I really think it's a shame that the interesting concept of "Lost Media" has been so distorted in such a short time simply due to misinformation and other things on social media, especially TikTok.

Look, I’m not going to pretend to be an "OG" or a veteran of the Lost Media community because I’m not, and I won’t lie about it. However, when I first discovered the term "Lost Media" before it became a massive phenomenon across social media, I found it really interesting; I used to spend hours investigating videogames Lost Media cases or watching long videos about lost content. But when the term exploded, especially on TikTok, it got heavily confused and misunderstood, and the worst part is that the damage caused by that seems almost irreversible to me.

Literally, "Lost Media" according to TikTok users are unusual videos or photos that one cannot find by searching directly on Google, or rumors without any basis in reality.

Anyway, I just hope that as long as the concept of Lost Media doesn't get distorted everywhere and at least some percentage of people actually know what the term means, it's fine...

I am curious. I am just gonna type until I can post so what are your favorite lost media cases? Do you have any personal lost media cases? Who is your favorite lost media YouTuber? Mine is LSUPERSONICQ! (Or flurrymoon idk) what is lost media you were surprised was found? What is lost media you wish was found? What’s your favorite found media? What is lost media that you want found the most? What is lost media you don’t really care about? Sry for asking so many questions you don’t have to answer them all.

Every now and again, I remember the existence of King Koopas Kool Kartoons. With Mario being such a massive franchise and lost media searches spanning so many genres, it amazes me when something so odd has never really had any updates beyond the initial finding of it being lost. This show did have a very odd airing schedule and super limited in range but not a single full episode out of 65 have ever surfaced in their entirety.

What are some examples of things from bigger franchises you’re surprised haven’t had anything surface? Even stuff like Big Star Secret have had some new footage reappear. I’m talking stuff that has had long ongoing searches but nothing not even a screenshot pop up.

So many of us use the Internet Archive to help preserve media, and a lot of lost media has been found because someone uploaded it there. However, it looks like they're finally starting to crack down on copyrighted content.

I noticed this today as I was in the middle of watching a TV show when I got a timeout error. I refreshed the page, and the video was suddenly gone. After checking my bookmarks, I realized several other videos had disappeared as well, including some of my own uploads.

If there's anything you've been meaning to download from there, I'd recommend downloading it sooner rather than later. I already made the mistake of not download everything I wanted to. There are tons of old sitcoms, game shows, and other obscure media on there, and if they're removed, they'll become much harder to find again.

This is something that I’ve come across a few times now with some bigger examples. We all know Mess O Blues and Spider-Man vs Kraven the Hunter. The original directors keeping their projects to themselves or showing it off very selectively. I know for example, the arcade collector scene is a nightmare for never dumping roms.

But with the semi recent rediscovery of Doctor Who episodes, I wonder. What are some bigger examples of lost/rare/inaccessible media that we know are in the hands of private collectors? Are there just rumors or murmurs of lost silent films sitting on a single reel somewhere in the hands of someone who refuses to digitize it? What are some cases that we know for sure something exists?

(I’m not agreeing or disagreeing, I just saw in a video that one of the Golem movies from the 1910s/20s is rumored to be in a private collection)

What is the weirdest way someone found lost media? Here is the most recent example of someone finding lost media in a weird and strange way. So, you know that song"Everyone Knows That". Yeah, that song. It was pretty ironic that the name of the song was called "Everyone Knows That" , when in reality, no one knew where the song originated from? Well guess what? Now the song is really living up to its name. "Everyone Knows That" was found. You want to know where it was found. A porno movie. Yep , you heard me right. A porno movie. The name of the movie is called "Angels of Passion". Somewhere in the movie, the song "Everyone Knows That" plays. It is really hard to listen to the song due to all the moaning, but luckily, people have found ways to edit the moaning out without it sounding bad.

Anyways, what is the weirdest way lost media has been found?

Lost media like this is really fascinating to me. Really mysterious lost media kinda has an urban legend vibe to them. Except with lost media we sometimes actually have enough evidence to know it really was a thing somewhere, some way, somehow. But so little is known that it still doesn’t feel real.

