Comment by eitally
5 days ago
At the top of the heap (Mr Beast, Nastya, Ryan, etc), this is true:
> The ideal creator has no distance between themselves and their persona. They have been interpellated by audience metrics; their subjective experience already takes audience reactions into account.
> Or more simply, YouTubers are not “Creators” but Creations. Audiences, rationalized by the platform, and the vloggers who upload the videos those audiences consume are not separable either theoretically or empirically.
It's pretty obvious, too, because these YouTubers have a distinct theme where their popularity is dependent on 1) the whims and algos of the platform on one side, and 2) the ability for their audience to care and relate to something pretty dang detached and irrelevant from their everyday lives (unboxing, aggressive acts of charity, etc).
While you hear plenty (Most? All?) YouTubers complain about the ranking algorithms & capriciousness of their overlord, I don't believe most channels are quite as vapid as those at the top of the heap. Lots of deep subjective content, and lots of freaking annoying CapCut edits, but also a primary focus on meaningful content relevent to viewers. These people may not be getting rich from their vlogging, but it's also not fair to call what most of them are doing "vlogging", either. It's video-based short form content curation for a clearly identified audience. Not remotely the same as how the big guns like Mr Beast have to view their work [where they're much more similar to a cable TV network or a commercial production company than an independent producer].
Well put. As long as channels like Technology Connections can remain financially viable on the platform and not beaten down by the algorithm, I really don't care how many Mr Beasts are making "slop content".
I do. Slop content is melting the brains of the people watching that content to the detriment of society as a whole.
Soap operas, reality TV and evangelists have existed forever in various guises. "Bread and circuses" is thousands of years old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
1 reply →
If you remove this they'll simply substitute it with something else. Some people don't mind "melting" their brains as they didn't have a primary use for it anyways.
1 reply →
Probably. But this isn't really something you can control. So why bother?
1 reply →
>but also a primary focus on meaningful content relevent to viewers. These people may not be getting rich from their vlogging, but it's also not fair to call what most of them are doing "vlogging", either. It's video-based short form content curation for a clearly identified audience.
There's a fine line between "content created for X people interested in Y topic in Z form" and "content that's relevant to my viewers."
The former is a channel that is avoiding the "creator" described by the author. The latter is on a path towards the author's "creator."
For a long time, the two can be very similar. The group you are tailoring your content for and your viewers won't necessarily diverge quickly, especially in niche areas or highly technical fields. But they will inevitably diverge.
Worth noting that the form this takes will depend on the topic.
It's rare to find a creator that can avoid this trap long-term. I see it even with small channels I follow.
Youtube is also killing a lot of history channels because if there's any violence (eg war) they get demonetized, the algorithm avoids them, or they can even have their channels disabled. Most now blur out pictures of the holocaust, which negates a lot of the otherwise serious impact on a serious subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24QgMpvX3mw
I enjoy the occasional true crime documentary. It's been amazing to watch YouTube demonetization just drive censorship to an absurd degree.
No blood, no violence, no bad words. And the words YouTube deems bad are somehow much stricter than what I grew up with. Many words related to violence (abuse, assault, etc) words related to death (killed, executed, etc) words related to drugs (took me a while to figure out what a suspect was even saying when their speech was censored to "they drank and used s**d" I finally figured out it was speed aka meth)
It's amazing to see how sanitized things have become, almost to the point of absurdity. Does making it so that people can't say the word "abuse" somehow eliminate abuse from the world?
I watch a YouTuber called bigclive who does hardware teardowns. Occasionally he'll tear down a single-use vape to show how you can harvest re-usable li-ion batteries from them.
He can't use the word "vape", or the video gets de-monetized...
Obligatory plug for Nebula, where a lot of educational YouTube has gone for refuge from demonetization. Many creators will have different versions that they upload to Nebula containing the content that YouTube wouldn't let them add in.
> YouTubers are not “Creators” but Creations
This is such a broad and general statement for a platform that is unfathomably big.
I don't any of the mass market Mr Beast, Nastya, Ryan videos on my feed. At all. I get smaller (but still large) creators with videos that actually engage the mind. Example: https://www.youtube.com/@blancolirio
But I guess that's the distinction between a Youtuber and Creator.