Why are Boring Youtube Videos Popular?

When you’re the stay-at-home parent of a 2 year old, you do a lot of things to keep your kid entertained — like watch Youtube videos.  In the course of searching for Elmo, Fireman Sam, and others, I’ve come across a lot of boring crap that has received literally millions of views.

Take for instance this one of a guy with a miniature excavator.  Boring!  But it has still received 2.7 million views:

Then there’s this pointless one of a woman going down a slip ‘n’ slide.  Over 3 million views:

Or how about this shaky-cam video of a horse walking along a fence?  Absolutely nothing happens.  As far as I can tell, it only received 1.7 million views because it’s titled RETARDED HORSE:

This astounds me. The popularity of reality television (a.k.a. the Parade of American Trash) at least makes sense because those shows are like pornography, except instead of titillating us with sex, they do so with stupidity. But these Youtube videos, of which I’ve given only a small sample, have nothing going for them whatsoever.

Some are no doubt getting repeat views from 2 year olds. Owen is a big fan of DOG vs. WATER BALLOONS, (3.6 million views).

I admit to some sour grapes here. The three cinematic trailers for Blood Born filmed last year were the product of months of hard work, and I think (in my thoroughly unbiased opinion) that their production values are a couple steps above the retarded mini-horse video. And yet only one of them has broken a thousand views so far. Maybe instead of giving them such stellar titles as “Blood Born Trailer #3,” I should’ve called them “Scary Monster.”