YouTube Face

April 10, 2018 8:06 PM

Taken cumulatively, there’s a surreal, Lynchian quality to the images.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? (18 comments total)

So remember those disturbing 'deep dream' images that were created by slowly tweaking images until they were 'recognized' more and more strongly by computers, resulting in lovecraftian nightmares of dogs and eyes that computers really liked? Basically that but happening in slow motion with online videos.
posted by Pyry at 8:33 PM on April 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

Attention has always been an arms race, it's why we now have autoplaying videos on practically every website. I started a niche blog in February that has gotten a little over 200 followers and I find myself looking at the analytics to see which posts did well. It's not monetized at all and I doubt it could ever be, but I don't believe that money started out as the primary goal of a lot of these YouTubers either. Humans are wired to like attention and approval, and when we're not getting enough, we find out how to get more. Even babies know this. Even cats know this. They will meow incessantly until you break down and give them what they want. They'd make great capitalists.
posted by AFABulous at 8:40 PM on April 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

Don't forget to favorite, flag, and move on!
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:35 PM on April 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I see they're using theneedledrop as an example, so I guess he must still be going. Did anybody ever figure out what the deal was with his alt-right meme side-channel (previously)?
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:45 AM on April 11, 2018

I watch a lot of YouTube and I think it’s great. But a lot of the dominant aesthetic does give me over-the-top children’s television vibes. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.
posted by defenestration at 6:08 AM on April 11, 2018

I’ve noticed a new direction on YouTube Voice as well—ever shifting accents/voices and enunciation. Perhaps this helps keep the viewer’s attention. Like one second it’s over-enunciated American english, then it’s a fake southern accent, then some resemblance of a posh English monarch, then over-enunciated American english. That kinda thing.
posted by defenestration at 6:11 AM on April 11, 2018

i wonder what percentage of YouTube viewing time is spent by literal children on their parents accounts, and how that might be warping things.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:14 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Way back in 1998, I created a geocities page called 'Naked pictures of Cindy Crawford'. This was before good search engine algorithms, when they basically believed you had what you said you had.

It had nothing but a text message saying 'you are the [counter] person to fall for this'. It got a few hundred thousand views, and then I pulled it down.

I could have been the Henry Ford of the attention economy, if only my scruples hadn't gotten in the way.
posted by signal at 6:31 AM on April 11, 2018 [5 favorites]

Those exaggerated expressions are useful if you are trying to teach someone with face processing difficulties how to detect other people's emotions. If you are sad you put on the face of a Greek tragedy mask. If you are happy you beam imbecilically with your smile stretched from ear to ear.

With a bit of luck and encouragement, you can also get the pupil to imitate the face and then the extreme wears off and they are doing a muted form of the expression. This helps them to show their emotions instead of having blunted affect.

I sort of assumed that they were making the faces that extreme for people who don't recognize ordinary expressions - sort of like using large block letters for someone who is visually impaired.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:19 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

The final image in the article seems to display some pretty ordinary looking expressions. Obviously people are going to thumbnail themselves caught in the moment of most extreme reaction For The Humor, but it's not as if they're holding that facial pose the entire time.
posted by inconstant at 7:38 AM on April 11, 2018

I think the thesis is wrong - if you don't think you make these faces, watch yourself talking in the mirror sometime. The Soup would also take hilarious looking stills (still does maybe since I've heard they are back) like this for comedic effect all the time.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:41 AM on April 11, 2018

There needs to be another article on YouTube-style editing, which is so distracting to me that I've stopped watching vlogs. Why on earth do people have so many jump cuts?! Just do another take if you flub a line or have too many filler words. It's not like you're paying for an actor's and film crew's time. I stopped watching Jay Smooth a long time ago because of this. (I guess he still does it, but at least there's a cat in the background.)
posted by AFABulous at 7:45 AM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why on earth do people have so many jump cuts?!

Because that style was funny when Ze Frank invented it, and now it's just spread everwhere like kudzu and autotune abuse.
posted by flabdablet at 8:54 AM on April 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

Plus everybody wants to use Sony cameras these days and those overheat after roughly 30 seconds of recording.
posted by dominik at 9:00 AM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Perhaps the emergence of YTF hints at one of the many ways these algorithmic forces might begin to shape our physical appearances.

I've been wondering if children who watch a lot of modern animation are beginning to imitate its facial expressions, which would be similar (simplified, amplified).
posted by clew at 9:49 AM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why on earth do people have so many jump cuts?!
Music videos. The average scene is about 3-5 seconds there.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:24 AM on April 11, 2018

The post links to https://www.frackfeed.com/ which I found so repulsive I couldn't stop looking around.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 10:36 AM on April 11, 2018

i think the jump cuts thing is just that it's a much easier way to do a webcam face video monologue. you can practice for hours until you finally get a good take, or you can just splice things together. it works for audio too except the cuts are far less apparent.
posted by vogon_poet at 5:43 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]