[Decky]

If you can't respond to my post with anything substantial don't respond at all. I stand by what I said.

Youtube doesn't give an illusion of legitimacy onto what anyone says, everyone is aware that anyone with a camera can record a video. I don't really see what it is you are complaining about here. If you were personally fooled as you thought everyone on Youtube is some sort of expert that is your own problem MB. Most intelligent people are not nearly that gullible. People like Igor who worship basement dwelling rodents and hang on their every world would be just as easily fooled by any other medium (psychical text, text on a normal website, face to face conversation etc) as they are on Youtube.

This is just a simple fact, anybody with a webcam can record a Youtube video and everyone knows that anyone with a webcam can record one. Your entire argument hinges on the idea that Youtube confers some sort of legitimacy onto people and you have provided no evidence for this (as none exists). Hiding behind some dead Canadian does not lend you argument any more credibility (just as being on Youtube does not lend Igor's antisocial friends any more credibility).

[MB.]

Well it couldn't be clearer that you have no desire whatsoever to discuss McLuhan's theories as they apply to youtube, which is the purpose of this thread. You are obviously mistaken about the nature of my "argument".

[Decky]

So you have no response at all then? You have no evidence whatsoever that Youtube confers any sort of legitimacy onto the people who record videos and publish them on its site? Nothing? Well that has to be the easiest debate I have ever won. I thought you would at least be able to dredge up one single augment in favour of your idea but I guess not.

Somehow there is no joy in beating a man who won't fight.

[MB.]

The very notion that you think this is a debate requiring victory is yet another blindingly clear indication of your inability to understand the OP. You've now made half a dozen posts in this thread without discussing Marshal McLuhan's theories once. Will you ever?

[Decky]

You claimed that Youtube confers academic legitimacy onto people, I pointed out that it does not. Screaming the name of dead Canadian in my face is not an argument. Explain how you think Youtube confers an aura of academic legitimacy onto people uploading videos onto its platform. It is a simple request.

Just to repeat myself here, screaming the names of dead Canadians is not an argument here or anywhere. If you think his works support your bizarre idea that people uploading videos on Youtube all end up being believed automatically explain how it happens any why or vanish back into your cave, you won't get many responses to a thread where your one argument consists of typing a corpses name with no other argument.

Take Goons posts for an example here, when he brings Marx up to support his argument he just not just type "Karl Marx" and then presses submit. He explains why Marx's theories support his position or he posts extracts of Marx that he believes speak for themselves or he does a bit of both.

Are you new to academic debate perhaps? Or possibly you are an American? Either would be a significant handicap here... God, maybe it is both? You poor soul.

[Saeko]

That was the worst post I've read today, Saeko.

If that post offended your opinions or feelings, I sincerely apologize.

I wonder why you'd rush to the "defence" (amounting to bolding some of my posts and spouting Wrong!) of someone on the internet who make youtube videos literally entitled "this week in stupid"?

It's because I am deeply and madly and deeply in love with him. I'm going to marry him, have sex with him and carry his babies.

I should add that I was quoting Joe Rogan who pointed out in his interview with Benjamin that he seems like a man obsessed. I'm glad YOU pulled Godwins law here too, I should add for no reason.

Well why didn't you just say that from the beginning?

I mean, if Joe Fucking Rogan Son said it, it must be true, right?

Do you really think this guy, who literally wears 4chan t-shirts and spends all of his time trolling people for their opinions is a liberal? How divorced from political reality are you by the echo-chamber of the alt-right?

Yeah, but I have to admit that the lack of a halo and wings is somewhat suspicious.

Pretty embarrassing on your part that you didn't even try to respond to the actual thrust of my post either (ie, why is the discourse so toxic, and what does this tell us about youtube as a medium). Sad.

Given the torrential downpour of bullshit that the first half of your post was, I didn't think that the rest of it was worth responding to.

[MB.]

Are you familiar with the academic work of Marshal McLuhan?

[Saeko]

Are you familiar with the academic work of Marshal McLuhan?

No, and in general you should assume that I am unfamiliar with people that nobody has ever heard of.

[MB.]

Sounds like you don't really have anything to contribute to this thread. Do you often interject in debates you don't understand? I created this thread when I was meditating on the work of McLuhan, ironically, whose biography is called "You know nothing of my work".

[Saeko]

Sounds like you don't really have anything to contribute to this thread.

It sounds like that's just your opinion, man. I'm not sure what Anita Sarkeesian and Carl Benjamin have to do with McLuhan, and yet you keep going on about them.

Furthermore, whatever you post on here is up for discussion. I am not required to respond ONLY to the things that you want me to respond to.

Do you often interject in debates you don't understand?

Yes. Sometimes I even learn things.

I created this thread when I was meditating on the work of McLuhan, ironically, whose biography is called "You know nothing of my work".

At the rate you continually say nothing specific about him or his theory, I doubt I ever will know anything about his work.

[SolarCross]

MB cut out my point that his sweetheart Anita Scamhardcheesian is a dumb as mud liar and a shameless scammer but left in my one liner about Swindon. What gives?

[mb edit: nobody likes Swindon. But seriously the youtube video would be fine, just repost it over here: viewtopic.php?p=14822724#p14822724 ]

[noemon]

You claimed that Youtube confers academic legitimacy onto people, I pointed out that it does not. Screaming the name of dead Canadian in my face is not an argument. Explain how you think Youtube confers an aura of academic legitimacy onto people uploading videos onto its platform. It is a simple request.

