YACK on: YouTube
Grant Sanders
If you've checked out the national news on TV or online lately, one news story stands out. No not the whole Foley congressional page scandal. That's old news. (Remember, folks, the average news consumer

has the attention span of a gerbil.) I'm talking about something really, really big. I'm talking, of course, about Google's purchase yesterday of YouTube for $1.65 billion.

That's billion. With a "b" in case you read that really quickly.

Now, seeing as you're holding a newspaper right now and reading these words formed from liquid pigment pressed into a sheet of dried pulp made from the fibers of dead trees, there's a good chance you might not know what YouTube is. So, I'll tell you.

It's basically television, on your computer.

Okay, that's an oversimplified explanation, but that's where your brain needs to begin when grasping the phenomenon that is YouTube. TV on your computer. What makes it different from regular TV is that the stuff that's on YouTube is actually video clips shot by, for the most part, amateurs. The content comes from "you," the viewer. That's why they call it YouTube. You control the programming.

The YouTube craze all started a couple years ago with a kid from New Jersey named Gary Brolsma who recorded himself using a cheap-o web camera lip-synching to a song entitled Dragostea Din Tea' (a.k.a., "Numa-Numa Dance") by the Romanian pop band, O-Zone. It was just some chubby kid from New Jersey wasting time with his computer set-up. The song is catchy but not Grammy material. The quality of the video is lousy. And Gary is nothing special to look at. But the combination of these three, when uploaded to YouTube, caused an overnight sensation. People started emailing the link to their friends. It went, as they say, "viral." It was downloaded several million times.

Since then, 3,000 videos have been made and uploaded to the Internet of people singing this crappy song by an unknown Romanian pop band. I'm not kidding. Three thousand uploads.

People also upload a lot of other silly stuff. Like videos of themselves jumping off rooftops into swimming pools. Or guys dropping Mentos into two-liter bottles of diet Coke (which causes quite an explosive reaction). Or skateboarders taking tremendous spills and sending themselves to the hospital. Hundreds of millions of manhours are wasted every week by people uploading this silly content and hundreds of bazillions of man-hours are wasted by people who actually watch it.

Sure, in addition to a vast wasteland of garbage on YouTube there are also a small number of interesting and worthwhile video clips. Jon Stewart often shows up there, which violates Comedy Central's copyright, but so far no one is suing. There are videos sent from servicemen in Iraq. And there are interesting world events caught on tape and broadcast uncensored for the world to see.

But when it comes right down to it, most of what you'll find on YouTube is just putrid, mindless drek that no one would ever want to watch. And this is what Google just bought. For $1.6 billion. Asite full of content that ranges from mediocre to just plain awful.

I entered the word "Nantucket" into the YouTube search box and discovered four pages of videos people have shot on this island. Most of them awful. Poorly edited. Unwatchable. One of which I

have imbedded on the YACKon.com home page so you can take a look. It's the best one of the bunch. Just go to yackon.com and scroll to the bottom to play it.

This all got me to thinking. If YouTube can be so incredibly bad and sell for $1.65 billion, maybe I could sell yackon.com for $1 million! This is, after all, Nantucket. Where everything pretty much costs $1 million or more, right?

But first, I'm going to have to make some changes. I'll have to dumb-down the content on YACK. Instead of offering podcasts of Keith Bergman addressing the Nantucket Government Study Committee on how town governments with town managers can work, I'll have to add more podcasts of people making rude noises by compressing air under their armpits with their hands. Instead of a thoughtful discussion of the 'Sconset Beach Preservation Fund plan (a.k.a., "the Scheme"), we can have a discussion about how to light your personal gasses on fire without injuring yourself. Instead of pictures of the first day of family scalloping, I'll need to add dozens and dozens of pictures of housecats in sinks.

I figure the dumber I make the stuff on YACKon.com, the more someone will pay for it.

If you would like to buy YACKon.com, please email me your bid at grant@yackon.com. Serious inquiries only. No freaks or MLM scams, please.

YACK on. I

Grant Sanders is the host of YACK the Nantucket Online Community at yackon.com and his favorite YouTube video is the chubby kid with the light saber here: http://tinyurl.com/qztj3. His views are his own and they do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Nantucket Independent.