Sep 30, 2016There is, to an extent unparalleled in history, the promise that anyone, anywhere in the world, without cost or travel or the embarrassment of public failure, can learn just about anything. Some take it too far.
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Instruction Videos Are Why the Internet Was Invented
- After a breakup, a writer turns to wikiHow, a network of self-help spawning a community of anonymous care. Updated Sep 30, 2016 ago
- The case for the instructional video's place in the catalog of human knowledge is strong.
- The self-help video genre got its start with moralizing films in the '50s—thanks to liberals.
Sep 30, 2016If you needed a really explicit reason to believe that humanity is embarrassing, wikiHow formalizes it in a judgment-free zone.
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The Catalog of Human Knowledge
"Now that YouTube is 10 years old, it's clear that video tutorials are among its most valuable—if sometimes mundane—contributions."
The case for the instructional video's place in the catalog of human knowledge is strong. The most famous tutorials, like the Khan Academy math videos, attract millions in venture capital money and aspire to replace the university.
Modern instructional and self-help videos have origins in a wave of sententious, moralizing films from the 1950s. Strangely, to our ears, these weren't produced by conservative cultural warriors but by liberal Hollywood types who wanted to instill a public ethic beyond the family.
How to Get a YouTube Slave
YouTube doesn't do enough to find harmful instructional videos and delete them. As of now, you, too, can learn on YouTube how to make thousands of dollars off "slave" users hacked to stream their lives on webcam.
Alan Resnick is the batshit Baltimore genius behind Adult Swim's contribution to the instructional genre with "Live Forever As You Are Now," which parodies the credulous TEDxAnything attitude plaguing the tech industry.
But his most meta exploration of the concept is really in the serial Alantutorial project, where a series of bewildering events beset a man incapable of processing the world around him except by producing a constant stream of instructional YouTube videos about his nonsensical daily challenges.
Sep 30, 2016When Julius Yego couldn't find a javelin coach he turned to the internet to find one, and he did—YouTube.
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The How-to Video Was How Most Indians Discovered TV
In the '70s, Indira Gandhi's government conducted a massive social project called the "Satellite Instructional Television Experiment," installing community televisions in villages that sometimes barely had a car battery to power them with.
It was a more forward-thinking plan than even Gandhi could see: "The state was the one to detonate the information bomb of the 1980s, but it couldn’t control the force of the explosion or see past the smoke of its own grand plans."
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The Editors' Longreads Picks
- An excellent essay on poverty and writing by Starr Davis. Updated May 31, 2022
- Novelist Héctor Tobar tries to understand the 1992 Los Angeles riots through the experiences of a single high school.
- Steven Johnson with a long assessment of the current state of A.I. and language. (The illusion has gotten very good.)
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Welcome to The Morning News Tournament of Books, 2017 edition.
- Our championship match is decided in the Tournament of Books, with news of a Rooster surprise debuting this summer. Updated Mar 31, 2017
- In Thursday's action, Reyhan Harmanci sets up a colossal final.
- The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad.
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Все ваши Белый дом принадлежит нам.
- "Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?" Updated Mar 3, 2017
- Wilbur Ross just wanted to make some money in ethically gray areas (that should've prevented him from taking office).
- Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman can't help but continue to lie.
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The oceans are under assault, and not just from the White House and friends.
- Trump's assault on the environment begins with American headwaters. Updated Mar 1, 2017
- Don't just blame the oil companies for destroying the oceans—blame sushi restaurants.
- Nothing escapes the deepest trenches of the ocean floor. Not light, not nutrients, not pollutants.
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