Localized Irritant IV: Hey YouTube -- thanks for nothing

Yes indeed, a new year, a new gripe. You'll be seeing more work from me this year, I promise, but in the meantime I have to get the juices flowing again, and I find there's no better lubricant than sheer, unadulterated irritation. Welcome back everyone. Have a seat and adjust your faces.

So I'm reasonably sure, after four months working for a dot-com, that I've seen just about every permutation of YouTube videos featuring people:

a) getting hit with large, cumbersome objects
b) getting hit with small, fast-moving objects
c) getting hit with large, cumbersome and yet fast-moving objects like cars (whoever posted that gem was a little sick)
d) falling down stairs
e) falling off tables (I'm looking at you Scarlett)
f) being pushed off stairs and/or tables
g) getting struck in the nuts by small children (this one's for you guys out there)
h) slipping on banana peels
i) slipping on a buttered floor (my personal favourite this year)
j) otherwise maiming, injuring or damaging themselves, other people nearby, or property

Subjects A-J make me incredibly happy. I'll be the first to admit that pain is hilarious -- and for those of you reading this thinking, "Oh sure, wait till it happens to you"...well, apparently you haven't read any of my other stories. To me, few things are funnier than an unsuspecting younger brother being broadsided by a gigantic exercise ball, or an irritating roommate being pranked into nearly killing himself on a pre-buttered floor. I blame my propensity for this kind of humour on a childhood filled with "Three Stooges" and "Laurel and Hardy" reruns, that taught me physical abuse doesn't actually hurt or have consequences of any kind, but does make for hours of wholesome family entertainment. (At least in my family)

However, during my tenure at my current position, I've also been subjected to the other side of YouTube, the part that makes you break into hives every time you hear the words "user-generated content": I wish I had an appropriate title for these douchebags, but the only way I've heard them described (without epithets attached) are as "YouTubers".

Okay, there are a few entertaining video web logs (vlogs?) that I'll follow if I'm inclined, and one or two are real gems (the McDonalds Millionaire guy is an underrated genius), but the vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of the content on YouTube is as vapid, if not more so, than any text blog you might come across on LiveJournal or...well, Blogger, actually. Seriously, it's bad enough to have to plow through the mountains of blogging horse shit that clog up the internet without having to WATCH it too. I read about somebody's bitchy parents, or somebody's lame attempt at amateur political analysis, or somebody else shamelessly ripping off the work of known comedians, or whatever, and that starts veins pumping in my forehead. But my goodness -- it's a whole new world of rage to actually listen to these mouth-breathers speak...and to watch them is an even greater treat. I find words fail me in instances like this. They should have sent a poet. Or, contrarily, they could have just picked one out of the virtual gutter of weird-looking preteens with ninety facial piercings and a haircut that looks like it was done by Stumpy the one-legged barber (on account of the 45 degree bang-angle) who read garbage like "Twilight" and think it's a fucking documentary. I'll go there another time; that's hate within hate.

I just...I don't understand what prompts these people to share their thoughts with the world. Just because the venue is there does NOT mean you should necessarily utilize it. If you're going to blather your way through some kind of inane, half-formed opinion on Iraq or the current state of music or something (or else jump-cut your video to get rid of the hours of "ums" and "ahs" in between cogent sentences) you should at least think about maybe, I don't know, reading something other than Wikipedia for reference, or better yet, consider NOT SHARING your verbal diarrhea with the rest of the viewing public.

Same goes for all you twelve year olds who have taken it upon yourselves (or had it forced on you) to start playing guitar fifteen seconds after exiting the womb, so you now play like the bastard son of Steve Vai and an M60 machine gun. Okay, you're very good. No, I'm not jealous, but you're very good. And I don't blame you for wanting to share that skill with the world. FIND SOME NEW MATERIAL. If I have to listen to one more of you kids play Canon in D at a zillion miles an hour, or some weak metal shit that could just as easily be done through MIDI for all it sounds like decent melody, or even AC/DC at eighteen hundred times the normal tempo, I'm going to crawl through the screen and ram your Sears-brand shit festival of an axe right up your nubile, pre-teen ass.

And don't even get me started on all these gamer assholes who decide to take a good song (EVERY good song, it seems) that I'm trying to locate so I can learn it without having to download it, and set it to a video of some bullshit World of Warcraft ambush scene or -- worse -- Japanese animation of any make or model. I tried, guys, I really did. Lots of my friends are into anime, and they did everything in their power to find a series I might enjoy. No dice -- it all looks fucking stupid to me, and you're not going to change my mind. So do me a favour and keep your weirdo Full-Metal-Fruit-Basket-Ranma-Mon pseudo-porn away from the music I like. Isn't that the whole point of J-pop as a genre, so you people can learn Japanese empirically by singing along to your favourite theme song from yet another show about children piloting robots? Furthermore, who lets children pilot fifty-foot tall missile-toting death machines anyway?
...I just wrote the follow-up line to that thought six times and erased it six times because I don't want to come off as a total racist, so I'll just say "imagine your own Godzilla joke".

Anyway, I know -- why watch this stuff if it incenses me so much, right? Two reasons. First, it would probably be imprudent and potentially libelous to write about the stuff that's actually pissing me off right now, so I needed a surrogate, and internet losers are a nice, easy target (they don't move too fast on account of the years of immobility leading to muscle atrophy. Oh, and they're all fat, too). And second, like every other internet loser on the planet, if I didn't watch this stuff, I'd never know what to bitch about.

All I'm saying is that, with a little creativity and a little forethought, there could be tons of great "user-generated content" on YouTube, and maybe it would be a community that people would visit for more than just clips of their favourite films or "man-hit-in-genitals" videos. As it is now, it's just a virtual expression of the kind of talentless wasteland our culture has become. YouTubers: you make me very, very sad. And angry. Yeah, that too.

There seems to have been no real point to this post. I'll come up with something better next time.

Oh, and Happy 2009.