Youtube's golden years were before the Google buyout. They have slowly turned it into a corporate entity.
Back then the search function worked properly. Now the algorithms are so messed up, that a lot of videos just sit there and don't even get 100 views if they aren't sponsored and have a bunch of advertisements in it. I have musician friends who really struggle just to get 100 views on their videos.
Well there are so many videos on the website now, probably being created at a much higher ratio to population growth. People can only watch so many videos.
Just wait until TikTok dies off and all the content creators from there move to YouTube like people did from Vine, lmfao.
It was all down hill from the day they added recommended videos.
When I watch channels I like, I usually let the ads play. That's how these channels generate revenue. And I have a couple of minutes to roll another cigarette.
Likewise/meanwhile on Twitch, they've engaged in a full-blown arms war against ad-blocking as to where even if you manage to find a workaround or get the stream to play externally (like VLC) they still manage to have pauses for ad breaks. Absolute hell for the few channels I watch and if you'd maybe want to check out smaller channels even that's a nuisance because you'll get pre-roll ads before the stream and ads in the middle of the stream at completely random intervals.
I don't know why but I actually haven't gotten any ads since the whole debacle started. Maybe because I use brave as my browser and ublock on top of that but idk
The only ads I get now are inline ones. "This video was brought to you by _____ (proceeds to do an embarrassing minute-long skit)". They still piss me off though - I remember the day I unsubbed from Game Grumps was after enduring a shitty skit for YouTube Red at the top of one of their videos - motherfucker the whole reason I bought that service was so that I wouldn't have to endure this shit.
That really gets inside your head. I noticed it bothered me on facebook even if I didn't know who the person was and half my friends were just people I had met while backpacking. I'd avoid posting whatever I had posted the previous day for a while. My dog's subreddit went from 10 subscribers to 9 and I was so distraught I almost had him euthanised for failing me.
Hay guys! EdgyHitler69420 here, coming at you with the latest news on how our boy Trump is destroying the deep state and saving America! But first remember to like and subscribe and hit the notification bell or you won't get my latest updates on why the sjw's and femi-nazi's are ruining America.
There's a dude that does trackmania videos. I've watched a couple and that's probably going to tide me over the next life so I wasn't really all that happy to see "I NOTICED THAT ONLY 20% OF THE VIEWERS OF MY VIDEOS ARE SUBSCRIBERS" being a part of his intro. That's not an exaggeration, well maybe it's higher than that but way below 50%
I'd be pretty stoked with a solid subscriber count and the occasional viral vid considering it's so niche but that's just me
I hardly subscribe to anyone anymore. When I've been watching a lot of one channel's videos, Youtube usually recommends me new videos from that channel as they come out anyway. Subscribing seems kinda redundant at this point.
Honestly it's weird to watch the same you tubers and not subscribe.
Yeah if i get to the poibt where i watch every upload of someone or even wait/expect their scheduled upload i subscribe :shrug:
If you watch one video from a YouTube channel you're not subscribed to (even if you watch like 1/3 of the video), YouTube will start spam recommending a bunch of their videos and every new video to you anyway, so I don't really see a point in subscribing very often.
They build a consumer profile of you anyway through ghost profiles and browser footprint tracking.
Google manages to fuck it up every month or so but when it works it is terrific.
none of the ones i watch really mention subscribing, a couple do a quick 10 seconds at the end of the video but that's it
i don't really watch any of the big ones though