Sweet Listener, we are in the presence of the most powerful threat to mankind ever conceived.
Apparently innocuous, seemingly good and true and wholesome, ostensibly gratifying, this beast is possibly more evil and more destructive than an elephant with a digestive complaint.
And what is this force of savagery and doom that places the entire human race under threat?
YouTube??? you cry. That fantastic platform on which you can view every facet of the world, for free, in the comfort of your own home????
Oh, innocent Listener. They’ve got to you too.
Therein lies my point. You have every single facet of our world at your fingertips. Want to learn how to be a heart surgeon? Done. Need an idea for what to buy your guinea pig for Christmas? Check. Want to find twenty seconds of commentary from the second half of a football match between Swindon and Port Vale in 1988 that you remember watching with your dad and the commentator made a funny noise in the 73rd minute that you’ve always remembered and want to relive? No ruddy problem.
There. Is. Nothing. You. Cannot. Watch. On. YouTube.
I have never ever not been able to find what I’ve been looking for on YouTube. Obscure TV programmes from my childhood that I’d feared I’d imagined, how to correctly apply bronzer (thank God for you, YouTube), hilarious compilations of people being knocked over by large pets. It’s all there for our viewing pleasure.
Where once we were forced to spend hours of our most successful procrastination time playing Spider Solitaire, or Minesweeper, or trying to work out how in the name of humanity you play Freecell, we now have millions of hours of people on magic mushrooms to enjoy.
But, naive Listener, this apparent enjoyment has a dark side.
Picture this: you arrive at the gates of Heaven expecting to be handed a certificate of all the super things you have done in your life, like been continually empathetic towards the elderly, shown tremendous kindness towards tortoises, made at least two people very happy, and eaten all your fruit and vegetables. Instead, you are presented with this:
Oh, the novels you could have written! The songs you could have composed! The dinners you could have cooked from scratch instead of scraping glutinous artificial matter from the base of plastic containers! The sex you could have had! The money you could have made!
ALL FOR THE SAKE OF SOMEONE DOING THIS:
YouTube could have been single-handedly responsible for destroying humanity before humanity had even had a chance to get itself going:
In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth , and animals, and a Man and a Woman, and YouTube, and thence forth everything ground to a halt, for the Man and the Woman consumed their days watching videos of cats being sick and badgers falling over rocks and lightning bolts hitting the bare dusty ground, and the Man and the Woman thanked God for creating seven whole days that they could dedicate to this most pleasurable of pastimes and this went on and on until the Man and the Woman and the animals became very old and died and then there was just the Heavens and the Earth and YouTube, and God wondered why he’d bothered.
YouTube has created needs for us that we didn’t think we had: we now need to see what happens when someone eats the hottest pepper in the world; we now need to remember the theme tune to Blockbusters; we now need to know the absolute, categorical and unequivocally effective method of preparing vegetables. HOW DID WE EVER MANAGE BEFORE?
Ohhh, the lost hours, Listener. Just the other night I snuck in a bit of YouTube action before going to sleep (why? BECAUSE THERE WERE VIDEOS OF BABIES LAUGHING AT PAPER TO BE WATCHED), and I found myself staring at a compilation of people falling down stairs. Had I sunk low enough? No. I sunk lower when I realised
I HAD SEEN THE RUDDY VIDEO BEFORE.
Oh YouTube. You undoubtedly do some good. Some of your videos are very inspiring and beautiful and emotional, but please – WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME WATCH THIS???
Stop it, YouTube.
BECKY SAYS THINGS 
Before YouTube there was TV, then TV’s began to breed and they moved into bedrooms, soon you could no longer walk through someones house without seeing a TV in every room. Now this TV has made it on to our phones, the difference being you get to choose what you want to watch, not what the TV tells you to. YouTube is just the next step of TV evolution.
A cog in the machine of babies laughing and cats jumping into boxes. Don’t blame YouTube, blame TV.
You’re probably right. And you know what the most awful thing is? Here in England there is a programme on TV which showcases the best YouTube clips of the week. I am not joking. Christ, it’s like the Matrix. I don;t think my head will comprehend that.
Thanks for reading 😉
I think there are several, I suppose it’s the next step on from you’ve been framed. In fact, when last watched, You’ve been framed also showed YouTube clips!
