Remember the year 2000? NSYNC's daring frosted tips versus the Backstreet Boys' hometown authenticity. (Lol.) Christina's voice versus Britney's "voice." PlayStation 2 versus Dreamcast. (Dreamcast forever.) Back then, the world was a profoundly different place. Apple hadn’t released the iPod and Windows XP wasn’t even out yet. But it was around 2000 that DVDs were becoming a thing. And all you need is this one promo to show you how bizarre things were at the time.

2000 was bizarre

Remember: this was an era when the way we think about media, how we consume it, and where was starting to converge in a big way. Just think about how strange it must have been to watch a movie on your computer. Wrapping your head around that when you’re accustomed to VHS is hard. So how do you sell that to people? Apparently intense close-ups, explosions, and cuts so fast your brain can’t process them. Because the future was cool. The future was extreme. The future was full of CGI monoliths apparently!

Had YouTube advertised online video like this in 2005, I like to think it’d be that much bigger today. Maybe that’s me.