The Jenna Marbles Paradox: Why Are YouTube Videos So Terrible?

The author assumes that there is a linear relationship between the amount of money that a creator has at their disposal and the resulting "production quality". So, once Jenna Marbles starts making some real bank, out come the camera crews and director and post-production effects and...<p>No. There is no path from Jenna Marbles to the traditional kind of television that the author is used to. They're just...different. Jenna has a specific way that she likes to create things and more money doesn't necessarily change that.<p>To make the kind of TV that the author imagines, you need to drop some money up front. Let's be charitable and say $300,000 for a pilot. Needless to say this is out of reach for almost 100% of the content creators on Youtube, so it's unsurprising that the content that has risen to popularity within Youtube has its roots in methods that cost essentially nothing.<p>Now, there are some interesting exceptions. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries [1] was nowhere near a "real" TV show in terms of budget but it had writers, production staff, and hired actors. Vice produces a lot of content that seems like it could fit into a normal TV program [2] -- almost. There are some other interesting shows that are sort of half-way there (well, more like 1/10th of the way there) in that they actually have production crews and do things like post-production (see: Wil Wheaton's Tabletop series [3]). I'm sure there are a ton of other examples.<p>So, the community is sidling up to high-quality content, but it's still unclear exactly how they're going to get there. By my estimation, to create a "TV-ready" drama, you'd need at the very least 100k subscribers paying $3/mo. Obviously no one is going to sign up for something if they're never heard of you, so you've got to make some free content that people love, then maybe make the jump via a Kickstarter? Or will true "channels" appear that bring the money and the subscribers and that then fund the shows of their choice? This is a really fascinating time for video content -- I'm excited to see how the economics end up playing out.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs&#38;feature=c4-overview-vl&#38;list=PL6690D980D8A65D08" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs&#38;feature=c4-ov...</a><p>[2] (Warning: NSFW) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsUH8llvTZo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsUH8llvTZo</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4F80C7D2DC8D9B6C</a>

I have the feeling the author is elevating presentation over content. His definition of terrible is different than mine.<p>I mean, I think "Transformers 3: Pixels Making Grinding Noises" has insanely great production value, and made a bajillion dollars, but honestly I'd rather watch two hours of Jenna Marbles videos, and I don't even like Jenna Marbles all that much.

I don't know that this author has his ducks in a row.<p>For example, in the USA, The Bell System provided an amazing quality of phone service. Uptime of the system was just astonishing, voice quality beats cell phones hollow. But clearly, the voice quality and reliability of the system wasn't all that necessary. Cell phone systems don't provide anywhere near the reliability or voice quality that The Bell System used to, and we're all overjoyed with it. It's just that a regulated monopoly could use some of it's wealth to provide geographic diversity, lots of human support and other things now considered crazy redundant.<p>Why not believe that the Media Monopoly (ABC, NBC, CBS) used their monopoly rents to make programming with lots of flourishes and quality? Just like The Bell System, radio and tee vee networks used to try to provide some reason for their continued existence.<p>Now that we can vote with our mice, we can pick the funny/weird/interesting content. We can choose the stuff that really matters to us, instead of just watching The Brady Bunch because the Thursday evening 7pm timeslot had 1 show that was bad, and 2 that were even worse.

I think the article overlooks a large segment - that is, very popular YouTube producers who genuinely make cool videos with (what I think are) professional graphics and production quality like freddiew, wongfuproductions, ryan higa, kevjumba, mysteryguitarman and kurthugoschneider<p>The article also misses what traditional TV lacks that YouTube producers do - audience interaction. They will make videos based on their fans' comments, hold meetups in their location and actually respond on twitter/instagram.

There's no paradox: people don't care all that much about production values.<p>People watch Jenna Marbles because she's funny and attractive. Whether or not she frames her shots well is much less important.

Blaming the rules of the game is sometimes appropriate, but not in the case. This is a free market for entertainment if there ever was one. Much freer than TV or movies.<p>The high-volume clicks that the author reviles? These consist of millions of individual consumer choices. The viewers decide what they want to watch. Apparently, this is what people like. Maybe old media didn't realize that and was wasting their money all along, or maybe tastes have just changed. But either way, if you don't like what's popular on YouTube (which I don't), you probably just have different tastes. Fortunately, there is plenty of diversity of YouTube, so you're not stuck with what's popular.<p>Which raises a question about this article: What exactly is the author criticizing? Surely it's not the <i>lack</i> of good content, because there is more of that than ever. It seems to be the mere popularity of bad content. But if bad content is popular, what of it? I don't mind. If it is truly bothersome, one can always take comfort in snobbery, which can be a lot of fun.<p>If Google were somehow distorting the market by deliberately promoting low-quality stuff, I'd blame the system. But based on the facts as stated by the author, I don't see any reason to believe that.

&#62; <i>The same can pretty much be said about the rest of YouTube’s top “talent.” From Shane Dawson to Smosh, it’s almost universally bad content, bad jokes, bad premises, bad production value.</i><p>Oh, you mean just like regular TV.

