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I think this kind of thing is ultimately what I like most about new media. A Youtube series doesn't need to be concerned about skewed audiences or the network's

I think this kind of thing is ultimately what I like most about new media. A Youtube series doesn't need to be concerned about skewed audiences or the network's branding: as long as it has a loyal following and an enthusiastic creator, it'll keep coming out. A lot of my favorite content probably wouldn't make it if they had to air on CBS.

duxup 6y ago
> A Youtube series doesn't need to be concerned about skewed audiences or the network's branding Is there a reason to think this is the case? I find YouTube to be the land of copycats and homogenization just as much as anywhere else. If anything the desire to attract clicks, views, thumbs seems more immediate than TV.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I'm surprised it's a question, to be honest. My favorite Youtube series include: * funny Mario Maker levels * pop history comedy videos * teardowns of random historical firearms * cooking from reconstructed historical recipes So it's hard for me to look at this and see homogenization.
  - duxup 6y ago
    I'm thinking homogenization across a given category / scene / community. It seems like any group of similar videos are heavily influenced by each other and often copy each other if they see another creator got a lot of response from their video. Are reaction videos getting views? Blamo, everyone does some reaction videos, and so on.
    - derefr 6y ago
      IMHO with YouTube niche content, it’s not so much the sort of “by external observation, that seemed to work out for them; so let’s cargo-cult it” that network television / movie studios do; but rather that content-creators within a niche are all part of the niche’s community — and the even-smaller community of “people who film themselves talking about that niche.” They might even all be personal friends. (Even if they’re not at first — someone who both shares your interests, and your videography side-hustle, is someone you’ll have a lot in common with! If you follow multiple channels on the same niche hobby, you’ll often find that they start to refer to one-another more and more, and then eventually there’s collabs, etc.) As such, obviously, they talk with one-another a lot; and usually trust one-another enough to make each-other moderators/admins in their Twitch/Discord/etc. (I mean, often they attend one-anothers’ weddings. There’s a lot of trust there!) And so there’s a lot of “hey, this did work for me, and made me a lot of money! You should try it too!” advice going back and forth. With the television networks / movie studios, the aping is the recipient’s idea. But with independent creators, it’s usually an external, unsolicited suggestion from another creator. The recipient of unsolicited advice will usually put a lot more thought into whether it really applies well to their situation, than they would if they came up with it themselves. (Unless they’re a channel whose whole “thing” is just copying what’s popular. But that doesn’t happen much in these niches, as you can’t really content-farm a niche.) Mind you, within the “everyone in the niche is friends” paradigm, you do sometimes see newer creators seemingly aping others a lot — but what’s frequently happening there is that the creator has some experienced creators as patrons/producers for their videos, where the experienced creators have the goal of “bootstrapping” the channel quickly into success, and so are guiding the new creator into these cliche-but-popular video formats (and the new creator is going with it, because 1. they’re inexperienced and don’t know better; and 2. their channel doesn’t yet have a brand to tarnish — that’s something they can build after they have followers.)
      - duxup 6y ago
        I feel like it is almost like cockwork. I see one person within a category try something, odds are the other 5 people I follow will do it. And these aren't new folks, they're the established leaders in views and etc. I guess there's an advantage of iteration ... sort of there, but man it feels like homogenization none the less.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Because YouTube doesn't have to filter for slotting content into a finite amount of broadcast time, it doesn't need executives deciding what programming is worth investing a timeslot in. ... but the sum of all YouTube viewers still have a finite amount of time per day to consume the content, so the game flips from "elevator-pitching some executive your idea is worth risking a highly-valuable timeslot" to "pulling in hundreds of thousands of individual audience members to like, comment, and subscribe." Much like there are multiple ways to convince an exec, there are multiple ways to attract an audience. While they can look like the same game if one turns one's head and squints, they're mechanically very different. (... possibly worth noting: YouTube does have premium original programming, which is slightly closer to the old "elevator-pitch your idea" model. But that's more to build exclusive property for its premium offering than to fill timeslots, and one doesn't have to partner with YouTube to reach a broad audience).

