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March 29, 2024, 07:40:57 AM

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What’s the appeal of youtubers? [split topic]

Started by touchingcloth, August 31, 2019, 07:46:06 PM

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touchingcloth

I'm sure I've said it before, but with some of these YouTube types I really don't get what the appeal is. With music and other forms of entertainment I often thing something is shit, but I can tell that that's just because it's not for me whilst understanding what other people might get out of it. But some of the stuff my nephews and friends' kids watch from off of online leaves me at a complete loss. I can tell they enjoy it, but I don't have a solitary clue why.

Quote from: Blue Jam on August 31, 2019, 06:24:20 PM
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-49448936/inside-the-selfie-factory-for-influencers

GRAVE.

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA












AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE

bgmnts

Quote from: icehaven on August 31, 2019, 07:31:20 PM
At this rate there's going to be more influencers than influencees, and the serious coin will be in being hawking yourself out as influenced.

I swear we reached this point with youtubers and podcasters a few years ago.

Sony Walkman Prophecies

Quote from: Twit 2 on August 26, 2019, 04:54:29 PM
Was walking past a couple and I overheard the woman say to the man "Your dad has some next level issues, though." They had a newborn baby with them and I had to bite my lip to prevent myself wishing next level cot death on them.

There's a programmer in my office who exclusively watches super hero films and plays video games in his spare time. He's a Dad with two young kids. Baffling.

Sony Walkman Prophecies

Quote from: touchingcloth on August 31, 2019, 07:46:06 PM
I'm sure I've said it before, but with some of these YouTube types I really don't get what the appeal is. With music and other forms of entertainment I often thing something is shit, but I can tell that that's just because it's not for me whilst understanding what other people might get out of it. But some of the stuff my nephews and friends' kids watch from off of online leaves me at a complete loss. I can tell they enjoy it, but I don't have a solitary clue why.

The videos are usually heavily diluted and hence easier to process aren't they. Saragon is just Niall Ferguson for people who can't be bothered reading books. PewDiePie is for late-starters who don't have the patience to sit through Hanna-Barbera cartoons; and God help that lot when they finally come of age.

touchingcloth

PewDiePie is baffling. When I heard he was the most watched person on the site and in danger of being toppled off the top spot I gave him a few extra views when I went to look what it was all about, and I just did not get it. He seemed like the kind of kid who would have been equally reviled by the cool kids and the nerds at school, just a waste of atoms whose only real purpose on this planet would seem to be preventing a grave from collapsing inwards.

bgmnts

Comparing a Hanna-Barbera cartoon to a youtuber is like comparing Leonardo da Vinci to the painter and decorator who helped you with your living room.

Fambo Number Mive

Depends on the Youtuber. There are a lot of funny Youtubers with interesting things to day, I listed a few I like in the Dessert Island thread in Technology.

Although some Youtubers do get really over-exposed. The ones which are all over the media seem to be the most vacuous/least interesting ones.

Lots of interesting videos out there about LeLe Pons and Hanna Stocking.

George Oscar Bluth II

A useful way of thinking about YouTube is that it's TV but completely deregulated. No commissioners, editors, producers or regulators between viewer and the "talent".

And people under 25 are watching hours of it a day. I wouldn't worry though, I'm sure it's fine.

Sin Agog

It feels like most post-innernet cultural developments are about doing away with the invisible talent moat between entertainer and audience, and I sorta admire that in a punk 'it was easy, it was cheap, go and do it' kinda way.  Don't watch any of the fuckers, though.

Ferris

Some of them seem to be insidious replacements for friends that also sell you things. Except by "you", I mean impressionable children.

When that US college admissions scandal broke (remember that?) I watched one of the incriminating ones from the "influencer" who mentioned she had no interest in going to college other than partying. That seemed pretty bad, but I was actually struck by the rest of the content - it's a long form confessional monologue about how school is going, and how her friends are doing, and what she's planning for the weekend. The content reminded me of the conversations I had with friends at school, and I think that must be the appeal. It was my first exposure to all this stuff.

If you're an impressionable kid who doesn't have as many friends as they think they should, it substitutes those intimate conversations with real people, but one party is using it to sell makeup and jewellery (I think those were her contracts?) to the other party. I think they're preying on insecure young peoples' insecurities and I think it is an evil thing to do, but I suppose it is no different from advertising (except it is more deceptive by design). Who knows?

