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

One thing we saw from that $100 million was that higher production values don't translate into more views. But really, why should they? What matters is content; I'm very happy for people to continue producing videos in their living room on their laptop, if the content is good.

I don't know that this author has his ducks in a row.

For example, in the USA, The Bell System provided an amazing quality of phone service. Uptime of the system was just astonishing, voice quality beats cell phones hollow. But clearly, the voice quality and reliability of the system wasn't all that necessary. Cell phone systems don't provide anywhere near the reliability or voice quality that The Bell System used to, and we're all overjoyed with it. It's just that a regulated monopoly could use some of it's wealth to provide geographic diversity, lots of human support and other things now considered crazy redundant.

Why not believe that the Media Monopoly (ABC, NBC, CBS) used their monopoly rents to make programming with lots of flourishes and quality? Just like The Bell System, radio and tee vee networks used to try to provide some reason for their continued existence.

Now that we can vote with our mice, we can pick the funny/weird/interesting content. We can choose the stuff that really matters to us, instead of just watching The Brady Bunch because the Thursday evening 7pm timeslot had 1 show that was bad, and 2 that were even worse.

I think the article overlooks a large segment - that is, very popular YouTube producers who genuinely make cool videos with (what I think are) professional graphics and production quality like freddiew, wongfuproductions, ryan higa, kevjumba, mysteryguitarman and kurthugoschneider

The article also misses what traditional TV lacks that YouTube producers do - audience interaction. They will make videos based on their fans' comments, hold meetups in their location and actually respond on twitter/instagram.

Blaming the rules of the game is sometimes appropriate, but not in the case. This is a free market for entertainment if there ever was one. Much freer than TV or movies.

The high-volume clicks that the author reviles? These consist of millions of individual consumer choices. The viewers decide what they want to watch. Apparently, this is what people like. Maybe old media didn't realize that and was wasting their money all along, or maybe tastes have just changed. But either way, if you don't like what's popular on YouTube (which I don't), you probably just have different tastes. Fortunately, there is plenty of diversity of YouTube, so you're not stuck with what's popular.

Which raises a question about this article: What exactly is the author criticizing? Surely it's not the lack of good content, because there is more of that than ever. It seems to be the mere popularity of bad content. But if bad content is popular, what of it? I don't mind. If it is truly bothersome, one can always take comfort in snobbery, which can be a lot of fun.

If Google were somehow distorting the market by deliberately promoting low-quality stuff, I'd blame the system. But based on the facts as stated by the author, I don't see any reason to believe that.

The author assumes that there is a linear relationship between the amount of money that a creator has at their disposal and the resulting "production quality". So, once Jenna Marbles starts making some real bank, out come the camera crews and director and post-production effects and...

No. There is no path from Jenna Marbles to the traditional kind of television that the author is used to. They're just...different. Jenna has a specific way that she likes to create things and more money doesn't necessarily change that.

To make the kind of TV that the author imagines, you need to drop some money up front. Let's be charitable and say $300,000 for a pilot. Needless to say this is out of reach for almost 100% of the content creators on Youtube, so it's unsurprising that the content that has risen to popularity within Youtube has its roots in methods that cost essentially nothing.

Now, there are some interesting exceptions. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries [1] was nowhere near a "real" TV show in terms of budget but it had writers, production staff, and hired actors. Vice produces a lot of content that seems like it could fit into a normal TV program [2] -- almost. There are some other interesting shows that are sort of half-way there (well, more like 1/10th of the way there) in that they actually have production crews and do things like post-production (see: Wil Wheaton's Tabletop series [3]). I'm sure there are a ton of other examples.

So, the community is sidling up to high-quality content, but it's still unclear exactly how they're going to get there. By my estimation, to create a "TV-ready" drama, you'd need at the very least 100k subscribers paying $3/mo. Obviously no one is going to sign up for something if they're never heard of you, so you've got to make some free content that people love, then maybe make the jump via a Kickstarter? Or will true "channels" appear that bring the money and the subscribers and that then fund the shows of their choice? This is a really fascinating time for video content -- I'm excited to see how the economics end up playing out.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs&feature=c4-ov...

[2] (Warning: NSFW) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsUH8llvTZo

[3] http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C