Leaving the YouTube Bubble

hey guy lily sings talk-show is bad the jokes aren't funny but her delivery makes him even worse what did the rock say to the flower okay bloomer skinny jeans favorite jeans mom jeans sounds like a dope genuine zon the segment seemed half-baked and are often more confusing than they are funny I'm going to read you an old-school definition okay okay and a new school different definition of popular slang terms and it's your job to guess the word and write it down as quick as you can on the straight of homework that's right and the entire show is set within the parameters of a dated format that they've made no attempt to try and modernize it's a train wreck that I just can't bring myself to look away from but it's also what I'm not totally surprised by I knew almost immediately that this was gonna be bad I think it was a girl is getting her own NBC late-night [ __ ] out there that's when I did because I've been familiar with Lily and her content for a long time and Lilly Singh is not a comedian let me explain Lily is wildly successful she has almost 15 million YouTube subscribers she's been on Forbes top 10 list she has her own company she wrote a book and she is the first woman of color to host her own network late-night show which is fantastic that's great that we're making those kinds of strides better late than never I just wish she was good at it so I didn't have to make this video so yeah I've been following the saga as closely as I have let me bring you up to speed September 16th pilot comes out already a disaster I'm very confident and proud of our first episode I mean of all that so there were several reasons why Lily was immediately met with backlash but more than anything else it was because she seemed determined to try and figure out how many ways she could retell the same Jo monologue about how she's not a white man song about how she's not a white man sketch about how she's not a white man sketch about how she's not a white man sketch about how she's not oh I'm starting to think that Lily might not be no I understand that as a straight white man myself it's not really my place to be saying these things and if I was the only one critiquing her in this way then the problem would lie more with me than it did with Lily however this sentiment isn't so much coming for me as it is just me echoing what I've seen from top comments on these videos from women from people of color so don't take my word for it take it from them my stand point is simply from a comedic angle using the same joke over and over again shows a lack of creativity this is the same reason a lot of people tend to not like Amy Schumer because there's very little variety in her material and it gets stale quickly luckily the other reason people don't like her is because she's also a notorious joke thief so as long as Lily doesn't oh but but moving on past the show's rocky start it did seem like after a while some things did start to change though not necessarily for the better for one it seemed like NBC might have stepped in with some notes specifically about how the audience isn't laughing enough because all of a sudden the monologues went from sounding like this to this that sometimes it gets stuck in my butt crack I swear it sounds like they're either pumping in fake laughs during post-production or they started instructing the audience to make more noise even if it wasn't warranted this actually leads to one of my many fundamental problems with the show the audience it is so awkward to watch any of the studio segments which by the way is most of the show because the crowd goes apeshit for every word that she says cuz I remember the first time I came out to my friends as a vegetarian [Applause] it's so distracting because there's almost nothing authentic about these reactions sometimes they're not even just laughing at the jokes they're laughing at the setups for the jokes but I'm freezing what are you laughing at she hasn't said the funny part yet the only vegetable I would ever eat is maybe a tomato okay if that tomato was smashed up and spread on some bread it may be a little cheese on there you're just laughing the whole time she's talking I get why they're probably directing the crowd to amp it up for the camera for one most of the jokes just aren't that good so if they're only gonna laugh at things that are actually funny it would be uncomfortably silent most at the time but also have you ever watched any other talk show not just late-night shows Ellen Jerry Springer [ __ ] dr. Phil there's hundreds of people in these rooms for some reason I will assume budgetary reasons NBC decided they only needed like 25 people for this show at that point you're almost better off having no audience because then there'd be no expectation for audible laughter but instead they have to make up for how small the crowd is by instructing them to be unnaturally over the top with their reactions and it's weird as hell nowadays you just know he's a creep if he's still spending time and AOL challenge there's times the words not the crowd and instead the editing team that did a terrible job of trying to sneak fake laughs into the show without it being obvious take this clip for example where they reuse the same sound twice an appropriate response would be to laugh or to comment haha an inappropriate response would be to slide into my DMS and comment kind of funny could be hotter it's such a distinct laugh how did you think this would fly under the radar it's so egregiously bad in addition to these problems with the audience the show itself is so overly scripted that it leaves no room for authenticity the core of this show should be the celebrity interviews it should be nearly impossible to mess these up and yet they did because the questions are so meticulously planned out and tightly structured that there's no room for banter or genuine moment everything Lily says in response to the guests leads so carefully into the next pre-planned question that it's just not fun to walk you can see it on the guests faces they're not having a good time though in