Tuesday, March 20, 2012

That Weird Part of YouTube

There are certain phrases in this world that make me smile. For example, whenever someone says "be still my beating heart," it inexplicably makes me smile, and usually suppress a giggle. Every. Time. I don't know if it's the fact that I momentarily picture them as a love-struck cartoon while saying this, or the fact that it seems so out of place in today's world, but I always get a kick out of people saying it. There's another phrase though, that pleases me even more:


Oh yes, you know what I mean. It pops up most commonly as the most-liked comment on certain videos, and it makes me laugh every time. It's funnier than "that weird part of the Internet" because, well, most of the internet is weird. Usually boring weird. But to be weird on YouTube is an entirely different thing. There is perhaps no feeling more universal than that of being caught in what my brother and I refer to as "the YouTube vortex." One minute, you're watching a video of a girl covering "Rolling In The Deep." Next thing you know, minutes have turned into hours, Charlie is biting his brother's finger while auto-tuned, you've watched that damn Christian the lion video three times, you've seen things you didn't even know were physically possible and bam- you're in that weird part of YouTube. Again. Thought Catalog describes it nicely in this article
"True, you start off looking at clips which make you feel good, i.e. “cute kittens,” “fat people falling,” “girlfriend pranks,” but two and a half hours later you’re looking at an 11-year-old kid with a gravely undiagnosed personality disorder from Germany looking into the webcam at you for 6:52 minutes with 37 views from 2006, and you looking at him in a k-hole’d haze, your respective gazes forever six years apart, trying to find something in each other, the retina and video cam merging into the same point of isolation, but nothing."
 I think it can be best surmised with this:
So, what do you think about that weird part of YouTube? Where's the weirdest place the "related videos" bar has taken you? Post a link in the comment section, and be rewarded with high fives.

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