🌞RETURN of the KEYBOARD CAT!🌞

One of the very first videos I saw on YouTube, back in about 2008 when the whole thing was new, was this Keyboard Cat. I found it in green screen and was able to add my own soundtrack (Darktown Strutter's Ball), which syncs up surprisingly well!

FUDGE WARS! Follow Mr. Swanley's no-fail recipe for perfectly made fudge (or else)!

 

I was YouTubing around (late at night, like always) and began to look at fudge recipes, as my last two batches hadn't turned out very well. I found the following jaw-dropping exchange between what could only be called a fudge scientist, and a few other people who were obviously having him on: but what made it even more delicious (pardon the pun) is that he had NO IDEA they were having him on. 

He took them entirely seriously in their earnest questions about the specific gravity of the fudge he was making - even asking him for a copy of his spreadsheet! - and just continued to pontificate, a self-involved, know-it-all, university-certified crashing bore, the type you never want to get caught with at a party. He ripped into the one person who had something intelligent (not to mention relevant) to say about the whole thing, accusing her of finding spiritual fulfillment in failure. Ain't YouTube grand?

MrSwanley2 years ago (edited)
I have tried making fudge many times, and found it near impossible to get consistent results using this technique. Then, being an engineer, I realised that both temperature and soft ball tests are (unreliable) ways to estimate water content. If you knew the target water content you could just measure it directly by weighing the pot and contents, before and after - there is no need to estimate it. I now believe that perfect fudge has a water content of around 10.5%. Hence with this recipe your starting weight is 1094g (+pot) and I predict that if you cook it until you reduce to 931g (+pot), leave to cool for 8 mins, beat for 5 minutes and pour... you should end up with perfect fudge every time. I made myself a little spreadsheet to calculate moisture content of common ingredients, and so far I've hit the nail every time I've followed it. In fact this method is precise enough to go for a particular type of fudge, e.g. moist or slightly dry.
Show less
Reply 5

Hide replies

AnyaLake1 year ago
+MrSwanley well good for you, you just took the joy out of it!
Reply 4

MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+anyalake The joy comes from eating and gifting perfectly made fudge, in fact I'm not aware of what other joy there is to be had. However, if you get some kind of spiritual fulfillment from failure then you can just keep on doing what you're doing. Nobody is forcing you.
Reply 9

Joseph Mory1 year ago
+MrSwanley from one engineer to another, would you care sharing that spreadsheet?
Reply 1

MrSwanley1 year ago
+Joseph Mory I'm willing, but I don't know how to get a file to you. I don't use any file sharing sites and I believe YT would block the URL anyway. I don't see a personal message system either. Besides which, the spreadsheet is nothing special. It's just a list of ingredients by weight (g), for each ingredient I input an estimated water % and use that to calculate the water grams. I sum the columns to calculate total weight and total water %, and a final section allows me to enter a target water% and predict what the total weight should be when that amount of water is removed. Basic assumption that all mass lost is water vapour. My water% estimates for important ingredients are milk(87%), sweetened condensed milk(33%), butter(15%). That's in the UK: different parts of the world have different standards for solids content of dairy products, so I would double check those.
Show less
Reply 1

Joseph Mory1 year ago
I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out, thanks for the input!
Reply

AnyaLake1 year ago
a spiritually fulfilled person would have sent a PM, exchanged emails or even posted onto google docs given that everyone posting here by definition has a google account. Right back to failing in life I go ...
Reply 1

MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+anyalake I am here trying to share ideas with other people who are interested in making fudge. You seem to be intent on nothing except picking a fight - for no good reason that I can see. Thanks for reminding me about Google: I just used it to mute any further posts from you.
Reply 3

Fyfy zyzy1 year ago
+MrSwanley I was wondering your calculations include the pot, how much does your pot weigh? Just so I could calculate and get exact results every time but with using my pot weight. Thank you for sharing what you have discovered.
Reply

MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+Fyfy zyzy The weights I gave don't include the pot, that's why I say (+pot) beside them. They are just the sum of the weights of the recipe ingredients, before and after removing water. Add the weight of your own pot to both.
Reply

Sam LSD1 year ago
thanks for that scientific calculation about moisture content.
Reply

Zilliz 0002 months ago
MrSwanley or....you could just use a candy thermometer! !
Reply 1

ferociousgumby20 hours ago
Woah!
Reply


FUDGE WARS, ROUND 2!: I just perused a few more fudge recipes on YouTube, and you wouldn't believe who popped up in the comments, giving everyone even more grief about the sacred science of fudge-making. Some poor lady, obviously just trying to be helpful, posted a conversion from British weight measurement to the standard North American dry measure system (cups instead of ounces/mls). And once again, the Fudge Grinch popped up.

