Nerd Mentality

Sellouts

Posted April 5th 2009 by Jacob Barnes.

My hate is a good tool for providing a genesis for discussion. I'm a pretty nice guy when dealing with many topics, but it's so much easier to write about things I don't like. That thing today is sellouts.

No, we're not talking about this site. In fact, I can talk about just about anything I want here without any outside influences which is why I enjoy coming here. The biggest collection of sellouts and aspiring sellouts exist on a site called youtube.

Looking through the front page of the Most Viewed videos tab I usually see about ten videos of some soccer clip, some naruto episodes and then you have the regulars. These are the women with large racks, gay men and other attention-starved people that will do anything to get views and comments.

Users like hotforwords do this by naming their titles "Donkey Punch," "Do it with your throat," or with other random boob puns. And when you click on the video, you are pummeled with pleas asking you to comment, rate and subscribe to her videos. Then there's people like Emily aka applemilk1988 who got famous after her "pretty intense japanese" videos were featured on the front page. Now her claim to fame is being a Japanese gravure idol, getting syphilis from her boyfriend and hitting rock bottom when she ended up begging youtube users for money after going to Japan without an education. There's countless people like that and most use more subtle ways to obtain views.

Luckily for me there are people out there like "Steve" Sutton aka suttsteve, who I assume deleted his youtube account last year. This guy made over 500 youtube videos during his time discussing topics like hairbrushes and fishsticks while maintaining a calm stoic tone of voice. But in one of his videos he talked about his lack of views/subscribers, saying that youtube isn't supposed to be a contest. He doesn't care how many people are watching his work, as long as there are a few people out there who enjoy it. btw, he recently started a new account at the beginning of the year so you can watch that here.

I will never ask people to subscribe to my videos, nor do I subscribe to anyone elses. Most of my videos seem to be an inside joke to a select few people or myself anyway. The point is, people can and should continue to make good quality work even if they don't get as large an audience as they should.

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