In addition to the author's points about how the videos are constructed (thumbnail tricks, headline bait) to gain views, you also have to consider the basic mechanism involved in getting views: accessibility to a large population of people. If your videos are created at such a high level that only people with an IQ&#62;130 can understand, you won't get that many views, and even fewer subscribers. If you target the crowd with average to below average intelligence then you have a much larger market. What do people with average/below average intelligence care about? They want to see people doing stupid stuff. They don't care about production value that much. They want to see someone looking like an idiot because it makes them feel better about themselves. This is the singular reason for low quality crap on YouTube and TV. The audience that can truly appreciate high quality shows is very small and can't sustain that much programming.<p>I'd also like to point out that not all YouTube channels suck. There is a solid community of educational YouTubers which make good stuff [1]. Also, SourceFed is where I go to get caught up on news that other people want to talk about and I only have 5 minutes to spare. Phil DeFranco's empire is an example of a business built on YouTube.<p>[1]Maybe that should be "who make good stuff" or "whom make good stuff." Maybe I should watch more YouTube videos on grammar and less about NASA.

This article completely misses the point. It is not glossy fine hd quality that attracts, it is the soul and heart that youtubers put into videos. Be it Jenna Marbles showing an example of a strong woman, Shane Dawson who gives hope and inspiration to bullied kids across the country - you can't do the same if you will be just pouring dollars. And no, they have someone to be 'good' for - Jenna has 8,785,657 highly engaged subscribers on youtube only, who value her sincerity above video quality.

One thing we saw from that $100 million was that higher production values don't translate into more views. But really, why should they? What matters is content; I'm very happy for people to continue producing videos in their living room on their laptop, if the content is good.

I suspect that this article makes more sense if you've read his book, which hits on the same themes with a lot more context, and a lot more history.<p>Youtube optimizes for grabbing attention in well-defined bite sized chunks that people think they can spare. A little dopamine hit, followed by another, followed by another, followed by..why didn't I get anything done today? The interaction isn't meaningful. It isn't rich. It doesn't improve our lives. But it is addictive.<p>If you don't see what is wrong with this, I recommend reading <a href="http://www.highexistence.com/why-you-should-avoid-the-news/" rel="nofollow">http://www.highexistence.com/why-you-should-avoid-the-news/</a> until you think you understand it. Then re-read the article above with that in mind.

Much of the blame for vapid content propogation on YouTube must also be assigned to YouTube's own content recommendations engine. This:<p><i>Won't accept no for an answer.</i> You can't select and item and say "never, ever, under any circumstances, show this to me again." You can't even delete it from the recommendations list.<p><i>Once you fall down a YouTube rathole, you stay there.</i> YouTube never forgets (or requires a severe amount of ass-kicking and browser/history deletion to be told to forget). Random crap content I've viewed long ago seems (and of course, I can't know for sure) to result in promoting the same sort of crap content. You've all ended up in <i>that</i> corner of YouTube, and there's no way out.<p><i>YouTube promotes its own recommendations over what you've searched for.</i> When I look for content, rather than have the search results represented in the recommendations list, it's YouTube's own selections. Which are often ... not what I want. But don't be tempted to click (see "rathole" above).<p><i>Mass markets favor common denominators.</i> There's <i>amazingly</i> good stuff on YouTube, for whatever your definition of amazing is. But often, that's going to be ver specific to who <i>you</i> are and what <i>your</i> interests are. The only thing I can guarantee is that the intersection of your interests with the rest of the world is likely to be at a pretty base level.<p><i>Eyeball economies favor vapidity.</i> We're seeing this in many areas (news, Web content, videos). Until user-selection tools become better at countering this, we'll continue to see the problem.<p><i>There is really good content with relatively poor production values.</i> Having an interest in fitness, Boris "johnny mnemonic" Bachmann's "Squat Rx" video series is _great_. It's a one-man production filmed at low (320p) resolution with spotty audio levels. But the depth of knowledge is excellent. Thankfully, it's filmed with a tripod and well edited. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/johnnymnemonic2" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/user/johnnymnemonic2</a><p><i>Production quality doesn't translate to high-value content.</i> "Vsauce" is a highly-produced video series. The information content is virtually nil (and the energy level is beyond annoying). The "origional series" "Blue" is ... beyond stupid.<p><i>Production quality CAN further boost high-value content.</i> The TED Talk video series, and RSA Animate videos are excellent. If viewed from a production perspective, there's a lot of work that goes into them, and poor imitations are poor, though some other parties have used similar techniques well, see the Post Carbon Institute: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-J91SwP8w" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-J91SwP8w</a><p><i>YouTube handles spam / MVP poorly.</i> A popular video will be grabbed and repurposed by spammers and mindless video propogators / mindless viral propogators <i>endlessly</i>. It results in a huge duplication of content (often at increasing levels of video/audio quality degredation). See especially "fail" video compilations. No, it's a trap! (See: "rathole", above).<p>Chalk it up to my own boring interests, but finding micro-channel content relevant to specific areas is one of the huge wins of YouTube. Interviews, seminars, conference sessions recorded, and other informational content. Along with a bit of entertainment. The problem of course is that such content has very little visibility at scale -- it's part of the "long tail". And despite what some Cluetrainists would want you to believe, the real money is still at the head.

