Amarna Forum

The previous 'marna had a brilliant thread on movie recaps. I consider movie recaps to a constrained form of video essay; so to build back better, I'd like to discuss video essays in general.

---

I spent my entire childhood and adolescence on the internet (and not a single second was wasted). The things I saw online evoked a variety of emotions: some made me laugh, some made me cry, some sparked lifelong passions; but the most profound and lasting emotion the internet instilled in me was fear. Kid me was a voracious consumer of creepypastas and cursed images. Looking back, most 'pastas were horribly written, most images so obviously photoshopped as to be comical; but I still find them unnerving in their oblique directness. Any piece of digital media that isn't self-explanatory has a certain mystique to it. It becomes a puzzle, where in addition to the surface content, you have to try to decipher who made it and what their intentions were. Which is why I still find this video unsettling:


Even blocking out that robot... everything from the lighting to the camera angle to the way the room is furnished to the inexplicable shot of a field is just... wrong. Not in a deliberately disturbing or "lol so random" way, but in a way that, when you try to rationalize it, frays the edges of your understanding of the world. Like an assortment of disparate parts that, upon touching one another, spontaneously assemble into a bomb: only when you try to correlate its contents are you in serious danger.

Why do I bring this up? Because, for me at least, that feeling of being unable to comprehend the purpose of something has disappeared from the Internet. It's not a matter of me growing up; when I go back to the things that scared me as a child, though they no longer scare me, I can still see that element of the uncanny, the incomprehensible. Rather, a process of refinement has taken place, shifting the tone of the entire internet culture. YouTube "content" is the epitome of this.

---

This YouTube video, from one of the biggest "horror" channels, is a representative example of what passes for "YouTube Horror" nowadays. It's a long, drawn-out "movie recap" of a series of YouTube videos (Local58). Not only is it fifty minutes long - three times the length of the source material - but over the course of these agonizing fifty minutes the uploader indulges in every "content" sin imaginable. To save (up to) fifty minutes of your life, I'll give you the play-by-play:

• The video starts with a brandmark. TV static, stock footage of the moon, stock footage of a forest at night, stock footage of a deer that zooms out to show that it's overlaid on stock footage of a TV in an empty room. A collection of calming night-time images assure you that, while the this video may get dark at times, your comfiness will never be compromised. A distance will be maintained between you and the subject matter at all times.
  
• The narrator himself sounds like the G-Man's gay brother. His syntax is sloppy, his cadence is off, he autistically articulates every phoneme of every sentence to an uncanny extent. There are uncomfortably long pauses between his lines, breaking the "flow" of concentration you usually maintain while listening to someone else talk - it's as if he's optimizing his voice to make it as intelligible as possible to people tuning in and out while doing other things.
  
• In the first minute-and-a-half of the video, he explains his rationale for making it: more videos have been uploaded to Local58 since his last video on the subject, and commenters wanted to see what he had to say about these new videos. He peppers his explanation with interjections ("since then, you guys have been vocal"; "but why?") which would have been rhetorically effective had he put some actual weight into saying them. But he doesn't. He narrates them in his usual monotone, with uncomfortably long pauses before and after.
  
• Every transition is the same. Fade to black, gradually fade in ambient music w/ still image or video clip, wait a few seconds, then lower music to accommodate narrator. No element is particularly powerful or jarring.
  
• Local58 is something kid me would have loved: a video series exploring the sensation of being trapped in the dark with your TV. The narrator ruins this sensation by butting in as a third party, reading every little bit of text in every video in his flat autistic cadence, maybe adding a bit of snide commentary here or there. Afterwards, he summarizes the entire text of the video in his native ESL, in case you didn't get it the first time round.
  
• I cannot stress how little original insight this guy adds to the source material, while still somehow managing to pad the video to an ungodly length. The most he'll do is identify a particular iconic photo, or cross-reference an element in the video with something else the creator has done.
  

The whole "review" just goes on and on like this, it's absolutely horrible. The ostensible purpose of the video is to explain the content of Local58, yet it barely goes beyond a surface-level analysis, and for the most part actively spoils any enjoyment you'd get out of the series. Watching this video "to understand Local58" is like eating someone else's shit to avoid the busywork of digestion.

