Most commodity and leveraged ETFs are designed to benefit just one party - the designer of the ETF. There are plenty of articles on USO and its travails.
But I don't agree that USO is _more_ dangerous for a casual trader to trade than oil futures, for the reasons I mentioned.
Removing the overall fluctuations of the oil market, the relative problem with ETFs is that they bleed away value over time. That's a real issue, but I wouldn't compare that to juggling a live hand grenade.
Edit: you did not say it was more dangerous, my mistake. I do think that ETFs are less dangerous, for the reasons I mentioned.
This, unfortunately (or for some, fortunately) requires understanding the structure of the Oil market and how Oil is bought, sold, delivered and transported and yes stored! Spot prices, futures, oil grades, hubs, contango, etc.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-30/investors... [2] https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts
USO has unpredictable drift due to contract rolling and often trades at a significant premium/discount to NAV.