I found the WEIRDEST how-to channel

this video is brought to you by curiositystream get access to curiositystream and my streaming service nebula and check out my nebula exclusive video debater theater when you sign up for curiositystream at curiositystream.com sarah's ed with the coupon code sarahzad so when i was 13 i was cast as the narrator in a summer camp production of 101 dalmatians and i needed to learn how to do a posh english accent i searched up tutorials on youtube and ended up on a very helpful channel called video jug where an acting coach taught me some great tips for how to sound like wallace and gromit once i finished watching that video i clicked on the channel to see more content and within an hour i was down at least five separate rabbit holes of 9 11 conspiracy theories werewolf hunting and pretending to be french all from the same channel what so video jug is a channel that claimed to offer tens of thousands of how-to videos on various topics from animal care to dating advice to accent lessons to politics the channel boasted nearly 750 000 subscribers and over half a billion views back in the early 2010s they would post dozens of videos a day often narrated by experts in various fields at the same time under the surface of helpful tutorials and expert opinions was a massive collection of truly bizarre content waiting to be unearthed but in 2013 the channel underwent a serious overhaul that caused them to severely rebrand and stop uploading on their main channel in what they didn't realize would be the end of their how to empire how did we get here in 2006 video jug was founded by three british creators entrepreneur david tabazel entrepreneur dan thompson and journalist danny kelly although he wasn't mentioned by most news sites as being one of the founders documentary filmmaker james peake who worked on the writing for many original video jug videos also claims to be a founder on his website the channel was founded in the really early days of youtube before they were even owned by google and they really were trying to do something new on top of the youtube channel itself they also created a website videojugg.com the url now redirects back to the channel but at the time videodrug.com was basically a centralized hub for all of their tutorial videos the site provided captions and text versions of the videos that could be easily printed out if need be when video jugs started out as a bastion of the youtube how-to community they likely didn't intend to be a host for low-budget hospital dramas conspiracy theorists and deeply disturbing music videos rather they were trying to fill a niche that while commonplace now didn't really exist at the time of video jug's creation youtube was still in its infancy there wasn't a general central hub for video content and internet advice and knowledge was often hard to find and unreliable video jug wanted to fill that hole by making a trustworthy service to inform people of whatever they might need be it advice on golf advice for job interviews car maintenance or dating tips lots and lots of dating tips but of course hiring experts on such a broad range of topics renting out studio space and equipment hiring editors and hosting thousands of videos wasn't cheap video jug was going to need money in their first year they acquired 30 million dollars in startup capital from two different investors jeremy caller an investment firm owner worth 320 million pounds and a recently defunct london-based hedge fund called sloane robinson that was known mostly for its stock trading in asia knowing now the amount of bizarre content hiding under video jugs smooth and polished exterior it's baffling to me that they got this much money right off the bat but an idea like this had never really been done before and the idea of having one place to go to learn how to do almost anything was probably pretty exciting as it turns out according to some linkedin comments from one of its former ceos the company failed to turn a profit until 2016 an entire decade later and even then the company was essentially gone by the next year a couple people basically just put 30 million dollars into a jug and this company just kept taking from the jug for 10 years until someone dropped some more coins in and then it turned into a ghost jug okay so they had their money they had 30 million dollars to lose the company was able to open an office in los angeles and began doing sponsored tutorial videos for microsoft with the help of a couple of nifty features in microsoft office's new bits of kit you don't need to be away from the parties for too long they also set up a deal with the yellow pages website not too long after that linked their videos to the yellow pages search engine and with this video jug was ready to get started and make their impact on the world their first few videos started out fairly normally their first video is still up on the channel and incidentally still one of their most popular is a tutorial on how to kiss passionately after that it was a mix of golf card tricks sponsored tech videos and michael jackson dance tutorials they're okay i mean none of them are shot very well and there's a decidedly awkward quality to all of them but they do technically inform people on how to do things in 2011 then ceo tom laidlaw gave a talk about the goals and aims of video jug and it's really bizarre to watch now almost a decade later with the knowledge of how the internet would evolve in video jug's final fate tom states that the main focus of video jug is to create short form sponsored content that viewers find primarily via searches in his own words it was less about becoming a destination site but rather producing content that other users would find on their online journey additionally video jug videos needed to have a long shelf life viewers would need to be able to utilize these videos