YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#171

Post by bryanrasmussen » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:11 AM UTC

alan_wade wrote: post #162

andai wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology is designed as a hyperstimulus. The real world (suffering aside) sucks the same way fruit sucks compared with candy.

I don't mind it when instead of candy you get fruit. When instead of candy you get kicked in the nuts by a horse, that's when you need some of that youtube to get your mind off of things.

kids who have been indulged however do mind, they want the candy, they want it now, and will complain for the next couple days about how you are always trying to give them fruit lest you attempt it again.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#172

Post by xte » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:15 AM UTC

A small point: did anybody notice how this reward mechanism prize the "idiocy" far more than the "knowledge"? I mean most followed YT channels, most upvotes on FB etc are about "brainless things", "brainless contents" vs valuable technical or cultural contents.

An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY channels.

That's of course natural but prize it instead of fight it it's a means to push toward stupidity.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#173

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:15 AM UTC

diminish wrote: post #64

My 6 y.o. lives in a youtube universe. Every content he creates, he makes a video and publishes on youtube. Making slimes, building stamps, building paper train wagons, visiting places, and of course unpacking toys and stuff. He always concludes video or other stories like `pls press the Like button, and subscribe to my channel in order not to miss a thing`. When I talk too much he says 'papa skip ad', with a tap ges…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#174

Post by salvar » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:17 AM UTC

xte wrote: post #172

A small point: did anybody notice how this reward mechanism prize the "idiocy" far more than the "knowledge"? I mean most followed YT channels, most upvotes on FB etc are about "brainless things", "brainless contents" vs valuable technical or cultural contents. An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY chann…

Who decides what is valuable content and what is brainless stupidity?

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#175

Post by dogma1138 » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:19 AM UTC

salvar wrote: post #174

xte wrote: post #172

A small point: did anybody notice how this reward mechanism prize the "idiocy" far more than the "knowledge"? I mean most followed YT channels, most upvotes on FB etc are about "brainless things", "brainless contents" vs valuable technical or cultural contents. An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY chann…

Who decides what is valuable content and what is brainless stupidity?

Im pretty sure that we can easily define metrics to measure that and we had.

This cult of relativism really needs to stop.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#176

Post by xte » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:19 AM UTC

anonymous5133 wrote: post #108

TravHatesMe wrote: post #16

What I find interesting is that many of these youtubers have created personas to appeal to their audience, like true entertainers. However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend. Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute fo…

My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says the amount of kids who are developing anti-social behaviors is increasing pretty rapidly. Kids these days have computers and are basically simply "escaping" to the internet to live in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality. Some even display active addictions to computer games, like minecraft, while others say they only have friends online in the games or…

It's not a matter of "computers" but a matter of education: if kids discover something like Smalltalk/Cobol scripting in a friendly environment like ancient Alto&c workstations or actual unix shells and Emacs they may choose to develop some IT skill or ditch computers entirely; if they are mere consumer of contents they became incapable of developing anything themselves.

Kids are "totipotent" individuals if they grow up as creators, citizen between other citizen they became adult, otherwise they became consumer, easy to steer from employers to politicians but incapable of being citizen.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#177

Post by nicolas_t » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:20 AM UTC

cknoxrun wrote: post #49

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute for people's social needs. I've wondered about this for podcasts too. I noticed a scary habit where I would play podcasts when I was feeling lonely. Over time, you feel like you're pals with the hosts and something about the audio format checks the social needs box in your brain, thinking th…

Personally I’ve experienced something like this while reading fiction. The characters are so life-like and endearing in some books that I miss them and feel a loneliness temporarily after finishing. So I guess it isn’t just modern media, humans just have a tremendous capacity and need to connect.

Same here, I actually find the effect from reading fiction to be much stronger than any other form of entertainment. After finishing a series of book, I will tend to be subdued, lonely and slightly depressed.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#178

Post by TomMarius » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:21 AM UTC

ittgsv wrote: post #153

a_imho wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube is turning 14 next year and computers have been mainstream way longer than that. Personally I was a kid when it was the TVs fault and video games were making kids violent, but imo things turned out just fine.

YouTube as a 24/7 entertainment channel for kids is definitely not turning 14 now; it's pretty much a recent phenomenon.

It started with Minecraft "let's play" videos, that was around 2010.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#179

Post by freeflight » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:22 AM UTC

andai wrote: post #125

bemmu wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun to imagine an alternative reality where our brains would simply be unable to accept flashing monitor LEDs or vibrating speaker diaphragms as representations of people.

If we can figure out why certain animals are unable to process TV images, we may be able to replicate the effect.

Imho that'd be a step backward.

The ability to interpret rational meaning into the abstract is something that enabled homo sapiens to get where we at today.

You can't just remove that for TV images and expect it not to impact the perception/thinking apparatus as a whole.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#180

Post by TomMarius » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:23 AM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #142

jedmeyers wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there should always be a space for government-funded programming and art. Why is everything people want has to be government funded? Just go ask people for money directly, like a lot of the abovementioned youtube stars do. Tax man with the gun does not have to be involved with this.

What country do you live in where the tax men have guns!? Ours just send lots of strongly-worded letters.

Basically all of (central, where I live) Europe, not sure about the USA. The police comes if you don't pay - it's a criminal offence. Nobody would pay if they only sent letters. Also European ministries of finances often have their own armed forces (customs administration[1]).

[1] For example the Czech Customs Administration: https://www.celnisprava.cz/en/Pages/default.aspx - note the sentence at the top: "Customs Administration of the Czech Republic is a security force ensuring processes in the field of customs administration and related taxes, as well as other non-fiscal activities in the favor of the state and its citizens. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Finance."