by: Adrienne LaFrance | Nieman Journalism Lab

In 2006, the year after YouTube was founded, comedian Dane Cook had a bit about how every whim of your imagination, anything you could blindly type into a search bar, was already posted to the site.

“Here’s a test: Go home, go to YouTube, go to the search engine, and punch your keyboard,” Cook said during his Saturday Night Live monologue in September 2006.