for years to come anyway so here's a video about how to add a photo background for your zune tom really places emphasis on video jugs reliance on short form content even bragging that they found the boutique video length of two to five minutes if you've ever watched video essays on youtube which i'm fairly confident that you have you'll know that youtube has started to favor longer and longer videos in recent years often prioritizing them in the algorithms and encouraging them with higher viewer retention rates while tom may be talking about what makes video jugs succeed he's also inadvertently referencing the very thing that contributed to its downfall also tom ends this video by saying that video jug prioritizes quality sound and video because if the sound isn't good viewers are more likely to close the video in the first five seconds three things one we know that's not true two this whole presentation has some god-awful fuzz behind it and three but you win by frightening other team watch videos the first sign on their channel that things were going a little strangely was a video titled how to be a hogwarts student which was half tutorial half not very funny comedy video in which viewers were encouraged to try starting arguments with their friends until they got mad enough to curse each other and unlock their psychic powers murmuring random words into their casserole until they mastered potions and tormenting friends by levitating various objects it's worth mentioning here that video jug allowed user-submitted content which was supposedly vetted for quality before being allowed on the website and channel as i'll talk about later it's questionable how well vetted these videos actually were in any case according to the founders user submitted tutorials made up about five percent of video drugs content and how to be a hogwarts student may well have been one of these it's worth mentioning though that a lot of these videos are written by and star the exact same people and very quickly a lot more than five percent of their content gets very bizarre it's all a very strange mix of genuinely helpful tutorials and just videos of dudes [ __ ] around and trying to be funny for example how to clown about whilst being pursued a video that teaches you how to be a discount vaudeville protagonist stars the same actor as the serious tutorial how to avoid credit card fraud how to clown about whilst being pursued the vaudeville guy was also an official writer for video jug according to the wikipedia page of his comedy partner who most certainly wrote this page himself the two of them were also featured in a huffington post article from 2012 teaching people how to give compliments as part of video jug my point being a lot of these weird videos weren't being submitted by random trolls but by the video jug team themselves this weird incongruity is further exemplified by the insane view discrepancy on video jug you'd have a video with four million views right next to a video with 400 views some having as many as 35 million and some having as few as 12. like not 12 million or 12 like 12. and whenever these weird pseudo-comedy videos showed up on the channel the commenters who did see it would respond with a mix of bafflement and anger what they were watching even their most popular videos have weirdly high dislike ratios showing incredible dissatisfaction towards video jug given their weirdly inconsistent content you'd think they wouldn't be nearly as popular as they were i mean anyone going to the channel for genuine help would likely be put off by videos like how to intimidate the opposition where a guy in a fake russian accent just screams for three minutes and people who wanted them to go full how to basic would likely get bored with the large swaths of fairly helpful and mundane videos according to the founders the most popular advice categories on the channel were job tips and dating advice and the sheer volume of romance tutorials on the channel is evidence of this looking at their top 10 videos three of them were some flavor of dating tip given the thousands of topics discussed on the channel that's a lot based on their most popular videos it seems like their more mainstream collections of romance money advice and dance tutorials were supplementing weirder things like how to survive a werewolf attack despite the bizarre nature of everything going on here it seems like the founders really believed in video jug as a project the founders blog section on the now gone website includes this oddly poetic 2006 entry by founder david tabazal for me video jugg used to have another name the wisdom project the wisdom of the older generations is often discarded and so is lost forever when they die this is such a waste there are numerous historical practical and personal life events that repeat themselves generation after generation sadly it is a strange fact that today in a multimedia world that so much experience and understanding is unavailable on a universal basis our task at video jug is to collect and succinctly film world-class experience and know-how by making and sharing tens of thousands of films we can eventually produce a living breathing collaborative video encyclopedia to surviving and prospering in the face of the common challenges found in modern life an ever-evolving searchable source on how to live well and achieve success wealth health and happiness it's also worth mentioning that when it comes to the weirder variety of video jug tutorials a lot of them were sequels that followed ongoing narratives from earlier videos like some sort of video jug cinematic universe so if you were wondering how to stay friends with your ex and ended up on a tutorial for it on video jug you would find yourself not on a straightforward tutorial video but on a [ __ ] hospital set with the words last time on broken hearts blaring at