Lily's defense this is generally a problem with most late-night talk show the celebrities are always on these shows to promote something so it's inevitable that the conversation will be led there but at least with other shows like Conan or Seth Meyers even Jimmy Fallon it's a little bit more conversational it feels like maybe they're following bullet points rather than like a verbatim script and the appeal of these late-night talk shows is to see celebrities you like in like a natural habitat where they're just being themselves telling a story whatever it is not doing some poorly written bit that her writing stack came up with a perfect example of what I'm talking about was this episode with Jenny slate and Kathryn Hahn and the interview segment was actually great Jenny slate is very funny and she was able to just tell a story and Lily didn't interrupt too much it was fun I would have liked to see ten more minutes of this but instead they come back from commercials and do this almost 7 minute long game I guess where they're not really talking to each other anymore it's just Lily holding up pictures and reading some dumb joke off cue cards and then they're just like oh I don't understand why you can't just talk to them for 15 minutes why can't that be what this show is you're three comedians right so just be funny talk to each other be natural it'll be funny why does every segment of the show have to rely on some lazily written script the absolute worst case of a segment being too scripted was this Halloween phone call with Hassan Minaj as you can see she's dressed up like him and as you can probably guess she's going to call him we should give him a call yeah she has no idea okay this is all scripted Lily Lily stop and not only is it all scripted but the main joke of the script is that she's just repeating everything he says like how a child does to annoy their siblings this is a really awesome joke because I am NOT wouldn't this have been better if you I don't know actually surprised him wouldn't that have been more entertaining why even do a segment like this if you know it has to be a pre-recorded video where the punchlines were written for children oh hey a transition remember earlier when I said Lilly Singh is into comedian this is what I'm talking about going through her most viewed YouTube videos you start to understand why so many of the jokes on her show seem to be targeted at children I think we can make this more relatable with the caption because she's always targeted her jokes at children like she used to make sketches about parents and school and parents and school she carved a niche for herself on YouTube by making edgy humor for children which is okay I guess to do on the Internet if that's your thing but now she's hosting a talk show that comes on at 1:35 in the morning I just don't get it this is why I will never understand why a youtuber a successful youtuber would want to go from a job where you can essentially do whatever you want you're beholden to nobody you can make the type of content you want to make to go from that to network television the strictest creative medium that there is Wow and if you're Lilly why stray so far away from the content you've proven you're capable of making you used to do surface level observational humor for children and now you're hosting a talk show it just doesn't make sense it seems like she set herself up to fail why did she think she could do this oh I know why it's because youtubers think they can do anything [Music] if I had to choose one job where the people who do the job have the biggest ego in the world it would without a doubt be youtubers and I'm including myself in this I'm guilty of this too there is perhaps no greater feeling for a youtuber than to upload a video see that it's doing well scroll through a bunch of comments that are mostly positive maybe even get a random text from another youtuber whose opinion you respect and he says great video and you're like thanks Wow and it goes straight to your head and you feel like the coolest funniest smartest person on earth and it's a great feeling it really is but it also blinds you to reality you're never as good as the overly positive comments will make you seem and you're never as bad as the negative comments will make you seem but it's important not to absorb that and let that influence how you feel about yourself even if it's good feedback it's important not to take that on and just have an ego that goes through the roof I imagine this is probably what Lilly Singh experienced for a long time for several years she made videos that were mostly very positively received by a lot of people she was able to read thousands of comments from child fans who don't know what comedy is yet but she could look at them and say wow I'm so talented and funny people love me I could do anything and now she's left the comfort of that you to bubble and thrown herself to the wolves and I think maybe for the first time it's suddenly hitting her oh my god maybe I'm not as funny as I thought I was her entire career she's had millions of people tell her Lilly you're so funny you're perfect and I think there's a chance it boosted her confidence a little bit too much I think ego management is something that a lot of youtubers struggle with it's an important part of the job filtering through large amounts of excessively positive comments without letting it go to your head I know for me it's a bit of a cycle like generally my best creative efforts come when I'm a little down on myself like maybe my last video didn't do very well or I just don't feel very funny right now so suddenly I I have an urge to prove to people know I am funny so I work even harder I'm inspired to stay up all night editing something and often time that extra effort leads to a video that is well received and I get all that great positive feedback again and I start to buy into it and feel really good about myself and then I suddenly lose that desire to work as hard and I just play video games for like four days straight until I feel like [ __ ] about myself again and the