Casually Explained: YouTube

this video is brought to you by Dollar Shave Club the product I would use if I could grow a beard but didn't want to now YouTube is the world's largest website behind only its parent company google.com and has been around since 2005 personally I've been using YouTube since it came out and times have really changed since then the videos were square you rated things with stars and every gameplay video started with let the bodies hit the floor and later dreamscape by sound system at the time the most popular videos were misheard lyrics stick fight animations keyboard cat and video someone actually emailed to you one of my favorite parts was that it was still the wild wild west of internet video so no one really understood the rules people would take songs right off LimeWire upload them to youtube with a few animate clips and then when the bands would tell their lawyers someone stole their song those lawyers would be like okay check the description do they get permission and when they saw no copyright infringement intended law they'd be like [ __ ] and back then I was pretty young and when people thought of making YouTube videos he was never for the money because there wasn't any it was for the shot at recognition for making something popular and while nowadays you have to eat laundry detergent or light yourself on fire for a quick view back then you could inhale a tablespoon of cinnamon and get the same 5 seconds of fame and even for the people making real content it wasn't that much more complicated one of the most popular formats was just a 4 5 minute vlog where you're just talking to the camera I remember one of the first videos I made was when I was about 11 and I lived in Australia at the time but was about to move to Canada and so I had this bit right this is the first joke joke that I actually made myself and it went like this don't get your hopes up so you might have heard they have milk in a bag in Canada and I was really excited when I first heard that so last time I was there I went to the grocery store to get some milk I go to the counter and say hi can I have some milk and they said ok would you like that in a bag and I said well I yeah sure and then they took the carton put it in a bag and that was it that's not what I [ __ ] asked for so that was it that was my first joke and my favorite part about that bit is that I've never actually bought my own groceries so I thought you had to order the milk from the guy working the cash register like I said to myself mmm I wonder where you find the milk oh yeah I know next the cigarettes anyway long story short that's why I don't make videos in front of the camera anymore or yet so as time marched on something happened that would change YouTube forever and that thing was HD suddenly production shifted from whimsical home videos and goofy moments caught on film to capitalizing on the emerging novelty of production value and being hot we saw people start vlogging seriously making short films Let's Plays and then as time went on and those genres became saturated we saw the emergence of complete novelty channels and while artistic animation died off a bit it was replaced with vlog animation or in the case of those less talented and artisanal PowerPoint and so here we are in today's YouTube and while there's more people channels and content than ever before I find myself with mixed feelings as both a creator and as a consumer of content on the creator front and as a relatively new YouTube channel I have to say it's only been good things for me like back in the day you couldn't make money on YouTube but nowadays the hope is there I also got sent a nice 100k subscribers plaque it was for the wrong person but the thought was nice and as someone who loves looking at data YouTube's analytics are right up there with Cambridge so no complaints from me but with that said I do know some youtubers were hit hard when in order to get advertisers back to their site after a few scandals YouTube's deployed an automated algorithm to de monetize videos that were potentially not advertiser friendly the problem being that most would say it's been far too aggressive in its flagging and to me the reason why it's so lame is not that companies are scared of advertising on a mildly controversial video they're scared of potentially harmful brand Association in the event that sadly caps lock at the Wall Street Journal voluntarily clicks on a video about Isis voluntarily watches a clip of terrorists blowing something up and then leaves thinking man [ __ ] vitaminwater when no rational person actually cares even though it is a pretty weak product on the consumer end besides YouTube being a bit out of touch with its fellow kids I mean the amount of good content being made is higher than ever before the problem is you actually have to search for it because the amount of our content being made is also higher than ever before and one of the reasons why we see a strong polarization of content and weak discovery features is because YouTube's primary metric for promoting videos is watch time and viewer retention which might imply you're maximizing for content that makes people want to stay but you're actually maximizing for content that stops people from leaving and that extends to how YouTube delivers content to individuals as well as a result I find if we look at the home page besides my subscriptions my own videos for some reason and lo-fi beats - chill slash study - I kind of end up mentally blocking the rest of the page the same way I became immune to banner ads on Miniclip so I think it sucks because I know YouTube has the capability for better targeting because Google delivers the ads to the platform and those things know you better than you do like if I watch the Logan Paul video YouTube's like here's a hundred more Logan Paul videos but Google's like here's an ad for condoms now what I am actually excited for that I think will happen the next few years and it's a bit of competition from other companies and at the moment the most likely competitor seems to be Facebook they're currently testing out video ads with the same revenue share as YouTube and they're one hypothetical move away from telling their biggest Instagram celebrities Facebook owns Instagram they can get paid to post on Facebook video and all their followers will be notified and that means YouTube will have to really reconsider filling your feed with 200 episodes of Hell's Kitchen when the freshest content is on Facebook which is something no one has ever said before and for us YouTube channels I'm excited because YouTube will have to treat me like I'm important but until they send me the right play button to make amends for my hurt feelings I would like to thank and explain today's sponsor Dollar Shave Club where for a limited time new members can get their [ __ ] shower shave starter set for only $5 and you might be thinking wow I've done all those things because I'm a human and that's right we're hitting a wide demographic with this product starter set includes their premium weighty handle which I have to admit is pretty economical and full cassette of cartridges this means razors by the way it's not a mixtape plus it also has three trial size versions of their most popular products shave butter body wash and this one's great just for the credit card statement one wipe Charlies butt wipes I don't know who won wipe Sharlee is but I'd like to imagine he's some guy at the office who eats a lot of granola regardless after the first box replacement cartridges are sent for a few bucks a month we are talking about Razer cartridges again but I did for a second get excited that the butt-wipes came in a fully automatic magazine at any rate while they clearly need me on R&D I have found my entire bathroom experience to actually be much more convenient because I don't have to remember to buy the little things I always forget and I do think Charlie might be onto something so if you'd like to take advantage of this limited time offer head on over to dollarshaveclub.com forward slash explained that's a Dollar Shave Club com forward slash explained to get your first starter pack for $5 [Music] you

Channel: Casually Explained

Views: 4,142,904

Keywords: youtube, adpocalypse, adpocalypse explained, old youtube, history of youtube, whats wrong with youtube, experience with youtube, stand up comedy, dry humour, animation, lofi beats to relax/study to, facebook video, envelope laser rectangle, viral videos, trending, best videos

Id: ZTFTngOG2bg

Length: 7min 28sec (448 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/OrdinaryM]

Fuck that milk joke was good

[u/Wilshire3030]

lo fi memes to relax/study to

[u/iprefertau]

i like the term artisinal powerpoint

[u/pet_the_puppy]

Loved the Cambridge reference

[u/kijib]

I miss the old YouTube

[u/Kwanzaa246]

The Lo-fi beats to study to was hilarious. have that on my dashboard as well

[u/_Serene_]

Oh so that's why every description back in the day included the phrase "no copyright infringement intended".. Makes sense.

[u/BarelyLegalAlien]

He sounds to happy lately. Awesome.

[u/BraveRutherford]

lots of promotion for dollar shave but i feel like him doing that enforces the point that yt is hard to make money off of nowadays for channels like this one