What I find interesting is that many of these youtubers have created personas to appeal to their audience, like true entertainers. However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend. Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute for people's social needs. People grow attached to this persona, sometimes obsessively. I think it could create of a scary pattern of disassociation, has it already?
Another thought: If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views. I think there is some sadness in that: no matter what form of art, so much of it is influenced (disrupted?) by money -- it almost seems inevitable.
My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says the amount of kids who are developing anti-social behaviors is increasing pretty rapidly. Kids these days have computers and are basically simply "escaping" to the internet to live in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality. Some even display active addictions to computer games, like minecraft, while others say they only have friends online in the games or with these youtube personalities like you say. These kids literally do not know how to make friends or interact with other kids because they are so used to just sitting in front of a game or computer basically having a "friend" entertain them with only one-direction of interaction. They think this is normal relationship for a friend. They don't understand that in the real world in order to get friends you need to talk to other kids and interact with them. They literally do not know how to do this because they've learned it is not necessary...
Parents need to take it very seriously and limit the amount of time the child uses the computer...otherwise these behaviors continue into adulthood. If you are socially incompetent then it will hold you back in terms of jobs and so on. Very troublesome is that parents are basically using computers to babysit the kids or to keep them occupied...which only helps to reinforce the lack of social skills they get. How many times do you see a kid in a shopping cart holding a tablet watching some movie or whatever? Very common.
Before I had regular access to technology I spent most of my after-school and recess time staring off into space, pacing around constructing imaginary worlds, and reading YA fiction. I had no interest in my peers, and no idea how to connect with them, years before I ever touched a computer. When I finally did get into the internet, and programming, it was manna from heaven. Now I get to be a productive member of society, staring off into space at my desk and constructing imaginary worlds in the form of software systems for important business purposes. If it weren't for that, I might have wasted away, disintegrated, completely detached from the normal human world.
I dunno. Just because a child has no social life and a lot of screen time, doesn't mean the causality works as you propose. Some of us have a tighter grip on the world of things than the world of people. (It's definitely become more balanced for me, with time).
I also grew up during the transition. We didn't have Internet in the house until I was 14, and even then my computer time was limited. My story is similar to yours. I had a few neighborhood friendships that only worked out because I was able to tell them what I wanted them to do. Otherwise, interactions with my own age group were never 2-way: if they didn't want to do what I wanted to do the way that I wanted to do it, I just went off on my own and was perfectly content.
In my teen years I spent most of my time writing, reading, or walking wherever. Again, I had a few friends, but I was picky and apart from that didn't care to "maintain" the friendships. When I started using the Internet more frequently, I found more passive friendships online that came and went and this was a much better solution for me. It meant I could connect when I wanted to, and instantly end the connection when I wanted to be alone, without much risk.
I probably sound a little more pathological than you, but my point is that some people just are a certain way. Apart from that there are external reasons why kids prefer the Internet to in-person interaction. The Internet as a solution came about for a reason. The world is so populated now that when one walks down the street, your neighbors are unkind or elusive because people cannot keep up with so many relationships at once. Trains are packed, everyone's chattering, everyone's rushing, there are people everywhere but no one is communicating-- there's no time or energy to connect with people. Some guy on the train is crying, but no one is going to comfort him because everyone has so much shit going on. The Internet, in one sense, is a way to reconnect with one's neighbors intimately while keeping a sane distance. If a guy on reddit is telling me he's crying, I instantly attempt to comfort him.
It's a weird thing, for sure. But, personally, I don't see an easy way around it in the short-term.
I think many who grew up in the transition phase became hooked on arts or other creative things like programming. (Programming can often be an art in itself, especially if done for fun.)
But today, when I can barely get shit done with all the distractions at my fingertips, I wonder if I could learn the basics before gravitating towards something passive.
The lack of internet on my LCIII as a kid forced me to scour every bit off these dozen or so "Nautilus" CDs we got in the mail. They were like little random chunks of internet. Some demos, software, music, a video (holy crap video on a computer!!!), And lots of written media.
It forced me out of necessity to give time to content I never would have bothered with otherwise.
No doubt. I'm glad to see other people saying this. I used to be bored all the time, and it did wonderful things for me.
Among those: the media, fiction, or interactions that were meaningful to me held more space in my mind. They weren't competing against a sea of trash and new stimulus.
I spent hours and hours with Robot Odyssey when I was 9-10 and hours with Fisher Technic around 10-11 because there just wasn't a ton of other games on the family Apple IIGS. On mobile so sorry no links but the former is basically robot programming with logic gates. The latter was scale industrial hardware and software. And yeah. Now I'm a roboticist.
Also I did a ton of engineering and robotics extra curricular stuff through the years. Then one year we got broadband and I got Lego Mindstorms. I took it out of the box once. I still feel bad about that gift.
>If it weren't for that, I might have wasted away, disintegrated, completely detached from the normal human world.
Or you might have found a friend and started a social circle based on common interests. Now you never have to, you get various approximations of that. You can hop onto an MMO and have an approximation of a social circle. You can code until a manager says "good job" and have an approximation of social approval. Hell you can watch porn and get an approximation of sex. You can watch ASMR videos and get an approximation of affection (don't tell me a video of a cute girl with audio that sounds like she's whispering in your ear isn't meant to be an approximation of affection).
It's good to have tech and the things it brings us, but on the other hand they're clearly sucking people into a passive life where they interact with the actual world as little as possible. I've looked back on how socially retarded I am because I ran away from the world using these tools, and I don't like it. And it's only a personal failure to a certain extent. We all know, clear as a bright spring day, that a lot of apps and services are build deliberately to keep you there as long as possible as often as possible.
When people say they wouldn't have it any other way, I'm not sure it's for any reason but they either don't know or can't handle any other way.
I'm still not convinced the "real world" is actually better, tbh (if we're talking about human interaction specifically, I don't mind getting outside occasionally).
I live in both, I can function decently in both, and I still prefer the passive tech life. Pretty sure without tech, I'd still prefer to be distant/alone most of the time, with only occasional contact with other human beings
Computers, internet, youtube, games - these things are a part of a real world. I mean, they aren't a hallucination, they don't exist on a separate plane of reality. Experiences are real, joy they bring is real, and for many people, it's far better than what the "real" world around them has to offer.
If people are tempted to escape into a virtual world, it might be because the real world around them sucks.
And the last century has shown us that while the preference for candy/sugar might have created a big obesity problem, we're still around and there's no going back. The jury is still out whether or not it's inherently bad.
Not being online-savy would put me at a social disadvantage. I'm in my early 20s. My impression is that it's only more so for younger ones. When people talk of "real-world social skills" they usually mean the ones that made sense during their adulthood.
Exists something call moderation, it works both for online presence and for candies. Eating 300 kcals of candies in one day every day will not have a bad effect on you (if the rest of the diet is good), same as checking your Facebook account for 1 hour every day (in 5 minutes interval every 1-2 hours), I disabled every notification from Facebook et similar, and I check them only when I have nothing else to do, and I believe is having a good effect on me, I'm still present online but I'm not wasting all my time and mental energy there
I don't think that's a good, general comparison. Depends on what you're doing online.
I spend my time online reading about my interests or talking to other people. In the outside world, the conversations I have are short and often unfulfilling. People are more open online and I really value that kind of open introspection with others. It's difficult to find information about my interests outside of the Internet as well, unless I go to the library which, for me, is at least an hour commute.
Lots of people are learning how to use the Internet productively because as we migrate our time from physical reality to virtual reality, we crave more corresponding meaning.
The real world sucks for me sometimes (y'know, apart from nature walks and the like) because it's not the apple it's the candy. It feels fake, empty, and lifeless.
kids who have been indulged however do mind, they want the candy, they want it now, and will complain for the next couple days about how you are always trying to give them fruit lest you attempt it again.
The obvious problem with this temptation is that it leads to atrophy (or non-development in the first place) of social skills, which, for 99% of people, is detrimental.
I have never really heard people describe elementary school as the most inclusive environment where if just children took their time to talk to their peers then everyone would get along and bullying would be something of the past.
If children has a higher need to escape reality than in the past then maybe we should ask why that is rather than in vain hope try to make the problem go away by removing the escape method. Like you I find it troublesome that parents use computers to babysit, but I would say the same thing about any form of babysitting mechanism that result in the child not get any social support.
The idea that children "decide" to escape reality is completely ludicrous. The purpose of parents and society is to make good decisions for the future of their children, not pretend like they're opting-in to media manipulation.
The term escaping carries a rather strong implied meaning that its not a opt-in choice in the absence of that which to escape from. It is simply the result when there is no social support from parents and society (ie adults), and the environment that exist in schools that results in bullying and other anti-social behavior.
Maybe Minecraft and others succeed because they're just easier than actual real-life connections? If so, Minecraft might be a problem, a shortcut too many kids are taking.
maybe is because I'm not from US, but I remember elementary school as a very inclusive place, we used to play with every single person in the classroom and also nearby classroom during recess. We used to meet outside school, play in parks and go to each other birthday, I still remember the single day of birth of every single classmate I had, and we are still in contact even if we all took different roads once starting university 10 years ago
Youtube is turning 14 next year and computers have been mainstream way longer than that. Personally I was a kid when it was the TVs fault and video games were making kids violent, but imo things turned out just fine.