you it's not even a tutorial it's just a three minute episode of an ongoing hospital drama series courtesy of video jug framed as a how-to hospital sets are incredibly expensive if you don't have this stuff already you're going to have to rent it and that's going to rack up a lot of money at the same time the quality of the video is absolutely terrible even for something that came out in 2008 it's just really not shot well yet this must have cost a ridiculous amount of money for video jug to make it's the perfect indicator of a channel that clearly had a lot of money but not a lot to actually do with it another odd thing about these continuous narratives is that they're notoriously hard to find almost all of their videos are formatted as how to do this even when they're not really tutorials and it's not like their multi-video stories have a playlist or anything we know they exist partly because i've stumbled upon a few and because james peake the filmmaker from earlier who describes himself as a founder still advertises that he wrote an ongoing love story for video jug but they're very difficult to actually look for and the only real way to find one is to accidentally stumble across them while searching for a straightforward tutorial also i have to say that one of my favorite video jug videos that's part of an overarching narrative is called how to know the lyrics to baby i love you it's just a music video by a band supposedly called go for it which was originally created for another parody video jug video how to start a boy band not only is the title incredibly awkward being weirdly forced into the how-to title style but despite being about how to know the lyrics the lyrics are not listed either in the video or in the description and just to add another layer of weirdness halfway through the video it just stops like dead ass stops i didn't pause or edit that that's legit how it was uploaded and the bizarre thing is that you can find a proper version of this video on their dailymotion page meaning this wasn't just an intentional [ __ ] post but rather some sort of rendering error that happened in the youtube upload process which begs the question of what oversight did this channel have how did nobody catch this after nearly 10 years and why did nobody seem to care a lot of these videos weren't even tutorials and didn't purport to be for example the aforementioned conspiracy theory video was just a guy unironically talking about how jet fuel can't melt steel beams there was no tutorial or how to it was just a random conspiracy guy talking about controlled demolitions or this video here that i'm not going to name because i don't want to get demonetized but was once again just a guy talking about how it's a phenomenon of science and these are two of their earliest videos beyond the fact that their whole channel was a bizarre mix of genuine tutorial videos and this stuff a lot of their actual tutorials aren't very good like for example this video how to sound like donald duck is meant to be a genuine piece of information about improving your voice work except that the advice is bad and at no point does the expert and actor named rasheen ever actually sound like donald duck once you've mastered the quack move on to some simple phrases side note but rasheen's videos are some of my favorite on video jug and when i first fell in love with this channel in like 2012 they were the ones that really got me hooked there's how to cry on cue where at no point do any tears come out of rasheen's eyes there's how to be impossibly french where rasheen teaches you how to pretend to be french by stringing garlic around your neck and making up a fake french town where your bad french accent is from how to fake a sickness where she suggests carrying a can of vegetable soup wherever you go with your friends in case you want to pretend to throw it up to get out of a social interaction and finally possibly my favorite rasheen video how to act like a vampire with a bit about walking that feels like something out of what we do in the shadows [Music] nadia could never i went on a bit of an internet rabbit hole when i first found this video so many years ago and i have this really distinct memory of tweeting to rasheen and her replying but i can find no evidence of this ever actually having happened and i can barely find anything about her now wherever she is i hope she's doing well and messages me on twitter we don't have time to cover every bizarre video video jug released believe me i desperately want to but i put it into a web tool and it told me it would take a full week without sleeping breaks to watch every video jug video and according to the site's ethos short videos are key for good seo i estimate that this is probably at least four video drugs long by now maybe for a charity stream one day i don't know that being said a lot of these titles are just so choice so i would absolutely recommend choosing at least one off this list that speaks to you and looking it up yourself because no matter which one it is you're gonna find something absolutely incredible there's this one where they just interview random people at comic-con and creep on cosplayers there's how to seduce a celebrity how to butch up your male dog how to manipulate men mind games for bad girls and a whole bunch more beautifully bizarre content for your viewing pleasure but a good thing can't last forever and eventually as views dropped and subscription counts stagnated it was time for video jug to adapt to a changing internet so in 2013 video jug began the process of an intense rebranding fortunately for us it was no less weird so around 2013 another website founded in 2006 began to grow in popularity the site hosted hundreds upon thousands of articles guides lists quizzes celebrity news stolen twitter posts and something vaguely resembling journalism while criticized