Hacker News Reader

Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

Quick tangential question: I watched a few seconds that video and was immediately struck by how Mark sounds so....YouTube'ey? What is it about his intonation and narration style that is so distinctly YouTube? I don't watch enough YouTube to get a sense for whether it's distinct to him or to an entire class of popular channels. Every sentence or two is a "quip" - it's loud and sing-song'y. Lots of phrases seem to end on a rising tone (my parents used to call this "upspeak?" because it sounds like you're asking a question? all the time?).

Where/when did this style arise?

View on HN

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-l...

TLDR: They use various ways of emphasizing words and adding variety to speech. It's almost exclusively done in videos where it's just a face talking to camera to try to make it attention grabbing.

They use Jon Stewart's Daily Show as a pre- YouTube example of someone using the same techniques for the same reasons.

Oh fascinating - great find. Thank you! I like in particular the phrase "intellectual used-car-salesman voice" (LOL).

ps - for those who are not subscribers: https://archive.ph/wkiWt

Interesting thanks for the link. I was a college radio dj and there is a similar thing for when people are speaking on-air. It's kind of strange to be in a basement alone talking into a mic, especially because people are listening! Makes me think of sports broadcasting mannerisms across different cultures/languages.

This is an interesting observation. I had a similar observation about tik tok influencer speak, though it’s not the same style as YouTube speak. There is a distinct shared way of speaking I’ve just called the tik tok accent (not talking about the AI voiceover). It’s something I’ve noticed mostly with female influencers, where they talk in a lower, quieter voice, that feels both like they are educating as well as perhaps infantilizing the listener. It’s difficult to describe precisely but definitely a shared phenomenon.

> I’ve noticed mostly with female influencers, where they talk in a lower, quieter voice, that feels both like they are educating as well as perhaps infantilizing the listener.

It’s called “patronizing.” These people think they are more interesting and intelligent than they actually are and take on this air of pretentious lecturing.

It's awful. I was impressed by the video and the technology, but the presentation style is irritating.

I felt especially sorry for the people working at the Rwanda site just trying to do their jobs efficiently, while he mucks about being fake-excited about everything. There's almost an air of "smile and nod and hope he goes away soon" about it

I think you're reading into it. Mark Rober is one of the good guys. lol

Yeah, he's a former NASA engineer making some pretty solid community contributions.

> I cut my finger making lunch? So I placed an order for some bandaids a couple minutes ago? And now they're four seconds away! That is a nearly silent drone system that can deliver a package from the sky? Right to my backyard in as little as two minutes? With dinner plate accuracy!

Where else do people talk like this? What motivates this kind of speech?

Viewer retention, remember when you were taught to make an interesting intro to an essay to grab the reader? This is just that in video form, to really succeed in getting to the front page/trending of Youtube you really have to grab randos who aren't necessarily coming to you for your content so it has to have an attention grabbing start.

> Where else do people talk like this?

On TV, but it got out of fashion recently.

There's a Monty Python sketch about an island full of foreign news reporters that's quite illustrating.

You can ask ChatGPT to make it 500 words intro. It will sound natural, just like, how you talk with your friends. People don't want to wait for someone talking something 5 minutes then realize that it's not the video they want to watch.

The idea is that you want to say everything about the video within 10/15 seconds to make viewer interested.

Just like how you want that the title of HN story must be under 80 character, not 800. Do you start conversation with someone by saying 80 words then go on for 30 minute?

My totally made up backstory for why this is is from bad editing in the early days of chopping up multiple takes where the edit does not happen on natural sentence endings so those intonations happen at unnatural places. it then became a thing and now is done in normal delivery as a style to be emulated.

Oh, around 2010 youtube (peak vlogger era) the cool thing to do in monologues was removing pauses between sentences, making a sort of galloping cadence.

Can’t say for sure where it comes from. But upspeak and it’s tangential culture does more psychic damage to me than advertising, “bad ux”, dubious business models, and most of the other common gripes on here

Mark Rober is one of the big-name youtubers that so many other youtubers try to emulate, so whatever his reasons are, the reason it sounds so "youtubey" is probably because it's how Mark Rober talks in his videos.

Its the male "comedic" friendly voice.

Essentially its a learned affectation to come off as approachable and unthreatening (see also Jimmy Fallon) to garner views. Read a "boring" technical article at Ars or watch this guy fumble around and be silly and give these practiced big smiles? A lot of people would rather watch a 20-30 minute video that's entertaining and lower information than read a 5 minute article thats denser.

Essentially this is blogspam in video form and it makes a lot of people very wealthy, so its not going away anytime soon.

As someone who loves the arts, but can't get into youtube personality culture, its just so crazy to me people watch these things. They're a bit infantlizing to me. "Oh you want to learn about these drones? Instead of proper sources here's some guy who will pretend to be your friend and do silly comedic things for you while explaining it to you on the 5th grade level." Umm ok.

The most positive thing I can say is that there are people out there who can't read well (or read English at all) or can't learn from reading well, so these videos can be seen as helping a vulnerable demographic in an accessibility-like way. It may also attract younger people who otherwise would never read an Ars or Hackaday or HN (or whomever) article because these outlets are just not super accessible to them (unknown site to them, written on a too low level, etc). And that these video personalities could be a stepping stone into better and deeper media.

Essentially media is a free capitalist market and people choose their media sources, via their own biases and limitations. If they want everything explained to them via a Jimmy Fallon impersonator, then it will happen. Eventually the lowest common denominator demands questionable gimmicks and the market is more than happy to oblige.

Personally, as someone who does enjoy youtube but also relates to the grating nature of over "blogspammy" content, I think the key is I'm rarely if ever only watching a youtube video. Audiobooks/podcast when I can focus, youtube videos when I can't/doin something else. Can tune in and out easily and mostly not miss most stuff as I'm scrolling elsewhere.

Great analysis though, "blogspam" in video form is a fantastic metaphor for the over produced algo gamey vids. (Perfect length to hit max ads, thumbnail, title, intro template, etc)

> Instead of proper sources here's some guy who will pretend to be your friend and do silly comedic things for you while explaining it to you on the 5th grade level.

Well, Mark Rober's intended, primary audience (don't let youtube hear this) is 5th graders so I don't know what you expected.

They aren't trying to sell kiwico kits to 26 year olds you know.

That's fair but Rober does the standard "Youtube voice" and persona popular in many demographics. I don't think its fair to say this is something unique to 5th grader audience YT's. This is practiced persona that leads to social media success in many venues.

Also HN isnt a 5th grader's venue, so its interesting how normalized it is posting children's media in adult spaces, probably because he doesn't come off as much more childish than most YT personalities.

that's not bad, upspeak is a great way to label the phonetic dancing being done. For that guy he always talks like that, something in the strong direction of salesman like. Sometimes you can go far back enough in the video history to sample their persona developing over time, eg ChrisFix videos on YouTube have undergone a more muted and normal speech pattern to the more ebullient stuff you find later.

I think the style arose out of a need to fill a 1-minute video targeted at an audience of low attention-span 13 year olds with 9 additional minutes of CONTENT! in order to meet the length requirement for monetization. If the filler CONTENT! is bombastic and sing-songey, it keeps your attention, however vapid it may be.

Also noteworthy is that Rober is a really good looking former engineer/technician. Most men I've known in the field do not have such as mediagenic appearance, but he is attractive enough that people accept him as a presenter.

>because it sounds like you're asking a question? all the time?).

I've noticed this among a lot of leftist/Liberal podcasting as well (like Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, lot of NPR presenters).

I don't understand it. it sounds unserious

Reply on news.ycombinator.com