Definitely, I'm not saying that these videos were the first. I'm saying that this trend started with them. Meaning: Many of the original 2010 Minecraft youtubers are still around and they're generally considered "the veterans".
Problem is that one can't measure social skills against anything other than ones own standards, and those evolve as generations go. In the eyes of a 1900 upper middle class person, we'd probably all be degenerates.
I'm born '86, regular access to technology since the early nineties. I'm a social kind of person, have many friends. Sometimes I just want to lock myself in for an entire weekend and play video games for 16 hours a day. Other times, I'll be having barbecues or going dancing.
And as many here have already stated, the extremes go smoothed over by time.
Before my household had internet I was nose deep in a book 24/7, never leaving my room, and I had no friends at all.
Post-internet I at least had friends, sure some were in the Netherlands, or Germany, or Australia, or Brazil, or Japan but they were people. Actual people that existed outside of the fantasy novels I would read. People that as an adult, I was able to travel to and visit. I have a job in web development, something that wouldn't even exist without the internet.
I owe essentially 100% of my "successful adult life" to the internet existing. Without it I'd likely be working a minimum wage job at a local fast food chain without a single friend to speak of. Merely existing and reading books.
I blame helicopter parents like my mother far more than I blame access to the internet.
What about the giant scare of strangers that flared up in the 90s? Every stranger is a potential murderer/rapist and you shouldn't speak to them. Children not being allowed to travel outside alone, the rise of "helicopter parenting". Even if you allow your child to go outside it's increasingly unlikely they'll meet another child because other parents don't let their children go outside. When I was younger I remember always seeing parks full of unsupervised kids playing. Most parks I see now are empty. Or maybe a parent watching their kid(s) play on the equipment.
A great feature on Playstation is Family Management using sub-accounts. You can set time limits where it will log them out automatically. You can also setup a schedule with certain hours per day and end time.
I hear lots of "how much gaming did you do when you were young?" but it isn't the same. Today big game companies engineer the games to be addictive to "win" screen time. Back then I may have sunk a lot of time into Nintendo but it was mostly solo playing or playing with friends/siblings that sat next to you. You tended to help each other out to get past levels, etc.
I'm not sure it is so simple. As a point of counter anec-data I was always kind of concerned about this, and I even developed a slightly unhealthy habit with my phone when I sank into depression. In any case, we decided an iPad for our son might be helpful for education and we bought one for him/us when he was 1. He used it quite a lot and he learnt maths really early. As he has grown up - now 3, he only occasionally uses his iPad. To be honest, I find it quite strange that it hasn't turned out how we all would expect it to. I've been conscious to not put crappy advertising games on there, or anything with psychological hooks. But I honestly don't think it is the device that is the root of the problem.
> I've been conscious to not put crappy advertising games on there, or anything with psychological hooks.
It's almost like reasonably moderating the content your child consumes will help prevent undesirable behavior.
I'm being a bit gratuitously sarcastic right now but that's really the crux of it. If it's trying to sell your child something or constantly stimulating them in a way the real world can't or it's not teaching your child something you want them to learn, be careful about how they consume it.
I'm nowhere near the age of having kids yet but I'm already thinking about the optimal balance of usage so my kid would be digitally native and not addicted to apps.
It's not a matter of "computers" but a matter of education: if kids discover something like Smalltalk/Cobol scripting in a friendly environment like ancient Alto&c workstations or actual unix shells and Emacs they may choose to develop some IT skill or ditch computers entirely; if they are mere consumer of contents they became incapable of developing anything themselves.
Kids are "totipotent" individuals if they grow up as creators, citizen between other citizen they became adult, otherwise they became consumer, easy to steer from employers to politicians but incapable of being citizen.
I don't think that behavior should be called anti-social. Why do you put their online friends in quotes? When I grew up, I only had one real friend, and everyone else I played with only because they lived on the same street. I did not particularly like the games most of the time, but there was no choice.
In contrast, these kids have friends, who actually share some common interest. They choose those friends. And also, probably, more of them. If anything, I'd call that hyper-social.
> My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says
Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on.
In addition, and assuming wildly here, how old is she? If you're the HN average of about 30, and she's about your age, she doesn't really have a cross-generational experience to pull from, even assuming she was making observations free of the very many cognitive biases one would expect in this situation.
My bet would be that if you found a teacher -- from almost any point in history -- and asked them what the kids are like in their time period, they'd tell you about the latest inventions that have made their kids uniquely awful and anti-social. I'll spare you pulling out the 3,000 year-old quotes about how "young people these days don't respect their elders".
If there are some studies that show it, I'd be all for it. Teacher anecdotes are uniquely poor quality samples, in my opinion.
Seriously, let’s be real. How much experience does this elementary school teacher have with the previous generation? None, probably.
Through all of time we’ve heard this. The current generation is supposedly rubbish in some way the previous generation was not. Instead it’s been the opposite. Each succeeding generation has surpassed the previous in any human quality. I have immense confidence that our collective children will be the same. We are better people than our parents. Our kids will be better than us. No doubt about it.
I have the same outlook. There are bad points in every generation, but groups of people don't get arbitrarily worse because they were born together at a certain point in time. Every generation faces a new challenge, and every generation attempts to overcome it, usually with unique results. Previous generations have no concept of the challenges their kids and grandkids face.
I'm a millenial, and my partner's parents, stereotypically, are always going off about how lazy, whiny, and unmotivated my generation is. From where I stand it's the complete opposite. I could explain why but, at the risk of starting a debate about millenials, I'll just say that my generation has been working on solutions to problems our parents either didn't have to deal with, or weren't aware of. And that's just the way "generations" work.
> My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says
Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on.
I've had a very similar experience with the people I know who are trying to be teachers, though most of the people I deal with are either in or just out of college and this could be attributed to inexperience.
I find it a little troubling that I see people practically seeking examples of unusual social behavior and attributing it to autism. I saw this sort of pseudo-analysis happen a lot with Sheldon in Big Bang Theory. Opinions of the show aside, I don't think it was ever explicitly stated that he had a social disorder.
I've made this same argument to my teacher friends who are worried about the youth. But consider this: while they may not have direct experience with youth across generations, we are unlikely to have as much experience with the youth of any generation as they do.
This was described in 1956 by Horton and Whol in the paper Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction.
> One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media - radio, television, and the movies - is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. [...] The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a
para-social relationship.
They even use your term 'persona' to refer to the individual behind the glass.
> But of particular interest is the creation by these media of a new type of performer: quizmasters, announcers, 'interviewers' in a new 'show-business' world - in brief, a special category of 'personalities' whose existence is a function of the media themselves. [...] Lacking an appropriate name for these performers, we shall call them personae.
> Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute for people's social needs.
I've wondered about this for podcasts too. I noticed a scary habit where I would play podcasts when I was feeling lonely. Over time, you feel like you're pals with the hosts and something about the audio format checks the social needs box in your brain, thinking that you're hanging out with another human. I don't want to unconsciously sate my social needs with podcasts so I've been more intentional about my listening.
There is a good reason why the Kardashians are incredibly successful. They are able to convince their viewers they are part of the family with their shows. I think its because you feel included since most of the show is back-and-forth gossip on family issues where its common for the people in the scene to try and find a solution to a problem where the problem person is excluded from the conversation. As a result, I think the viewer feels more welcome than even one of their family members.
Once hooked, the kardashians make bank because they can sell their fans laxative teas or hair growth gummy bears on instagram through huge ad endorsements
> I think its because you feel included since most of the show is back-and-forth gossip on family issues where its common for the people in the scene to try and find a solution to a problem where the problem person is excluded from the conversation.
Yes. I see this kind of shows as social pornography. But meanwhile pornography is seen as something that you see in private and you are kind of ashamed to recognize that you see it publicly. This social pornography is widely accepted and even children watch it with, usually, their mothers.
Society needs to create a taboo about this kind of shows. It maybe OK to watch them on your own if you need it. But not to include children and not to make it the center of your life.
These are just the initial iterations of how influence in a hyper connected society works. What happens next we are yet to see. Naturally most people don't think anything good.
Reality TV produced Trump. People forget it(what passes for news+social media news) also produced Obama. Remember he was hailed as the first social media President. After that every single politician, religious and social figure in every country was suddenly broadcasting their daily activities.
Just another avatar of what Reality TV hit upon.
So now the mechanics exist for an enterprising person to exert influence on a large numbers of people like never before. Across all kinds of geographic/social/cultural boundaries. Traditionally such influence has taken decades for famous people to acquire. So the textbook on how to use that influence has been very thin. The outcomes produced were much more based on pure luck than by design.
With big data and thousands of psychological experiments going on, how to use influence vast numbers if peoples lives, for good, is going to increase.
Personally I’ve experienced something like this while reading fiction. The characters are so life-like and endearing in some books that I miss them and feel a loneliness temporarily after finishing. So I guess it isn’t just modern media, humans just have a tremendous capacity and need to connect.
Same here, I actually find the effect from reading fiction to be much stronger than any other form of entertainment. After finishing a series of book, I will tend to be subdued, lonely and slightly depressed.
