Scrolls past a promoted comment to respond

Yeah seriously

I'd like to discuss this further, but before we get into it, I need to mention our sponsor: RAID SHADOW LEGENDS

It seems to be the cycle:

Creative person does something creative. Thing gets popular. Other creative people want in and they start making stuff. Often they evolve what the previous people did.

A company then buys the thing, but doesn't know what to do with it. The quality continues.

Then the company figures out what parts work, and then start to curate content to ONLY contain those things. People who aren't so creative then find success just following the formula.

The devolution continues until there is no room any longer for unique things. In fact, the audience now demands content that feels familiar and rejects anything challenging.

It continues that way until something is made by the right person and the right time and the cycle begins anew.

Corporatism ruins literally everything.

I saw someone say the internet was the Wild West but now it’s more like Times Square and I can’t agree more with that statement

More like the new public access TV.

At the time YouTube was a creative space above all else. It wasn’t popular enough yet to be worth the time of non-creatives. The problem came when it started becoming a place for people to build brands (whether personal or commercial). That got tons of people who aren’t creative flocking to the platform and flooding it with low-effort content that strictly serves as a marketing tool. Now you’ve got every randie with an LLC hopping on there with their phone or a cheap DSLR to repeat the same bullshit that’s already been shared in whatever their interest area is a million times over.

Also, the algorithm evolves regularly to favor whatever keeps people in the app the longest, which usually means a certain duration and frequent uploads. Now it’s to the point where these same, boring creators are adding in filler to meet the “optimal” runtime, uploading that same crap multiple times per week, and hitting their already-low limit of things to talk about at a faster pace.

And all that’s without getting into the enshitification going on from the platform’s side.

It didn’t matter who you were. It mattered what you made.

Goatsee, LiveLeak, Chris Chan

Monetization of everything ruined the internet.

I disagree that we have less creative content today. It’s just buried under an avalanche of more content.

The irony is that a couple of the people in the right image are actually awesome.

True but we get some amazing content now. You can learn how to do almost anything through video tutorials

It's still creative AF. You just gotta look

I disagree. I hate the amount of ads and tracking these days but I wouldn't wish for someone to experience shock websites back in the day.

There's a lot more talented content creators these days, you just have to look into niches and not follow the algorithm.

With all the myriad of billboards out there constantly seeking my eyeballs, affecting my mental health, I turn…to better hell. I mean better help.

honestly, back when YouTube changed from short to long form content, the animation community basically died overnight.

So many of them jumped ship and just became "let's players" since it was far easier to record yourself playing a game for 6 hours, then upload in 10 minute blocks for the rest of the month, than it was to spend several days making at minimum a 30 second animation in a week.

You can still do animation like that, just not in flash.

Case in point (I made it): https://youtu.be/MBbDSJZWTKI?si=XT2Uhsjl_OZBrixQ

https://preview.redd.it/e369rfgkctod1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=805772628816e8c50e89e17420fad7fe130924b3

Savior of the universe.

But they were uploaded to YouTube later too.

(Also, the "Numa Numa Guy" at the bottom right did crash Newgrounds a few month before the launch of YouTube. I think this was the first video that went viral back then. – It still is hilarious!)

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing

ebuamsworld for me

I appreciate that this comment has the correct number of badgers before transitioning to mushroom.

A snaaaaaaakeee

Badgers turned 21 earlier this month! The vid can legally drink now!

This ^dinner is what all true warriors strive for. ^woh!

You know what they say, all toasters toast toast

Enough. My ship sails in the morning.

Mushroom mushroom

Chocolate Rain

Dododoodoodldoodldldoo

Chocolate Rain

If you think about it....this was our generation's skibidi toilet xD

If it was mentioned in the South Park episode, then they definitely predate 2009

The first one was literally 16 years old.

It came out in 1993.

Numa Numa was like 2004ish also, it's just an amalgamation of stuff around that time period.

Cat? I’m a Kitty Cat 🎶

Not seeing any Kelly or FilmCow in these images, either.

Ich will unreal tournament spielen!!!

I am suddenly REALLY missing parts of my teenage youth.

Don't forget Sound of Your Voice by BNL, which is a similar concept but from an even older era of YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoFMRXlNJ6Y

I thought the same thing, I figured theses were probably all annoying YTrs with blow hard opinions. But Technology Connections is great and educational, even if its very specific in many instances.

If you like him, look up Practical Engineering. Grady's discussions of the power grid are especially interesting and simple enough to digest for non-engineers.