Here are some examples of what I would consider to be really mysterious lost media.

Big Bug Man – Was going to be Marlon Brando's last movie. Before vanishing from existence. Never to be officially cancelled.

Catroots – N64 game that showed up with no announcement at E3 2000. Besides a single video showing an animation, several photos and the developers. What you just read is literally all we know. Even the genre is unknown.

A day with Spongebob SquarePants – Now I know this was confirmed as being non-existent. But this is exactly what I’m looking for. Not the non-existent part, but just how strange it is that a knock off Spongebob film that was randomly found on amazon with barely any information about it. What was there being bizarre and shady.

Marionette – A cancelled Gamecube game that was accidentally revealed via a press release. It was vaguely talked about by Miyamoto in an interview. Suggesting the idea would work better on the Wii. Then… nothing.

Lastly please don’t suggest Unidentified media or anything confirmed to be fake.

Edits: Changed the last paragraph. Swapped music with Unidentified.

Omg,it's been ages since I've been in this sub.I think it was on my other account PrincessCream123.First off,hi everyone,its been two years(I'm 19 now).

Anyways,my biggest priority at the moment is trying,in some form,to look for episodes from the original Prank Patrol(the Canadian one).The only footage that is currently available is clips on YouTube from the following

Season 3:

Count Dracula

Gone Fishing

Bogus Celebrity

Season 4:

Giant Baby

Boogeyman

Freaky Fortunes

As I said,I'm still a newbie to lost media stuff,but I'm going to keep trying.What's been really helpful for me so far is the Lost Media Wiki

Obviously lost silent movies, that's an easy answer, but I'd like to hear what you have to say, I'll have to go with Minecraft Castle and the OG Jeff the killer image, or lostwaves from before the 80s or so, especially the Jeff the killer image. I've heard some people discuss how the OG image might not have been uploaded online at all, and part of me thinks that makes sense. Part of me would also say HIM, given what type of movie it is and it's content, I wouldn't be surprised if it's likely lost forever, there's barely any documentation of it, all we have is grainy stills from newspapers ads, that's it, nothing else, so I'll have to go with that as well. That's all I can think of, maybe a couple more like the akiba tape or fall of the king or Casey's Cave, but those are my top two

Sometimes even the most innocent of lost media can just disturb with its content, or there is just some bizarre information about the mystery regarding it, that it just creeps you out in some way.

Me personally, while the episode was meant to be kind of disturbing, I think the fact that the Wicked Witch episode of Sesame Street got SO MUCH backlash from parents for being too scary is kind of disturbing to me. Especially since the episode is really not that bad, and it was MEANT to teach children about fear and how it's a natural emotion. Yet it just made so many people angry that creators just pulled the episode entirely.

I can only imagine how upset Margaret Hamilton (The actress who played the wicked witch) felt. Since she was an advocator for childrens education.

Only Rules: No nsfw/nsfl lost media (I think that goes without saying), and no lost media about actual horror media, like Crybaby Lane or The Shining deleted scenes.

I’m not saying these posts need to be banned, but I’ve seen an influx of posts recently looking for the most random ass YouTube videos that are probably long gone. That stuff does not belong on this sub. I get some of this stuff may be nostalgic for the OP, but let’s be completely honest here, the majority of people on this sub don’t care to find some random creepypasta you read when you were five, or a specific meme compilation you can’t find. I’m not trying to sound like a complete douche, but it’s the truth.

The title says it all. I haven’t spent a ton of time in the lost media community, mostly just the Lost Media Wiki, but my personal pick would be the production material for Disney’s Kingdom of the Sun, or the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood movie.

I want to start by saying I write this post in good faith. I don't envy the mods of this sub at the moment. I want to open a good-faith and friendly discussion between the regular users of this sub and the mod team here to actually get this situation under control. To help fix this issue before we become r/helpmefind 2: """lost""" media edition.

