So Much Total BS On YouTube

[DrumBob]

I enjoy certain things on YouTube and check videos out at my leisure, things like, Pop Goes The 60's with Matt Williamson, which is excellent and very intelligently done. I also find certain drumming videos helpful, if they are accurate and well made.

Lately though, many of the videos I've clicked on are complete trash. Just now, I turned on a video by some idiot going on and on for 12:05 about how singer Joe Lynn Turner has stopped wearing a wig and has taken new bald publicity photos. Turner has alopecia, which the host described as, "Will Smith's wife's disease." Of course, the comments are turned off, preventing anybody from telling him what an asshat he is.

Another video concerned air show disasters, but whoever made it didn't use any film clips of the actual plane crashes. Instead, he used ancient footage of the Hindenburg blowing up, and stock footage elsewhere that had nothing to do with the video's subject.

Then, there are the "Celebrity Net Worth" videos, that usually show the subject of the video with a very busty woman, whose attributes have been Photo Shopped to be huge. Someone did this to Stevie Nicks, and made her look like she's a 44DDD.

Maybe it's a foregone conclusion that there's a lot of garbage on YouTube, but it seems to have gotten worse lately.

 

[Guildedagain]

It's gotten worse, way worse.

In 20 years, I've seen it go from amazing wonderful to a sea of ridiculousness peppered with advertizing, and since I won't buy/pay for Youtube Premium, I can barely watch a ten minute video, after the 1st half, it refuses to buffer and just won't load. A great case for doing more outside.

"Another video concerned air show disasters, but whoever made it didn't use any film clips of the actual plane crashes. Instead, he used ancient footage of the Hindenburg blowing up, and stock footage elsewhere that had nothing to do with the video's subject."

What really scares me about all of this is an audience that doesn't know the difference...

Also speaks to epidemic narcissism, where you can't do a simple car repair without a video, first time rodeo in most cases, bad info, incorrect and sometimes unsafe procedures, marquee style disclaimers across the bottom of the screen "Oops, don't do it like this" as it's easier to edit and ad disclaimers rather than to reshoot without blunders.

 

[Rocky]

It's gotten worse, way worse.

In 20 years, I've seen it go from amazing wonderful to a sea of ridiculousness peppered with advertizing, and since I won't buy/pay for Youtube Premium, I can barely watch a ten minute video, after the 1st half, it refuses to buffer and just won't load. A great case for doing more outside.

Even if you paid for YouTube Premium, it would only be ad-free until they felt like they had hooked enough people before they ran 'selected ads.'

 

[fronobulax]

Another video concerned air show disasters, but whoever made it didn't use any film clips of the actual plane crashes. Instead, he used ancient footage of the Hindenburg blowing up, and stock footage elsewhere that had nothing to do with the video's subject.

This, at least, is not new. For example, there were only so many photographs taken during the American Civil War. When you have read enough books, all of which were published and marketed as non-fiction (i.e. history), you quickly realize that the same photographs get used over and over whether the photograph has any real connection to the narrative, or not. In some cases it is not the author's fault. The illustrations were assembled by the publisher without any input from the author and just meant to illustrate things like "dead soldiers', "earthworks", "ironclad", "cannon", etc.

 

[schoolie]

twoodfrd is the only channel I enjoy anymore. Occasionally I'll find a performance that I haven't seen, but it's really gone downhill since Google bought them, and the ads are excessive.

 

[Midnight Toker]

I wouldn't say "YouTube is full of BS", as it's just an open public forum where anyone can upload whatever they want (within reason). The fact is, and has ALWAYS been, is a sizable portion of the human population are full if BS. There's a reason why only so many people are successful commercial filmmakers, documentarians, guitar teachers, drum teachers, music historians, military historians, etc etc. One thing I will say, the past few years dealing w/ a global pandemic has actually caused a lot of otherwise top notch private in person music instructors to resort to going on YouTube. 5-10 years ago, most guitar tutorials were done by bedroom players who aren't qualified instructors, and most weren't even playing it the way the original artist played it. So the level of good online guitar instruction has actually gone way up in the last 3 years! As for the rest of YouTube....it's all hit or miss, just like dealing w/ humans in general. That's not youtube's fault.

 

[ruedi]

Avoiding ads on yt: Try brave browser.

 

[twocorgis]

As far as nuking the ads on YouTube, the Brave browser is excellent for that. It also does a great job of blocking trackers and protecting your privacy (as much as is possible these days). EDIT: I see @ruedi already beat me to it!

 

[Uke]

a sizable portion of the human population are full if BS.

There you go ! I wonder if there are any You Tube vids on how stupid You Tube is!

 

[schoolie]

Avoiding ads on yt: Try brave browser.

