Hello Catholiccontriversy here. I've been on the internet for a good long while and recently I've been feeling nostalgic for old internet content. It's more than just "almost everyone I subscribed to in the first 3 years of youtube has quit," and "there were sites like atomfilms and blip and crackle originals and newgrounds that specialized in TV quality content that wasn't highly produced," there was an overall different approach people took to "being an internet content creator." A lot of this is just going to be me waxing nostalgic about "the good old days," and I recognize that this could just be "what I want is out there but I just don't have the time to discover like I used to," but I feel like there is something we're missing now.
Back in 2005-2011 when people thought of "internet videos" there were 3 different categories. You had "Charlie bit my finger, David after dentist, nut shot videos" and other "one off viral videos similar to AFV," no production value webcam and movie maker slide show videos of the user "as they are," and "high production but no budget creative series," and the most popular of those were the "high production no budget creative series." Back in the day the most popular youtube channel was Fred, a 4-8 minute series about a hyperactive 5 year old that does wacky things with a chipmunk voice. I know he was generally hated by the youtube community, but he was still very popular and I think a lot of that came from the creative passion Lucas put into his character along with how it was "a scripted series that couldn't be found on TV" (though that would change when Nickelodeon made him into a series). If you don't want to talk about "the most popular but most hated youtuber," there was also Smosh. Sure Smosh got their start with the Pokemon lip sync, but what kept them going for years were the scripted short films they made over the years. Their creative parodies of movies and videogames were a really fun time, and they were the 3rd most popular channel back when Fred was the most popular channel.
Now it wasn't just "scripted series" that were popular, there were also reality series. This is more than just "family vloggers, makeup tutorials and other how-to videos, news and entertainment commentary," I'm talking about series like "will it blend" and "is it a good idea to microwave this." Tom wasn't shy about the fact that Will It Blend was just an advertisement for Blendtec blenders, and both are just multi-camera edits of people destroying things in creative ways, but there was a theme song, and seasons, and intentional comedy, and episodes, and things that made it "a series." It wasn't just "hey it's Jake the Destruction Dude, I'm going to smash this with a hammer and chop it with a knife." Nothing against channels like that (hydraulic press is basically "hey guys, let's destroy this thing" and it's really entertaining), but shows like that added something more than just destruction. You also had The Game Chasers and Flea Market Madness, which was more than just vlogging which is "people in their life," it was a reality show about people specifically looking for videogames and where they look for them. I know Game Chasers are still around, but they used to make episodes more frequently.
So the question I wonder now is, why are there seemingly no "web series" anymore. Where are the Chad Vader's, the Ride with Me's, Supermac18s, Gaming Wildlife's, the Kids at Heart's (shout out to my friend Sky)? Well I know Kids at Heart stopped because Sky wanted to go onto other projects, and there was a lot of behind the scenes drama with Gaming Wildlife, and a lot of youtube channels stop because the guys behind them run out of steam, but like all TV shows that aren't The Simpsons and South Park, if one show ends the entertainment void is filled by something else. But except for maybe Scott the Woz, I don't really hear much about "character driven web series" anymore. There are plenty of scripted channels, but they're all critics and documentaries, and the person delivering the message is "the real person" and not "a character like the Nostalgia Critic or Jeepersmedia." I know a lot of this has to do with youtube's algorithm giving priority treatment to fast content turn around producing "character driven" content isn't as easy to make as "personal commentary" (to do it at the speed the algorithm needs requires method acting), but it could be done. Mike Mozart and What The Buck produced near daily content in their characters (Mozart wasn't as crazy on live streams as he was on fail toy reviews, and Michael Buckley wouldn't have deleted/privated all his videos if that was "really him"), but you just don't see people doing that anymore. If it could be done back when there was less business to online content creation, it could still be done today.
I think it actually runs deeper than that. This is more of a shift in culture, and I don't know if we will see "character driven web series again," at least not to the extent that we did back in the day. When the internet was still very young, everyone that wasn't "I just want to talk into a web cam or make a slide show in movie maker" was very "character driven." I think the general mindset was "on my own I am not interesting enough, I need to make a character and really play it up." Sure, there were guys like Tsukento that were themselves and were also making "high production content," but there was a rather large gap between "high production character" and "low production personal." However, as everyone got more familiar with online content creation, and the financial stability of online content creation became more understood (Crackle used to make their own high production web series like Star-Ving, and John K had the George Liquor Program and Weekend Pussy Hunt, and atomsfilms commissioning Angry Kid shorts and others, all of which went under because it was too expensive for the returns they were getting), things started to overlap. It turns out that people really liked the "real me" side of youtube and with higher quality editing software became more readily available, and youtube favoring "fast content and watch time" essentially killing off the "infrequent short creative works," we got more and more "real me driven" and less "character driven" content.
I admit that I'm an old man on the internet talking about "my good old days," and a big part of those "good old days" were things were far less saturated which made it easier to find things (the only barrier to entry was a willingness to make internet content, and that was actually a lot smaller than you might think), and I know there's a lot of stuff out there that I'm missing out on because I just don't have the time (my old bitlanders friend Alexander Trapp is probably making a goanimate series at this time, and I know Has Been Hotel has gotten a lot of praise), but you just don't hear about "dude you need to check out Ask a Ninja or Potter Puppet Pals" anymore, and kids are looking up to lets players and Ryan's World Toy Videos (or whatever Ryan's World is), and college kids are looking up to podcasters and vloggers, which isn't inspiring a kind of creative story telling that there used to be. Are we still going to have budding animators say "I have this great idea for a cartoon, I'm going to make a web series," or film students say "I want to tell the story I want to tell, and I'll post it to the internet." Is that even going to be a "reasonable aspiration" anymore? Again, I admit that I miss a lot of what is trendy; I thought the death of Adobe Flash meant the end of internet games, yet when I was on vacation somewhat recently I saw kids playing internet games on the hotel computer in the lobby. I just don't want to see the art of character driven web series die. I'm well aware that I'm "part of the problem" with this one (the only truly character driven series in my library is "Pokematic's Food Reviews," and I never pursued my "juxtapose modern problems to how they would be solved in a 1950s TV show" or "a mime lives with his own disembodied voice" show ideas), but that's just not where my creativity lead me. I hope in the future we can get more "character driven" web series that are more than just review shows, but who knows where the culture will take us. I don't know, I just find myself not wanting to watch a lot of user created content now adays while favoring traditional television because I want something that isn't "me in reality." If you have recommendations for "web series," leave them in the comments and maybe I'll check them out. Well this has been Catholiccontriversy, signing off, and may God bless you.
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