Abigail Skelton2 years ago
FOR EVERYONE IN AMERICA, HERE ARE THE INGREDIENTS: 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp butter 2 cups brown sugar 1/2 cup milk about 1 2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk what recipe should I convert next?
Show less
Reply 130

Abigail Skelton2 years ago
+thecraftyzebra Your welcome! Any suggestions for another recipe to convert?
Reply 1 

 

MrSwanley2 years ago
+the wild one I hate it when people use liquid volumetric measures for solids such as butter, and things with variable density, such as sugar. Even in America I'd have thought people would want to use sensible, repeatable measures. So, no more conversions please.
Reply 5

Sheree Hyde1 year ago
+the wild one Thank you for converting this for us in the US! Love these recipes! Please do caramel tarts!

Reply 2

Sheree Hyde1 year ago
+MrSwanley Speak for yourself only. I appreciate the conversions!
Reply 6

Tabitha Crouse1 year ago
Thank you so much! That is extremely helpful!
Reply 3

E Winter1 year ago
I know right. mrswanley has a lot of nerve speaking for everyone. Needs to mind his business if the conversations aren't useful for him.
Reply

Melatina771 year ago (edited)
Great tasting fudge and easy to make!
Reply

MrSwanley1 year ago
+E Winter It would help if you learned to speak and interpret English before making a fool of yourself. I clearly said "_I_ hate it", not "_we_ hate it", i.e. at no time did I claim to speak for anyone except myself. And I stand by what I said, which most people with a brain will recognize as common sense.
Reply 2

Woahhh!!

Clip from YouTube! (experimental video)

 

YouTube has a new "thing" that I've been experimenting with, but it seems unlikely I can do anything with it. Or not!

💗🧡💛Ferociousgumby THANKS YOU!💚💙💜

Not that I'm proud of my channel! Well, yes. From its beginnings in 2013 as a baking/crafts channel with Caitlin, to the indefinable weirdness of today, it has been a constant source of - what? Lots of things. I attempt to explain it here. Weirdest of all, I was just contacted by the producer of an MTV video clips show called Ridiculousness, asking my permission to use a video I made years ago - of Bill sneezing. How they found it, I do not know. It got 61,000 views, which for me is astronomical, though the highest one so far is 9,100,000 for a really stupid one with a rubber robot singing Daisy (like HAL in 2001).

It's is still getting multiple comments a day, but it's a complete coincidence. I had no idea it was "trending" on TikTok, and it still must be or I wouldn't be still getting so many views. I don't want to get caught up in views and subscribers, but being up to 14,800 subs is something I never expected. What's most gratifying is that my granddaughters, particularly Erica, think this is all WAY cool, especially the MTV thing. 

Whether they actually use it or not remains to be seen, but just being chosen is - well, something, I guess, out of the multi-millions or even billions of channels and videos (and Gangnam Style long ago surpassed a billion views). So here I try to explain it all, or at least talk about it. I've kept this blog for more than ten years and barely know if people read it, but I do get comments, several a week, usually from VERY old posts that people must have googled up. I also google MYSELF up quite frequently. When I do an image search, half the time images from my own blog posts come up. Which is kind of strange, but not for the internet.

The Troll Doll Channel: TRIPLE UNBOXING! Viking Bank, Cave Man Plushie, ...

