as a language learner, i guess most of us run into these weird computer generated youtube videos once in a while. And i just wonder, whats the deal with this? how could anyone possibly watch these extremely annoying low quality videos? is anyone actually watching these, or are they just spewed out like automatically, but if so why isnt youtube blocking it? or is it some cultural phenomenon that i absolutely do not get? it seems like people are watching and commenting
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[https://youtu.be/LWmauc-yQ5k](https://youtu.be/LWmauc-yQ5k)
5 comments
Nothing in the world is more dumb and annoying than western Youtube “influencers”, but millions of people are watching and commenting them for some weird reason.
It’s just the tts they use lol. There’s a lot of information in it so I wouldn’t say it’s low quality at all
It’s called ゆっくり解説. Some people spend a lot of time and effort researching a topic, writing a script, and editing the videos, the only thing they don’t do is actually record the voiceover themselves. Of course there’s bound to be some very lazy ones, but the most popular ones are hardly so. No, they’re not “spewed out automatically”.
People watch because it’s interesting, and also I guess because it’s a familiar format. I’d guess psychologically it’s easier to watch a video narrated by ゆっくり霊夢 and ゆっくり魔理沙 whom you already ‘know’ and love than one narrated by someone you’ve never heard of, even if the words were actually written by some random person.
Why would you think the whole video is computer generated?
Channels I watch in English include JCS, Chubbyemu, and Scott Manley. Informational, in-depth. Or, that’s how it appears.
When I try to get similar qualities out of Japanese channels, they tend to end up in tts. I can’t tell you why, but one thing is clear: a lot of Japanese channels that use their own voice tries to edit their videos like Japanese TV. And make it fucking annoying.
The problems above don’t happen with *exceptionally* good ゆっくり解説 types, including the three Japanese channels that managed to get subscribed by me: Fラン大学就職チャンネル, 浸透襲撃, and カカチャンネル. So I guess that’s why I personally like certain tts videos. Overwhelming majority are crap that practically reads off of Wikipedia or something though., so keep that in mind when you look for one that interests you.
The closest thing to Scott Manley and Chubbyemu is [資産価値ZERO](https://youtube.com/@urbansprawl-zero) – uses his own voice, no dumb sound/visual effects, and very informational. Only issue is that the topic is pretty advanced and requires Japanese common sense-level of knowledge in real estate, land, mortgage, and economic history. You’re going to see word like 登記 and 抵当権.