Luckily, society will have collapsed by the time Ferris Jr is a teenager and youtube will be a distant cultural memory handed down from generation to generation so I'll never have to worry about it.

Neomod

Wasn't there an apocryphal story a while back about a channel with a pair of hands opening kinder eggs that was making tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds in advertising revenue.

I found it hard to believe that that you tube advertising model was sustainable/even worked but the cash must still be flowing.


mothman

My nearly-10yo watches loads. No idea how many. Most of them are people who play Minecraft and Roblox (her iPad games of choice) and film themselves. Some of them have complex skits they film with voices, animation, etc. She's heavily invested in some of them. I keep telling her it's all made-up, but she's easily led, I worry where it might end...

bgmnts

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on September 01, 2019, 04:10:49 PM
Some of them seem to be insidious replacements for friends that also sell you things. Except by "you", I mean impressionable children.

When that US college admissions scandal broke (remember that?) I watched one of the incriminating ones from the "influencer" who mentioned she had no interest in going to college other than partying. That seemed pretty bad, but I was actually struck by the rest of the content - it's a long form confessional monologue about how school is going, and how her friends are doing, and what she's planning for the weekend. The content reminded me of the conversations I had with friends at school, and I think that must be the appeal. It was my first exposure to all this stuff.

If you're an impressionable kid who doesn't have as many friends as they think they should, it substitutes those intimate conversations with real people, but one party is using it to sell makeup and jewellery (I think those were her contracts?) to the other party. I think they're preying on insecure young peoples' insecurities and I think it is an evil thing to do, but I suppose it is no different from advertising (except it is more deceptive by design). Who knows?

Luckily, society will have collapsed by the time Ferris Jr is a teenager and youtube will be a distant cultural memory handed down from generation to generation so I'll never have to worry about it.

This is an important point.

Most of these people I think are trying to be like our online friends, I have sometimes been caught up in that where I listen to a regular podcast or a youtube channel where its a group of lads just chatting or playing video games like I did with my mates when I was 12.

Which says to me that people have become so dull that they even want their human friends to be virtual. Even then if you were to go out with most people under 40 you will find most of them on their phones, which is quite worrying.

It's like giving a child tele to pacify it although its constant and for adults as well as children.

Plus its also the new reality tv thing of being rich and famous whilst having absolutely no skills or talent whatsoever, just an incredibly stupid user/customer base.

JesusAndYourBush

Can someone explain... when someone is called an influencer, what are they influencing?

The other day I saw someone requote an 'influencers' instagram post.
The post itself was dumb but the person posting it was impressed.
Is that it? They influence weakminded people to repost their dribble?

Ferris

Quote from: bgmnts on September 01, 2019, 04:20:26 PM
This is an important point.

Most of these people I think are trying to be like our online friends, I have sometimes been caught up in that where I listen to a regular podcast or a youtube channel where its a group of lads just chatting or playing video games like I did with my mates when I was 12.

Which says to me that people have become so dull that they even want their human friends to be virtual. Even then if you were to go out with most people under 40 you will find most of them on their phones, which is quite worrying.

It's like giving a child tele to pacify it although its constant and for adults as well as children.

Plus its also the new reality tv thing of being rich and famous whilst having absolutely no skills or talent whatsoever, just an incredibly stupid user/customer base.

It's why celebrities go on chat shows or podcasts and tell funny stories about themselves and their normal/wacky lives*. "Ooh I'll go and watch that film and buy popcorn and Pepsi and that, because I like him/her", but only because they've manufactured a synthetic familiarity with you and monetized it on their end.

I don't mind when this happens with (for example) Bob Mortimer because I get the impression (based on the synthetic familiarity described above!) that he's a genuinely nice bloke, and he's also not paid to sell things to me. Actors, influencers, TV personalities etc are paid to sell me things so I'm inherently a bit more suspicious - "influencers" just seem to be the most craven version.

There are other youtubers available I assume. I like the chap who restores things, and Primitive Technology is very restful.

*This is very cleverly satirized in the Nathan for You episode "The Anecdote", for anyone interested.

Ferris

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on September 01, 2019, 04:27:58 PM
Can someone explain... when someone is called an influencer, what are they influencing?

