TH-cam was never separate from "the industry". TH-cam was born from "the industry" and is subject to all the same issues. You should find out what vaudeville is. TH-cam is evolving almost exactly as entertainment did in the early twentieth century. Think of Mr Beast as the new George Burns or Red Skeleton. *Edit* While you're at it, think about the fact that 1984 is about 1948.
"No separation made between the product itself and the content made to advertise the product. When little Timmy buys a Prime, he's buying a souvenir of his parasocial relationship with Logan Paul and KSI" -- brilliant line. This whole essay is quite superb - you're a gem of a creator and I hope more people start to discover you.
I just got done and was going to comment on this same line. It's so bleak to see the mega channels that drive the business' model gradually come to imitate the style and production of traditional TV, as their budgets grow, but then - as the video says - the style and content they mimic is the advertorial trash.
I wonder how long it will take until we see the absolute trash fire that is reality TV being the most succesful stuff on youtube. We are already pretty close with mr beast, but I think it can still get worse. Mr beast has too much of that "rich kid showing of their stuff to feel superiour" vibe to him while reality TV has more like a "bully telling people how they bullied their victims and acting like they had fun" vibe to it.
I love that observation !!! Its so true and I think the same thing is happening with other celebrity endorsements, for sure with buying an athletes merchandise
The irony of this being you calling him a ‘creator’ which I assume is short for ‘content creator’, a term that aptly describes the people making this kind of nothing. He’s a video essayist and I think deserves to be called as such.
It's so weird that Europe went nuts for prime. I'm not twelve so when people were talking about drinking prime I thought they'd found a way to liquidate an Amazon subscription service.
This reminds me about how in the 80s they loosened regulations surrounding advertising to children, and we saw an explosion of tv shows and franchises that were basically toy commercials like transformers.
G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, Masters of the Universe, Jem and the Holograms, and of course the ones that did not last the test of time like SilverHawks, Visionaries, Challenge of the GoBots, and those weird ass children's shows based on R-rated movies like Rambo and RoboCop. While some of these properties did eventually get sequels, spinoffs, or reboots that made them more than just toy ads (IDW Transformers comics, the 2011 ThunderCats reboot, etc.), a lot of decisions were still mostly controlled by the toy people, which is why the ThunderCats reboot was cancelled or why all Transformers media post-2007 is mandated by Hasbro to shove Bumblebee in everything as a main character.
For added insult, a lot of those shows also crammed in a moral message into every episode because that allowed morally-flexible network operators to classify the cartoon as 'educational programming.'
Those shows were good though, especially compared to what we have today. What came after was also good, but different (Ren and Stimpy, the Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and the other Dreamwork stuff) , but then after that there was a sharp decline. Also, don't think that Transformers didn't have a message: the Deceptions are a highly competitive society, prone to war and whose main obsession was to secure the world's "Energon" (stand-in for oil) reserves. And to make the metaphor foolproof, their schemes are often set in the Middle East's oil fields. What does this remind you?
@@DioBrando-qr6ye I think those example shows were an awkward transition for animation - some studios were experimenting a bit with appealing to a wider audience than just little kiddies, but at the same time any animation not suitable for children was seen as not commercially viable. So you ended up with shows trying to be mature, but afraid to be so in any meaningful way - which came out as endless toilet humor and gross-out gags, and a few hidden references.
I work with 10 and 11 year olds and we have children stealing each other's prime bottles. So many children have had arguments about it. And then when I told some children that I tried prime, they all went mental and they seemed so disappointed when i said i didn't like it.
Same thing happened with Pokemon when I was a kid. There were thefts, fights, playground Pokemon card sales tycoons. The teachers banned them eventually. Wait 20 years for these kids to to be 30, making their nostalgia for this particular consumer product a weirdly intrinsic part of their unique identity as a human being. Then wait 40 years. Like Star Wars and The Avengers and G.I. Joe, maybe Prime will be a huge part of the moral mythology of the western world. Probably not lol but it would be no more or less absurd than the current situation.
@@meursault7030The key difference here is that those are toys that can be played with and used as a way to either interact with others or to be creative and tell stories, even if theyre just silly kid stuff. Prime is a drink that kids like because it makes them feel like KSI and Logan are their bestest friends in the world for realsies. Don't get me wrong I had my parasocial relationships as a kid but at least they were contained to whenever I was watching TH-cam
@@JosephFish3r thanks for replying. You are a witty dude. I was also thinking that if mr. beast made a fucking chocolate factory, then nick avocado's fat ass should have been falling in the river. Get the community involved, ya know.
Pausing two minutes in to just say first thing: thank you for being soft-spoken. It's honestly refreshing after watching so many videos in which people feel the need to shout into their microphones for some reason. Continuing on!
yes his voice is smooth and its awful when ur just chillen or even worse falling asleeep and someone switches from normal talking to screaming D: i.e every horror game youtuber
My 10 yr old cousin is constantly watching TH-cam and I can’t stand the people she watches sometimes. So many TH-camrs are yelling to try and keep young kids attention. It’s so annoying.
it's mostly the ones who create content for kids. idk maybe to grab the attention of the kid they constantly yell at the mic. mrbeast and his minions also do the same thing
@@internetstranger-As an adult, I prefer the Billy Mays style because it's often hard to make out what's being said. If I'm listening to a video in the background while I'm driving it's even harder, or I have to turn up the volume so high my ears bleed.
I’m very happy to have only just now heard of it in this video. I have never dipped a single toe into this side of TH-cam he’s discussing. The only time I ever see it is in these videos discussing it. From everything I ever see I can’t fathom how so many people eat this pure garbage up. It makes me sad the rock bottom standards people have and how easy it is for someone to become rich by just being a talentless asshole.
I recall seeing it for the first time a good while back now and it got my attention since I'm always down to try a new drink. By some stroke of luck I passed on it at that moment and then looked it up on google when I got back home and saw it was a logan paul brand. I dodged a real moral bullet there ngl
Whilst I don’t dislike mrbeast , I really dislike his tactic on TH-cam, it’s all money oriented and it teaches kids that’s all that matters …. 10,000 dollars here , private jet there… as someone with young siblings only getting into TH-cam now and I got in at 2009 it’s so scary to see what it has evolved to
I don't really see how this is a problem with MrBeast in anyway, he's not promoting himself as anything except entertainment. Just like with television, you should not leave it up to youtube content creators to teach your kids or younger siblings what is right and wrong or what is or isn't valuable.
@@flingIetuin Parents should be the one to teach children how they view that the world works. MrBeast makes videos to entertain, not to promote morales for your children to follow for the rest of their lives.
@@frostern4863 he makes children's entertainment, he could do literally anything with the money he has and he chooses simply to show money, like remember when the most popular children's entertainment was cartoons that were drawn by hand and had themes and morals and music and artistry or television series with plots and characters and storytelling rather than videos that glorify wealth while artistically contributing only a recreation of the visual aesthetic of some bits of a film adaptation of an anti-capitalist children's book how is the parent to reason with the child that their desire to have a bottle of prime is fundamentally harmful, it's a simple principle that can be explained but a child is not going to go "yeah now that my idols have promoted it and my parents have forbade it i no longer want the prime", parents have never in all of history had to contend with the modern day level of influence a random person in a country on the opposite side of the world can have over their childs thinking, and that random person is knowingly promoting and endorsing the financial system which has created and now is exploiting that same situation mr beast is responsible for the message he purports, and he knows that his audience is children, and parents have constantly been defeated in moral teachings by the bright lights and flashing colours beneath any advertisement/gross spectacle that appeal so much to the monkey brain that a child cannot be told no and if told no will only want it more, and now the leading figure in that field is mrbeast
I love that everyone is having such a difficult time buying Prime while my Kroger is stocked floor to ceiling without any product moving. It’s in a college neighborhood, so I assume the lack of 8 year olds has something to do with it.
Besides this video being another banger, I just can’t get over the fact that a mom put a goddamn SMOOTHING FILTER ON HER 5-YEAR-OLD. I hate social media. I hate everything. I’m only 34 and I’ve already turned into oldmanyellingatcloud.jpg.
