Someone in the gaming section the other day mentioned how Youtube was over once normies realized they could make money on it.
I agreed and elaborated. But I want to know something. That fake, overly enthusiastic, faggy way of talking they all do...how and why did they arrive there? How and why did the normies go "that....being a retarded faggot and talking like one...that's the gold rush boys!!!"
I want to know the progression.
When I was watching early youtube, the popular people had edge, were raw, and were usually ranty and negative, like most talking heads usually are, because that's far more entertaining to watch. A funny bitter guy like Anthony Cumia is 1000x more interesting than an Ellen Degeneras with her insincerity.
So what the heck made the faggy youtube voice/personality the golden ticket in the minds of normies? What was that pipeline that led there?
There was a secondary force that became primary once the gold-rush was moving as you describe. That is, the 'viral marketing campaign' organizations that believed the best way to advertise was to get the social media engagement from anyone they could buy positivity from.
The mannerism of someone paid to shill is fundamentally different than the natural speaking forms of critique, review, or casual mention. The feedback someone on the take will get will be "more positive, more effusive" on and on. They're selling a product, and it is their overly gay hyperactivity applied to their audience.
The rest of it, is the hive-minding of what is successful and trendy. A mode of communication develops based on the norms and expectations of these particular audiences (those with something to hawk) and players (those who can act and manufacture 'engagement').
Nailed it, corporations got involved with their psyops and started introducing agents to the system as well as buying off youtubers. I'm sure there are plenty of people online that others can point to who they once quite liked who have turned into some variety of clout chaser who's just trying to get clicks, an outright shill or shill through product placement trying to disguise itself as legitimate content.
I remember on reddit some of this shit got so bad you had users stealing other content and trying to repost it as their own ( which they still do ) for likes or you had sponsored posts that were so blatant even the average redditors were calling it out.
I think the actual 'content' on what should be dubbed as normie tube has gotten even worse than usual lately. Most of it seems to be lazy as fuck react content where 90% of the time it's some person going "Uh huh", "mhm" or something I've ranted about in the past a never ending use of jump cuts and generic memes in order to game the algorithm.
It's usually some variety of:
. Insert simpsons meme reaction
. Insert minions meme reaction
. Insert Futarama meme reaction
. Insert Star Wars meme reaction
Once you get red pilled on content creators that obsessively chase the algorithm you can't unsee this, in fact you could potentially write a little formulae because of how generic normie tube has gotten. It's funny how the channels that have proper content over the long term don't need to do any of this to stay relevant.
To my shame I confess that I used to be a fan of TheAmazingAtheist way back in the day, not because I agreed with everything he said but because he was genuinely highly entertaining and didn't have a filter. His decline was a long and slow one, but getting busted by HarmfulOpinions for shilling Candid was the final nail in the coffin of his credibility.
I mean you can write a formula and people do, because they're responding to a formula that is the algorithm.
It's a loop to be sure. But the fact of it all is that even when constrained, "The Market" as a force of nature is POWERFUL.
Good explanation, thank you!
The effect is especially jarring when the ads are done by more mainstream, non-gaming channels like fishing and hunting channels. In the video itself they talk one way, usually like normal dude-bros and/or hyped up 20 somethings, and then in the ads they put on the goofy YouTube voice and it's just fucking weird.