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Just Me Venting About YouTube
3 days ago
Please forgive me for this bit of venting. I already posted this journal on DeviantArt, but I wanted to post it here on FurAffinity for some of my friends to see. I'm not as notalgic for this era as I am for the year 2000, but I can still remember a time when YouTube was a fun place to watch videos on the internet. No intrusive ads or sponsors in the middle of the video. None of this so-called "YouTube Kids" slop content featuring Spiderman and Elsa doing various things that parents don't want their kids to see. No AI generated nightmare fuel. TikTok wasn't even a thing yet, so there was no YouTube Shorts. None of those nonsensical mobile game ads.
The first video that I ever watched on YouTube, back in 2006 or 2007, was the Japanese commercial for the original Fire Emblem game for the Nintendo Famicom, which was presented like an opera where Marth was standing in the centre of it all. I watched that video after I was introduced to Marth in Super Smash Bros Melee. During my early years of browsing YouTube, I became more curious about the history of Nintendo and video games as a whole, along with whatever cool Nintendo stuff that they had in Japan but America didn't get. I've learned about the Famicom Disk System, PC Engine, BS-X Satellaview, and the Sharp X68000, thanks to YouTube.
I liked to watch YouTube Poop videos featuring King Mah Boi and Squadala and those other characters from the Zelda CD-i games. Some of my favorite YTP creators included WalrusGuy, Imaperson, and Madanonymous, who made what used to be one of my favorite videos, "Some Woman Talks About Kitten Huffing". I always liked to quote that video. "Fashion is fashion. Fashion... is fashion. Very fashionable. Whew! That was exhausting!" I think they also did a YTP of that old Disney educational short film about something that a woman goes through in her life.
However, the one thing that I found the most annoying about YouTube at the time was the sudden jumpscare with the scary image without a warning in the beginning of the video or even the description. I'll never forget that time when I played that video with the 90s techno dance remix of the Always Coca-Cola jingle in the background while working on my art and being interrupted by a loud scream that seemed to come out of nowhere. There were also multiple videos about satanism, racism, and subliminal messages in old Disney cartoons that pretty much ruined my childhood.
I wish that I was able to find more fun, entertaining videos on YouTube about the subjects I'm really interested in, like cryptids and wild animals, for example, from content creatures that existed before 2020. I'm not interested in the videos where they try to debunk the existence of Bigfoot, Yeti, Aliens, or the Loch Ness Monster. I want to listen to some stories of people's encounters with those kinds of creatures along with some stories of animal attacks. Because I'm sick of listening to those commentary drama slop channels who talk about something controversial that a political Twitch streamer has said, and I don't want the algorithm to recommend me another one of those rage bait videos with the outrageous thumbnail and the title saying "Donald Trump Gets Angry Because Canada Is Doing This" or some shit like that. Another video that I want to avoid like the plague was the one that is about Disney's Aladdin, you know, the one with the screenshot of the genie and the word Yes in the thumbnail. I might also want to look up some videos of animated cartoons featuring furry/anthro characters or maybe some dinosaurs. If you have any suggestions or recommendations on what videos I can watch or what channels I could subscribe to, please let me know in a comment.
Oh yeah, and before I forget, I wanted to mention how they were apparently punishing viewers who use adblock when browsing the internet, like myself. Not only do I use ad blockers. I pay for the Premium, since I don't want to see ads while watching YouTube videos on my TV or my iPad, so I don't know what obnoxious ads there are, but I've heard from a friend that was getting an ad for a robotic toy dog that was being advertised with AI generated images and some guy singing Jingle Bells.
The first video that I ever watched on YouTube, back in 2006 or 2007, was the Japanese commercial for the original Fire Emblem game for the Nintendo Famicom, which was presented like an opera where Marth was standing in the centre of it all. I watched that video after I was introduced to Marth in Super Smash Bros Melee. During my early years of browsing YouTube, I became more curious about the history of Nintendo and video games as a whole, along with whatever cool Nintendo stuff that they had in Japan but America didn't get. I've learned about the Famicom Disk System, PC Engine, BS-X Satellaview, and the Sharp X68000, thanks to YouTube.
I liked to watch YouTube Poop videos featuring King Mah Boi and Squadala and those other characters from the Zelda CD-i games. Some of my favorite YTP creators included WalrusGuy, Imaperson, and Madanonymous, who made what used to be one of my favorite videos, "Some Woman Talks About Kitten Huffing". I always liked to quote that video. "Fashion is fashion. Fashion... is fashion. Very fashionable. Whew! That was exhausting!" I think they also did a YTP of that old Disney educational short film about something that a woman goes through in her life.
