Its a Chinook helicopter, not a van.

Originally Posted by James1959
I am starting a Glasgow You Tube ADV channel and I am calling it Itchy Balls.

James1959, when your new You Tube channel is up and running, let me know.
I'll subscribe!

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Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Youtube is and will be the new book, the new newspaper, the new radio and the new TV in my opinion.

Youtube has made - only through user generated content - itself to the dominating future communication channel. Youtube or video is the medium dominating our future- It combines all aspects of traditional media! Youtube is the 2nd most visited website in the world , counts for 25% of all internet traffic and 500hrs of videos are uploaded every minute.

Youtube socializes bikers. That ones who count the curves on mountain roads as well as that ones who film and sell their trip anywhere on the world as an income.

Youtube let the users travel and visit places all over the world he or she will or can never reach in life for different reasons.

Youtube is a nanny for stressed mums - watch young mums on the streets when they met and talk with a coffee to go in the hand while silencing kids in the stroller with their smartphone playing a youtube video.

Youtube is used in and by politics to build power and to show the good and the evil politically outcomes.

Youtube is making and branding celebs of any kind and creating wealth for them.

Youtube drives the industry in promoting and selling products through advertising - equal for a motorcycle or video game and of course even for selling books. Funny to recognized that people who read get now triggered by book trailers!

But youtube is also a learning plattform to share knownledge for everything imaginable. Traditional educational establishments like universities use it and everybody can take part. You can learn to play ukulele, to cook, to repair your bike or you can learn languages.

Youtube is a channel to build knowledge for a wide mass e.g. in a pandemic about a virus and in the same time it is a plattform for dubious content creators to promote their opinion formation.
And so on and on...

For many users youtube is an injection of life and full of aspects or perspectives they never could imagine before. An injection for your personal life which you cannot find in traditional media like book, radio and tv because these do not use an algorithm to suck the user in his bubble of personal interests. Youtube is the mirror of mankind and showing the full variety of humans and their subjects.

And it is imho unstopable and will have in the future a strong impact to all societies and cultures of the world.

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The community is still out there, and from what I've found there are few pretensions or snobberies out on the road. When you're riding you're part of the same family.

Social media is another matter and I have little time for most of the "monetised YT channel" crowd. There are a very, very small number who are genuinely groundbreaking but that's a tough call in a world where our "adventure ride" is a thousand people's daily commute to work. Normally the best you can find is somebody who's doing a major ride for their first time and share in their sense of wonder. There are few "roads less travelled" these days and few new perspectives. But personally I'd rather read such things and not sit through endless cliched drone shots of a motorcycle on a lonely road (tourist bus just out of sight). I certainly can't be *rsed with somebody who styles himself a riding guru telling people to stand up on rough roads or the bloke who thinks the world needs a new instructional video on how to adjust a chain. The ones who pop up with "when we were there in 1996 on our 6-year RTW..." wear a little thin too. Nobody likes a pissing contest.

Disclaimer: I do blog when I travel, but that's as much for my memories as anything else. If others enjoy my ramblings that's nice, but my monetised earnings so far (and projected) total £0.00.

There is a huge problem for YouTube. Credibility.

When enough of it is total ******s in the name of entertainment, the factual stuff is no longer believed. Watergate Tapes on Social Media would have been claimed as their own my every third rate impersonator who could do Richard Nixon.

The mainstream media has reacted by adding rubbish to their own output instead of keeping up the quality, not that the likes of Motorcycle News have been quality in my lifetime. The BBC used to review cars you could buy, not blow up caravans because its fun

YouTube is primary information, the user needs to learn the skills to filter it.

Andy

Time brings always changes. Yes, social media brings too a lot of worrys.
For me is the biggest problem, that they are not regulated, each year more % of the world population are using social media to "read the news".

After the cambridge analytics scandal, after censorship of a leaving president we can just guess about the power behind of social media. It even can kills the loved democracy in many different ways. But that seems another chapter.

Recently I wrote about Eva Beck who is a travel vlogger who starts too overlanding by 4x4 at 2021. With the amount of Views/Like/Comments we can assume that she earns around 110'000 Euro a month.

Is what we do all day from morning to night just a hobby or our work? We should consider to look after it - as a new profession.

Compared to Eva are the most well etablished social media travellers like Dan Grec or GrizzlyNbear - just beginners. But even they - live from sharing their trips on social media - or are sharing their experiences.

Everyone as he likes. We dont have to watch it, if we dont like it. We can just go out and travel, without having to edit videos and vlogs.

Like Turbofurball wrote, those "good old days" - can be remembered too very very differently.

Surfy

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