heavily at the time the site would soon grow into prominence and it wasn't long before the name buzzfeed was on everybody's mind you might have heard of it i don't know one of the keys to buzzfeed's success on top of the sheer volume of viral content they put out and or aggregated without credit or compensation is that much like video jug their channel is clearly divided into a wide variety of nicely categorizable and highly shareable content if you're into food there are entire channels like buzzfeed's tasty that focus entirely on that if you're into diy look no further than nifty you can find sub-channels of buzzfeeds for virtually every topic that could possibly go viral and the massive media network that they own has been a major key to their success well for a channel like video jug that while successful has never once been profitable and seems to be struggling to define itself this kind of formula is extra desirable and video jug likely very quickly wanted in so they stopped focusing on their main channel and instead started up a collection of side channels each focused on their own topic while giving their website a drastic remodel this wasn't the first time video jug had attempted something like this back in 2012 they attempted to start up a channel called video jug gaming to focus specifically on video game related content the channel only ever ended up getting just under 8 000 subs a small fraction of video jugs 700 000 and most of their tutorial content was not only extremely low budget but also just like bizarre for example take this tutorial ostensibly a guide on how to play zelda ocarina of time you'd think it would teach you how to fight or where to progress or useful tips for the game itself but the actual tutorial is literally just a guide of turning on your console selecting the save file and booting it up and the video just ends there before you ever get a chance to actually play any zelda the video has a singular comment incredulously asking whether this is a troll channel once again though it super wasn't this was one of their real ones the rest of the channel is mostly like this with a few guides on evolving specific pokemon somewhere in the mix when video jug decided to set up a series of more specific channels for their network a year or two later video jug gaming was unsurprisingly not resurrected instead video jugs set up a series of network channels focusing on various topics like makeup comedy and diys they initially named these channels along the lines of video jug beauty video jug food and drink and video jug diy gardening but shortly afterwards renamed them to buzzfeedier sounding names like pose scoff deco bliss and my favorite channel quipstar which focused on short form comedy content that could be watched in single sittings wait this feels familiar these channels weren't not popular but they also never really caught on subscriber counts would range from 395 000 on one channel to as little as 100 subscribers on another for example one of their network channels status fear had just under 800 subscribers and despite the fact that all these channels were rebranded to be sleek and buzzfeedy wasn't any less bizarre than its early video jug counterparts statosphere focused on listicles in video forms such as seven facts you need to know about pluto superb five word tombstones or my favorite jared leto's facts and rumors that prove he'll be terrifying which not only aged beautifully but i just love the weirdly clunky way they named it it doesn't even mention the joker or the movie jared leto is just rumored to be terrifying which if you follow hollywood rumors he is a lot of this just genuinely feels like click hole stuff like this one where baby's faces are photoshopped into pizza and it just lists the babies who will be the baby of the year [Music] at the same time again it wasn't like this was pure parody and they leaned fully into it a lot of this stuff was just completely serious and felt like an almost cynical attempt to capture buzzfeed energy making the weird stuff even weirder and this was true for all of their channels for example pose their associated beauty channel was mostly full of very basic hair and makeup tutorials that had a lot of mainstream appeal and then they also had stuff on there like how to read a man by his lounge lizard boots which was again a pseudo comedy video about how you shouldn't trust a man who wears leather boots by the end most of the pose videos were fairly basic and typically featured a couple of distinct personalities but the weird oddly inconsistent content was always lurking just below the surface the bizarre nature of the channel had never stopped video jug from getting moderately popular in the past and these new network channels were no exception based on those ceo linkedin comments this was the first time video jug had ever been popular and they seemed to find a business model that worked for them luckily information on how that happened is pretty readily available because of another side channel video jug networks where they advertised their company and encouraged creators to be a part of it they state that they can connect creators to branded content and help them with audience engagements they proudly boast that they receive a total of over 60 000 likes comments and shares a month which is a number that seems really impressive until you realize that just moments later they said they were basing this off of over 30 channels worth of content even just pausing the clip you can see a screenshot from one of their advertised videos and see that it has only 2 381 views and only 32 likes on top of producing content for video jug's own affiliated channels the network also advertised itself as a sort of early mcn basically they tried to attract independent creators to make sponsored content on their own channels while affiliated with