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The problem with for-profit documentary videos
🕑 Added 2023-04-30 00:03:52 +0000 UTCAfter watching me argue with Act Man in my Marathon video, viewer Khanh Tran Quang pointed me to a Mac video by a big tech YouTuber to get my impressions.
It's what I've seen for years on YouTube, even when I was deciding whether to do my Macintosh series back in 2014. Flashy effects and presentation hiding poor content. They have an incredible number of 'views' and they more-or-less admit in the video that maximizing views/subscribers/content (i.e. profit) is their primary goal. Giving viewers a good, accurate video is, therefore, not a priority. The host was generically charming, and entertained by his own antics more than I was. It is a strange choice to have him talk with authority about the machines and then, when he actually uses them, it's obvious that it's the first time he's seen them. This 'raw first impression' is obviously to let the host be entertaining, but then he shouldn't be the one talking about the machines because he doesn't know anything.
Of course the most glaring mistake is saying the G3 Powerbook was the first to use PowerPC, which makes me completely not trust any of the information presented, and killed my interest in the rest of the video... but I told Mr. Quang I would watch it through... By the way, the iBook toilet seat joke has been so overdone, it's just cringe-inducing. It's a joke that was funny once, being told to me for the 50th time.
Moreover, the Powerbook 100 was not a popular laptop. It only became popular when Apple was trying to get rid of unsold inventory at a steep discount. The real star of that series was the Powerbook 170. Skipping to the 500, then to the G3 ignores a large number of laptops. The DuoDock series, eMate, the 5300 and the 3400 were all omitted. That's because he didn't buy every laptop. I know he says "every MacBook" but it clearly implies he bought every Macintosh laptop. The title certainly will attract the most important thing... views. Saying Wallstreet was the last of the G3 models instead of Pismo was another glaring error. With these facts so readily available, I can't believe they would be that selectively stupid. It feels like they are feeding the audience disinformation. Re-writing history to match the machines they had, only so their title would be perceived as accurate.
I don't think too much about Apple's laptops after the Intel transition, and the video did nothing to make it interesting, but they certainly dragged it out.
It's not hard to use generic special effects and wikipedia to make a video. The challenge is making a deeply accurate and entertaining video. That requires too much time, thought and research to be profitable at the level that they can achieve by simply being deceitful. It's the reason YouTube doesn't work for curating good documentary videos. Their model makes it more profitable to generate rushed 'infotainment' garbage like this.
Thanks to this viewer for introducing me to this channel I'd never heard of. While morbidly interesting (like looking at a car crash) I will not be returning or subscribing to that channel.
Comments
Evil Biden
I absolutely hate the big fancy YouTubers and especially the tech ones. They’re usually wrong but speak authoritatively so the masses believe them. Linus is a good example but this guy fits too
Christopher Yeo
I can’t add much more to this than yourself or others already have other than I completely agree. An unfortunate product of our time - TV production ‘back in the day’, although at times flawed with the facts, were typically vetted enough at a factual level that was fit for broadcast. If they weren’t, people knew about it and it would have been lambasted for inaccuracy. We see this sort of reaction now but typically through herd mentality rather than an educational standpoint. Sadly, it’s often overlooked in favour of sycophantic idolisation of the host or algorithm-based highlights which see them through. Great post however 65!
