Thoughts on modern Youtube culture

[Memory]

I just don't have the attention span anymore to actually watch a lot of videos anymore. I can't stand 90% of things out there and the things that I do, I really have to be in the mood for.

[Spots]

Regrettably, a good chunk of the stuff I've watched on YouTube since around 2017 has been drama-related content. I used to be more into it back then, but I still stay somewhat up-to-date. I think the platform's obsession with drama is definitely a bad thing overall, but I can't help but be somewhat entertained by it. I feel like YouTube drama used to be more funny and petty back in 2016-2017 and nowadays it's more like people being exposed for doing actually horrid and illegal things. I wish we could at least go back to the days where most of the drama was just immature adults beefing with each other for stupid reasons and making cringy diss tracks instead of committing crimes against humanity. I suppose that in an era where YouTubers are so connected to their fanbases and each other and are resembling legitimate celebrities, the quality of their character starts to matter more than it did back in the really old days of YouTube.

[Memory]

I wish we could at least go back to the days where most of the drama was just immature adults beefing with each other for stupid reasons and making cringy diss tracks instead of committing crimes against humanity.

I think it's less that YouTubers did less fucked up shit back then, but more that people now hold them responsible for it instead of considering it hating because they're big celebrities with a fanbase that encompasses more than cishet white male teenagers who love edginess.

In the past you'd be laughed at, ridiculed, harassed or attacked for trying to expose a YouTuber who does terrible stuff, and the fans would celebrate. Big part of old YouTube was "triggered feminist compilations" and similar content, clearly showing how their entire point was "if you care about being a good person, you're cringe because you care too much and aren't as cool and stoic as me".

[Swiftpaw]

Something I've noticed about videos in general are the amount of focus on monetization. It makes sense, videos are a hard medium to create for, but it's unavoidable both if you're interested in making videos and if you're watching them.

I've tried to train my YouTube algorithm to mostly show me videos with under 100k views, so that way I get a little more diversity. Usually the smaller videos are a little closer to what I remember with older YouTube with it being mostly people creating things for fun instead of capitalism.

I understand why people make videos for money though, and I know that there are people who have it as a career and there are quite a few people I watch who fall under that category, I just wish it wasn't everywhere.

I've been meaning to try to switch away from using YouTube, but it's yet another pitfall of the modern internet and ADHD. It's a quick and easy way for my brain to get dopamine in the background while I do other things.

[dozzleDsnozzler]

i use it mainly for background noise. youtube is weird to me because it's been thru all the blights of the modern internet and just kept standing because it's really the only site of it's kind worth using. youtube had the advantage of being the first video site so it has a decade and a half of videos, history and community. but it still hasn't replaced television or movies, despite what many ppl thought back in the day, it's just kind of it's very own thing. i don't like using youtube, i think a lot of the trends and changes have been for the worse, ESPECIALLY youtube shorts. google runs youtube at a loss, so you constantly see ads if you use the mobile app. i counted, they display one ad video in your recommended every five regular ones.

lol not really my thoughts on modern youtube CULTURE more so just modern youtube in general

[creaturefeature]

I´ve pretty much use an exntension that where it automatically directs me to channels i´ve already subscribed instead of the front page that way I only see what i´m only interested inseeing.

I also recommend the newpipe app for mobile, no ads and you can export the list of channel you´re subscribed to there.

[starbreaker]

I don't even know what "modern YouTube culture" is. I only use the site for music videos.

[musicobsessed107]

As someone who has been using YouTube since late 2012, the site feels a lot different now than it did 12 years ago, and not in a very good way either.

2012 YouTube may not have been perfect (especially since that was the year they removed custom profile layouts), but it was a hell of a lot better than 2024 YouTube. You had more originality and creativity on the platform back then as opposed to now where everyone's doing the exact same thing, solely trying to pander to the algorithm for more clicks and to avoid being demonetized. The one thing I love about older YouTube videos is that they were made by random people just goofing off and having fun in their spare time. You didn't have people treating YouTube as if it were a job or something. You don't really see those types of videos being made anymore, unfortunately.

Something that also annoys me about many contemporary video essay videos is how the creators of those videos add in WAY too many cuts into their videos, where each scene lasts maybe about 5 seconds or so before quickly moving onto the next, rinse and repeat with each clip or image. I can't stand to watch those videos as I find the fast pacing quite overstimulating (maybe the creators figured that the majority of people out there have had their attention spans obliterated by the short form content epidemic currently going on right now, I don't know). It makes it nearly impossible to focus on the actual message of the video when cuts are being spammed into it with the blink of an eye.

To say the least, I'm not a fan of modern YouTube. Certain extensions like uBlock Origin, Return YouTube Dislike, Shorts Block, and YouTube Redux make it bearable to use as well as sticking to videos that still have the homemade and amateur feel to them.

