Old Youtube

My music taste has changed a lot over the years. There was a time when all I listened to was Green Day, and I knew the lyrics to all 150+ of their songs. And now I must have played their songs maybe a dozen times this whole year. But every now and then I like to go back and listen to my old playlists, just to go back mentally into a different phase of my life, sometimes a decade ago.

So that is what I was doing today when I stumbled upon this youtube video saved in one of my playlists.

There’s no way for me to describe it, you should give it a watch yourself. A little fact about this video, back in the day this used to be the most-watched video on Youtube!

Youtube has changed a lot now, with a lot of corporations entering, it has become just a repository of Talkshow clips and music videos. The top 10 most videos on youtube right now are all songs and nursery rhymes.

When I started watching youtube, the most subscribed channel had just 2 million views. And videos like ‘Evolution of Dance’ had a chance of succeeding. You didn’t have to be a professional to get views on youtube. This is why people went to youtube, to watch amateur creators just having fun and not really caring about user engagement, or click-through-rate, or all that crap. Those were the good old days, what changed?

My best guess is that money is to blame for this, though many may not agree with me. When youtube first began, you didn’t get any ad revenue for your videos. This is one of the reasons why people weren’t that worried about the actual numbers, they just created content that they thought was good.

But then the youtube partner program started, and suddenly being a YouTuber was now a proper job. And as soon as a hobby becomes a job, and money is involved, it starts going south pretty quickly. Videos became clickbaity, and format and topics were always based on whatever the algorithm favored. One youtube makes a podcast that gets good views, suddenly every YouTuber is making podcasts. Someone did a live stream and played chess? Hell yeah now everyone is doing that.

And more than anything else, things got professional. All the big Youtubers now have a team of writers, cameramen, editors, and whatnot. They have offices! And we have ads, not only the ads by youtube, but the YouTuber will interrupt the video to promote a sponsor as well. Why did we move from TV to youtube again?