As a fellow old cloud yeller-atter, I feel you. This channel is young man giving cloud a calm talking to and making it have a think about what it did, I think it's something we can aspire to.
i imagine these kids in the future looking at their old photos of childhood on their mom's instagrams or tiktoks, and not being able to see what they ever really looked like as a kid
I thought this too, it’s sad. I’m 26 and honestly already right there with you, I don’t like how things are going honestly. I’m glad social media didn’t exist (at least in its current form) throughout most of my childhood
It makes me think about how we have such separate and distinct bubbles of content youtube unique to every person. I don’t think I’ve ever had a single KSI or Logan Paul video suggested to me on my account because I don’t fit the demographic or target audience. Logan Paul is still just the unaliving forest guy to me. It makes me forget how many people (especially kids) have constant exposure to them. Kind of like I had a lot of exposure to Cartoon Network as a kid. It’s kind of wild to me idk And sometimes I would ask my mum to buy me a Dexter plush or Power Puff Girls toy, but I didn’t absolutely lose it when I saw a PowerPuff Girls branded pack of chicken nuggets at Asda. It wasn’t a big deal because those nuggets didn’t feel like an investment into any kind of parasocial relationship with Blossom. It’s wild how much consumerism is pushed on these impressionable kids now
I know right. In many ways, it's more of the same thing we experienced with cartoon network and such, but it's also very different in other ways since it's such a totally different way of consuming and interacting with your shows. I honestly find these sorts of marketing to children very distasteful.
I feel the same way! Even if kids do go nuts for branded sweets or toys like that (my nephew begged me for paw patrol kinder eggs recently when he saw them by the till), I feel like them asking for something or being excited because they see it in the shop or their parents just buy it as a cute little thing is different than them learning about it on the internet and asking to go to the shops specifically for that thing.
@@user-es7ui5mc1m The most noticeable and unforgiving difference is how quickly these influencers can reach their audience (within seconds) and how much the power is skewed in their direction since they have a marketing team and such helping them plan out what is essentially a massive psyop on impressionable kids who are still learning how the world really works. It's just sad, and it's up to adults to guide children so they can see these sorts of manipulations coming from a mile away.
youtube started out like early bbc (people not knowing what they were doing, making what they thought were interesting and informative videos) and is now in its 80s cable tv everything is an ad era waiting for youtube to simply become network tv - with its own little sub websites where you can watch video essays or whatever without being pushed towards something else
@@usernameirrelevantHonestly this. I freaking hated when they first implemented shorts on the app because it would recommend to me constant irrelevant and sensationalist garbage that I had no interest in. After a while they started showing more and more content from creators that I actually do like, but every time they update the algorithm they go right back to serving me that same garbage just to see what I'm willing to watch or what I'm willing to ignore. This is especially true when it comes to the ads. I've managed to block over 500 different ads for tiktok and yet it's the only freaking thing they ever show me. That's predatory as hell.
i’ve carved out my own niche on the app. i’ve clicked not interested so many times i can’t even count but i only have people i’m subscribed to on my home page and it’s great
People often say "TH-cam was better back then" and they're completely correct. 2009 cat videos and homemade sketches are vastly more entertaining than the mush we are spoon fed by contemporary creators like Mr Beast. The ironic part is the people who say this often hoover up the same mush they swore to destroy...
I've heard Jimmy talk and he is so consumed by content creation it's impressive but also kinda terrifying. I mean, he's GOING to hit burnout, it doesn't matter how passionate you are, and that's gonna knock him out like a truck. There's all these people he's employed and he's mentally just got NOTHING else going on except that drive to make content. What's gonna happen? I weirdly anticipate it, because I've never seen someone like Mr. Beast, who keeps trying to up the ante all the time, just crash. It's inevitable. I hope the best for people in his employ but it's gonna be interesting to see.
The way that you found the Prime bottle reminds me of how I found a Livestrong bracelet in 2004. They had been sold out for weeks and then one day I happened upon one in the gutter one street over from my house. A true Charlie Bucket experience lol
Here in the states, it’s already making its way to the clearance shelves. There were a few weeks where it was mildly tough to find, but nobody seemed to care after that. I passed a pallet of them marked down at Walmart not long ago.
Idk what middle of nowhere state you're in but prime is selling out where I'm at. The only flavor that regularly stays on the shelf is the meta moon. Everything else is gone within days of coming in.
Wow, this is the first video I've seen from your channel and I'm blown away. I was originally planning to put this on in the background while drawing but I was so enamored by your delivery that I could barely look away from the screen. Your video style and presentation are so pleasant, I loved the green tones/deliberate visual color palette as well as the way you speak in a natural way rather than using a "youtuber voice" or sounding really scripted. I feel like the video had a lot of thought and care put into it and I really appreciate that! Keep up the good work :)
I'm 28 so I remember being a child during really early TH-cam, it's wild how much this platform has changed for both better and for worse. I wouldn't want it go back to those days (for one a lot of the content wasn't actually that good in retrospect) but at the same time it was interesting to be an incredibly small part of it. It's great that people can make careers on TH-cam but I do miss the sense of 'authenticity' it had back in the day though, ofc there's still TH-camrs that have that authentic vibe.
Yeah there was a period where creators could make a living but the viewers weren’t drowned with sponsors. Also there wasn’t the 10 minute minimum to get good ad revenue.
It’s so strange to me seeing the lengths people are going to to get a Prime. Where I live in America, the drink is still pretty popular, but not rampage-a-store-to-get-one popular. Crazy
Totally, I tried it a month and some change ago, and had no idea of it's affiliation or the zoomer hype involved. To be honest, they put their names on a pretty decent product, relative to other energy/sport drink hybrids of course; they're sugar free and the flavors are pretty spot on.
Just in case no one has mentioned it yet: ANTI-CHEF has an ongoing series on his channel where he attempts Julia Child's recipes. It's fucking delightful.
this was an incredibly simple, yet overall great video. Nothing flashy needed, just some nice scenery (love the fit btw) a guy and his camera, and maybe a few clips here and there. Goes to show how the more human side of youtube isn't dead yet
I live in Wales and it's really easy to get prime. I live in a place with an aging population and literally no one buys it here. I've been to Asda and seen them on display for like a few pounds. I've seen it in discount stores too. I wonder if those big money scammers just travel outside of cities to get it for cheep and sell it for all that money.
I live in a sleepy Lancashire town and it’s the same here haha, I could go to the corner shop next door to me and get one for about £3. I wouldn’t even pay that tbh though
@@clova1311 Nice, Lancaster is a lovely place. I’m from Cumbria, went to uni at Preston, and then ended up moving to Chorley later on. A lot of the population here is advanced in age haha
can't agree more that mr beast is scary as hell. also my bf is a teacher at an elementary school and one of his students recently chose earning a bottle of prime as an incentive for meeting some behavior goals, and so my bf went to a gas station and got him this "logan paul energy drink or whatever" as he described it to me lol. still have no idea what's in it tho
I think TH-cam for a LONG time has wanted to be TV, we just projected the whole desert island thing onto it. Since we found it to be so interesting and unique. While TH-cam has pushed harder and harder on demonetisation and promoted TV videos like late night shows on trending pages forever. From TH-cam's eyes the "desert island" almost killed them (adpocolypse, Pewdiepie etc. L.Pauls japan forest video.) Most Importantly TH-cam wants that TV ad model and more specifically TV ad rates which pay wayyy more. I do yearn for the desert island tho, TH-cam can be such a unique form of media when creators think outside the box.
It’s weird, because where I live in the US (rural, barely any cell coverage, extremely mountainous terrain, high speed internet is a luxury as long as you’re in the right area to get it) … Prime and Mr. Beast stuff stays stocked on shelves. No one around cares much for it, not even the kids. The candy is like $4 a bar and the drinks push about $3-4 each … they have a harder time in small mom and pop shops keeping Jones Soda and classic Hershey bars. I think every time I’ve seen the Mr Beast candy bars on shelves, they look like someone threw them on the ground and broke every single one of them lol. I think one local store is going to stop stocking them because they’ve sat for so long. It’s just really wild to see people go crazy over stuff and even overpay for something that can barely sell in certain areas elsewhere lol. All because a TH-camr is associated with it. I’ve tried the milk chocolate bars, and I’m going to be honest … they taste like ass. There’s much better chocolate out there for the price of one bar. PS - great videos, look forward to seeing what else you put out.
