YouTube Makes Me Sad

I'm going to just put this out there: I don't understand YouTube.
I mean, I've seen viral videos, sports highlights, vlogs, and whatnot, but I would only categorize my YouTube consumption to be on a as needed basis -- as in "Hey, you've GOT to see this video!". I spend most of my time watching shows produced for TV. After reading the Forbes list for highest paid YouTube stars, I'm beginning to feel out of step (or maybe envious). The top earner is a video game commentator, pewdiepie, making a cool $12M a year! I think it's worth a pause to think about the gravity of this. When I was a kid, being a professional gamer would have been a pipe dream. Who would have thought that commentating while playing video games would have been enough? Side note, based on this esports (professional gaming) ranking, the world's top professional gamer, ppd, has career (!) earnings of only $2M. So why waste your time getting proficient at a game when you can just film yourself playing it? Two out of the top 10 earners from the Forbes list are video game commentators. Eleven out of 20 from this Business Insider list are video game commentators. 

Clearly there is a market for pre-pubescent to adolescent males that is not being catered to on TV. Is there anything more sad than watching someone else play video games?  What does this say about the world today? Kids these days need more friends. Boys need more friends. Parents need to let their kids out more often and let them mingle with other kids. Everybody lives in a vacuum these days. We lack interaction. Social media is supposed to be social but it's more often than not a one way street. You might find yourself carefully packing your your thoughts and emotions into this neat package (a tweet, an instagram, a status update) but then you click <Enter> and off it goes on this little raft, out into the vast sea of floating garbage along with everyone else's completely inane diatribes. There's no room for dialogue, for subtleness,  for real empathy. 

We are all passive consumers raising a generation of even more passive consumers. This makes the very few who actually create material, no matter how vapid, very, very rich. It might be easier than ever to be seen and heard but now we find ourselves living in a world where everyone is screaming for attention but no one has anything to say. Everyone has a method but no one has intent. This is essentially how I view YouTube as a 30-something. View counts mean nothing, it just represents the lowest common denominator. All this sadness and I haven't even brought up the comments section...