In spite all of this, the video has four million views, more than any video on the actual Local58 channel. Why? Because it's content. And YouTube aggressively promotes content.

---

The Rules of Content

1. Content is (usually) meta-media. Making original work is hard. Commenting on work that already exists is much easier, and allows you to piggyback off of said work's existing audience.
   
2. Content is "chill". Strong emotions, passionate speech, daring conclusions: a good recipe for a meaningful life, not so much for engaging content. The optimal character for a "content creator" to play is that of a sage calmly imparting their wisdom.
   
3. Content is detached. You don't want the viewer to be personally affected by, or invested in, the content. That will impair their ability to detach from $CURRENT_CONTENT and re-attach to the next content in the autoplay queue. If your audience is primarily Zoomers, you don't have to put much thought into this; Zoomers are already very good at viewing things from a "detached" perspective, because they tend to think of themselves and their immediate social group as a small enclave in hostile space.
   

I apologize if this all sounds nonsensical or disjointed. It's a collection of many disparate observations that I haven't bothered to tightly reconcile with each other.

There is another throughline of the concept of "content" that always bothered me, one that appears in IRL streams, internet drama/"bloodsports", and lolcow shit. This meshes with the meta-media concept somewhat, as all of these are derivative of other people and their works. "It's content, bro" is their cry whenever confronted on this. Tiny nuggets of "drama" buried in hours upon hours of streams and videos and forum posts, which is promptly clipped and spread around.

IRL streaming was once a very bold idea, a new avenue of entertainment for an emerging medium. Now it's separated into two major groups: Twitch/Youtube refined IRL (lifeless, uncharismatic streamers passively experiencing a safe public space) and IP2 IRL (watching a loser's continued downward spiral). Neither has any potential for creativity. Most have retreated back into more conventional streams or given up altogether.

The concept of the "lolcow" was born from something much more interesting, true Wired Anthropology. Ulillillia is an artifact of this early scouring of the internet for weird guys' rich inner worlds pasted unceremoniously online. Nobody tried to mess with him; they just admired his weird neuroses, obsessions, life experiences, writing, and art. Christory was preceded by something that would more appropriately be called Art Christory, a study and appreciation of the Sonichu comics. Even the early trolling was something creative. Knowing that Chris would boldly and proudly step into whatever trap they set up, they sought to create the most entertaining and ironic ways for him to do so. The troll sagas felt like stage plays, with the audience clued into something that Chris was too autistic/prideful to see coming. Now it's just A-Logging all around. I've mentioned in the Acceptable Targets thread how the Kiwi Farms audience is mostly spiteful losers who seek to attack e-celebs they don't like or find someone more of a loser than them to antagonize.

Bloodsports... do I even need to explain this one? Maury without the minstrel show. Never had a downfall, it's just been parasitic shit the whole time.

---

The formation of entertainment into a refined pipeline of "content" from site to site I think plays the largest part in this. "Content" is the word applied to an ISO-standardized shipping crate of passive entertainment that makes the rounds from one website to another. You can see it happen in real time if you hang out in many disconnected social spaces online. Chris-chan did something wacky? Pack it in a crate, put it on a truck to the Port of Kiwi Farms, send it on a container ship to the Port of Twitter, then a train to Right Wing Twitter City, a truck to the Wholesome Chungus Account Distribution Warehouse, and finally to your door in a Twitter Suggested Postal Service step van. Every part of this delivery system is free of cost and technologically streamlined so you don't have to lift a finger to find anything, just open your mouth and let the pre-chewed "content" slide down your throat. Now you're based and redpilled!

Economies of scale have precluded the need for creation, much less creativity. This used to only happen at the community level when it gets too big and its users stand to gain nothing from putting time into creativity or thoughtful engagement. Chat's too fast, just post kappas. Thread's moving too fast and about to hit bump limit, just post reaction images and one word responses. Nobody will, or even can, read that wall of text you just posted. Now this phenomenon has priced out niche engagement on the internet as a whole. Why make or read a long post on Amarna when you can just have Twitter drop a steaming turd of internet drama into your mouth? Just smash the like button for more.

