The trouble with the rise of the YouTube Video Essayist™ is that everybody wants to be the next Defunctland or Hbomberguy, but all the wannabes know is how to be an influencer, so the resulting video essays are always really about themselves. You’ll get a forty-five-minute video with maybe fifteen minutes of actual, topical information padded out with half an hour of tedious theatrics about how hard it was to do research for the video and how nobody wanted to talk to them, and I’m just sitting here like “yeah, dude, it was hard because you don’t know how to perform research, and nobody wanted to talk to you because your behaviour toward your prospective sources amounted to borderline harassment, and that’s how it looks in your own version of events which has clearly been spun for optics – I can’t even imagine how badly you must have gone about this in reality”.
some have pointed out that cathy didnt create the original 3D model. that is true, and I would love to know the origins of that! but that isn't what I wanted to figure out with this video; i set out to learn who created the GIF specifically, i.e rotated it, edited it, made it into a .gif and posted it online.
Way too many of the things start out with like 4 minutes of chit-chat before they get to the meat, then once you're in it, there are frequent cutaways for running gags that don't land.
The truth of the matter is that it's hard as hell to have an original thought, hard to edit a video, hard to research. The best essayists are the ones that post infrequently for a reason
That 12 hour one about Survivor pisses me off. I posted it here excitedly because I love Survivor. But its just a bland recap with no analysis, commentary, or original thought. I guess that can be fun for someone whos never seen the show?
Yeah those folks make good content and have original thoughts.
Id honestly love to see a video series of someone whos never seen the show before going through the seasons if they actually expressed opinions though. (I especially would love to see a zoomer's reaction to the early seasons since they're such time capsules, especially the first season. Like is Rudy charming or offensive to a queer zoomer? Ik a common reaction for people looking back is "how in the fuck is Jerri a villian" which i love.)