How YouTube's Year-In-Review 'Rewind' Video Set Off a Civil War (nytimes.com) 337
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: You might guess that a surefire way to make a hit video on YouTube would be to gather a bunch of YouTube megastars, film them riffing on some of the year's most popular YouTube themes and release it as a year-in-review spectacular. You would be wrong. YouTube tested that theory this week, releasing its annual "YouTube Rewind" year-end retrospective. The eight-minute video was a jam-packed montage of YouTube meta-humor, featuring a who's-who of YouTube stars along with conventional celebrities. The video was slickly produced and wholesome, with lots of references to the popular video game Fortnite, shout-outs to popular video formats, and earnest paeans to YouTube's diversity and inclusiveness. It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity, but the video started a firestorm, and led to a mass-downvoting campaign that became a meme of its own. Within 48 hours, the video had been "disliked" more than four million times. On Thursday, it became the most-disliked video in the history of the website, gathering more than 10 million dislikes and beating out the previous record-holder, the music video for Justin Bieber's "Baby."
The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," one of the most popular creators in YouTube's history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016. Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platform's homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes. The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."
"But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul -- stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month -- remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn't want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn't want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either," reports the NYT. "And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory -- making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos." This tension is at the heart of the controversy over YouTube Rewind.
"A YouTube recap that includes only displays of tolerance and pluralism is a little like a Weather Channel highlight reel featuring only footage of sunny days -- it might be more pleasant to look at, but it doesn't reflect the actual weather..."
The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," one of the most popular creators in YouTube's history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016. Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platform's homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes. The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."
"But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul -- stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month -- remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn't want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn't want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either," reports the NYT. "And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory -- making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos." This tension is at the heart of the controversy over YouTube Rewind.
"A YouTube recap that includes only displays of tolerance and pluralism is a little like a Weather Channel highlight reel featuring only footage of sunny days -- it might be more pleasant to look at, but it doesn't reflect the actual weather..."
You have to use the word War (Score:3, Insightful)
Americans don't understand anything else, War on drugs, war on terror, war war war.
Shame they don't understand what winning is anymore
Re:You have to use the word War (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should start a war on ignorance.
What a bunch of dumbasses.
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Re:You have to use the word War (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering the success of America's "War on ...", we should start a war on intelligence. We sure need more, and all the various "wars on" something have accomplished is that today we have actually more of the thing that we wage war on.
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If that's true, then it was a real injustice, anti-democratic (lower-case "d") move to ban Alex Jones.
If that's not true, then there was no real need to ban Alex Jones, and this was a capricious use of power.
For those who would silence^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hshape speech, there are few principled reasons for them to do what they would do.
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Yeah, bullshit. Alex Jones is a lying idiot catering to dangerously stupid people. If he was wearing a sandwich board in front of my store, I'd kick him to the curb the same as Youtube. Dangerous morons are bad for business.
The free market sometimes works. Alex Jones is free to fuck right the fuck back to his momma's basement and record anything he wants and post it on Breitbart or anywhere idiocy is still in vogue.
Don't like it? Aww.
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We are no better for having heard your profanity-laden opinion. And yet, I would never advocate that you should be silenced.
Re: You have to use the word War (Score:4, Informative)
Re: You have to use the word War (Score:3, Insightful)
"Nobody silenced him"
Same breath, "he was silenced by YouTube."
I never listened to Alex Jones, but I wonder what he says that gets fragile fascists like you all hot and bothered?
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If that's true, then it was a real injustice, anti-democratic (lower-case "d") move to ban Alex Jones.
Why? Is YouTube a government agency?
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Clearly, we need a War on Hyperboles. It really boils down to a real need to standardize the English language [wikipedia.org].
Re:Slashdot's 2018 Year In Review (Score:4, Insightful)
This was the year Slashdot ignored Q Anon for the entire year.
wtg
That is because covering a practical joke perpetrated against idiots is not funny, news worthy or interesting, it is just sad.
People don't lie knowingly being told. (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't like knowingly being told what is cool and what isn't. I mean when it's a friend or even a complete stranger saying "check this out, it's cool", that's all well and good (provided it actually is, and not a rickroll). A friend knows your tastes to some degree. A stranger can assume some things about you by where you are and how you're dressed and such. YouTube can't do any of these things, because they're only making one video, aimed at billions of people.
