I had to push the pause button on a You Tube channel this morning, despite liking the content. I just couldn't stand the style. It was supposed to be a roundtable conversation between three people. But one guy got control over the microphone and just wouldn't shut up. Why did the moderator not shut him down?
Time after time, on You Tube, you see people who need to hire a communications coach.
It doesn't end with podium-hogs. There are too many people speaking heavily accented English. It requires too much effort and concentration on my part to listen to them. If I wanted to put out that much work, I would read something, rather than watch a video.
You Tubers need to ask themselves whether they are even using the right medium. Or if they have chosen video as their medium, how they should adjust their style to fit the medium.
Another thing that will cause me to turn the video off is people who speak written-English instead of speaking spoken-English. Lawyers and professors are particularly bad at this. Don't people understand that a spoken language is quite different from its written form? In particular, when somebody speaks with convoluted sentences and parenthetical clauses, they are in the wrong medium.
I am not averse to foreign accents. They can even be charming. But it is hard to put up with non-rhotic English. Aunt Louisa vacationed in Cuba, and parked her car far from the war monument, comes out as "Aunt Louiser vacationed in Cuber, and pahked hooh cah fah from the wooh monument." It drives me crazy.
What is happening these days on You Tube is reminiscent of the classic movie "Singing in the Rain," when Hollywood was adjusting from the silent movie era to the talkies.
So far I have been discussing people who don't understand the video medium. Let's talk about somebody who does. Gonzalo Lira is somebody other You Tubers should watch and emulate (with the exception of his smoking.)
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