itsabluebanana's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Simmer (NG 20th Collab Piece)]

Neat, this reminds me of some of the lounge music tracks from Gran Turismo 5 and 6.

[Welcome to the Internet Wasteland | Stanpai's Soapbox Ep. 6]

In my experience, I probably got my knees deep into the internet late for my age; I haven't joined or heavily interacted with any online community until 2013. Due to this, I'm a bit limited in what I can say about the internet and the quality of the stuff one can find on it during the 00s and 10s.

I can talk about something that was briefly mentioned that I can correlate to the issues of a low entry barrier in content creation: Let's Plays. Formats of video LPs today and for the past few years are entirely different from what I've watched (and enjoyed) during the late 00s/early 10s when I was just browsing the internet: cleanly recorded playthroughs of games with commentary by the player, as well as potential other commentary from other people to bounce back off for humor and/or discussion.

Back on Youtube during the mid-to-late 00s, most LPs hosted there were either recorded on an external video recorder or Unregistered Hypercam 2 and/or didn't have any sort of engaging commentary. This resulted in those videos being so lacking in quality that there was an entire channel on YT that was originally created to riff on these types of LPs. I think there was a reason why I gravitated towards this one channel on Youtube during the early 10s that I really liked a lot for Let's Plays: Consistent quality in terms of commentary (or lack of), humor, and showing off gameplay, and very good video editing, which made those LPs really stand out.

Thinking back on that, I think I understand what you are discussing in this podcast: that one has to put in time, effort, and resources into a Let's Play to make it really good, to go past the entry barrier. However, because YouTube had a lot of LPs with low effort, and also because Youtube was the most popular video sharing site, you either had to sift through YT to find something that was worth watching or look to other sites, like SomethingAwful (which is where the concept of Let's Play started anyway). I think the situation with video LPs during that time is similar to the situation with general content on the internet today, that there is so much low-effort content filtering out the stuff that people clearly put their time and effort on for their own creative expression.

Going off on that, a low entry barrier could be one of the reasons why the situation is like it is now, but I don't think it's entirely a bad thing in terms of technical accessibility. I think it's the drive or instinct to further improve or build upon oneself in their works with that ease of access that results in most works being mediocre. It's why I always try to keep pushing myself with my creative works with the time and tools that I have, because I don't want myself to stagnate.

[SUGOI CAT FACTS !!!! EDITION 3 VERSION B]

apian felines

KEKIIRO responds:

whoa i didn't know cat birds existed too