Even smaller channels are bombarded with offers for promoting something, and they usually do, because who can say no to extra cash? YouTube was once an outlet of creativity and it now became hostage of greed and companies. I pay bills with what I do, with the books I write, with the theater”. His answer was (I am going by memory and I suppose slightly paraphrasing): “it’s not mandatory to do commercials. A journalist once asked Alessandro Bergonzoni (an Italian theatre actor, playwright and all around genius) why he wasn’t doing TV commercials even if he was so popular. I always had a hard time with accepting promotion, and things only became worse in current era, where promotion is masked as content. How many did start a channel cos they felt the urge of communicating? And how many started it as a complement or substitute for their existing income? We can’t know, but it’s possible to form a reasonable idea by looking at their content and presentation. YouTube photography channels usually don’t exist for sharing something worthwhile - they share something as a mean for existing, and they exist for making promotion possible - self promotion, another brand promotion, or both - it is all about selling –– selling yourself or selling a brand. Some channels have a slightly different video structure, but if you look closely, the song remains the same. Whassap YouTube! Please like and subscribe! Smash that like button! This video is brought to you by (insert sponsor). Social media is what we could call a basic tribal social structure, where trying to replicate what seems successful is the norm: people in the videos mostly act the same, edit the video in the same way, light the video in the same way, talk about the same topics, start and close the videos with the same words, attempting to craft their own iconic catchphrase –– or shamelessly adopting someone else’s. How many times did you see the same titles - even the same thumbnails - “tips and tricks for doing X” or “why I switched from brand Y to brand Z” or the classic “N reasons why _ “. Most photography YouTube channels are showing the same kind of content - or at least, most of the (at least moderately) popular ones. All the photos in this post are shot with The Nikon Z6 II and the Nikkor 28mm 1.4 This can be fine sometimes, especially if there is some entertainment value at play, but I usually find it tedious. The duration, the editing, the audio/video sync, it all demands that you submit to the time treatment expressed by the video. Watching a video is a different experience, because it is based on a definite timing. When I read an article I have total control on how I absorb its content. I like to read - and I like it much more than consuming video. In the end though I never do that, mostly because I like the written word so much. I sometimes caressed the idea of opening my own channel on YouTube - intrigued by communication through an experience of time that is so different from the written word.
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