So, is anyone else sick of all the crappy video links?

March 1, 2006 10:54 AM

So, is anyone else sick of all the crappy video links? Just reposting the latest "wow, look at this"/"isn't this funny" stuff from Google Videos and YouTube gets a bit dull.
posted by Orange Goblin to Etiquette/Policy at 10:54 AM (84 comments total)

Nope, just you.
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:59 AM on March 1, 2006

You know what gets dull? People posting stupid ass comments about how curling isn't a sport.

Lame.
posted by hototogisu at 10:59 AM on March 1, 2006

The lame ones are removed, the amazing ones stay. Seems to work so far.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:04 AM on March 1, 2006

Another vote for not sick.
posted by xmutex at 11:06 AM on March 1, 2006

evan like to dust in a very cute way
posted by brain_drain at 11:08 AM on March 1, 2006

You really dislike curling.
posted by smackfu at 11:09 AM on March 1, 2006

Evan is well on his way to becoming a profoundly talented curler. Look at that broomish action!
posted by hototogisu at 11:11 AM on March 1, 2006

There are many more videos, but then, there are a bunch of new video services. It seems like most of the ones I click through to from here are pretty good. The curling one was strange because it was so short, but after I watched it two or three times it just started to get more amazing and I thought it was cool.
posted by OmieWise at 11:15 AM on March 1, 2006

You know what gets dull? Railin' yr mom.
posted by keswick at 11:16 AM on March 1, 2006

You know what else is dumb? Single link posts to pictures of peoples cats on scanners.

Metafilter remains true to its roots. Metafilter is dead! Long live metafilter!
posted by blue_beetle at 11:17 AM on March 1, 2006

That never gets dull keswick.
posted by smackfu at 11:19 AM on March 1, 2006

Last night as I drifted off to sleep I started composing an editorial on the viral/meme video thing.

I doubt any of my ideas are new, but I realized that a while ago we truly moved into post MTV territory. Even shorter attention spans, "viewer programmed content", an endless stream of video clips, often forcibly removed from context to the point of absurdity, surrealism, abstraction and even complete detachment.

And what are we watching with this fantastic new technology and all this fantastic technological wealth?

Stupid human tricks. People falling over, off of, out of and on to things. People on fire. People pranking other people. People falling out of the sky and going splat. People doing improbable things.

It's a bit more than that, of course, but it's not that far off the mark.

I'd guess we're just about past the middle of this trend, with a fair ways to go before it's done.
posted by loquacious at 11:20 AM on March 1, 2006

So, is anyone else sick of all the bitchy sniping? Just posting your latest "This isn't the best of MY web!"/"Isn't this lame?" snarks from your cubicle and basement gets a bit dull.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:20 AM on March 1, 2006

loquacious - i think we're just like a bunch of chimps, sitting around at the zoo, waiting for another chimp to fart so we can point and laugh.

really.

/sigh
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:25 AM on March 1, 2006

Just posting your latest "This isn't the best of MY web!"/"Isn't this lame?" snarks from your cubicle and basement gets a bit dull.

"MetaTalk is a discussion area for topics specific to MetaFilter itself, ranging from bug reports to feature requests to questions of content."

Dull, but appropriate.
posted by justgary at 11:25 AM on March 1, 2006

True enough justgary, I should have been more specific.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:31 AM on March 1, 2006

No, dull is the whole anagram subway map meme that seems to be the agenda over at another weblog. But a good viral video is a thing of beauty.
posted by crunchland at 11:38 AM on March 1, 2006

Yeah, WTF is up with the anagrams?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:41 AM on March 1, 2006

OG: back to lynx with you.
posted by mischief at 11:41 AM on March 1, 2006

crunchland's perspective makes the single video link much more tolerable. Nothing could be as tedious as anagrammatical subway maps. Nothing.
posted by boo_radley at 11:43 AM on March 1, 2006

Yeah, WTF is up with the anagrams?