I live in Ohio (haha funny meme), so I've been hearing about the Paul brothers since the Vine days (in fact, I found pictures of them wrestling at a tournament at my middle school from a while back). But just seeing how they've went from Vine to "England is my City" to the suicide forest debacle to crypto to podcasting to MMA to selling their own energy drinks has been wild. I get the same feeling of TH-cam feeling a lot more sinister. Everyone has a product/brand to sell now and it genuinely has changed the entire landscape. It went from people's fun little projects to full-time jobs. TH-cam as a company grew with it, getting acquired by Google and now making us watch two unskippable fifteen second ads to watch a three second video of a cat. I'm just extremely averse to this trend of mass consumerism that's everywhere, if that makes me some kind of Internet purist, then whatever. I loved the point you made about it being all about *hype* because everything is just like "WHOAAAA GUYS WE BUILT A GIANT MR BEAST-BRANDED ZEPPELIN FOR SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS AND THE LAST PERSON TO TAKE THEIR BIG TOE OFF THE CHASSIS GETS TO TAKE IT HOME." Additionally, I totally agree with how YT is turning into a facsimile of TV; I think the adult swim-esque editing on Vinesauce videos lately is a great example of a way this can be done well. It is essentially the millennial/Gen Z TV-we watch it when we eat, before bed, to get our news, and when we just want background noise (Additionally, I think podcasts are basically the new talk radio). There's still plenty of old-style channels around like, RedLetterMedia or LGR (Or you yourself Joseph!) that make good content out of a clear passion. But what is Mr. Beast's/Logan Paul/Whoever the fuck's passion? Money? Philanthropy? Selling self-branded products worldwide? Hyping up ridiculous bullshit that makes kids pester their parents to spend money? It's always just left a bad taste in my mouth and your Willy Wonka comparison finally articulated that bad taste in a meaningful way.
Meanwhile where I live you practically had to give it away. I didn't realize it was involved with one of the Paul brothers and tried the blue raspberry and it was awful
I remember when sponsorships started becoming a thing, and there was such a massive backlash that they started legislating against advertising without disclosure, here in the UK it was because of an Oreo campaign. Everyone hated sponsorships, but now it feels like I can't watch a video without being advertised to. I can only imagine that I might've been sucked in by it all had I been a child now, but to be fair I was 13/14 when TH-cam started getting properly big and getting all those sponsorship things, so I was old enough even then to miss the early stuff. Now you've got 10 year olds watching videos that are 40% sponsorships, 40% merch adverts and 20% something that could be argued is worth watching. And once you start noticing it you can't stop either, for a good while now I keep noticing how easily people flow into their ad reads, or their product placement, and if you aren't primed (ha) to notice it or at least an adult with a developed brain and some life experience, you could easily forget you're even watching an ad even though they "technically" comply with regulations by disclosing their affiliation with the brand. This isn't some "good old days" post, TV hasn't been any better since the 80's, but it feels even more insidious when it's paired with trying to pretend you're some kids pal, when at least TV had a modicum of a barrier between the advert and the person.
For all this talk of Prime I still have no idea what type of drink it is and at this point I'll just assume it's Logan Paul's bathwater. Wait that bathwater nonsense was years ago wasn't it? Is it even a relevant reference? Oh god, I feel so old.
I don’t even know anymore, I made a reference to something that happened in 2007 the other day without realising how long ago it was and I got told it was a “boomer memory” hahaha
I wouldn’t even know Prime existed if not for randomly bumping into videos on here about it. I’m 41, but social media generally makes me feel about twice that old…I’ve got no idea wtf is going on with The Youth anymore lol
it just feels so jarring and alienating, and people wilfully eating up just makes it feel all the more hopeless because a platform like youtube can be used to do so much more, capitalism sucks. great video though, love the term 'willy wonka-fication'
Best video I've seen in a *long time* thanks for this man, very sobering and, weirdly, the video itself is so refreshing as to how older youtube used to feel; just good goddamn content, amazing tone too, humour got me everytime haha - plus there's no bs, no time wasting, no horrendous sponser in the middle of the video - it's a *prime* (guh) example of what used to make youtube so fun, keep it up my man ^^
I originally thought this video was going to be about how the Willy Wonka movie (one of the more recent ones) actually inspired a ton of candy and basically the movie existed to advertise products that didn’t exist at the time and how that was similar to how TH-camrs are basically making products for videos and then they actually become a thing- Kind of like how Mr Beast probably thought it would make a funny video to make a burger chain, and then made it to sell the whole deal. Weird Willy Wonka Movie and candy lore aside though, good video :)
idk like I've basically grown up watching TH-cam at this point but the only TH-cam merch I've ever owned is for Unus Annus as a gift and that was a special circumstance for obvious reasons, how do kids buy whatever they see a creator promoting, especially if it's just a stupid energy drink?
Yes or at least they try. A lot of parents have been scared because of this but yt still let's those creators around. Some also don't really know what their children are watching so that adds on.
Saw at least 12 bottles of Prime in the shop the other day for like £2 a bottle with the sign underneath saying "3 per customer per day". I guess the Prime fever is over. It was basically adults trying to scalp them, and kids completely obsessed because it was essentially just rarity to show off on the playground- the modern equivalent of a shiny pokemon card or something.
@@jonathanweir6084 Kids were seriously asking for it for Christmas. A £2 bottle of energy drink. As their main gift because dumb parents were paying like £100 for one.
Your videos are very good Joseph, I can see the effort that's been put into the production value. You'll be thanking the folks for 100k before you know it.
Really great essay, especially how you drew a connection between these products and peoples' parasocial relationships. TH-cam is absolutely becoming more like the TV that I escaped from, but much like channel surfing as a kid, I can always find something good to watch like this. I've always found these ultra-popular creators... distant, just because I don't see them on TH-cam at all unless I sign out of my account. TH-cam has always been able to close the distance between me and the content that I want to watch. Does it make it hard to find genuinely new content sometimes? Absolutely, AI-driven recommendations are a double-edged sword. But content like this (dude holding microphone in bedroom and talkin about whatever) is plentiful, and still reminds me of the TH-cam golden age, thanks for keeping it coming.
Man, these type of videos are great at sending me into a doomspiral about the future. This level of consumerism is unhealthy, couple that with all the other bad influences of social media (body issues, polarisation, parasocial relationships) and I really wonder how things will be 10 years from now
Honestly, the fact people are having conversations like this and thinking critically about this kind of culture just shows that human nature is stronger than social media. It’s gonna be weird in 2064 when mr beast becomes president- but ya know life finds a way
Nice video, not watching ads was the reason I started watching TH-cam when I was a kid.Nowdays I feel like I'm being driven away from here because of ads again... At the end of the day I know that if I can't keep on watching TH-cam free without ads Im out and that would be the best for my mental health.
I'm 42 and grew up in a culture where trans was not even discussed. I was about 16 when I met my first transgender friend. A little background... I was heavily involved in alternative culture, the goth scene specifically, and I'm glad it was a subculture where gender nonconformity was supported. All the clubs had shared bathrooms, there were no rules on gender. That helped shape me and my viewpoints. When I met Steph I was unsure how to refer to her. She had to conform to her assigned gender in work/home, but was her true self when out on the dance floor. I'd seen her in both roles. So I asked her about herself, when she was fixing my makeup in the bathrooms. She explained what was going on, and as a 17 year old who hadn't yet been able to have much interaction with other trans people, managed it beautifully. She wasn't cross-dressing, which was common in the scene, she was expressing her true self. That's all I needed to know. It's not hard for me to understand, it wasn't hard for me to understand. She's a woman, she was always going to be a woman no matter if she was supported at work or home or out in the world. It didn't take her very long to be able to feel ready to express her gender in the everyday life, and I'm glad she was able to practice self-realisation in a safe supportive alternative culture. Yeah there was mild confusion with some, but veryv little bullying and not aggression, and it was quickly discouraged or even outright ganged up on. Anyone who wasn't able to shed their assumptions was excluded and ostracised, because that wasn't in the spirit of the culture we wanted within the goth scene. I'm glad my teenage years involved people like her, and a subculture that allowed her to be true to herself.
My other half works in a supermarket. The primes sold out so fast every time they’d get them in. Apparently some staff were buying it at £2 a bottle and were reselling them on eBay for £15 each!
Edit: holy shit, Prime has the same amount of caffeine as four cups of coffee, why is this marketed to children?????? Not gonna lie, if my little sister was obsessed with prime like this, I’d trick her into doing a blind taste test with other similar drinks. I’m curious to what extent kids only like it because it’s prime. Also, isn’t Prime an energy drink? Ridiculous someone would give their kid an entire ass energy drink. Caffeine is shown to negatively affect children in large amounts.
