When I saw Jeremiah McDonald’s “Conversation with my 12-year-old self” (now at 700k views and probably hitting a million today) I knew I recognized that stare.

Luckily it took zero detective work to find his other famous videos. McDonald was already a YouTube star back in 2007, when he made the two-million-view video “YouTube Is My Life”.

“Conversation” is a masterful viral video, the type whose gimmick is not just luck but a lot of creative hard work:

But it’s not McDonald’s first conversation with his young self. He used some of the same childhood footage in this promo for an event last year:

It’s fun to see how he’s taken an extremely good concept and developed it until it earned him a hit.

Here’s his other hit, “YouTube Is My Life”, with cameos from other YouTube stars of 2007.

If you really like McDonald and/or YouTube-culture humor, and you have a lot of patience, you might like “A Featured Video”, also from 2007. It’s slow, un-pretty, and rather navel-gazing, but YouTube performers back then didn’t have to compete with top music videos and professional productions:

Here’s one more slow but charming sketch in the style of Peep Show:

And lastly, a boldly dorky wordless piece called “Jazz Dispute”: