As April Fool’s pranks go, this one is pretty good: YouTube have announced that it will be closing down and accepting no new videos.
The video insists that YouTube was in fact only set up as part of a contest to find the best home video on the Internet.
“We are so close to the end,” Tom Liston, communications director at YouTube. “Tonight at midnight, YouTube.com will no longer be accepting entries. After eight amazing years, it’s finally time to review everything that has been uploaded to our site and begin the process of selecting a winner.”
There’s some familiar faces in the video, including a cameo from Antoine Dodson, who struck internet fame with the “Bed Intruder” Auto-Tune video.
“We are all storytellers — that is what pulled me into this contest,” said Dodson. “I encourage everybody to watch as many videos as possible before YouTube deletes everything tonight.”
Sailing completely over the top, YouTube go on to say that every video on the site will be reviewed by a panel of judges – a process that will take ten years – with the winner to be announced in 2023, when the site will come back online.
