Life and Death
Memento Mori — My New Motto and Why It Should Be Yours, Too
How a YouTube channel and a Latin phrase changed an entire fanbase’s mentality about life.
For those that are familiar with YouTube, a very important channel died recently. However, its importance wasn’t felt until the very end.
But that’s how it was designed.
YouTubers Mark Fischbach (Markiplier) and Ethan Nestor (CrankGameplays), alongside Amy Nelson (Mark’s girlfriend), debuted the channel Unus Annus on November 12th of 2019. The channel was named “One Year” in Latin and at the end of 365 days — the channel would be deleted.
In the meantime, new content would be uploaded every day with no breaks for one year — something that is uncommon in the YouTube community. At the end of their 365-day upload streak, the channel would vanish.
Fans of both Ethan and Mark were excited and surprised by this new idea the team had come up with and many signed up for the experience right away by subscribing to the channel.
At first, the channel started with only 400,000 subscribers, then up to 800,000, and finally one million. From there, the channel continued to grow until the end when it reached a final 4.57 million on its last day.
The videos were entertaining and crass, at times, but they were deep and meaningful at their core. Each video began and ended with a timer that showed the exact amount of time the channel had until its demise. Viewers entered each new video with a reminder of the death that would soon come.
Memento Mori and How It Came Into Play
The team — sticking with their Latin theme — chose “Memento Mori” as their catchphrase, of sorts. Memento Mori in Latin translates roughly to “Remember, you will die” in English.
The team chose this phrase and used it often, as a reminder of the slow ticking of the clock that represented both the channel and our lives here on Earth.
Now is this phrase a bit morbid? Yes. But does it encapsulate one of the most important ideas to live by? Absolutely yes.
We often go through life, day-by-day, expecting everything to be the same. We expect to wake up after we go to sleep. We expect to have food to eat. We expect our friends and family to be there on each new day. But the truth is — this can change at any moment.
The average life expectancy in the United States is 78.7 years old, but that doesn’t mean that we will all get to that point. Roughly 2.8 million people die each year in the U.S. due to car accidents, heart disease, and everything in between.
With this being said, shouldn’t we live life to the fullest instead of waiting for the next perfect opportunity or “chance of a lifetime?”
Memento Mori is a simple reminder that “Hey, you’re gonna die someday.” So why, then, should we waste any amount of time not giving it our all? Why waste time going to a school you’re not happy with to get a degree you don’t need? Why wait to start that project you’ve been dreaming about for years? Why wait to start that company until the market is “just right”?
People wait every day for the next best thing to happen. People also die every day wishing they’d done more.
When I worked in an assisted living center with the elderly, one of the biggest regrets I heard about life is “I wish I had done more.” When you’re standing on death’s doorstep, the last thing you’re thinking of is “I think I’ll wait a few more years” or “I’ll get the perfect opportunity soon. It’s coming.”
Lying in Wait
For the Unus Annus channel, death was a common talking point. Both Mark and Ethan ruminated about the death of the channel in almost every video — if the timer wasn’t enough of a reminder.
In the middle of their year-long venture, the channel began to plateau. Many viewers lost interest with the assumption (or maybe blind hope) that the channel wouldn’t really be deleted when the timer ran out.
This middle area is where many of us find ourselves daily. We get comfortable with life and we forget just how fragile it really is. We surround ourselves with the mundane — never asking ourselves for anything more or less.
We often forget that our time is limited, and this is one of our biggest flaws, in my opinion.
As humans, we have so much potential to do great things, but we often squander our time cuddling up with the mundane — wasting our time on social media, in poor relationships, in dead-end jobs — in the Cul-De-Sacs of life that lead absolutely nowhere.
Sometimes, we’re happy to have a bit of the mundane in our everyday life. It makes time a little easier. When we know what to expect, we can become comfortable and at peace with our existence.
But that’s never where we get anything worthwhile done.
A Bittersweet Ending
At the end of the channel, with two weeks left, engagement started to really pick up with viewers. Some who had never heard of the channel were discovering amazing videos for the first time with only weeks left to enjoy it.
Diehard fans began pleading with the team to not delete the channel. They could instead just quit posting, right? What would the harm be in that?
But the Unus Annus team didn’t back down from their original goal. On the night of Friday the 13th, they deleted their channel, along with all of their social media accounts, at 12 am PST and said goodbye to their year-long project.
The crew honored the channel with a 12-hour live stream starting at 12 pm PST. This live stream is where the death of the channel started to get real for viewers.
Throughout the stream, the team congratulated themselves on the success of the channel, reviewed past videos and clips, viewed fanart, and discussed the meaning of Unus Annus, as a whole.
A quote from Mark in his recent video titled Unus Annus — Post Mortem gives the best explanation about the overall meaning of the channel:
“You know, someone asked me a year ago why I was doing this, why we were making the channel and putting so much effort into it just to delete it. They didn’t understand it — they couldn’t understand it. They were like, ‘It doesn’t make any sense, why would someone put all that effort into something they were just going to get rid of — they were just gonna throw away?’ And I said, ‘It’ll make sense, when it ends.’”
What Mark says here parallels perfectly with life itself. Why put all this time into something if it will eventually end? Why get a degree, get married, have children, or get a promotion if you will die someday?
The answer is — for the experience.
What would life be without all of these daily pleasantries? What would life be like without family and friends to interact with and love; without children to play with and raise? What would life be like without a dream job and a place to call your own?
It would be boring — the exact definition of lifeless.
There’s no time like the present to get started on what you’re dreaming about. The viewers of Unus Annus understand that well, now. The death of this channel sparked a thought — a conversation — between all of us that watched it and are aware of the meaning behind it.
The channel may be dead, but it lives on in our memories — just like with the death of a loved one. We still have time here on Earth to make the most of every minute — every second.
We can make all the excuses we want, but when it comes down to it, the clock is ticking. We’re running out of time with every second of every day. How we choose to spend that time is up to us.
So — what will you do with your time?
Memento mori.