cycle continues so that's how my ego usually manifests itself and I think for a lot of youtubers it's a similar thing where at the height of their ego are at their worst while simultaneously feeling invincible it's why Logan Paul during the peak of his relevance probably thought I could never [ __ ] up and then he did [ __ ] up and it came as a huge shock to him I think there was just no way that YouTube was going to prepare Lilly for the storm of hatred she's been receiving and now she's in self-defense mode Lilly strikes me as a kind of person who when her abilities are questioned resorts to bragging about her accomplishments to validate herself to her naysayers don't believe me here's a compilation of that I always thought that by 30 I would be married with a few kids and be living in a mansion wouldn't you getting a mansion will be the easiest thing on that list I actually just changed my Instagram handle to act Lilly that's right just the way I'm famous Maya is invite-only which means everyone on it is either a celebrity or an insanely beautiful person I was invited and in the last decade I've gained about 15 million subscribers I've written a book as well you've written many I've written a book I know it's hard writing book is very hard he can leave his family and come live with me at my house I have a lot of money no other talk show host or comedian would even think about talking like this because it comes off as so pompous it turns people against you can you imagine Conan coming out and doing a monologue like guys tonight I just want to talk a little bit about how rich I am and I'm better than you and I'm very tall and I'm rich I'll be crying when I Drive him away from his parents house in my test well no one wants to hear people brag about how much money they make there's nothing comedic or relatable about that but Lilly's facing more backlash right now than she ever has so her instinct is to combat that by saying things like guys I'm actually pretty successful and this shows really good few shows have 100% fresh ratings from critics Kenny I don't know if you saw but Emily you know Emily over at cosmopolitan she said this shows actually pretty good and so I don't know why you don't like it I mean we all know that ten critic ratings are more important than over a thousand user ratings that say the total opposite also [ __ ] you here's another myth lanius gripe I have about her show she has a segment called gift baskets where she basically takes a few people who have messed up in some way and she fills a basket for them with a bunch of bad jokes and it's a pretty good idea for a segment but I realized after watching them all how often the punchline is just penis small the Golden Snitch is from a game in Harry Potter and they're the smallest balls in the game I got the travel size because I can't imagine your tiny penis would need any more than that bears the penis you have a team of professional writers and this is the best they could come up with or here's another joke I really enjoyed about producer Todd Phillips she spitefully points out that the first movie he ever directed has a bad rotten tomatos score I found this to be especially ironic given that the movie she's calling out has a higher audience rating than her own show now that's funny I will say part of me empathizes with her she's obviously trying very hard to make this work I think she's just in over her head she posted a blog recently going through a day in the life as a head of a talk show and oh my god I got stressed just watching it she those are the details of a standard like 1400 or workday where she's filming two shows going through constant makeup and wardrobe changes she's filming other bits for the show she's managing a huge staff of people that are all looking to her for direction and it's clearly starting to wear on her a big part of this if I'm just kinda with all of you if this is a lot it's like a lot to learn I'm always tired everything I experienced previously in my life I feel like I experienced an out tenfold you know before there was three people making videos about me online now there's a hundred people making because about me online that are mean I kind of feel like at this point maybe she's no longer in denial about the show and she knows that it's just not very good but also she's trapped in it we're gonna do this we're committed to this this show needs big sweeping changes in order for it to get better but there's no time to do that because they're already in the middle of making like 90 episodes so if it's new writers that they need or a bigger studio that they need they can't really stop and do anything about that right now because they're too busy drowning trying to make the best of what they have it's also a case where they have shows that are airing in like December in January that they filmed in like August so even if they are trying to adapt this show they can't retroactively lis change something that's already been written in film except by adding more laughs this is why patience is so important when it comes to late-night talk shows very rarely are they a finished product overnight I remember when Seth Meyers started his show he did what every other late-night show host did and he came out and he delivered a monologue and it was kind of weird because everyone knew him from this and now he's doing this and he just wasn't very good at this and so you know what they did they stopped doing that they adapted the show they put him back behind a desk they used graphics to enhance his punchlines and now it's much more comfortable to watch because they tailored the show to fit the strengths of the person hosting and this is what desperately needs to happen to a little late with Lilly Singh right now she's just doing a condensed version of every other late-night show so don't do that change the format make it your own the monologues are not her strengths which makes sense because she doesn't have a stand-up background so it's not inconceivable that she wouldn't be natural in this setting but if that's the case then don't do a traditional