[JINSBEK]

It's strange, since it's not exactly a «normal» social media site, but I do believe the current version of the site embodies all that is wrong with social media. Lots of weird, genuinely predatory people getting a lot of fans and making half-assed apologies when the truth comes out,

Wait what? Who's doing that? I must not be watching the same kinds of videos you are, since I... Well I mostly stick to either music, or documentaries of some sort.

Frankly, I love how YouTube randomly recommends me bangers out of nowhere. I am now a lifelong fan of Wednesday Campanella. Recently the most fun thing that's been recommended to me on YouTube is music and screenshots from a made-up lost media game from the 1990s, with a very vulgar name on the console called the Dango... Now musicians from everywhere are adding more "discoveries" of the score, and even making up gameplay footage and music from a hard-boiled sequel. It appears I've successfully trained YouTube to show me almost only music-related media. Mmmmmmmmmm sweet DnB and vintage hip-hop. I don't even remember how I found Captain Yajima, I guess it was just in my Recommended. Other recommendations I get are hours-long music mixes for specific moods, and honestly, I AM LOVING this era of everyone curating and releasing their own mixtapes. Why yes I would like a compilation of Relaxing Playstation 1 Music or Silent Chill or this horribly unindexable mix of early 2000s-esque music. I'm also very intentional with what I search for, like, {I wonder if anyone's made a video of "Floch's last charge with Erwin Smith's theme" and oh my god some madman made it.}

My fiancee @VioletHeaven was just recommended The Hampster Dance Song and that's because she's been going out of her way to watch ancient YouTube memes. The more intentional you are about actually using the search function (and what you click on), the better the algorithm tends to be, 100%.

What I'm more interested in are the new influencer-aimed AI features that frankly, seem hilariously bad and only cement my "resolve" (I wouldn't really call it that... It's not like I have hard feelings or are stressed out by this) to watch "only humans" and pigeons, and ASMR, and whatever. AI-generated comments for creators that are "Whaaat? It's simulating my own burn-out now." HAHAHAHAHA   Like personally, as annoying and insincere and unwanted as those features are, I also find this garbage ROFL-level hilarious. Like yes these features suck and only promote people to engagement-farm even more. But also I don't care because I don't watch engagement farmers??? Kek. Now the creepy thing is all of the platform's content being scraped to train LLMs... All right, Dead Internet Hypothesis. I can't wait to see chatbots talking to each other in the Comments section.

And besides that, in order to make YouTube even remotely enjoyable I need to use ad blocker and Unhook. I only just found out about Unhook recently and it's been a GODSEND. You can remove everything YouTube recommends to you entirely, but really I just use it to get rid of those end cards at the end of videos that cover up the last part of the video?!?!?! Who's evil wicked idea was that?? Anyways, besides YouTube some of the alternatives have had moderate success like Dailymotion or Vimeo, but they still don't come close.

Oh my god I love you. Those freakin' end cards were making the ends of a lot of videos, especially older ones, impossible to see! JUST LET ME VIEW MY DAMN VIDEO GAME INTROS ALREADY! ARGHHH!!!

I think analyzing the point when specific social media sites started to become worse is beneficial; usually it has something to do with more ads, user unfriendly design to serve more ads, becoming walled, being bought up by big companies, and the sheer volume of users.

I can't speak for all of them since there are a few and especially with Lemmy, it is obviously up to the instance hoster to enable and disable some stuff as well as defederate from some other instances, but a lot of Reddit alternatives (even the ones not trying to be) can avoid a lot of this toxicity by
- (many) being FOSS and the goals and accountability that comes with it
- not belonging to a social media giant/large corp (yet?)
- much much smaller user size
- not having to rely on ads or having to please shareholders and incentivizing growth, therefore being able to listen to what users want or leave things as is, instead of always trying to pull more users, serve more ads, get more people to sign up for premium etc. (instead usually it is volunteers, donations, etc.)
- design choices discouraging toxicity and prevent specific dynamics from developing

On the last point, one site that is especially good with this is, in my opinion, Tildes. Their design philosophy is very intentional, down to the placement of specific UI elements to create more friction. More friction means more intention, less doomscrolling, less addiction, less instant posting before thinking, and filters out specific groups of people you'd rather not have. One such thing is the comment box being at the bottom of the comment section, not the top, and strongly suggesting every app for Tildes being developed by volunteers keeping this intact. It is supposed to encourage reading replies before just adding on. Can it be circumvented? Sure, you can get to the bottom of the page with a key press. And would this scale well, with millions of users and a huge comment section of thousands of users? No. But right now, it works.

I think it all adds and begets each other; if you are a big social media giant pleasing shareholders, you want more users because more users create more content, and more content means more people stay and engage; those are more people to get into subscriptions or pro plans, more people to serve ads to, which means more money from advertisers and happier shareholders; and to keep that up for record profits each year, you gotta get that user growth even when the quality of discussion at some point drops down by sheer number of people. To do so, you might use dark patterns, or use design favoring outrage, one-liners and discourse for most engagement over long form posts and positivity. The community doesn't grow organically anymore, which would filter out people you don't wanna have there, and instead takes about everyone; inflammatory content is accepted because it drives engagement, which is money. You just have to toe the line between enraging everyone while not enraging the advertisers.