Fun to imagine an alternative reality where our brains would simply be unable to accept flashing monitor LEDs or vibrating speaker diaphragms as representations of people.
You're putting a dark twist on it, but personally, I do feel like many of my favorite youtubers are my friends. I might not be their friend, but I love them, they have taught me a lot, and helped me to get through tough times.
If I'm sad I can always watch their videos and feel happy and connected to other people. I like people who create awesome stuff, I can relate to them a lot more than to the people I meet in real life.
I don't think these feelings are invalid. If people watch someone's content, and learn things, and feel connected, and that makes them feel good and happy - I think that's wonderful.
Besides, it's not like real life people are amazing at being real, everyone has a fake persona they're trying to project. What you can't fake is being funny, insightful, educational, likable, charismatic, talented, inspiring, etc. If you're creating something good, people will like you. Nothing wrong with that.
Junk food will make you full too, but over time make you sick. I fear you're substituting real human connection with cheap alternatives. Cooking healthy food can be annoying and it often makes a mess, but is necessary in the long run.
Dismissing real life people as "not amazing at being real" is ironic to me because people have been the way they are since maybe even before the dawn of homo sapiens. That's just what real is. Not everyone is this charismatic, funny, inspiring character. You still welcome them into your life just as they welcome you into their lives.
I think this is the essence of most modern entertainment. I once produced a pilot children's animation and had written a "bible" - the text that sets out what you plan to do for a series - and was told by a senior commissioner in no uncertain terms that modern children's tv series "must take place in the same place with the same characters so kids can come home and watch the show at the same time every day and feel like they have a family while their parents are doing something else. That way they buy into the brand and parents buy all the merchandise". As you mention, it's the inevitable consequence of optimisation and why there should always be a space for government-funded programming and art.
> there should always be a space for government-funded programming and art.
Why is everything people want has to be government funded? Just go ask people for money directly, like a lot of the abovementioned youtube stars do. Tax man with the gun does not have to be involved with this.
Basically all of (central, where I live) Europe, not sure about the USA. The police comes if you don't pay - it's a criminal offence. Nobody would pay if they only sent letters. Also European ministries of finances often have their own armed forces (customs administration[1]).
[1] For example the Czech Customs Administration: https://www.celnisprava.cz/en/Pages/default.aspx - note the sentence at the top: "Customs Administration of the Czech Republic is a security force ensuring processes in the field of customs administration and related taxes, as well as other non-fiscal activities in the favor of the state and its citizens. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Finance."
Absolutely. But I for one would rather live in a world that had the diversity of both private and state-funded art, each with their own biases. Surely that's better than the single influence of the market?
Virtually all governments all over the world have various arts funding schemes that covers music.
That being said I have no strong opinion either way on if that's a good thing or if the music funded this wouldn't have been funded some other way if those schemes hadn't existed
What country are you in? Definitely if you're in the US or Europe there are plenty of places you can apply for government funding if you're a composer.
Also if the government is funding the concert hall and that funding lets the concert hall put on work by and pay a composer, at what point does it stop being government funding?
"The Chicago Philharmonic Society has been named the recipient of a $10,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The award will support a collaboration between The Chicago Philharmonic Society, composer Augusta Read Thomas, and Chicago-based percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion for the creation and performance of a new work for percussion quartet and orchestra. The premiere will be presented in fall 2017 as part of the Chicago Philharmonic's 2017-2018 symphonic season."
Just out of curiosity, can you name a CD produced in the US by a composer paid by the government to compose?
No, but if really I wanted to find one I'd probably start by looking here: https://www.arts.gov/ and then continue looking at smaller and more local arts grants. Also I'm sure that at some point some part of the government has commissioned new music for some project or event, although it's quite possible that that music has never been released on a CD.
But again it's all down to how you draw the line. Are you asking if there are composers on the federal payroll or if a composer has ever won a government grant and uses the money for that grant to pay his rent while continuing to compose?
And more importantly what do you mean by funded? If the local council offer free or subsidized rehearsal space to local up and coming bands, is the album they created there "government funded"?
I'd say no. But some people would say that the road the band used to drive around was government funded, therefore their music is. I don't agree with them.
I'd say government funding is when the government pays money to a specific artist to produce art. Like when a record company decides to pay a band to produce an album, or a publisher decides to give an advance to an author to write a book.
Australian here - I just discovered today that our current right/conservative government has a program where artists can receive a $15,000 grant to record their album [1], and the left/progressive opposition has pledged to double the number of grant recipients if elected [2]. I can't say I've heard of any of the 2017 grant recipients.
Yes, but there is a bright side too. Mr. Rogers developed a personal relationship with many of his viewers in the way that you are talking about, and I think he did a great service to the world
Mr. Rogers was different because he was using his influence for social good and to teach positive characteristics/skills/traits etc.
The other personalities, do not specifically cater to this. They're more interested in creating a following and creating something that keeps people coming back for more.
Are you saying Mr. Rogers did all of his work for free out of the goodness of his heart? He was a TV personality and totally reliant on ratings to pay the bills. I don't see how YouTube is any different.
Of course Fred had bills to pay as well, but on the whole his motivations were certainly overwhelmingly altruistic. Read his Wikipedia page[1] to get an idea of what drove him to produce Mr. Rogers. Here's an excerpt:
>Trained and ordained as a minister, Rogers was displeased with the way television addressed children. He began to write and perform local Pittsburgh-area shows for youth. In 1968, Eastern Educational Television Network began nationwide distribution of Rogers's new show on WQED. Over the course of three decades, Rogers became a television icon of children's entertainment and education.
>Rogers advocated various public causes. In the Betamax case, the U.S. Supreme Court cited Rogers's prior testimony before a lower court in favor of fair-use television show recording (now called time shifting). Rogers also testified before a U.S. Senate committee to advocate for government funding of children's television.
If you dig deeper Politics, Sports, Religion, Movies/TV all do the same thing. They contribute to a "sense" of well being.
What contributes to "actual" well being of the follower is another matter entirely.
Though in the age of big data, despite all the pessimism we are surrounded by, it is possible more and more for the celeb class to influence "actual" well being (in terms of mental health/purpose/financial stability etc) of their followers.
The next George Lucas or Stan Lee could push psychological buttons in ways no one ever has before.
Here is a (somewhat related) instance of what you are talking about: A New Mexico Resident drove for 11 hours to break into the home of Gavin Free and Meg Turney, with intentions to kill Free [0]. It seems he became obsessed with Turney and wanted Free to die "alone and without children". Obviously there were other mental health factors at play and it wasn't just "youtube fame did this", but it is a case of this largely one-sided relationship-dynamic.
Pewdiepie definitely diverges strongly from Felix‘ IRL persona. Pewdiepie is an outgoing personality with misogynistic tendencies, playing with racial slurs every now and then, appealing to his Reddit/4chanish/incel followers (whom he now calls army of 9 year olds).
IRL he seems to be awkward around other people, soft (nice), and obviously a bit depressed.
I think Pewdiepie's main reason for success is the opposite of what you just said. Differently from other youtubers, he seems real and honest, not built artificially to target a specific audience.
Have you ever watched Meme Review or You Laugh You Lose? Nobody is like that IRL, these videos are made on lots of energy drink. He has a lot of honest videos too, but those are not where most of his revenue comes from. He also admitted that he used "forced positivity" for a long time to gain subscribers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyGI1uHyyws
Maybe I'm biased because I'm a fan. But there is a large difference between forced positivity and "misogynistic tendencies, playing with racial slurs". I'm not saying he's not partly performing, but he's not the misogynistic/racist character you were suggesting.
Oh yes he is. How do you explain the „respecting wamen“ thing? „Death to all Jews“ - yeah it was just a joke, right? „F‘n N-Word“ in a live stream. The incidents add up. He’s probably not serious, but he does play around, I don’t know how you can deny that if you have seen a lot of his videos.
I've watched pewdiepie vids and think they're completely retarded but pewdiepie as a person is a genius because he knows the largest demographic on youtube are immature youngsters who have tons of time to watch youtube. So he creates content to cater to that demographic's quirks.
His real persona comes through pretty frequently though, which is why people like him, imo. When he does longer gaming videos, or more serious videos, you can see what he is really like to some degree. Most of his viewers should be very aware that the PewDiePie persona isn't who he actually is in real life, which is a departure from other YouTubers who always have their "TV personality" on while they are recording. Even in his less serious videos, every once in a while he will break from his PewDiePie persona and have a bit of more serious commentary, which makes him seem very genuine, while still being entertaining. The viewers know he is having fun and joking around in his videos, rather than trying to act like he is something he's not.
I've never watched pewdiepie but I assume his audience is too young to be on reddit or 4chan or to having been rejected by women for so long as to consider themselves to be celibates.
How would you know any of that without actually knowing him IRL for the contrast?
Afaik your IRL description is one he gave about himself, where he also explained that he initially used YouTube to get past his "awkward around other people" issue.
In that context, I find it hard to believe that people could consistently play a "fake-persona" without that ever influencing their normal mannerisms, particularly when they have to summon this "fake-persona" on a near-daily basis.
