Awesome Youtube

As rare as success in it is, being a YouTuber or influencer is now a career that exists. But its foundation is still one of the oldest tricks in the book: advertising. Micro explains why YouTube channels and dubious startups were made for each other, calling to mind Cory Doctorow’s theory of Enshittification : grab market share, screw customers over, cash out.

The subtitles, aka closed captions on videos, usually help people know what they are saying on screen. However, animator Ubonga shows that YouTube’s closed captioning feature can be used to display custom animations. We had no idea you could select the color for each letter like that. Ubonga also knows how to get #1 on Trending whenever he wants.

“Have you seen Percy Jackson is Good Because of Reasons by YouTuber Firstname Lastname!?” Two guys name-drop the longest video essays they’ve watched in Man Carrying Thing’s silly commentary on the proliferation of lengthy YouTube videos. But for real, we unironically love those white noise and beach sounds videos.

If you browse YouTube regularly, you might have noticed certain trends and similarities between the most popular videos, from how their titles and thumbnails are presented to their duration. MinuteEarth explores this convergence and how video creators adapting to algorithms works kind of like animal evolution.

Whether you’re a cat that likes to watch birds or a human that likes to watch videos, this clever bird feeder from Fred has got you covered. It attaches to the outside of your window and provides a live stream of birds wrapped in a frame that looks like the controls for a YouTube video. There should be a “Skip Squirrel” button.

Sean Buckelew’s animated film explores what might happen if the government combined artificial intelligence and drone technology to enable a war machine that makes “objective, compassionate, and ethical” decisions. While live-streaming a demo of its capabilities, a programming error causes it to rethink its purpose.

(Flashing images) We already know that confetti and other small, moving objects can wreak havoc on video compression algorithms. Now, The Slow-Mo Guys have gone all out to push YouTube to its limit with some ultra high-definition, high-speed footage of glitter falling towards their camera’s lens.

Do you love trucks (or SUVs)? Then check out our friend Tim Esterdahl’s excellent YouTube channel. Tim’s honest, matter-of-fact style, and no B.S. opinions are a refreshing change of pace from slickly-produced automotive content, and he really knows his vehicles. Check out some of his videos, then subscribe.

Like most people who post videos on YouTube, musician Madilyn Bailey has been subjected to an endless stream of hateful, poorly spelled comments by 12 year olds. Rather than taking them to heart, she turned their trolling into a song, and so far has racked up over 6 million views as the ultimate sweet revenge.

(PG-13: Language) Omri presents one of the more entertaining and enigmatic videos we’ve seen in a while. The first episode of the highly meta This Is Not a Show follows its creator as he searches for ways to make himself more popular and interesting on YouTube. Show your support for more episodes on Kickstarter.

“The Internet is fake.” Destin of Smarter Every Day got duped into watching an automatically generated video on YouTube about sensationalist politics. So he researched how it was happening and came up with this defense: stop hating and be more considerate.

We really do our best to avoid hyperbole and overblown clickbait content around here. But if you’re a content creator and are desperate for eyeballs no matter the cost, check out Materialisimo’s brief tutorial on “guaranteed” YouTube success.

In what is certainly one of the stranger YouTube channels we’ve come across, the guys from 99 carpet have filled their little corner of the internet with videos of carpets being scrubbed clean, and recorded the sights and sounds to soothe our minds and souls.

From executive producers Jordan Peele and Charlie Sanders (Key & Peele writer) comes Weird City, a YouTube Premium comedy anthology film. It’s set in the future inside the titular city, where the haves and have nots are segregated.

Disney is releasing a series of animated shorts on YouTube that will retell stories from the Star Wars movies. If you’re worried about the voice acting, fear not: Star Wars Galaxy of Adventures will use dialogue and sounds from the original films. Premieres 11/30/18.

(PG-13: Language) If you can believe it, YouTube has only been around since 2005. Lots of things have changed with the service since then, and Casually Explained is here to casually explain the history of Google’s video juggernaut, and what its changes have meant for creators.