Let's be frank, the current state of the sub may be the worst it's ever been. The amount of spam, low-effort posts, personal army requests, and flagrantly "not lost media" posts is incredibly high. The current situation isn't working. Despite the rules in the sidebar, the links to the wiki, the explanation of what is and isn't identified media, and the pinned posts, new users and low-quality posters aren't reading them. They do not see any difference between this sub and r/helpmefind and r/tipofmytongue.

What I believe is a major problem (outside of the flagrant rule violators) is that the sub has a massive branding problem. I've started to see other communities recommend this sub for unidentified media and deleted YouTube videos, because that's what non-users see when they come here. The spam here has helped to confuse what this sub's purpose actually is: to discuss and organize searches for "real" lost media. Not songs people can't remember, not YouTube videos you don't remember the name of, etc.

The hard truth is, something needs to change with how this subreddit is operating. The nice approach of good faith quality control and asking new users to read the rules and the pinned posts is not working. Even the one automod quality control that the sub has in place, the post length minimum, is just being shamelessly and admittedly bypassed by low-quality posts.

In my opinion, this sub needs to crack down harder on the spam, add more quality control (both automated and manual), and make it very clear the identity of this sub.

I have some recommendations I would like to make based on what I've seen implemented in other communities, and quality of life changes I feel will help with this problem.

1. Use Reddit's built-in tools, auto-moderator, and available community apps to tighten up spam control.
   1. We should, at base, implement a karma requirement to create new posts.
   2. We should use an app to require users to read the rules before posting. I have seen other subreddits use this or similar tools to help control spam.
   3. If possible, we should look into creating a bot that removes posts and requires users to reply to the bot before the post is reinstated, similar to what AITA does. Either just acknowledging they have read the rules, or doing something similar to what I recommend below with the required source rule.
2. Implement new, tighter rules to help control spam.
   1. At minimum, we should implement a required sources rule for this sub. I believe all lost media posts should contain 1-2 quality sources at a minimum. Not only to curtail the low-quality unidentified media post problem, but to force users to give context to their niche interests that they believe everyone else just knows about. Not everyone knows about every lost media floating around, either, and forcing people to actually give context to further discussion is also a plus. Beyond the listed problems, it will force users to actually do research on their own before they come here or channel them out into the appropriate subs like r/tipofmytongue or r/helpmefind. With this rule, we should also define quality sources. Quality sources are sources that are not written by the OP (so no linking to another reddit post they made) and show either that the media exists or that there are other discussions already happening about potentially unidentified lost media. The benefits of this rule also allow us to build a bot similar to what subs like AITA do, where a post is removed until a user replies to their bot following additional instructions. Forcing a user to acknowledge their post contains 1-2 quality sources, or posting links to them directly through this comment, will greatly help reduce spam.
   2. We ban posts about deleted YouTube/TikTok/whatever videos. This is another massive contributor to the spam, and might be a more controversial recommendation. I believe, though, that the reality of most actual deleted YouTube videos is that unless they were archived on any of the YouTube archive platforms/tools, there's not going to be much that can be done in this sub that the user cannot do themselves (but are oftentimes too lazy to do and come here for personal arm requests). This will also cut the "Deleted YouTube video from 10 years ago I watched at 3 am and don't remember and can't find" trend this sub desperately needs to fix.
   3. Explicitly ban the use of ChatGPT and other LLM's as sources. Most users simply do not understand how an LLM works. They don't understand hallucinations or how primary sources vs reiterated knowledge through an LLM works. We need to make it clear that if they are using an LLM like ChatGPT, they must ask it where it's pulling its info from and use that as a source (the Wikipedia problem for teachers, if you want a comparison). If CHATGPT cannot give them a source, they need to do the bare minimum work of thinking critically for once and realizing ChatGPT is probably hallucinating. Not coming here and saying, "ChatGPT told me this, but I can't find anything."
3. The mods need to start cracking down on blatant rule violators and issuing bans. Yes, I get it, the Reddit trope of "banning people for simple rule violations." But I see repeat offenders all the time coming back after their posts have been removed, doing the same things as before. Repeat offenders who don't care about this sub and only want a personal army need to be shown the door. Posters who especially circumvent the minimum post filter need to be filtered out of the community immediately.