> How would you know any of that without actually knowing him IRL for the contrast?
I follow him around a lot, and as you said, you cannot hide personality traits forever. E.g. he definitely is not misogynstic, but he plays that card often during Meme Review or his other weekly formats to cater to his Reddit audience. I honestly believe he speaks for his real self in his social commentary videos.
I've had a few phases were I binged a couple of his videos over the years, as such it feels like I've actually seen him kinda grow up.
I don't think it's really a "card" he consciously plays, it's much more a reflection of the culture he lives in and caters to, as a gamer.
Not all use of misogynistic language has misogynistic intent, particularly not when it's been an established part of the sub-culture. And in that context, this recent need to "enforce PCness", particularly in gaming culture [0], DID trigger a massive reactionary backlash that most of the industry and especially the mainstream seems still to be ignoring.
Gaming has always been about freedom and creativity, just hinting at intent to censorship [1] is enough to cause a, usually very loud, reaction. Right now the industry as a whole is running into a wall it won't be breaking through, instead it's paying the price by losing customers en mass. Take a look at recent EA, Ubisoft, Activision stock development and you will see exactly what I mean.
Other factors play into that as well, like over monetization of products which are often of very shallow quality. Case in point: Fallout 76
Or simply misreading what your customers actually want: Blizzard with Diablo immortal.
All these issues have brought the community to a breaking point, and now the most visible and biggest industry players are feeling the brunt of it.
With the audience that he has, he HAS to hold himself to higher standards. I get that he would burn out if he didn’t do what he liked, but he could at least let Brad edit it all out.
"They are not authoritarian, they just censor your language."
But I guess intent doesn't matter, it's all about the optics, right?
It's kinda amazing how ESRB 18+ games can have players commit the cruelest and bloodiest violence, but as soon as somebody says a slur, that's suddenly "crossing a line".
More interestingly this mechanic functions in every kind of social relationship. Everybody who isn't a total shut-in has at least a few different audiences they cater to. Also very common to become too attached to a persona that, say, pleased one's parents but doesn't quite work out at work and suffer for it.
And if anything given the prevalent expectation for consistency, such dissociation is rather freeing.
Great comment. I have some thoughs on the matter:
- I dont think you need the money motive though (its def. sufficient but not necessary). - The relationship between money and art is as old as civilization itself - in fact I believe the coupling is looser today than in ages past.
- Some would argue that the term art is not applicable to most popular youtube channels.
>People grow attached to this persona, sometimes obsessively. I think it could create of a scary pattern of disassociation, has it already?
I know Jenna and Julien have had people show up to their previous address, it seemed like mostly parents driving/flying their kids across the country to show up at their rental house to meet them...
I follow some vloggers that I find entertaining as well as have listened to podcasts for a decade now. I will readily admit I have more of a perceived familiarity with a lot of these people than I do with people I know in the real world for example:
- Adam Carolla and crew, 5 days a week times many years. I know about Adam's kids, his nanny, his wife, his business endeavors, his high school antics, his childhood, falling out with his friends, his genital warts test...
- A guy in Germany named Pierre who does a couple of few vlogs a week on his YouTube that I've supported via patreon and am Facebook friends with now
- Jenna and Julien, I've basically been watching both of their channels the entirety of their relationship
- The hosts of Geek Radio Daily, which I'm friends with on facebook. I've been listening to them a decade, I've been writing and calling in to the podcast the entirety of that time, I occasionally shoot memes to Flynn and we've been playing Words With Friends for several years, yet he and his wife know virtually nothing about me and I feel like they are old very good friends as I've been listening to them sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, for a decade.
- Mike Luoma, I discovered him on podibooks a decade or so ago. Listened to him narrate his stories. Found his podcast. Listened to it. Hired him to do an intro to my podcast that lasted a few episodes. Been friends on Facebook for years, have introduced him to other podcasters, will be on his 500th episode in a couple of weeks, I feel like I know so much about Mike yet I bet he knows virtually nothing about me.
It's certainly an interesting world we are building. Celebrity worship has been a thing as long as there have been celebrities but never before have we had such levels of exposure to given individuals. Such access to their lives through their video or audio, through their social media, through their patron-only content.
I find it fascinating and addictive but I absolutely recognize there is real danger in a society that is moving towards this sort of exchange, especially for individuals that do turn to obsessive behavior and even idol-worship.
Radio has similar properties, which is one of the reasons it is such a popular medium for certain types of demagoguery. Modern TV is different, but many people had similar feelings of attachment to soap opera characters, etc.
This is just watching tv. I can make my wife laugh with our injokes based on our own life and stories but also based on Modern Family and Fresh Off the Boat episodes we’ve both watched.
Considering the politician with the best understanding of exploiting a major social media platform is President now, imagine where these youtubers will go.
> However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend.
Just like Mister Roger's Neighborhood in the 1970s.
By all accounts Mr. Rogers wasn't a persona, though, that was the real him. He really did want to be everybody's friend, not for fame or fortune, but because he wanted to make the world a better place.
> If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views.
In the past brand prestige protected the media from this to happen. A backslash on a TV will make all advertisers to flee.
YouTube does not suffer from this. They host radical, xenophobic, and misogynistic content without consequences. Because they label themselves as a tech company, a middleman that has no responsibility on their own content. But are they? Meanwhile we buy what YouTube advertisements show they have no reason to stop.
When you optimize society to generate money instead of generate value you get to this weird situation.
My 7 year old son watches Dude Perfect on YouTube, which I had never heard of. Apparently its all the rage, in elementary schools and he heard about it via other kids.
I watched a few to make sure they were ok, but they mostly came off as older guys doing elaborate stunts that kids would do on a much smaller scale (like throwing balls off tall buildings, fat suits on cars, etc )
I'm not shocked they are making $20M or so. One of the episodes showcased their new Dude Perfect headquarters that looked like a block long warehouse with basketball courts, foam pits , etc in it with their DP logo all over it.
I guess it pays to cater to kids base desires on a grander scale
Not surprising, but I find the practice disturbing. I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children sees, and much of the marketing to children likely occurs in this unwanted but hard to avoid space. The end result is corporations trying to train children that the best way to live and enjoy one's self is if they buy a steady stream plastic goods made overseas, eventually to be discarded in landfills.
One could imagine a world where advertising to children is no longer considered appropriate, with the understanding that the young minds of the world should not be manipulated by corporate interests.
Or those who want that kind of environment need to find a new way to fund media.
> I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children sees
I hear things like this a lot.
It's not hard, it just takes time.
Is it hard to make that time? If it is too hard to make time to do something with your kids that you yourself think is important, you have to reconsider your priorities.
If you didn't plan appropriately, and decided to have kids before realizing the effort required, then you need to do some risk-reward analysis and determine which things you "have time" to pay attention to and which you don't.
> unwanted but hard to avoid space
Again, not hard, just time consuming.
Time and interest will make sure your kids are well adjusted (well, at least as well adjusted as their parents).
My issue with this (I don’t have kids) is that the people with the least time are the poor. They’re chronically busy, and so taking the time to keep your kids off of this stuff is a privilege not everyone can enjoy.
>a steady stream plastic goods made overseas, eventually to be discarded in landfills.
I don't know what ads your kids are getting but with the possible exception of the "Wish App" ads (which I fervently wish would die a fiery death at the very heart of the sun), most of the ads pitched to my kids are hawking digital ephemera of some sort or another.
"I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children sees"
I'm less worried about the commercials (we pay for YT Premium so there's none of those) but more in YouTube's suggestion algorithm. I worry about one of my kids getting lost down one of those toxic rabbit holes.
If your kid is hooked to youtube, you have a bit more control than than a parent in the 90s whose kid was hooked to cartoons. Today you could opt out of all advertisements by paying Youtube or installing an ad blocker. That said, I'm not sure you can block channels that are entirely ads, like unboxing channels.
Bah, all that pales comparison to Paw Patrol ip. They're the kings of selling shit towards kids. There was an article a month (WSJ or NYT) or so back that they crossed $1 billion for revenue this fiscal year. That and like Peppa Pig is somewhere around the $300mil marker. Think of this, Paw Patrol can walk up to the Cowboys NFL team (normally the highest grossing team from what I can find) and say "You're poor." And get away with it.
But I mean, hell, the Paw Patrol folks apparently don't say no to any licensing idea. Last weekend my buddy picked up Paw Patrol gardening gloves for his kid. Seriously... who would say "Yes, it makes perfect sense to put a children's tv character on gardening gloves and sell them in Lowes, next to all the actual, real gloves." And it worked.
I had never heard of Paw Patrol until I got some Paw Patrol snack size ziplock bags at my local Dollar General because they were cheap.
So cheap that they busted open when I was using them for dying plastic beads with alcohol ink. Beads and ink went flying all over my apartment. I bought them specifically for dying beads btw.
As someone with a six year old daughter who loves YouTube. I worry about this too. I can't really explain why I am worried, maybe I am just being a parent. I just hope in future sometime my daughter doesn't have some altered version of reality gleaned from commercials on YouTube.
I worry that my 2 year old daughter will develop these addictions.
My hope is that in modeling good behavior (kids are always watching! They learn more watching our behavior than we can ever try to teach them!) she will not.
