“Man, I wish we had videotaped the time we blew up that abandoned trailer out in the woods,” a friend of mine said randomly while we were sitting around the other day. “It would no doubt be one of the most-watched video clips of all-time on YouTube by now if we had. I bet we’d be legends.”

I bet we would be, too. And we’re not alone. I’m sure there are tons of people that have done really dumb things and didn’t tape them (not knowing then that later on they could get famous on the Internet for it). They probably feel gypped, too. Worse off are the old-timers and baby boomers who didn’t even have the technology to record their stupidity – they never even had a chance to make fools of themselves in front of the world (eventually they let Kevin Costner do it for them).

YouTube – the hugely popular Web site that allows anyone to broadcast their homemade videos to millions of people – has got lots of people reminiscing these days about their less-than-proudest-moments, wondering: What if?

“What if we had a camcorder that time we were wrestling and you put me in such a tight ‘Arabian Crab’ that I farted just as my pants were splitting?” asked another one of my friends who joined the conversation. “That would have been YouTube gold, because it really looked like the molten blast you forced out actually caused the blowout.”

While my friends and I are stuck in the failures of our past, there’s people out there letting YouTube dictate their future. They don’t want to regret not cashing in on their thickness like the last generation did. For example, over the weekend, a New Jersey donut shop employee beat a robber on the head with a ceramic mug – not to recover the money or defend his own life – but because he didn’t want to forever look like a sissy on YouTube.