Cable subscriptions around the country are in decline as internet streaming services
take the place of expensive channel packages.
In many ways it makes perfect sense, after all why should you pay for hundreds of channels
when you only like watching a few dozen?
Yet many households in the US have both streaming services and cable, but with the explosion
of internet tv we find ourselves asking, is the net enough to satisfy our entertainment
needs?
To find out we once again turned to your favorite, and our least important, staff writer to challenge
him to give up an entire day of his life that he'll never get back and watch YouTube for
24 hours straight!
Hour 0: A 24 hour challenge, this is so much nicer than the typical month-long nightmares
I have to endure.
And for once the challenge doesn't involve something ridiculous, dangerous, or my personal
favorite: ridi-angerous, a combination of the two.
The rules to this one are simple: watch YouTube for 24 hours straight.
What I watch doesn't matter, I just have to physically watch it pausing only for bathroom
breaks and I guess emergencies such as the house burning down around me.
Although with youtube streaming on smart phones nowadays even that probably wouldn't qualify.
Short of a zombie apocalypse that also knocks out the internet, I have to watch YouTube
non-stop.
I admit that I already get most of my watching done online, I haven't had cable for at least
a decade and life has been perfectly fine with just streaming subscriptions.
Less ads, and you get exactly the content that you want without paying for a hundred
channels dedicated to rural soccer leagues in the amazon rainforest- it's a pretty damn
good deal if you ask me.
To be honest I don't even know why people still pay for cable, although I guess maybe
there's a few shows on tv you can't get on streaming as fast as you can watch on tv,
but even most of the best tv shows are available on streaming anyways.
Like Game of Thrones, although after that disastrous finale I'm not even sure HBO Go
exists anymore, do they even make other shows?
So I hesitate to say this, but this might actually be fun for once.
I'll check in in a few hours and record my experiences.
Hour 5: Five hours down, a little over a fifth of my challenge complete- this is a cakewalk.
At first I thought it might be difficult to get through because despite there being billions
of videos on youtube, I honestly didn't think there would be anything I really wanted to
watch.
I'm not big on internet celebrities or watching streams, probably because I'm not twelve years
old, and meme videos are entertaining for about ten minutes because again, I'm not twelve
years old.
I do love animal prank videos though, so I watched a few of those and just kind of let
it autoplay from one video to another.
An hour later I was watching animal fail videos which somewhere around hour two segued to
human fail videos, which was fine until those led to some very annoying internet celebrity
videos at which point I stopped watching.
We get it, you're cool online.
I decided to rewatch some of my favorite movie's trailers and found a bunch from way back in
the day loaded online.
Watching the original Alien trailer gave me the chills, as well as the original The Thing
trailer.
They really don't make horror movies like they used to.
I just let it autoplay again and realized I'd spent almost three additional hours watching
trailers for old movies, which got me to thinking: who the hell uploads these?
Youtube is like a huge virtual library for video, but who in the world actually takes
the time to upload all of these videos?
Whoever you are, you're doing a hell of a service for humanity.
Keep it up.
5 hours down, 19 to go.
Easy peasy so far.
Hour 9: There's a lot, and I mean a lot of movie trailers on youtube.
I watched trailers up until an hour ago and I realized that trailers may be my favorite
part of a movie.
I always hated getting into a movie theater late and having missed the trailers, and if
I'm being honest there's some times when I'm disappointed that the trailers are over and
the actual movie is beginning.
I feel like I've watched every trailer for every movie ever, from Caddyshack to the latest
Pacific Rim.
Girlfriend finished work early today so she came home and has joined me for at least part
of this journey.
My ass is sore and my eyes are a little fuzzy from staring at a big screen TV all day, but
I am definitely still entertained, and I still cannot think why anyone would need a cable
subscription with all this media at your fingertips.
I've decided to let her pick what we watch, and I'm curious if she can be as entertained
as me by Youtube.
Hour 13: Girlfriend made it four hours, although to be fair, she did have to leave for one
of her classes at the gym.
She said she felt kind of worn out from just sitting and watching, and when she did I realized
that I'm pretty worn out too.
Even though I work from home and spend a lot of time on the computer, I still try to make
sure I stay somewhat active, and I've definitely never sat on my ass for thirteen hours straight.
My eyes are kind of fuzzy and my brain feels just a little bit mushy, which is ironic because
we just spent the last four hours watching documentaries.