video jug which to be fair has been a successful business model for other networks in the past except some of these affiliated channels are linked on video jug's main page and they're just not very successful their most popular affiliated channel is a magician with 12 000 subscribers who later went on to appear on some morning talk shows and do some pretty cool magic tricks everyone else has fewer subscribers than him including affiliated channels with as few as 100. for example there's a makeup channel on here with a hundred subs that released six videos ever and never uploaded again based on their show reels made to advertise to other creators sponsored videos seem to be typically commissioned in series of six so several of these channels were created for video jug made content once and then never again and they're still listed on video jug networks page also i googled the woman who made these makeup videos and she's a verified instagram influencer now with a website a podcast and 50 000 subscribers she was also highlighted in the bbc and the daily mail it's not that the talent they hired wasn't good it's that they seem to have no idea what to do with it and this is a common thing when it comes to video jug they started out with a lot of money and clearly had access to a lot of talented people one of the earliest videos they uploaded is william shatner showing off a bad celebrity impression they were able to secure interviews with several celebrities at the 2018 choice awards like brenda song shailene woodley and director john chu yet once again this video has an absurdly low view count at only 175 views and the actual talent they hired was once again often made up of some genuinely skilled people remember that guy from earlier who wrote a bunch of video jug videos and very obviously wrote his own wikipedia page yeah he won two baftas and was one of the writers for sean the sheep and both paddington movies the problem wasn't the people video jug had access to the problem was something with video jug itself something just wasn't working the jug wasn't empty the jug had all the right ingredients for a tasty pitcher of content they just didn't know how to mix any of it together so what's wrong here despite or maybe because of the lack of significant material success coming out of video jug networks they were going through a lot of changes behind the scenes in the mid 2010s they initially hired a ceo named nancy krugschank who stepped down to work at telegraph they had originally planned to simply go ceo list but that plan quickly fell through them instead hiring tom laidlaw the ceo from that video before this unfortunately also didn't work out and he was terminated as part of the rebranding they went through an insane number of ceos in a very short amount of time from nancy to tom to their former head of commercial gareth mugford to a woman named nina harrison bell to their current ceo a man named nick mcalpine once again nina harrison bell was the first person ever to make video jug profitable and she only worked the company for less than a year leaving in 2016. but this is where things get very confusing in october 2015 video jug acquired a firm called bladenmore that consults for clients like banks big airlines and uber blademore's founder richard rivlin became video jug networks as chairman video jug is still listed as the parent company of bladen moore in several places which is really interesting to me because although bladenmore isn't a massive company they're clearly much more engaged than video jug and are doing a lot more professional work video jug also created a company called arcuro in late 2016 which they listed on their networks page and in the descriptions of their videos as the company to email for b2b inquiries for video jug the arcuro website no longer exists and the company was formally dissolved in november 2018 but according to their website specialists in three distinct areas arcuro is a group of award-winning filmmakers and digital experts helping our international client base to best use the power of film online video and digital technologies to connect inform and engage with the audiences that matter most whatever the [ __ ] that means the website also states that they specialize in building sustainable businesses which is well you know arcuro's mission statement and everything on their website is exceptionally vague and full of corporate jargon but based on what parts of this web archive from 2017 will still load arcuro did some degree of work helping to produce corporate films for investment firms and medical companies as well as apparently the nhs none of these films will actually load nowadays but googling things like corporate film invest corp pulls up the fact that blade and more also produced a corporate film for them for a period of about two years arcuro bladenmore and video jug were deeply intertwined for instance nina harrison bell the ceo of video jug who brought the company into profitability was the head of bladen moore's video department throughout most of 2015 then worked for video jug throughout 2016 and then after she left became the ceo of arcuro in 2017. she now works for another company that while full of jargon and corporate speak also seems to make films for corporations so i mean good for her a lot of their clients are the same as well phillips is listed as a blade and more client and they were also one of the only listed sponsors of video jug networks also of the few listed clients on arcuro that we can still find on web archive there's a lot of overlap with bladenmore not to mention this shuffling of employees between the three companies isn't limited just to nina nick mcalpine started working for bladenmore in 2005 and was there until 2015. after that he became director of video jug where his linkedin said he worked until july 2017. earlier that year