YouTube for things other than videos: wtf

<KP9001> Disch, you should post that on board2 also
<KP9001> very good point, it pisses me off too.
<Disch> I would if I went to/cared about board2
<Disch> feel free to copypasta if you want
<KP9001> every time i run into one of those videos it just 
         makes me want to rip my dick off and throw it in the river.

Posted by Disch
Everything is becoming YouTube'd these days. You'd think that wouldn't be a bad thing... but people are using it poorly/inappropriatly.

A good example of this is what I see happening to a lot of people on these boards. People are making a VIDEO of their hack rather than just making a screenshot. Now... I agree that some things cannot be adequately captured in a screenshot. But 95% of things can be. The other 4.9% could be captured in a series of 2 or 3 screenshots (or even an animated screenshot -- if you prefer -- which I don't).

I just downloaded and watched a video of a hack where someone changed the text color. The video was 2.2 MB. A screenshot would've been maybe 5 KB. And "Hey look what I did. I changed the text color under so and so circumstances! Isn't that awesome?" is maybe about 130 bytes (I didn't actually count). Was a video really necessary?

Another thing I've seen on YouTube are these slideshows of still images. Still images. I guess they have accompanying BGM too, but that still seems somewhat ridiculous.

I've even seen videos that were purely audio. I'm not lying. A single, static, stationary image and accompanying audio. This blows my mind. What also blows my mind is how common it is!

It's gotten to point where people on IRC are talking about this song and I'm like "hey give me a link to that song so I can listen" and instead of a link to the song I get a link to some YouTube video that plays the song. So now if I want to listen to it... not only can I not just download it to my computer, but I also have to download a file that's 3x the size and 1/5th the quality.

I know what you're thinking. "So what". And to those of you on DSL/Cable/decent internet connections it doesn't really matter... since 6 or 7 MB or whatever those videos are fly by like nothing. But goddamn... some of us still don't have highspeed internet available. Not for lack of trying, either-- it simply isn't available everywhere (why it isn't available everywhere yet is another thing that blows my mind -- I mean they still bother to hook up phone lines to new houses they build... but not cable/DSL internet? What the hell is that... internet is like 1000x more important than a landline these days -- hell lots of people don't even use their landline. But that's a topic for another discussion).

So yeah. Use some consideration. Use your brain when uploading things to YouTube... or linking to thinks on YouTube. Ask yourself "Is this a video? Or is this a waste of my time?"

Thank you, Disch.

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