Throughout modern history (certainly long before the internet) creative works that become the most popular are not necessarily that of the best quality. They're usually those that cater to the interests of the most people.<p>It happens to be that most people wish for regularly-updated pieces of entertainment that give them a particular emotional stimulus, regardless of their "quality". Aspects of human nature like these affect markets involving a macrocosm like the community of those that watch YouTube. Changing the pay model won't fix that. In the end, the number of people who want to view one's creative work determines how much the creator earns.<p>So really, rather than being a complaint about YouTube, this article is a general complaint about how things of "bad quality" are more popular than things of "good quality", which is a half-handed complaint about an aspect of human nature in the public macrocosm. This can't really be fixed unless one limits the audience in some way, and often it's a much more logical decision not to do that.

All I get from that is that betabeat is pissed that the audience doesn't understand that they must care about production value and how much money is being spent to make those videos.<p>Don't get me wrong I find the Young Turks to be so badly produced that I can't stand to watch them -- but that doesn't mean that I get to tell others what they should value.

What is being run, unintentionally by YouTube and its army of content generators, is a massively parallel search algorithm that evolves and optimizes itself to find every facet of human weakness. Networks effects on the internet allow it to run at an unprecedented speed and scale.<p>There is a certain ironic beauty to how destructive the system as a whole becomes. Everyone gains. The content producer, YouTube and the advertisers are locked in an addictive feedback loop. Even the users gain through the quantity and diversity of content.<p>Exactly like the housing bubble, everyone including the rating agencies did well right up till the end.

No mention of Devin Graham's channel? High quality consistent videos: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/devinsupertramp" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/user/devinsupertramp</a><p>Comparing the quality of TV to YouTube is like comparing the design of a website vs the design of a newsletter. The expectations are much higher with TV shows and websites. With email and YouTube, as long as it's readable/watchable and the content is good, people will come back.

I couldn't help but agree with a lot in this article. Youtube's video page tends to be too busy and distracting. It's more of an entertainment/pop culture platform, if anything. It's really hard for tutorial/educational content to rise, and since they don't reach that many page views many channels don't collect much revenue from youtube.<p>which is why, recently I launched a site called Starseed - it's a youtube-like platform just for tutorial/educational videos. Starseed.io was created so that tutorial authors can upload tutorials on any topic they care about – no matter how advanced – for free and start collecting donations on their video’s page from day one. It's sort of like each channel on starseed is like the PBS network - getting funded by its viewers.<p>you can check it out at <a href="http://www.starseed.io/" rel="nofollow">http://www.starseed.io/</a>.<p>I hope, one day, educational channels can sit on a platform meant for their growth and not competing against epic meal time lol.

I watched Idiocracy [1] last night for the first time. The story is very clever in parts. Certainly the description of a film that was considered the best because it was just a picture of someone farting. Is taking the style of Youtube to the extreme.<p>The original article is pointing to that future, where Generation C's attention is on the low brow entertainment and traditional production cannot sustain itself.<p>Like journalism today is fighting for survival (who's going to pay for a full time reporter when you can get information off twitter?), television production will also be fighting in 10-15 years time as the next generation of adult switch off the satellite/cable TV in favour of Youtube style content.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/</a>

Video production is a team sport. It's only going to look professional if you hire a crew of experts.<p>And buy / rent a lot of expensive gear.<p>Someone like Jenna Marbles needs to focus on her content. Writing, recording, and editing a weekly show is more work than you think.

There's a few well known youtubers in the comments to that article ... kind of interesting to see their responses :) But yeah, I kind of agree. Youtube is a new thing, it doesn't have to adhere to conventional notions of "quality".<p>This is oddly inverted, but I remember a few years ago I was working at EA Tiburon when EA did the whole exclusive NFL deal. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over that, and people complaining about year after year releases of Madden, with few improvements ... but you know what? consumers buy it, and so the party continues. Same goes with youtube ... the content obviously provides value or entertainment for a large number of people. Don't fight it, just accept that it is what it is.

HeadOn apply directly to the forehead.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3icfcbmbs" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3icfcbmbs</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn</a><p>It works for some. Actually it works for a lot, and that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Most people go through the day without the intuitive eye for wit, great taste, and appreciation for production value that a media manipulator and PR strategist would have, but I wouldn't say that makes the world a worse place. What's good and what's effective can be 2 separate things entirely.

The content is terrible because the audience is terrible.<p>We are stupid.<p>The content is therefore stupid.<p>It has to play to us. It plays to what we want.<p>This isn't hard.

Its really arrogant to think you know what "good" is, universally. No matter how much you argue for why something (media, art, music-ish stuff) is bad or good, it really doesn't change people's minds- when was the last time you were personally convinced that you didn't like something after enjoying it?

I'm just surprised that there's that much revenue in youtube videos

Alternatively, why are our standards so damned high?<p>Is there not a decent chance that many people watch what seems like "lower quality" stuff because it is more relatable.