About

Primitive Building Videos are time-lapse tutorials on YouTube, wherein, men build houses, pools, water slides and other architectural structures with only "primitive technology" such as mud, dirt, rocks, sticks and bare hands. The contrast between the final results and the "simplistic" claim led to virality and skepticism online. The videos started with one channel called Primitive Technology in 2015 which later received multiple copycat accounts from Southeast Asia that entered the market. Starting in 2019, many creators exposed primitive building videos as fake or staged due to mounting evidence such as visible tire marks, which continued to build until mid-2022 when it sparked a viral debate and controversy online over their authenticity.

Origin

"Primitive Building" videos started in 2015 when a channel called Primitive Technology starring Australian John Plant started posting content. On May 2nd, 2015, Primitive Technology uploaded its first video,^[1] titled "Primitive Technology: Wattle and Daub Hut," where the lone man builds a hut out of trees, leaves, bamboo, twine, rocks and clay. Over the course of seven years, the video received roughly 31.6 million views and 433,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

Primitive Technology's videos received cross-platform attention towards the end of 2015, earning multiple tweets^[2][3] that shared links to its videos, alluding to its growing vitality. On June 23rd, 2015, the /r/PrimitiveTechnology^[7] subreddit was created for the channel.

Primitive Technology dominated the subculture until 2017 when other channels started to infiltrate the market from Southeast Asian creators. On October 16th, 2017, the YouTube channel Primitive Technology Idea posted its first video^[4] that was about making a stone axe. Primitive Technology Idea posted its first primitive building video on November 28th, 2017, showing a man making a stone house. It received roughly 101,400 views in five years (shown below, left). On April 22nd, 2018, the YouTube channel Primitive Survival posted its first building video, earning roughly 125,800 views in four years (shown below, right).

In the year 2018, most primitive building channels were created on YouTube including Primitive Survival, Tube Unique Wilderness, Evolution Primitive Time, Primitive Jungle and Primitive Building. As each channel fought for subscribers, the primitive building projects became increasingly elaborate. For instance, on June 16th, 2018, the YouTube channel Primitive Survival posted its "Part 1" of building a primitive swimming pool, being the first video of its kind on the platform and earning roughly 98,900 views in four years (shown below, left).

On July 27th, 2018, Tube Unique Wilderness posted a swimming pool video that accelerated the genre, using a viral thumbnail of a "Swimming Pool On The Villa House By Bamboo." In roughly the same amount of time, Tube Unique Wilderness' video received roughly 26.1 million views (shown below, right).

Cultural Awareness / Primitive Building Memes

As the genre became more mainstream, cross-platform awareness and tweets emerged about primitive building videos and the absurdity of their final products. For instance, on October 5th, 2018, Twitter^[5] user CoraBridgeman tweeted, "why am I addicted to watching primitive building videos smh," earning just 13 likes in four years. On April 21st, 2020, Twitter^[6] user bombsfall tweeted, "watching one of those primitive building youtube channels and digging a spring-fed underground pool in my backyard only for it to immediately collapse and kill me for my hubris," earning over 700 likes in two years (shown below).

On February 28th, 2019, YouTuber ShakeSauce posted a video titled "Primitive Technology GONE WRONG," wherein, he reacted to and parodied primitive building videos. In three years, the video received roughly 899,200 views and 24,000 likes (shown below).

Primitive Building Videos Staged / Fake Controversy

Starting in 2019, skepticism started to mount regarding whether or not primitive building videos were staged or faked. Many did not believe the men could build such structures with the processes they showed. On October 12th, 2019, YouTuber Polydactyl was the first to make a video about this skepticism, titling it "Primitive technology channels are lying to you," and receiving roughly 647,700 views in three years (shown below).

On October 23rd, 2020, YouTuber Jabroney added to this growing discussion, posting a video titled, "What Happened to Primitive Technology?" where he outlined the timeline of the original Primitive Technology account being copied by multiple channels and slowly dying out because of it. Jabroney highlighted in the video that these copycat channels were creating structures that Primitive Technology couldn't compete with mainly because they were allegedly being dishonest with their construction processes. In two years, the video received roughly 1 million views (shown below).

In 2022, the skepticism surrounding primitive building channels came to a head when the Twitter^[8] account TrungTPhan started a thread on June 29th, 2022, that, similar to Jabroney, outlined the timeline of Primitive Technology being overshadowed by the Southeast Asian channels. The primary tweet in the thread received roughly 11,400 likes in four weeks (seen below).

Then, YouTuber SunnyV2 posted a video on July 7th, 2022, about the topic, earning roughly 9.4 million views in 13 days (shown below, left). On July 18th, YouTuber Cr1TiKaL then added to the discussion, earning roughly 2.1 million views for his video in two days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References