monologue maybe the interviews could be longer and a little bit looser so it doesn't feel like Mindy Kaling is being held hostage also while I do respect her decision not to talk about politics on her show avoiding current events all together kind of renders the show pointless like whether or not you agree with the politics of someone like Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert there's still a reason for people that watch these shows because they're covering topics that are relevant to millions of people Lilly Singh is doing a five-minute monologues about how her hair is long how do you expect people to tune in and care about that I mean clearly they don't no one is watching the show one of the only times I've ever seen her trying to do something topical was when they referenced the okay boomer meme but the entire segment was literally just puns what did the guy say to his questionable medical test results okay tumor team of professional writers two and a half minutes of pun and to make matters even worse it didn't even do well keep in mind we're talking about someone who has 15 million YouTube subscribers and most of the clips on our shows channel don't even have a hundred thousand views universally beloved actor Nick Offerman has a secret Talent fourteen thousand view Nick Offerman two weeks ago on hot ones a YouTube show 4 million views it's almost like you don't need to be on network television to produce high quality content that a lot of people will see and YouTube is a totally valid platform where you can build a loyal audience of supportive followers instead of being exposed to the inevitable criticism of a broad mainstream audience it's almost like that because it is like originally I was gonna end the video there but there's one more thing I want to talk about that I think does a good job of summarizing both the points I was trying to make with this video the most frustrating thing about Lilly and what I think will ultimately lead to the downfall of her show is that she cannot handle criticism since her show has started there have been a ton of people providing rational criticism constructive criticism that she just brushes off as hey dozens of YouTube videos critiquing her show explaining not just what's wrong with it but also how it can be improved and her response is imagine posting mean videos to YouTube criticism is not mean it's not mean to say hey I think you could be better if you did this that's helpful that's how you improve yes plenty of the comments she's receiving are not helpful at all there are people just saying you know women aren't funny they're saying racist [ __ ] and that's fine to ignore all that because those people are wrong but you're lumping those kinds of comments in with useful criticism and just ignoring all of it what I've done here is I have gathered some positive comments the reviews are from places like the Atlantic variety CNN decider Cosmopolitan deadline whereas before there were negative reviews from like angry virgins yep that's right if you dare dislike the great Lilly Singh then you're just an angry verge the 3,000 or so ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB were written by people who've never had sex before and that's why they're so mad look Lily I understand it doesn't feel good to receive negative feedback obviously you would prefer to just have people tell you you're great and you're funny and everything's perfect if it's true but if there are areas where you can improve and you're not gonna be honest enough with yourself to recognize that you at least need the people around you to be blunt and tell you how you can get better otherwise you want and it's concerning because in that same vlog you said this everybody is way too nice to mean they never want to call me out about anything okay it's one thing to ignore comments on the Internet that's fair but even your staff your writers your producers none of them are calling you out on anything well that's a recipe for disaster sure maybe that helps spare your feelings in the short term but in the long term it's gonna be the reason your show fails because you're too stubborn to adapt Lily thinks that because she used to be successful on YouTube I'll remind you by making content for children that she knows better than everyone else and she will not value your opinion unless you're saying something nice about her weird why does that sound so familiar oh that's right okay well good luck with your show Lily sorry for being mean I wanna give a huge shout out to today's sponsor ray Khan for sponsoring this video guys are you tired of this me too which is why I'm glad I started using ray cons e 25 wireless earbuds they sound great they feel good in my ear and they're stylish as hell they're so discreet I bet you didn't even notice I've been wearing them in this entire video please don't rewind and check just believe one reason I find myself using these earphones over the other headphones I have is because I like to listen to music as I fall asleep and as you can probably imagine it's super uncomfortable to have giant bulky headphones on your head while you're trying to lay on a pillow so popping these in my ears sends me right to sleep every night thanks ray Khan they're also great for working out which is something I did once because there's no dangling wires and they feel super snug in your ear not only do ray con earbuds sound as good as other premium brands but they also start at about how the price and in addition to that they've got a bunch of great Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals going on this weekend so check that out click a link in the description they come in a bunch of different styles and colors and they currently have 14 thousand five-star reviews so how about that get yourself a parrot by raking calms that's drew gooden it's a great way to get a cool pair of headphones and also support my channel in the process thank you to Ray Hunt for sponsoring this video thank you guys so much for watching it and remember if you ever criticize someone you will go to jail