A triple-troll triple threat! It's amazing to me how many of my subscribers are now watching my troll videos. This is one of the very rare videos where I actually address the camera. My channel is still booming at a ridiculous rate, and all due to one very DUMB, short, thrown-together video. Well, it happens! I recently saw a small channel which garnered 50 MILLION VIEWS for a 30-second excerpt from somebody else's video. Not even original material! And, typically, the views dropped back down to the usual few hundred after that one. But somehow or other, people are subscribing, including my grandchildren and their friends! I am now known as "famous Nanny" or "Erica's crazy grandmother". This is full-circle, as I started the channel to post videos of Caitlin and I doing baking and crafts. The coolest moment of all is when Erica's boy friend Ryder posted a comment under one of my videos, and I thought - oh no. It can't be "THE" Ryder, is it?  IT WAS!!!! I asked him to say hi to Erica for me, and he said, sure, next time I see her. It was probably the highlight of the whole ten-year-long ferociousgumby experience.

TEN! THOUSAND! SUBSCRIBERS!!!

When I started doing baking and crafting videos with my nine-year-old granddaughter (now an adult going to university), I barely knew what a subscriber was, and I even remember asking her, “Do I have a channel?” In the ten years or so since then, my channel has been a fun hobby which incorporates many of my favourite activities, such as running around in the park photographing ducks and collecting WAY too many trolls. (The rest of it is just freaky stuff.) I do plan a special celebratory video and even have a ferociousgumby tshirt, but am recovering from a nasty bout of COVID and have to lay low for now. But to everyone who enjoys watching these crazy little things, thank you for giving me a chance to share the things that give me joy. More to come, once I stop coughing!

It's the end of an era

 

We-e-e-e-ellll, it's the end of an era for me. YouTube is no longer posting videos directly from the site, and since THAT is where I got them, I'm having to take the long way around. A pain, but that's "progress". Blogger is now a very old and kind of outdated app, and even though I DID update the look of it fairly recently - I don't even know if the saved ones will work now. This is a pain mainly because long entries are kind of sparse now - pandemic has changed everything, including how much time I have to actually write something coherent. The thumbnail at least SEEMS to be correct here - YT has been casually taking them off and putting up random screen-grabs, when I generally put more into my thumbnails than into the videos. So I don't even know if THIS will work any more, and if it doesn't, this blog will have to revert back to still photos and text (as it began!). I guess Blogger is no longer considered "hip" enough, and I am DONE with Facebook, and this time I reeeeally mean it! I am surprised to see at least a fragment of the custom thumbnail here, when it's not showing up anywhere else. YT is "adding" features, meaning it is subtracting others. And all on a November Monday. 

UPDATE. As I look at this, it really looks OK - I just have to take the extra step of copying and pasting the address up top. Actually, it looks a hell of a lot better so far, and I can make it any size, and you can also watch it on YouTube easily. But how I wish they'd warn us about changes, rather than just pulling the rug out from under. They "roll out" changes as if it's some kind of bloody red carpet. Anyway, I seem to be able to watch this, so hope you can too.

💗Whatever this is, I love it!💗

I have no idea what this is or where it came from. Must be YouTube.

Links to my YouTube channel, YouTube, and Blogger

Links to my YouTube channel, YouTube, and Blogger

Margaret Gunning magunning@telus.net

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd9Gtf_dCA7fkyDE62Z2GpA 

https://www.youtube.com/ 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/

5 Cereal Gadgets that Actually Work!

Testing YouTube's "new" format. I may never get the hang of this! But at least now I can post more than thumbnails.

Internet ambush: the poison pill

(This started off life as a journal entry, but as it evolved I realized this is something I really need to post. It deals with a subtle form of psychological abuse on the internet, in which someone offers you something and makes it almost impossible for you to say no, even if deep down you are uncomfortable with that person and don't want to play. In some cases, there is bad blood in the past which is being denied, glossed over, or twisted around to be your fault, while excusing the perpetrator as having only the best motives at heart. I had an example today on YouTube, just a small one, but my alarm bells went off like crazy.So this is more personal and emotional than most of my blog posts.)  

I had a strange offer this morning from a woman who, like me, has a YouTube doll channel (specifically, troll dolls). She has been very nice in praising a couple of my videos, but then offered to send me a troll, and I refused it. I won't give out personal info, but it was more than that - I could feel a hook in it.  I know I`ve been suspicious before about things that turned out to be OK, but I don`t know this woman, and sometimes fulsome praise (I mean fulsome in the sense of much-too-muchness) IS suspicious. Yes, she has come up to me on the playground, skipping along in a gingham dress and pigtails, etc., and said, "Let's be friends!", and here I am being all suspicious. 

