I spend a lot of time on YouTube, mainly because I inexplicably committed to posting an awesome or interesting video every morning. And so here are a few things about YouTube that are kicking my ass these days.
1) "Embedding disabled by request." Why? You're posting your video for free. Whether it's viewed on YouTube for free or on my blog for free is completely irrelevant. It's all free.
2) 99 percent of the most viewed videos on YouTube are awful or unfunny. It makes me sad for what appears to be the totally loss of, you know, good taste. Instead of dropping videos that violate copyright laws, YouTube ought to go through and delete every video that violates the laws of taste: mainly any video made by a hipster ranting into his webcam about items from Yahoo's "Weird News" page or videos of guys using a silly voice. And not necessarily in that order.
3) Cellphone concert bootlegs. Here's me scrambling for a video at half-past-dark in the morning: Oh look! I've never seen that Death Cab video. [clicks thumbnail] BBRBBBBBRBRBRRRRRRRRR! The obnoxious atomic belch noise (also known as the awful sound of a rock concert recorded on a shitty cellphone) erupts from my laptop speakers. Neighborhood dogs start barking. Car alarms go off. My wife throws waffles at me.
My wish for YouTube is that quality and taste will eventually win the day, and the crappy videos, much like the shittiest MySpace pages -- the ones with purple text on top of blue tie-dye backgrounds -- will go away. Soon.