seeking other means of video storage

Tuesday Jul 1st 2008

Recently I’ve considered closing my 2 YouTube channels permanently and moving my video elsewhere. There are plenty to choose from.

My reason for wanting to switch is for two 2 reasons:

YouTube has been a paid-only club for some time now.
The YouTube community is, without a shadow of a doubt, the absolute worst internet community that exists.

The paid-only club

Every YouTuber’s dream is to become a “partner”, i.e. to get paid by YouTube (Google). The problem with that is that you’re not a videomaker anymore; you’re an actor.

Let me clue you in on what happened to more than a few of these “actors”.

Hollywood fast realized that YouTube is in essence nothing more than a public access channel on steroids. Same crapola, much larger scale. As the old saying goes, you can’t polish a turd - it’s still shit.

When Hollywood put a few of these YouTube celebs on the small screen, no one bought it. Absolutely none of the internet fame translated to a wide broadcast audience the way people thought it would. Every single attempt to make it work crashed and burned. You can’t sell “internet cute” on television. It just doesn’t work, period.

As a result, there are more than a few YouTube celebs that moved to California who have come to the realization that going there was a huge mistake. Some still have a few bucks in their pocket but are losing money. Others are close to being penniless.

Mentally speaking, a few of these celebs are completely off their rocker at this point. They figured “Hey, I’m famous on the internet. I can do anything I want.” No, you can’t. Did you not remember that the line between the internet and real world is very, very thick? Guess not. When you have early-20s kid + internet fame, that kid thinks he or she rules the world. Nope. That’s not the way it works.

If any one of you YouTube celebs reads this (and it’s the internet so hey, it could happen), here’s my suggestion to you if you moved to California and have found it’s not a bowl of cherries there: Pack up now and leave. L.A. is a tough town that chews people up and spits them out for breakfast. Go home, rest, live normally to the best of your ability and try again in a few years if you feel like it. It is not an admission of defeat, it’s being realistic.

The worst community on the internet

Everyone hates the YouTube community, myself included. In fact it’s a stretch to even call it a community. A more accurate description would be “a bunch of fuckwits that just figured out how to use MySpace yesterday”. Give me a break.

Wherever I decide to place my videos in the future is going to be somewhere that’s reliable that has little or no commentary allowed at all. Possibly Internet Archive. That site has no “cool factor” to it whatsoever AND THAT’S FINE BY ME. Old school is good school as far as I’m concerned.

So whenever I get to it I’ll get to it. Yeah, sounds vague, but whatever. Not a pressing matter at this point. YouTube has run its course for me. Time to put my time and effort into something better.

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3 Responses to “seeking other means of video storage”

Silentside Says:
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:38 am
Agreeing with your opinion.
Youtube has turned out to be a bloated network.Decency is ‘gone’!

Are you sure that you are going to transfer your video stuff to archive.org?
Do let us know when you do so.
Also, being a hardcore internet surfer, I’m interested to know about the other options which you consider for video stuff other than archive.org.
Silentside Says:
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 am
In my previous comment , I referred ”hardcore internet surfer” as you ;-)
Don’t mistake it as me.You get the point :)

Good wishes Rich!
Rich Says:
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:28 pm

Metacafe and Vimeo are the only other 2 I’ve considered. I also have the ability to post short videos to my Flickr account so I may give that a shot.

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