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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

Bingo.

I do not understand the attraction of nearly all YouTube creators and celebrities. I don't get the appeal. All the videos sound the same and have the same stupid looking tag lines to get you to watch them. Outrageous actions for attention are deeply troubling to me.

And I'm also SUPER aware that it's because it's not for me. I'm not the target demographic at all, and never will be.

At some point you have to realize that the world moves on, and that's just part of getting older. It feels awesome when you're 18-24 and everything is relevant to you. It feels way less awesome when you're over 40 and everything seems to be out of control.

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YT has RSS feeds for every channel.

So I’ve switched to using RSS to follow the specific niche creators that add value for me. As a result, my YT experience is entirely unlike what the YT algorithm suggests.

Similarly, I use Ublock Origin to remove basically every element of the site except the search bar, subscriptions and the video player itself.

There's also some YouTube-specific extensions like SponsorBlock and DeArrow [1] which specialize in removing distractions from YouTube content - not just the UI.

[1]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ ; https://dearrow.ajay.app/

Isn't this basically the same as only using your subscription page, and not the main youtube startpage?

Close, but not quite the same, since I don't even need a YT account or subscription page.

My official YT subscriptions are now just a subset, mostly as a mechanism to give small channels a little algorithm boost.

Did not know this! Going to be checking this out, thank you.

Well, one could argue that when you’re over 40 a lot more is actually directed at you because that’s when you’ve got the most money to spend. Cars, properties, services, vacations, kids etc. Everything might start to seem to be out of control, but major products finally start to seem to hit the right spot for your taste and promise that control in some sense.

YouTube caters to every niche. Including the more snobbish demographic who “claims” they don’t understand the appeal of YouTube videos (aka don’t understand humans and entertainment in general)

Check out stuff by Johnny Harris , veritasium, etc… for more educational stuff.

Also I didn’t like the ageism comment. I’m about your age and I can definitely understand the appeal of Mr. Beast. I feel a lot of the disdain for him is more snobbery than anything. Some people think they’re better or too good for that type of entertainment. If you truly don’t understand the appeal I think that’s actually a sign of autism. It’s unlikely you’re autistic and it’s more likely to be snobbery disguised as lack of understanding.

Entertainment is usually mindless anyway. It’s not like Shakespeare is some higher form of entertainment. It’s all snobbery that segregates these things. Transformers has more technical complexity and represents a bigger human achievement then Shakespeare.

The technical know how of thousands of people utilizing technology decades in development combined together to achieve the transformers movie to tell a story with more clarity then the equally cliche story of Romeo and Juliet.

It’s all mindless entertainment and class based prejudice.

Johnny Harris makes well produced videos that contain a lot of old information and misinformation. If any of his videos cover a topic you're an expert in, you'll see immediately.

Then choose some other educational channel in which there are thousands.

Just putting it out there for people who care about the quality of information they consume.

I also often see the same said about Veritasium.

No veritasium is pretty legit imo. Johnny Harris is not bad, I’ve heard the same criticism too. I think he won an award in journalistic integrity at one point.

Theres no YouTuber without criticism. Referring to no one in particular: There’s even offensive snobbish garbage comments equivalent to the banality of Mr. Beast videos here on HN yet this doesn’t reflect the overall vibe here.

Don’t try to bring my overall point down by attacking one particular aspect of one particular example. What should the snobbery of some of the commentary on HN here render the entire site moot? No. My point stands regardless.

> Don’t try to bring my overall point down by attacking one particular aspect of one particular example. What should the snobbery of some of the commentary on HN here render the entire site moot? No. My point stands regardless.

No, you giving two for two garbage suggestions shows how easy it can be for garbage content to masquerade as good. Both on YouTube, in HN comments, and elsewhere.

Highly disagree. Those are not garbage channels.

it's not true of veritasium; he is meticulous about correctness. it's true that his videos do include a lot of old information, but it's correct old information such as the theory of relativity

agreed. This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_X2cMHNe0 generated a lot of controversy and he ended up being right. Hence the criticism. It's almost like the Monty Hall problem for Marilyn vos savant where even people with PhDs derided her for being wrong when in fact they were all wrong themselves.

