Thoughts on modern Youtube culture

[BartTheZech]

I'm not sure how anyone can watch Penguinz0 or Mutahar nowadays, they seem to drag a video out for 30 minutes or more for the most basic, vanila opinion. Although, maybe my attention span has just degraded...

But yeah, I can't stand how dramatic they can be. I mean, there's always horrible shit in the world and always will be. However "doomer", edgy, or just negatives opinions are more attention-grabbing for some. It's the negativity bias, it's why ragebait is a thing.

I'm not sure how anyone can watch Penguinz0 or Mutahar nowadays, they seem to drag a video out for 30 minutes or more for the most basic, vanila opinion. Although, maybe my attention span has just degraded...

I recall Mutahar actually making videos about wanting to go back to different forms of content and I know they started doing deep web browsing again, though yeah nature of most youtube content to be negative. Honestly I never saw the appeal of penguin, whenever I watch he doesn't really add too much to whatever he's commentating or playing? That might be a personal preference thing though.

[Inlusione]

I'm not sure how anyone can watch Penguinz0 or Mutahar nowadays, they seem to drag a video out for 30 minutes or more for the most basic, vanila opinion. Although, maybe my attention span has just degraded...

But yeah, I can't stand how dramatic they can be. I mean, there's always horrible shit in the world and always will be. However "doomer", edgy, or just negatives opinions are more attention-grabbing for some. It's the negativity bias, it's why ragebait is a thing.

People who are usually watching Penguinz0 often do so by having him talking in the background while they do something completely different. Or just eating. Or some activity where they 'need' a background noise. I think that's also why their videos are dragged out for so long, they know their audience well enough to just take advantage of these habits. It's a passive consumption model.

[Furbisms]

My biggest beef with modern youtube is that it is very hard if not impossible to like, have people see your stuff at all, if you don't do basically all this stuff we've all been complaining about, or at least get extremely lucky.

I am stubbornly continuing to do what I want and what makes me happy despite being punished by the algorithm for it. Ive looked into alternatives and have been curious about some but haven't had the chance to experiment yet. I think theyre all flawed in ways that makes them not practical for me to use entirely instead of youtube but I figure experimenting anyway couldn't hurt.

In the end I'm kind of whatever, because at least I have friends who care about my stuff, and I'm not intending to get huge anyway. So like, I'm gonna keep having fun. I just don't think it's healthy for the overall site culture that things are the way they are.

I think in reality there's probably tons of earnest videos made by genuine people, they just don't get boosted by the algorithm. Or at least, that's my theory anyway.

[starbreaker]

I'm not sure how anyone can watch Penguinz0 or Mutahar nowadays, they seem to drag a video out for 30 minutes or more for the most basic, vanila opinion. Although, maybe my attention span has just degraded...

(tl;dr: the internet should be for text, not video)

I don't know who Penguinz0 or Mutahar are, but their identities are irrelevant to the opinion I mean to express: people making video essays tend to talk too much and say too little. (I have a similarly low opinion of podcasters, but that's out of scope for this thread.)

Just as I've never been to a meeting at work that couldn't have been an email, I have never seen a video essay that couldn't have been a blog post or a book.

Furthermore, I think that the internet was never meant to be cable TV with a comments section, and platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are part of the problem. They are inaccessible to people with low-bandwidth connections and old, "obsolete", but otherwise functional devices. They are inaccessible to the blind and the deaf. Nor can you grep a video the way you can a plain text file. The infrastructure necessary for streaming video (and streaming audio) can only be provided by corporations; anything beyond plain text and still images is practical to self-host. I am happier when I avoid such platforms, I am glad I don't participate in "modern YouTube culture" as either a producer or a consumer, and I think we'd be better off without it.

But I'm old enough to remember what life was like before ubiquitous internet access, so I could be biased. Now get off my lawn. :)

People who are usually watching Penguinz0 often do so by having him talking in the background while they do something completely different. Or just eating. Or some activity where they 'need' a background noise.

I think such people would be equally well-served by radio, or by putting on music that doesn't require the listener's full attention.