duxup 6y ago

> A Youtube series doesn't need to be concerned about skewed audiences or the network's branding Is there a reason to think this is the case? I find YouTube to be the land of copycats and homogenization just as much as anywhere else. If anything the desire to attract clicks, views, thumbs seems more immediate than TV.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'm surprised it's a question, to be honest. My favorite Youtube series include: * funny Mario Maker levels * pop history comedy videos * teardowns of random historical firearms * cooking from reconstructed historical recipes So it's hard for me to look at this and see homogenization.
- duxup 6y ago
  I'm thinking homogenization across a given category / scene / community. It seems like any group of similar videos are heavily influenced by each other and often copy each other if they see another creator got a lot of response from their video. Are reaction videos getting views? Blamo, everyone does some reaction videos, and so on.
  - derefr 6y ago
    IMHO with YouTube niche content, it’s not so much the sort of “by external observation, that seemed to work out for them; so let’s cargo-cult it” that network television / movie studios do; but rather that content-creators within a niche are all part of the niche’s community — and the even-smaller community of “people who film themselves talking about that niche.” They might even all be personal friends. (Even if they’re not at first — someone who both shares your interests, and your videography side-hustle, is someone you’ll have a lot in common with! If you follow multiple channels on the same niche hobby, you’ll often find that they start to refer to one-another more and more, and then eventually there’s collabs, etc.) As such, obviously, they talk with one-another a lot; and usually trust one-another enough to make each-other moderators/admins in their Twitch/Discord/etc. (I mean, often they attend one-anothers’ weddings. There’s a lot of trust there!) And so there’s a lot of “hey, this did work for me, and made me a lot of money! You should try it too!” advice going back and forth. With the television networks / movie studios, the aping is the recipient’s idea. But with independent creators, it’s usually an external, unsolicited suggestion from another creator. The recipient of unsolicited advice will usually put a lot more thought into whether it really applies well to their situation, than they would if they came up with it themselves. (Unless they’re a channel whose whole “thing” is just copying what’s popular. But that doesn’t happen much in these niches, as you can’t really content-farm a niche.) Mind you, within the “everyone in the niche is friends” paradigm, you do sometimes see newer creators seemingly aping others a lot — but what’s frequently happening there is that the creator has some experienced creators as patrons/producers for their videos, where the experienced creators have the goal of “bootstrapping” the channel quickly into success, and so are guiding the new creator into these cliche-but-popular video formats (and the new creator is going with it, because 1. they’re inexperienced and don’t know better; and 2. their channel doesn’t yet have a brand to tarnish — that’s something they can build after they have followers.)
    - duxup 6y ago
      I feel like it is almost like cockwork. I see one person within a category try something, odds are the other 5 people I follow will do it. And these aren't new folks, they're the established leaders in views and etc. I guess there's an advantage of iteration ... sort of there, but man it feels like homogenization none the less.
shadowgovt 6y ago
Because YouTube doesn't have to filter for slotting content into a finite amount of broadcast time, it doesn't need executives deciding what programming is worth investing a timeslot in. ... but the sum of all YouTube viewers still have a finite amount of time per day to consume the content, so the game flips from "elevator-pitching some executive your idea is worth risking a highly-valuable timeslot" to "pulling in hundreds of thousands of individual audience members to like, comment, and subscribe." Much like there are multiple ways to convince an exec, there are multiple ways to attract an audience. While they can look like the same game if one turns one's head and squints, they're mechanically very different. (... possibly worth noting: YouTube does have premium original programming, which is slightly closer to the old "elevator-pitch your idea" model. But that's more to build exclusive property for its premium offering than to fill timeslots, and one doesn't have to partner with YouTube to reach a broad audience).