The other day I saw someone requote an 'influencers' instagram post.
The post itself was dumb but the person posting it was impressed.
Is that it? They influence weakminded people to repost their dribble?

My very limited understanding is they live glamorous lives that we all want to emulate, and conspicuously wear ray bans or specifically talk about or use [insert name of makeup here] as part of their "content". They are paid by the relevant companies to do this.

Alan Partridge was an early adopter vis a vis Corsodol, or that place that sells terry's chocolate oranges. In 2019 people do it via instagram instead.

José

i quite like photonic induction and that iranian-canadian guy who keeps making electrical appliances explode for comedic effect because they're sort of educational.

oh and theres a wierd looking ukranian midget called supersus who gets drunk off his tits and films himself breaking into old soviet bunkers and sealed off metro tunnels and shit, which come to think of it is something i used to do with my mates back in the day (except it was mainly abandoned factories and mental asylums for us and we weren't filming it). so maybe i'm re-living vicariously through the dude. he's the only youtuber i've even considered buying merch from as the dude still lives in a tiny soviet apartment as opposed to the palatial L.A mansions most of them "vlog" from.

if you're watching KSI, phillip defranco, logan paul or whatever though you're a cunt. high quality youtube content by cunts, for cunts, delivered directly to cunts. like and subscribe and don't forget to ring the bell. if you're putting a tablet with these pricks on in front of your kid for twelve hours a day you're an extra double-triple cunt and should report directly to the grave post-haste.


kalowski

Quote from: mothman on September 01, 2019, 04:14:45 PM
My nearly-10yo watches loads. No idea how many. Most of them are people who play Minecraft and Roblox (her iPad games of choice) and film themselves. Some of them have complex skits they film with voices, animation, etc. She's heavily invested in some of them. I keep telling her it's all made-up, but she's easily led, I worry where it might end...
Here's where it ended with me and my kids: I have banned them from watching the stuff.
Totally unregulated, I have no idea what my children could be watching next. My son, watching some cunt playing Fortnite and hearing this dick (not me) shouting at the screen is not on, not entertainment, and not happening Chez Kalowski.
I don't give a fuck what others may say, I hate the shit. I can envisage a time where all social media is banned for under 16s. (Current free market government not withstanding).

George Oscar Bluth II

I sort of think the BBC should sign up some videogame streamers. Kids love it and they're not going to stop loving it, so you have to go with them. And for parents it'd be a seal of quality, an assurance that they're not subtly indoctrinating the kids into white nationalism or whatever because some videogame streamers are doing that.

They co-opted pirate radio in the 60s and created Radio 1, don't really see why this is any different.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: mothman on September 01, 2019, 04:14:45 PM
My nearly-10yo watches loads. No idea how many. Most of them are people who play Minecraft and Roblox (her iPad games of choice) and film themselves

I mentioned before (probs in the other thread) Little Nose's favourite is a Canadian brother and sister (and sometimes their dad posts vids as well), and this is pretty much all they do along with various "challenges".  They make $2.5million a year apparently, and they're about 14 and 12.  They have absolutely no concept of money or the value of things - one of the regular challenges is they throw a dart at a map of the world with each continent representing a different shop (everything from Maccy D's to Louis Vuitton), and then the other has to buy them the most expensive thing in the shop.  They've also done "spend $1000 in Walgreens in 10 minutes" challenges.  Sickening.

I've also mentioned before the main thing that annoys me - and it REALLY annoys me - is the amount of food that goes to waste in these challenge vids.  Like make pizzas or sundaes with mystery ingredients, or trying every single thing in a particular range (like all the different flavour Pop Tarts), and they take one little bite and the rest just gets binned.

Aw, it makes my rectum clench in anger just typing it.


Course, we're all just jealous that we didn't think of it first...

mothman

Re: kalowski and Nose's points, yeah, I'm not happy she watches this stuff, but at least it's more age-appropriate when barely a year ago she was still watching CBeebies at an age when most have switched to CBBC. And she's on the autistic spectrum, altering her behaviours isn't easy. We have enough to deal with on her part without introducing more problems, so we're basically chickening out of doing anything right now!

A bigger problem for us is the bullying she receives - at school, but also in the games she plays. She can't handle it when cunts in Minecraft or Roblox attack her or steak her stuff, and we don't understand what's going on so can't help her.

