These days, YouTube might seem like it’s mostly influencers and unboxing videos, but once upon a time it was a special place where anyone and everyone could update total strangers about the mundane details of their lives. Early ‘vloggers’ were pretty ahead of their time even though most of them usually boasted one or two subscribers, if they were lucky. By looking closely at the history of a YouTuber’s channel, the life trajectory that reveals itself through thumbnails is often surprisingly hilarious. These sorts of ‘character arcs’ aren’t limited to YouTubers—comedic moments of character development and plot twist gems can be found in Twitter threads, Facebook posts, Reddit replies and anywhere else people are able to post about their lives. We’ve collected some classic examples of hilarious character arcs summed up in pics and screenshots.