"Content creation" is so ubiquitous as to approach perfect competition, and thus the product becomes homogenized. If you mean to make a living through Youtube, every minute spent working on your video has diminishing returns. Why have original thoughts when you can "review" or commentate over someone else's? Thoughtful, high-effort works are artisan goods. You will likely fail to find an audience in a sea of "content" equivalent to a can of Coca-Cola or a McDonald's cheeseburger. (To be clear I don't mean to denigrate Coke or McDonald's which are legitimately impressive, just as I don't mean to disparage #Logistics which I think is humanity's most impressive creation.) As you were discussing before, the Indian has perfectly refined this system to create the most bizarre, twisted "content" imaginable where you wonder if anyone is actually watching it. It's like Chinese plastic rice scaled to industrial levels. Is this part of some large-scale scam that no regulator cares to do anything about or are people really stupid enough to eat plastic?

(05-25-2022, 01:13 PM)Frank Wrote: [ -> ]There is another throughline of the concept of "content" that always bothered me, one that appears in IRL streams, internet drama/"bloodsports", and lolcow shit. This meshes with the meta-media concept somewhat, as all of these are derivative of other people and their works. "It's content, bro" is their cry whenever confronted on this. Tiny nuggets of "drama" buried in hours upon hours of streams and videos and forum posts, which is promptly clipped and spread around.

Re: calling mace "content spray" and so on: there's something impressive about the attention economy's ability to turn human suffering directly into money (viz. the George Floyd and Astroworld NFTs). Blood as WD-40 greasing the gears of the Wired Juggernaut. The attention machine has long capitalized on desperation (viagra / penis enlargement spam) and outrage (modern journoshits), but only recently has it progressed to straight-up pain.

(05-25-2022, 01:13 PM)Frank Wrote: [ -> ]Christory was preceded by something that would more appropriately be called Art Christory, a study and appreciation of the Sonichu comics. Even the early trolling was something creative. Knowing that Chris would boldly and proudly step into whatever trap they set up, they sought to create the most entertaining and ironic ways for him to do so. The troll sagas felt like stage plays, with the audience clued into something that Chris was too autistic/prideful to see coming. Now it's just A-Logging all around.

Part of this decline, I feel, is due to the supply of genuine lolcows being exhausted. Lolcows are usually found in small niches, "market failures" relative to the zero-sum hyper-competition of the "content" web. The Final Fantasy House is a perfect example of this: a "sexual market failure" enabled those weirdos to get together, and a "social market failure" enabled them to exploit more competent people.

Was engaging in will-to-see perusal of Minecraft "content".





The video is alright, but I'm more fascinated by the personality behind it; specifically the complete lack thereof. This is the most unremarkable "content creator" I've ever seen. Yet he regularly mobilizes armies of people who far surpass him in merit - modders, server hosts, video editors, master builders and the like.

The most charitable reading is that Sipover acts as a sort of mediator or socialite. If that's the case: why him and not one of the five million other aspiring YouTubers? Was it luck of the draw? Did he pivot from a more "involved" brand of "content"? Or is the bar really that low?

(10-19-2022, 02:39 AM)Chud Wrote: [ -> ]The video is alright, but I'm more fascinated by the personality behind it; specifically the complete lack thereof. This is the most unremarkable "content creator" I've ever seen. Yet he regularly mobilizes armies of people who far surpass him in merit - modders, server hosts, video editors, master builders and the like.

The most charitable reading is that Sipover acts as a sort of mediator or socialite. If that's the case: why him and not one of the five million other aspiring YouTubers? Was it luck of the draw? Did he pivot from a more "involved" brand of "content"? Or is the bar really that low?

With things like his breakout video 'Who is the Best Minecraft Youtuber' I have to wonder how much buildup goes in. Was this like an already determined thing behind the scenes that everyone would boost this guy and this was just his professional debut? His online social life is probably very important.