MY HISTORY WITH YOUTUBE
2006-2007 Golden Era
So I've been on YouTube since 2006. Now granted I wasn't old enough to understand how to make videos nor did I have an account during the time, but I still watched videos. The logo itself says it all on why I liked YouTube. People were able to make their own content & doing the things they want to do for people to enjoy. Now granted there were still rules on the site people had to abide by. But everything was still fine with many people creating original content. There was a wide variety of videos for you to watch with memorable videos and channels:
-AMVs
-YouTube Poops
-Every CDI Game -Daft Hands
-Numa Numa
-Daft Hands
-Whun Thowzand
-30 Seconds Long
-Who's That Pokemon (It's Pikachu)
-Yugioh Abridged
-Lazer Collection
-They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard
-I've Got a Jar of Dirt
-Harry Potter Puppet Pals
(The List Goes on)
In addition to that, YouTube also had a great layout. The overall layout was simpler to use. The ratings system was based on stars rather than thumbs up or thumbs down.
You could also create video responses on another channel's video based & make backgrounds for you channel.
On top of that, the customer service was actually helpful. It wasn't automated & there were actual people helping you. If there was any kind of issue or dispute, the people on the other side would actually look into it.
2008-2009 The Turning Point Era
So 2008-2009, things were still decent, but you started noticing videos becoming less & less in quality. Don't get me wrong, you still had a variety of good videos, many coming from newgrounds:
-Egoraptor's Awesome Series
-DBZ Abridged
-Weird Al
-Nostalgia Critic
-Bowser Ignorance is Bliss
-Brawl Taunts
-Rick Rolling
But you also started noticing some bad ones as well:
-Fred
-Annoying Orange
-Jersey Shore
-MTV-related things
2010-2012 The Last Decent Era
So this was probably the last decent era YouTube had while at the same time the start of its downfall, mainly due to lack of creativity. There started becoming a large abundance of these types of videos:
PewDiePie: Right off the back, I never thought PewDiePie was funny. That said, I'll say I never cared for PewDiePie. The thing with this is not the person himself, but what it created. Multiple people tried imitating this humor, being random for the sake of random without any punchline behind it.
Music Record Labels: So let's address the elephant in the room known as Justin Bieber. Growing up in high school during this time was abysmal for me & this was the starting reason why. We all remember "Baby" back in 2010 when it first came out & how bad it was. Well unfortunately, Bieber managed to pick up the Disney Channel preteen crowd as a cult following. (The Beliebers) I could never get away from constantly having to hear about Bieber, One Direction, Taylor Swift, (Still don't like her) Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Ke$ha, the list goes on, & people would never shut up about them. To add to that, there was also a trend happening when it came to music producers bringing in preteens with insane overuse of autotune:
-Rebecca Black with "Friday"
-Jenna Rose with "My Jeans & OMG"
-Willo Smith "I Whip my Hair Back and Forth"
-Devin Fox "Hook on You"
-Double Take "Hot Problem"
-Nicole Westbrook "It's Thanksgiving"
The problem with all of this is you could never get away from it whether it be from people or YouTube's algorithm putting in my recommended. The music producers on YouTube had a large amount of power. (More on that later.)
- Rant, Drama, & Critic Channels
So as I mentioned earlier, a lot of those names had a lot of hate. But this was only a fraction of the next trend of Drama & Rant Videos. Now granted there were channels I looked up to at that time, like MrRepzion, Amazing Athiest, OutbackZack, Blood etc. But during this time, everyone started trying to make their own channels of their own.
- Reactions Videos
So all of us probably know reactions videos from mainly the Fine Bros. & people thought they invented those. But the thing is these videos were created long before them. They just made them popular. Now I have no problem with reactions videos if they're actually genuine reactions. But the problem was many of these "reactions," were incredibly scripted & fake & were only made to make themselves seem funny. This was incredibly noticeable in Summer of 2012 when Slenderman, a supposedly scary game, came out. Many people recorded themselves playing it & had these incredibly fake reactions.
- (And the largest one) Gaming Channels
Now gaming videos were nothing new to YouTube. There were people, such as DarkSydePhil (Oh god I mentioned the Taboo name. Right off the bat I'll say I don't hate the guy.), who practically pioneered video game playthroughs with just a normal camcorder. The problem was around the late 2011 time, people started finding out they could make money from playing video games & we had an over-saturation of video game channels. To top it all off, most of them suffered from the same problem as the Reactions videos where there were so many scripted events & attempts in the videos to try & make themselves seem funny. This took away from the gameplay experience because most of these channels were focusing too much on the comedy. (Again, like Slenderman) This was noticeable with channels like Smosh, who had never had a gaming channel until that time & always made skits & GameGrumps (And I'll be honest, I honestly could care less about either.) What's more, you had moments at these gaming conventions like E3 where you had these companies hire these guys to talk play the game live & commentate over them. But the problem was they were trying to focus more on their own comedy rather than the game.
