What better way is there to describe the phenomenon known as YouTube? A vast dumping ground used by the human race as a place to put everything. Not just garbage, though there is no doubt garbage aplenty, but everything that we take the trouble to commit to video and then install there, probably forever or as near to forever we can achieve.
Garbage itself need not be worthless. Sometimes, items of value are put in landfills, on purpose or by error. Most items found in them at least were valued at one time, or contained what was valued by someone and then used or broken, or aged or became beyond repair. In time it like other landfills will be the delight of archaeologists and anthropologists, or perhaps even extraterrestrials eager to learn about us after we've killed each other or are wiped out by natural disasters.
There's no denying its fascination. It's similar to the Internet or the Web or whatever it's appropriately called, in that you will find what you search for, no matter how trivial or exotic it may be (well, within certain limits). I've found much related to history and my other interests, and I've hardly explored it. But matters of historical interest must make up only a small portion of what's been dumped there and may be viewed at our pleasure at any time. Episodes or portions of episodes of series available through other media are there; performances of all kinds; commentary on films, politics and other things by anyone who knows how to post to it....in fact, anything by anyone who knows how to post to it, regardless of its content or quality. Videos regarding aircraft, ships, cars, cats, aliens, created by people who may or may not know something about what it is they upload. Or is it download?
That is a concern, or should be. The extent of the expertise of those who purport to be experts on what they put in the landfill, verification of what is claimed, what's motivated them, the veracity of what you see, are not delved into or expressed, in most cases. If such things matter to you, they're your concern. You must make the effort to determine the quality and truthfulness of what you see. I suspect few are inclined to make that effort.
Some of what you see clearly constitute opinion. There are several devoted to reviews of TV series and movies, which are amusing though generally negative. The ones I've seen are especially critical of productions deemed "woke" or which appear to go out of their way to feature characters which are of all races and sexual preferences, at the same time damning traditional masculine characteristics.
I've written before of my distaste for those I consider media missionaries; those who seem to feel a need to teach or show the less enlightened among us what is proper, regardless of the content of the works they seek to dramatize. Regardless of the Lore, as it's called in the case of the sometimes obsessively liked books like Lord of the Rings, for example. I feel a certain sympathy for critics who complain of gratuitous modification of great stories for missionary purposes of this kind.
But there's nothing I've seen to indicate that these critics are particularly knowledgeable, or that they should be watched or listened to, beyond perhaps the number of views they've accumulated. Why shouldn't that be enough to qualify them for what it is that they do, which I would say is entertain, nothing more, nothing less?
As to such things I'm inclined not to take them very seriously. What interests me about them is not their content, but what it is that motivates people to make them and put them on YouTube and to watch them. I think it gives the creators, rather than the watchers, a feeling that they attain a certain fame, or perhaps even immortality given the fact that as far as I'm aware, once you're there on the Web you can never be completely deleted. I don't think this conceit is disgraceful. I'm aware of the fact that this blog may be considered my own effort to attain something similar, though I know that the number of views it's had is exceedingly small in comparison with those of any given cat video, which makes that most unlikely.
As to other things we see in the landfill, or on the Web, or in social media, they're to be taken seriously to the extent they influence others. Those who make them are known now as "Influencers" apparently. And those who watch or read or hear them are so easily influenced, that what they seek to influence and the reasons why they do so must be of concern.
We as a species are so likely to make mistakes that the more of us there are, and the more that we're able to influence others, the more the mistakes we'll make in number and in severity. It's curious that information and knowledge are so easily and widely available through technology, and yet we seem the worse for it. It was once thought that the better educated and informed we become, the better we will be. We seem to be determined to establish that is not the case, however. Disinformation is as or even more likely to be accessed on YouTube or other sources, of course. But information itself can be dangerous if unfiltered and unrestricted.
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