However, the one thing that I found the most annoying about YouTube at the time was the sudden jumpscare with the scary image without a warning in the beginning of the video or even the description. I'll never forget that time when I played that video with the 90s techno dance remix of the Always Coca-Cola jingle in the background while working on my art and being interrupted by a loud scream that seemed to come out of nowhere. There were also multiple videos about satanism, racism, and subliminal messages in old Disney cartoons that pretty much ruined my childhood.
I wish that I was able to find more fun, entertaining videos on YouTube about the subjects I'm really interested in, like cryptids and wild animals, for example, from content creatures that existed before 2020. I'm not interested in the videos where they try to debunk the existence of Bigfoot, Yeti, Aliens, or the Loch Ness Monster. I want to listen to some stories of people's encounters with those kinds of creatures along with some stories of animal attacks. Because I'm sick of listening to those commentary drama slop channels who talk about something controversial that a political Twitch streamer has said, and I don't want the algorithm to recommend me another one of those rage bait videos with the outrageous thumbnail and the title saying "Donald Trump Gets Angry Because Canada Is Doing This" or some shit like that. Another video that I want to avoid like the plague was the one that is about Disney's Aladdin, you know, the one with the screenshot of the genie and the word Yes in the thumbnail. I might also want to look up some videos of animated cartoons featuring furry/anthro characters or maybe some dinosaurs. If you have any suggestions or recommendations on what videos I can watch or what channels I could subscribe to, please let me know in a comment.
Oh yeah, and before I forget, I wanted to mention how they were apparently punishing viewers who use adblock when browsing the internet, like myself. Not only do I use ad blockers. I pay for the Premium, since I don't want to see ads while watching YouTube videos on my TV or my iPad, so I don't know what obnoxious ads there are, but I've heard from a friend that was getting an ad for a robotic toy dog that was being advertised with AI generated images and some guy singing Jingle Bells.
YT is a pile of trash now, now spreading corporate trash. Google is trying to compensate for their growing bloated state that comes from being a practical monopoly in video hosting. They're so desperate that in 2026/7 they're going to stop people from using apps not from the play store. Now one has to rely on imaging their phone and tablets with either linageOS or graphineOS. I heard a mobile version of linux is also available for phones too.
One thing is for certain, YouTube isn't about "you" anymore. It's about them, and by them, I mean Google and those greedy corporate overlords. I've seen it go full on totalitarian in the past decade. You couldn't play a couple of seconds of one of your favorite songs in one of your videos, otherwise it would get taken down because of copyright detection bots. You couldn't use swear words (most of the time) or even mention certain subjects like suicide or the holocaust, because that would get your video instantly demonetized by the AI algorithms that run that website. Yet, they allow NSFW material, AI slop, and fetish content in the ads they play inbetween videos. Almost a decade ago, you would see one ad before any video that was uploaded on YouTube, and that was it. Now, they've become so greedy, they're telling visitors not to use adblock, and they are apparently age restricting or sometimes taking down videos that were criticizing them.
I know exactly how you feel. Earlier this year, because I got fed up with Google's bullshit, I switched my browser from Chrome to Brave, because I got fed up with webpages running slower because I was browsing the web with adblocks and other extensions enabled.
Life can still be pretty good, just not from big corpo places and products xD. Ma and pa shops and use items and self happiness in a casual life and in crafts is what carries me.
Invidio.us instances work on phone browsers if you can't get newpipe after 2026/2027. (Newpipe still works but later you may need a flashed os to get it to work.)
Honestly I feel like the internet is better when you stay in small circles like on FA, telegram, discord, and retro style forums.
And just treat YT as a modified TV that's better to watch than being on aired.
Corporations and governments see the internet as too much as a valuable asset, like severe weather advisories, policy announcement, advertisement, data analysts for corporate ventures, commerce, and etc. are all too important for the global economic system for civilians to wield it spontaneously.
Youtube is backed by lobbyists and corpo buddies that want to change public opinion so that they can either excuse or distract the public away from corpo behaviour. They blamed bats but not blame the Chinese's over crowded billion population and unsanitary foggy urban hell holes. The corporations just didn't want to stop air traveling and international business until it blew into their face.
The internet is now just a tool for techniques for the never happy billionaires and thousanaires who grew numb from their pile of toys and now want a mountain, and the best strategy against this is to not rely on the internet when ever possible and use open source software and customize your personal experiences as much as possible.
Also here are some archives of earlier youtube vids:
https://github.com/ftde0/yt2009
(For desktop.)
https://github.com/ftde0/yt2009/blo.....n/apk_setup.md
(Same as before but for android)
https://archive.org/details/youtube-archive_202310
Also archiving media like vids, pics, and games once in awhile is generally a good idea due to the volatile nature of the internet, servers going down, policy changes, incompatible device/account settings etc.