Mr Beast hasn't technically done anything wrong per se. But his whole brand just makes me really... Uncomfortable? Like every big TH-cam event he hosts is reminiscent of creating the torture matrix from the hit novel, "Don't Create the Torture Matrix"
Damn I actually saw a lot of Prime in the grocery store the other week, I had no idea what it was. I just thought it was a new sports drink trying to pop up, I didn't realize it was all this
I know this was probably a throwaway line, but most of those American candy stores in urban areas in the UK are in fact part of a massive network of money laundering. There's some wild connections there if you feel like looking it up! Great video btw 🙂
As little aussie kid, I always thought when he was offering a one pound bonus for the ticket that a pound must be a huge sum - seeing that now is so depressing lmfao. Hit the nail on the head again w/ this vid, no matter how serious the content is I will never not laugh when I hear the logan paul colourblind soundbite, perfectly balanced - that said, defo was not expecting shirtless eddie
Love everything about the video. Content, vibe, sense of humor, color of the wall, that little print with some trees and stuff, color of your hair and your lovely outfit ❤ Im waiting for more. Ow, and Im gonna call you Ron Weasley if thats ok.
this was insanely good, I especially liked your allagory for youtube as an isolated island away from the norms of tv and traditional media, very cool man, you put a lot of my feelings towards the site into words
Because I go outside and touch grass, I only found out that prime existed once I started seeing it in my local convenience stores these past few months. But, it was priced at like £12 per bottle, which can fuck right off. But what's funny is that my local area is in no way the right market for the overpriced sugar water, so it's just been sitting there untouched and steadily lowering in price just to shift stock. I think one place has it at £7 atm, which is still overpriced. £2 I feel is the max you should spend on a 500ml sports drink
Where did all the prime go? My 14 year old son buying them as soon as sainsburys opens, emptying some of the bottles refilling them with vimto and selling them to year 7s for a tenner!
9:03 using an inflation converter, £1 back in 1970 when Willy Wonka was filmed, would have been worth about £14.32 in 2022 money. Still a paltry offering. 😆 To be fair I worked as a data analyst in an automotive plant in England a few years ago and I once received a corporate coffee mug as a bonus. 😆
4:17 missed opportunity to say, “he wanted a piece of that dough” smh But that aside, this was a really really great video. I’m trying to curate my recommendations on TH-cam to purge my bad habits, and your video was just what i was looking for. It’s straight to the point, it talks about some of the problems that we’re seeing in TH-cam, AND it’s funny and you’re entertaining and charismatic without a ton of super flashy editing. I’m subbing because i wanna see more of this content and will also check out your other channels.
I'm on the otherside of TH-cam. I never heard of Prime or whatever the chocolate thing is. But then again I avoid both those creators and clicked "don't show this channel" option.
Whats crazy about this to me is that barring the ignition of it all, this is no different from other food fads like say, that one chocolate milk fad from years ago. These fads were always crazy but isolated, set off by events that generally speaking werent intentional or easy to organize. Now? One or two influencers can set it off with the snap of their fingers.
I work in Sainsbury's. We used to sell out or prime within an hour of having it it. People would fight over it. Now? We have boxes of the stuff lying around, taking up space. We can't even *give it away*
Sometimes I despair at the state of the world, it’s politics and it’s climate and rampant consumerism. Older people tell me “But we didn’t know any better, we let our greed and sloth ruin the world. The younger generations are far more knowledgeable, they will do better than us.” And I don’t have the heart to tell them how the younger generation are just as corrupted as them
I every time I watch another video of you, I forget that I’m already subscribed and go to subscribe again, only to find past me was already smart enough to do so…
The prime epidemic was effecting co-workers of mine too, I personally don't care for products that's only selling point is the faces behind the product
At a work experience I did recently, someone in traditional media asked me if I'd heard about the Prime situation, so afaik the TV people are paying attention
Honestly I bought a bottle a couple weeks ago, knowing nothing about the hype - I thought it was a normal energy drink so picked it at the store - and I really wasn’t that impressed. It’s nothing special honestly.
You make some great videos. I hope to see you do really well on here. I was a teenager when youtube first came out and used it a lot ever since. It's interesting to see lots of the things you're saying here reflect views that were held by me circa 2011. Hope to see more of your stuff soon. Keep it up.
I first noticed your channel from the James Corden video and I'm happy to say that I love your video style so much. The jokes and information goes well together, keep up the good work
I worked in grocery hell and i never knew prime was anything other than a new drink released by a corporation. A few people bouth some evwry now and again but i dont think anyone else knew what it was - if they did then their enthusiasm was subdued
I feel like they’re purposefully under-stocking these drinks a little and making them a bit more difficult to access to create this sort of false scarcity. If they were easy to get from the beginning I don’t know that these frenzies would have gotten this bad. But then again I’m from the US and people get trampled on Black Friday here so 🤷🏾♀️
It's so weird seeing TH-camr products like prime and Mr beast bars in like every gas station or grocery store I go to. I don't even live in a super populated area so it just tells me this stuffs MASSIVE
@@jonathanweir6084 it's just weird how big these people are. We'd have never imagined major super stars like Mike Tyson having their own dedicated TH-cam channel.
these are all actual scenes from the wonka movies. i dont even think its in demand like this here in Southern California. maybe it was. idk its not that impossible to find. feels like 1/3 of items in walmart or target are youtube related now. toys, snacks, home goods, everything
I think it's just like that over seas. I live in KY and it's not like that either, shelves are still stock with it, heck it's usually the last thing to go if the shelves are empty.
My friend herbie who got me the bottle also makes videos (which are much better than mine)
www.youtube.com/@herbie.e
Thank You Brother.
TH-cam was never separate from "the industry". TH-cam was born from "the industry" and is subject to all the same issues.
You should find out what vaudeville is. TH-cam is evolving almost exactly as entertainment did in the early twentieth century. Think of Mr Beast as the new George Burns or Red Skeleton.
*Edit*
While you're at it, think about the fact that 1984 is about 1948.
"No separation made between the product itself and the content made to advertise the product. When little Timmy buys a Prime, he's buying a souvenir of his parasocial relationship with Logan Paul and KSI" -- brilliant line. This whole essay is quite superb - you're a gem of a creator and I hope more people start to discover you.
I just got done and was going to comment on this same line. It's so bleak to see the mega channels that drive the business' model gradually come to imitate the style and production of traditional TV, as their budgets grow, but then - as the video says - the style and content they mimic is the advertorial trash.
I wonder how long it will take until we see the absolute trash fire that is reality TV being the most succesful stuff on youtube. We are already pretty close with mr beast, but I think it can still get worse. Mr beast has too much of that "rich kid showing of their stuff to feel superiour" vibe to him while reality TV has more like a "bully telling people how they bullied their victims and acting like they had fun" vibe to it.
Nerd City was right about the Pauls to begin with, this is just proving his point
I love that observation !!! Its so true and I think the same thing is happening with other celebrity endorsements, for sure with buying an athletes merchandise
The irony of this being you calling him a ‘creator’ which I assume is short for ‘content creator’, a term that aptly describes the people making this kind of nothing. He’s a video essayist and I think deserves to be called as such.
_"When Little Timmy buys a PRIME, he's buying a souvenir of his parasocial relationship"_
Titanic line, superb.
It's so weird that Europe went nuts for prime. I'm not twelve so when people were talking about drinking prime I thought they'd found a way to liquidate an Amazon subscription service.
It was only the UK europe isnt even a country
@@nikistimelapses I thought the whole continent flipped for it. Never have I been more glad to be wrong
@@strayiggytv Happened in Norway as well. Remember seeing a huge line for it one day at the mall. They sold a bottle for £20 each
@@strayiggytv anywhere outside the English speaking countries prime pretty much flopped
I would liquidate Amazon💥
This reminds me about how in the 80s they loosened regulations surrounding advertising to children, and we saw an explosion of tv shows and franchises that were basically toy commercials like transformers.
G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, Masters of the Universe, Jem and the Holograms, and of course the ones that did not last the test of time like SilverHawks, Visionaries, Challenge of the GoBots, and those weird ass children's shows based on R-rated movies like Rambo and RoboCop.
While some of these properties did eventually get sequels, spinoffs, or reboots that made them more than just toy ads (IDW Transformers comics, the 2011 ThunderCats reboot, etc.), a lot of decisions were still mostly controlled by the toy people, which is why the ThunderCats reboot was cancelled or why all Transformers media post-2007 is mandated by Hasbro to shove Bumblebee in everything as a main character.
For added insult, a lot of those shows also crammed in a moral message into every episode because that allowed morally-flexible network operators to classify the cartoon as 'educational programming.'
Those shows were good though, especially compared to what we have today. What came after was also good, but different (Ren and Stimpy, the Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and the other Dreamwork stuff) , but then after that there was a sharp decline.
Also, don't think that Transformers didn't have a message: the Deceptions are a highly competitive society, prone to war and whose main obsession was to secure the world's "Energon" (stand-in for oil) reserves. And to make the metaphor foolproof, their schemes are often set in the Middle East's oil fields. What does this remind you?
