Tech

The First Viral Videos Wore Bikinis

I really am having trouble believing it, but YouTube has only been around since February 2005. Sometimes it feels like YouTube was the key ingredient to the invention of the whole “viral comedy/parody video” thing. But people were utilizing cheap cameras and Web publishing to create goofball videos since long before that, as evidenced by this obscure web series called How-To-Do Girls featuring women in bikinis teaching calculus that started in 2004.

Enjoy the copywriting of this synopsis, via Internet Archive:

“How-to-Do Girls tackle that notorious freshman weeder class. Playboy model, Jaime Lynn, and MIT Nuclear Engineering Graduate, Paige, use more than the black board to teach that perennial hardcore college subject, calculus. Paige & Jaime Lynn as your math teaching assistant give a whole new meaning to TA.”

Now, the videos themselves are gems from a hilarity aspect alone—the calculus tutoring is generic, but okay—but the reason they’re so great is because they’re archaeologically valuable. I mean, they’re Internet history, from a time when YouTube was just getting its legs, insane special effects meant something, and before hack marketing people were slinging around "viral" as if it's the end-all buzzword. So, with that in mind, harrumph and nod appreciatively like a true academic as you watch part two below.

This post originally appeared on Motherboard.