Memento Mori
7Unus Annus finally ended several days ago. What they did was as interesting as it was inspiring and I wanted to share my thoughts and pay my respects.
Mark (Markiplier) and Ethan (Crank Gameplays) as well as Amy, especially Amy and the rest of the crew worked diligently and tirelessly to produce a full video every day for an entire year and they worked hard to ensure that the videos were entertaining and memorable. This hard work made the channel's last moments all the more momentous and allowed them to stick in our memories for the foreseeable future.
Colour me impressed.
Unus Annus was a joint YouTube channel created and run by Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nestor-Darling. The two did a variety of activities on the channel, uploading one episode per day, while steering clear of normal gaming videos they're known for. Ethan represented the "Unus", while Mark represented the "Annus" persona.
The channel was created on November 13, 2019 as a way of giving their viewers a once in a life time experience, free of, what they considered as, restrictive guidelines, with the end-goal being to remove all of its content off of YouTube after a one year run without any intent of preserving it, as well as discontinuing Unus Annus' merchandise, hence the channel's name, which translates to "one year" in Latin. This method aligned with Mark's idea of not everything being immortalized on the internet and that the most treasured experiences lie within those unique, fleeting moments, tying into Unus Annus' symbolic imagery of frailty and death, and their commonly used term "memento mori" (Latin expression for "remember that you have to die").
Fischbach also stated that he would be issuing copyright takedowns to any re-uploads of his deleted content without his permission. On November 13, 2020, after a twelve hour broadcast, Mark, Ethan and Amy deleted all of Unus Annus' social accounts and finished off the livestream by terminating the channel.
On November 14, 2019, Mark and Ethan replaced their social accounts' profile pictures and banners with solid white and solid black images, respectively. The following day, both of them posted a channel specific version of "This Will End in One Year" video, addressing their audience in a monotone voice about the then-upcoming Unus Annus project. The two were dressed in suits; Mark in white portraying "Annus" and Ethan in black portraying "Unus," with each representing the aforementioned colors.
Both videos linked to Unus Annus' channel introductory video of the same name, in which Mark and Ethan described their plans to upload one episode per day onto the channel for a full year, before eventually removing all of its content from YouTube with no intention of preserving it, hence the channel's name, meaning "one year" in Latin. The only exceptions to the 'one episode per day' rule were Unus vs. Annus challenge where they uploaded two videos side by side in a single day and the Omegle video that was taken down by a third party via privacy claim. In addition, Fischbach also stated that they will be issuing copyright takedowns to all of Unus Annus' reuploaded material without their permission.
Unus Annus' theme is centered around life and death, with its primary colors consisting of solid white and black, as a tie-in to the aforementioned symbolism. Its primary imagery featured an hourglass with a skull inside each cylinder, representing the incessant passage of time, as well as them etching towards the series' deletion date. The channel's slogan was "memento mori," a Latin phrase meaning "remember that you're going to die."
Each video's intro would start off with a slow rise of Mark and Ethan's distorted voices, chanting the channel's name in unison. Alongside its introduction and closing credits was a timer, overlaid across a black screen that counted down from 365 days and 12 hours, with each subsequent upload subtracting 24 hours off the clock to indicate the remaining lifespan of the channel. This same process would be applied to all of Unus Annus' future episodes, until their final upload and eventual deletion of the channel.
A number of videos would abruptly end, similarly to that of a suspense horror movie, with an exaggerated scene centered around the episode's theme, usually implying either Mark's or Ethan's demise. With the exception of a few videos, almost all of Unus Annus' thumbnails featured an Archimedean spiral pattern, either across its background or as part of the featured visual element. The song "Turncoat" by Michael Rothery was often used during their announcements and acts as the channel's unofficial theme.
#unusannus #mementomori #vlog