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YouTube Gets a Vuvuzela Button (Seriously)
teh31337one writes "YouTube always has had a way with pranks. Some time in the last hour, the world's largest video portal activated a new button on some videos that looks like a tiny soccer ball. Clicking it will activate an endless, incredibly annoying sound that sounds vaguely like a swarm of insects. Or, for anyone who has been watching the World Cup, like the dreaded vuvuzela — an instrument commonly played in South Africa at football (soccer) games. South Africa is, of course, the host country for this year's World Cup, and fans watching the games have been subjected to the vuvuzela's mindless drone for hours on end. The noise is so annoying that television networks have taken measures to filter it out, and guides have popped up showing viewers how to block it from their TV sets and computers. I'm not seeing the button show up on all videos, but it is definitely appearing on some clips that aren't soccer-related."
...on ANY website?
Dreaded? Incredibly annoying? Come one, it's just a trumpet. I get the feeling that after all the prophets of doom predicted the stadiums wouldn't be finished and the fans would be murdered by criminals, they have nothing left to complain about except the little trumpets.
Oh come on, April Fools Day' is the Internet at its most amusing just for stuff like this. You know it's only a temporary change.
Well you've got to mimic the Facebook, otherwise how will you attract all those cool, intelligent people who use social networking sites to your services?
Being that I'm from the US, I didn't need yet another reason to hate soccer... but, thanks Youtube for giving me another one!
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
I Like This!
Soccer is what the rest of the world follows for sports as they don't have access to baseball or football or basketball or hockey.
Some americans do play soccer, mostly because mothers consider it to be more harmless then a sport where you hit others with a baseball and spit on your balls, gay men jump each other, or the kid ain't black or japanese or the mother is against open warfare on ice. (European impression of US sports).
The vuuzela is something soccer fans blow because they are bored out of their mind and hate their neighbour but rioting is forbidden. Average EU soccer fan does hockey on the stands.
As an EU citizen who has been to both EU and US sports events, don't bother Americans. Your sports might be impossible to comprehend for non-natives but the atmosphere is a thousand times better.
For the EU soccer fans, attent a US sports event once and make it clear you are a foreinger, the Americans will welcome the newbie and show you everything, just remmeber that they like to play pranks and so will offer you a drink of cooled piss and pretend it is beer. Just smile politely and drop it somewhere. It is all part of the experience.
Oh yeah BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Far more annoying than either of these are the fucked-up popup "slide window" ads that obscure the bottom 1/3 of every fucking video on Youtube these days.
I've taken to just clicking the Download Helper button and downloading whatever video to my desktop, so I don't have to see those stupid annoying ads and can actually see the video I was looking for.
sounds like some part of a woman's anatomy
vuvuzela button: sounds like some part of a woman's anatomy i'm not aware of, but should be aware of
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And this: http://www.sharenator.com/Vuvuzela_Compilation/patrick_stewart_1276646087-67688.html
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The one legacy the vuvuzela will have after the World Cup is the future exclusion of South Africa from ever again hosting any international sporting event.
Adblock Plus takes care of these, haven't seen one ever on my desktop/laptops.
Vuvuzela Concerto in B Flat.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Your assumption regarding the rating system of youtube is wrong. The like/dislike system was adopted as a consequence of the rating habits of youtube users not in an attempt to mimic facebook. The majority of the videos on youtube were either 1* or 5* with mostly nothing in between.
The like/dislike mechanism is an evolution of a system that is trying to adapt itself to its user base.
You can read more about this on the official youtube blog - http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html
Cheers.
Vuvuzela's are South African culture, if you dont like it, dont what any of the games, we couldnt care less what you did.
No, the vuvuzela is not part of South African culture. It's a freaking Mexican horn, and wasn't even available in South Africa until 2001, when some crappy plastic company started churning the god-awful things out down there.
It's no more part of their culture than OS X is.
Those triompet in their form at footbal match are only commercialized recently. The traditional one don't even have that form or noise.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Oh, for once in your dreary, lonely life, just laugh and appreciate harmless spontaneity, you hopelessly miserable, cynical person.
No, I'm not a "leecher."
On the other hand, I came to see the video. If they want to run a 5-10 second bit before the video plays, like many other video sites do, I have absolutely no problem with that. They need their advert money, fine. If they want to put ads down the right side, as long as they're not neon flashing crap or those annoying expanding "a truck runs all across your screen covering up the article you came to read" flash ad crap, fine.
Where I get annoyed is that the ads are actually BLOCKING MY VIEW OF THE VIDEO. Many times, it's blocking my view of a foreign news clip or something else that has subtitles (like Auto-tune The News), which means the subtitles themselves are getting blocked.
Google/Youtube needs to learn: STOP FUCKING COVERING UP THE VIDEO. It's damn annoying and no, it does NOT make me more likely to buy the advertised product. Far from it, I'll get even more pissed off if I mis-click the tiny-ass little "x" button to get the fucking thing to go away, and then either have a new page popup happen, or have my browser wander away from the video entirely.
Also, it's youtube. You know what's more annoying than websites all mimicking each other? 99.9% of the content on youtube, that's what.
The vuvuleza sound is actually quite an improvement. For instance, this morning one of my friends had sent me a link which turned out to be two minutes of a video of a rabbit, not doing anything. The buzzing sound gave it an ominous tone which was highly amusing, like the bunny was very very slowly moving toward a swarm of evil robotic bees.
The top youtube videos, what you might expect to be the cream of the crop, are even worse: "Justin Bieber LOVES Chinese Guy!" I can't imagine a horrible buzzing noise degrading the quality of that one. A bunch of clips from the world cup, most having already been taken down, a buzzing noise would at least be something. "Seattle Cop Punches Woman - Raw Footage " didn't have the option, a buzzing noise masking the incoherent shouting would have been nice.
It really failed to improve "Super Mario Beatbox" though.