How I made a YouTube video with 450,000 views as a 13 year old

The year was 2007. Summer 2007 to be exact.

If you read my post about if your first programming language really matters you would know that I have hacking in my blood. In fact I even minored in Cyber Security in college because it was an interesting subject. But the first “hacking” I ever did was not really hacking…

I was always fond of cheat codes in video games; little codes the player can input for bonus health or unlimited lives. That wasn’t exactly enough for me.

I decided to purchase a “Action Replay”. This device plugged into my Nintendo DS, and allowed me to input commands to do things in the game that were not possible without it. I enjoyed unlimited lives in Mario, and spent a lot of time creating a beautiful house in Animal Crossing. Nothing was more satisfying than going over my friends house and showing them all the random stuff I hacked into the game.

At my age I really wanted to post a video about how cool the hacks are. I mean I would talk to my friends and they wanted in to my hacking ways. So I knew there could be an audience.

I got my DS out and loaded up a hack to spawn a very rare pokemon. Everyone that posted videos on youtube somehow captured the video from the DS straight into the computer.

I didn’t.

My older sister had a webcam which was complete awful quality. But it would make do. So picture me holding the webcam in one had with the DS in the other while trying to press the buttons to move my character. It’s quite a sight.

In the video I run around a normal grassy area and the maximum level pokemon appears and I have 999 master balls of course which assures a catch. On top of that the pokemon is shiny.

Needless to say I thought it was pretty clear I was cheating. But I put in the description that I caught it “Using Action Replay level 100 shiny wild modifier.”

People were furious. I received over 100 comments, most of them exclaiming that I was cheating. Yeah I was, its in the description… The like ratio was awful but the views kept on coming.

Now as an adult 8 years later I enjoy pointing out the fact to people that I have a video with half a million views on YouTube. It’s garbage, but its my garbage and I will cherish it forever.

I just hope no one finds it.