But my God, the CRAP that goes on on the internet, and sending me something like that out of the blue makes me beholden in some weird way, even guilty and feeling I maybe "owe" her something, which of course I do not. Over-gifting or completely unexpected gifting is aggressive at worst, even an ambush, though it also makes the recipient feel THEY are crazy or "off" for being suspicious of a generous gift which has been freely given. What is wrong with you to think there are strings attached?

I don`t know this woman from Adam, or Eve, or anyone else, and she has hardly any videos on her channel at all. That alone is reason to be wary. She referred me to her website, which is generally a sales pitch. Sending me a troll after seeing only two of my videos is an odd thing to do, and even if it didn't lead to "you owe me", psychologically it DOES do that. It`s also real Nigerian prince stuff at its worst. Falling for it leaves you feeling angry, ripped off and ashamed.

I don't want to give her my personal info, least of all my mailing address. Then she will know where I live. A complete stranger. I have heard of the most diabolical things coming from letting your boundaries down, though to be so wary of her makes me seem weird and over-suspicious. She also said, rather snippily, "that is, IF you're interested" in a completely different tone, implying that if you're NOT, you're not being very friendly to a fellow enthusiast.

It's better to err on the side of caution, I think. So I think I handled it right in graciously declining and telling her I don't give out that sort of information. My troll channel is meant to be pure joy, and if someone likes it, thats great. But it is set up a certain way. No commerce, no freebies, no offers or trades, no buy and sell or even being made beholden by sending ME something I never asked for and really do not want. It`s actually pressure on me to MAKE me be interested in her work (for surely I must thank and praise her profusely when I get it!), or making me feel guilty if I am NOT interested in her work, which at the moment I am not. 

So there may well be more snippiness ahead. "That is, IF you`re interested" had a nasty core to it, coated in sparkly sugar.  Postal stuff is dicey at best, especially with the border closed, and I don't know where she lives, but I assume it's the States.  I don't want her finding and criticizing the stuff I post about the States. It could start a war. She may be one of these DETESTABLE Paula Deen-like Southern women, a type I need to stay miles away from. A large number of crafty women on the internet are, maybe because they are traditionalists and egocentric busy bees.

This is the etiquette I think is sensible: don't offer something free, it'll make the other person feel they "owe" you something even if they insist you don’t. Don't agree to receive something when it is offered out of the blue by someone you do not know. When you get that twinge of quease in your belly, something subtle but unhealthy is going on.

That quease means you are sensing a manipulative ploy from someone who doesn't know you from Adam (OR Eve). When I see the nasty leech behaviour of Lynne, my former high school friend, who stood by and silently watched while I was systematically eviscerated in front of her close friend Lori – WHY ON EARTH would I want to connect with her again? But that was exactly what she wanted to do, and insisted on it over and over and OVER again.  If I feel uncomfortable with her and choose not to connect, she should accept it as my decision without questioning it, not pursue me all over the internet, finally driving me to explode and then REALLY be the villain.

I did not stay on my hometown Facebook page (which is the way Lynne somehow connected with me again, trampling the boundary of my blocking her a couple of years ago) for more than a few days, before realizing everyone had their head up their ass and was obsessed with the past. She took my brief interest to mean I wanted to endlessly reminisce about a place that nearly destroyed me. In retrospect, certain things can look very different, and now I see that what she did was every bit as savage as what Lori did (prompted by nothing, by the way), or worse, because her utter silence and total lack of ANY semblance of defending me was making her complicit. Quite simply, she literally stood by and watched.

I don't want that energy in my life, but the way it panned out made it, guess what, ALL MY FAULT for refusing her 'concern'. But even that didn't stop her. By some devious means, she found my YouTube channel (which goes by the name of  ferociousgumby) and left a comment on a video about side effects of meds, telling me I should taper off! If a person blocks you, GUESS WHAT, they do it because they are uncomfortable with you. Those times she visited (she invited herself to have coffee with me twice when she was in town from Ontario), I did not want to see her and did not enjoy the long conversations about Chatham and the past, which is where everyone STILL lives now, including telling me in detail about one person I barely knew who committed suicide. The rest was about how no one in the school system understood her son. Her conversation was one-sided, a monologue, and a drag on my spirits. I felt awful, yet relieved when she left. I did not know how to say no in those days, at all, and now that I DO know, it still causes an interior struggle.

