YouTube Depression Theatre: I Can't Believe We've Done This

Like many millennials, I occasionally have a tendency to let bad emotions get the better of me, and I often numb the anxiety the best way I know how: distracting myself on the Internet. Over the last few decades I've cultivated a bank of videos that often get me out of a spiral; they're inspiring, humorous or just plain interesting. I'm going to share them with you under the heading I call "YouTube Depression Theatre," and you can put them on if you ever need to feel something.

What can you understand about someone you've never met in 12 seconds?

Seventeen years ago, British lad Paul Weedon uploaded this video to YouTube with no context. He's sporting sunglasses and a sash around his head, and is about to explain whatever he's doing in the moment. "So, basically, what I was thinking of doing was—" And that's when it happens: an arm from out of frame whaps the side of his head. "Ah, fuck," Weedon responds with considerably less emotion than you'd expect. Then, the rejoinder that launched a thousand memes. "I caahn't believe you've done this." He's not pissed; his reaction is too British. He's...cross.

For years, this video came and went with no explanation. Finally, a grown-up Weedon tried his best to explain, promising a documentary-style breakdown of what led him to this moment. Of course, that plan was unwieldy, so last year he uploaded his proof of concept that kind of said everything he needed to—everything I suspected all along.

Weedon was the kind of kid who liked making funny videos with friends. I don't know what he expected, but when I watch this, I think about the times I was party to such moments. And I think of Tristan, one of my best friends for nearly 25 years.

Tristan More was a year older than me in middle school. We had the same chorus class, and he was one of the eighth graders who was kind of nice to me. I don't know if we'd bonded over our mutual love for Star Wars and Jurassic Park yet. Through him, I would connect to other upperclassmen in high school—the art and music kids. You know the kind: they seem cooler to you than they might to others; there's an air of seriousness to their budding talents; they, like most high schoolers but particularly chorus and band kids, are simultaneously oversexed and undersexed at the same time. (When people expressed surprise that I wasn't interested in the TV series Glee, I would quote the philosopher P.W. Herman: "I don't have to see it, Dottie; I lived it.")

As a kid with not a lot of self-confidence, I can't tell you how important Tristan connecting me to these other kids was. I would honor that gesture by being a relative dick to him a lot of the time. I was a little tyro of the lunch table, cultivating my own imagined cult of personality and certainly being a little snot to either Tristan or my other best friend Jeff Seesselberg, who'd enter high school a year after I did. Misfit-on-misfit teasing is the worst, especially when one of you is memorialized in a yearbook in a truly bizarre way, with the superlative "Don't Get on Their Bad Side." I mean, what? But his loyalty never wavered.

As Tristan prepared to fulfill his dreams of going to film school, he'd shoot a 15-minute comedic short based on a strange punk song two of our friends had written. Ninja Attack!!! was about a suburban teen and a math teacher (played by Tristan's father in a bald cap) whose lives are overrun by flamboyant ninjas, and take it upon themselves to exact bloody revenge. This was right about when the Kill Bill movies were released, and it's pretty obvious to see the similarities of variously costumed ninjas gushing bicycle pumps of fake blood to the strains of the Pixies, Run-DMC and free jazz. I played "Mike Belleview," a local journalist who provided the framing story by eliciting the tale from the hero. It's the kind of ridiculousness that could only come from bored suburban teens who didn't take drugs

Now, I cannot show you Ninja Attack!!!, because it's not available online. However, a teaser trailer for its sequel, Another Ninja Attack!!! (made while Tristan and I attended separate colleges) does exist.

There are plenty of things I could tell you about Another Ninja Attack!!! For starters, it's a feature-length project, about 88 minutes long. I reprise my role as Belleview, revealed to be the brother of the villainous Ninja Leader from the first film. (This was also true in real life.) The film also has one of the 10 funniest jokes I've ever seen on film. (Sorry to explain it, but: in a montage of the math teacher's college life, he sits down three times on a couch with a friend, Coca-Cola bottles in hand for each of them. The first two times, the friend unscrews the cap and proclaims, "Hey, I won a Coke!" The third time, the teacher purposefully switches the bottles; the friend reads the bottle cap and again shouts, "Hey, I won a Coke!"; the math teacher opens his and exclaims with utter bafflement, "I owe a Coke?!")

It might seem crazy to share home movie footage of yourself with a bemused audience. But it's more than that. I see years of friendship, things that only make sense to me. Less weight and lines in the face. People I haven't spoken to for years, for various reasons. One guy in here was a dropout from my high school who was part of our friend group; he later found a passion for culinary school and worked in catering. He got my college girlfriend a scarf for a secret Santa that he clearly put a lot of effort into despite not knowing what to get. He died the week after I graduated, the sole victim in an apartment fire later ruled to be arson. Maybe you watch this and think about who those people are in your life. I hope they mean as much to you as mine do to me.

Time has had its way on friendships, but mine and Tristan's never wavered. He started hanging out with my good friend Mike Joseph when I was in my 20s. When Mike and I had a stupid falling-out that is not worth getting into but lasted for a while, those two continued to be friends; now that I've repaired my friendship with Mike, I see a guy I've known since I was 11 at parties and other get-togethers. There's a lot of history in rooms like that, but ours is special. Tristan has matured in ways that he would explain better than I could. But it's made him an even better friend than he already was. He's bounced back from personal tribulations and has been a crucial part of so many life events of mine. His passion for art complements mine nicely, from his ongoing film podcast to the concerts we go to together.

Friday is Tristan's birthday. I was always going to write this regardless of that, but my plans to celebrate with him yesterday were waylaid by transit issues. The guilt and stress of missing my friends and my daughter's bedtime, being stuck in situations I could not control, filled me with such unruly emotion. And he helped talk me out of it, on a day meant to celebrate him. He gave me such words of kindness—words that took me years to properly articulate to him—that really hit me where I live.

I love you, Tristan. I can't believe we've done this.