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YouTube millionaires are not your friends

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Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#91

Post by csydas »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #88
csydas wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind, childhoods are a lot different now because you are exposed to a lot of information and people you never would have had a chance to meet when you were a child. As a kid in the 90's, my parents gave my brothers and I a choice: cable TV, or DSL once DSL came to our area of the city. We chose DSL, and definitely the Internet experience I had growing up was way different than every other kid at school since…

> (I assume you mean "bland") Yeah, Frenchman here :) Let met edit that.

happens :)

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#92

Post by BiteCode_dev »

andersa wrote: post #83
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In person, I get it. You chill with someone you like, you don't need to do much to enjoy it. Like reading together, or just being there. However, I don't get watching pewdiepie playing something. I just can't groke it. You don't know the person, the person is not in the room, the person is not even currently playing since it's a recording. It's a flat image of someone else having fun. And not somebody particularly go…

Why watch sports or tv shows or anything at all? It's other people having fun.

To be honest I never got that either, somebody scream for red or blue in front of a screen.

But at least for sports, you will see a level of play that is itself can be interesting because you can't just see it in day to day life.

Watching a video of a guy opening a kinder egg or playing badly at cod for the first time.

I get people watching streamers that are good at what they do. Rankers. Speed runners. Analysts. Jokers.

This is not what I'm talking about.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#93

Post by BiteCode_dev »

l33tman wrote: post #87
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In person, I get it. You chill with someone you like, you don't need to do much to enjoy it. Like reading together, or just being there. However, I don't get watching pewdiepie playing something. I just can't groke it. You don't know the person, the person is not in the room, the person is not even currently playing since it's a recording. It's a flat image of someone else having fun. And not somebody particularly go…

After you've watched a person enough on YouTube or Twitch you start feeling that you know them (even though it's completely unidirectional). I think there is a term for this but it's for sure an established phenomena. At that point it feels like watching friends do stuff I guess

I get that. Humans can get close to anything or anyone.

But to get there, you have to spend time doing so before it happens.

Which means you have to watch many videos where somebody is explaining their school day or reacting to a movie trailer before you get to that point.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#94

Post by BiteCode_dev »

theshrike79 wrote: post #78
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In person, I get it. You chill with someone you like, you don't need to do much to enjoy it. Like reading together, or just being there. However, I don't get watching pewdiepie playing something. I just can't groke it. You don't know the person, the person is not in the room, the person is not even currently playing since it's a recording. It's a flat image of someone else having fun. And not somebody particularly go…

I've explained it to myself like this: It's exactly like watching sports. You want to watch it live on tv, even though the fact that you're watching has zero impact on the result. You're just watching other people play a game. You could do anything else and just check the scores afterwards, but still you want to watch it. Some people will watch a recording of the game and still enjoy it even though the scores were de…

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35207785

But I can live as well with it. I don't blame the kids that watch those. I just don't understand it.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#95

Post by vasco »

jen729w wrote: post #74
nullcipher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s what I love about HN. Sure, most of us wouldn’t mind being rich (sorry, ‘financially independent’), but it’s not the driver. The driver is to make something cool; to make something better. Is this sarcasm? If it's genuine, I can think of many reasons. Either you are too young or wearing horse blinds or not living in the valley. Practically every start up is driven by a desire to be rich. This is why everyone s…

> Is this sarcasm? No. I’m a long way — physically — from ‘the valley’, and I’m certainly not young. When I say ‘HN’ I mean the day to day discussion on this site. I know there’s VC and whatnot here but really, mostly, that’s not what I’m reading. Perhaps I subconsciously avoid it? I’m reading people who are passionate about technology. I’m reading nerds who love a new thing. That’s what brings me back here day after…

You are making judgement calls on people's personalities based on not very much. HN is a public website, the discussions can be good and genuine and we can all be the same narcissistic psychopaths that are only here to accumulate HN karma that for some reason we value higher than money.

Or we can all be dogs, it's the internet and you have no idea. I'd start taking online communities with a bigger grain of salt.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#96

Post by Last5Digits »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #76
Last5Digits wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more like sitcoms. A cast of slightly funny and charismatic characters going through mildly interesting experiences has been a mainstay of entertainment media for some time now.