It probably would have died off by now, but one of the cities brought copyright into it and Cory went berserk.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:45 AM on March 1, 2006

the amazing ones stay

You mean like that guy falling off the truck? ;)

OMGAMAZING!
posted by scarabic at 11:46 AM on March 1, 2006

I'm waiting for them to find a Sony rootkit angle for the subway anagram posts. Then I'll be twice as riveted.
posted by Gamblor at 11:46 AM on March 1, 2006

loquacious - i think we're just like a bunch of chimps, sitting around at the zoo, waiting for another chimp to fart so we can point and laugh.

Do chimps really do that? Point and laugh at another chimp who farted, I mean? Because if so, my respect for those little guys just went way up.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:58 AM on March 1, 2006

The amazing ones stay.
posted by ND¢ at 12:02 PM on March 1, 2006

hototogisu writes "You know what gets dull? People posting stupid ass comments about how curling isn't a sport"

Burn!
posted by Mitheral at 12:07 PM on March 1, 2006

You know what's lame: posting how a thread is lame in the thread itself AND starting a MetaTalk thread about it.
posted by chunking express at 12:15 PM on March 1, 2006

Railin' yr mom is soo Metafark.
posted by R. Mutt at 12:16 PM on March 1, 2006

The lame ones are removed, the amazing ones stay.

Thank god that rule doesn't apply to the machete humor. MetaFilter would be a lesser place.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 12:19 PM on March 1, 2006

My cubicle is in my basement.
Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...
posted by keswick at 12:20 PM on March 1, 2006

im in ur base nailing ur mom
posted by cortex at 12:21 PM on March 1, 2006

"He's inside the house! The calls are coming from inside the house!"
posted by OmieWise at 12:23 PM on March 1, 2006

My only problem with them is that they're easily double posted because many times the posts don't have a lot of information about the videos in them, or other links on similar topics. So there's a video post, then someone else posts another video post with a different URL, and people are all like "D0UbL3!!" and I have to watch them both to figure it out. Otherwise, they seem like another way to link to content and they're mostly good. Curling rocks.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:23 PM on March 1, 2006

Someone needs to make a curling TC in Source. We have the technology. It would be awesome.
posted by cortex at 12:28 PM on March 1, 2006

I totally agree. [potentially NSFW]
posted by kosem at 12:31 PM on March 1, 2006

I'm sick of the fact that I'm stupid enough to keep clicking on these video links all the time, only to find that the videos take ages to load, if they work at all, and when they do, the quality is so completely dire I may as well just make an animated gif of some random shifting pixels and stare at that for three minutes while stuttering under my breath in an American accent about autistic schoolboy curlers getting loads of points at the end of the game by falling off a truck.
posted by jack_mo at 12:34 PM on March 1, 2006

aaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnd scene...
posted by hototogisu at 12:37 PM on March 1, 2006

jack_mo, you really think that's worse than the videos that used to get linked here? They were invariably 25 MB WMV files that downloaded incredibly slow and brought people out from every corner to bitch about how they wouldn't work on Linux or Mac.
posted by smackfu at 12:39 PM on March 1, 2006

If curling is a sport, then, dagnabbit, the activity in kosem's video ought to be, too. Think of the endorsements!
posted by crunchland at 12:40 PM on March 1, 2006

one of the cities brought copyright into it and Cory went berserk

Given how easy it is to push his buttons, I'm shocked he hasn't been properly punkd yet. Maybe I'll have to do it.
posted by cillit bang at 12:40 PM on March 1, 2006

I had actually thought about posting this in MeTa before I saw the curling post, it just reminded me that I was going to. I don't have some huge hate for curling, I just don't think 5 seconds of content makes a good post. I mean, the video was over before I even realised what it was, I had to watch it again to tell.

Is it ok to link to a single paragraph of text that takes 5 seconds to read? What if I posted a link to this single block of text:

Canadian curling team hits their stone into one of the other teams, which hits another, and then another, and all of the other teams stones are pushed out of the ring, without touching anyone of the Canadian's stones. This was a really good shot and won them the game.

