After watching the YouTube video in class, I became curious to see what the best YouTube videos were. So I went on to the site and searched the most viewed. The top viewed clip was a guy dancing to different types of music, it was filled with a plethora of comments asking why the hell this was the most viewed video on YouTube. It had 72 million views. The next most watched was the music video for "I don't like your girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne. Unfortionately, I watched the entire song, as I didn't quite understand why she was so attracted to this guy. He never did anything. Anyway, I thought that I'd have better luck looking at the highest rated videos. Most of the top ten were either a ventriloquist and his dummy or clips from the movie "the pick of destiny" with Jack Black. It was a good movie, but nothing outstanding. So in conclusion, are there no outstanding videos on YouTube? Is there nothing that everyone can agree that is good? Is guys in a rock battle against the devil the most appealing clip to a majority of people? What about a guy with his hand up a puppet's butt? Hopefully some of these questions can be answered later in this class.
i know this is not exactly what you're looking for, but I like most of the videos that are here (as do people I have shown them to)
I think the strength of youtube is that there's content for everyone. I think the rating system as a marker is flawed in its own way. If a movie just makes it past the minimum to be in the contest, but the only people who the movie appeals to happen to LOVE seeing a puppet with a hand up its butt then it may very well be top rated. There are plenty of people who will just vote max if the subject is something they like (don't ask me why). There are plenty of good videos out there on youtube, whether you like seeing the absolute most painful crashes (my favorite) and sports bloopers to full TV shows, stand up comedy and, well pretty much anything you can think of. The most seen videos also have a tendency to take off, because the more people see something, the higher up on the most seen list it gets, the more people will watch it. The fact is that some of the best youtube videos are more focused on certain tastes, and while these videos won't be as popular as vidoes that are somewhat interesting to a larger group, I personally think that they're better.
Don't lose faith in youtube because a lot of people like seeing Avril Lavigne prance around or seeing rediculous dancing the most. After all, a lot of people really liked Michael Jackson back in the day, and all the music from that time isn't exactly the same, nor anywhere close really.
The rating system is indeed flawed, but will not change unless the employees of YouTube change their capitalistic mindset. Popularity is a fundamental organizing structure for YouTube because it is what allows YouTube to survive as a corporation. Popularity= a larger influx of hits from users and more active users= the more revenue that YouTube will see from its advertisements. As long as popularity is responsible for the financial prosperity of the 60 employees that run YouTube, then YT will continue to operate off of this basis. What incentive do they have as a company to operate their site any differently when they have mastered a site structured to produce a ridiculous amount of money.