So I'm not saying this era was all bad because it did have memorable videos:
-Nyan Cats
-Guile Theme Goes with Everything
-The He Man Song (You know what I mean)
-Double Rainbow
But the large abundance of those videos drowned out many of the creative videos.
2013-Present The Dark Era
So YouTube is now currently in a horrible age to exist, not because of the videos, though there is still over-saturation of certain kinds, but because of the multiple controversies & questionable decisions:
2013
Right off the bat the first thing that happened was Youtube completely dropped the "Broadcast Yourself," slogan. That alone should tell you its priorities.
We also had the problems of YouTube's layout change (again). YouTube wanted to make a mobile version of its platform. The problem was, rather than having its own separate thing, they made it so YouTube on all platforms had the same layout. The problem was it took so much creative things. You could no longer create your own custom background and the background you're given was as bland as a college textbook. The only creative thing they allowed you to do on your channel was upload a small banner at the top of your page.
Another issue was the YouTube Apocalypse, not to be confused with the Adpocalypse. YouTube lost a lawsuit due to copyright controversies. What happened in late 2013 was YouTube, with out notifying anyone, decided to implement its own Content ID system run by bots to notify if a song was being used without permission in a video. The problem is the system didn't take into account the Fair Use policy. So many people who had background music in their videos were getting videos flagged & taken down. On top of that, many people who were receiving revenue from videos were losing revenue because their videos were being demonetized. This was incredibly bad for the many people in the gaming area because the system would automatically detect if music was being used & even if it was only a snippet, the video would be flagged & the revenue would be going to the music record label, not even the game publishers, the music record label. The worst part was most of the companies it said was flagging the videos were never flagging them, so the system automatically flagged them under their name. Even bigger channels like Angry Joe, Nostalgia Critic & others were affected by this change.
2015-2016
YouTube's algorithm began to change. YouTube wanted to promote more of its most popular channels. The problem was there were channels who were getting little to no attention anymore. So if you ever wanted to search for something, it only takes into account the most popular about that, even if its not from their channel itself. So there were channels with negative videos made about them & the negative videos were being promoted more than the actual channels. In addition, these channels were also getting smaller pay cuts compared to the larger ones.
2017
Where do I begin? Let's start off with YouTube TV. YouTube decided it wanted to be more like TV & have these networks like they do on TV with commercial breaks, scheduled times, etc. The first problem with this was many people went to YouTube to avoid things like this. Most of us didn't want to deal with all the TV nonsense & this was a place where we could avoid it. The second problem is YouTube's horrible algorithm. If you typed in anything news-related that's about a certain story, it would automatically view networks like MSNBC, CNN, etc. At the same time, they were also not viewing any of the other channels. I was tired of seeing news about Russia, so I wanted to go to other channels to get my stories. If I wanted to see those other channels, jumping through hoops is an understatement of how I had to find those channels. YouTube has begun focusing more on the corporate sides of things.
Then we had Adpocalypse 1.0. After PewDiePie made a joke about Nazis on one of his videos, advertisers were suddenly getting mad that their ads were being shown on his videos. So YouTube decided to make a system where if there was anything in the video the system found offensive, it would automatically demonetize the video. This caused multiple problems because the system was too lax. If it had any form of profanity, minor suggestive pictures, or even anything that talked about religion, the video would be automatically demonetized. So channels like TJ Kirk (formerly the Amazing Atheist) had to change their names.
Then we had Adpocalypse 2.0 after the Charlottesville controversy & Vegas Shooting. So now you couldn't even talk about those or else your videos get demonetized. But there was a hypocrisy with this because MS news outlets talked about it all the time yet their videos were still fine. Turns out there was also another system that wanted to block out any kind of "Fake News," practically meaning any kind of small channels, especially progressive channels.
WHY IS YOUTUBE CRAP NOW?
YouTube was a community back then. There was much content with wide variety of creativity. When I got older, I wanted to be part of that community. What's happened is that creativity on YouTube practically died. Bigger channels are getting propped up while YouTube is turning its back on small channels when small channels were the ones that made YouTube to begin with. There's no place for growth on YouTube anymore & the only way you're ever going to get big on YouTube is if you were already big to begin with or you follow the same formula every channel does. I tried doing things like that & I didn't like it because it didn't fit me. I felt like I was forced to be a character I didn't want to be & if I didn't do those things I wouldn't get big. In the end, I decided I'll make my own content. I don't care if it's not the same cut & past model everyone follows. I'd rather be the small-town hero & YouTube needs to realize that these smaller channels were what made YouTube. YouTube needs serious competition & I believe Steemit/DTube has that potential.
So if you feel like I missed anything or wanted to discuss something, write something in the comments below.
You can also find me on Twitter: @RandomRon005