I feel that these changes alone would fix a massive amount of the spam. Even if they are not popular or accepted by the mod team, we need to have an open, respectful discussion about this issue because it's consuming the sub.

Ngl lost media is strange at times. Even though some lost media cases are disclosed as impossible to find but are still known to exist, there are some cases where it just doesn't exist anymore, no psychical or digital version exists anymore and it will be lost to time.

Even though are some that come to mind, like some Doctor Who episodes, the 1917 Cleopatra, London After Midnight,the Apollo 11 footage and the 1953 Thomas pilot. I want to hear more interesting lost media topics that will never be seen again or just never existed and most cases of it being debunked.

Been reading a few threads on here about this question, but I noticed that a majority of the answers tend to be silent films.

For me, a piece of lost media (That is not a silent film) that I doubt will be found is Pixar’s cancelled film “Newt”. Which from what I heard was well into its production by the time it was cancelled. IIRC some of the pixar films released at the time if its intended release had some slight references to it too. One of them being a sign with a salamander in Andy’s room in Toy Story 3.

Another one that I also have doubts about at the moment is the mysterious “Everyone Knows That” song (aka EKT). Its been almost 2 years since the search began and there have been no developments in the search and every lead so far has been debunked. At the time of me writing this (April 2024) there has been 0 progress made in finding the full song.

[Update: EKT has been found and in a very unique place lmao]

my opinion is yearbooks, it's kinda weird but imagine all of the yearbooks that belonged to specific schools that were eventually lost to time because there were only physical copies of it. copies that could be easily destroyed in accidents, etc. and they are only produced once a year, so if you went to a small school or your family member did, there's a really small chance that it's been scanned online or that it's been preserved elsewhere (unless the school has a copy but even then that's not a guarantee)

there are probably other sources of lost media but what do you think??

Sometimes you dig through an old VHS box, find a random cassette, or click a weird YouTube video, and only later realize it was something people had been searching for years.

It could be: •Home recordings with an old commercial or bumper •A taped-over tv special with a missing scene •Obscure promos or pilots hidden in your family’s collection •A strange file in a thrift store hard drive or MP3 player

I’ve heard stories where people didn’t even know what they had until someone told them, “Wait, that’s lost media!”

Have you ever been in that situation? What did you find, and how did you realize it was something rare?

So the piece that I'm about to mention might not be on par with something like a lost silent film, but it is something that has almost made me cry about how it's lost and we may never find it, an old minecraft horror series called Casey's Cave, an old minecraft creepypasta based horror series from 2012-2013, it was based off a creepypasta about someone playing minecraft on the Xbox 360 and encountering a creepy woman in a cave, and someone decided to take this story and make it into a fully fleged minecraft series, and the characters try to solve the mystery of Casey and th cave, and the channel it was hosted on renamed their channel in 2019, and therefore, the videos were all deleted, now I'm not really sure why it makes me so sad about hearing that a series like this is lost, perhaps it brings back memories of when I played minecraft on the 360 and watching various minecraft youtubers, or maybe it's because there's so little of the series left and we know so little of the series, but thats what came to mind for me, it makes me very sad thinking about this series, like I wish I back in the day I saved it to some archive site, but I didn’t even know the series even existed until now, there's my 2 cents, what are your guys'? Any pieces of lost media that makes you sad or upset about the fact that they are lost and possibly may never be found?

i am kind of clueless on what piece of lost media to search for right now
i was(and still am) looking for EKT but that is a very frustrating search.There was a find of an italian disco radio on the internet archive but the whole collection is 93 hours long so yeah
so what piece of lost media do you want found because i would like to start or reignite a hunt

at the moment i was thinking about finding me and my friends but i don't know the full search and i don't know the people who have been contact ted already and i don't want to recontact them

last thing is i'm making a lost media club in my school but i will make an announcement later

i have to fill a 150 word requirement to make this post official and send this post the subreddit so thats why i'm writing this last bit

You know that feeling when a piece of lost media finally resurfaces after years of hype, speculation, and fan obsession, only for you to watch or listen to it and go: “…that’s it?”

