I'm too old for this shizz or whatever, but I can't comprehend that people actually make a living making youtubes of themselves talking about veganism or whatever.

Some folks make millions a year on that site. It’s $2000 per million views.

There is a lot of cash to be made as an “influencer” beyond the view revenue also. We are not the target audience by a long shot, but some of the small fries you have never heard of are getting 10k to make a few review videos for products on their channels.

The ones for kids are the craziest. Lots of people just opening and playing with toys getting millions of views because kids wil veg out for hours watching it and parents will use it as a babysitter. It’s all so bizarre.

It's almost like TV shows make millions, and YouTube videos are like mini-TV shows. Bizarre.

Well, the part where you look at moving pictures on a screen is the same. Good call.

Those Coyote Peterson shows have at least a 3-person crew and go to locations all over the world. That's on the way to being TV show.

I’m not really sure what the argument is about at this point, but the path to making a profitable YouTube Channel is not similar to the path of making a popular tv show.

Yes people pay to have their ads on content with a lot of viewers. That’s not head scratching. That the content is so popular is, at least for me.

You're shocked that kids like watching videos involving toys?

When given the choice between playing with toys or watching other people play with toys I would have previously assumed they would choose playing with toys. Shocked may be an overstatement.

Since it’s so obvious to you it’s too bad you let other make millions off of such a no brainer, or do you have a play-dough channel?

Strawmen. It's not a choice of either/or, they do both. Play with toys and watch other people play with toys. Watching other people play with them actually enhances their own pretend play with toys.

The YouTube watching mainly comes at the expense of TV watching. YouTube offers more specialization of specific toys, characters, themes, etc that kids like, vs generic TV programming.

Last question is a strawman too. Achieving the viewership is not as easy as it sounds, and yes, I've tried. It's also obvious to me that you can make millions writing dystopian, sci-fi, fantasy novels for teenagers that get turned into movies, but I haven't successfully done that either.

Anyway, my posts perhaps came across as ruder than they were intended, I wasn't attacking you, it was just sarcastic ways to express that these things are not bizarre.

Watching videos of someone you don't know opening a present is indeed bizarre.

Watching videos of people you don't know playing video games is indeed bizarre.

Watching videos of people you don't know playing sports is indeed bizarre.

Watching videos of people you don't know singing is indeed bizarre.

Etc etc etc.

They like looking at toys, and oftentimes it's toys they don't have or don't have access to and won't anytime soon, they would have no other way of looking at them otherwise. Doesn't seem strange if you accept the fact that kids like not only playing with toys but looking at them, especially ones they don't have.

Why are you so salty about this?

I'm not, I'm just responding to posts.

Every child in America is obsessed with Youtube. It isn't the same as what television was for other generations because the content of the "shows" is basically a commercial. There is very very little (if any) artistic creation. If television is "junk food", YouTube is like a syringe of high fructose corn syrup mixed with crack.

Also, when someone puts up a 911 conspiracy video and 100m watch it and 50 million of them think that it is real, it is kind of hard to have a functioning society. I know, chicken and the egg, but still.

Does Trump win the presidency without Alex Jones?

I work a lot with kids, can confirm it's predominantly kids watching other kids play with toys they themselves don't play with. It's f***ing weird either way though.

Honest question to all the "it's bizarre/weird" people - can you give me a good reason why it's strange?

And how is it different from people watching sports, or poker, or video games, or singing, or nature shows, or food shows, or whatever else?

In the case of all the other activities you've listed people watch professionals, not randoms. No one is watching some random little league baseball game on YouTube.

My step son was watching some beach ball home run derby. It had over 4 million views lol. He also likes to watch videos where random people are cracking baseball card boxes/ packs. Those get a lot of hits too. I don’t get it either but they aren’t just watching professionals.

For toy videos, in many, if not most cases, kids are watching "professionals" on YouTube as well. People who are making hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars by doing this. People who are at the top of their profession and the best at what they do.

How is that different from watching poker professionals or video game professionals? Sports only seems different because it has more history and is more popular, but it started in the same way. And college sports don't feature professionals either. The YouTubers are more "professional" than they are. The random little league comparison may not be accurate, but even if it were, it would be a bad comparison because that's the lowest level of the activity. Yes, more people are watching the highest level. Just like they are with poker and video games and kids' toys videos.

Singing shows like American Idol are largely composed of random amateurs. The Voice has "professionals" but largely failed 2nd chance professionals or background singer borderline professionals.

Nature shows or food shows are about the subject matter.

None of this really matters though, whether someone is "professional" or not is not the reason that people watch. In pretty much all cases, the reasons that people watch is because they are interested in the underlying activity or subject, and then watch the best version of that activity or subject.

Kids like toys. There doesn't appear to be a good reason that kids watching toy videos is strange but people watching other activities is not strange.

Obviously people watch because they are interested. Have you never once in your life been mystified by what someone else finds entertaining?

Not really. People have different preferences. That's why I said it's not bizarre.

To me, your guys' posts are like an avid baseball watcher saying that watching basketball is bizarre. Or a football player saying that people watching poker on TV is bizarre.

It actually kinda seems like condescension towards an activity that they themselves don't care about and towards the people that watch it. It's only "strange" because you don't like it yourself.

My mom watches hours a day of a gay couple opening cultured pearls and selling them on periscope. Who am I to judge I sit around reading politics on a poker forum.

Who said TV had to be "artistic?" It just has to be entertaining. YouTube's niche is figuring out just how easily humans are entertained right now. With the top YouTubers and Twitchers having better ratings than top TV shows it's probably time to stop hand waving it away.

RE: YouTube - people (kids especially) enjoy something that many other people find bizarre. Film at 11. My parents thought it was crazy that I'd play baseball on the Nintendo for hours instead of just going outside and playing baseball. I, in turn, find it crazy that my son will watch videos for hours of OTHER PEOPLE playing video games. It's the circle of life. In the months after the cavemen discovered fire Ug said to Uga "Little Moog no hunt, just stare at fire."

RE: YouTube shooter - I'm willing to accept that some people need guns. I'm also (less) willing to accept that some people don't actually need guns, but should be allowed to have them for some reasons. And then you have the huge percentage of people running around who are out of their goddamned minds who are ALSO allowed to have guns. And the gun nuts don't want measures taken to prevent the third group from having guns because they're afraid that will lead to guns being taken from groups one and two. **** em. Take em all. Repeal 2A.