YouTube is probably the main source of information available to the majority of us these days.

The printed book, weekly or monthly magazine I drew from is a thing of myth (bought a copy of “American Cinematographer” the other day out of the blue and enjoyed it, but at $17au, I can see why relatively free YouTube wins most of the time).

This has a ton of issues.

YouTube is like Wikipedia.

There are no information police, no true editors, little awareness or enforcement of standards, so you get good and bad information (often at the same time), terminology that can be misleading, lies told, good information lost in the roar, agendas championed.

YouTube is an open forum powered by popularity algorithms, presentation and the illusion of correctly understood information being shared, but it is not fact checked. I worked in retail for a long time and the reality was, the best salesmen were usually not the best educators or the most morally adjusted of us.

My pet peeve at the moment is the miss-use of depth of field/aperture terminology. I cringe when the raft of popular videographers in particular use depth of field terms incorrectly (like using the term “more (of a) depth of field”, but actually meaning “more more pronounced shallow depth of field effect”, when more depth would actually mean well… .more or deeper depth of field). Saying “stop down to a smaller aperture”, because of misidentifying smaller aperture numbers as being smaller, which are actually wider aperture holes etc. It is getting so bad, I feel the actual physics of it are semi-redundant and the new terminology is taking over*.

The big issue here is they all listen to each other in a loop of self justifying error so the inaccuracies become lore and the poor confused viewer then reads something like an actual instruction manual and gets the other (true) version, making the already tough to understand near impossible. Is it right that the more popular face on YouTube will often win out over the cold hard truth in text?

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You need to “play the game”.

The presenter is forced to play the “catch word” game to get noticed, using clever terms and trigger words. If you do not play the game, if you use literal or information based titles, your video will never launch. If you use the promise of easy gain, the fear of impending doom or simply entice with clever confusion, you will do better than relying on truth.

“Ten must do tips”, “You are doing this wrong”, “Why you are failing” or “How to guarantee success” and many, many other over the top pseudo-headlines may get you hits and grab the attention of viewers, but you had better follow that up with something real and true or be aware of the harm you are causing.

This is always a part of something, but as speed of adoption and retention equals income generation, the reality is you need a big hook to catch a lot of little fish. No decent book was without a title and even catchy cover picture, but the correct assumption from the buyer should be all books would at least be proof read, fact checked and edited to some extend. They were expensive to produce and taken seriously, so needed some standards. Even magazines are/were accurate, concise and informative.

There are many good presenters and I personally learned a lot from them, but there is also a huge trap of personal opinion, flawed testing regimes, parroting innacuracies, paid sponsorship and bias.

I am lucky in that I have a long back story of learning from accurate and reliable sources and sometimes teaching these to fall back on, but this does not help much when half a class of students want to argue the point, citing a bunch of more popular than me “experts” on YouTube, who, legitimised by the format clearly, apparently know more than me and those I learned from, when most were not born when I learned it correctly.

I do not “play the game” so I have no skin in the information dissemination world. I just have to see physics bastardised, photography and video terms twisted and changed to suit an often uninformed presenter’s use.

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It is limited, unfulfilling and hard work.

The format is limited in time, attention holding and completely reliant on the care factor and honourable intentions of the presenter.

As well intentioned and informative as many presenters are, they still have to “give a crap” enough to do the work. It is hard and often unrewarding, which is a shame as the presenters with the most to give often cut and run when the reality of it all settles.

I get it, I often stop blogging for long periods because other things get in the way or I simply have nothing to say, but for YouTubers, often under pressure to produce, even pressure from sponsors, it must get dark and heavy some times and it takes a lot more to do.

No wonder so many good YouTubes fall away. Integrity, genuine pride in their work and a desire to get it right are all swimming against the tide.

It is an ever tightening funnel of limited perspective.

I am always surprised how a format with almost unlimited potential for input growth often has little of use to say on an important subject. I guess I need to ask the right questions and accept the answers given? Even in my other hobbies it is often easier to dredge up an old magazine article than search the web.

The sad fact is, gear reviews get the most hits, but often tell us the least. On this blog, my Domke and Filson bag reviews are by far my most viewed and cynically, even though I generate no income from this site, I did post them to address the shortfall of information I found myself and to get more hits.

Staying the course of truth and avoiding bias, when it is built into the system is hard and often pointless.

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I am left to wonder where are we headed?

Fake news is the norm, words for money are standard, greed over generosity always a threat, with few if any other options to turn to. Are we tainting a generation of talented young replacements, bending them to a will and perspective they do not even see as tainted, or does it even matter. If they use the wrong terms, but get the right result, is it any different to someone using a second language incorrectly, but getting the idea none-the-less?

Since the first words were printed, sharing of accurate information has been possible and created the world we now live in (well some of us), but it has never been for free and it has always had it’s falsehoods. Nothing written or read has ever been completely without bias or a required perspective, much of it is outright lies, so maybe we just need to hope that the best of us will rise above it as we have in the past.

*More depth of field is deeper depth of field i.e. more depth of field or in focus area which is a smaller number, which is also less light, which is also called stopping down, or closing the aperture. Not a suggestion, fact.