@@DioBrando-qr6ye I think those example shows were an awkward transition for animation - some studios were experimenting a bit with appealing to a wider audience than just little kiddies, but at the same time any animation not suitable for children was seen as not commercially viable. So you ended up with shows trying to be mature, but afraid to be so in any meaningful way - which came out as endless toilet humor and gross-out gags, and a few hidden references.
@@DioBrando-qr6yethis isn't true just your opinion. many good shows out now
I work with 10 and 11 year olds and we have children stealing each other's prime bottles. So many children have had arguments about it. And then when I told some children that I tried prime, they all went mental and they seemed so disappointed when i said i didn't like it.
Same thing happened with Pokemon when I was a kid.
There were thefts, fights, playground Pokemon card sales tycoons. The teachers banned them eventually.
Wait 20 years for these kids to to be 30, making their nostalgia for this particular consumer product a weirdly intrinsic part of their unique identity as a human being.
Then wait 40 years. Like Star Wars and The Avengers and G.I. Joe, maybe Prime will be a huge part of the moral mythology of the western world. Probably not lol but it would be no more or less absurd than the current situation.
Same here, prime is not safe for anyone under 18 btw. They should not be allowed in schools or around minors
@@meursault7030It was Pogs in my day. 😂
@@meursault7030The key difference here is that those are toys that can be played with and used as a way to either interact with others or to be creative and tell stories, even if theyre just silly kid stuff. Prime is a drink that kids like because it makes them feel like KSI and Logan are their bestest friends in the world for realsies. Don't get me wrong I had my parasocial relationships as a kid but at least they were contained to whenever I was watching TH-cam
@@rheawelsh4142yes children *never* bought shitty products purely due to parasociality before 2023 /s
The bottle was an empty prop. I am still yet to taste the sweet sweet nectar of Prime 😔
my favorite part was actually you not paying for that product
I don’t know if I missed it…
But I think the larger question is: what does SnoozleBerry Prime taste like?
Shoulda gone to Wakefield
It’s…well it’s a drink alright. Nothing special.
@@Jakepearl13 its salt sugar liquid
this dude is right. its like youtube is new money and tv is old money.
no literally that
@@JosephFish3r thanks for replying. You are a witty dude. I was also thinking that if mr. beast made a fucking chocolate factory, then nick avocado's fat ass should have been falling in the river. Get the community involved, ya know.
Pausing two minutes in to just say first thing: thank you for being soft-spoken. It's honestly refreshing after watching so many videos in which people feel the need to shout into their microphones for some reason. Continuing on!
yes his voice is smooth and its awful when ur just chillen or even worse falling asleeep and someone switches from normal talking to screaming D: i.e every horror game youtuber
My 10 yr old cousin is constantly watching TH-cam and I can’t stand the people she watches sometimes. So many TH-camrs are yelling to try and keep young kids attention. It’s so annoying.
it's mostly the ones who create content for kids. idk maybe to grab the attention of the kid they constantly yell at the mic. mrbeast and his minions also do the same thing
@@internetstranger- I understand what you mean, but I don’t watch content meant for kids, so I feel it must be something else.
@@internetstranger-As an adult, I prefer the Billy Mays style because it's often hard to make out what's being said. If I'm listening to a video in the background while I'm driving it's even harder, or I have to turn up the volume so high my ears bleed.
I have literally never heard of prime before and I’m a little proud of myself for that one
same! it just seems really not worth it. stayin with just my hot chocolate ;>
I’m very happy to have only just now heard of it in this video. I have never dipped a single toe into this side of TH-cam he’s discussing. The only time I ever see it is in these videos discussing it. From everything I ever see I can’t fathom how so many people eat this pure garbage up. It makes me sad the rock bottom standards people have and how easy it is for someone to become rich by just being a talentless asshole.
Me too lol
I recall seeing it for the first time a good while back now and it got my attention since I'm always down to try a new drink. By some stroke of luck I passed on it at that moment and then looked it up on google when I got back home and saw it was a logan paul brand. I dodged a real moral bullet there ngl
I found out about it because of South Park. Their drink is called Cred. Lol
Whilst I don’t dislike mrbeast , I really dislike his tactic on TH-cam, it’s all money oriented and it teaches kids that’s all that matters …. 10,000 dollars here , private jet there… as someone with young siblings only getting into TH-cam now and I got in at 2009 it’s so scary to see what it has evolved to
I don't really see how this is a problem with MrBeast in anyway, he's not promoting himself as anything except entertainment. Just like with television, you should not leave it up to youtube content creators to teach your kids or younger siblings what is right and wrong or what is or isn't valuable.
@@flingIetuin Parents should be the one to teach children how they view that the world works. MrBeast makes videos to entertain, not to promote morales for your children to follow for the rest of their lives.
@@frostern4863 he makes children's entertainment, he could do literally anything with the money he has and he chooses simply to show money, like remember when the most popular children's entertainment was cartoons that were drawn by hand and had themes and morals and music and artistry or television series with plots and characters and storytelling rather than videos that glorify wealth while artistically contributing only a recreation of the visual aesthetic of some bits of a film adaptation of an anti-capitalist children's book
how is the parent to reason with the child that their desire to have a bottle of prime is fundamentally harmful, it's a simple principle that can be explained but a child is not going to go "yeah now that my idols have promoted it and my parents have forbade it i no longer want the prime", parents have never in all of history had to contend with the modern day level of influence a random person in a country on the opposite side of the world can have over their childs thinking, and that random person is knowingly promoting and endorsing the financial system which has created and now is exploiting that same situation
mr beast is responsible for the message he purports, and he knows that his audience is children, and parents have constantly been defeated in moral teachings by the bright lights and flashing colours beneath any advertisement/gross spectacle that appeal so much to the monkey brain that a child cannot be told no and if told no will only want it more, and now the leading figure in that field is mrbeast
@@frostern4863yea i also dont see any problem with racist content targeted towards kids, tbh the parents shouldve done better teaching the kids smh
@@djerk2138 If your kid becomes a racist, it definitely is not youtubes fault.
I love that everyone is having such a difficult time buying Prime while my Kroger is stocked floor to ceiling without any product moving. It’s in a college neighborhood, so I assume the lack of 8 year olds has something to do with it.
@@PostalDude_1997trust me the schools are swimming with prime it's a nightmare
Same. I live in one of the largest cities in the country and every grocery store has a fat stack of Prime bottles that barely gets touched.
Really? We get it in and don’t even bother actually shelving it, just put it in the display bins and it’s gone within 24 hours
is it an energy drink?
Besides this video being another banger, I just can’t get over the fact that a mom put a goddamn SMOOTHING FILTER ON HER 5-YEAR-OLD. I hate social media. I hate everything.
I’m only 34 and I’ve already turned into oldmanyellingatcloud.jpg.
As a fellow old cloud yeller-atter, I feel you. This channel is young man giving cloud a calm talking to and making it have a think about what it did, I think it's something we can aspire to.
i imagine these kids in the future looking at their old photos of childhood on their mom's instagrams or tiktoks, and not being able to see what they ever really looked like as a kid
I thought this too, it’s sad. I’m 26 and honestly already right there with you, I don’t like how things are going honestly. I’m glad social media didn’t exist (at least in its current form) throughout most of my childhood
I'm only 30 and I am like "These gotdang KIDS." when I'm barely considered an advanced adolescent. Agony.
@@viscountrainbows2857Old.
i can't explain it but these videos feel like taking a nap in a car while your family talks politics
You're right.
It makes me think about how we have such separate and distinct bubbles of content youtube unique to every person. I don’t think I’ve ever had a single KSI or Logan Paul video suggested to me on my account because I don’t fit the demographic or target audience. Logan Paul is still just the unaliving forest guy to me. It makes me forget how many people (especially kids) have constant exposure to them. Kind of like I had a lot of exposure to Cartoon Network as a kid. It’s kind of wild to me idk
And sometimes I would ask my mum to buy me a Dexter plush or
Power Puff Girls toy, but I didn’t absolutely lose it when I saw a PowerPuff Girls branded pack of chicken nuggets at Asda. It wasn’t a big deal because those nuggets didn’t feel like an investment into any kind of parasocial relationship with Blossom. It’s wild how much consumerism is pushed on these impressionable kids now
I know right. In many ways, it's more of the same thing we experienced with cartoon network and such, but it's also very different in other ways since it's such a totally different way of consuming and interacting with your shows. I honestly find these sorts of marketing to children very distasteful.
I feel the same way! Even if kids do go nuts for branded sweets or toys like that (my nephew begged me for paw patrol kinder eggs recently when he saw them by the till), I feel like them asking for something or being excited because they see it in the shop or their parents just buy it as a cute little thing is different than them learning about it on the internet and asking to go to the shops specifically for that thing.