well, the truth turned out to be quite complicated; see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AXv49dDQJw. the result is more complicated than just a single time delay, and the details of the experimental setup (like the wire diameter! and load impedance relative to transmission-line pulse impedance) matter a lot. in alphaphoenix's first experiment, putting 5 volts into a kilometer of wire, he got 0.2 volts across his resistor immediately, then after about 1.6μs, a jump up to about 2 volts, and then a gradual rise to 1.7 volts, some overshoot peaking after another 1.6μs, and then settling back down to the 1.7-volt level

(derek's results in the linked video, which incidentally links to one of the two i linked above, were quantitatively different but qualitatively similar)

the really unintuitive thing about this i think is that people think of electrical energy as flowing inside wires, when actually almost all of it flows around the wires, as veritasium explained quite ably. this is something people doing high-speed pcb layout have to deal with a lot in order to avoid emi problems

as i understand it, derek has a ph.d. in physics, or actually in physics education research https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Veritasium. that doesn't mean he knows everything about physics, but generally my experience with people in ph.d. programs is that they're good at listening to counterarguments and admitting when they're wrong, and also seeking out experts before publishing

(i think the veritasium video does contain a minor error in that it says electrons collide with metal ions, which as i understand it is not exactly how ohmic resistance works—the 'electrons' moving through the lattice are not exactly electrons but virtual particles similar to phonons or plasmons, and so the things they scatter off of are not individual ions—but possibly derek knows this and was intentionally simplifying, or possibly my understanding is wrong. i mean, i don't have a ph.d. in anything, much less solid-state quantum physics! derek certainly knows the electrons traveling through the wire aren't point-like particles bouncing around like billiard balls, and that the ions aren't red spheres with plus signs on them, despite depicting them that way.)

>i think the veritasium video does contain a minor error in that it says electrons collide with metal ions, which as i understand it is not exactly how ohmic resistance works—the 'electrons' moving through the lattice are not exactly electrons but virtual particles similar to phonons or plasmons,

electrons are moving through the wire. The virtual particle thing is a misunderstanding on your part I think.

I think your talking about current. Current flows in the opposite direction of electron drift velocity. In the simplified model they use these things called negative and positive charges flowing through the wire and current is defined as the movement of positive charge. These "charges" are of course virtual in nature because it's not what's actually happens.

What actually happens is negative charge is moving and positive charge (protons) are frozen.

And yes of course derek knows that it's a wave traveling through the lattice.

while of course that is correct, that's not what i'm talking about

there is a good introductory presentation in https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_13.html but note that it assumes some previous familiarity with quantum mechanics. §13.6 explains that mostly what the electrons (really propagating waves of quantum probability amplitude for there to be an extra electron) are scattering off of is imperfections in the lattice. but that can't be the whole story or all perfect crystals would be superconductors

Yes, thank you! And I dont even watch Mr Beast, but I admit I immediately want to click on that «I spent 24 hours in ketchup»

It offers entertainment value. The educational component of it is it offers education into human psychology when people are presented with challenges and reward, etc. etc. etc.

Mr. Beast videos are actually insightful and educational in certain contexts. It’s just snobbery all the way down.

Clearly never read Shakespeare...

Clearly did. It's made up. People are in awe by the complexity, meaning and poetry but in the end it's still bullshit. It's also outdated. People admire classics because of some milestone they passed but after about a decade that milestone becomes cliche.

I studied Shakespeare relatively extensively and while it's obviously clever, probably a big part of his appeal was his plays were vulgar. Also a lot of the things we often attribute to him inventing may have been common turns of phrase back then.

Shakespeare is Wicked or Hamilton is probably a good modern comparison.

I’m 39 and thoroughly enjoy MrBeast videos. They’re clever and fun and exciting. Pretty amazing a lot of the things that only he can pull off. And he’s been pulling off impressive stunts for years. He’s incredibly well capitalized at this point, but he grinded there and has been doing novel videos from the start.

By broad definitions of "pull off", if the accusations of faking things and changing rules are to be believed.

> if the accusations of faking things and changing rules are to be believed.

The evidence behind the accusations is sooooo bad.

How so?

Honestly it sounds like a deficiency on your part and that you need to explore some. Because I follow a lot of smart, talented, nerdy, and interesting creators. And my feed is nothing like what you described.

When ever someone describes me what their feed is full of or taken over with, they are secretly telling me what type of bubble they are in and what type of content they actually consume.

I'm also ruthless with the "not interested" and "don't recommend channel".

the point is not the "taste" as in "I like Taylor Swift" / "I like nine inch nail" / "I like bethoveen"

The point here is the finality: pure waste of resources

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