YouTube's new tape mode is one of those fantastic Google experiments that exists for no other reason than some engineer thought it'd be fun and they were able to figure it out.
In celebration of the 57th anniversary of video tape, YouTube now has a tape mode — signified by a VHS tape icon in the bottom menu bar — letting you flashback to the awful artifacts and problems you would encounter all the time with VHS.
There are a few caveats:
- It doesn't work on embeds, so if you want to play with tape mode on the above video you need to click through the YouTube logo
- It's only available on certain videos. Based on some initial research, it seems that anything monetized, or uploaded by an official YouTube partner, is omitted.
- It's probably just for a limited time
Here's a good exmple by way of Caroline Brooks "Tomorrow Tonight," directed by Tim Cruz, which takes us into a Mickey/Malory/Bonnie/Clyde sorta psychotic romance.
And if you've never had to live with VHS, make sure you pause it, which always caused brain-melting jitter unless you owned a fancy deck with a toggle wheel.