And that would be a best case scenario, where YouTube really does just want to promote what's cool. However, it is incredibly obvious that what they really want to promote is advertiser-friendly content, much of which is quite good, while silently glossing over the parts they don't like. Unfortunately for them, the parts they don't like are the parts their various viewing populations do like. This is why television could only be cool in small batches, the world is simply too big to all have the same tastes.
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Check this out, it's cool. [youtube.com]
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Most of the stuff they left out isn't really cool, it's just edgy bullshit for edgy teens.
Most of the popular stuff on YouTube is that kind of rubbish, or stuff for very young kids, or music videos, or meta-outrage. Would be nice if they included some really cool and interesting stuff, like some of the more niche channels. Show us some wood/metalworking stuff instead of 50 different Fortnight clips.
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Most of the stuff they left out isn't really cool, it's just edgy bullshit for edgy teens.
Most of the popular stuff on YouTube is that kind of rubbish, or stuff for very young kids, or music videos, or meta-outrage. Would be nice if they included some really cool and interesting stuff, like some of the more niche channels. Show us some wood/metalworking stuff instead of 50 different Fortnight clips.
Yeah, in my opinion, most of the "popular" stuff on Youtube skews towards tweens and teens, it's not cool, innovative, or even good.
Re:People don't lie knowingly being told. (Score:4, Interesting)
Would be nice if they included some really cool and interesting stuff, like some of the more niche channels. Show us some wood/metalworking stuff instead of 50 different Fortnight clips.
Those metal and woodworking is advertiser unfriendly so those channels got demonitized beside channels for gear heads, hobby shooters(of everything from BB guns to high power pistols and rifles), center and right wing political commentators first and so on.
So you'll take your fortnight clips and like it.
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Yeah bullshit. There is nothing advertiser unfriendly about This Old Tony, ABom79 and so on.
You should let youtube know, obviously your understanding of what's "advertiser friendly" is far more reaching.
The ones that are advertiser unfriendly are not because of the shop stuff, it's because of what they say. In fact it seems a good guess that AvE intantionally says things to demonetise his videos given what he's said about in the past.
So how about clive's channel? Oh...right, it must be because he's critical of shitty product design right, and the companies file copyright strikes against him.
So take your endless stream of paranoid drivel elsewhere.
Maybe it's time for you simply to grow up, and stop jamming your head into your ass?
Liks Alex Jones, that wll known centrist.
You mean like Styxhexenhammer666? Or Razorfist? Or Tim Pool? Chris Ray Gun? Mans1ay3r? Kadokawa? Laci Green?
Yes, I think it is time for you to take your hea
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Video at 11.
On your patreon first?
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because they're only making one video, aimed at billions of people
Ahh yes. The one-size-fits-all that fits no one. The "the average airman didn't exist" paradox.
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No, there's a formula to making movie trailers. That's why they all look about equally appealing, but prove not to be when actually viewed: it's easy to make an excerpt that makes you look good, and practically every movie has enough material to do so. This doesn't necessarily translate into having enough to sustain interest for two hours, though.
News pieces are sensationalized, which is not the same as "being cool". It's much more akin to clickbait.
Advertising is not the same either. Very few, if any, comp
Mired in Controversy (Score:3, Interesting)
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Interesting how the summary doesn't mention (though the article does) that both Logan & PewDiePie have been mired in controvesy for a few years. Hardly surprising that Youtube wasn't interested in showcasing them.
"Mired in controversy", as used here, means a bunch of officious jerks complained. When a special set of jerks complains about you, you become "controversial", regardless of what the overwhelming majority of people think.
Google does their bidding to avoid being "controversial".
Re:Mired in Controversy (Score:5, Insightful)
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And yet Kanye West's music videos persist on the medium.
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Actually, the overwhelming majority of people above the age of 12 do think that Logan Paul is a shithead, particularly in regards to the Suicide Forest video. Doesn't mean that the bout with KSI shouldn't have been referenced in the Rewind, but most people are fine with him not being actively included. You're right about PewDiePie, though.