I should probably start a thread about all we've been through with her over the past few years - she's the one who nearly died on the operating table a couple of years ago - but I can't face doing it, I'm right in the middle of it all and if I really had to sit down to try to deal with it all, I'd go mad.


pigamus

Going to sound like Methuselah asking this, but what exactly is Minecraft? How does it work?

peanutbutter

They're friend substitutes, that's basically it. I mean, I listen to some 4+ hour weekly podcasts, ain't no way it's just about my love of pro wrestling or whatever else that leads to that. It's either I like the people or I like their dynamic together.

I've no time for him myself but I think I get why PewDiePie is super successful. He gives off a pleasant vibe, he has a nice face and comes across like a happy guy... He reminds me of some friends I've had who were kinda vital in ensuring I wasn't exclusively friends with miserable people that reminded me too much of me. He's the internet version of that guy in school that absolutely everyone knew and liked, often quite obnoxious but never seeming outright malicious.

You can probably tell something or another from people's youtube subscriptions of the kinds of people they want to be their friends. In Pewdiepie's case it seems like it's pretty simply "people want to be around people with a pleasant carefree vibe"



The whole Patreon backed side of things can't last though, not to the level its currently at.

Shit Good Nose

mothman - you have my sympathies. 

You could always write it all down and then not post it.  Just for some kind of catharsis.  Hell, some of us kuntworks migjt even be able to offer useful advice.  Much stranger thongs have happened.

More specifically about the YT stuff - we don't stop Little Nose from watching it, we just make sure she stays on YT Kids - despite the odd dodgy vid that gets posted occasionally (which usually gets taken down quicker than Victor Lewis Smith vids on the main YT), it's surprisingly very well policed.  And most if not all of the regular posters (on Kids YT at least) know exactly who their audience is, and I'd be VERY surprised if any of them fucked that up.  I mean I know you've got your pewdiepies and Logan Pauls and that, but Kids YT is an altogether safer and more friendly space.

Plus it means we don't have to sit through the same episode of Topsy and Tim or Tracy Beaker for the five hundredth time.


Quote from: pigamus on September 01, 2019, 06:18:31 PM
Going to sound like Methuselah asking this, but what exactly is Minecraft? How does it work?

Get with the times gramps - it's all Roblox and Fortnite now.

mothman

Quote from: pigamus on September 01, 2019, 06:18:31 PM
Going to sound like Methuselah asking this, but what exactly is Minecraft? How does it work?

You... build stuff? There are two modes, Creative, where you can just do that, build yourself your own little world (Mothlet's is amazing, it has underwater lairs and a rollercoaster and treehouses and rainbow-coloured sheep), and Survival, where you interact with peple and they can kill you and steal your stuff (the meltdown she had the first time that happened, I thought either we'd have to call an ambulance and/or mental health services, or the neighbours would call the police). *I* don't know!

Twed

What are we defining YouTubers as, here? Is it:


  • Anybody who makes a living publishing content on YouTube
  • Anybody who makes a living publishing content on YouTube and is a gobshite

If it's 1 then you need to go on a course about how to surf the information superhighway effectively.
If it's 2 then that's a bit of a self-fulfilling category

bgmnts

The 'friend substitute' aspect is the most terrifying as it makes it so much more insidious when they are racking up a shit ton of cash, condoning gambling, espousing/platforming right wing ideals, being racist/homophobic etc.

pigamus

Quote from: mothman on September 01, 2019, 06:26:45 PM
You... build stuff? There are two modes, Creative, where you can just do that, build yourself your own little world (Mothlet's is amazing, it has underwater lairs and a rollercoaster and treehouses and rainbow-coloured sheep), and Survival, where you interact with peple and they can kill you and steal your stuff (the meltdown she had the first time that happened, I thought either we'd have to call an ambulance and/or mental health services, or the neighbours would call the police). *I* don't know!

So is there a way you can have friends on there who will back you up, or is it totally dog eat dog?

Twed

TechMoan, EEVBlog, LGR, Technology Connections, bigclivedotcom, Souped Up Recipes, Ziang's Oriental Food Workshop, Chris Fleming, Kim Justice, Fran Blanche to name a few. The ones in bold are some of the few things that exist that make me feel lucky to be alive in 2019.