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RANT: This stuff needs to stop

Eli Apperson

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(Disclaimer: I know a lot of the cubing community is rather young, and nothing really can be done about this, but I'm gonna rant about it anyway.)

So, as usual, I was scrolling through YouTube, and I see YT shorts video that has one of the green screen things. So, I click on it, and it's someone doing a solve then when the green side gets finished they show Dylan saying x-perm. Ha Ha Ha. Then, when I look at the channel that posted, with 18k subs, it was full of trash other content like this. My big problem with this and many other channels like this, is that they don't contribute anything to getting faster, learning more, seeing new perspectives, or anything of the sort. I don't care if people put up "entertaining" videos, but I wish people would stop idolizing people like Jperm or Cubehead, and quoting stupid stuff they say. Another thing I've noticed is that whenever those two channels specifically comment on a video, they get hundreds of replys of "yoooooooo' or "I DoN'T REaD CHinESe hahahaha". Like I said, I know it is somewhat natural for younger kids to idolize big channels or people they look up to, but that doesn't really excuse people who are very aware that what they post is not helping anyone.
 

Fire Cubing

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(Disclaimer: I know a lot of the cubing community is rather young, and nothing really can be done about this, but I'm gonna rant about it anyway.)

So, as usual, I was scrolling through YouTube, and I see YT shorts video that has one of the green screen things. So, I click on it, and it's someone doing a solve then when the green side gets finished they show Dylan saying x-perm. Ha Ha Ha. Then, when I look at the channel that posted, with 18k subs, it was full of trash other content like this. My big problem with this and many other channels like this, is that they don't contribute anything to getting faster, learning more, seeing new perspectives, or anything of the sort. I don't care if people put up "entertaining" videos, but I wish people would stop idolizing people like Jperm or Cubehead, and quoting stupid stuff they say. Another thing I've noticed is that whenever those two channels specifically comment on a video, they get hundreds of replys of "yoooooooo' or "I DoN'T REaD CHinESe hahahaha". Like I said, I know it is somewhat natural for younger kids to idolize big channels or people they look up to, but that doesn't really excuse people who are very aware that what they post is not helping anyone.
As a jperm stan, I hate it when people make unentertaining videos and find a way to sneak in jperm or cubehead and get thousands of views and subscribers from that. It is incredibly scummy and only tricks young people to subscribe to them and give them views and money. Of course, their posts do not entertain anybody by the slightest bit, they just wanna get a quick buck out of the other jperm/cubehead stans.
 

GodCubing

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It sounds like you envy their success. You cannot say they don't deserve it because clearly they have that sub count for a reason and though their methods are questionable as long as no copyright laws are being broken it's ok. If you don't like their content don't subscribe. Also their success will likely be short lived as they will run out of unique videos to make and people will start to realize their own stupidity. My point is don't envy their success, and if you don't like their content, don't subscribe. It's that simple.
 

xyzzy

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Seeing a 15-year-old write "I know a lot of the cubing community is rather young" is an Experience.

1. I actually don't know and have never seen any of what you consider to be these extremely-low-quality channels. Not even once. (My channel discovery method is finding channels advertised here, or from clicking through the very rare insightful comment on channels I already follow, or even more rarely from YT's recommendations.)

2. There's a lot of idol worship in this community, and from the POV of someone who isn't one of the idols, it's hard not to feel envy. (I'm on both sides here: you guys know who I am here on these forums, but besides that and maybe Layer by Layer listeners, I'm largely unknown. And I have my own idols that I worship!) It's not like the popular cubers on social media became popular overnight – they all had to put in effort to get to where they are now.

3. There's a conflict between:
(i) content I want to watch
(ii) content that many people would want to watch

It turns out that low-effort entertainment is really popular. I don't mean "low-effort" in the sense that the content takes little effort to produce – whether it does is irrelevant – but in the sense that the content takes little effort to consume. Make a silly joke, provoke a little laughter out of the viewer. If you want more out of a YT video than that, then it's as GodCubing said: just subscribe to better channels instead.

Also, vote with your clicks. I precommitted to never watching anything from channels that abuse clickbait titles. J Perm has been moving in that direction, and I've been watching his content less in exchange. If you don't give garbage content views, that's less incentive for The Algorithm to recommend it to the next unsuspecting victim. (I mean, all in all it makes almost zero difference, but it's a matter of principle.)

4. YouTube comments, especially on bigger channels like J Perm's or SCR's, are filled with low-quality junk. "What cube would you recommend", "what should I learn next", "what do I do to be sub-30", etc. etc. etc. on entirely unrelated videos.

Given what I said in point 1 above, I don't often see J Perm / CubeHead / etc. commenting on other cubing videos, largely because I don't watch many other cubing videos in the first place. I cannot confirm/deny how common the problem described in the OP is. If it is common, maybe the channel owners should be more proactive in comment moderation. There's no need to have (e.g.) J Perm fanboys spamming replies every time they see J Perm in the comments.

