Twitch, YouTube, Sterilization & Normies

Shantotto

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At first I was a bit reluctant to give into referring to people as normies because it seemed a bit elitist, but I'm realizing more and more that the wesbites I used to call home have been taken over buy a certain type of person incapable of dealing with anything remotely offensive or edgy online and it makes me sick. And corporations are enabling it by giving into cancel culture and dropping sponsorships without any acknowledgement of context or intent. I think as the internet and multiplayer gaming became ultra mainstream (2018-present because of Fortnite and explosion of twitch), corporations took notice and began targeting the lowest common denominator of people ("normies") for commercialization and slowly but surely attempted scrubbing out any trace of the genuine, edgy, "politically incorrect" communities that previously gave their websites culture. They cultivated environments where conflict was not allowed and considered harassment. I used to come home from high school and feel like I was jumping into the salty spitoon, the internet was a refuge from the rules and regulation of the real world. But now it feels like the real world is a refuge from the rules, regulation, censorship, and political correctness of the internet.

I say this because I don't think its entirely the normies faults. But their presence and the mainstream attention it brings, inevitably catches the eyes of corporations who seek to monetize the attention of the masses and they will gladly censor, moderate, and mold platforms into brand friendly Weenie Hut Jr's because it brings in more money. And over time, this has an effect on culture of which future generations will be conditioned by when they begin using the internet.

Anyone who was on twitch or youtube 2017 and before can tell you it was so much more real and exciting back then. YouTube basically sat back and let the community manage itself as long it didnt break any rules explicitely stated in TOS. Twitch was a place for nerds and lighthearted Trihard spam. Trends and culture were created by and truly reflective of the people of the platform, people were rewarded for being interesting and pioneering new genres of content. They were unfiltered, sometimes they went too far, but were ultimately called out by other members of the community, or ostricized for being douchebags when they deserved it, but they were never deplatformed or shadowbanned and could nearly always come back by regaining the trust of the community. But now YouTube and Twitch will hide comments, shadow ban people, and punish you for beefing with other "content creators" and it feels like we haven't had any major developments in the culture for the past 3 years... everything is just brands, reaction clips, and politically correct "content". TV 2.0

I'm sort of going on a tangent here but perhaps I'm just venting

I guess it boils down to the fact that mainstream attention of online gaming and social communities caught the eyes of corporations who realized they could monetize all this attention. Social media companies realized it's a lot less profitable to act as bulletinboards than it is to become a publishing service that algorithmically maximizes watch time and user engagement. Who cares about what people think is cool and popular. We'll just serve them whatever keeps them online longer.

But six years of this heavily censored "content creator" brand bullshit has slowly eroded community and conditioned people into being politically correct TV personalities for money and fame. And it's sort of rubbed off on the average user. Back then you didn't play games because everybody else was playing them on twitch or a "content creator" was promoting them, but because you enjoyed the game and people who played it. Every new game dies as soon as there isn't enough "content" to produce for it on youtube. I really miss when video game communities revolved around the people who played them not the "content creators" who promoted it. It all feels so corporate now.

Is this just the natural progression of late stage capitalism on the internet?

Sincerely apologize for how many different directions this post went. This was originally a reply to a post about the positive aspects of gatekeeping but I realized it was no longer a reply and just me venting about several issues with no coherent point. Share your thoughts.

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handoferis

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Frankly, I don't notice this very much - this doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but:

I don't engage with people on social media sites and only use discord in some very specific ways (as close to IRC as I can get without being trapped talking exclusively to crusted over linuxmans). I also do what I did with the internet from the start, which is seek out new knowledge. I try to avoid discussing products/services/anything involving money changing hands cause you'll inevitably find some paid astroturfing bollocks, and "engaging" is what the fuckers want you to do. I buy things that I feel like I'll like in a vacuum (fuck reading reviews they're all bs anyway) and kick the fuck off for a refund if they don't live up to my expectations.

