The Jenna Marbles Paradox: Why Are YouTube Videos So Terrible?

Throughout modern history (certainly long before the internet) creative works that become the most popular are not necessarily that of the best quality. They're usually those that cater to the interests of the most people.

It happens to be that most people wish for regularly-updated pieces of entertainment that give them a particular emotional stimulus, regardless of their "quality". Aspects of human nature like these affect markets involving a macrocosm like the community of those that watch YouTube. Changing the pay model won't fix that. In the end, the number of people who want to view one's creative work determines how much the creator earns.

So really, rather than being a complaint about YouTube, this article is a general complaint about how things of "bad quality" are more popular than things of "good quality", which is a half-handed complaint about an aspect of human nature in the public macrocosm. This can't really be fixed unless one limits the audience in some way, and often it's a much more logical decision not to do that.

There's a few well known youtubers in the comments to that article ... kind of interesting to see their responses :) But yeah, I kind of agree. Youtube is a new thing, it doesn't have to adhere to conventional notions of "quality".

This is oddly inverted, but I remember a few years ago I was working at EA Tiburon when EA did the whole exclusive NFL deal. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over that, and people complaining about year after year releases of Madden, with few improvements ... but you know what? consumers buy it, and so the party continues. Same goes with youtube ... the content obviously provides value or entertainment for a large number of people. Don't fight it, just accept that it is what it is.

Agreed.

I watch only a couple YouTube channels actively and there's a common thread in almost all of them: the 'host' has an interesting personality. Sometimes that personality is completely fabricated and sometimes it's real - it doesn't really matter since viewers don't care. It's a lot like how the Stephen Colbert on 'The Colbert Report' isn't really the real-life Stephen Colbert. The videos also are typically more throwaway than TV - and that's why production is so low and the comparisons don't hold up.

It's the allure of a la carte TV, where if you want some girl talk, gun videos, a let's play, or funny cat compilation video, it's all there and easily digestible at any point in the day.

In addition to the author's points about how the videos are constructed (thumbnail tricks, headline bait) to gain views, you also have to consider the basic mechanism involved in getting views: accessibility to a large population of people. If your videos are created at such a high level that only people with an IQ>130 can understand, you won't get that many views, and even fewer subscribers. If you target the crowd with average to below average intelligence then you have a much larger market. What do people with average/below average intelligence care about? They want to see people doing stupid stuff. They don't care about production value that much. They want to see someone looking like an idiot because it makes them feel better about themselves. This is the singular reason for low quality crap on YouTube and TV. The audience that can truly appreciate high quality shows is very small and can't sustain that much programming.

I'd also like to point out that not all YouTube channels suck. There is a solid community of educational YouTubers which make good stuff [1]. Also, SourceFed is where I go to get caught up on news that other people want to talk about and I only have 5 minutes to spare. Phil DeFranco's empire is an example of a business built on YouTube.

[1]Maybe that should be "who make good stuff" or "whom make good stuff." Maybe I should watch more YouTube videos on grammar and less about NASA.

Agree with you, but it saddens me that people will listen to her just because she's "attractive." She's not that good looking, she just wears a lot of makeup. I'd have a conversation with her in a bar, but since she's hundreds of miles away from me I don't have to pretend that she's interesting because I don't get anything out of it.