We’ll have to watch this Matrix evolution, Smith got really annoying when he began to clone himself.
I bet You’ve Been Framed is now full of nothing BUT YouTube clips!
Haha, probably. I can’t watch it anymore to find out though because a) I’ve no TV and b) I couldn’t bear to watch it if I could 🙂
I tend to agree, as you can even find a clip called the “World Curling Federation Promo Video” which prompted an immediate response from yours truly. My latest post… Thanks Youtube.
Oh, curling. What a pointless sport. Thanks YouTube. 🙂
I’m so glad someone agrees…
I can not tell you how many times I have watched and rewatched and rewatched again the “Willam’s Beatdown” series on The Stylish Youtube channel. I KNOW ALL THE JOKES. WHY DO I KEEP WATCHING?
*watches again*
Oh for the love of GOD, why have you given me SOMETHING ELSE to watch on YouTube? I read your comment, thought to myself ‘I’ll see what she’s talking about before I reply,’ went on YouTube, found William’s Beatdown videos.
THAT WAS HALF AN HOUR AGO.
Thanks for making me waste my life TO AN EVEN GREATER DEGREE.
Urgh.
🙂
RIGHT?!!
But she’s damn funny.
True. BUT I STILL NEED TO DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH MY LIFE.
You can.
Go make a cuppa, listen to the rain and watch this, so so funny. http://dailygarlic.com/picture/people-were-wondering-what-goes-on-inside-a-cats-head-this-guy-nails-it-21872
We just used YouTube to figure out how to use our new automatic, battery-operated wine bottle un-corker. How lazy is that! I doubt we’d have figured it out on our own.
I’m so sorry but I laughed like hell at that drunk guy falling over. Who wouldn’t?
It’s a slippery slope, isn’t it? Once click begets another. And then another. And before you know it, a week has gone by and you haven’t bathed or eaten or slept. The new addiction.
It’s taken me nearly an hour to reply to four comments on this post. Why? BECAUSE PEOPLE KEEP GIVING ME IDEAS OF WHAT TO WATCH ON YOUTUBE AND THEN I KEEP CLICKING ON OTHER STUFF AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT IT’S 2045 AND I’M VERY OLD AND I’VE DONE NOTHING WITH MY LIFE AND I REALLY NEED THE TOILET.
And to be fair, battery-operated wine bottle uncorkers are a nightmare to figure out, so I totally forgive you for searching for the answer on YouTube. 🙂
It’s very charitable of you to say that but after seeing how it’s done, I felt like a double-idiot over my uncorker befuddlement. It’s kind of intuitive, really. Press button down. Press button up. Tragic.
We all have these slightly ‘slow’ moments 🙂
Can I just admit that as soon as you went into the story of creation, the Monty Python narrator started rolling in my head…oh, no…now I want to go find a clip on YouTube. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?
Hilarious post, as always, especially since it hits so close to home!
Hahaha, the Monty Python narrator would perfect!
Thanks for reading 🙂
Thanks for saying things about things!
Well thanks for listening to me say things about things 🙂
As long as you say things about things, I will read the things you say…about…those…things.
Okay, okay, I’m stopping 🙂
Watching YouTube is like eating chips. You can’t eat just one.
And you can get fat, lethargic and very very thirsty doing both.
Exactly.
Please take down that video of me falling over. It’s very hurtful.
Christ, I’m sorry. I just thought it was funny. It is funny – but I not that funny. I also hoped it would make you realise that your drinking is way out of control and you need to get some help.
Your only recourse is to gouge your eyes out with toothpicks (find the video first for the best way to do it).
Okay, you’ve done it. You’ve provided me with the one thing I cannot find on YouTube. You cannot find an instructive video on how to gouge your eyes out on YouTube. I shall make one immediately.
🙂 I’m pretty special –
But I would have been AFRAID of searching that out and getting something that I would be compelled to watch.
Since trying to find that video, I have watched at least 8 utterly unrelated videos just by clicking and clicking and clicking and am currently staring at an Irish band jumping up and down in a pub in 2007. WHAT IS GOING ON??
You’re easily distracted by the entertainment environment…
Hahahaha!
