Exreality.NET

As of this past Monday, the internet is back to its normal boring personality. You may have your favorite ranting site to frequent still or that forum you joined years ago that is slowly fizzing away to an average post of once a day, but there’s nothing left now to fill the time between checking your e-mail and looking at other people’s facebook accounts. The reason? YouTube has finally finished and released their anti-privacy filter that blocks content from being viewed that is not the property of the person who posted it. Granted it hasn’t been perfected, but it certainly does its job well enough to suck the enjoyment out of wasting your day away on the internet.

This filter has yet to block all copyrighted material that was chopped up by YouTube users to provide entertainment to those seeking relief on the net, but it has blocked enough content that I cannot watch Family Guy clips whenever I please. Recently YouTube has come under fire from broadcasting corporations such as Comedy Central and Fox. To save their own asses, they’ve created a filter that blocks any video that doesn’t abide to their user agreement. It is the users’ fault in the first place that they cut together video that was copyrighted, but the average YouTube viewer has gotten used to being able to watch whatever they want, whenever they want. We, the YouTube viewers, are the real sufferers here. All we want is to watch something funny via the internet because we have 5 minutes to spare during our work day. We’d watch television if we could, but what’s the point? There’s never anything funny on TV anymore, unless it’s on at night. Classic comedy reruns aren’t as enjoyable as watching something recent that is relevant to modern society. We’ve almost completely left the era of sitcoms and are currently in the era of crude humor based cartoons (Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, etc.) and fake reality shows (The Office). Let’s just face the facts, even with close to 1000 channels, there still is nothing good on during the day.

YouTube was an oasis for those bored out of their minds, those who needed a quick laugh to brighten their spirits and motivate them to do something. There are a handful of funny original videos on YouTube, but compared to the amount of funny videos posted with content stolen from television shows, it fails to be worth viewing. The problem with these original videos is the exact opposite of what happens with pirated videos: advertising. These small original productions are swimming among a sea of videos, most are either pure crap or uninteresting, thus the average joe YouTube user doesn’t want to have to filter and sift through a mound of crap to find one gem because let’s face it, unless you could go and sell this gem for cash, you’re left covered in shit with nothing to show for it. But the large corporations are getting a plethora of free advertising from YouTube because people are watching their shows via YouTube. Person A may suggest to person B that this show is funny and show him a five minute clip of it on YouTube. Once person B has seen this clip and enjoyed it, he then decides to start watching the show it came from, thus the media corporations gain from the free advertisment on YouTube. In the end, everyone wins… to an extent. The problem with television is that we don’t have control over it. A new show is on once and then not shown again until it’s released on DVD, put into syndication, or is a summer rerun. The average person is busy and can’t always watch what they want at the half hour to one hour window that it is on for. YouTube was savior to these people because you could watch a show at anytime. That is no longer possible.

As we now leave the YouTopia of YouTube, we shall add it to the list of innovations of the internet that haven’t strictly followed the “law” and eventually paid for it. Some of these stand outs are Napster, Kazaa, and now YouTube. We can only dream what will come next only to be taken away a few years later… YouTube has brought us far, showed us that television is funnier on the internet… and when it’s free. As they say, “All good things…”