Thanks! The ads are only a problem when I watch youtube through Roku

 

[JohnW63]

I saw the how much are the members of Fleetwood MAc worth video and it started with Stevie photoshopped with " Dolly Partons ". I got sucked in with click-bait. I was thinking that at her age there is no way she would do that! And I was right. But I'll not watch another video from that source again.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I enjoy certain things on YouTube and check videos out at my leisure, things like, Pop Goes The 60's with Matt Williamson, which is excellent and very intelligently done. I also find certain drumming videos helpful, if they are accurate and well made.

Lately though, many of the videos I've clicked on are complete trash. Just now, I turned on a video by some idiot going on and on for 12:05 about how singer Joe Lynn Turner has stopped wearing a wig and has taken new bald publicity photos. Turner has alopecia, which the host described as, "Will Smith's wife's disease." Of course, the comments are turned off, preventing anybody from telling him what an asshat he is.

Another video concerned air show disasters, but whoever made it didn't use any film clips of the actual plane crashes. Instead, he used ancient footage of the Hindenburg blowing up, and stock footage elsewhere that had nothing to do with the video's subject.

Then, there are the "Celebrity Net Worth" videos, that usually show the subject of the video with a very busty woman, whose attributes have been Photo Shopped to be huge. Someone did this to Stevie Nicks, and made her look like she's a 44DDD.

Maybe it's a foregone conclusion that there's a lot of garbage on YouTube, but it seems to have gotten worse lately.

Am I missing something? Of course there's stupid stuff on Youtube. And TV. And the radio. And social mefia.

So what else is new?

 

[cupric]

I always remember the days before streaming media. It really wasn't that long ago! Like twenty years or less. And then it was on your pc. Those times when you had a song in your head, one that you knew, or some that you didnt. Making it a point to stop by the record/CD store to see if you could find it. Sometimes you did, often times you didnt. (Ever look for Badfinger, Straight up in the 80s through 2000s? Just a example....). Either way you were not going to hear that wonderful tune in your head NOW.
Then came better streaming, and YouTube. You could find anything almost immediately. And it was free! Instant gratification.
And I agree it is now riddled with much nonsense. And fairly recently with commercials. But so isn't virtually everything else. But, you can still find most anything you want to hear, and with live videos! For free! And for that I will always be in awe.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I always remember the days before streaming media. It really wasn't that long ago! Like twenty years or less. And then it was on your pc. Those times when you had a song in your head, one that you knew, or some that you didnt. Making it a point to stop by the record/CD store to see if you could find it. Sometimes you did, often times you didnt. (Ever look for Badfinger, Straight up in the 80s through 2000s? Just a example....). Either way you were not going to hear that wonderful tune in your head NOW.
Then came better streaming, and YouTube. You could find anything almost immediately. And it was free! Instant gratification.
And I agree it is now riddled with much nonsense. And fairly recently with commercials. But so isn't virtually everything else. But, you can still find most anything you want to hear, and with live videos! For free! And for that I will always be in awe.

Yup. It just takes picking what you want, not what you don't want. Why should we make ourselves crazy?

 

[crank]

Plenty of garbage on youtube and plenty of garbage, maybe with better production values? on TV.

It's your choice to watch or not.

 

[DrumBob]

Am I missing something? Of course there's stupid stuff on Youtube. And TV. And the radfio. And social mefia.

So what else is new?

Plenty of garbage on youtube and plenty of garbage, maybe with better production values? on TV.

It's your choice to watch or not.

I'm selective about what I watch on TV and YT, for sure. It seems like 75% of YT videos are pure clickbait. I can find good stuff if I hunt for it.

 

[davidbeinct]

I don’t even know where you would find stuff like this pre-YouTube. There’s an episode with Rev. Gary Davis too. I can avoid a lot of dreck for a chance to see stuff like this.

 

[cupric]

I don’t even know where you would find stuff like this pre-YouTube. There’s an episode with Rev. Gary Davis too. I can avoid a lot of dreck for a chance to see stuff like this.

Exactly!

 

[Midnight Toker]

^ yep....the astronomical wealth of rarities, both audio and video, found on YouTube is mind numbing. Not to mention w/ today's cellphones w/ their ultra high quality cameras, if you're bummed about a concert you had to miss for whatever reason (...or If that artist just didn't come to a venue near you), chances are, the entire thing is on YouTube in HD quality!! (And if it isn't, several shows from the same tour certainly are! ) I regularly find myself watching entire concerts I only wish I could have attended on my big tv w/ surround sound cranked....thanks to YouTube and it's uploaders. (Not to mention, countless old classic concerts I was too young to see at the time!)

 

[cupric]

Amazon Prime was pretty good until a year or so ago when they started adding commercials. But it is part of the "free shipping" package.
Netflix has a lot of proprietary programs, but I do not care for most of them. And now they are hinting at the addition of commercial content also.
I had a few of the standard big name channels such as HBO. It seems they have limited new additions, instead rehashing older content. Their series can be excellent, but limited. It also take years for new episodes. I could be dead by then!
So I guess it is all relative.....