Now my fear is just that my behavior is not good enough.
Advertisers are always looking at ways to skirt the rules in non-obvious ways. There are a lot of laws around advertising to kids including total bans in some regions. Ways to legally side-step those rules are pretty rare and when one is found - until the loophole is closed - you can be sure of a lot of business going that way.
What do you think is more effective: an ad saying my child will like this toy or my child asking me for that toy? I think it all boils down to that, basically.
That is surprising. I never once got the impression they were trying to do something much bigger than themselves; pretty low key on their mission there.
Which isn't too bad because it's basically a tv show at that point. They have multiple hosts, cameramen, sets, etc. There's probably quite a few people working on those shows and they probably burn through that 20m pretty quick.
My six year old has started running around the house without his shirt, lifting things and drinking milk so that he can be all swole. That or he watches chrisfix videos on how to repair the car.
I highly recommend the chrisfix videos, btw. We've both learned a lot about cars.
I've been gently reminding my son that Dude Perfect is pure entertainment and he is barely learning anything with it. He's slowly been drifting away from it.
Thankfully, he watches kurzgesagt, BackYard Scientist, VSauce, TED and mostly scientific or programming videos so its mostly 5 to 1 , educational to entertainment videos with the limited screen time he has.
The Khan Academy courses are really good as well as the ProdigyGame (for math) for keeping him engaged and multiple grades ahead of his current grade.
The only reason it works is because these youtubers know that the largest demographic on YT is 8-22 year olds who are immature. On the flip side, the advertisers think they're advertising to adults with disposable income....thus it because a huge waste of ad spend for the advertisers but they haven't realized that yet. All they know is TV viewership is decreasing and online media is rising...so they need to do something to push their products.
Well they are advertising to people with disposable income, by proxy: the parents of the kids who watch the videos then beg/nag their parents for things from the adverts.
Half a year ago I saw a documentary (can't remember which), where a number of popular YouTube vloggers were followed to see what being an influencer entails.
While each of them were enjoying the good stuff - the money earned, the free gadgets and trips, etc. - in general each of them also felt trapped. To me it seemed like hell to live a life like this.
Huge social pressure from followers to crank out new content on a continuous basis. No time to take real breaks, let alone a longer vacation. Totally focused on social metrics. A wrong move leading to loss of 1,000s of followers. A vacation or even being sick leads to people complaining in your feeds, or even starting to threaten you.
Responsibilities and contracts with influence marketers.
Being an influencer is a kind of topsport. You are a professional, while you are also still a kid.
And the longer you keep doing it, the more you've made a life's choice (neglecting school, building real social network, etc.) and it is harder to get out of it.
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the real famous vloggers also can no longer come outside without being recognized everywhere. E.g. 16-20yr olds that cause young children to go histerical when they see them, giving signatures all the time. Literally no rest anywhere.
Of course, going to a job for 40+ hours a week feels like being "trapped" to a lot of people. Especially when you throw in a Mortgage, car loan, student loan and some credit cards.
At that point, it's impossible to stop going to work 40+ hours a week.
Sure. He can. He is already at the top. And his example will be the ultimate dream of many, with full support of (greedy?) parents. But your kid may not be all that lucky. It is a crowded market.
And for each influencer there are tens of thousands of wannabe's, who are quietly churning on for just a handful of followers, but with the same grand dreams of fame and glory. If they get their real joy from this, then that it is okay. Otherwise at least they learn to handle disappointment early in life.
To me this little news snippet had just hit home how much of a bubble I live in, and how we're diverging into multiple streams of media for different cultures and classes.
These million dollar media businesses exist that I have no idea about and no exposure to. Presumably when my child reaches approx 8, he'll have been brought up without ads and with most of this content having been blocked (or more accurately, just never coming into the house/houses of his friends, blocking, even though that's what it is we're doing is almost too 'active' a word). And there will be a whole sub-class of the population brought up on this stuff that we never mix with.
Or maybe I'm naive and these media will get in past our defences, but judging by how current media bubbles work it's a distinct possibility that it will remain a bubble I'm never exposed to (I.e I know pay TV options and certain newspapers/you tube things exist, but struggle to tell you a single person I know under the age of 50 who subscribes).
I can't be the only one who feels a little sick at the prospect of making money heaping consumerism on children...?
Eh? I mean, most of the money comes from sponsored videos.. So hot wheels, thomas the train, surprise eggs.. etc.. some are obvious, some are the kid playing with the thing. It's funny that we cut the cord and don't allow kids to watch nick jr or disney jr but instead allow youtube where the subversion is greater. My kids don't watch any (or very few) traditional ads but they know exactly what is hip. Most of this was from youtube kids. And now they have the surprise toys. Genius. Is it bad or good? I mean don't take your kid to target or walmart or the supermarket or the airport...
Well, for context, I wouldn't even think of youtube as a media service (whether it is or isn't is another topic). I think of it as a video hosting website: subsequently I engage with it looking for a trailer, a how-to video, instructions, when a real-estate agent uploads a video of a house they're showing...and yes maybe every now and then a video or meme that someone forwards me.
As a video-hosting website, i don't think it would be responsible for me to consider giving a young child open access to it until they're old enough to basically be able to have open access to the internet: because its a video-hosting website on the internet, not a media company, and certainly not one that's vetting material suitable for small children.
Subsequently, it doesn't even get past the first psychological/physical barrier of getting into the home as an idea.
Now, bear in mind, when I grew up and was under 10, I wasn't allowed to watch cartoons before school. Cable wasn't a thing in my country. Indeed my parents would have protested that cartoons and many commercial shows "rot the brain" (and these days, i'd be inclined to agree).
I didn't feel denied, I remember watching cartoons on the weekend, and while yes, I had some hotwheels and matchbox cars (never saw a cartoon of them, did they exist?) and a voltron sheet and toy set (which I do remember as a cartoon admittedly, along with astroboy, lost cities of gold, dr who, etc). But for the most part I remember my sand pit and my building blocks more. And then just as I got old enough, home computers became a thing.
We had sesame street and playschool and mr squiggle, to be sure, but these did not have any commercial content. I also remember I had david attenborough and nature documentaries and general trivia gameshows that I liked to watch with my grandmother downstairs in the granny flat. And there was a set time each night when my parents would watch the news (which i found boring). And of course we had books!
But there were a whole HEAP of shows where the main purpose of the show/story was not even vaguely ads or consumption, and its those and similar shows that I'd be allowing, or am planning to put on a server and let my child watch from there.
As for target and walmart, well, we don't have the later in my country, and I've barely been in one of those retail stores currently for several years. Our food/groceries are delivered, and when we do go to the supermarket, its to pick something up on the way home from work or as a last minute when we're out of something: alternatively, many of the other essential things are bought from the greengrocer/bakery/dairy or other specialist retailers that are scattered around my neighbourhood, again, currently without advertising distractions targetted at children.
I mean, i get the message: I went to the supermarket as a child with my parents as well, but we weren't allowed to get anything. It was 'the rules'. I distinctly remember being allowed one Cadbury Furry Friends chocolate bar every wednesday that my mother would bring home from work: they're little blocks of chocolate about 15-20g in size.
I'm not saying we're immune from advertising. But my point is there's at least two separate worlds now: like the internet with ads, I've grown up without ads on the internet, my children are going to grow up without ads on their internet, because they're just blocked before they come in the door. There's a whole world of media out there (apparently) they aren't going to see (and looking at some of it now I'm even less inclined to let them) because at best they might have to watch it at a friends, but due to the social bubble, even the degree that its going to happen is an open question.
It's been happening for decades though. Kids don't watch Saturday morning cartoons these days or wait to see what toy will be in the next McDonald's happy meal. They watch YouTube and see ads there.
Internet advertising isn't regulated but in a way it self-regulates. Content creators don't want in-appropriate ads and YouTube doesn't want that either when a channel is targeted for 8yo, it would make them lose money.
Or like He-Man, where the entire premise was to create a cartoon they could sell action figures from. Rewatching it, the plot wasn’t all that coherent. But that didn’t matter, because Battle Cat was cool and Skeletor’s castle had a microphone and speaker built in.
Under 13 year olds cannot have a youtube channel or account without the supervision of their parents. They absolutely are allowed to use the site, though. Youtube even has channel setting specifically for young children.
A small point: did anybody notice how this reward mechanism prize the "idiocy" far more than the "knowledge"? I mean most followed YT channels, most upvotes on FB etc are about "brainless things", "brainless contents" vs valuable technical or cultural contents.
An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY channels.
That's of course natural but prize it instead of fight it it's a means to push toward stupidity.
It may just be the difference between how many people a video is relevant to and how deeply it impacts them. Things like tech, history, physics, and DIY channels each have fewer people who connect with the content than something like how to decorate nails.
One explanation could be the amount of investment one has to make to fully appreciate, and thus get value from, these different topics. For example, appreciating a "just for laugh" video generally takes less effort and specific experience than appreciating a technical video. This is related I think to the Law of Triviality [1].
