Consider this a post-mortem on Unus Annus.

I'll attempt to explain its purpose, its impact, and what it ultimately meant.

And to start with what it was, we have to start with what it is.

As of 12:00am PST of today, Unus Annus is nothing. It is gone forever. It is deleted.

What Unus Annus had been before its inevitable deletion was a YouTube channel, created by Mark Fischbauch & Ethan Nestor.

Ethan & Mark conceptualized the channel over the course of two weeks at the beginning of November 2019 & by November 13th, the channel was up and running.

Unus Annus is Latin for "One Year," & the name itself is honestly the perfect encapsulation of what it was.

Because on the one hand, it was a fairly serious channel about investigating the nature of death, impermanence, & the meaning we instill & derive from both of those.

And on the other hand, Unus Annus sounds like anus, & when the channel first started up, the recommended videos on YouTube using the search term were medical videos about anal fissures.

And that's apropos, given that the channel was also one part chaotic YouTube shitposting.

The first video was titled "Cooking with Sex Toys" & it's exactly what you expect: Mark & Ethan buy sex toys & make breakfast with them.

It was weird, very clickbaity, but also very funny. The editing was one part satirical of vlogging, one part genuine embrace.

And it was fun.

And honestly, the intent for the channel had been to continue on with that weird exploration of mostly clickbaity topics - like the Bad Kind of Cupping or Drinking Our Own Pea - for the rest of their one year. They had a full schedule lined up for collabs & other weird shit.

But, just as the channel was sort of hitting its groove, Covid-19 started. And quarantine began. And suddenly, they couldn't do in person stuff anymore.

Their ideas for YouTube Prom, the many locations & travel ideas they'd had, all of their in person stuff was basically gone.

And this marked a shift in not only the content that Unus Annus began to make, but also the tone the channel had.

And here I need to explain something: for those who don't know, Markiplier is the largest horror game YouTuber online. That's always been a part of his branding.

And while earlier videos had certainly dealt with the macabre - they bought their own casket & looked up how they might die - and some videos had incorporated horror elements, like their "death" at the end of the escape room, what came to be dubbed as Quarantannus changed things.

And this is where I need to mention that part of the goal of Unus Annus was to produce a video every day for that entire year. Every day, mostly at noon, Unus Annus would pump out a new video, so that by the end of the project they'd have a year's worth of videos. And they did.

But this was the obstacle that Quarantannus presented, because like most of us, they hadn't counted on a pandemic to force them apart.

So, they began basically going down internet rabbit holes. What lurks in the ocean, is bigfoot real, some conspiracy theory type stuff & all.

And, because each video needed to end with SOMETHING happening, most videos ended with one, or both, of their animated & edited deaths.

By the end of quarantine, they came out slightly different. The channel hadn't changed, but had further embraced the melancholic & macabre.

And you might be thinking "this all sounds like it was just some chaotic gross out weird out channel made by two guys on YouTube."

And it was. That's basically all it was. And it wasn't meant for everyone. I'll even admit that at first, I really wasn't interested in it at all.

But when I was locked down in the depths of that summer, I found a sort of refuge in this weird channel uploading daily new content on the regular. And a lot of folks took comfort in that weirdness. It became a way to both distract & deconstruct the death we're now surrounded by.

An approachable avenue where two relatively familiar faces could be zany in one moment & also briefly touch upon the tenuous nature of life itself.

And, as Unus Annus went on, it grew more genuine.

Because part of it was watching a friendship be tested & blossom in new ways.

It's somewhat strange that Mark, who's 31, would be friends with Ethan, who only just turned 24. The trajectory of their friendships started with Ethan doing a backflip for Mark at a PAX East 2014 panel, which tickled Mark. They grew closer, collaborating more. Until Unus Annus.

It was very clear at the start of UA that Ethan wasn't as experienced as Mark. But also something that was clear was that Mark was used to being in charge.

Both of those things changed over the course of UA. Ethan grew more confidant & capable, Mark relaxed on being in charge.

And not just being in charge but also being competitive.

There's an infamous moment where Mark - having been extremely annoyed by Ethan & having assumed he wasn't paying attention to something important to an episode - lost control & punched a hole in the wall.

It was early on.

Towards the end of UA, they talked about this moment as a shift. Ethan - who was usually passive - actually confronted Mark & set a boundary that that wasn't ok. And Mark began to reflect on his own competitiveness.

By the second half of UA, they were examining themselves more.

Because while UA was a big old YouTube shitpost, it also was sort of a bucket list. A challenge to experience new things & confront fears. They got pepper sprayed. Mark confronted his fear of the ocean. Ethan ate a bug.

It was intentionally memey but there was a heart to it all.

And what had intended to be a channel that did collabs & crossovers increasingly focused on the dynamic & personalities of its two hosts by the end, which gave it a great amount of added depth.

And honestly, the last thing about it became embodied in that dynamic as well.

Because part of what UA confronted was this idea of permanence. In a digital age, we take for granted the permanent nature of art. But that has robbed us of the joys of impermanence.

Imagine if every joke told between your friends was recorded. What would the value of that be?

There's a certain magic to live performances, to nights spent between friends laughing, to the happenings of life which aren't set in stone.

And, as two large YouTubers who've had lives that are very recorded, Mark & Ethan wanted to challenge that notion with this weird channel.

And it worked.

By the end, there were nearly 1.5 million people watching the livestream where they deleted it all.

And UA now lives as a memory. An in-joke. A thought exercise.

But in a year plagued with pandemic, it was an anchor. Not just for viewers, but also for others.

Because Unus Annus gave people jobs. They had merch, which was run by a warehouse that was struggling but now has been able to expand to 4 warehouses & take on hundreds of new workers.

That's growth for a company during a year that might have sunk them. And that's not all.

All the businesses they went to & shot on location with were given free advertisement. Many of them gained success from the exposure.

During 2020.

That's huge.

They did a charity drive over last Christmas. They gave away their golden YouTube button to a fan.

They gave back.

And during a year when many of us were in desperate need of something reliable, something distracting, & something meaningful, they gave us something to latch onto.

And now it's gone.

And that's not only okay, but in a way beautiful.

Because they succeeded at what they wanted.

Unus Annus was many things, but it was always supposed to die, much like ourselves.

And it was a sometimes gross shitpost, but it was also this friendship strengthening between two people who spent nearly every single day together for an entire year.

And also grow together.

Many fans by the end were begging for it to remain & there's an understandable desire for it to have done so.

But therein lies the central question the channel challenged.

Because do we really want everything recorded & known exactly? Is that really what we should strive for?

Sometimes, I used to think so. That we should discover all the secrets & solve every mystery.

But what would we do after we knew?

Isn't there a certain beauty in not fully knowing?

I know for many of you, you may be feeling loss this morning. And you were supposed to. It died.

This weird thing we all were a part of is dead. We mourned it & watched it go.

But I also know for many of you, you may be feeling left out. Like you didn't know about this, like you wished you would've seen some of it.

But that's where we can all come to terms on however.

Because we can talk about it, just like a relative can talk about coming back from a vacation to a place you've never been.

Because the space now that we are in can be one of the sharing of memory & the enjoyment that can bring.

Unus Annus may have ended but we keep it with us.

Your friend who watched it can show you the YouTube clippings, tell you about all the weird stuff that went on, & you can enjoy their weird translation of it.

It's like the sharing of a story, a thing every ancestor of ours has done in one way or another.

And that's beautiful.

Because the point of Unus Annus was a challenge between a group of close fellows to create something impermanent. Something which, for a year, was known & after could be taken by each who had participated & shared.

Their time of creation has ended.

But ours has only just begun.