Rob
Re: Mired in Controversy (Score:2)
Re:Mired in Controversy (Score:4, Interesting)
You know what stops you from being labeled because of such things? By not actually doing something that the overwhelming majority of people dislike.
A great way to stop any sort of progress.
The majority of people disliked the Eiffel Tower project at the time. Same goes for the car, trains, electricity, abolition of slavery, science (remember the Dark Ages?), many forms of art and so on.
Now, in this particular case, the (in)famous PewDiePie is as much of a shallow creator” as any other so-called creators” featured in the Youtube Video. They're all a bunch of clowns figuratively eating shit for the enjoyment of huge crowds of retards. That's modern society, and that was pretty much any society in the past, with one exception: Average Joes were never a good source of income until now, so they were largely ignored by celebrities. They had to entertain each other for pennies. But in today's society, Average Joes are wealthy enough to produce vast amounts of money if they are entertained with relatively insignificant costs. Film yourself absurdly and exaggeratedly reacting to other people's stupid videos, make millions of dollars a year. Get rich being retards' servant. Hurrah for contemporary entertainment!
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With Kjellberg these involve a joke by comparing some people to nazis, sharing a video by someone who's made videos doing the same, trying to see if people on a service called "Fiverr" will do very inappropriate things for next to nothing and blurting out a bad word in the middle of a live stream. In the latter two cases he immediately apologized for it and in the case of the Fiverr video he a
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Hardly surprising that Youtube wasn't interested in showcasing them.
So when celebrating creators a bit of "controversy" suddenly becomes the reason why you don't feature your single biggest (for the most of the year anyway) creator?
There's nothing interesting about this at all. In fact the summary mentions everything you need to know about the situation: People disagree with Youtube and the video became the most disliked video as a result showing clearly that the controversy was irrelevant.
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Well, then we might have a bigger problem at our hands than we currently know, because for all we can tell, this is what people want to see. I don't have a clue why, but if there are people subbing to them, and we're not talking about a few 100 fringe interest loonies, then I guess you'll get this reaction. Especially if you sell that video with the slogan "everyone controls rewind".
Last I checked it's absolutely a-ok to downvote a video with a misleading clickbait title...
Gee Sus. (Score:5, Insightful)
A bunch of kids downvoting a video to be trolls is not a 'civil war'. This is firmly "things that don't matter to anybody".
A dose of perspective would be healthy.
Re:Gee Sus. (Score:5, Informative)
This. "Pissing match" is the same number of words as "civil war" and is ten times more accurate.
Re:Gee Sus. (Score:4, Insightful)
A bunch of kids
the most-disliked video in the history of the website
Dismissing a movement that made a professionally prepared video the most disliked video in the history of the second most popular service on the internet as "a bunch of kids" is precisely the brain-dead response that causes this mismatch between creators and consumers in the first place. You realise that this represents a fundamental disconnect between a platform and their viewers right?
A dose of perspective would be healthy.
That's my line.
Do you by any chance work in marketing? I mean we've had a killer year for marketing.
Blizz.con's Diablo Immortal Announcement.
The NVIDIA RTX release debacle.
and now a celebration of Youtube being the most disliked video in history.
Great stuff produced by people who desperately lack perspective, specifically that of their user base.
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that causes this mismatch between creators and consumers in the first place.
Oh, what a shame.
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"Movement"?
Oh, sorry, I didn't know that you need a movement now to dislike something that's garbage.
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I wouldn't call consumerism an extreme ideology...
How can it be about creativity... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity
How can that be true when it doesn't feature most of the CREATORS that make YouTube so popular?
A parade of B-List celebs doing Fortnite dances is not a "celebration of creativity".
I don't really follow YouTube much at all, but this seemed like a big tone-deaf misstep on the part of YouTube that is trying to pretend like some people do not exist. Absurd. Celebrate what you are, all of it, or say nothing at all.
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...this seemed like a big tone-deaf misstep on the part of YouTube that is trying to pretend like some people do not exist.
Google doesn't respect users or content creators.
Re:How can it be about creativity... (Score:4, Interesting)
It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity
How can that be true when it doesn't feature most of the CREATORS that make YouTube so popular?