At the end of the day though, I think there's somewhat of an inverse relationship between how many people you can impact with a given message (or video) and how deeply you can impact them. To impact someone more deeply requires deeper insight and shared context gained through experience on the viewer's part to interpret and appreciate the video, which necessarily narrows the target audience.
The system that disproportionately incentivizes the less deep content is probably the fact that the incentives are built around numbers of views, which doesn't discriminate between deep versus cursory impact on the viewer. If overall value of a video were calculated as number of people impacted multiplied by the depth of the impact, there would be more incentives to create impactful videos. However, most incentives currently reward only the number of people impacted irrespective of the depth of impact, and so it's much easier to produce videos that impact a lot of people with little depth.
Of course, this trivializes how difficult it is to actually build a large audience, which is difficult to begin with. Personally, I think they all have their place. Sometimes I want something stimulating to watch, sometimes I want something brainless.
Like you say, it's natural, just like in the past(?) when stupid reality shows and drama was gathering all the ratings. And I'll be honest (I'm not sure I'm one of many who feel this way), when you see guys like the Paul brothers in this list I can't help but think that the bad guys won.
Well it's natural in the sense that "mother or idiots is always pregnant" (ancient Italian proverb), but that's also not a thing we should prize.
I mean, in my poor English, that it's normal we have a bigger audience for a video of people doing parkour that for a video about Bayesian's filter but we must develop a way to prize more the latter than the former.
In physical world we have something like a doctor, lawyer, ... get paid more than a clown, so they can afford a better life, get prize by the society, inspire other's to take their path etc. Clowns have their role of course, we also need them, only they receive a proper reward.
We start to invert this trend with professional sportsmen's, movie/entertainment industry and now with social platform we bring that trend to the sky.
Generally speaking, in the entertainment industry, you have a few individuals that are pulling in a lot of money... and a huge bunch of people doing very similar things that pull in nothing. My assumption is that the Youtube world here is similar to the pop music industry... where often the difference is not necessarily raw talent. Luck plays a huge role in this field, and how you handle marketing your "personality" and "brand" likewise is a big factor. These are things to keep in mind if you "aspire" to be an entertainer or social media star. (In music, there are areas, eg session / orchestra / Broadway players, where raw technical talent matters more, but that's a different subject...)
It is very untypical for an entertainer in popular fields like this to remain very big for over a decade. I think Jeffree Star is one of the few entertainers who has actually maintained top status since the Myspace days. In music, it's easily possible to think of a few Myspace-era music acts that are going strong (think Arctic Monkeys). But it's also easily possible to think of top Myspace-era acts that are now operating at much lower levels (think Owl City). The modeling / fashion world seems even worse than music at first glance for career length.
Currently, if you are an average programmer (you don't even have to know much about Bayesian filters) or other more technical career (including doctors and lawyers), you probably will have a pretty good paying career that could last decades. If you are a stellar entrepreneurial type, you also could earn millions (more than entertainers even). But if you don't have the knack for that or don't get the right breaks, you'll still probably come out fine, much better than the average entertainer.
Same thing with TV, Music, Film...If you want mass appeal you need to hit the lowest common denominator. It doesn't bother me because I find that if you just let go of your pretensions there are some genuinely good channels that could be describe as "Idiotic".
Heck Pewdiepie is actually a pretty interesting channel from time to time. You got to hand it to the guy for putting in the work to not only reach the top, but to stay on the top but hasn't completely sold out to advertisers to make bland family friendly content.
It rewards popularity in itself. It just happens that most people are at or below average and average isn't anything to write home about. It rewards lower effort for higher returns as well. That also isn't remotely new. Gossip rags sell more than even accessible science magazines let alone journals.
It isn't stupidity in itself that pays. Make a channel of hitting yourself in the groin every day and you won't even break $10k/year.
The modern "need" (mania) of defining metrics have a deep root not in knowledge but in ignorance. Smart people can reason autonomously like Galilean scientific models, ignorant can only follow Aristotelian model.
That's also the reason today we have substantial ZERO innovations and capacity to produce new things.
I think you have a poor understanding of what metrics mean, and in case it’s pretty ironic since Galileo essentially defined the modern scientific method of observation, experimentation, and mathematization which birthed quantitative assessment.
I think not. I think I have a clear understating on how we trade Science for neoaristotelism because someone want brainless, managerial-driven, commercial-servant research instead of Science and culture.
A small example: take a young CAD/CAE/CAM engineer, ask he/she to design something for doing a certain job. Ask the same to an ancient engineer. Compare results.
The young will give you a well simulated part/assembly ready for first prototype, the ancient normally gives you small note and a drawing. Prototype the two: the younger one is generally far more complex to being build, costly and far less effective than the ancient one. And it's not a matter of experience, it's a matter of different way of thinking.
Today we spent enormous time in bureaucracy with ridiculous stuff from ITIL/Kanban to the last bit, we spent enormous time in detailed reasoning being on contrary incapable of see the big picture. That's why for instance in shipping company when a (rare) EU doctor (we have less reformed medicine studies than the USA) went in the USA local seafarers they put themselves in the queue for being visited by "real" doctors.
Perhaps my poor English make hard for me to clearly express concepts, sorry. How to do your nails it's simply far less valuable than how a banks or a car work in knowledge terms, however on YT&c it get far more financial reward than a video on banking systems, mechanics etc.
I don’t think it’s has less value on a case by case basis, but this is also not relevant.
There is a big difference between education/enrichment and entertainment and while some content creators might walk the line between them there is a pretty big split.
I would say pre-defining what is “valuable” is probably not the best approach because it too prone to selection bias, an instruction video on how to do nails to a beautician is far more useful than a video explaining correspondenant banking systems.
That said the content as a whole can be measured in terms of its impact on cognitive and emotional state and well being especially on large sample sizes.
We already know that social media voyeurism causes a lot emotional distress, we know that certain types of content can make you “dumber” at least in the short term.
And on a larger scale we can check the social and individual benefits for specific cases, e.g. how many individuals who watched a specific subeset of content turned their life to the better in say a period of 5 years.
You, me, any other. We all like to laugh but we know that life is beyond that. That's why we have schools that teach history, physics, chemistry, math, geography, ... instead of teaching nail arts, hair styling, parkour etc.
Also, if you travel the world a bit, you'll easy see how most "mean acculturated" countries offer generally a better life quality, life expectancy etc.
Actually, I have to shoot you down on that one. There are "beauty schools" that teach nail arts, hair styling, makeup, etc. Want to know something really interesting? The people you're shitting on that go into those schools, have a better placement rate of finding jobs and are generally happier than those that go into the "classical" education routes. Plus, the beauticians can make pretty good money too. Have you seen how happy these people are with their lives? I'd give up all my tech skills from beginning to end just to be half that happy with life.
Also, when you tell someone "if you travel the world a bit", it makes you seem like a stuck up cunt standing on a soap box that attended too many liberal arts classes and you're just regurgitating what your teachers told you since you don't have a single independent thought or experience of your own. Just sayin'.
At nazi times in Germany if you have joined nazi's party earlier and you participate in many nazi's related activities you'll get rewarded far more than "traditional citizen", perhaps with a humanistic degree... In actual Russian federation if you have the "right friend" and you keep saying that Putin is a good man you'll certainly get better rewards respect of a journalist that say government is corrupted and actual president is a dictator. In my home-country (Italy) if you have some friends in Catholic church or you are in some catholic association you have better chances to get paid more, have more customers, have less bureaucratic problems than a well known atheist or agnostic etc.
I do not say that nail art should not exists, only that reward you get from it should be proportionate to what you give to our society so I expect that a good plumber being rewarded more than a nail artist. Simple as that.
On different countries comparison, I'm living in French, have lived in Italy, Sweden, a bit of stay in USA, UK, CZ and Rus. I compare plus and minus I see in all that countries and that's my conclusions. Never attended a "liberal art class".
I get my nails done regularly because I struggle badly with compulsive skin picking and chew on my cuticles a lot. They clean up my ragged cuticles for me (so I don't get carried away doing it myself and make them worse), and the nail polish makes my nails thicker so it's harder for me to pick at my skin. I work in a machine shop and regularly work with acetone on the job, so regular nail polish I could do myself is not an option. I recently started getting the powder dip manicures because they're pretty indestructible and extra thick, and it'd be extremely difficult to give one of those to yourself.
Who are you to say nail techs don't contribute to society? Getting my nails done as harm reduction strategy for a mental illness is an enormous boost to my quality of life. I'm often in a lot of pain because of my cuticles or because I've got some picking spot I can't leave alone, and getting my nails done always comes with a sense of relief for me. I've gotten less and milder staph infections since I started getting them done regularly, too.
Don't poo poo on nail techs, man. Most fabulous, glittery "medical treatment" I've ever gotten.
It says 15% OF this earnings, he might be getting more than that but 15% is locked up until he is an adult.
Even so, the parents are probably the actual 'runners' of the company (?) doing all the work except being on camera. Meaning administrative work, accounting, filming, editing, marketing maybe and so on.
Exactly, it's not like the kid is writing the scripts, creating the sets, buying the equipment, paying for lawyers, settings up advertiser deals, paying for video production and editing, etc. From the videos, it seems like they've now got a much fancier house too, which I'm assuming was paid with the earnings.
