I've noticed that Ray William Johnson's =3 series seems to be one of those things on the internet that became so popular that people got tired of how much other people were loving it and it became really unpopular. A common complaint is that he got famous from using other people's videos on his shows, but that alone doesn't seem like a credible argument to me because there are so many other shows that do the same thing in different ways:
- REACT by Fine Bros. (and the genre of videos it inspired)
- WeSauce
- A Brief History, by Foot of a Ferret
- PBS online shows like Idea Channel and Game Show, since they use relevant clips to expand on whatever their hosts are discussing
- Does Not Compute, a show on Cracked's YouTube channel that highlights and lampoons popular trends in online videos
- Retsuprae (a show that riffs on low-quality Let's Plays)
- Some episodes of some top-10 style shows (WatchMojo's main channel, AllTime10s family, etc.)
- Review shows about other review shows
- Vlogs and video replies that feature parts of the videos to which YouTubers are replying
I'm curious about the ethics of making a career or hobby out of making a show that mostly shows videos that other people made. It seems that many people make various kinds of videos where they discuss all other types of media, so I'm not too sure how video-centric videos differ. Is it the style of the show that matters most? Even if it was ethical because credit was given where credit was due and the host(s) had other projects that were more original, should they only continue if they are certain that the genre is popular but not infamous?
10 Jul 2015, 7:37 pm
