Commentary Channels
This is just a small thought I had the other day.
Im showing my age, lameness, and extent of terminal online syndrome saying this. But commentary channels have really changed since the 2010s.
Its really weird. It was around this time that I really got onto the internet, and youtube was booming. Instagram, twitter, and snapchat existed but youtube was for entertainment. It wasnt even really a question. You looked at instagram to see what people were up to, twitter to see what people thought when they were bored. Vine was probably the closest competitor to youtube and was the closest thing to tik tok. Vine was pretty classic but I still feel like youtube was the biggest fish. Twitch wasnt even really all that, I felt it was still too nerdy back then.
But commentary was the biggest thing on youtube back then. That and lets plays. But commentary channels were a interesting little boom that I remember getting really big, and it now exists in a form that is totally unrecognizable.
I feel like the closest thing today is, funnily enough, streamers. Mostly because streamers are the ones now doing some activity while talking. Importantly, talking while thinking theyre saying something smart or important. Honestly if you were/are big enough, it did have some impact. But they arent MLK or something.
But a big difference, other than the usual length of a video going from 15-30 minutes to multiple hours, is how people now react to stuff. Because having a gimmick is, I guess, essential nowadays. Because, when an older commentary channel reacted to something, their reaction was somewhat pure. Regardless of their personality or gimmick if they reacted to something disgusting for example, they would be speechless, horrified, flabbergasted. Their gimmick would return or shtick unpause soon after. But they werent trying to maintain the gimmick while reacting to whatever.
The gimmick mightve shaped the reaction, or given some context to how a reaction might look. But they reacted somewhat freely, which allowed it to be less formulaic. And you could be interested in how the person you watched might react to the topic. Would it be crazy enough they would finally be speechless? Or have they been petitioned to watch something worse so many times they might just get more jaded and miserable? Or would they even lose it completely? It felt more like watching your funny friend react to something.
Thats not to say they were totally genuine or even higher quality either. It was pretty common for those dudes to have to announce their break because doing the same thing every week for so long made them hate it. It was funny because they all had similar stories of stopping their job because they loved making videos so much, only to burn out in like a year because they actually just liked not having to work.
Many of them treated it like a job too, eventually getting sponsers. I think the idea of doing social media or online entertainment as a job came from this, and then created the social media slop farms we see today.
Back to streaming, I feel its not all that different except that streamers MUST have a gimmick. Like Speed's is being super crazy and destroying stuff. If he saw something crazy, he would bark or flip his table. The stuff I actually find funny from him is when its something so insane he breaks character. Overall, from what little ive seen from streamers, their gimmicks keep their reactions too formulaic. I can kinda see where stuff is gonna go, especially if theyre doing the same thing for an hour. This feels more like watching Jimmy Fallon react to something.
MoistCritical is kinda a microcosm of this. He does all this crazy stuff while being the quirky non chalant dude who says something absurd, but now its the same regardless of what hes watching or doing. Strangely, he hates his older stuff that had the funny friend/older cousin vibe (a mix of different video genres, being parodies, commentaries, or voiceovers) and instead bound himself to sitting on a chair talking about some happening and periodically throwing in an obscenity (Jimmy Fallon vibe). Hes so committed to his gimmick I know what the video will be like so why watch it. But hes actually got some convictions and standards so kudos I guess.
Either way I miss channels and videos not feeling like manufactured personalities made to go viral instead of random people the internet adopted and made a thing unique to it. Like, less mainstream. Not underground or whatever. But plenty of youtubers and streamers now are just normal celebrities instead of internet celebrities.
Im also stupid and unc so maybe my nostalgia is strangling my brain.