For some, it's narcissism, for others it's promotion of themselves as musicians, demonstrating goods for someone else, informational, company training, etc. I use YouTube a lot, to learn things. I had bought a welder a few years ago and never got around to using it because I really didn't need to weld anything important, or urgently. I had welded exactly once since high school and at that time, wire MIG welding may have existed, but we only had oxy-acetylene and stick, so I needed to get up to speed and I found a few great instructors (weld.com and weldingtipsand tricks). The first welds I made sucked something fierce, but I improved enough that I could beat on the joints with a 2-1/2 lb straight pein hammer and they didn't break, so.....

I have a friend who has hundreds, if not thousands of videos on YT and one has over 1.5 Million views. I hope he gets paid for them.


I forgot to mention all of the conspiracy theorists. (There- that ought to keep some of you busy for a while)

Like I said. Fins called out the wrong guy and now he's playing along.

I don't know that one yet (thankfully), but my little one sure loves Blippi. He would watch it all day and all night if he could.

The reason most of these are targeted towards kids is that when our kids are annoying the hell out of us, we hand them the tablet and let them go nuts. We only have YT Kids on there, so they are safe, but this is the crap they sit and watch and watch and watch and watch....until we pry the thing out of their cold dead hands.

I make my kids go outside and play in the dirt sometimes instead. It is good for them. :) But yeah, you can watch a lot of stupid videos in 2 or 3 hours on YT kids of dummies doing dumb stuff. I guess I need to get a go-pro and set it up to record my kids' reactions to the videos they are watching, and put those up and cash in. That is the kind of mindless stupidity is out there for kids.

There is plenty of useful stuff out there for adults. I have a handful of subscriptions to some informative channels that get updated maybe once a week. I understand YT sells ads. But who watches them? Most of them have a "Skip" option after 5 seconds. Not sure who does not skip them, but apparently enough people are watching the ads to make it worthwhile. Maybe the kids videos have ads that kids watch thinking it is just part of the show.

With Atwood hes not just making money off of youtube ads. He has cashed in on branding and merchandising. My kids actually put his stuff on their Christmas lists.My 13 y/o got a SmileMore shirt for her dog.

Its bottom shelf reality TV. Believe it or not some people still watch shows like survivor, the bachelor, big brother even though they are obviously manufactured drama. There is no difference between the Jackass franchise and a bunch of skate boarders on youtube smashing their nuts on hand rails.

So, if we all agree that it's the one of the newest forms of entertainment for the kiddies....What's next?

Facebook Live?  Think about it, your followers will be glued to Facebook (right where Zuckerberg wants them) waiting to get a ping that you're about to go live for your stupid hi-jinx show. 

Facebook?
The only people I see still using Facebook a lot these days, are older people. The younger generation loves following trends. And they skip around every few years to a new social media platform now. And there are a lot to choose from these days.
Which if you think about it, is counter productive. When everyone was on Facebook, all you had to do was search for who you were looking for. Now to see everyone, you have to search across several social sites and might not even know about a site they are on.