If anything, that short paragraph is more informative than the video...
posted by Orange Goblin at 12:47 PM on March 1, 2006

smackfu said 'They were invariably 25 MB WMV files that downloaded incredibly slow and brought people out from every corner to bitch about how they wouldn't work on Linux or Mac.'

Dunno really, someone would've always moaned that they didn't work on a Mac by the time I got to them, so I wouldn't bother downloading!

I am genuinely stunned that YouTube and Google Video have proved so popular when 99% of the videos (that I've seen) are unwatchably shit quality, though. Eg. that one someone posted here the other day of people doing cool martial arts stunts - I couldn't actually make out any of the cool stunts, because any time anyone moved I just saw a wibbling pixelstorm. (I have a relatively fancy computer and a fast connection, too, so assume they look this dreadful for everyone? If so, it's definitely weird that anyone bothers to watch.)
posted by jack_mo at 12:53 PM on March 1, 2006

I'm sorry, are you seriously trying to equate three lines of bad copy with a rollicking good time of a sports highlight reel?
posted by hototogisu at 1:04 PM on March 1, 2006

I've always found most of the videos to be slow loading right after they get posted, but after waiting for a bit they load and work just fine.

Then again, I have a shit connection and a shit computer, so I dunno.
posted by hototogisu at 1:05 PM on March 1, 2006

Don't worry, Orange Goblin. Viral videos are just a fad. With the advent of faster internet connections, and sites like google video and youtube, it's not surprising that they seem to have taken over the consciousness of the internet. Just like the tiltshift fad has temporarily taken over flickr. But fear not! People will soon catch up with you and share your weariness, and we'll move on to some new thing to bore ourselves to death with.

Or, the Apocalypse will occur. Either way, something new always comes down the pike. Just go with it.
posted by crunchland at 1:29 PM on March 1, 2006

Folks, I just can't recommend this site enough. Please take all your awesome videos there. kthxbye.
posted by mkultra at 1:38 PM on March 1, 2006

Oh, great. Another video aggregator. I just managed to extract myself from google video so I could get ready for work, you fiend.
posted by loquacious at 1:47 PM on March 1, 2006

Don't blame me...
posted by mkultra at 2:02 PM on March 1, 2006

In my time hanging around MeFi, I have noticed that as soon as something has happened often enough to be recognized as ANY kind of 'trend,' someone will speak out against it. They don't need to have a reason why it's a bad trend. Part of it is wanting to point out how observant they are. The other part is this strange demand for iconoclastic originality in every single post (or something). I have never quite figured out how this impulse works, but you can see it in action all the time.

"Oh shit! That's the second time I've seen someone do that! How trite! I must open a MeTa thread and assert my ennui."
posted by scarabic at 2:07 PM on March 1, 2006

So, is anyone else sick of all the crappy video links?

I don't know, I was about to post a crushingly sad fpp, but a silly google video post made me laugh, and I changed my mind
posted by matteo at 2:08 PM on March 1, 2006

I'm really excited to make my first FPP with a google video I found, but am nervous as to how it would be received. I've lurked a bit and it does seem to fit with other google videos I've found. Feedback, anyone?
posted by Iamtherealme at 2:14 PM on March 1, 2006

Perfect.
posted by ND¢ at 2:16 PM on March 1, 2006

omg, ND¢ - they taught that cat to wink. I'm amazed!
posted by madamjujujive at 2:25 PM on March 1, 2006

Flkash Mc Cool is 30 seconds of brilliant and then three additional minutes of shut the fuck up.
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:25 PM on March 1, 2006

Lone voice crying in the wilderness here but, um, I like the video links. See, I don't have TV at home, so the only chance I get to see anything on it is at work..., er, gotta go....
posted by Lynsey at 3:32 PM on March 1, 2006

I don't care if it's a video link or not. If it's good, then I enjoy it. What's the big deal?
posted by danb at 3:34 PM on March 1, 2006

Once again, just to grind the point a bit more:

Thanks for your interest in Google Video.

