Enlarge / A mean efficiency you’ll be able to count on to see, and take part in, at Web Temple. Co-creator Clayton Collins is within the middle body, performing as his alter-ego Lengthy Distance Husband. (credit score: Web Temple)

In early Might, I wanted a change of tempo from my normal YouTube rabbit holes, having gone down a couple of of these throughout months of quarantine. My discovery of Web Temple nearly felt like discovering a very good bar or music venue; as a substitute of being served content material by a video platform’s algorithm, I needed to know somebody, get a tip, and sort a whole URL.

The Temple made a blunt entrance on my looking tab with little greater than a cropped YouTube embed and a chat field with no scrolling function. After which it received bizarre.

I witnessed a startling musical efficiency drenched in autotune (the laughs between songs have been additionally autotuned). The singer wore snowman print boxers, an outsized sweater that includes summary humanoid photographs, and a hat studying “WWW DOT COM MY ASS.” He danced with three stuffed sheep in his arms, whereas behind him, a inexperienced display screen was flooded with imagery chosen by viewers members. They’d chosen photographs of Shrek and Unicode shrimp emojis.