A parade of B-List celebs doing Fortnite dances is not a "celebration of creativity".
I don't really follow YouTube much at all, but this seemed like a big tone-deaf misstep on the part of YouTube that is trying to pretend like some people do not exist. Absurd. Celebrate what you are, all of it, or say nothing at all.
How is it supposed to be feel-good if the big creators you're referring to are extremely controversial due to repeated racist statements and making fun of dead bodies?
There's always been two ways to approach fame, you can be mainstream, and your audience will probably be very small, but if you do make it big then virtually everybody will be happy to associate with you.
Or you can be controversial, and you'll get a big audience just from the notoriety, but you'll piss off a bunch of people who aren't your audience and make yourself toxic to mainstream venues. Like the videos that YouTube chooses to showcase itself.
Logan Paul and PewDiePie made their choice, they went for controversy and got a boatload of cash and fame at the cost of mainstream acceptance. Everyone needs to deal with the consequences of their choices, I don't see why YouTube stars should be immune.
I'm not even talking about Pew (Score:5, Interesting)
Logan Paul and PewDiePie made their choice
I can sort of understand leaving out Pew as punishment for gaffes (he''s not actually racist though, try not to spread lies m'kay?).
But there are a world of other very popular creators on YouTube, as as I said it had none of them. It was not a reflection of YouTube, or what people saw through the years. I don't even have a beef with sugar-coating it and presenting only nice moments... just don't make things up that do not reflect the YouTube people know and use through the year.
They would have been better off just having the crazy Russian dude make stuff that science every day guy could explain as it exploded.
Re:I'm not even talking about Pew (Score:4, Insightful)
Logan Paul and PewDiePie made their choice
I can sort of understand leaving out Pew as punishment for gaffes (he''s not actually racist though, try not to spread lies m'kay?).
I was very careful to be accurate. I didn't say he was racist, I said he made "repeated racist statements".
Now is he actually racist? I'm not sure, I don't really follow him well enough to make a judgment.
I do know that "oh I'm not actually being racist, I just said X as a joke" is a deliberate tactic used by racists in order to normalize racist views while keeping some deniability. I'm not claiming that PewDiePie does that, but there are real consequences to jokingly using racist language.
Re: I'm not even talking about Pew (Score:3, Funny)
Don't forget that he's a heretic and a blasphemer also. YouTube should excommunicate him.
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like a big tone-deaf misstep on the part of YouTube
Youtube saw the Diablo Immortal announcement and wanted to get in on that "being booed by their users" action.
YouTube Stars (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody cares. Not even their immediate family cares. The most-viewed videos of 2018 were all music videos of bad records. You could literally show videos of goats being hypnotized instead of every single "YouTube Star" and YouTube would make just as much money. If you can name five of these YouTube Stars you should be ashamed of being such a giant loser.
Get over yourselves. Pewdiepie spouting racist shit isn't that interesting and the people that watch him don't buy shit anyway. Advertisers are starting to realize they're better off targeting their parents. The only good YouTube videos are the ones that show you how to de-bone a chicken or unclog a toilet.
Re:YouTube Stars (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:YouTube Stars (Score:5, Informative)
YouTube stars don't even have the biggest audiences on YouTube. Check for yourself. Go see the list of the most-watched videos on YT for any year, including 2018. Not a single YouTube "star" on the list.
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Umm... so TV is for old people, YT-stars are watched by kids without any income, what the fuck do people in their 20s to 50s do?
Wait, right, we're working...
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Except, they don't. Top 50 channels average 4 million views. Broadcast TV networks average 27 million. I mean, sure it beats out Fox News (barely), but cable is always lower in viewership.
Oh, and YouTube's numbers are worldwide, the TV numbers are in the US. So, you know, any given person is far more likely to have seen broadcast TV than a Youtube star recently
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Fair enough. By that methodology the top 50 YouTube channels* is about equal to the viewership of broadcast TV.
* Two caveats. First, that assumes that people watch at most one of the top 50 channels, as the TV numbers have duplicates who channel surf between them removed. That seems unlikely as a lot of channels crosspromote. Second, that's, again, global viewing for YouTube and US for broadcast. So, if we assume US TV is as popular as other countries that have internet access, it would add another 1
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There are plenty of them. Here's the first one that google showed me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This is the internet, after all. And if you had ever lived in the country, you'd know that this is a thing.