in january of 2017 he became a director executive producer at arcuro a title his linkedin says he still holds to this day so between january and july he was the director of video jug and arkiro at once then in august of 2017 after seemingly leaving video jug he became director executive producer of bladenmore based on a blog post about lockdown this april this is still the case and he currently heads a film team at bladenmore that produces films for its corporate clients if this is confusing to you you're not alone my co-writer emily and i ended up sending an email to nick hoping to disentangle some of whatever is going on between these three companies and ended up receiving a response from nick saying he currently oversees video jug and that he worked with video jug from the very start before youtube was even owned by google so he may have been working with video jugg and blade and more at the same time starting as far back as 2006 and still is we sent two follow-up emails explaining what this channel is and a few other questions about what video jug's deal was but as of now we haven't gotten anything back i want to remind everyone once again since a lot of these videos from bladenmore look extremely sleek in corporate that they came from the same people who produced how to clown about whilst being pursued how to intimidate the opposition and how to know the lyrics to baby i love you to further add to the confusion although video jugs seems to have acquired this very serious media company in 2015 and constantly passed its employees back and forth between the three companies for several years and although video jug is listed as blade and moore's parent company in multiple places this no longer seems to be the case the public records for things like acquisitions are all available for video jug online and apparently they went through some kind of downstream merger in 2017 and bladen moore now controls video jug a venture capital group called mc50 bought a whole bunch of video jug shares in 2016 and a year later bladen moore bought them back and are now video jugs owners this is further confirmed by the brief email exchange we had with nick in which he says he's currently video jug's director and oversees it on behalf of its current owner bladen moore we also looked further into the financial records available for video jug because although they don't seem to like actually do anything anymore they technically still exist and are registered as an active company we also googled the office address on video jug's linkedin page and it leads back to the blademore office they currently are listed as having an average of zero employees 14 000 pounds in current assets and 3.9 million pounds in liabilities meaning they're worth around negative 4 million in money right now their fixed assets meaning stuff like equipment and studio space also went down by 80 000 between this year and last year which means they seem to be essentially just sitting around losing money for blademoor once again we emailed nick to ask if video jug is actually even still doing anything anymore but have yet to hear back as far as we know video jug just exists solely as a ghost jug dead but still around haunting the place looking back on video jug it's hard to see why this company is even worth remembering or what its purpose was to begin with how can a company with such a simple business plan as make how-to videos turn into this and what was it that made them die out so harshly the easiest thing to blame is how the foundation of youtube itself has changed as youtube developed and changed over time so did its algorithms and its culture this is evidenced by the fact that the early video jug network showreel straight up told people that most of their traffic came from people who were searching for them that's great if you're working with an algorithm that prioritizes short videos but as we now know it super does not as mentioned before video jug boasted about the importance of short form video something that would become discouraged by youtube's changed algorithm which promotes long-form videos more in recommendations and search results i mean this video alone is probably gonna turn out to be at least nine video jugs or four quivies long for a company dedicated almost entirely to seo that had to be a significant wound i think the general culture shift of youtube was also a pretty big factor as the site became more and more mainstream the prominence of youtube personalities grew more and more gone were the days when most people would mostly just discover videos by googling now they wanted to follow individual creators not just because they want tips but because they enjoy the people on camera this is going to be a significant blow to video jug because again searches are where most of their traffic came from this is really evident with the popularity of beauty bloggers which would you rather watch for makeup advice some random how-to video made by someone you're not sure you can trust from a generic sounding company or a video made by a creator you know and find enjoyable and you can trust to provide entertaining content and just look at me i don't call my channel sociological media criticism i call it sarah's ed because sarah's ed is me so on the connecting with people side of things video jug is naturally going to fail because a lot of being a successful youtuber these days and having people come back to your channel is making people like not only your content but like you as a person and although late video jug made some efforts with hiring recurring personalities for their network channels it was really just too little too late and for people who are browsing the internet looking for vaguely bizarre and eye-catching instructional content the truth is they're not gonna be looking for something like video jug with five minute crafts being one of