You jump twice. Then you step back with your left foot. Your right foot back. You kick your right foot forward twice. Your left foot forward twice… you repeat those steps – quickly and with conviction. And if you succeed in the rhythm of electronic music with a rocking bass underneath, you will soon be the boss of the club (or the schoolyard). At least: in 2007. If you look back at videos in 2025 in which people jump with dedication, your reaction is more likely to be: “God. How did this exist?”
In short, that is the simple and successful formula The best of… the zeros (AvroTros). Videos of trends from the relevant era – what did we watch, listen to, do? – are alternated with the responses of a wide range of celebrities, from Sita Vermeulen to Rick Paul van Mulligen. They all look back on the zeros differently, but share the same amazement. And that’s largely the simple pleasure of the program: pointing at your screen and saying “oh yeah!” calling out with every long-forgotten memory. Talkers – oh yes! ‘Schnappi’ – oh yes! K-otic – oh yes! Jumping – oh yes!
The latter trend started with a few online videos. That this was still a very unusual state of affairs in 2007 was evident from the short fragment of the Man bites dogreport that was made at the time about jump duo Patrick Jumpen (fantastic name, very to the point) was made. “New fads quickly find their way to a large audience via the internet,” the voice-over explained at the time. “The Brabant boys Patrick and Dion are a hit on Google Video with their jump videos.”
The wonders of the Internet also heralded the end of the encyclopedia. For the sake of form, the celebrities leafed through such a paper knowledge bundle. “It’s a hassle,” sighed Van Mulligen: “The old world.” The makers of the program had dug up a Teleac video of a man behind a large white computer. “If you know what you are looking for, but not where you want to look for it, then you use a search engine,” he explained calmly. “I now click on ‘www’, on ‘search’ – and um… it starts searching.” While the computer collected search results, the man grabbed his cup of coffee. He held it with both hands and leaned back a little, as if to say: it’s almost out of work.
Contraception
It is now difficult to imagine that new internet users simply threw a word into such a search engine for fun and then watched in amazement as the information came to them automatically. Sometimes you wish that a little less information came to you automatically, especially via social media. Or at least that that information is properly checked – but for high media lords such as Elon Musk (X) and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) even that appears to be too much to ask. Fortunately, there are still program makers who try to distinguish online fables from facts. Such as in the new BNNVARA program Healthy or bullshit?which examines health trends on social media. On Wednesday it was birth control’s turn. An increasing number of women are trading in the traditional pill for ‘natural’ contraception. You can then monitor your cycle by measuring your temperature and keeping track of apps, which should give you insight into when you are and are not fertile.
That method is not exactly reliable. The fact that many women still fall for this is often due to fear of negative side effects of pills or IUDs (which are a lot more effective), fueled by self-proclaimed fertility experts. Although you as a doctor should take such concerns seriously, these drugs are actually quite safe, the general practitioners and gynecologists interviewed emphasized. It’s better not to worry too much about TikTok claims. We will also hopefully say about this in about twenty years: “God. How did this exist?”