I don't know why I tolerated it, except SHE phoned ME, assuming we were still "best friends" or even friends at all after decades, with a lot of bad blood in the past. Later I dodged the bullet, but as usual with these things, I was left feeling bad for what I had to do. I saw just the beginnings of a tirade from her on Facebook messaging (and HOW can you message someone when they have been blocked??) and didn`t read it, knowing what it would be like and how I would be cast. And how it would leave me feeling, basically ruining my day.

When someone says no, when someone erects a barrier or a boundary, you MUST accept they have their own reasons for it which you may know nothing  about (and are NOT owed an explanation for because it is none of your business), and respect it. Otherwise you don’t respect the person, and then why are you even trying to get the so-called friendship from decades ago (laden with bad blood) going again? Why try to trample down those barriers, and just arm-twist and arm-twist until that person says, Oh, forgive me, I was wrong! I DO want to be your friend again! Let me just push down this barrier I erected because I am so DAMN uncomfortable with you. And kindly do not twist this around and leave ME feeling bad, when the violation is YOURS.

I guess these people just HAVE to win this somehow, to push themselves on you repeatedly until you give way, or even tackle you in the name of friendship. 

I have learned from Linda L. and that really insane Terri chick who was obsessed with Harold Lloyd that you MUST be careful not to get swamped or even sucked into a little whirlpool that has its own sick agenda. There is this bizarre sense that time has stood still (which it apparently HAS in Chatham) and youll just happily fall into step again and be best buds, which we never were. At all.

I am actually shocked at what she did, but what with her, Linda L. and that HL-obsessed chick, I am now much more careful. They were much more blatant examples of actual mental illness, personality disorders, but I learned from them (mostly, what to avoid). And what do I lose? Nothing at all, though having to push back on the troll offer left me feeling subtly dampened during an already hard time. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, something I did not need on a grey day like this.

But it's all a potent reminder that no matter how the internet has evolved, it is still the wild west, and right now it seems to me it reflects the worst of human nature far more often than the best.

Coping with COPPA: a NewTube's coming!

I've taken a break from all this YouTube/COPPA/FTC nonsense, having multiple health problems to cope with (including trips to the ER with strange doctors poking at my ribs). But this - at least, in this video I try to envision an alternative to the vise-grip YouTube has on communal video sharing. So far, no viable alternative exists, but it COULD, and it MIGHT - so watch for it! In the long run, I believe this is the ONLY solution.

Dear FTC: Please LISTEN TO ME!

(My letter to the FTC protesting the absurd, destructive new policies which YouTube is trying to force on its creators. I just can't shut up about this! It's an example of an almost Kafka-esque bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake. I've had a channel for over 10 years, posted 1750 videos, and can't stop now. I've broken this long screed up into pieces, with my usual, appropriate visual aids from Fritz Lang's nightmarish cinematic vision, Metropolis.)

"I wish to protest against the new FTC/COPPA restrictions which YouTube will soon be passing down to their creators. Under these new restrictions, channels that endeavour to make high-quality content for kids will no longer be able to earn an income OR have their videos accessible to subscribers (due to very tight restrictions on all the features needed to allow their videos to be seen). 

Thus kid-oriented channels will be hamstrung by the very regulations which were originally intended to keep kids SAFE on YouTube. Because kids will no longer have access to their favorite high-quality kids' channels, I believe they are MORE likely go to adult-oriented content which may be inappropriate and even harmful. 

The specifications which must be applied in evaluating the correct category for our videos are EXTREMELY vague and virtually impossible to apply. If we differ from YouTube in our choice of category, which in YouTube's case is done by robots, we can be fined up to $42,000.00 PER VIDEO. 

Most YouTubers are extremely concerned about kid safety, but we CANNOT provide age-appropriate, high-quality content for kids if we have our income and all our features taken away. This has caused tremendous anxiety in the YouTube community, and the only direction we have received from YouTube if we wish to protest this potential meltdown is to "consult a lawyer". 