@@user-es7ui5mc1m The most noticeable and unforgiving difference is how quickly these influencers can reach their audience (within seconds) and how much the power is skewed in their direction since they have a marketing team and such helping them plan out what is essentially a massive psyop on impressionable kids who are still learning how the world really works. It's just sad, and it's up to adults to guide children so they can see these sorts of manipulations coming from a mile away.
I remember in 2007 my Dad wouldn’t let me get the Neopets cereal because I only wanted it because it was Neopets branded lmao
Consumerism has always been pushed on kids. Shows like Transformers, etc.? Those were toy ads.
Between Willy Wonka and Squid Games, I honestly don’t think Mr. Beast knows how to recognize or engage with critiques of capitalism
................................................... yes
I still think beasty boi’s smile is hella creepy. Those eyes are dead dead dead
i worry he's fully aware of them and just ignoring their themes completely because it would limit the amount of $ he's making :(
he literally sleeps underneath a picture of Bill Gates, I think he might love capitalism actively tbh
I mean he is literally winning at capitalism but also doing it in the most ... ethical way possible? At least to my knowledge.
youtube started out like early bbc (people not knowing what they were doing, making what they thought were interesting and informative videos) and is now in its 80s cable tv everything is an ad era
waiting for youtube to simply become network tv - with its own little sub websites where you can watch video essays or whatever without being pushed towards something else
Never gonna happen, they want you to watch a million hours of slop
@@PlatinumAltaria I would stay on the site longer if they recommended me similar slop, like tiktok does
@@usernameirrelevantHonestly this. I freaking hated when they first implemented shorts on the app because it would recommend to me constant irrelevant and sensationalist garbage that I had no interest in.
After a while they started showing more and more content from creators that I actually do like, but every time they update the algorithm they go right back to serving me that same garbage just to see what I'm willing to watch or what I'm willing to ignore.
This is especially true when it comes to the ads. I've managed to block over 500 different ads for tiktok and yet it's the only freaking thing they ever show me. That's predatory as hell.
i’ve carved out my own niche on the app. i’ve clicked not interested so many times i can’t even count but i only have people i’m subscribed to on my home page and it’s great
People often say "TH-cam was better back then" and they're completely correct. 2009 cat videos and homemade sketches are vastly more entertaining than the mush we are spoon fed by contemporary creators like Mr Beast. The ironic part is the people who say this often hoover up the same mush they swore to destroy...
I've heard Jimmy talk and he is so consumed by content creation it's impressive but also kinda terrifying. I mean, he's GOING to hit burnout, it doesn't matter how passionate you are, and that's gonna knock him out like a truck. There's all these people he's employed and he's mentally just got NOTHING else going on except that drive to make content. What's gonna happen? I weirdly anticipate it, because I've never seen someone like Mr. Beast, who keeps trying to up the ante all the time, just crash. It's inevitable. I hope the best for people in his employ but it's gonna be interesting to see.
The way that you found the Prime bottle reminds me of how I found a Livestrong bracelet in 2004. They had been sold out for weeks and then one day I happened upon one in the gutter one street over from my house. A true Charlie Bucket experience lol
Here in the states, it’s already making its way to the clearance shelves. There were a few weeks where it was mildly tough to find, but nobody seemed to care after that. I passed a pallet of them marked down at Walmart not long ago.
That's kids' attention spans for you
@cynister7384 swear I've heard of prime for almost a year now tho
@@cynister7384 KSI isn't that popular here in the states. Dunno about Logan Paul though
Idk what middle of nowhere state you're in but prime is selling out where I'm at. The only flavor that regularly stays on the shelf is the meta moon. Everything else is gone within days of coming in.
@@1MrLGreenThunder bro they stopped selling it here already shits dead
I finally tried Prime Hydration out of morbid curiosity.
Always read the label. Once the Stevia hit my tongue, I knew I had made a terrible mistake.
Wow, this is the first video I've seen from your channel and I'm blown away. I was originally planning to put this on in the background while drawing but I was so enamored by your delivery that I could barely look away from the screen. Your video style and presentation are so pleasant, I loved the green tones/deliberate visual color palette as well as the way you speak in a natural way rather than using a "youtuber voice" or sounding really scripted. I feel like the video had a lot of thought and care put into it and I really appreciate that! Keep up the good work :)
I'm 28 so I remember being a child during really early TH-cam, it's wild how much this platform has changed for both better and for worse. I wouldn't want it go back to those days (for one a lot of the content wasn't actually that good in retrospect) but at the same time it was interesting to be an incredibly small part of it. It's great that people can make careers on TH-cam but I do miss the sense of 'authenticity' it had back in the day though, ofc there's still TH-camrs that have that authentic vibe.
Yeah there was a period where creators could make a living but the viewers weren’t drowned with sponsors. Also there wasn’t the 10 minute minimum to get good ad revenue.
😊 oh p😊😊
god i love living under a rock i had literally never heard of prime until this video
same
It’s so strange to me seeing the lengths people are going to to get a Prime. Where I live in America, the drink is still pretty popular, but not rampage-a-store-to-get-one popular. Crazy
it's all for clout, they just want to record it and get likes. literally no other reason for this behavior
Totally, I tried it a month and some change ago, and had no idea of it's affiliation or the zoomer hype involved. To be honest, they put their names on a pretty decent product, relative to other energy/sport drink hybrids of course; they're sugar free and the flavors are pretty spot on.
Extremely based and accurate, the rampant consumerism just makes me so sad
Just in case no one has mentioned it yet: ANTI-CHEF has an ongoing series on his channel where he attempts Julia Child's recipes. It's fucking delightful.
this was an incredibly simple, yet overall great video. Nothing flashy needed, just some nice scenery (love the fit btw) a guy and his camera, and maybe a few clips here and there. Goes to show how the more human side of youtube isn't dead yet
I live in Wales and it's really easy to get prime. I live in a place with an aging population and literally no one buys it here. I've been to Asda and seen them on display for like a few pounds. I've seen it in discount stores too. I wonder if those big money scammers just travel outside of cities to get it for cheep and sell it for all that money.
I live in a sleepy Lancashire town and it’s the same here haha, I could go to the corner shop next door to me and get one for about £3. I wouldn’t even pay that tbh though
bingo.
@@Cheemma same here. im a student at lancaster uni and the campus stores are also stocked with prime that no one buys
@@clova1311 Nice, Lancaster is a lovely place. I’m from Cumbria, went to uni at Preston, and then ended up moving to Chorley later on. A lot of the population here is advanced in age haha
can't agree more that mr beast is scary as hell. also my bf is a teacher at an elementary school and one of his students recently chose earning a bottle of prime as an incentive for meeting some behavior goals, and so my bf went to a gas station and got him this "logan paul energy drink or whatever" as he described it to me lol. still have no idea what's in it tho
Its full of caffeine and shit
Sugar and caffaine. Good Lord so much sugar.
@@Murmarine and he works with ELEMENTARY SCHOOLERS. Lord help him with those Prime-addicted eight-year-olds....
I think TH-cam for a LONG time has wanted to be TV, we just projected the whole desert island thing onto it. Since we found it to be so interesting and unique.
While TH-cam has pushed harder and harder on demonetisation and promoted TV videos like late night shows on trending pages forever. From TH-cam's eyes the "desert island" almost killed them (adpocolypse, Pewdiepie etc. L.Pauls japan forest video.) Most Importantly TH-cam wants that TV ad model and more specifically TV ad rates which pay wayyy more.
I do yearn for the desert island tho, TH-cam can be such a unique form of media when creators think outside the box.
It’s weird, because where I live in the US (rural, barely any cell coverage, extremely mountainous terrain, high speed internet is a luxury as long as you’re in the right area to get it) … Prime and Mr. Beast stuff stays stocked on shelves. No one around cares much for it, not even the kids. The candy is like $4 a bar and the drinks push about $3-4 each … they have a harder time in small mom and pop shops keeping Jones Soda and classic Hershey bars. I think every time I’ve seen the Mr Beast candy bars on shelves, they look like someone threw them on the ground and broke every single one of them lol. I think one local store is going to stop stocking them because they’ve sat for so long.
It’s just really wild to see people go crazy over stuff and even overpay for something that can barely sell in certain areas elsewhere lol. All because a TH-camr is associated with it.
I’ve tried the milk chocolate bars, and I’m going to be honest … they taste like ass. There’s much better chocolate out there for the price of one bar.
PS - great videos, look forward to seeing what else you put out.
