The Internet is filled with shit. This article focuses on a very specific portion of that shit and explains why it is shit. If you’re not a fan of shit, you should probably shi-I mean, leave. You should probably leave.
The Video Response
You’ve just watched a video of a seal and clown getting into a slap fight. You’re so moved/shocked/aroused by this battle of ocean and circus, that you record yourself providing your thoughts on it and immediately upload it to YouTube. If you’re one of the people who felt compelled to do this, kill yourself. Then post it online so people can respond with their own video responses, therefore indicating who should kill themselves next. In case I’m being unclear, the end goal is eliminating this sect of video-makers.
I’m okay with the internet providing an expansive, sectionalized canvas for discussion. There are plenty of examples of thoughtful, progressive conversation happening between different internet users. This might be as rare as a unicorn learning Spanish, but it happens. But NONE OF IT ever occurs in video responses. Every single one is made by a half-gestated chimpanzee or an angry blob of pizza grease and sadness. These people must spend their entire days wearing muzzles because I can’t understand the aching need to record themselves speaking. Doesn’t their job have a suggestions box to deal with that? These people are so eager to share their opinions that even their sex dolls get bored and leave.
If I were to draw a connective thread between these three types of YouTube videos, it would be the problem with sharing for the sake of sharing. It’s not considered normal to approach someone in Starbucks and begin giving a play-by-play of “2 girls, 1 cup”, so I don’t know why people would think a video of them rhetorically discussing it is appropriate (to be fair, watching people react to it is pretty great). They protect their fragile self-esteem beneath a veneer of “It’s who we are!” but they’re aware saying that out loud automatically pushes us closer to Armageddon. Hey, there’s something to post a video response to! I would probably be okay with a middle-management asthmatic discussing the apocalypse as it occurred. The acid rain and undead dinosaurs would be a significant improvement.
The Vocal Pop Cover
These are some of the laziest and most terrible of YouTube videos. This is when people with no musical ability at all decide to show the world what they’re incapable of by playing their iPod and singing terribly over it. Part of me is impressed, because some of these people are so bad that their voices actually cause spiders to kill themselves. If people are allowed to be that proud of their lack of talent, then every racist/sexist/inhuman commenter on Youtube deserves a medal. We should start giving gold stars for tripping over your own shoelaces. Maybe even put people’s names on a plaque if they say something racist. Hold on, I’ll start it: all Asians are good at math and can teleport. Permanent engraving, here I come!
What’s so frustrating is that these videos require little to no effort to make, which makes creating this kind of torturous crap easy. We’re living in the age of oversharing, where a phone camera and karaoke track have falsely convinced everyone that every little piece of their life should be thrown into the great digital ether. It’s doubly embarrassing that these people are willingly sharing their ineptitude. I’m all for accepting people’s flaws, but I don’t want them forcefully shoved into my ears. It’s like that scene from “The Matrix” when the robotic prawn crawls into Neo’s belly button, except instead it’s worming its way into my brain cavity and it’s way less sexually arousing. What’s worse, they defend their fragile self-esteem by labeling everyone who doesn’t pat them on the back as “haters,” which may be my least favorite word. It’s the word people will use when God asks them to atone for the hookers they suffocated. Essentially, it means “I know I’m terrible, but stop calling me out on it.” Sorry, guys, but we’re not haters, just reasonable human beings who really appreciate not existing alongside this garbage.
The Acoustic Pop Cover
Just four levels of hell below the “Vocal Pop Cover” is the “Acoustic Pop Cover.” You’ve seen hundreds of these. Some pop song hits the radio, and a flood of acoustic covers burst forth from Lillith’s womb. It’s like somebody asked the question “How can we be as vapid and boring as possible?”, and four million fifteen-year-old girls with borderline-retarded guitar abilities answered the Craigslist ad. NEWSFLASH: acoustic covers are for campfires and funerals. No one is impressed that you were able to look up guitar tabs online. If aliens ever use these videos to understand the human race, they’ll fill our atmosphere with poison out of mercy.
The worst mutation of this trend is the immaculately produced pop cover. These are done by kids whose parents have enough money to afford a RED camera and a studio. Cue two dudes with guitars and a rhythm machine singing Rihanna as the camera dramatically pans around them. To make sure you get a minimum of 500,000 views, make sure you light the scene like a Michael Bay wet-dream and have your singer staring contemplatively into the distance. Remember, music is deep and thoughtful, so if you look like you’re doing anything other then holding back an orgasm, people will think you’re fake. Just look at Lana Del Ray. She actually had an orgasm on stage during her SNL performance, and now her cyborg engineers have to take her off the market.
The worst part is that it’s these people who eventually “make it.” Take Karmin, whose covers of Lil Wayne songs made them viral celebrities, eventually landing them a record deal and one of the worst SNL performances I have ever seen. Lana Del Ray seemed weird because her circuit box was flooded with lipstick, but everything about Karmin’s performance is objectively terrible, from her unflattering and nauseating wardrobe to the loaf-pinching squat she does during her incoherent and weirdly-accented “rapping.” This performance should legally be categorized as a war crime. It also might be the first commercial for public euthanizing. Decide for yourself.
(I’ll decide for you…it is).