I understand that many of you were too busy being born in 1993 to be able to relate to this, but The Box was basically a collective YouTube for 90s kids.

The Box worked by having a "menu" between videos with a code to vote on which video got played next. You called in with your dinosaur landline or, if you were as awesome as me, your see-through purple Casio cordless. As it was the 90s, there was a whole lot of slow jams and what is now classic hip hop.

In Lubbock, The Box was on a UHF signal, which basically means you didn't have to have cable to get it. This meant everyone had the opportunity to participate. In my experience,The Box was just as popular if not more popular than MTV (at least with elementary school kids that were allowed to watch music videos).

At first The Box was free, but then it switched to a 900 number and charged as much as apps do now per song. I know a lot of kids that got grounded over this.

One upside was that The Box played "naughty" videos MTV wouldn't touch, which you'll see in this awesome video ripped from my friend Kenny's personal VHS collection. So this is real Lubbock vintage here, the top 20 requested videos of 1993. (FYI: Number 20 is Dennis Leary's "A--hole," so if you don't want to see or hear the word 'a--hole,' don't click play on the video below.)

 

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