Funny Spongebob

There is a video I remember stumbling across on YouTube years ago that I can’t find anymore, and I vividly remember having a few nightmares caused by it back when I first watched it as a dumb teenager.
Let’s set the stage. If I had to guess, this happened in either late-2010 or early-2011. Me and a friend were hanging out in my room in the middle of the night like most people around our age at the time liked to do. We played all kinds of FPS games, drank Mountain Dew, the works. It all started when I started browsing YouTube on my shitty clamshell laptop to see what kind of random slop I could find. This is what I’d usually do before hitting the sack, just watch random shit out of boredom before my eyes got heavy and I fell asleep. A bit of context that is important to mention is that the YouTube account I was using at the time was shared with my younger brother, and so usually the recommended section on the home page was frankly all over the place. On my side, there were Call of Duty montages and edgy comedy videos and whatnot, meanwhile my brother was watching various cartoon clips as most young kids on YouTube do, especially SpongeBob or other Nickelodeon-related videos. Despite the mis-match of recommendations, the both of us rarely watched the other’s recommended videos; we both just consumed our favorite content without really ever glancing at whatever the other brother was looking at. This night, however, was different.
If I recall correctly, me clicking on this video was a complete accident. I was intending to click a different video but, since I was half asleep at this point, my finger slipped and I clicked on the video next to it; a seemingly ordinary SpongeBob video. I groaned and wanted to click off but just as I did, something caught my attention. I clicked back onto the video page and I saw that the dislike ratio on the video was quite high. The comments on the video weren’t much better either, with a large majority of them either being scared and/or confused out of their minds at whatever the hell they just watched, or just cussing out the uploader. This made me morbidly curious; I obviously wasn’t one to watch SpongeBob at my age (since I thought I was too “cool” to watch it or whatever), but seeing this amount of hate towards it made me want to watch it, just out of curiosity as to whatever anomaly I just stumbled upon. With some reluctance, I clicked play.
First off, the video’s title wasn’t anything too crazy. The video had a very simple title of “funny Spongebob.” It also wasn’t a very popular video either; as I recall it having a little over 2,000 views. The video started with a blue Windows Movie Maker title card saying something along the lines of “FUNNY SPONGEBOB EPISODE” while some shitty AudioSwap music played over it. The music was quite loud, and so I quickly turned down the volume so as to not wake up my now-asleep friend. I obviously didn’t want to get caught watching a children’s cartoon or else I probably wouldn’t have lived it down. After the title card faded out, it cut to a shitty quality recording of the SpongeBob episode, “Can You Spare a Dime” playing off of a CRT TV. I remember there being a Nickelodeon splat screen bug in the corner, suggesting that this footage was ripped straight from an actual TV broadcast. I also remember there being subtitles on the screen as well. Whoever was filming clearly had a shaky hand as I remember the camera jerking and shaking a lot; I even distinctly remember a part in the middle where the person filming dropped their camera on the floor before picking it back up again. As the video droned on, I checked to see the video’s length. If I recall correctly, it was a little over 9 minutes long. I groaned, wondering if I wanted to watch what was essentially an entire SpongeBob episode, but I was still wondering why so many people seemed to be genuinely afraid of this video, so I pressed on.
A good majority of the video was just showing the entirety of the episode on the TV, almost like one of those bootleg movie theater recordings or something along those lines. I remember being lowkey impressed that this person managed to upload an entire SpongeBob episode onto YouTube and not have the video taken down, especially since the Viacom lawsuit was only a few years prior. I suppose the atrocious video quality and the fact that I don’t think you could hear the episode’s audio super well had something to do with it. After a few minutes of watching, my eyelids became really heavy and I just fell asleep right in front of my laptop. Looking back, I wish that I didn’t wake up to see… the video’s ending.
The video suddenly went dead silent. For some reason, the sudden deafening silence jolted me awake. It almost scared me a little bit since the SpongeBob episode was almost background ambience while I was asleep for that brief time. When my eyesight came back into focus, I saw that the screen was paused on what looked like a commercial break after the episode finished. The only thing that was audible was the quiet buzzing of the TV. After around 30 seconds of nothing, there were audible footsteps. I initially thought that they were coming from my house but quickly realized that it was coming from the video. The camera quickly panned away from the TV and onto a shot of the other side of the room. The room had an ugly yellow hue to it and was dimly lit. The room was quite messy, with clothes on the floor, a bunch of plushies on the bed, and there was even an overfilled trash can. It almost looked like an episode of Hoarders. Right in the center of the room was a door that was open only a creak. The footsteps got progressively louder, and I remember my heart beginning to race as the anticipation built up.
Suddenly, the footsteps stopped. Whatever was making those noises was clearly at the door now. I could hear heavy breathing from the camera man. The door slowly opened, making a loud creaking sound in the process. When I saw… IT step into the room, I became paralyzed.
A man, almost completely naked, and wearing a box crudely painted yellow over his head stepped into the room. The man made no sound. He clumsily looked around the room a bit before looking straight at the camera. I remember feeling like he was staring into my soul. I was fully awake now at this point, my heart racing. I knew at the time that this was probably some stupid art project or whatever but I was still so confused at what the fuck I had just stumbled onto. It almost felt like I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to.
The video was still deafeningly silent at this point. The man slowly walked towards the camera. Actually, no, he wasn’t walking, he was clearly limping on one leg as he made his way towards the camera. I winced in genuine disgust at what I was seeing, I know, a bit of an overreaction but could you blame me? I was a dumb preteen watching this in the middle of the night while half asleep, that would probably unsettle anyone. The man soon approached the camera and stared deep into the lens, his face taking up the whole frame. I got a much better look at his face. The box he was wearing on his head was clearly a bit soggy, suggesting that the paint job was likely shortly before this video was recorded. There were eye and mouth holes cut out, giving me a glimpse at this man’s face. His eyes were bloodshot. I vaguely remember his eyelids twitching a bunch as he stared intently at the camera, never really losing eye contact. He had some slight stubble around his chapped lips. He clearly didn’t have great dental hygiene, as his teeth were bright yellow and his gums were showing signs of gum disease. Then, the man began to speak in a very hushed tone. I don’t remember what he was saying verbatim, but I do remember he had a very thick accent. I was honestly too paralyzed to try and listen to what he was saying anyways. After he was done saying whatever he was saying, he stepped back from the camera a little bit and his hands latched onto the camera to stop the recording. The video quickly faded to black and a final Movie Maker text title showed up, reading “meet funny spongebob.” After that, the video abruptly ended.
It’s been over a decade since I watched this video. The video’s definitely long gone now but it still stays rent free in my head to this day. I still have many, MANY questions about this video; what the purpose of it was, how it was even allowed on YouTube in the first place, etc. I’ve tried everything I could to try and find this mysterious video again, to try and relive that surreal night I had all those years ago, but to no avail. I even asked my younger brother (who's now an adult) but he doesn't remember it. I guess it was a bit stupid of me to assume that he even watched the video in the first place. However, I did stumble upon what I think is a r/DeepIntoYouTube post about the video, the way the comments under the post were describing it matches up perfectly with what I remember. Despite this, there's still a ton of questions I have about this video, but I suppose that the questions I have are questions that are better left unanswered.
Category:SpongeBob
Category:SpongeBob SquarePants
Category:Spongebob Pastas
Category:Computers and Internet
Category:YouTube
Category:Lost Media
Category:Lost Videos
Category:Weird