This video is an example of a video with damn near a billion views on YouTube...
I just find it interesting because I've totally seen this video before (in part) and I've definitely never purposely looked for it.
It's always been some 'Recommended' thing I'm sure. This time it was a totally random video listed under some 100% unrelated shit I searched for!
But when I saw it I immediately thought "super dramatic Mexican/Spanish soap opera parody" and how those TV shows sort of a meme, have been for years.
So that made me click on it. I still didn't actually watch it though, like I don't even have the sound on.
Odds are I won't watch it.
This is the thing about these videos with 'billions' of views. I just don't find that they have much impact.
Back in the day there was a value to something being niche or having a small elitist following.
Nowadays the viewcount or subcount is seen as a currency (both literally and figuratively) in terms of the overarching value. to the degree that anything with a small base is considered a failure or not worthy of having a voice.
You'll have an iconic genius (like, say, Thurston Moore) who has hardly any subscribers, and then you've got some stupid fucking idiot playing with her panties while licking an ear-shaped microphone that's getting more subs an hour than the icon's grand total.
It's nothing new that masturbation material sells, and art is a labor of love, but it seems like the value of that has been lost in the minds of the many. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.
I guess the difference is, if Thurston goes on tour he will fill theaters, whereas you can't fill a theater with the above-mentioned idiot. Okay, I feel a little better now...
"wherever the crowd goes, go in the other direction. They're always wrong" -Charles Bukowski.
Counting page views was originally done in the context of Webmasters looking to increase traffic on their websites.
Social media put SEO-style metrics into the hands of idiots who play with their panties and lick microphones.
View counts, number of upvotes, number of followers, etc., are "social proof" in the context of social media - they're taken as an indicator of how much influence someone has.
While I was writing the software for my website, I had the notion that posted content should stand on its own merits, and that people's decision to read something shouldn't be swayed by numbers. Consequently, my site has practically no numbers except for timestamps on it.
I agree, numbers on websites are a wee bit excessive...
Look at all the numbers on this site...
Numbers out the wazoo and it does fuck with the way the site comes through on search engine results.
But I like numbers so I don't care. I guess it would be undesirable for people who don't like numbers, or want to look really good on search engines.