YouTube as a Platform
YouTube is a pretty basic platform. You want to watch a video? Just click on it and it’ll only stop you for buffering, ads, and maybe the occasional age restriction block (but you can lie and get through those easy). Want to upload a video? Just click the upload button, drag your file onto the screen, add a name, save changes, and wait for it to process. It'll only take 3 minutes to 3 days depending on your length and wifi speed. Don't worry about doing anything else on Internet until it's done. Using YouTube professionally though, even if not as a full time job, you start to see things get a little complicated, but I'm positive you can handle it. You have to plan around high watch times, keep a gauge on audience’s interest, make sure your thumbnails are looking good, etc. etc. That's not really important information when you can just create thumbnails like the one above and just ignore any kind of quality what so ever.
YouTube runs with some pretty basic systems. You have your likes and dislikes rating system, which you can use without ever having to attach your username, so there's no responsibility or guilt for ruining small 'Tubers' days for no real reason other than you don't agree with their opinions. These can be turned off by the video’s owner but only if they turn both likes and dislikes off. Because who wants to hear anyone else's opinions, right? Next you have the notorious comments section, which the channel owner can filter with certain blacklisted phrases, or turn off the comments section all together. You don’t see either of these very often unless someone managed to irritate a lot of people. Because who likes opinions?
Coupled with how many views though, likes, dislikes, and comments are the basis for YouTube’s searchability algorithms. Logically, the more of these you have on your video, the higher you will show up on a search page--supposing you remembered to tag your video, at least. Because while the title of your video does count as a tag, so do all the additional tags you can add to your video. So be sure to add loads of irrelevant tags to your video so that everyone can find it. This can make it very easy to produce clickbait, but that's just means more views and that's a good thing. But, also remember, people like to see drama, so videos with lots of dislikes also have a higher chance of having more views, making them show up higher on a search list as well. So be sure to cause lots of drama with other channels for absolutely no logical reason at all.
See a comment you don’t like or an offensive video? Don’t worry. You can just click that report button and fill out the "real" reasons there was an issue with this video. Your personal feelings and opinions are totally a good reason to get offended too at absolutely anything, and there's no need bothering to take in anyone else's experiences. Oh, you don’t know what the rules are because the Terms and Conditions weren’t very clear? Don’t worry! You can just shout in the comments section in all caps and with bad punctuation, spamming the dislike button over and over (as if it does something) and submitting false claims by flagging the video and channel.
What’s flagging? Flagging is what YouTube calls reporting because of the little flag icon marking it. Don’t worry about having actual claims to submit, because flagging is entirely anonymous. You can use flagging to do anything from reporting something really offensive and against the rules to submitting a copyright strike against a channel that you don’t own any of the copyright for.
What if someone flags one of your videos, though? Oh, don’t worry. YouTube works around the clock, having totally real, relatable, and understanding robots process all copyright claims. They’ll weed out all the fake reports for sure. If a claim does hit your account, don’t worry, your account has three strikes to prevent someone from ever taking down your account on false claims. But don’t even try attempting to get that flag removed, because you’ll lose a lot of time and money and reputation and probably won’t get anywhere. To make doubly sure that you’re being a great person, though, YouTube has a super smart computer that makes sure all the content you’re showing falls under fair use and doesn’t belong to anyone. If it catches something, it’ll just handle things all by itself and turn off access to other countries or monetizing, so you don’t even need to worry about mentioning if you have any special permissions from the owners, own the content, or are under Fair Use.
Oh, monetizing, the best part about YouTube. Want to get rich quick? Have a webcam and a microphone? You’re all set! Just get yourself 100 subscribers and you can turn monetizing on on any videos you own all the content to or have permission to you. When someone watches those annoying ads at the start of your videos, or if they pay for ads to be skipped with YouTube Red, you get a 45% cut out of that advertising with YouTube! Awesome! That’s about .0001 cent or less for one view! But don’t forget to turn your adblock on when you go watch another channel, because who has time for that. Markiplier doesn’t need another ~.0001 cent. You’ll be rolling in it in no time.
And that’s YouTube as a platform. Here's a look at how far YouTube has come to let you bask in the YouTuber fame.
"History of YouTube." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d.