I am a grandmother of four and have been posting videos featuring my hobbies, collections, nature videos, family celebrations, etc. for 12 years. I am not monetized, but if I lose my channel, I will literally lose 12 years of family history and creative satisfaction. That door will likely be closed to me forever. 

YouTubers pour heart and soul into their work, and their channels are an intrinsic part of their identity. This could be the equivalent of mass firings or layoffs, for no reason that will help child safety whatsoever. PLEASE rethink this, talk to as many YouTubers as you possibly can, watch as many videos in as many categories as possible, utilize REAL people and not algorithms/bots, and try to work with YouTube to come up with something which is possible to comprehend/apply and respectful to creators. 

Without creators, there is no YouTube. With so many people going out of business, you will see a mass exodus. In effect, it could end YouTube as we know it. Surely this was not the original intent! I believe it's within your power to save the situation and make it work better for EVERYONE involved. I ask you to take another look at this entire issue, and work with YouTube AND creators to come up with regulations which make sense, actually DO protect children, and allow this whole vibrant, enthusiastic community of YouTube creators to continue." 

Your Comment Tracking Number: 1k3-9dfc-sdm7

YOUTUBE PANIC! Fines, threats, and the fear of extinction

There is mass panic in YouTubeland, and I can see why. Suddenly everything has changed, and creators are facing the fear of huge fines, slashing of incomes, and/or deletion of accounts. And yes, this DOES affect me. Though I am not monetized, I have had my channel for 12 years and have posted almost 2000 videos, FAR more than most monetized users. And each and every one of those videos (which YouTube could delete at a click) has deep personal meaning for me.

I have been writing and writing about this in my journal. This is very long and wordy, but I will post it anyway, in case someone out there is as confused as I am. (Please note! In an awful stroke of un-luck, Blogger just deleted the entire edited version of this post, but I backed it up in rough form.)

First, this is what Wikipedia has to say about the matter:

COPPA violations

In April 2018, a coalition of 23 groups (including the CCFC, CDD, as well as Common Sense Media) filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that YouTube collected information from users under the age of 13 without parental consent, in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

In September 2019, YouTube was fined $170 million by the FTC for collecting personal information from minors (in particular, viewing history) without parental consent, in order to serve targeted advertising. In particular, the FTC ruled that YouTube was partly liable under COPPA, as the service's rating and curation of content as being suitable for children constituted the targeting of the website towards children. In order to comply with the settlement, YouTube was ordered to "develop, implement, and maintain a system for Channel Owners to designate whether their Content on the YouTube Service is directed to Children." YouTube also announced that it would invest $100 million over the next three years to support the creation of "thoughtful, original children's content".

YouTube began to introduce the required policies in December 2019: all channels must either declare the entirety of their content as being directed towards children or not, or do so on an individual basis per-video. Beginning in January 2020, videos marked as being targeted towards children will have reduced functionality. These videos will display contextual advertising based on the video's metadata, rather than targeted to the user. Community features such as end boards and other widgets, notification functions, and comments are also disabled. The FTC settlement places the burden on channel operators to correctly classify their videos (with a threat of a fine of $42,000 per-video). YouTube stated that it would also use machine learning to enforce these rules. Uploaders will not be allowed to appeal automatic decisions of this nature. These policies have faced criticism by the service's community, due to the ambiguous nature of YouTube's explanation of the new policy, and the legal risks associated with them.

(Please note! It isn't December 2019 yet. So either Wikipedia is written by time travellers, or they can't be bothered to update this big lumbering thing once December actually rolls around.)

Blogger's/YouTuber's reflections. This YouTube thing, I don’t know. There’s a lot of misinformation flying around, with a number of “don’t worry”s which are even more misleading. December 10 is the day of reckoning. The “disabling comments on videos containing minors” a few months ago was a complete bust. It was totally random, though small channels got the worst of it. Mine was scattershot, but ALL of the disabled ones featured dolls! Yes, dolls, with no human presence at all except a voiceover, and the videos were meant not for kids but for vintage (adult!) doll collectors. In other words, an algorithm isn't a very efficient way to analyze content. And that is what scares me half to death.