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Now do one where you de-bone the toilet.
It's the SJWs stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is exactly the problem. The media is deep at the whims of the left, as it requires government handouts for its survival. All the classic media outlets from paper to cable are dying and taken over by YouTube-like systems where people can pick and choose what viewpoints they want to hear, even *gasp* multiple opposing ones.
YouTube and Facebook itself however is in an echo chamber amongst its own decision maker community and continues to pander to an evil yet very vocal minority and thinks that this is a
Re: It's the SJWs stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd like to hear the facts, please
One man's garbage is another man's ... fact? Is THAT how it goes?
Then again (and where DID this come from?) you "have to" be considerate and look at ALL ideas EVERWHERE.
Fine, but we're all not 4yos arguing 1+1=11. Having a discussion on Calculus or Interplanetary Orbits does NOT need to include that.
You can argue limits are stupid (beginning Calculus) or the Earth is Flat (beginning Geology -- then again, if it's not Australians who live at the "bottom of the world" then who is it? (Oh, sorry, I
Re: It's the SJWs stupid (Score:2)
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...because the video was widely perceived as nodding to SJWs, the plague of our age.
Are you a conservative 12 year old? Why not get out of your parents' basement once in awhile and check out the real world? Every time I see some asshat like yourself moaning about SJWs and self-flagellating themselves I have to laugh. What happened to you that your precious snowflake of a self needs a boogie man to fear at all times? Could you please grow some balls and stop pissing and moaning about "SJWs"?
I live in a very liberal college town, and I never run into "SJWs". Maybe they exist on the college
Re:It's the SJWs stupid (Score:5, Informative)
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Do you even have the capacity to step back and look at yourself?
I've stepped back and looked at both of you.
To be very clear. You are on the ugly side of this, supporting, defending, and propagating malevolence.
SJW's are right wing. Not left wing. Sorry. (Score:2)
All their bullshit is designed to keep people divided by race when they should be uniting by class. From people who would all be neoliberal and/or neoconservative Republicans, in a universe where the Southern Strategy wasn't a thing.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's what TFA actually says, since apparently you can't be bothered to click on the link:
The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year â" such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions â" went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. âoePewDiePie,â one of the most popular creators in YouTubeâ(TM)s history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016.
Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platformâ(TM)s homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes.
What part of that counts as "people dissatisfied that YouTube isn't doing more to suppress speech that The Times itself fears"?
Re:It's the SJWs stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It's right next to that. Much like The Times, you totally missed it.
The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."
Thats why they think the downvoting is occurring. There's not enough censorship.
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Sigh. Relevant part from your own quote:
pushing them toward
What about that says censorship? No, they are talking about the crappy YouTube recommendation system that gives you flat earth bullshit and conspiracy theories when you are looking for NASA videos.
Is not recommending something censorship? Does free speech depend on your ability to game the ranking algorithm now? Are people who block spam fascists?
Whitewashing (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no other word for it, and it's why people found this so repellent.
Let's not forget that it took bieber what, 9 years to get to that many dislikes, this virtue-signaling shitshow got there in a week?
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I am pretty sure you can't say that, "whitewashing" is certainly racist or something these days.
May I suggest the term "cleaning with a biodegradable, fairly-traded detergent"?
Get a fucking life (Score:3)
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Yeah, but that doesn't drive clicks. Outrage does. Do you think they yelled about this shit from their front porch? No, they made videos about it. With advertisements in them.
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If you're upset about what Youtube said were the most popular videos of the year, then you really need to get a fucking life. It's just stupid fucking entertainment.
Indeed that is the perspective of the users, but that is not why this is "news". This is news because it shows that a platform fundamentally has no idea what makes its community tick. Remember this is "we know everything about everyone" Google showing that they don't have the slightest clue about people.
The kids complaining need to get a life, but Google, ... oh there is some real meat in the fact that this is the news today.
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The outrage is not that this is supposed to be popular. What gets people pissed is that not only this video was in the "suggested" video pile of EVERY user while at the same time not fitting into the viewing habits of what seems to be the majority of users.