Currently, the playback feature of Google Video isn't available in your country.

We hope to make this feature available more widely in the future, and we really appreciate your patience.

For what it's worth, I reckon most of the videos that have been posted have been considerably less than 'amazing'. At least the ones I've been able to see.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:51 PM on March 1, 2006

Oh, here we go with the quaint claim that Metafilter is only catering to 97% of the people who actually use it.

Look, if you choose not to live in the warm, totalitarian embrace of the United States, Stavros, that's not our problem. You either get your civil liberties, or you get google video. You can't get both. Deal with it.
posted by crunchland at 3:58 PM on March 1, 2006

I'm going to do it myself:

Metafilter: 30 seconds of brilliant and then three additional minutes of shut the fuck up.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:10 PM on March 1, 2006

I, too, dislike the number of google video, youtube and other video site posts that are made around here.

On the other hand, metafilter is shmegeggefilter, so I just subtly bitch about it on rare occasions rather than say that the site should fit my preferences.

on the OTHER other hand, we have this quote:

The lame ones are removed, the amazing ones stay. Seems to work so far.

These are not amazing and are, in fact, lame.

And that's just on the front page AT THE MOMENT. Further, there are NO video links showing up when I use the "detect deleted metafilter threads" bookmark, and I don't recall any in some time. (yes, I'm lame and check the deleted threads every day. It's a schadenfreude thing. They're funny sometimes.) I mean, does it HAVE to be a video of someone flying a luck dragon to get deleted?

Admittedly, I think the two girls post is awesome, but I also liked the luck dragon post. Point still stands.
posted by shmegegge at 4:11 PM on March 1, 2006

that should have said "metafilter is NOT shmegeggefilter." sorry.
posted by shmegegge at 4:12 PM on March 1, 2006

I don't watch much TV either. Frankly, I do enjoy watching random short attention span videos on teh intarweb, perhaps even especially the stupid human tricks.

I remember the first (non-embedded) full motion, downloaded video I ever saw on a computer. It was an FLI of that Russian MIG that crashes tail-first at an airshow. It took like 2 days to FTP down from someone's server over modem, and it was only a meg or three. I'm surprised it even played at all on that old 386.

Then again, at the time the internet was "small" enough that my brother actually had a pair of three ring binders - one for HTTP pages, one for anonymous and public FTP servers - with nothing but indexed URI/URLs and locations in them. This was well before that brief trend for "Internet Yellow Pages" books. I remember thinking "Wow, there's so much stuff out there!". In hindsight that's outright comedy.
posted by loquacious at 4:18 PM on March 1, 2006

That's funny, shmegegge, I thought two of those were awesome. So, right now, on the front page, we're batting .500 or something. Good work, team.

I can declare my opinions as facts just as well as you.
posted by hototogisu at 4:27 PM on March 1, 2006

You either get your civil liberties, or you get google video. You can't get both. Deal with it.

*cries*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:15 PM on March 1, 2006

I'm getting awful tired of the videos. There are other places that are far better at collecting amusing videos. We hardly need to turn MeFi into yet another EBaums, College Humour, Fark, or Linkswarm.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:42 PM on March 1, 2006

hototogisu, I'm not stating my opinion as fact. I'm saying there's reason to believe that the lame ones DON'T get deleted, because almost NONE of them get deleted.
posted by shmegegge at 6:11 PM on March 1, 2006

sick sick, sick, sick and also sick.
posted by mwhybark at 6:13 PM on March 1, 2006

You know what I'm tired of?

The crappy text links. You click a link and all you get are words words words words words. They're only slightly better than crappy photo links, where it's just picture upon picture upon picture.

Or, in other words, the net is basically made up of: words, pictures, audio, video, and interactive combinations of one or more of the preceeding. Asking "is everyone tired of the 20% of the net that is finally starting to come into its own?" seems kinda silly.
posted by Bugbread at 6:17 PM on March 1, 2006

The crappy text links. You click a link and all you get are words words words words words.