I guess what I'm saying here is that today's "communities" are not communities and you lose fucking nothing by not interacting with them. So why interact with them and get sad? Sure, I'm the out of touch old twat now, but I'd rather be out of touch than sucking on the corporate teat for false enjoyment.
 
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Andy Kaufman

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Interesting to see 2018 as the doomsday date, I'd say gamergate and its consequences set these gears into motion.
Filthy Frank leaving YouTube also was a telling sign that the fun days are over and everything is about to get sprayed with disinfectant acid until everything's dead and sterile.
 
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honestly, the internet has been my second home for at least a decade and now I hate most of it with all my heart. you are being called out if you want to exist on the internet just to enjoy it because now you outta be selling something or become a product. these message boards like agora road are a few of those corners where I can say anything and actually put my opinions. one cannot call out any influencer on any platform even if it's for valid reasons, you will be doxxed by their toxic communities for days. I hope things change but every new service or product seems to take it just a bit forward, slow but persistent.
 
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not a criticism towards you but people complaining about things becoming sanitized after some super-late date like 2018 makes me feel old... no doubt we'll soon have another generation saying "bro the internet got so bad after 2024 I swear it was the wild west before then"
that being said I definitely agree with your point. it seems that every advancement is a step towards further censorship, either for the sake of government control or to be more brand-friendly for advertisers. the internet becoming easier to use for non-techliterates is a huge part of it since they're more likely to overlook what is obvious manipulation. most of them literally don't know how to use a computer that isn't a smart phone
 
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Andy Kaufman

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There's another theory. The people who were creating the edgier content grew up and/or left. They stopped finding it enjoyable or productive and spent their time doing other things along with most of their audiences. We all have to grow up at some time.
Then where's the next gen producing that content?
That spot is still open and I also think it would have an audience - especially in today's climate something edgy would garner attention from people who are usually forced to consume PC, ad friendly, algorithm curated content.
 
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Shantotto

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There's another theory. The people who were creating the edgier content grew up and/or left. They stopped finding it enjoyable or productive and spent their time doing other things along with most of their audiences. We all have to grow up at some time.
For many thats true. But for many not so. And one would also think once they grew up, they would be replaced with younger channels. But wasn't and still isn't the case. 2017 was a landmark year for youtube, particularly in controversy related to offensive content, advertisements, and ensuing policy changes that would remove monetization from non "family-friendly" videos.

It marked the beginning of Adpocalypse, a series of policy and algorithm changes that would demonetize and intentionally stop promoting videos if they weren't family friendly enough. Youtubers began censoring cuss words from their videos because, well... youtube's NLP bots would sift through the first few min of each video and demonetize if it contained cuss words or trigger words like "pedophile". However people quickly noticed demonetization not only removed the ability for a video to make money, but also for it to be seen. They wouldn't show up in recommended and subscribers stopped receiving notifications for new videos to channels they were subbed to even if they had the bell notification on. YouTube made it very clear they no longer ok with edgy content on their platform.

So I do agree, some people like Filthy Frank and Maxmoefoe, and Idubz moved on.

But channels like leafy (love him or hate him), were deliberately obscured from search and later terminated even though his new content didn't breach the harassment policy despite his ban claiming so

And in the coming years YouTube
- Enacted policies banning "creator on creator harassment" which took down videos critiquing other youtubers and retroactively removed the infamous leafy content cop from the website 3 years later
- removed (hid) the dislike button
- outright KGB style executed channels (
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye22ctrq71g
) 1h long but the "Strikes" portion shows they do not care how sloppy they get with individually targeted censorship

There is definitely an element of nostalgia to my frustration, but I can't help but notice how sterile these platforms are compared to before and especially how TV like they've become. It's probably a combination of the policies and the natural progression of more brands taking notice of gaming and the online personality scene but you can not say everybody just grew up. The internet has been steadily becoming more censored since its inception and 4 years ago my generation on YT/Twitch got its share of the inevitable corporate sterilization from principal Susan, Bezos, and their shareholders.
 