If you are using a social media platform or product, you'd expect this platform or product to somehow match your expectations. What people learned in this Review video is that YT doesn't match their expectations AT ALL.
People are resisting political correctness (Score:3, Insightful)
Inclusion has become code for exclusion. It’s a bit like saying direct action when what someone really means is violence. Inclusion is simply another way of saying progressive or politically correct. As has been shown time and again these values are very exclusionary.
It also means that the winners will be determined based on their politics, gender and skin tone. No consideration will be given to merit. Why bother watching when you can predict the results based on whether or not they support progressive values?
Conservative, anti-abortion, white, male, Christian, straight? All of these things are grounds to exclude you. Especially if you belong to a group that is supposed to be progressive. Black and conservative? Progressive but anti-abortion? Your life will be ruined and you will be treated as a traitor.
People are seeing through the charade that is political correctness. Political correctness is nothing more than fascism with good manners. The intolerance of the politically correct is becoming known by the masses.
for context... (Score:2)
https://qmap.pub/players/read/... [qmap.pub]
https://qmap.pub/players/read/... [qmap.pub]
DGAF (Score:5, Informative)
The real travesty here is not what they left out of the video... It's that the alt-celeb internet culture is as useless as the traditional one. It's that there is a market, and marketers, for this video to even be conceived.
Re: DGAF (Score:2)
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People are wired to 'follow' about a thousand others. The size of a primitive community. It was important to know who you could trust. (There is a name for this 'constant' it just escapes me at the moment.)
'Celebrity' is just an evolution of that wiring against modern urban life, you interact with much more than 1000 people, but actually 'know' much fewer (how many people do you think you know by name?). So people fill in the empty spaces with 'public' persons, 99% of which will be categorized as 'untrus
Different worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
I watch YouTube all the time and have no interest in the people in this rewind thing because I am an old fart. :D :D https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com]
My favorite channel at the moment are a about a guy sailing up and down the canals in England in his narrowboat. Very relaxing.
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too"
But my point is that there's plenty of stuff on YouTube that seems to (thankfully?) be off the hype radar and lives it own quiet happy life. A lot of people my age don't seem to know that, maybe because they are not logged in to google/YouTube when they get the front page. I tried that once, it's awful.
Cheers.
Re:Different worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
I Agree that the most interesting entertainment youtube channels are often about quite everyday things but it often helps if their presenters are a little eccentric or unusual. I follow a few on wild camping, one on nail polish (seriously, they just gave $10k to a cat cafe from sales of teeshirts so they must have something about them), some insane Ukranians playing about with very high voltages from microwave oven transformers, a housewife teaching how to cook chinese food, a senior Ham in Florida testing cheap radios and another explaining how mains or battery six tube radios work and how to restore them. Most of them are not making big bucks from their channels but they all have a passion for their subject. Maybe it is just me but most of the people who realy get my respect in this world are enthusiasts of some kind or another, not "Celebrity" entrepreneurs manufacturing random entertainment or doing bollocks like giveaways at subscriber number increments in order to increase "engagement" - a real turn off in fact.
On the other hand all this stuff is the entertainment side of things and my real interest in YouTube are the university talks, lectures and colloquia on various science subjects. You would be suprised just how interesting Dengue fever actually is. I have learned a lot about microbiology for example even though my background is in engineering. The knowledge available on YouTube is absolutely amazing and is actually the strongest reason for hoping the "cat videos" continue to pay for this side of its existence. I have saved playlists of videos I have watched by subject on a dedicated channel - the content out there is just mindblowing. Level ranges from Public to near graduate, (there are some exceptional teachers like Leonard Susskind who can get the guts of the idea over even if you could not repeat the math.)
https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com]
There are also historically important things on there like the first video of an actual rocket taking off and going into orbit to meet up with the ISS - as seen from the ISS. The first time in history that most of the planet can see for themselves what it looks like for an actual real rocket to take off and power up into orbit to join you. Not a "Star Wars" Hollywood movie or a cartoon. The real thing, and I saw it on YouTube. Ace.
Do they care? (Score:2)
Does Youtube even care? Why should they? The video has 138 million views in 10 days. Mission accomplished.