5.
people make unentertaining videos and find a way to sneak in jperm or cubehead and get thousands of views and subscribers from that.
You can get thousands of subs from that? Man, what the hell have I been doing.
 
Last edited:

Eli Apperson

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It sounds like you envy their success.
This is hilarious. As far as YouTube goes, I make videos purely because I enjoy making videos. I started YouTube with the knowledge that my channel will most likely never go anywhere in terms of views or subscribers.
It sounds like you envy their success. You cannot say they don't deserve it because clearly they have that sub count for a reason and though their methods are questionable as long as no copyright laws are being broken it's ok.
They are eligible for copyright strikes if a channel chose to do so.
The "reason" they have the sub count is because they are preying off of the knowledge that people, especially young people, idolize other people.
The reason I think this is questionable is that it does not contribute anything at all to cubing, and these channels are getting rewarded for it.
If you don't like their content don't subscribe.
You are too kind. Thank you.
. Also their success will likely be short lived as they will run out of unique videos to make and people will start to realize their own stupidity. My point is don't envy their success, and if you don't like their content, don't subscribe. It's that simple.

If you remember, I started this post with:
and nothing really can be done about this,
I am completely aware of all that you are saying, I was simply bringing what I believe is a problem to attention.
 

Eli Apperson

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Seeing a 15-year-old write "I know a lot of the cubing community is rather young" is an Experience.
Not saying that I'm not young, but I am a bit older than the majority of the online community
2. There's a lot of idol worship in this community, and from the POV of someone who isn't one of the idols, it's hard not to feel envy. (I'm on both sides here: you guys know who I am here on these forums, but besides that and maybe Layer by Layer listeners, I'm largely unknown. And I have my own idols that I worship!) It's not like the popular cubers on social media became popular overnight – they all had to put in effort to get to where they are now.
The specific channel I am referring to has been popular for less than a week, so this is rather irrelevant.
It turns out that low-effort entertainment is really popular. I don't mean "low-effort" in the sense that the content takes little effort to produce – whether it does is irrelevant – but in the sense that the content takes little effort to consume. Make a silly joke, provoke a little laughter out of the viewer. If you want more out of a YT video than that, then it's as GodCubing said: just subscribe to better channels instead.

Also, vote with your clicks. I precommitted to never watching anything from channels that abuse clickbait titles. J Perm has been moving in that direction, and I've been watching his content less in exchange. If you don't give garbage content views, that's less incentive for The Algorithm to recommend it to the next unsuspecting victim. (I mean, all in all it makes almost zero difference, but it's a matter of principle.)
That is definitely a good principal, but from your earlier comments it does not sound like you are on YT all that much anyway.
I'm all for short, entertaining content. My problem is with the stuff that takes 15 minutes to put out, while channels that spend hours on actually good content are left in the shadows.
4. YouTube comments, especially on bigger channels like J Perm's or SCR's, are filled with low-quality junk. "What cube would you recommend", "what should I learn next", "what do I do to be sub-30", etc. etc. etc. on entirely unrelated videos.

Given what I said in point 1 above, I don't often see J Perm / CubeHead / etc. commenting on other cubing videos, largely because I don't watch many other cubing videos in the first place. I cannot confirm/deny how common the problem described in the OP is. If it is common, maybe the channel owners should be more proactive in comment moderation. There's no need to have (e.g.) J Perm fanboys spamming replies every time they see J Perm in the comments.
I agree
 

Sajwo

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Well, if that's such an issue for you, then you should consider stopping watching those videos. Just be happy that cubing community is growing. Youtubers really play big part in making our hobby more popular ;)
Like >90% of those videos are for plain entertainment anyway and do not contribute anything to "getting faster, learning more, seeing new perspectives..." and that's including both CubeHead and J Perm. If you really want to get fast, you have to figure it our yourself.
 

kubesolver

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As I see it your complaint is analogous to a 60 old complaining that kids prefer watching other kids playing computer games instead of opera.
The only sensible reaction IMO is to accept that there are people who prefer what you consider low quality/ low effort entertainment. What is worse it will probably become mainstream entertainment when they get older rather than disappear when they get older and smarter (I've lived through it with any music genre, super hero cartoons, computer games...).
I find it funny to see someone 3x younger than me acting like an old grandpa complaining about young kids these days.
 

