Who remembers when this was the most watched video on YouTube?
“The clip received 70 million views in under 8 months. At that time, it was rated on YouTube as: #1 Most Viewed All Time Video on YouTube.com.” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judson_Laipply
“He uploaded the dance to YouTube on April 6th, 2006.” - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/evolution-of-dance
As someone said in the comments, they really don’t make (promote) videos like this any more.
It’s just a beautiful video, someone performed something on stage, the crowd clearly loved it. It required real talent, and wasn’t just done to get Youtube views in a weekly/daily video posts trying only to drive engagement.
A shame that Youtube’s best days are long behind it. Yes the beast is bigger than ever and has so many more people, but it’s not quality rising to the top.
In defense of YouTube…
The thing is, you absolutely can still find stuff like that. The trick is to search for stuff you like, and train YouTube’s algorithm to find more stuff like it. I’ve got mine trained enough that my feed mostly consists of stuff I actually do want to watch.
Some of it is from “content creators,” yes (although nothing from the well-known ones), but a lot of it is just random things I happen to have an interest in.
Okay, that said, YouTube’s default feed can suck my hairy scrote. It’s astoundingly bad.
Well therein lies the problem. I don’t know what to search for.
And when I do think of something, most of the time I’ll get maybe 4 or 5 results for semi-related content that I’m not interested in, and then the remaining results are completely unrelated crap that the algorithm thinks I want to watch. I’ve heard that over 700,000 hours worth of video are uploaded every single day, but apparently I’m not allowed to actually search for them.
Instead we get the same old videos we’ve already seen in our feed. I’m so tired of fighting the system…
I think you’re missing what I’m bemoaning. It’s not “Youtube doesn’t work”. It’s “Good viral content no longer exists” When this video or Charlie bit my finger got popular it got popular OUTSIDE of people who were searching for it. People got exposure to something unique fresh and new that wasn’t something they always clicked on.
Now it feels like everyone is in their little echo chamber in youtube, which is great, I get to see SBNation, NumberPhile, Tom Scott, and Your Movie Sucks… and don’t see Mr. Beast or PewdiePie, because that’s what I choose to view.
But nothing spreads “Virally” any more because youtube feels like they locked down what people see to what they 100 percent know people want to see with no chance.
A bigger different problem with this is what happens on twitter and sites like that, where it reinforces bad mentalities. If you only look at alt-right or progressive videos, you start to ONLY see those, and you aren’t getting a wealth of different opinion, you basically get a singular view of the world, because that’s what you want to see. It’d be fine, but people start to think “What I see on social media is representative of the entire world.” And that’s the first step on a bad path.
Thank you for clarifying. I’ll have to think about it, but at first blush, I’m completely in agreement with you.
Yeah, I mean you are perfectly able to say “I like modern Youtube.” But I’m just nostalgic for when it wasn’t oversaturated and there were global phenomena. Now there’s so many special videos and memes for every group you pretty much can’t keep up with it all so there’s confusion when someone brings up something you’re not a part of.
Yeah it took me a while too but but by carefully curating my subscriptions, likes, and comments I get what I like on youtube.
Most of YouTube used to be this type of thing.
A More Civilized Age.
Mr. Beast’s videos are pure brain rot.
I cannot stand them, everything about it is just awful.
Here’s a good article about him.
Videos like this still go “viral” but with hyper personalized algorithms today there are much more niche communities that things circulate in.
That’s the thing, it’s not viral if it’s personalized. “Viral” expands far outside of the niche. You might not like videos of baby or slice of life videos, but Charlie bit my finger was everywhere. Almost no one wanted Rick Astley, but everyone saw it. Even this, I don’t look up dance videos, but I Watched this whole thing. That’s where “Viral” is… The “this is popular even without being a fan of it.”
Now it seems the only videos that do that is shitty drama or clickbait crap.
it’s not a prank video?
I never watched youtube for these “viral” videos…
I qatch it for the creators who make content they (and I) really care about.
The funny/viral stuff is great too but its not the reason i use youtube at all.