About that, this. I've pointed to it before, and I will again, because it's one of my all-time favorite metatalk comments.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:27 PM on March 1, 2006

Thank god that rule doesn't apply to the machete humor. MetaFilter would be a lesser place.

Way to bring your petty, little internet grudge into a totally unrelated thread.

Golf claps aplenty for you!
posted by Cyrano at 6:33 PM on March 1, 2006

stavros: Thanks, interesting comment (and I do hope you realize my complaints about words and photos was not in earnest).
posted by Bugbread at 6:34 PM on March 1, 2006

What annoys me is when they don't even mention what the fuck they're linking to, just "wow, look at this!!!!!!1111!1!1!".
posted by signal at 6:57 PM on March 1, 2006

I love the idea of more good video links being posted, but it does seem that video linkers are among the more lazy posters here. That link to a 5-second *replay* clip of a curling shot is a case in point (no offense, whoever made it, but you could have done at least a little digging for a better clip). Sites like YouTube have made it so easy to find quick laughs in clips that it takes almost no effort to make that kind of post. And lack of effort tends to lower the bar in general.

there's reason to believe that the lame ones DON'T get deleted, because almost NONE of them get deleted.

That's kind of what it looks like from here, too, although it's possible I'm just missing all the deleted lame-o video posts. But I can't remember seeing one deleted for reasons other than being a double any time in the last few months.
posted by mediareport at 7:29 PM on March 1, 2006

stavros: that comment had too many words - I only made it through the first sentence.
posted by meech at 7:34 PM on March 1, 2006

The japanese link inside was longer. I linked to the shorter one because it was short and to the point. The shot is only 5 seconds after all.
posted by chunking express at 8:02 PM on March 1, 2006

I'm sick of the fact that I'm stupid enough to keep clicking on these video links all the time, only to find that the videos take ages to load, if they work at all,

Proof of this site's diversity. In no case have any of the video posts I've been interested in (I skip those I'm not interested in) been slow to load and they all work.
posted by juiceCake at 8:13 PM on March 1, 2006

Sorry, chunking express, I thought someone else had posted the longer link to help salvage the post. My apologies for the error, but I still think it was a lazy post that helped lower the bar for video clips so that almost anything qualifies for the front page.

*shrug*

Just an opinion, and probably a minority one here these days.
posted by mediareport at 8:21 PM on March 1, 2006

I would just like to take this opportunity to state that the Songy Challenge post from a couple weeks ago has changed my life and sparked a movement among my friends.
posted by mayfly wake at 8:24 PM on March 1, 2006

Way to bring your petty, little internet grudge into a totally unrelated thread.

Lame posts were being discussed and Anti-Hippie Action League is the absolutely lamest post I've ever seen avoid deletion. Perhaps my coment was somewhat off-topic, but to a degree common on MeTa (and miniscule compared to the dios/monju Establishment Clause derail in the impeachment thread today).

I dunno what the fuck you're talking about with "petty, little internet grudge", however. I believe you have either me or dios confused with another user.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 8:33 PM on March 1, 2006

You either get your civil liberties, or you get google video. You can't get both. Deal with it.

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that we can see google video just fine in New Zealand. I think you know what I'm saying.*

(* My country kicks your country's torturing, warmongering, democracy staining ass.)
posted by The Monkey at 2:48 AM on March 2, 2006

You assume I'm not Maori.
posted by yerfatma at 4:25 AM on March 2, 2006

I'm sick of crappy anything posts.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:16 AM on March 2, 2006

You only think you're free, Monkey. That's the problem with living on the other side of the planet from the rest of civilized humanity.
posted by crunchland at 8:40 AM on March 2, 2006

yerfatma, well, I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I do. So?

crunchland, I am free, and I love it.
posted by The Monkey at 9:18 PM on March 2, 2006