Channel: undefined

Views: 9,393,222

Rating: 4.9328265 out of 5

Keywords: drew gooden, comedy, commentary, reaction, vine, drew gooden vine, road work ahead guy, parody, rant, cringe, lilly singh, lilly singh talk show, late night cringe, lilly singh cancelled, jimmy fallon, seth meyers, conan

Id: lex6USTugUU

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Who now?

[u/PyrotechnicTurtle]

Lily Singh has the same style of humour as shitty vinestars like Lele Pons and "generic hot tween boy #547 on vine", which I really do not find funny at all. It's not a good fit for youtube, but it's an even worse fit for late night tv where the audience isn't 13 or idiots. (I got familiar with Lily's work a few years back trying to impress a shitty, dumb ex)

[u/[deleted]]

I join reddit today. Finding random things. Like this video. Never heard of her or even knew she had a show. She seems very unfunny.

[u/harry-balzac]

15 minutes are over

[u/TheRealMeatMan]

R/cringe was banning all posts of her and critical comments when she first aired it was a “hmmm” moment for me.

[u/HyssopMP]

Hey guy :)

[u/BabyFire]

This dude makes pretty good videos! I watched this, then a recent one he made about 1950s how-to videos. Thanks for the introduction to a new channel to watch!

[u/spekawhner]

This was a great watch! Thanks for sharing :)

[u/MattIsWhack]

Her style of humor reminds me of Raven Symone's. The same over the top bombastic stuff she used to do on That's So Raven. I don't know if that same style of humor fits a talk show setting but it can definitely fit a sitcom setting, and as evidenced, her scripted videos on YouTube. I'm more surprised NBC execs made this decision knowing full well what works and what doesn't. I would even think it's intentional sabotage by the mainstream media of a YouTube star just to prove once again that YouTube stars are talentless hacks, which we all know mainstream media loves to do.