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How YouTube's Year-In-Review 'Rewind' Video Set Off a Civil War (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: You might guess that a surefire way to make a hit video on YouTube would be to gather a bunch of YouTube megastars, film them riffing on some of the year's most popular YouTube themes and release it as a year-in-review spectacular. You would be wrong. YouTube tested that theory this week, releasing its annual "YouTube Rewind" year-end retrospective. The eight-minute video was a jam-packed montage of YouTube meta-humor, featuring a who's-who of YouTube stars along with conventional celebrities. The video was slickly produced and wholesome, with lots of references to the popular video game Fortnite, shout-outs to popular video formats, and earnest paeans to YouTube's diversity and inclusiveness. It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity, but the video started a firestorm, and led to a mass-downvoting campaign that became a meme of its own. Within 48 hours, the video had been "disliked" more than four million times. On Thursday, it became the most-disliked video in the history of the website, gathering more than 10 million dislikes and beating out the previous record-holder, the music video for Justin Bieber's "Baby."
The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," one of the most popular creators in YouTube's history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016. Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platform's homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes. The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."
"But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul -- stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month -- remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn't want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn't want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either," reports the NYT. "And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory -- making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos." This tension is at the heart of the controversy over YouTube Rewind.
"A YouTube recap that includes only displays of tolerance and pluralism is a little like a Weather Channel highlight reel featuring only footage of sunny days -- it might be more pleasant to look at, but it doesn't reflect the actual weather..."
The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," one of the most popular creators in YouTube's history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016. Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platform's homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes. The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."
"But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul -- stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month -- remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn't want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn't want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either," reports the NYT. "And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory -- making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos." This tension is at the heart of the controversy over YouTube Rewind.
"A YouTube recap that includes only displays of tolerance and pluralism is a little like a Weather Channel highlight reel featuring only footage of sunny days -- it might be more pleasant to look at, but it doesn't reflect the actual weather..."
The only reason Google won't know what hit them is because what hits them will be a rambling, incoherent rant that nobody can understand.
Scott Adams has been spiraling into conspiracy theories and hate based politics and misogyny for years. The only real question is when he's going to admit that he's standing side-by-side with the white supremacists in his support of Trump and Trump's wall.
man this story you guys keep telling yourself about 'lefts' and 'rights' and 'SJWs' while you seek out things that offend you and stand around looking smug that they exist like that proves anything other than the idea that maybe you can't differentiate instances of objects from properties of sets.
do you ever step outside it and realise you're all just making up shit in retrospect to justify internal group metrics that don't really have any other justification, as part of a gigantic culture gambit you're setting yourselves up to lose so you can feel like legitimate victims?
I'm real sorry you all got the idea from cartoons from the 90s that you were all supposed to individually be the hero.
Do you even have the capacity to step back and look at yourself? Holy shit dude. I don't know what happened to you, but you need some serious help. What you're describing doesn't exist except in the rightwing echo chamber.
Get out once in awhile. I promise that the real world is nowhere as scary as Fox News and Breitbart tell you it is.
Just don't be an aggressive dick to everyone not like you, and it will all be fine. Even if you're still a paranoid conservative.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Those metal and woodworking is advertiser unfriendly so those channels got demonitized
Yeah bullshit. There is nothing advertiser unfriendly about This Old Tony, ABom79 and so on.
The ones that are advertiser unfriendly are not because of the shop stuff, it's because of what they say. In fact it seems a good guess that AvE intantionally says things to demonetise his videos given what he's said about in the past.
So take your endless stream of paranoid drivel elsewhere.
enter and right wing political commentators first and so on
Liks Alex Jones, that wll known centrist.
SJW n. One who posts facts.