From the Wikipedia page, only 15% of the child’s earnings need to be put aside into a trust:
“This law requires a child actor's employer to set aside 15% of the earnings in a trust (often called a Coogan Account), and codifies issues such as schooling, work hours and time off.”
This doesn't mean that the parents get the other 85%. All the income belongs to the child, the 15% figure is put in a trust as a requirement by California law and cannot be accessed until the child turns 18.
Are you sure? Seems like the parents are really the "producers" and the kid is more of an actor. He very well might get a lot of that money, but I'm not sure. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Is there any reason to give an 8 year old child access to (his) millions of dollars?
My 6 y.o. lives in a youtube universe. Every content he creates, he makes a video and publishes on youtube. Making slimes, building stamps, building paper train wagons, visiting places, and of course unpacking toys and stuff. He always concludes video or other stories like `pls press the Like button, and subscribe to my channel in order not to miss a thing`. When I talk too much he says 'papa skip ad', with a tap gesture. on air.
youtube is the definite leader for <10 y.o.s around me.
This is like some nightmarish version of the panopticon. Future societies won't have to worry about monitoring their citizens - they'll already be raised to broadcast everything by default.
You should explain to him that whatever you publish on the Internet is forever and whether he'd like someone in his adult life to be able to find that content.
Maaaaybe. Link Rot is a real thing. Look at Twitch. They delete a LOT of footage all the time. A lot of speedruns are lost to time due to these 'top-level' decisions.
It doesn't have to be a part of the experience, you can disable the comments on their videos. Although other videos you watch on YouTube would still have comments, obviously, unless you use an adblocker or something to get rid of them.
While I think it's great when kids create content, what really scares me are the comments. Youtube is often times such a cesspool, I wouldn't want my kid to interact with that as a creator. How do you handle that?
He currently doesn't care about the comments but most comments are quite offensive. I see him alone, in his room, preparing for a video, rehearsing his speech, and having multiple takes and revisions. Kind of very weird. He comes up with like `papa, i need photopolymer, darkening toner,glue.. because i want to do xx.` . Of course he's pissed off when he hears, as a child he can't touch chemicals.
I was interested to see that the top 10 earners are all male.[1] I wonder if this is merely a reflection of greater male patronage of Youtube generally but the topics that these top earners are focusing on are not all stereotypically male interests. The 7 year old kid reviews toys which seems quite gender neutral and then there's the makeup artist which, presumably, would be of more interest to a female audience. What is stopping women and girls from dominating Youtube?
why force equal outcomes on such a niche place like Youtube?
on Instagram the top earners are all females. Kylie Jenner makes $1 million per post, Selena Gomez 800k. And it is ok to be like that as Instagram is 70% female.
> why force equal outcomes on such a niche place like Youtube?
I didn't get that from the OP at all - I think it's a valid (and quite an interesting) question to pose (especially as a marketer): what is it about YouTube's audience that seemingly favours male creators?
Not about "forcing" anything, but it's always interesting to dive into why platform demographics differ and the reasons behind it.
(Also, my assumption is "dominate" here isn't like take over, but just "do it really well" - feel free to correct me OP).
> What is stopping women and girls from dominating Youtube?
I think it is valid in English language to consider this sentence as saying women doing better than men on the platform. dominate is not another word for equality in English.
True, but it's also valid in English colloquially to use "dominate" as to just be really good at something too, and that was my interpretation in this context.
The majority of viewers are male, so I think it makes sense that the highest earners are also male - I would expect people, especially younger people, to gravitate towards YouTubers of the same gender. Also there are several gaming channels in the list of top YouTubers, which is also a category dominated by males.
I'd like to know that too, as a recruiting manager I've wondered why there are no more female manager role models and what I can do to change that (and I did change some things in the past).
Recently I saw a woman and man commenting on the chess championship on YT, both excellent chess players.
She tried to impress/be liked by being nice and helpful, he tried to impress/be liked by being powerful. This of course should not be taken as a study but a starting point for some thought - he kind of dominated her appearance (though I guess this wasn't his intention).
Seriously though, it seems that every time I switch on to any news or current affairs show, they're talking about the gender wage gap. So clearly a lot of people are interested in this.
There are so many things wrong with youtube such as accountability, standards and advertising value. These problems get even weirder when kids are involved.
Obviously the reason this kid is making 22m is because other kids are watching. Which isn't bad. This kid basically won the lottery and good for him.
But then you have things like elsagate which is/was (idk if it's over) so weird. I still don't know what the hell was going on there. I can only assume that, once again, kids are mindlessly watching these videos and that's fairly disturbing.
Also I am curious about what people that buy ad spots on youtube think about the fact that a lot of the views they're paying for are kids that won't care about products like their makeup or adult oriented products/services.
Well ten years ago kids were mindlessly watching cartoons on TV, which probably had just as much advetisement. The main difference with YouTube, I figure, is that the money is mainly going to content creators rather than TV executives.
On the other hand, the recommended video feed is something akin to heroin for the brain, so giving kids unbridled access to YouTube is probably not the best parenting strategy
The main difference is not just the money going to content creators. Like preommr said, the real main difference is all the creepy stuff that's on Youtube that you don't normally see as an adult on your YT account recommended videos/related videos, but that kids see because things are targeted at them. There's some real creepy scary stuff out there. TV back in the days, even if kids watch them obsessively, at least don't have "dangerous" stuff like that. They were curated by reasonable people working at the networks, not algorithms.
I will never give my kid unbridled access to YT. When she's old enough to watch videos, I would consider downloading specific content from YT filtered by myself, for offline viewing.
Kids will always mindlessly watch stuff but it's about what they're watching. I am on the fence about ad heavy shows, but that's not what I am talking about when I say that a lot of these shows are disturbing.
I am assuming you've never watched an elsagate video because it's like a fever dream. I know old cartoons like ren and stimpy were strange, but these videos are just... creepy. They'll show things like drinking, taking drugs through needles, all kinds of weird sexual stuff in a way that's really disturbing. You just have to watch it see what I mean.
And there's a lot of this disturbing content that seems to mainly target kids on youtube.
I just watched a few minutes of "Ryan disappear[s] through a Secret Portal in the house to the North Pole" and am thoroughly impressed. Clearly a lot goes into the concepts, sets, and overall production of these videos. I don't know all of the details, but I can imagine how building a business like this could be one of the cooler ways for a family to spend quality time together.
These YouTube families are great. I hope they keep perspective though and don't go all Disney child actor. I mean maybe they can have hollywood careers etc but kids need to be kids.
And they're still making shitty videos with the kids that weren't taken away. I think they were pulled off YouTube again and had to start their own site for their content.
I'm not sure if you're being serious, but that video was honestly minimal amount of effort when it came to effects, sets and production. There are channels on Youtube with a fraction of the following that produce content orders of magnitude more professional than that. This kind of video can be made by some amateur producer in their bedroom. Considering they make 22M, you'd really think they'd spend money on at least getting a single professional video editor, if not more.
I wasn't kidding at all! I once found my ~4yo niece watching a series of YouTube videos that were just close ups of adult hands unwrapping small toys. Zero animations. No audio or editing. The video had a million views or something. (I can't even find this video because I don't know what to search for.)
When I read the BBC article, I assumed it was something equally no budget. Little kids like weird stuff.
Considering they make 22M, you'd really think
they'd spend money on at least getting a single
professional video editor
I've heard it claimed that many youtubers get locked into their day 1 aesthetic and intentionally avoid changing their winning formula.
If your videos shot in your bedroom with a single fixed camera on a tripod, no staff and basic editing are making you $15 million a year, why fix what isn't broken?
The #1 counter-example I can give is MKBHD. Look at the evolution of his videos. As he has gotten more popular, he has continuously worked on improving his equipment and style. He know shoots and edits in 8K, with RED cameras, professional intro, and so on.
You can still keep your personality, your style and your quirks, but upgrade things such as video quality, editing, and overall production quality.
That's not my experience with Ryan's Toy Review videos.
My son watches these, a little less than he used to, but still.
They're mostly about him goofing off (using toys) with his family. I'm sure there're some that are scripted, but a large majority of them are just him being a kid.
Best summary I've ever read about Logan Paul is this (since-deleted) tweet: "Watching adults learn about Logan Paul is like seeing Mt. Everest base campers leave for the summit with a windbreaker and a granola bar."
The toddler model of celebrity (acting out for attention) pays off short term from the controversy and occasionally destroys themselves in the long term.
There are kids who have been depressed since age 8, no idea when their depression will end.
The number is increasing at huge rate.
There are kids who will look upto these kids and get in competition mode while other kids gonna be depressed because they can't afford or can't do as good as them.
It's interesting how so many people criticize this family that is making tens of millions every year. If that is wrong, they should start with TV Shows in which children that are much more exposed and sometimes not having fun doing what they want, make actually a 6 fig salary. Too many grow to be poor and lost adults. At 7 Ryan has enough money for a comfort life.
This kid has made more money than I will ever see in my whole life. I’m not jealous I’m proud! I hope he’s got some good support around him as all that money so young could be a recipe for disaster if not managed right. High school comes to mind: if I was a self made millionaire in high school oh man I would likely have been even more wreckeless than I was.