Possibly, like latino soap opera but for kids. I never could grasp the former, so maybe that's why I don't get the latter. I browse youtube anonymously and so I get the neutral youtube experience, with what it things the average user wants. Today I say a video suggestion with kids in the pics and a title "we made a blind test to distinguish frozen food from real one". It's a really easy thing to do with your friend a…

No, I meant American sitcoms like Friends, Seinfeld, Home Improvement, Modern Family, etc. None of these shows show anything dramatic or larger than life - it's just a couple of friends or a family going through relatable yet sanitized everyday situations.

Many of these shows were the pillar of people's evening ritual - the whole family would gather around the TV to watch a fictional family experience life.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#97

Post by 411111111111111 »

l33tman wrote: post #87
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In person, I get it. You chill with someone you like, you don't need to do much to enjoy it. Like reading together, or just being there. However, I don't get watching pewdiepie playing something. I just can't groke it. You don't know the person, the person is not in the room, the person is not even currently playing since it's a recording. It's a flat image of someone else having fun. And not somebody particularly go…

After you've watched a person enough on YouTube or Twitch you start feeling that you know them (even though it's completely unidirectional). I think there is a term for this but it's for sure an established phenomena. At that point it feels like watching friends do stuff I guess

I've never developed a parasocial delusions myself but still frequently watch various YouTube millionaire's plays games.

For me, it's just low effort entertainment. Like I don't enjoy talking with people, but it's kinda nice to have someone talk in the background to remind me that I'm not the only human alive.

I'm in my thirties though, these parasocial teenagers might be less jaded then I am.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#98

Post by satvikpendem »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #69
throw74648284 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I relate to your sentiment, and then I think about how hard it was to explain to my parents why I enjoy watching others play video games.

In person, I get it. You chill with someone you like, you don't need to do much to enjoy it. Like reading together, or just being there. However, I don't get watching pewdiepie playing something. I just can't groke it. You don't know the person, the person is not in the room, the person is not even currently playing since it's a recording. It's a flat image of someone else having fun. And not somebody particularly go…

You enjoy the feeling of having friends, as you develop a parasocial relationship with the person on the screen.

It is essentially a hack for the brain's social processing systems. Generally, we'd have only seen others in real life and interacted with them. This confers evolutionary advantage so we feel good interacting further with people, and perhaps even seeing people do things we find enjoyable in the first place.

Now with video, we feel good as we "spend time" with the other person, even though they don't know of our existence. Our caveman brain doesn't know about this sort of one sided relationship at all, it wasn't present in the olden days.

We will see the same with AI and chatbots as the decades pass, only at least now we're actually able to interact in a two sided way. There are already people doing this with ChatGPT or even Replika.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#99

Post by bentlegen »

MrPatan wrote: post #55
highwaylights wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve missed the point of the comment. The point is that these people aren’t making their money from what they’re preaching, they’re making it from YouTube. Even if there were some validity to what they’re saying in the videos, if the video has 3 million views by the time you’ve watched it then you’re at least the 3 millionth fish in the packed-to-the-gills salmon farm by then and there’s no margin left for…

Vox also doesn't make their money from whatever it is they preach, but from Vox getting clicks.

And theatres need attendees, streaming services need plays, tourist attractions need eyeballs, etc. Just because a publication needs “clicks” does not make their argument invalid, or that they can’t achieve that viewership without debasing themselves.

It’s okay to be slightly provocative to get attention to a valid story, IMO. At no point does Vox tell me I too can run my own news publication and become influential like them; if they did then I think it’s fair to doubt them and their motivations.

Re: YouTube millionaires are not your friends

#100

Post by wheybags »

berjin wrote: post #46

> Drop shipping, or the practice of PURCHASING cheap goods, usually from China, and selling them on a legitimate-seeming website for profit Vox doesn't even understand what drop shipping is. The whole point is that the goods don't need to be owned. Vox are mad people are watching dumb videos instead of their own low quality articles.

I think people might be down voting you because they also don't know what drop shipping is. To clarify: drop shipping is when you have no inventory, take customer orders, and then simply forward those orders. So, for example, If I get an order for a hairbrush on ebay, instead of shipping a hairbrush myself, I would go on alibaba or similar, and order a hairbrush shipped straight to my customer.
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