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I used to really dislike youtube because I thought there was nothing but people goofing off and ripped TV shows on it. Honestly people are doing serious resear

by swiley 7y ago

I used to really dislike youtube because I thought there was nothing but people goofing off and ripped TV shows on it. Honestly people are doing serious research on it, and besides that you can get lectures or even just friendly monologues/QAs from experts on almost any subject. It was MIT's math videos that convinced me to start watching it, after that I found some of my favorite proffessor's lectures there too along with a lot of graduate level stuff from other universities. Then there where all the videos from amateur and professional scientists and musicians and so on. The basics of my personal understanding of music theory came from a nearly century old book I found in a used book store but it's grown a lot thanks to youtube. I hate that it's controlled by a single company, and that they keep tearing down the chemistry channels but while it's still no substitute for reading papers when you get into really niche subjects (ex: molecular dynamics and computational chemistry) the educational side of youtube is surprisingly underrated.

spookthesunset 7y ago
There is an amazing amount of fairly high quality content on youtube these days. For my personal use, it has given all the "traditional" media sources a serious run for their money. If it wasn't for my partner I could easily cancel cable, netflix, HBO, and everything else and just live off of youtube content. To me, the coolest part about youtube is it is "direct to consumer" with no middlemen. With few exceptions, all the content I watch comes directly from regular people making videos about things they are passionate about (be it mine exploration, building stuff with CNC mills, urban exploration, documenting abandoned malls, filming their day driving a train, picking locks, etc). There isn't some production company that sets guidelines or provides funding... it is just regular people. I do agree it is a problem that youtube is the only real player in town to host this sort of thing. Hopefully that will change over time.
asdff 7y ago
Unless you know what to look for, the discovery on youtube for these videos is terrible. I watched a lecture from my prof, 40 minute video with a couple hundred views uploaded by an official university youtube account. You'd expect the sidebar to be filled with similar 40 minute lectures uploaded from similar university accounts with similar low viewer counts, but instead the sidebar was filled with these zaney outlandish conspiracy theory videos. They probably got preference on the sidebar because they contained all the relevant keywords in their headings (not counting the obligatory "Hillary" or "Satan" or "Lizard person" found in most of these titles), coupled with millions of views. Sometimes I like to imagine a youtube where it's the university lecures that get millions of views, not the far right tinfoil hat content that eventually rears it's ugly head in every sidebar feed on the site.

by swiley 7y ago

spookthesunset 7y ago

There is an amazing amount of fairly high quality content on youtube these days. For my personal use, it has given all the "traditional" media sources a serious run for their money. If it wasn't for my partner I could easily cancel cable, netflix, HBO, and everything else and just live off of youtube content. To me, the coolest part about youtube is it is "direct to consumer" with no middlemen. With few exceptions, all the content I watch comes directly from regular people making videos about things they are passionate about (be it mine exploration, building stuff with CNC mills, urban exploration, documenting abandoned malls, filming their day driving a train, picking locks, etc). There isn't some production company that sets guidelines or provides funding... it is just regular people. I do agree it is a problem that youtube is the only real player in town to host this sort of thing. Hopefully that will change over time.

asdff 7y ago

Unless you know what to look for, the discovery on youtube for these videos is terrible. I watched a lecture from my prof, 40 minute video with a couple hundred views uploaded by an official university youtube account. You'd expect the sidebar to be filled with similar 40 minute lectures uploaded from similar university accounts with similar low viewer counts, but instead the sidebar was filled with these zaney outlandish conspiracy theory videos. They probably got preference on the sidebar because they contained all the relevant keywords in their headings (not counting the obligatory "Hillary" or "Satan" or "Lizard person" found in most of these titles), coupled with millions of views. Sometimes I like to imagine a youtube where it's the university lecures that get millions of views, not the far right tinfoil hat content that eventually rears it's ugly head in every sidebar feed on the site.