After joking around with the camera for a while, I decided to stop. I immediately went to the nearby computer shop. I forgot about my Facebook password in this timeline, so I needed to create a new one.
Back then I used Facebook to play games. I really loved to play Dragon City, Backyard Monsters, and Farmville. These games were famous back then, especially in the Philippines. I spent about 5–8 hours a day back then in the computer shop just to watch or play those games.
"Mang Vin! OPEN TIME on PC 9!" I shouted at the people at the counter. His name is Vincent, we call him Mang Vin.
(Short for Manong Vincent, English for Uncle Vin.)
"Ow Brier!! Long time no see. I thought you won't be coming back anymore! Where are you playing now, you traitor?!" Mang Vin teased. This is always the case with every shop out there. Every time you play in another shop, the owner will be disappointed in you. So we did our best not to get caught.
"Nah, I was busy making money. I do haircuts at home. You haven't heard the news yet?" I said as I stood up and went closer to the counter to have a conversation with him. We are close after all; back then this place was my life school, home, computer shop. When there is a tournament, he always asks me to play.
"Haircut and making money? Aren't you a good kid now? JAKE!!! Look at this kid, he is already making money. He's half your age, when the hell will you find yourself useful!!!" He shouted at the back. Jake is his son. He dropped out of school and spent his day in this shop.
"Fuck off old man. You can't even reset a computer, how can I leave you with this place? If only you were as dependable as that child, I would already be a millionaire by then!!" I watched them bicker for a while. People are already used to this, so no one paid them attention.
After a few minutes they settled down.
"Mang Vin, let me borrow a card reader! You guys really took your time." I said. Card readers are useful during this time, since plugging your camera directly to a PC is not possible during this time.
"Ow here, take it. Just don't lose it, you'll pay for it!" He said it was some sort of treasure.
I got back to my seat and it was already open. I quickly plugged the SD card into the reader then plugged it into the PC. The devices of Mang Vin are a little advanced during this time; most of the shops are yet to have flat screen monitors while he already uses flat screen monitors.
I quickly copied the video to the computer so that I could plug out the SD card and the reader. I took a look at the video and it is really clear even on the wider screen. That camera is really useful.
I went to Facebook and created my account. However, I forgot that unlike in the future, I have to make a Yahoo account or Gmail. This time many accounts are linked to Yahoo. However, I know the future, so I choose Google instead because Yahoo won't be of use in the future.
I filled everything up with my name, username, address, age, and more. For my password, because I am quite a forgetful person, I used a secret technique. For all of my accounts, no matter what it is, I only use a single password.
"And… done!" Finally, just creating an account took about 10 minutes.
"How the hell does my captcha always get rejected?!" I sighed. I quickly fixed my profile and used a cat as my profile picture. No one hates cats, after all. They just exist, unlike dogs. That is, attention-seeking cats don't bother you unless you bother them.
I quickly took a look at the video and started uploading it. I don't have any Facebook friends yet, but I'll set the audience to public so that people can still see it.
However, as I started the uploading process, I looked at the time remaining 1 day!!!
"What the fuck! HEY OLD MAN YOUR INTERNET SPEED SUCKS!" I shouted at the counter.
"You little brat! That's already the fastest plan!!"
Facepalm. How can I forget about this? This year the Philippines internet speed sucks. Well, even in the future it will remain bad. Other countries are already in the robot era, downloading all of Netflix in a second, while in the Philippines we wait for buffering on YouTube for hours just to watch a few seconds, then buffer again.
I quickly started to think of a solution. I can't leave this be for a whole day just to upload a video. The quality is good so it takes a lot of space. Downgrading the video will be bad for the viewers.
"Hmmm, should I just cut this into multiple pieces?" Having determined the way to resolve this, I quickly opened the window of Movie Maker. This tool is free and built in the shop. It is a bad tool because it has fewer features and it downgrades your video a little when you run it using this tool.
However, this is the only tool I can use for free. Others need a subscription, or I could pirate other software, but I don't have that kind of computer skills.
I quickly cut the video into multiple parts. I also did minor editing to make it more presentable, like adding sound effects and stuff. To do this, I used a YouTube converter app to convert YouTube videos to MP3. I did have fun editing the first video and started adding more into it.
After an hour, I started exporting the video.
"15 minutes?!" Sigh, I want to complain, but I know nothing will change no matter what I do.
"Mang Vin, two Pancit Canton Chili-Mansi in PC 9, add some egg please!" I said as if I was ordering in a restaurant.
While waiting for my food and the exporting process, I decided to set up a YouTube account and a channel. I named it Briertv. This kind of format is quite effective during this era. Many aspiring internet influencers use this format of name plus TV.
After setting up my account, I decided to watch some videos on it.
"Everything is boring and the quality sucks."
No one took it seriously because no one knew you could earn cash on this site if you did well.
After a few minutes, my food and the export were finally done. I quickly opened my Facebook to upload the video, however I saw a notification and someone added me as a friend. I saw that most of them were my classmates so I quickly accepted them. This includes Joms. I stalked them for a bit and there were just a bunch of memes, random photos, and pickup lines being posted online.
I started uploading the video. For the caption I put: "My first vlog testing my new camera!"
Then posted!!! I saw the timer and it is only about a few minutes since posting. The video is about 5 minutes long so it won't take that much time. The raw video takes about 1 and a half hours so I can create about 16 videos with just that much.
After a while, I got back home after uploading 3 more videos. I wanted to do more because it was fun editing videos, however it was already 8 in the evening so there was nothing I could do. I saw some reaction in the video, mostly from my classmate. However, I can leave the replying tomorrow because I am short on time. I had to eat dinner after all.
I walked on the way home, not knowing that this video that I made would make a huge fire on the internet.