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juicy_ricky

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Frankly, I don't notice this very much - this doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but:

I don't engage with people on social media sites and only use discord in some very specific ways (as close to IRC as I can get without being trapped talking exclusively to crusted over linuxmans). I also do what I did with the internet from the start, which is seek out new knowledge. I try to avoid discussing products/services/anything involving money changing hands cause you'll inevitably find some paid astroturfing bollocks, and "engaging" is what the fuckers want you to do. I buy things that I feel like I'll like in a vacuum (fuck reading reviews they're all bs anyway) and kick the fuck off for a refund if they don't live up to my expectations.

I guess what I'm saying here is that today's "communities" are not communities and you lose fucking nothing by not interacting with them. So why interact with them and get sad? Sure, I'm the out of touch old twat now, but I'd rather be out of touch than sucking on the corporate teat for false enjoyment.
Yeah, imagine looking to youtube for "culture"/"community" and being upset that a platform created to generate add revenue fails to live up to either.....
 
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i miss youtube back then. and the state it is in now is upsetting, but what can you really do as a website that hosts millions of videos? youtube is such an expensive website to run, videos take up a lot of storage and servers. it felt like they had some directions financially they could have gone over its history, either being corporate-friendly and get a steady cashflow or rely completely on the goodwill of the content creators, donating money to keep the site running but being unreliable, unstable, and honestly unrealistic. i feel like the moment they decided to put up ads and interact with corporations was the point of no return and if you really want to make money, you need to advertise to normies to keep the money flowing since theyre the majority. if only money didnt have to be an option for things to exist on the internet...

but at the same time i feel like thats kind of nice and infuriating at the same time about internet culture. from what i have observed, it seems like the outsiders innovate, grow a culture, normies adopt said culture, casts out the outsiders (or the outsiders become the normies) only for those to innovate all over again. its such a bizarre cycle. i could be totally wrong and it just makes people bitter but what else can one do?
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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I think that "Gamers" and "Gamer culture" and "Internet Culture" all becoming mainstream were both their downfall and a massive mistake.

A lot of elitist gatekeeping we don't see today comes from people who grew up in these cultures when it was considered fringe, weird, nerdy, geeky, lame, for losers, etc. The gatekeeping that is typically pushed comes from people who realistically did not grow up during that time period. As a young kid, I was viciously bullied for gaming. When I was 11 a kid smashed my copy of Pokemon Red on the sidewalk and told me to "stop being a weirdo faggot all the time". So I hit him and we got in a fight. When we were taken to the counselor's office, she berated me for hitting a kid over "some game". There was a stigma to people who played games. We were strange, we were in the wrong.

So, when we were online, we did not want to act in that way. A lot of communities were not managed well for the sake of freely expressing our interests. Things are referred to as "more wild" from that time period, but really it was just a more niche conglomerate of people allowed to act in a way they normally couldn't.

Its interesting you say "ultramainstream" and mention 2017/2018 as a time period. I would say in the last few years the mainstream appeal of it has really ramped up, but maybe I'm blind to the more nuanced changes due to my age? I feel these things began to become mainstream nearer to 2012. We can say before that, perhaps, with the rise of ProGamers, CoD communities, and massive videogame marketing, but even those were still not as accepted as many other mainstream hobbies. To me, things became boiled down, watered down, corporatized, normified, around 2012. To me, Twitch was just another step in that process and Youtube hadn't seen its hayday since Google bought it out.

I will say between 2012 and 2017 Youtube did have explosive growth and massive influence on some areas of culture, but I always thought that that was the harbinger of doom and what you're referring to, "ultramainstream", is actually the naturally settled state resulting from that massive explosion in popularity and accessibility during the 2012-2017 era. As soon as a corporation touched these websites, their fate was sealed.
 
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Shantotto

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Its interesting you say "ultramainstream" and mention 2017/2018 as a time period. I would say in the last few years the mainstream appeal of it has really ramped up, but maybe I'm blind to the more nuanced changes due to my age? I feel these things began to become mainstream nearer to 2012. We can say before that, perhaps, with the rise of ProGamers, CoD communities, and massive videogame marketing, but even those were still not as accepted as many other mainstream hobbies. To me, things became boiled down, watered down, corporatized, normified, around 2012. To me, Twitch was just another step in that process and Youtube hadn't seen its hayday since Google bought it out.

