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Bob Saget 2.0
theodp writes "Slate makes a pretty convincing argument that YouTube and its knock-offs can trace their roots back to America's Funniest Home Videos." From the article: "The show's stock in trade was to find the lowest common denominator and then hit it in the crotch. Consider this list of select highlights from the show's 'Best of Kids & Animals' DVD: a kid doing a cannonball onto his dad's groin, a baby running into a church pew, a dog peeing on a wedding dress, and a kid clocking his dad in the nuts with a helmet. While these clips are all certainly lowbrow, they've also got something else in common: They're oozing with family values."
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
Now if most of youtube's content could be somewhat funny, or even "slightly more funny than bland humor" I would see comparing it to funniest home videos. Like it is, youtube is painful to endure. I would venture to say countless people singing into a qvga camera isn't exactly entertaining for most of us.
Funnypics
Youtube may have some low-brow physical humor, but America's "Funniest" Home Videos doesn't have TV clips and music videos. The variety alone places Youtube in an entirely different category. Plus, Youtube doesn't have those annoying voice-overs.
Esoteric reference.
speaking of bob saget and youtube...
THIS is bob saget 2.0! (NSFW)
I'm 24 years old, and I gotta admit... AFV (America's Funniest Videos) is still one of my favorite shows to watch. Sure, it's mindless content, but no other show on tv packs more laughs per minute.
Maybe it's a bit juvenile laughing at old people falling over, people getting hit in the crotch, or just general stupidity of people with too much time on your hands, but... AFV is basically a bunch of youtube videos strung together, and is funny no matter what age you are. (Just ignore the lame jokes by the host...)
Sure, there's other content on Youtube that isn't of the "funny video" variety, but... I'd say that the majority of the "viral videos" that get spread around the internet are of the funny variety, and what drives the majority of the site.
Sometimes, someone will send me a link to a video on YouTube that's pretty funny. From there, the "similar videos" function lets me find other humorous videos in the same vein (e.g. Stephen Colbert clips, MST3K clips, whatever).
However, when I approach the site's front-end, the "most X" (where X is popular, viewed, voted on, or whatever) lineups are jammed full of webcam clips, in-jokes, and episodes of anime. It's a bizarre disconnect.
I have wondered how many parents know that their teenage kids are dancing in front of the camera for youtube's global audience.
Wincopy
You can do the same comparison for just about everything, how the car has it's roots in the horsewagon, how the internet has it's root in just about any other media distribution etc...
And while I'm at it, why say "YouTube and its knock-offs", YouTube wasn't exactly the first site where one can post homevideos. YouTube is a knock-off which just happens to be the biggest.
Actually, lowest common denominator is okay. For instance, when adding the fractions 1/6, 2/3, and 4/18, you could convert all the fractions to a denominator of 54, as in 9/54, 27/54, and 12/54. But the correct procedure is to convert them to a denominator of 18, as in 3/18, 9/18, and 4/18 (16/18, or 8/9). And the lowest common denominator is only 1 if the numbers are all integers. You can't express 1/6 as a fraction of integers with a denominator of 1.
For more, see Wikipedia.
I'm not sure I agree that it can be traced "back to" a TV show like AFV. That's like saying that because Christianity decries murder and adultery, that any system of morals that incorporate these same values, has its Christian roots. What we're talking about here is universal appeal: they are elements within our social makeup that inspire a natural interest.
However, the interesting thing about youtube is that with few exceptions, it is a relatively unfiltered medium. There is no marketing department behind the scenes deciding what it thinks you'll like. You pick the stuff you do find interesting, and ignore the stuff you don't. I would agree that it's a somewhat tedious process sometimes, but what's nice about the way that youtube is structured is that what started out as a dead end (something uninteresting), can sometimes lead you to something very worthwhile via the associated links that show up, or responses that people other members have posted.
My only gripe really is that I wish people would observe a bare minimum of what makes a watchable video - shooting in near-complete darkness isn't one of them, nor is movement that makes it look like the one holding the camera is having a grand mal seizure.
"YouTube: Everything Slashdotters hate about MySpace rendered as a low quality video"
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Everything I learned about America I learned from watching "America's Funniest Home Videos" and "Antiques Roadshow"
Think about it.