I live in Ohio (haha funny meme), so I've been hearing about the Paul brothers since the Vine days (in fact, I found pictures of them wrestling at a tournament at my middle school from a while back). But just seeing how they've went from Vine to "England is my City" to the suicide forest debacle to crypto to podcasting to MMA to selling their own energy drinks has been wild. I get the same feeling of TH-cam feeling a lot more sinister. Everyone has a product/brand to sell now and it genuinely has changed the entire landscape. It went from people's fun little projects to full-time jobs. TH-cam as a company grew with it, getting acquired by Google and now making us watch two unskippable fifteen second ads to watch a three second video of a cat. I'm just extremely averse to this trend of mass consumerism that's everywhere, if that makes me some kind of Internet purist, then whatever. I loved the point you made about it being all about *hype* because everything is just like "WHOAAAA GUYS WE BUILT A GIANT MR BEAST-BRANDED ZEPPELIN FOR SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS AND THE LAST PERSON TO TAKE THEIR BIG TOE OFF THE CHASSIS GETS TO TAKE IT HOME."
Additionally, I totally agree with how YT is turning into a facsimile of TV; I think the adult swim-esque editing on Vinesauce videos lately is a great example of a way this can be done well. It is essentially the millennial/Gen Z TV-we watch it when we eat, before bed, to get our news, and when we just want background noise (Additionally, I think podcasts are basically the new talk radio).
There's still plenty of old-style channels around like, RedLetterMedia or LGR (Or you yourself Joseph!) that make good content out of a clear passion. But what is Mr. Beast's/Logan Paul/Whoever the fuck's passion? Money? Philanthropy? Selling self-branded products worldwide? Hyping up ridiculous bullshit that makes kids pester their parents to spend money? It's always just left a bad taste in my mouth and your Willy Wonka comparison finally articulated that bad taste in a meaningful way.
Meanwhile where I live you practically had to give it away. I didn't realize it was involved with one of the Paul brothers and tried the blue raspberry and it was awful
i tried the moon one and it was a worse mountain dew Kickstarter
Is it more of a Red Bull drink energy or like an isotonic thing? They don’t sell them here in Malaysia
I remember when sponsorships started becoming a thing, and there was such a massive backlash that they started legislating against advertising without disclosure, here in the UK it was because of an Oreo campaign. Everyone hated sponsorships, but now it feels like I can't watch a video without being advertised to. I can only imagine that I might've been sucked in by it all had I been a child now, but to be fair I was 13/14 when TH-cam started getting properly big and getting all those sponsorship things, so I was old enough even then to miss the early stuff. Now you've got 10 year olds watching videos that are 40% sponsorships, 40% merch adverts and 20% something that could be argued is worth watching.
And once you start noticing it you can't stop either, for a good while now I keep noticing how easily people flow into their ad reads, or their product placement, and if you aren't primed (ha) to notice it or at least an adult with a developed brain and some life experience, you could easily forget you're even watching an ad even though they "technically" comply with regulations by disclosing their affiliation with the brand. This isn't some "good old days" post, TV hasn't been any better since the 80's, but it feels even more insidious when it's paired with trying to pretend you're some kids pal, when at least TV had a modicum of a barrier between the advert and the person.
NO I was in the grocery store listening to this and impulsively bought some Prime.
LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!! IM FEEDING THE BEAST AAAAAAAH
For all this talk of Prime I still have no idea what type of drink it is and at this point I'll just assume it's Logan Paul's bathwater. Wait that bathwater nonsense was years ago wasn't it? Is it even a relevant reference? Oh god, I feel so old.
I don’t even know anymore, I made a reference to something that happened in 2007 the other day without realising how long ago it was and I got told it was a “boomer memory” hahaha
I wouldn’t even know Prime existed if not for randomly bumping into videos on here about it. I’m 41, but social media generally makes me feel about twice that old…I’ve got no idea wtf is going on with The Youth anymore lol
it just feels so jarring and alienating, and people wilfully eating up just makes it feel all the more hopeless because a platform like youtube can be used to do so much more, capitalism sucks. great video though, love the term 'willy wonka-fication'
Well rather this than whatever dystopic hellholes await us after the revolution that never comes...
Best video I've seen in a *long time* thanks for this man, very sobering and, weirdly, the video itself is so refreshing as to how older youtube used to feel; just good goddamn content, amazing tone too, humour got me everytime haha - plus there's no bs, no time wasting, no horrendous sponser in the middle of the video - it's a *prime* (guh) example of what used to make youtube so fun, keep it up my man ^^
I’ve loved everything you’ve done recently, so I’m excited! Can’t wait to see your opinion on this, the whole situation is pretty nuts
I originally thought this video was going to be about how the Willy Wonka movie (one of the more recent ones) actually inspired a ton of candy and basically the movie existed to advertise products that didn’t exist at the time and how that was similar to how TH-camrs are basically making products for videos and then they actually become a thing- Kind of like how Mr Beast probably thought it would make a funny video to make a burger chain, and then made it to sell the whole deal. Weird Willy Wonka Movie and candy lore aside though, good video :)
I'm so glad that I discovered you so early on. Love your essays
idk like I've basically grown up watching TH-cam at this point but the only TH-cam merch I've ever owned is for Unus Annus as a gift and that was a special circumstance for obvious reasons, how do kids buy whatever they see a creator promoting, especially if it's just a stupid energy drink?
Yes or at least they try. A lot of parents have been scared because of this but yt still let's those creators around. Some also don't really know what their children are watching so that adds on.
Saw at least 12 bottles of Prime in the shop the other day for like £2 a bottle with the sign underneath saying "3 per customer per day". I guess the Prime fever is over. It was basically adults trying to scalp them, and kids completely obsessed because it was essentially just rarity to show off on the playground- the modern equivalent of a shiny pokemon card or something.
it was like an nft sort of. "yo, i got it!" who gives a fuck.
@@jonathanweir6084 Kids were seriously asking for it for Christmas. A £2 bottle of energy drink. As their main gift because dumb parents were paying like £100 for one.
And the young kid from Willy Wonker would grow up to be a surgeon, HE IS A SURGEON, HE IS HE IS A SURGEON!! Great video, superb thank you sir
Your videos are very good Joseph, I can see the effort that's been put into the production value. You'll be thanking the folks for 100k before you know it.
Really great essay, especially how you drew a connection between these products and peoples' parasocial relationships. TH-cam is absolutely becoming more like the TV that I escaped from, but much like channel surfing as a kid, I can always find something good to watch like this. I've always found these ultra-popular creators... distant, just because I don't see them on TH-cam at all unless I sign out of my account. TH-cam has always been able to close the distance between me and the content that I want to watch. Does it make it hard to find genuinely new content sometimes? Absolutely, AI-driven recommendations are a double-edged sword. But content like this (dude holding microphone in bedroom and talkin about whatever) is plentiful, and still reminds me of the TH-cam golden age, thanks for keeping it coming.
Man, these type of videos are great at sending me into a doomspiral about the future. This level of consumerism is unhealthy, couple that with all the other bad influences of social media (body issues, polarisation, parasocial relationships) and I really wonder how things will be 10 years from now
Honestly, the fact people are having conversations like this and thinking critically about this kind of culture just shows that human nature is stronger than social media. It’s gonna be weird in 2064 when mr beast becomes president- but ya know life finds a way
Nice video, not watching ads was the reason I started watching TH-cam when I was a kid.Nowdays I feel like I'm being driven away from here because of ads again...
At the end of the day I know that if I can't keep on watching TH-cam free without ads Im out and that would be the best for my mental health.
Yeah! The world needs more ginger video essayists!
I'm 42 and grew up in a culture where trans was not even discussed.
I was about 16 when I met my first transgender friend. A little background...
I was heavily involved in alternative culture, the goth scene specifically, and I'm glad it was a subculture where gender nonconformity was supported. All the clubs had shared bathrooms, there were no rules on gender. That helped shape me and my viewpoints.
When I met Steph I was unsure how to refer to her. She had to conform to her assigned gender in work/home, but was her true self when out on the dance floor. I'd seen her in both roles.
So I asked her about herself, when she was fixing my makeup in the bathrooms. She explained what was going on, and as a 17 year old who hadn't yet been able to have much interaction with other trans people, managed it beautifully.
She wasn't cross-dressing, which was common in the scene, she was expressing her true self.
That's all I needed to know. It's not hard for me to understand, it wasn't hard for me to understand.
She's a woman, she was always going to be a woman no matter if she was supported at work or home or out in the world.
It didn't take her very long to be able to feel ready to express her gender in the everyday life, and I'm glad she was able to practice self-realisation in a safe supportive alternative culture.
Yeah there was mild confusion with some, but veryv little bullying and not aggression, and it was quickly discouraged or even outright ganged up on.
