[drzaiusapelord]

Its the male "comedic" friendly voice.

Essentially its a learned affectation to come off as approachable and unthreatening (see also Jimmy Fallon) to garner views. Read a "boring" technical article at Ars or watch this guy fumble around and be silly and give these practiced big smiles? A lot of people would rather watch a 20-30 minute video that's entertaining and lower information than read a 5 minute article thats denser.

Essentially this is blogspam in video form and it makes a lot of people very wealthy, so its not going away anytime soon.

As someone who loves the arts, but can't get into youtube personality culture, its just so crazy to me people watch these things. They're a bit infantlizing to me. "Oh you want to learn about these drones? Instead of proper sources here's some guy who will pretend to be your friend and do silly comedic things for you while explaining it to you on the 5th grade level." Umm ok.

The most positive thing I can say is that there are people out there who can't read well (or read English at all) or can't learn from reading well, so these videos can be seen as helping a vulnerable demographic in an accessibility-like way. It may also attract younger people who otherwise would never read an Ars or Hackaday or HN (or whomever) article because these outlets are just not super accessible to them (unknown site to them, written on a too low level, etc). And that these video personalities could be a stepping stone into better and deeper media.

Essentially media is a free capitalist market and people choose their media sources, via their own biases and limitations. If they want everything explained to them via a Jimmy Fallon impersonator, then it will happen. Eventually the lowest common denominator demands questionable gimmicks and the market is more than happy to oblige.

[mptest]

Personally, as someone who does enjoy youtube but also relates to the grating nature of over "blogspammy" content, I think the key is I'm rarely if ever only watching a youtube video. Audiobooks/podcast when I can focus, youtube videos when I can't/doin something else. Can tune in and out easily and mostly not miss most stuff as I'm scrolling elsewhere.

Great analysis though, "blogspam" in video form is a fantastic metaphor for the over produced algo gamey vids. (Perfect length to hit max ads, thumbnail, title, intro template, etc)

[mrguyorama]

> Instead of proper sources here's some guy who will pretend to be your friend and do silly comedic things for you while explaining it to you on the 5th grade level.

Well, Mark Rober's intended, primary audience (don't let youtube hear this) is 5th graders so I don't know what you expected.

They aren't trying to sell kiwico kits to 26 year olds you know.

[drzaiusapelord]

That's fair but Rober does the standard "Youtube voice" and persona popular in many demographics. I don't think its fair to say this is something unique to 5th grader audience YT's. This is practiced persona that leads to social media success in many venues.

Also HN isnt a 5th grader's venue, so its interesting how normalized it is posting children's media in adult spaces, probably because he doesn't come off as much more childish than most YT personalities.