posts from @CriminallyVulgar tagged #YouTube

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CriminallyVulgar
@CriminallyVulgar

I've got nothing directly against Tom, I've watched a couple of his videos and they're very good, I just don't like his style of writing/speaking. No big deal, but enough that I basically decided to skip his videos unless they covered something particularly interesting or important.

But motherfuckers I feel a deep compulsion to click on this video. This seemingly pointless video about a tiny aesthetic trend, that I've already noticed and strongly dislike.

Because why is it an hour long???

Bravo Tom, well played.


CriminallyVulgar
@CriminallyVulgar

It's decent. It's like 20 minutes too long, he reiterates the same points more than I think was necessary. He also got entirely bodied by a comment raising a much more interesting angle - Tom focuses a ton on the idea that it's a cultural response to overproduced interlopers, but I think it's more about not appearing "out of touch" with their peers, and holding the mic is a simple way to look less professional while also saving yourself some work (and having to figure out what to do with your hands). Being a try-hard is good until you're successful, then it becomes cringe.

Anyway, the comment rules and feels like it gets closer to the point than the whole hour long video.



These aren't so much a coherent argument or conclusion in themselves, but a bunch of axioms that inform my thinking about it.

  • We all know video streaming is prohibitively expensive, in a way that scales fairly linearly with bitrate and usage. Storing video is generally expensive, but distributing it is moreso because you have to pay every single time it's viewed.
  • bitrate scales very unfavourably with resolution, and successful youtubers have an unhealthy obsession with pushing higher resolutions because (heavy opinion) "video """quality""" " is an easy metric to improve without relying on algorithms to push videos.


I've been watching woodworking videos on YouTube for like a decade now? Just really relaxing shit, inspiring stuff. It's an ambition of mine to get into doing it myself, but time/space/mentalhealth/money/hayfever all slow me down.

Anyway, in the last couple of years the trend driving YT woodworking is Slab Tables (i.e. rather than a bunch of boards put together, a big fuck-off cross-section of the tree) encased in this massive thick shell of boat resin, so you can have the appearance of a live, natural edge, but conform it to a nice regular manufactured shape.

And I fucking hate it.