Actually wanted to start a thead on that topic to enquire on the occasional hostile reactions to some Youtubers, not really to spark some unnecessary flame war, but rather out of curiosity and wanting to have some civil and fruitful talk about that.
To be honest, my
feelings are very mixed about the whole Youtube coaster community. The overall quality is very uneven, and I find
a lot of content to be quite shallow. Sometimes there is the unfortunate mentality of judging other people's opinions and rankings far too pettily, in a condescending way - which, granted, isn't exclusive to Youtube. I also find the community not to be the most mature, but the (probably?) younger audience might explain that.
I have subscribed to a fair amount of channels, and thus I get a lot of notifications from these. As a result, I am sometimes frustrated with the
lack of creativity and saturation with similar content from so many channels. For example, with the recent Six Flags announcements, it seemed almost everyone was doing their "Analysis" of a new coaster thing. To be fair, some of these analysis videos were decent and enjoyable to watch, but I feel most of these are only scratching the surface in terms of insight and... actual analysis. Too much "reaction" stuff, some personal thoughts on the layout and theme. I feel there is more insightful and original commentary to say. For example, some manufacturers like S&S, Premier (and even Vekoma) seem to make a return in the US market. Would be interesting attempting to explain why rather suddently the market seems to become more competitive after years when it was almost only RMC and B&M. In other words, I wish some Youtubers try to
put things more into perspective, rather than just give their personal opinion and basic facts.
I am also critical about the (perceived) saturation with all the vlogging stuff. I am guilty of that myself to be fair, but
too many vlogs seem to reuse the same 'narrating my day' formula with little thought as to how to make the content more interesting and in-depth. This might be only a personal quibble, but I am also not very fond of the whole 'showing my face talking for minutes'. I want to see coasters and theming, not some whoever Youtuber's face damnnit! Showing your face and honest reaction can help you being more relatable, but I really think this sort of device has to be used very sparingly. It doesn't help that few vlogs actually have polished editing and filming, something which admittedly takes a lot of practice and experimentation to grasp. Take for example movemotions'
brilliant video montages. Fair enough, movemotions are professionals, but I haven't found any Youtuber creating videos with the same dynamic.
On the other hand, I find
some people there on Youtube put some insightful and/or entertaining stuff. There is potential in the medium.
Theme Park Crazy does some cool research on more obscure or historical coaster trivia - actually I often ended up seeing him commenting to request permission to use footage on many obscure Youtube videos! His
video on Vertigo at Walibi Belgium was well researched and dealt with a coaster venture worth mentioning and discussing. Also
Coaster Bot has a very promising progression. His videos are perhaps more targeted towards a larger, more casual audience, but I appreciate his careful editing efforts and his Manufacturers videos provide a comprehensive insight into a manufacturer's history and portfolio. There might be more Youtubers worth mentioning here, but it can be quite hard to filter between so much generic, shallow content and genuinely relevant stuff.
Tyler Bybee (Coaster Studios) is quite polarizing here I believe. Some of his content isn't exactly my type, but imo other videos like his
Kings Dominion documentary show promise and interesting creative decisions like interviewing GPs to discuss their experience and thoughts.
I have to admit I've been personally struggling to put out satisfying content on my own channel for a while. I stopped vlogging for reasons stated above and while I have some ideas in the back of my mind, it proved quite challenging to actually make them work. I have several thoughts for future 'Obscure Coasters' episodes, but sometimes it is very difficult to find footage of such rides to illustrate my comments. I've been thinking of taking about Jet Rescue at Sea World Australia for a while, however it seems only TPR has decent video clips of that coaster - and Robb's never gonna give permission to use his videos. Some other concepts, like a 'Coaster Geography' series, are stuck in development hell due to my own lazyness and not finding the right montage and software tools to convey the whole 'getting some sense of actual geography' feeling. I might eventually find the drive and solutions to that, hopefully. But enough of personal whining.
In short, coaster talk on Youtube has potential. In my opinion, a lot of it is superficial and immature (but sometimes entertaining) though. I also believe the way Youtube works i.e. often quantity > quality doesn't help. Nonetheless, the platform has room for quality, thoughtful, polished and insightful videos. There just needs to be more of it.
