If you have an .avi file, you weren’t watching Days on broadcast TV. You were watching it on a laptop in your dorm room, or on a secondary monitor at work. What happened in Salem on that specific Tuesday?

Long live the .avi. Long live the tape traders. And for goodness' sake, make sure you have the right codec installed.

Open it. Watch the first five minutes. Let the cheesy synth soundtrack wash over you. Look at the hairstyles. Listen to the dial-up quality of the audio.

A single line of text that hits you like a wave of deja vu:

But the real meta-plot of April 26, 2011, is what was happening in our world. This was the golden age of "tape trading" going digital. Someone—maybe a superfan in the UK who couldn’t get NBC, or a college student who had class during the 1:00 PM timeslot—recorded this episode.

A quick trip down memory lane: This was the height of the era. Sami Brady was, as always, torn between two men while trying to hide a secret the size of a cruise ship. Bo and Hope were likely chasing a villain with a silly name, and Stefano was probably stroking a chess piece in a dark room.

Don’t delete it.

Let’s crack it open. First, look at the extension: .avi