This is the value of growing up (Score:5, Insightful)
Paul and PewDiePie earned their ostracism fair and square. Maybe if they started acting like people, they'd gain an audience outside basement-dwellers, sockpuppets, and dead accounts.
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I agree. Still, at least I know PewDiePie (ok, I know of him, never seen any of his videos), but who the fuck are the people in the Rewind video? I actually had to look them up, and now I sit here and want my time back because they're even MORE uninteresting than PewDiePie could ever be.
I never watch any of the so-called YouTube "stars" (Score:2)
The University of YouTube is a great place to learn things
I watch graduate level physics lectures from top professors
I also watch glassblowing, welding, knifemaking, woodworking, surgery, engineering and business analysis
Even some of the "commercials" are educational. I learned a lit about mining by watching Caterpillar promotional videos
Of course, I sometimes goof off and watch mindless stuff like dead malls
Nothing to do with celebs left out (Score:4, Interesting)
Truly, it is really that bad, they poured huge amounts of money into it and they've got something simply unwatchable, i've seen (or tried to see it) on the first day, before any of those news about it being the must disliked video on the site, or the analysis said that so and so are missing and some other random guy that only stream on twitch is there, and I still could get to half of it.
The video is the most disliked because it was pushed to everybody that visits the site and it was writen by a committee that has no idea of what it is doing.
Re: (Score:3)
Hit the nail on the head.
For the 2018 rewind [youtube.com]:
There's no music for the first 30 seconds, just talking. The music finally starts, people jump out a flying bus. Fast forward to 0:55, music stops, it's more talking time, followed by some obvious CG. At 1:10, cut to more people talking, this time around a campfire. The topic is what should be in the video. At 1:30, there's finally some decent music and dancing.
The good lasts just 20 seconds, and then back to the campfire with someone speaking a foreign language.
Who cares? (Score:2)
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Familiar with some of these, not others. Some other under-appreciated folks:
Art of the Problem - great information theory videos
Captain Disillusion - special effects debunking
Jay Foreman - Wry British humour-laden takes on infrastructure and "mips" (maps)
Pask Makes - Aussie wood worker
Scott Rumschlag - Ben Krasnow mixed with Adam Savage?
The Science Asylum - Accessible and well thought out physics explanations that I've often found to yield new insights even for someone familiar with the subject
Trekspertise
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Why the downvotes (Score:2)
Take a step back and find out just why people downvoted it. There's got to be a reason. And no, it's not that "all the alt-rights that felt slighted" did it. Sorry, no. I'm far from alt-right. Even though I still don't get what's "alt" about it, unless you're German (where "alt" means "old") this doesn't make sense, it's the same old assholes they always were, there's nothing alt about it. Yes, they downvoted it too, maybe for that reason, but you think that's all? I doubt it. I'm pretty sure with this vide
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Payment processors and other similar organisations simply get massively lobbied by this well connected and loud group of crazies that are very skilled in using platforms like twitter to organise their hate mob.
If fringe group nationalists really gave a shit, they'd drop checks in the mail if they had to. Funny thing about conservatives is they're perfectly happy to expect others to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, but when it's their turn, suddenly the whole world is fucking them over. Oh, the irony.
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Because we all know that all non-far left, center, right crazies (we're all crazy in the eyes of someone) thinks intentionally provoking people with something is not only acceptable but something to embrace, right? I don't mention the far right that obviously had their right arm projecting upwards in appreciation.
Given the number of times right wing (US standards) people have protested against something small that provoked them your perception of the world is interesting.
Re: That means Youtube has won (Score:2)
She is the last time that a business caved to right wing protesters?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yes thank you, I mean people like this one.
Re: (Score:2)
You should have stopped with the first sentence.
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No, you basically got the reason of the insane amount of downvotes just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
And this is exactly why the rewind became the most loathed video in YT-history: It's everything YT-viewers do NOT want, why we cut the cord and went from cable TV to the internet.
What this "Rewind" was is an endorsement of home-order-television shows mixed with very bad reality soaps. Actually, not even reality soaps. It's mostly random people doing random weird shit. Even cable didn't sink that low (yet), but here we are.
And if we wanted this kind of lowbrow "entertainment", we'd have stayed with cable.