The whole thing is a hot mess, but kids’ channel creators are the ones who are really scrambling. Everyone is afraid of YT now because they’re holding that $43,000.00 fine over everyone's head. No one is spelling out if it means anything for the non-monetized, but it probably does. I just don’t want to lose my nearly 2000 videos posted over 12 years! But if my channel is seen as ambiguous, problematic or just not popular enough, it may be dropped. They have that power. It all comes down to perceived financial worth.

I was alarmed what happened to PizzaFlix, a highly-rated, award-winning vintage movie channel which has always been one of my favourites. For no reason anyone can ascertain, it was abruptly canned, with an awful form letter stating, "We realize this is tough news, but. . . " Though I wonder. . . it mentioned not complying with YT standards. What does THAT mean? The creator may not have been totally forthcoming. He said all his stuff was copyright-free, but that can be extremely tricky, as I found out myself.

I know I should just leave it, because all my comments on YT may even be hurting me. People are going on there and crying! I can’t go over 2000 videos and designate each one as “for kids” or “for adults”, but I may be forced to do just that. In most cases, they were made for a general audience, but "intent" means nothing here. In fact, YouTube has made a public statement that you must choose between those two immutable categories for each and every video you have ever posted.

The only middle ground was taking each video separately, which I finally chose as the only option with any leeway. But that may mean 2000 agonizing decisions based on almost no information. And if YT doesn't agree with how I label them, I will likely just be canned. For example, if I say a video is "for adults" and the algorithm decides you've featured or even mentioned a toy or game or movie or song or costume that MIGHT appeal to children, or if a kid appears somewhere in your video, even by accident, you can be fined $43,000.00 for breaking the law. The original video from YT "explaining" all this to creators kept saying, if you have any questions about all this (or if you want to contest it), "CONSULT A LAWYER."

As usual, the “biggies” with many millions of subscribers and views are above all this and won’t suffer at all. But middling channels may lose their livelihood. And I might be canned and all my videos deleted at a stroke, because I am not financially viable. But the thing is, YT puts all sorts of restrictions on ads, then tells people they’re being terminated for not being commercially viable! And nowhere is it ever spelled out HOW MUCH you have to earn to BE commercially viable.

It’s impossible to tell what you’re supposed to be doing. Some response videos are angry, some are outright rants, some are scared, some placating and nervous and tip-toeing around to suck up to the beast (when protesting to the FCC, they plead with us to "be polite!"), some reassuring (and those are the worst!). Don’t worry, folks! Don’t be so panicky! What’s the matter with you? But then there’s PizzaFlix, which will soon sink into oblivion for no known reason. It seems to me that YT should be revamping its system, but that would be too much work, so it won’t – it's easier to just throw creators under the bus to save their own ass.

I never thought this would happen, but right now I have to think of my mental health. I put a statement in my channel description that my videos are made for a general audience, but I am not at all sure it was wise because that category no longer exists! If I am seen to be contesting the rules. . . It’s hard to put all this aside, but right now I have to. Is it worth it? Yes, it is! Two thousand memories, two thousand joyous creative experiences, two thousand big chunks of family history, birthdays, dance competitions, Taekwondo exams, animations, troll celebrations (which are “dolls” and suddenly "for kids" now!) - gone forever. It's scary, and right now I feel completely powerless. Logic would say that they would just hand my material back to me, but it will be deleted entirely unless this bizarre situation changes, and fast.

Short takes from my YouTube channel

"My doll's eyes are MOVING!": the video that rocked the internet

Why is this video so significant? I'll tell you why. It isn't. But unlike most of my YouTube videos, which garner somewhere between one and ten views, this one got 18,500 (and counting - every day that I check, it's higher).

It has long been my belief that there's something "off" with YouTube's view-counting system. Weirdly, it's skewed in favor of those who get the most views. Multi-millions and even BILLIONS of views are now possible for monetized channels. Meantime, little old me gets a handful, if that. Sometimes if I look on my video manager, the number of views is wildly different than what shows up on my page.

So what is going on? And does YouTube care? All I know is, every once in a while something happens on my channel that is WAY weird.

Awhile ago, someone named LaurenZside https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBnbqt4VRhotq2TQjkIi2A liked one of my videos - well, liked it, or thought it was weird. (It was.) It was this one:

In this one, the trolls do absolutely nothing. The thing is, I think people assume I am a little old lady who is so demented, she thinks the trolls ARE doing something - not to mention talking to her and voting in the latest Federal election. They don't get that this is supposed to be absurd and crazy BECAUSE they don't do anything.