I will say between 2012 and 2017 Youtube did have explosive growth and massive influence on some areas of culture, but I always thought that that was the harbinger of doom and what you're referring to, "ultramainstream", is actually the naturally settled state resulting from that massive explosion in popularity and accessibility during the 2012-2017 era. As soon as a corporation touched these websites, their fate was sealed.

Yeah I do notice that various generations on the internet view different years as the golden era of whatever platforms or the time when culture died depending on age, and its only natural. It's weird to see posts on IG calling 2017/2018 Fortnite their childhood (I'm a "Minecraft was my childhood" 2012-2015 dude lol i bet some dudes in here are chuckling) but then I think it makes sense because when you are younger, 2-3 year time spans, especially at that 10-15 age range feel a lot longer and more landmark than the following years as you get older. But I will admit, Fortnite in its early days was truly magical and gave me a feeling I never thought I would never re-experience after Minecraft in its original hayday. But I sort of have this irrational fear that in the next 8 years we will see the next generation reminiscing over baby shark videos on YT. It gives me chills.

I like that you mentioned the explosive growth of youtube between 2012 and 2017, because although I had occasionally been on YT before then, 2012 was the year I really began going online frequently, watching Minecraft videos, PewDiePie, and delving into the world of online multiplayer games so I was a part of that explosion. To be a bit more accurate, what I meant to say was 2012-2017 was the perfect blend of accessibility and freedom to cultivate true expression and, subsequently, internet culture. We had the massive music video channels, late night comedy shows, and big studios opting to create highly streamlined mainstream content on the website, but we also had the smaller gaming, commentary, and internet personality channels doing their own thing. There was a distinction between us and them, and sometimes some overlap in sponsorships and cameos, but overall we were allowed to co-exist on two sides of the same platform.

But 2017 was a sort perfect storm for hyper corporatization of everything

- Controversy and drama from our end of YT (Leafy, PewDiePie "Death to all jews" fiverr video, ads playing on extremist beheading videos) brought bad press to the platform forcing them to crack down on edgy content

- Fortnite introduced online videogame culture, Twitch, and e sports, to a much more receptive younger audience, and propelled the idea of profitable "content creator" into mainstream pop culture while showcasing newfound demand for freemium models with exhoribitantly expensive skins (cost as much 1 copy of a game) and benefits of sponsoring "content creators" (Valorant today)

*side note* 2016 was the year YT added ML to its recommendation algorithm for maximizing watch time and im guessing the algorithm naturally gravitated toward political and polarizing content giving the platform a bad look leading them to take manual action in cutting out that type of content and edgy content just happened to fall into the crossfire
 
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Outer Heaven

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The biggest injection of normies came to the internet when smart phones gained popularity. People who would otherwise never have learned what an internet was were suddenly using it daily to access site previously only used by computer literate people. The iPhone in particular made the internet so accessible that literal babies use it, removing any barrier to entry that would have otherwise filtered out normies. Over time companies, social media and otherwise, realised that these people formed the largest market and tailored the internet to them. Nowadays you can be online 24/7 on a hundred different devices, none of which are a traditional computer and many people don't even know how to use one properly. If it wasn't for the type of person to still use Instagram or TikTok in current year, the internet would be a much better place.
 
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handoferis

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*side note* 2016 was the year YT added ML to its recommendation algorithm for maximizing watch time and im guessing the algorithm naturally gravitated toward political and polarizing content giving the platform a bad look leading them to take manual action in cutting out that type of content and edgy content just happened to fall into the crossfire
If they are taking manual action it doesn't work very well, cause youtube is desperate to send me down a white power rabbit hole any chance it gets.
 