And you are totally right. Last night I was up until nearly 2 am. Not because I was curled up with my husband. Not because I was reading a lovely book. Not because I was catching up on work for my job. Not because I was finally finishing up a long-overdue blog post.
Oh no.
Because I couldn’t stop watching videos of celebrities falling down.
I should really just buy my one-way ticket to hell right now.
Thank GOD other people do it. But in our defence, celebrities – in fact anyone – falling over is AMUSING.
And let us, for a moment, contemplate the difference in the American phrase of ‘falling down’ and the English phrase of ‘falling over’. Aren’t cultural differences interesting?
🙂
Two things; Firstly, brilliant blog Becky!
Secondly is that true, that I’d get more sex if I stop watching YouTube?! Wow
And ( OK three things) I’d add the fact that it can be traumatic. I was watching a clip of a music festival from years ago (I’m talking decades) and there I was lying on my back on the ground, as dirty as its possible to get at a festival, staring at the clouds with the most ridiculous grin on my face. I’d got the look of someone who’d been having a great time… Trauma is from not having a glimmer of the fainest memory of what I’d done
Ohhhhhhhhhhh that is UNLUCKY!!!! That’s amazing, but would seriously freak me out if I spotted myself on a random video of something I did decades ago!
And i’ve not had the sex theory validated but I’m very willing to conduct such an experiment – I’ll let you know in a week or so 😉
I think we should apply for a grant to conduct this valid & worthwhile research.
Think we might need a statistically significant double blind sample group (tricky for those doing the YouTube viewing lol), then we could conduct a bit of process control…but there again you could just do what every good politician does & make it up
But Youtube made three young men very rich when they sold it to google, and isn’t that what our world is all about? If people are striking it rich, it doesn’t matter if the little folk fall a bit (ok, a lot) lower on the productivity scale.
Speaking of its “invention,” your post got me curious so I looked it up. These three PayPal employees put it together and one of the idea-igniters was Janet Jackson’s Superbowl wardrobe dysfunction. One of the founders was frustrated at not being able to find that moment online, so figured why not create such a platform? Who knew, I ask you.
You bemoaned getting older before and being a good decade beyond your years is my saving grace. I see my kids going to Youtube, but don’t pay much attention myself outside of looking up music. (Though there are plenty of other time-wasters in my life.)
What to eat when you’re watching Youtube videos? Anything 😀
I get sucked down the rabbit hole following the trail of super disgusting videos.
And yes, I watched both examples you put up! Of course. Just to make sure drunk guy fell backward, and to annoy the hell out of my two cats. And because – Awww, cats!
I have failed at finding something I was looking for. Maybe I need your professional help?
Wow, what the hell were you looking for for it not to be on YouTube? Or maybe your brain was just so filled with drunk cats falling over that you forgot what it was? 🙂
Hahah! I know exactly what it was – a public service announcement with the tag line “people are great”. What I can’t remember is where I lived when it was on TV. Was either FL or OH, and it was so annoying and smarmy that whenever some human does something disgusting I sigh and sing, ‘people are great.’ I’m guessing Ohio, as I think the running joke started with an ex I met there.
It was sooo bad. I want to see it again!
My daughter and my wife eye-guzzle YouTube down like it was liquid crack. I got a media server so they’d watch it on the tele instead of the computer. That made things worse.
No, they don’t watch vids of drunk people falling down. But they watch plenty of other stuff over and over.
Liquid crack is an excellent way to describe YouTube!
Thanks for reading 🙂
You’re welcome, as always. Keep kickin’ hide and takin’ names 😉
Haha, will do!
BABIES LAUGHING AT PAPER ARE THE FUNNIEST THING EVER.
Thank GOD someone else understands.
So spot on Becky. The YouTube time suck is alive and well in my house too.
Luckily, there are people like Becky who… at least some of the time… use their time productively so that we can read awesome writing and free ourselves from Youtube binges.
Dave, you are way too kind 🙂
Reblogged this on lunamothblog and commented:
Just a bit of humor from Becky Says Things…
Thank you for reblogging 🙂
I laughed hysterically at Stickman’s portrayal of reliving that “noise” you always remembered. I like your work.
Thank you so much! 🙂
Reblogged this on Confessions of a Randomer and commented:
STORY OF MY LIFE.