You have either misunderstood or misread. McLuhan is relevant as the OP clearly states because it is he who proposes that the medium grants an aura of legitimacy even to the stupidest of people due to the "one-way repetition factor". MB. did not claim that youtube confers academic legitimacy to anybody, if you read the OP:

What I'm getting at here is that youtube lecturers are generally trash but the medium (here is where Mcluhan comes in) gives them an aura of legitimacy, basically because someone isn't stoping them every few minutes to say, "wait, you sound like a crazy person," or "hmmm, I happen to know that what you just said is nonsense". Since they can just prattle on forever, the very fact that they are doing so begins to generate a momentum in which their ideas are then disseminated. I should also add that a lot of these people don't have actual jobs and are being funded by other anonymous internet people themselves usually crazy agenda seekers. As such, you would be a fool to listen to anything being said by someone on youtube who is just rambling into a camera/microphone.

[Potemkin]

You have either misunderstood or misread. McLuhan is relevant as the OP clearly states because it is he who proposes that the medium grants an aura of legitimacy even to the stupidest of people due to the "one-way repetition factor". MB. did not claim that youtube confers academic legitimacy to anybody, if you read the OP:

Noemon is right, Decky. Clearly, these people do think (falsely) that posting their videos on Youtube grants their inane ramblings an aura of legitimacy and respectability. In the far-off distant days before teh internetz, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, people like that would just bore the tits off everyone at their local pub by droning on in a loud voice about the nignogs and the lefties. Nowadays, they have a media platform complete with microphones and cameras from which they can propagate their contemptible nonsense, and have a potential audience in the millions. Their message is just as negligible and contemptible as always, but the medium now makes them look like an important personage rather than just an obnoxious opinionated bore, which is what they are. In that respect, the medium truly is the message, as Marshall McLuhan rightly said.

[SolarCross]

Youtube is a big tent, most of the original content stuff on there is funny cat vids, inane jokes or video game playthroughs.. I'd guess youtube has basically no reputation for "legitimacy" whatever is meant by that word. Do you want people to stop using that service just because a few people used the platform to expose Anita Scamhardcheesian as a liar, an idiot and a fraudster? Honestly youtube is a bit bigger than that.

[noemon]

Being a youtuber is a thing, a cool thing apparently that has provided various of those inane "tuber's" with fame, influence, TV interviews, media coverage and what have you.

This discussion is about the dangers that this new medium has brought about and not about Anita per se. I couldn't give a toss about Anita.

[SolarCross]

Being a youtuber is a thing, a cool thing apparently that has provided various of those inane "tuber's" with fame, influence, TV interviews, media coverage and what have you.

This discussion is about the dangers that this new medium has brought about and not about Anita per se. I couldn't give a toss about Anita.

Danger? More like jealousy.

[noemon]

So you do not see any dangers at all? with all the kids watching their favourite "youtuber's" and following them like cult-leaders?

[SolarCross]

So you do not see any dangers at all? with all the kids watching their favourite "youtuber's" and following them like cult-leaders?

They follow what they find fun and interesting, that's it. Kids today aren't the sheltered pets they were in the old days. They are tech savvy media masters, not many fell for Anita Scamhardcheesian's scams did they? and she was rapidly exposed.

Youtube is most dangerous to the reputations of losers, fools and liars.

[MB.]

Something that I'm thinking about is the utilization of the medium, and how the underlying themes seem to transcend the subject in an isomorphic fashion. I'm thinking particularly here about video game reviews or live streams, for example, this report from late 2014 indicates that at least 15% of all of youtube is composed of gaming related videos, accounting for 364 billion views. Apparently when the study was conducted, 26% of all videos were about "people or blogs" with another 14% composed of music videos. The study doesn't indicate what the other 45% of youtube is, but presumably everything else (sports, movie clips, productions, cat videos etc). The most popular games were Minecraft, Call of Duty, League of Legends and Grand Theft Auto.

So we know people produce a lot of content that involves them basically playing a video game during a long solo or group session. People also produce a lot of content that involves them talking into the camera (their vblogs- 26%). So 41% of all youtube videos, presumably, are about someone talking into a microphone while blogging or gaming. It seems to me that these aspects of youtube go hand in hand. The solo experience of playing a video game is a kind of self reflective process, where the gamer is describing their virtual experience to their audience- proponents of Baudrillard's hyperreality theory take note. Likewise, the bloggers are engaged in a similar solitary experience narrating something about their lives to their audiences, their lives then becoming isomorphically virtual.

I think this is highly significant when the videos happen to be about politics. Although the subject is ostensibly entirely different, the medium structure is exactly the same. This of course goes both ways. Thus, the video game videos are ostensibly isomorphically the same structurally as the political videos. In other words, on youtube, video games are politics and politics is a video game.

I'd argue both are basically examples of self programming, where the content creator is autistically doing the same thing over and over again and usually ranting about their superiority (at headshots, whatever you do in League, or in terms of their idealogical/political beliefs). In other words, the 41% of the medium that is dedicated to these two subjects is essentially narcissistic self programming.

No wonder there is so little genuine discourse. I thought this came out very very clearly in the Benjamin vs Winters debate where Benjamin doesn't even bother to argue the actual debate question and just starts rambling about whatever issue it is that he really wants to talk about, going so far as to invent strawmen in doing so.

If the medium is not utilized as it really should be in an optimum fashion (ie, structured debate or dialogue interviews), the result seems to me to be massive self delusion. The subject is almost irrelevant so far as the medium is concerned.

[Decky]

but the medium now makes them look like an important personage rather than just an obnoxious opinionated bore, which is what they are. In that respect, the medium truly is the message, as Marshall McLuhan rightly said.

Just saying it is so is not an argument. Being on youtube does not make anyone look like an important personage, it makes them look like someone that can afford a webcam. Evidently you and MB are far more easily impressed than I am.