Eli Apperson

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For me (36y) the Thread initiator and "those kids" are all totally the same group for me (relatively) 😉
Age is roughly irrelevant. It is just more apparent in the younger community.
Edit: And what does "the same group" mean. Are you saying I make low quality junk on YouTube? This comment does not really make any sense
 

Eli Apperson

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As I see it your complaint is analogous to a 60 old complaining that kids prefer watching other kids playing computer games instead of opera.
The only sensible reaction IMO is to accept that there are people who prefer what you consider low quality/ low effort entertainment. What is worse it will probably become mainstream entertainment when they get older rather than disappear when they get older and smarter (I've lived through it with any music genre, super hero cartoons, computer games...).
I find it funny to see someone 3x younger than me acting like an old grandpa complaining about young kids these days.
Lol, I agree with this. I suppose I was complaining a bit when writing this post, I just really don't like seeing the community go this way.
 

tuskie

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(Disclaimer: I know a lot of the cubing community is rather young, and nothing really can be done about this, but I'm gonna rant about it anyway.)

So, as usual, I was scrolling through YouTube, and I see YT shorts video that has one of the green screen things. So, I click on it, and it's someone doing a solve then when the green side gets finished they show Dylan saying x-perm. Ha Ha Ha. Then, when I look at the channel that posted, with 18k subs, it was full of trash other content like this. My big problem with this and many other channels like this, is that they don't contribute anything to getting faster, learning more, seeing new perspectives, or anything of the sort. I don't care if people put up "entertaining" videos, but I wish people would stop idolizing people like Jperm or Cubehead, and quoting stupid stuff they say. Another thing I've noticed is that whenever those two channels specifically comment on a video, they get hundreds of replys of "yoooooooo' or "I DoN'T REaD CHinESe hahahaha". Like I said, I know it is somewhat natural for younger kids to idolize big channels or people they look up to, but that doesn't really excuse people who are very aware that what they post is not helping anyone.
This is prevalent in any sphere of the online community. Take Valorant for an example; not every video is a guide on how to improve at the game, many are just compilations or short videos of funny moments. This is likely beneficial for the game as people are more likely to engage with shortform content as opposed to long guide videos, so gets more people looking at the game which is a direct comparison to cubing. If a non-cuber sees a short video about something they know, they might click it, laugh, or not for that matter, and then search more about it; as opposed to not clicking on a 20 minute video by Jayden McNeill analysing Mehta as it looks intimidating.

For any matter, the channel you're talking about does upload videos that 'contribute anything to getting faster' if you looked for more than two seconds.
 
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(Disclaimer: I know a lot of the cubing community is rather young, and nothing really can be done about this, but I'm gonna rant about it anyway.)

So, as usual, I was scrolling through YouTube, and I see YT shorts video that has one of the green screen things. So, I click on it, and it's someone doing a solve then when the green side gets finished they show Dylan saying x-perm. Ha Ha Ha. Then, when I look at the channel that posted, with 18k subs, it was full of trash other content like this. My big problem with this and many other channels like this, is that they don't contribute anything to getting faster, learning more, seeing new perspectives, or anything of the sort. I don't care if people put up "entertaining" videos, but I wish people would stop idolizing people like Jperm or Cubehead, and quoting stupid stuff they say. Another thing I've noticed is that whenever those two channels specifically comment on a video, they get hundreds of replys of "yoooooooo' or "I DoN'T REaD CHinESe hahahaha". Like I said, I know it is somewhat natural for younger kids to idolize big channels or people they look up to, but that doesn't really excuse people who are very aware that what they post is not helping anyone.
I'm not sure I entirely understand where you're trying to get to. I mean, yeah sure, people posting those kinds of content is, for the most part is useless, but like for other topics, this is going on as well. Like for some channels, with 100k subs, half of their content literally revolves around things about big channels, for example, they make sort of clickbaity clips about Dream's face reveal, or other things. And i know it's been mentioned before, but the audience those videos focus on, is what I think not focused on people who follow J perm or Cubehead or cubers in general, so it is something new for those who don't watch these big channels' videos. And I understand that obviously it gets annoying for people having their channel skyrocketing from unoriginal content, but this is all around YouTube, and this sort of cubing content is incredibly minor to the entire concept of making clips which revolve around bigger channel's content.
 

DGCubes

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Somewhat off topic, but in my opinion, clickbait is great! If you're a full-time creator and you put hours into a video you're really proud of, choosing not to use clickbait is equivalent to missing out on a lot of views. Nothing about the content itself changes, but the difference between clickbaiting and not clickbaiting might be the difference between having YouTube as a job and having it as a side-gig. If you think your content deserves views, you're doing it a disservice if you choose not to use clickbait. (Of course clickbait can be annoying if it's deceitful and doesn't accurately represent the video, but that's not what people like J Perm are doing.)

And of course, it's also totally valid to be on YouTube and not care how many views you get! If you are trying to do it as a job though, the numbers unfortunately matter.
 

Flowkap

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You can still clickbait even if it is your job. Whether it's part of how he grows is irrelevant, he is still somewhat clickbaity
I disagree. JPerm has high quality content in my opinion. Never had the feeling it's click baity.

Imo of the content is what was promoted it's not click bait. Of you get something totally different then yes and that never occurred at JPerm for me
 
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