Webdriver Torso

Webdriver Torso is a YouTube account created by Google on March 7, 2013. It was a popular mystery that started many theories until YouTube stated that the account was an internal testing utility. Most of the videos are 11 seconds long, although some can also be around 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 25 minutes long. They are slideshows showing slides about 1 second long each. Each slide consists of a solid white background overlapped by two solid color opaque rectangles, one red and the other blue. Both rectangles have a random size, shape, and position on the slide. When the two overlap, the red rectangle always appears over the blue one, and on rare occasions, the red rectangle completely covers up the blue one. Each slide has a random computer-generated wave tone. In the corner of each video, it says "aqua.flv - slide (number with four digits)". Early videos were called "aqua", which was then changed to "tmp" (which is an abbreviation for the word "template" or "temporary") followed by random characters. The videos are made to test YouTube video quality. After creation, the videos are uploaded to YouTube. The uploaded videos are then compared to the videos before they were uploaded, to see how much quality was lost. However, there is still some speculation behind this account, as Google's replies did not solve the many references some videos make to popular memes, characters, etc. For example, a video had the silhouette of Rick Astley, the singer of the infamous Rick Roll.

When YouTube was asked about it, they replied: "We're never gonna give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality, and we're never gonna let you down by playing YouTube in poor video quality. That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso," which is a reference to, again, Rick Astley's infamous song "Never Gonna Give You Up".