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Healing

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I think the one thing that gets me more than anything about the current state of the internet today is the point that everything has to be a brand, or at least "brand-friendly." I'm not the oldest person on the internet by a long shot but I still remember a time in YouTube when things just felt more authentic, personalities were more real, and hell 'content' as it's called now were just videos. Now everything has to be this image of your persona, how you "market" yourself, and so many people keep pushing the idea that there's only one way to do all this. Because of that, everything seems so shiny and polished, but in the way that lacks personality.

Also, it's worth noting that I personally don't think that being edgy and politically incorrect is what is more genuine. 2015-2016 are some of my least favorite years on YouTube looking back, even if it's more for personal reasons, and I wasn't a big fan of people like Leafy even back then (though I did watch idubbbz and Frank). I think what's more genuine to me is when people stick to their truths, are straight to the point, and don't hide behind a veil of artificial actions and scripted nonsense. But if that means that your truths are to be politically incorrect, then so be it, there may just be some disagreements in some areas. In 2022 on the internet, real and genuine creators are hard to find, but not impossible. Hell, even some genuine creators have still managed to get big on the internet, it's just harder to do that now.
 
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Yeah I do notice that various generations on the internet view different years as the golden era of whatever platforms or the time when culture died depending on age, and its only natural. It's weird to see posts on IG calling 2017/2018 Fortnite their childhood (I'm a "Minecraft was my childhood" 2012-2015 dude lol i bet some dudes in here are chuckling) but then I think it makes sense because when you are younger, 2-3 year time spans, especially at that 10-15 age range feel a lot longer and more landmark than the following years as you get older.
You might not know it yet, but I think you're just getting older. I'm one of those people chuckling at the idea of 2012-2015 being some kind of special golden age. Obviously, the best era was from 1996-2007 because that's the period of my childhood that I'm most nostalgic over. ;-;

The biggest injection of normies came to the internet when smart phones gained popularity. People who would otherwise never have learned what an internet was were suddenly using it daily to access site previously only used by computer literate people. The iPhone in particular made the internet so accessible that literal babies use it, removing any barrier to entry that would have otherwise filtered out normies. Over time companies, social media and otherwise, realised that these people formed the largest market and tailored the internet to them. Nowadays you can be online 24/7 on a hundred different devices, none of which are a traditional computer and many people don't even know how to use one properly. If it wasn't for the type of person to still use Instagram or TikTok in current year, the internet would be a much better place.
In reality, I think this is what's really shifted the culture of the web at large. Prior to around 2006 (a little before iPhones started to make the smartphone mainstream), most people weren't regular internet users. At least that seems to anecdotally be the case. If you were online before that you probably knew someone or were someone who was a bit of a computer nerd. If you were a child then you were a digital native. Maybe one of your parents worked with computers or you lived in an area where personal computers were common place. The mainstreaming of smartphones and social media drastically lowered the bar for entry and centralized most of the web's users into the handful of major services we have now. It was a replay of Usenet's Eternal September but on a way larger scale. A lot of things have had to be dumbed down to better suit the use cases of people who can't maintain their own web pages and I think that has led to the shift away from more laissez-faire attitudes. I don't think it's all negative (there's way more information available now and most of it is higher quality) but the culture is totally different.

As a young kid, I was viciously bullied for gaming. When I was 11 a kid smashed my copy of Pokemon Red on the sidewalk and told me to "stop being a weirdo faggot all the time". So I hit him and we got in a fight. When we were taken to the counselor's office, she berated me for hitting a kid over "some game". There was a stigma to people who played games. We were strange, we were in the wrong.
I'm not sure how related this is to the sterilization and corporatization of the web but I think it's worth talking about. I was probably a bit younger around this time (I would have been 7 or 8 when Pokemon Red and Blue hit the US markets). I never got bullied too badly in school (just the usual kids being mean to each other stuff) but even without bullying computers and the video games were a niche subject. I was really into Final Fantasy and absolutely no one in my peer group had heard of it until around video games started to become mainstream (2006-ish). By the time I was in high school it wasn't uncommon for the school band to play pieces from games as practice or during performances (I've heard a lot of mediocre renditions of To Zanarkand). If you weren't around at this time it might be hard to imagine how few people actually interacted with personal computers on a daily basis.
 
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