I didn't realize how many documentaries youtube has, and I love docs so it was a pleasant
surprise.
I also didn't realize just how wide a variety of docs they have- we watched one on the moon
landings and then another on the hunt for the giant squid.
For laughs we watched one on bigfoot and another on the Nazis.
We went from moon landings to giant squids to bigfoot to Nazis.
Wow Youtube, is there anything you DON'T have uploaded?
I am feeling pretty tired already though from just sitting here, so I think I need to energize
myself and I have just the idea.
With the girlfriend gone for a few hours I'm going to watch a bunch of old, really cheesy
music videos on full blast, and I mean super cheesy but energetic stuff like Barbie Girl
by Aqua.
That should wake me up.
Hour 15: Girlfriend came home and caught me singing along to Spice Girls songs at the
top of my lungs.
I don't have anything else to report other than my humiliation.
When she went to the kitchen and asked me what I wanted for dinner I blasted out the
opening to Spice Girl's Wannabe, belting out “Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really
really want!”
She stuck her head out of the kitchen and just glared at me.
Hour 20: Ok, things are getting a bit rough- but I don't think YouTube is to blame.
To be perfectly honest there is literally no end to the entertaining crap I've found
on youtube all these hours.
But sitting here on the couch and just watching tv is killing me.
Funny because I'm getting paid for it, and it's basically eight year old me's dream job.
My ass hurts from sitting though, and I've had to get up and pace around the living room
just to wake my legs up.
Honestly the biggest challenge here is not finding things to watch for 24 hours on youtube
that make the experience bearable, it's just physically watching for 24 hours.
I watched some redubbed old-school cartoons like Captain Planet, G.I.
Joe and Transformers, and almost busted a gut laughing.
Then I went back to watching some really obscure music videos, like really, really obscure
stuff and discovered hillbilly metal- yes, that is a thing and yes you should go watch
it immediately after this video because you won't regret it.
I also found Mongolian throat singers rapping, which is also pretty mindblowingly awesome.
If you don't know, Mongolian throat singers are men and women who sing directly from the
back of their throat and have really deep, scratchy melodies, and some younger mongolians
have learned to rap while singing in that style and it's the best thing I've ever heard.
Maybe even better than hillbilly metal.
Then for some reason I started watching a bunch of old Enrique Iglesias music videos.
Don't judge me, the girlfriend already has.
Hour 24: That's it, an entire day of watching youtube done.
I've watched everything from movie trailers to redubbed cartoons to the weirdest music
videos humanity has ever created, and there are some real headscratchers out there.
So what have I learned from this experience?
Well, the most obvious is that humans are weird.
Like, really, really weird.
I don't know how strange aliens will be when we finally meet them, but I have a very hard
time believing that any intelligent life we ever encounter is going to have an online
repository with literally millions of videos of people scaring their cats with cucumbers.
Or... their space-cats I guess.
I also confirmed though that you can in fact watch twenty four hours straight of youtube
and never, ever run out of content to keep you entertained.
I stand by my original position on owning cable- and if any of you do still own cable
subscriptions, why?
Cable is expensive and forces you to take packages with a ton of channels you don't
like, while the internet literally offers you whatever you want right up front, and
most of the time the only cost is your internet subscription.
Honestly the hardest part of this challenge was the physical element of it.
Not moving from the couch for twenty four hours is incredibly exhausting, more so than
just staying up.
I've worked over twenty four hours before on film sets and when hitting writing deadlines
or even my time in the military, but when you're just not doing anything, now that's
hard.
Even if you're being entertained with people failing in hilarious ways, cats being scared
with cucumbers, or very loudly watching embarrassing music videos you secretly love.
Honestly though, far as challenges go my brain feels fried but at least this one was entertaining.
I feel like you could watch youtube straight for a year and never get bored.
By the way, for my sake don't suggest that in the comments because I'm pretty sure The
Infographics Show will totally think that's an amazing challenge idea and immediately
make me do it.
So keep on suggesting they send me to Hawaii for a month, because it totally rocks that
you guys have my back!
All my suffering feels like it's not for nothing!
See you guys on the next challenge.
Think you could watch youtube for 24 hours straight?
What would you watch to spend the time- other than Infographics Show of course!
Let us know in the comments, and as usual if you enjoyed this video don't forget to
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