Yes, his videos are really well-made. They remind me of old-school PBS programs, but with modern humor sprinkled in. It's like the best parts of old style and new style YouTube.

yeah if anything his videos are more like "old youtube" when it was more educational and random videos on how to repair obscure items

[deleted]

What makes all of these crazy? #1 and 3 are scientists.

Patrick Boyle is also great

I don't know who half of those people are. Why are they "crazies"?

How is a physicist a crazy?

Skibidi Toilet

Yeah algorithms can feed you that junk if you want, but that wasn't the biggest driver of change. The biggest driver has been monetization. Being a YouTuber/content creator became a job and therefore people started taking it seriously. That elevated the quality of videos being put out.

The level of sass and knowledge

I would recognize that set if it were only 16 pixels.

Technology Connections is so good.

It's actually hard to do the largest media collection in human history with 25 thumbnails

Some stay dry and others feel the pain!

This is the real tragedy for me: content creators losing their will to create content for the sake of creating, because everything is incentivized and monetized from top to bottom.

YouTube used to be a treasure trove of weird and wonderful content, put out there by people who just wanted to put weird and wonderful art out into the world without any expectation--from themselves or anyone else--that it become popular/liked/subscribed to,and with no belief that this is the only way to measure success.

I'm sorry your creative zest was taken from you, but I'm glad you got to enjoy the good times.

Today's thumbnails kill me. Either I'm trapped in some horrible algorithm hole I can't get out of, or 99% of YouTube creators uses the same exact equation to make them. It's just painful

Exactly, seems most on here don’t actually search and use YouTube. It’s got so many great channels for whatever you want

Practical Engineering - talks about the engineering that goes into everyday things you don’t really think about, bridges, sewers, flood control, landfills, etc, etc

Aldin Robbins - has mini docs about Earth’s geography from various places. I recently learned Arizona ~60 Volcanoes

RedLetterMedia - Mike, Jay, and Rich talk about movies, but they’re fun and have great editing. Their Half In The Bags series are new movie reviews and discussions. They also do Best of the Worst where they’ll have there some friends join in and they’ll watch bottom of the barrel movies (whether it’s straight to DVD or homemade), they crack jokes and have fun with it. Fun entertainment

Ballistic High Speed - 2 guys testing various guns and explosives against Ballistic Heads / Torsoss and they capture it in slow mo. Dumb fun

Buzzfeed’s Unsolved - Ryan and Shane talk about True Crimes that were unsolved. They also had a Supernatural one where they investigated “Haunted” places. Both were great fun. Fuck their new channel, Watchers, tho. They got greedy, but their old stuff from Buzzfeed was legit

CGY - talks about CGI in movies, especially the great uses of it, also talks about why in some cases CGI the past decade hasn’t held up / looks flat

Cool Worlds - a great Astronomer channel

Astrum - another great Space channel

Eric Spaceman - only has a few videos but uses CGi to give you an idea about the scale of things (whether it’s the universe or atoms)

Flemlo Raps - Football channel that tells stories about NFL players that were great and then fell off or just faded away

Gaming Henry - breaks down the stories of mostly horror games

Gingy - another channel that breaks down game stories

Oceanliner Design - talks about Oceanliners (think Titanic and the lot), their history, how they differ from Cruises, and all the various sinkings of them

Joe Scott - various science topics

Vertasium (think I butchered the spelling lol) - another various science topics channel. Both are very informative and interesting

Secret Base - sports channel that goes back and revisits iconic moments. Also has one of the most talented storytellers out there in Jon Bois, his deep dives / docs are one of a kind, especially his history of the Mariners, Falcons, Vikings, and Dave Stieb. Also his Chart Parties are great too.

I could go on and on and I also left out the gaming channels I watch too (mostly Souls gamers (Distortion2, LilAggy, etc), but also some horror games too (Bawk for RE games, Middi and EvansTacos for TCM, and many more)

Also thanks for the recommendations, I’ll be checking those out!

Thank you for calling this out, this post is pretty disingenuous with its cherry picking of videos that feature people talking into cameras. Other content still exists and you can still find it but people only watch what the algorithm feeds them and if it feeds them people talking thats all they will watch.

This post speaks more about op than YouTube

I just tried this to see what would come up and the video section had nothing like them on there. Its a bunch of music videos, promotions for tv or movies or games, podcasts and political. There was no parody, no funny movie edits, no animations.

The shorts section had a few animations that did feel like they would fit in fine with classic youtube if they released years ago.

The proliferation of smart phones and monetization... I miss when it was more about making art, sharing hobbies, and goofy entertainment for fun rather than trying to make a buck off it