the most successful channels of all time the rise of content farms has definitely put a dent in the success of more straightforward tutorial channels channels like five-minute crafts are bright and colorful appealing to kids often cycle through the same content over and over again meaning they take very little time and effort to make and as demonstrated by youtube personalities like ann reardon often literally fake their tutorials because they produce so much content that very few people will ever actually try out everything they make to see if any of it actually works that means as unfortunate as it is content farms like 5-minute crafts and blossom can produce more visually appealing tutorials with less time money and effort the rise of content farms has had a negative effect on all kinds of creators and producers there's been a lot of talk about how independent cooking channels get forced out of youtube because of recipes that don't even work but can get way more views with way less effort but i think this is especially the case for things like video jug's now defunct diy channel there's no one to connect to so people aren't going to repeatedly come back to this channel there are tons of reasons the algorithm isn't going to like video jugs so no one is going to come across it organically or in their recommendations either that means at best they're going to have people finding them through one-time searches for one very specific need and that's just not enough to keep people hooked this is true not just for video jug but for the culture of how-to videos in general i mean it's telling that right now the most popular ostensible how-to channel is a guy who makes fake tutorial videos where he just smashes eggs around even if you're doing everything right the way youtube is currently structured just isn't very friendly to regular short uploads that aren't from personalities you can really connect to for example the most popular actual how-to channel right now was called howcast with 8.1 million subscribers yet despite those massive numbers and regular continual uploads to this day they're still not pulling very big numbers getting only a few thousand views per video on average all their heaviest hitting videos came out somewhere between 2010 and 2013 and they don't have a single video in their top 200 uploads that came out less than five years ago howcast has its fair share of strange and awkward videos as well like this video about how to kiss like twilight but by and large the channel seems much more professional and consistent and the videos are shot well and seem fairly high quality they're still really not doing great all this to say you can do everything right as a current how-to channel and still fail because of the way youtube culture is nowadays even howtobasic who again is a parody youtuber making fun of these channels isn't doing as well as he used to i mean he's still pulling a million or more views per video that's a lot but all his really viral content is several years old and it's been a while since the channel really struck gold i think this is in part because the joke relies on recognizing the structure of a how-to video the first few seconds are designed to look like an old video jug or how-cast video which makes it funny when you recognize the pattern and it suddenly turns into eggs that joke really only works if you know what a high budget how-to video is supposed to look like so it's no surprise that how-to basics heyday was around the same time that most real tutorial channels were at their most popular though those comparisons would imply that video jug was running perfectly fine up until they went defunct as you can tell by their large amounts of dislikes and widely varying view counts bad signs were there from the start the real problem seems to be the company's lack of quality control video jugs seemed to have a substantial identity crisis did it exist as a helpful informational provider or as a comedy shitpost channel both of these have potential for an audience but they can't earnestly co-exist people who want to see wacky comedy videos aren't going to subscribe for boring education videos and people who want to see pure educational material aren't going to appreciate the more surreal and humorous videos that would also be uploaded this isn't helped by the standardization of the channel titles because of the way video jug operated almost all of its content followed the formula of how to blank this seems simple enough but it also means there's not much to determine if the video is meant to be serious or if it's meant to be funny unless the title is also hilariously absurd their upload rate couldn't have helped things either video jugs seemed to prioritize quantity over quality which would make sense when you're focusing primarily on seo the more things you make the more likely people will find you via search engine but once again this leads to a massive bulk of content most of it either not good or just not indistinguishable from one another there are five videos just on how to mess with telemarketers you can't make over 125 000 videos without double dipping sure but at a certain point you start to dilute the market with your own content and going back to the subscriber model it keeps people from wanting to follow video jug directly with people primarily paying attention to their subscription feeds nowadays do you really want to subscribe to a channel that uploads videos in bursts of dozens most of which are videos you won't even watch because well you don't need to learn about how to send a wedding invitation to a male military officer well why not follow the video jug's site then after all it's clear that that's where the majority of their attention went to and clearly what they wanted people to see and to that there's no easy answer except to say that websites aren't what they