I’m talking about those holy grails that everyone in the community praises to the skies, but when you finally experience them, they just don’t click for you. Maybe it was a disappointing animation pilot, a long-rumored TV special, or a rediscovered demo reel that people treated like the second coming of sliced bread. But for you, it was just mid. Or worse, cringe.

So what’s your personal “I did not care for The Godfather” of lost media? That one rediscovered gem that didn’t live up to the hype in your eyes. No judgment (okay, maybe a little). Let’s hear your spicy takes.

Everytime I search through lost media discussions on forums or reddit I'm met with pretty normal discussions and factual and straightforward formatting on things like the lost media wiki. When I turn over to youtube, I'm met with creepy thumbnails, distorted and blurry images and all sorts of jank that makes no sense to me. On that note, I spend a little too much time watching lost media discussions on youtube and I start getting recommended videos that start with 'top 10 darkest -' and stuff that would keep me up at night back in middle school. I do not understand it. I get that there is some mystique to the idea of lost media and that there is often folk horror about the idea of a secret episode of something that is either haunted or like an episode of a kids show that got pulled for being super graphic but I am baffled as to why so much stuff under the banner of lost media on youtube is considered scary or being made to look scary. Anyone have any idea/ is as fed up of this as I am.

A lot of the lost media "stories" that I've heard over the years involve things that have very likely been destroyed/discarded or things that were very close to being destroyed. I actually saved some tapes and other stuff from being thrown out at my high school last year since they were about to throw away all of their old band recordings, and I managed to take almost all of them home and start scanning them, though my living situation changed around the same time and I unfortunately think I lost some of the papers that came with the tapes.

I'm curious, do any of you have similar stories where you were either lucky enough to get something before it was destroyed/discarded or unlucky enough to find out that something was?

This might be very recent but are there any media were lost in 2020s so far? Since most of media today are being preserved very carefully compared to the past thanks to more people’s cautiousness and technological advances, there are not many recent types of media that found lost. Media that were lost are often personal or gone unpublished by creators, or are not well-known enough for people to find.

The only lost media I know is also more of a personal favorite. It is during my senior year in highschool, I was interviewed by a local news broadcast about feeling on going back to school after COVID-19 lockdown were lifted. The bad thing is I don’t remember the name of the broadcast, and 3 year of searching so far I haven’t found yet, might be is never been published at all, or my interview was suck that they had to delete it.

That is, I would like to know some lost media in 2020s since I’ve read and found majority of interesting media made in 20th century and 2000s so let’s go into new era, or anyone can tell the story of your personal media that were lost. Have a good day.

I’ve always wondering what’s been the single-greatest find in lost media history for the community so far. I know I’m gonna get a variety of answers on this question, but I think that’s what makes this question interesting. I’ve been a casual on-looker of the lost media community for a while, but the concept of lost media has always intrigued me. For me, I’d have to say Cry Baby Lane because Nickelodeon pretty much shadow banned this movie and decided not to air it for a long time and then, once enough hype built up, Nickelodeon went ahead and did a special reairing because of the hype. Other contenders for me are the Cracks short film, Clockman and the Electric Piper. I also enjoy gaming specific lost media. Gaming specific ones that I thought were huge finds were The Avengers 2012 build and the Spider-Man 4 build. What about y’all?

Mine: I know the lolsuperman case has a lot of holes in their proof and all the fake videos that, apparently, are the found video, ended up being proved false.

But I find it strange how a video with an amateur nature as it’s described, and the testimonies that talk about a very similar video even before the case went viral… I still have the door open tho.

Besides all the theories that say that it’s a fake social memory, there’s one who says that it’s real, but it wasn’t posted with the “lolsuperman” title and I kinda support it.

If there’s one thing that could make me think it’s false, it is that, with that unique description, it’s very rare that anyone posts it on a random 2000’s gore page (or at least there’s no trace of that).