LaurenZside is very popular, though I am not sure what she does. Probably gaming, if I knew what THAT was. She has lots of fans, most of whom seem to be young girls. Their thumbnails are unicorns and rainbows and such. Soon, I was getting hundreds of views for this video, not to mention comments. People kept saying they "came from LaurenZ". I did finally find the clip she posted in which she shows a few seconds of it. She must have posted a link to it or something.

That's cool, it's kind of fun, and it doesn't really matter what LaurenZ or her fans think of me, so long as they are entertained by this. 

But wait, there's more: "My Doll's Eyes are MOVING!" was made as a lark a very long time ago when I had a VERY brief fling with reborn dolls. I was too cheap to buy real ones, so got some fairly convincing knockoffs from eBay for about 30 bucks. Nobody really watched it, the usual scattering, and a very few comments saying the doll's eyes were NOT moving, that the effect was from shaking the camera, which is probably true. Then: KA-BOOM! 18,500 views, all at once it seemed.

The only other time this happened was when a short video of the family singing Happy Birthday to Ryan went nuts. Not exactly viral, but over 80,500, and for why? It's cute, yes, but most of my stuff is mighty cute, isn't it?

When I finally tracked down the LaurenZ video, I realized the "My Doll's Eyes are MOVING!" video was also mentioned, and a tiny clip included, even with my voice in it!  This explained the (for me) avalanche of views, which wouldn't be a blip on most YouTubers' radar. But fun for me, and even funner reading the comments. Everyone seems to be good-natured and willing to enter the spirit of the thing, even while INSISTING it's just the camera shaking (which it is).

Relevant passages are at  1:58 and 7:58. I have just taken a video of HER video showing MY video, and I want to see if they cancel each other out (perhaps a self-erasing video?) or disappear into a vortex of immeasurable depth and terror.

A peanut butter sandwich made with jam

This adorable gif of the adorable Emmy, as in emmymadeinjapan,was going to be a short YouTube video until I flew into a panic. Usually I know when I'm going to violate copyright, and stay well away from it. Now I'm not so sure. I think a gif is OK (isn't it? Especially on a blog no one reads.)

The whole reason for this paranoia is the "strike" against my account I got from "violating community standards of decency" with my Eadweard Muybridge animation, the same animation that appeared on several other videos which were allowed to stand. The video consisted of seven or eight frames of nude women, mostly shown from the back, with one woman playfully dumping a bucket of water over the other's head. I was warned that this was considered filthy pornography, and if I got two more strikes against my account, I was "out". I mean, now and forever.

So now I'm freaked out.

Never mind the jaw-dropping and even horrifying stuff I see on YouTube now, including a recent one about a woman who "FUCKS A DOG!" (and this news screamed at us by some millennial loser). Horrible, horrible stuff, because it's ugly. It's cheap and doesn't accomplish anything. I'd rather watch a person shit. I don't look for others of this genre and don't want to find them, but I am sure there are  some that are a thousand times more explicit than my two little frollicking Muybridge girls.

So at least we get this gif, this very cute snippet of Emmy looking at her peanut  butter sandwich seven times. I'm not sure why seven, but it's adorable. Most of her stuff is quite watchable and relaxing. I like her respect for other cultures, other eras, and other ways. She featured a series on prison recipes, real ones I mean, from  a cookbook written by a former inmate. The treatment was not mocking in any way ("Boy, all those guys in the slammer, they must get horny as hell" - I can just see it), or satirical or even funny, but respectfully fascinated at how people make do with limited resources. That's how Emmy approaches things. No spit-takes, no mugging (though she does put on funny accents once in a while and does a split-second "bit" at the very end), no screaming into the camera with her face half an inch away from the lens.

In other words, no cheap tricks. 

I hope this is the new YouTube, but I fear not. She's considered old school now. YouTube has been hijacked by the gamers, loud millennial slackers with the IQ of a gnat. Almost all of them are young males who experienced failure to launch, and sit home alone in their Mom's basement all day, perpetually playing  video games and "fapping" to pictures of their latest female android superhero.