Anyone who wasn't able to shed their assumptions was excluded and ostracised, because that wasn't in the spirit of the culture we wanted within the goth scene.
I'm glad my teenage years involved people like her, and a subculture that allowed her to be true to herself.
My other half works in a supermarket. The primes sold out so fast every time they’d get them in. Apparently some staff were buying it at £2 a bottle and were reselling them on eBay for £15 each!
Edit: holy shit, Prime has the same amount of caffeine as four cups of coffee, why is this marketed to children??????
Not gonna lie, if my little sister was obsessed with prime like this, I’d trick her into doing a blind taste test with other similar drinks. I’m curious to what extent kids only like it because it’s prime.
Also, isn’t Prime an energy drink? Ridiculous someone would give their kid an entire ass energy drink. Caffeine is shown to negatively affect children in large amounts.
Mr Beast hasn't technically done anything wrong per se. But his whole brand just makes me really... Uncomfortable? Like every big TH-cam event he hosts is reminiscent of creating the torture matrix from the hit novel, "Don't Create the Torture Matrix"
Literally
Exploiting poor people for content is doing something wrong, I'd say.
Love my little internet bubble. This is the first time I've ever heard about this drink and also the latest mr beast shenanigans
Damn I actually saw a lot of Prime in the grocery store the other week, I had no idea what it was. I just thought it was a new sports drink trying to pop up, I didn't realize it was all this
I know this was probably a throwaway line, but most of those American candy stores in urban areas in the UK are in fact part of a massive network of money laundering. There's some wild connections there if you feel like looking it up! Great video btw 🙂
As little aussie kid, I always thought when he was offering a one pound bonus for the ticket that a pound must be a huge sum - seeing that now is so depressing lmfao. Hit the nail on the head again w/ this vid, no matter how serious the content is I will never not laugh when I hear the logan paul colourblind soundbite, perfectly balanced - that said, defo was not expecting shirtless eddie
Love everything about the video. Content, vibe, sense of humor, color of the wall, that little print with some trees and stuff, color of your hair and your lovely outfit ❤ Im waiting for more.
Ow, and Im gonna call you Ron Weasley if thats ok.
Mate this was genuinely an amazing video from start to finish. Funny as fu** whilst also making really great points. Class.
this was insanely good, I especially liked your allagory for youtube as an isolated island away from the norms of tv and traditional media, very cool man, you put a lot of my feelings towards the site into words
Because I go outside and touch grass, I only found out that prime existed once I started seeing it in my local convenience stores these past few months. But, it was priced at like £12 per bottle, which can fuck right off. But what's funny is that my local area is in no way the right market for the overpriced sugar water, so it's just been sitting there untouched and steadily lowering in price just to shift stock. I think one place has it at £7 atm, which is still overpriced. £2 I feel is the max you should spend on a 500ml sports drink
Where did all the prime go? My 14 year old son buying them as soon as sainsburys opens, emptying some of the bottles refilling them with vimto and selling them to year 7s for a tenner!
9:03 using an inflation converter, £1 back in 1970 when Willy Wonka was filmed, would have been worth about £14.32 in 2022 money.
Still a paltry offering. 😆
To be fair I worked as a data analyst in an automotive plant in England a few years ago and I once received a corporate coffee mug as a bonus. 😆
this is an exceptionally good video and the big lee feature was phenomenal i am glad to know there are others familiar with him
I'm so proud of Juni Cortez finally starting his own youtube channel.
Joseph, your content is always so ON IT! Eloquent, insightful, and articulate are all adjectives that come to mind. Nicely done once again!! ❤
4:17 missed opportunity to say, “he wanted a piece of that dough” smh
But that aside, this was a really really great video. I’m trying to curate my recommendations on TH-cam to purge my bad habits, and your video was just what i was looking for. It’s straight to the point, it talks about some of the problems that we’re seeing in TH-cam, AND it’s funny and you’re entertaining and charismatic without a ton of super flashy editing. I’m subbing because i wanna see more of this content and will also check out your other channels.
I'm on the otherside of TH-cam. I never heard of Prime or whatever the chocolate thing is. But then again I avoid both those creators and clicked "don't show this channel" option.
Thank you for taking me back to the ukelele strumming era, can you see it
bro ty for keeping me up to date bc this is the first time i hear of prime IN MY LIFE BRUH
Whats crazy about this to me is that barring the ignition of it all, this is no different from other food fads like say, that one chocolate milk fad from years ago.
These fads were always crazy but isolated, set off by events that generally speaking werent intentional or easy to organize. Now? One or two influencers can set it off with the snap of their fingers.
I work in Sainsbury's. We used to sell out or prime within an hour of having it it. People would fight over it. Now? We have boxes of the stuff lying around, taking up space. We can't even *give it away*
Oh and selling stimulants to children should be illegal.
Sometimes I despair at the state of the world, it’s politics and it’s climate and rampant consumerism. Older people tell me “But we didn’t know any better, we let our greed and sloth ruin the world. The younger generations are far more knowledgeable, they will do better than us.” And I don’t have the heart to tell them how the younger generation are just as corrupted as them
I grew up watching Julia Child and Jaques Pepin with my mom, I'm glad someone else remembers them! Julia Child never made clickbait
I every time I watch another video of you, I forget that I’m already subscribed and go to subscribe again, only to find past me was already smart enough to do so…
Same here. Each video is a breath of fresh air
The prime epidemic was effecting co-workers of mine too, I personally don't care for products that's only selling point is the faces behind the product
I JUST WATCHED JOE'S NEW VIDEO
14:21 fair play to the little lad but why on earth is he bare foot 😭
Quite funny watching this a year into the future where it's common to see Prime in the discount section in supermarkets.
You did not had to distort the prime bottle dynamically to look like Nikocado is drinking it in the 1 second clip, yet you did it anyway, thanks
That is hilarious to me that Timothee is the newest Willy Wonka. I didn't know that it was time for another reboot.
At a work experience I did recently, someone in traditional media asked me if I'd heard about the Prime situation, so afaik the TV people are paying attention
Honestly I bought a bottle a couple weeks ago, knowing nothing about the hype - I thought it was a normal energy drink so picked it at the store - and I really wasn’t that impressed. It’s nothing special honestly.
And this is why we have to support smaller creators who take the time to make quality content
You make some great videos. I hope to see you do really well on here.
I was a teenager when youtube first came out and used it a lot ever since. It's interesting to see lots of the things you're saying here reflect views that were held by me circa 2011.
Hope to see more of your stuff soon. Keep it up.
Never heard of prime until today. It's amazing how easily people can be tricked into paying through the nose for cheap sugar water.
Thinking of TH-cam like a gilligan’s island of the entertainment industry makes so much sense and I love it
Interesting parallels. Definitely made me look at willy wonka as more of a prediction.
I first noticed your channel from the James Corden video and I'm happy to say that I love your video style so much. The jokes and information goes well together, keep up the good work
I worked in grocery hell and i never knew prime was anything other than a new drink released by a corporation. A few people bouth some evwry now and again but i dont think anyone else knew what it was - if they did then their enthusiasm was subdued
I feel like they’re purposefully under-stocking these drinks a little and making them a bit more difficult to access to create this sort of false scarcity. If they were easy to get from the beginning I don’t know that these frenzies would have gotten this bad. But then again I’m from the US and people get trampled on Black Friday here so 🤷🏾♀️
This video was on f*cking point! I just subbed
It's so weird seeing TH-camr products like prime and Mr beast bars in like every gas station or grocery store I go to. I don't even live in a super populated area so it just tells me this stuffs MASSIVE
they are the tv show and commercial at the same time.
@@jonathanweir6084 it's just weird how big these people are. We'd have never imagined major super stars like Mike Tyson having their own dedicated TH-cam channel.
I’ve actually never seen mr beast bars and I live in Los Angeles
i love the editing
Thank you!
I am also a fan of the editing. It takes significant effort to make a video this easy to watch.
Update: My local food pantry is giving away PRIME. (in case anyone is not familiar, that's a very bad sign for the brand)
these are all actual scenes from the wonka movies. i dont even think its in demand like this here in Southern California. maybe it was. idk its not that impossible to find. feels like 1/3 of items in walmart or target are youtube related now. toys, snacks, home goods, everything
I think it's just like that over seas. I live in KY and it's not like that either, shelves are still stock with it, heck it's usually the last thing to go if the shelves are empty.
@@lizzyrank5405 If by overseas you mean the UK, then probably. You won't find that shit in Central Europe, though, I can tell you that much for free.
This is the best TH-cam video I've seen in atleast 22 minutes