used to be youtube won the video market and a lot of people don't like to watch videos on sites that aren't youtube for something as expensive as video hosting you need a wide amount of traffic to continue being profitable and i can't imagine that many people were going to videojug.com relative to the amount of people who watched them on youtube [Music] video jug is fascinating because it feels like such a time capsule of an era of the internet that doesn't exist anymore it's this strange surreal mess of a channel with more content than anyone could ever reasonably expect to watch it's a lesson about how a company can stray so far away from its original intention in pursuit of popularity and how that ultimately led to their downfall i've always been a fan of weird content online whether it's this guy who's made thousands of videos imitating pop culture content with baffling titles or a family band that makes really awkward viral songs but one thing that's particularly interesting about the brand of weirdness at video jug is how entrenched it is in this very formal how-to framework videos about stalking around and hissing to be more like a vampire co-exist with things like blade and more's deeply commercial energy and high budget content in a way that's incredibly fascinating to me the mix of earnest creativity and corporate cynicism video jug is both what made me love it and very likely a large part of what destroyed them that's not even mentioning how much of their work is just misguided talent like for every video made by an actual expert or every video made by a funny comedian there's one that blurs the line between both solely because of the low quality of the presenters in the production i feel like nowadays even a lot of weird content is polished and consistent in its weirdness that isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're in the mood for some strange offbeat sketch comedy or a guy throwing eggs at the wall it's generally a good thing to know you're gonna get the exact brand of oddity you expect and it's the reason these things are able to be relatively successful at the same time there's something unique about the feeling of unpredictability you get from the kind of raw unfiltered often accidental peculiarity that video jug has to offer and as much as it's fun to watch and make fun of there's something kind of delightful about that it makes the process of watching a video jug video feel like getting a prize from a cereal box you're not sure what you're gonna get when you click on it will it be something low-key and normal will you get something wild and strange or will you get something that's just downright bad i mentioned earlier a list of video jug videos that we've discovered that are particularly funny or strange but there's over 150 hours worth of content currently on that channel and there are bound to be some fantastic videos we haven't even discovered yet especially taking into account how many side channels the network boasted i would highly encourage everyone to check the channel out and see if you can find one for yourself that's truly special or bizarre and if you do please tweet them at me i want to see all of it we've talked about a channel that ended up being more bizarre entertainment than education but if you are looking to learn something real and cool especially given how hard it is to wade through so much content to get to the good stuff i can't recommend curiosity stream and nebula enough curiosity stream my sponsor for this video is a really fantastic streaming service that offers thousands of really interesting and informative documentaries on a broad range of subjects like science nature and technology and i find myself always learning something new on there curiosity stream has also partnered with nebula in order to help creators like me make some really cool content nebula is a collaborative streaming platform between me and tons of other creators like tierzoo lindsay ellis legaleagle and many more it's a really great platform for educational and informative content especially content that isn't best suited for youtube because of copyright or monetization issues for example i was able to make a video called debater theater specifically for nebula and it's something i'm really proud of in debater theater i talk about how to better use arguments to persuade others with lots of cool examples like how people use debating skills in movies the news and even award acceptance speeches it was a really fun video to do and as someone who used to teach debate to a lot of novices at university these kinds of tools are a really fun way to get better at persuasiveness and critical thinking and how to notice when other people are trying to use those same tricks on you and the best part is signing up for curiosity stream with my code also includes full unlimited access to nebula it's the only place where you can watch debater theater and lots of other cool original content for nebula just head to curiositystream.com sarah zedd and use my code sarahzed at sign up that's curiositystream sarahzed i can't stress enough how grateful i am to have a platform like nebula where educational creators can make this kind of content and it's great to be a part of it [Music] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] on top of a big thank you to all my patrons i would like to specially thank kim weston and yehuda katz for joining my 20 plus tier welcome

Channel: Sarah Z

Views: 421,653

Rating: 4.953433 out of 5

Keywords: sarah z, video essay, video essayist, breadtube, twitter, tumblr, internet history, how to, tutorial, 5 minute crafts, howcast, videojug, expertvillage, h3h3, lefttube, philosophy tube, youtube, youtube culture, weird internet, reddit, youtuber, howtobasic

Id: d-Rw6-TAhHU

Length: 47min 10sec (2830 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020