I wonder how many views one needs to get such income and who pays it? I had a blog with 500k monthly unique visitors and rarely made over $500 from AdSense. I had pretty good bounce rate and average visit was 7 minutes.
Top YouTube talent in general: ad revenue, endorsements, affiliate sales, sell shirts/pins/hats, appearance fees etc.
The individual in this article:
>all but $1m of the $22m total is generated by advertising shown before videos, with the remainder coming from sponsored posts.
But take people like Jenna and Julien: they make and sell limited edition pins, they have a twitch that pretty mcuh always has someone as a top bits tipper at 10k bits plus twitch subscribers, a cut of YouTube red subscribers watching their streams, Jenna has done keynote and commencement speeches (a quick google search shows her booking fee might be 20-50k$), she has a Sirius XM show, she has a podcast.
> The amount generated by sponsored posts is small compared with other top YouTubers, Forbes writes. It is "the result not only of how few deals Ryan (or his family) chooses to accept, but also the fact that his pint-sized demographic isn't exactly all that flush".
They then proceed to disprove this "fact" in (literally) the next sentence:
> The toys featured in one of the channel's videos can sell out instantly.
There really needs to be some regulation or at least self-regulation for this kind of stuff. This child should remain the exception (this is technically child labor), and advertising to kids on youtube should catch up with TV standards. And i don't think this kind of publicity is doing any good to other children.
Perhaps a startup that helps parents deal with this kind of stuff easier?
And regardless of whatever supposed income numbers there are out there, only the IRS cares about the 1099's from Adwords and companies sponsoring their content. If they get their appropriate tax checks from those, all is gravy.
I banned Ryan's after they started peddling his Walmart toys - my 4 year old hasn't seen/asked for Ryan's in last few months. So cut them off while young.
Something still feels wrong about something that takes comaparatively so little effort making so much money. I’m not saying it’s easy but it’s much much easier than many other proffesions. Think of software engineers slaving over brilliant designs staying up night after night for a few hundred thousand per year, or even NFL stars that expose their brains to permanent damage. It’s almost like a new form of the lottery. The viral lottery.
Or think of villagers in rural Africa or India, doing intense manual labor all day for little playoff and a premature death. Unfortunately, life's brutal and unfair. You could take your savings and put it all on 28 in roulette, and hey, maybe you too can have massive payout for minimal effort.
If it actually takes so little effort, then why aren't they outcompeted by someone putting more effort into it? Is breaking big on Youtube only luck based?
Much of what we were taught about hard work was pushed by exploiters of peasantry whose fallen descendants would literally risk a disgraceful death and believed damnation as highwaymen rather than work a day in their lives. It just perpetuated and their lies got out of their control and got many of them killed several times historically - from Cromwell to communism. And it didn't end too well for their deposers either - from their own actions no less.
The truth is hard work can pay off not that it does and working smarter is always a better option.
Could anyone point me toward a more comprehensive analysis of incomes from YouTube?
Specifically, I'd like to get an idea about the distribution of income across active monetised accounts. This would be far more interesting to me than looking at some - I'm guessing - statistical outliers.
What does a average channel, with modest viewers, with niche content, earn for the producer?
Not sure if it's exactly what you're after, but I know of this[0] video from CGPGrey talking about adsense specifically. There's also this[1] video breaking down the income sources for Linus Tech Tips and related channels, although they probably don't qualify as 'modest views'? This[2] is talking about twitch streamers rather than youtube channels, but it's quite an interesting breakdown too.
Yes, I'd definitely say that Linus' channel is much bigger than I'm interested in. I'm thinking of the small channels who put out quality content, b with a restricted audience. I watch some channels who make Linux and Chess videos and the content is superb, but there's a natural threshold level of views they'll get.
I was prompted to think about it after a conversation with a colleague. We were talking about the market within medicine for giving exam prep courses to med students and doctors. A recent day course we noted was £50 per student and it was sold out (about 200 people I think). The person delivering the course had multiple dates lined up across the UK.
We wondered whether it would be more profitable for this individual to use youtube (there would be numerous pros/cons to this, but that's another topic).
We could quickly do the maths to work out the income from X students, on Y dates, minus Z estimated costs, etc, for the traditional lectures... but we just cant find any data for likely youtube profits. The information seems almost deliberately obscured.
On the flip side there are probably peasants in rural East Asia who labor in extremely challenging conditions and make a fraction of what you do. If they understood that your job was to (probably) sit in an air conditioned room tapping keys and talking to people for a few hours a day for significant wealth they might feel what you feel.
Yeah, it’s all relative. No matter how bad your situation is or how successful you become, some people will always have it better than you and some people will always have it worse than you. So there’s no sense in beating yourself up over where you “should be” in life. Just do your best to improve and grow according to your values and priorities.
I don't really like this comparison to peasants, they can be happy and healthy for doing what they do, but office jobs are just depressing and unhealthy in comparison.
money is one thing, but the effort put into is another, I've been doing engineering jobs, and I've put lots of efforts from education to actual job. This whole chain of efforts is just to have a life; money is necessary for a life, which a hard-earned one for me. I can say it's been difficult along my path of life personal or professional, that's why youtuber earnings shake me emotionally.
I'm 34, and I just discovered PewDiePie. I thought he was one of those irritating Let's Play guys, but I was definitely wrong. His videos are mostly about reviewing memes, internet news, and funny videos these days. He's a really entertaining guy. I highly recommend you subscribe.
Who is watching these videos? Youtube TOS states you have to be at least 13 years old to use their site. If I were to see my 13 (or older) children watching a 7 year old unwrapping toys, I think I would go to the psychiatrist just to check them out.
Unless of course YouTube allows for their own TOS to be violated and they have a right to do so in the spirit of greed; their pockets are clearly filled up by children clicking on Google ads; otherwise how do you think he made that $22MM, from a GoFoundMe donations??
Children under 13 can legally watch videos on YouTube with their parents. Consider the premise: you must remove all children, including infants and babies, from the room and or hearing/viewing distance before you utilize the YouTube service. That's laughable to say the least. You can also take your children to R rated films for example, they just can't go by themselves. The same concept applies to video games - you can buy your 11 year old Grand Theft Auto, they can't buy it for their self. It's not illegal for children to listen to music with vulgar lyrics, they just can't buy it typically.
Thought so too, but that's not their ToS, unless I missed some part (didn't read the whole thing and just scanned for age-related sections): https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms
> In any case, you affirm that you are over the age of 13, as the Service is not intended for children under 13. If you are under 13 years of age, then please do not use the Service. There are lots of other great web sites for you. Talk to your parents about what sites are appropriate for you.
I read the ToS before posting that. It's overruled by the fact that the adult can utilize the service and legally YouTube can't force a parent to remove their child from the room while said parent is utilizing YouTube. It's perfectly legal and does not violate the ToS. The parent is using YouTube, the ToS applies to them and not the child.
It is that simple. It would be laughed out of court on any challenge as an issue.
You can also use thousands of other popular sites that are 13 age restricted while in the presence of your children.
> If I were to see my 13 (or older) children watching a 7 year old unwrapping toys, I think I would go to the psychiatrist just to check them out.
Oh, 13 years is nothing... watching is nothing.... if I ever meet an adult who makes videos aimed at kids, where they're either saying nothing, or infantilizing themselves as extremely as possible, I have so many questions to ask them, and already one answer I reject beforehand, and that's "money through advertisements shown to small children".
Speaking of that, we'll never know how many million dollars YouTube made (or god forbid is still making) on ads on ElsaGate-type videos. It's not like that would be hard to find out for them in one week, and it's not like it couldn't be argued to be a sound investment in PR to donate some or all of that ill-gotten money to charities that help with child abuse or trauma. But I guess it's even better PR-wise to just change the subject and never bring it up again, as they kinda did last year.
> If I ever meet an adult who makes videos aimed at kids ... or infantilizing themselves as extremely as possible, I have so many questions to ask them
I take it you're not from Australia?
Have you heard of The Wiggles? [1] Wikipedia says they earned $AUD 49 million in 2009 alone
Or Hi-5? [2] Wikipedia says $AUD 18 million in 2009 alone.
I see a difference between infantilizing oneself and being "kid-friendly". Just like I wouldn't think of Sesame Street as adults infantilizing themselves.
Take people like jackseptic and others with their "floundering around while being hyper" stuff. That's what I mean with infantilizing oneself in a way that harms development and is not kid-friendly at all.
"But kids like it". That's where the concept of being mature comes in. Adults cannot excuse what they are doing by what kids supposedly like. By that logic, it'd be better to give kids sweets than actual food.
I don't even have to try, ElsaGate is going strong as ever. Couldn't find you any live action extreme stuff with adults in diapers and all that, but I wouldn't be surpised if even some of that is still around.
Thanks to Youtube and Disney calling it "over" before it could gain the mainstream traction it absolutely still warrants. These unmarked mass graves, they will have to be talked about, make no mistake. Decades of normalization that lead up to this will have to be thrown out, too.
Another thought: If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views. I think there is some sadness in that: no matter what form of art, so much of it is influenced (disrupted?) by money -- it almost seems inevitable.