The first vids that I saw were for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, sometime around 2000-2001 just as online vids were really first starting to appear. They were by Bonibaru (bonibaru/boniblithe), if I'm not mistaken, and I stumbled across them while looking for fanfiction.
LiveJournal hadn't really taken off yet at that point, so I mostly found other vids via message boards and mailing lists (Nummy Treat, oh how I miss you) that linked to vidders' personal websites for the first year or two. Then, probably around 2003, western media fandom really started making the shift to LiveJournal.
I also watched a lot of AMVs back in the early days, and those I found mostly via webrings (which is how I also found anime/manga fic, to be honest). I remember that there was a really big one back in the early 2000s, which separated sites out by fandom and then broke it down even more with whether they had fic/vids/fanart/etc. on them, but I can't remember the name of it to save my life.
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LiveJournal hadn't really taken off yet at that point, so I mostly found other vids via message boards and mailing lists (Nummy Treat, oh how I miss you) that linked to vidders' personal websites for the first year or two. Then, probably around 2003, western media fandom really started making the shift to LiveJournal.
I also watched a lot of AMVs back in the early days, and those I found mostly via webrings (which is how I also found anime/manga fic, to be honest). I remember that there was a really big one back in the early 2000s, which separated sites out by fandom and then broke it down even more with whether they had fic/vids/fanart/etc. on them, but I can't remember the name of it to save my life.