And a lot of this can be avoided simply by not being motivated by capitalist profits off of the site. Smaller communities spread out over the web, growing and shrinking organically, no dark patterns, filters, design encouraging positive long form content and signing off after a while all together has the potential to create a better social media.

I think this encapsulates the development of many online media platforms perfectly. At a certain point, the low barrier of entry allows a critical mass of content that requires money to host and maintain, and... Now that everyone is competing for in-app attention in an attention drought, the tactics used (clickbait thumbnails, meet generative clickbait thumbnails! Why make a shocked and grossed out face in the middle of your footage, mask the still, and overlay it on a thumbnail when you can just have a machine generate a facsimile of you looking shocked? Hahahaha) are going to be increasingly desperate. And I think a lot of these people will just have to heave up their chests and accept that they can't make a living off of YouTube anymore. Or at least not stay sane while doing it.

To be honest, YouTube's been great for me. Sure, it's not as Newgroundsy as before, but the sheer amount of music I've been exposed to makes me very happy.

[VioletHeaven]

I don't even know what "modern YouTube culture" is. I only use the site for music videos.

Saaaaame! I literally exclusively watch indie music, video game music, sometimes deep dives/documentary/high quality science videos like Kyle Hill's Half Life Histories series (I strongly recommend that and his Chernobyl series if anyone wants to actually learn about nuclear history).

Regrettably, a good chunk of the stuff I've watched on YouTube since around 2017 has been drama-related content. I used to be more into it back then, but I still stay somewhat up-to-date. I think the platform's obsession with drama is definitely a bad thing overall, but I can't help but be somewhat entertained by it. I feel like YouTube drama used to be more funny and petty back in 2016-2017 and nowadays it's more like people being exposed for doing actually horrid and illegal things. I wish we could at least go back to the days where most of the drama was just immature adults beefing with each other for stupid reasons and making cringy diss tracks instead of committing crimes against humanity. I suppose that in an era where YouTubers are so connected to their fanbases and each other and are resembling legitimate celebrities, the quality of their character starts to matter more than it did back in the really old days of YouTube.

I tend to actively avoid drama content, and my algorithm is actually better for it, because I always click "not interested" on anything it gives me that I don't want to see, or I like, subscribe, whatever to videos that I do like. Plus, intentionally, deliberately searching for content does actually train your algorithm on what you want to watch as long as you actually watch one or two of the search results. That just means the little drama I do get, is usually from older videos (think 2012-2013 where it's just cringe/funny diss tracks), or deliberately funny, made up drama where someone is actually being praised in the same format. I don't remember the video, but I discovered that kind of drama from a post where it was titled "Person's content is DEBUNKED" and it was just a fanmade deep-dive into how much work the guy puts into all of his videos.
I really think that a lot of the drama posted these days is because there's an attention drought, so the drama creators moved from "X creator made some bad mistakes" to "X creator is literally a pedophile" because nothing gets more clicks than a thumbnail about a Minecraft YouTuber who assaulted a kid. The actual thoughtful critiques tend to get drowned out, because most people don't want to listen to a 30-40 minute video about where someone went wrong and how they can fix it, they just want OUTRAGE. It sucks.

Wait what? Who's doing that? I must not be watching the same kinds of videos you are, since I... Well I mostly stick to either music, or documentaries of some sort.

My fiancee @VioletHeaven was just recommended The Hampster Dance Song and that's because she's been going out of her way to watch ancient YouTube memes. The more intentional you are about actually using the search function (and what you click on), the better the algorithm tends to be, 100%.

To be honest, YouTube's been great for me. Sure, it's not as Newgroundsy as before, but the sheer amount of music I've been exposed to makes me very happy.

Yeah! Like I alluded to earlier, I deliberately trained my algorithm to do these things! It even recommended me the game Starsector because I'd watched a few videos on Starflight! With the little text, "based on videos you've seen recently". I can't believe that it genuinely managed to pick out a game that's basically a modern version of the original!
One thing I really recommend is saving your subscriptions and making a whole new YouTube account, then manually looking up each and every channel you actually want to keep over the course of a few days. You should also deliberately choose "Don't recommend" to any videos you don't want to watch. The algorithm is so perceptive these days that it's actually really easy to train.
I really like YouTube's indie music scene, as well. The amount of music I've found that's just remixes, or from completely made up games... plus, if you train it well enough, it'll recommend music from other cultures (I've got Romanian, Japanese, Korean, even Mongolian throat singing once...) rather than just American music.

As a whole I really think the YouTube landscape is a symptom of how you train the algorithm, rather than being force-fed drama just because it's popular. I do think the AI slop is much more popular than it should be, which is probably a symptom of declining attention spans, but it's really easy to avoid at this point, even without nuking your whole account.