# random (deleted) zero views youtube movie a carefully edited compilation of youtube videos with zero videos viewed over an hour on 'obscuretube' the result is a (somewhat dry) little slice of media archive ecology unreality status: underway the video once existed but is now deleted; it mostly consisted of american realty videos of empty properties to sell an elephant being washed and some other vague american highway stuff // insert missing video snapshot here file name: random zero views youtube movie-robert-what.mp4 file size: 215 mb file type: mp4 duration: 0:51:26 image width: 853 image height: 480 compressor name: lavc61.19.101 libx264 bit depth: 24 pixel aspect ratio: 4:3 audio channels: 1 audio bits per sample: 16 audio sample rate: 48000 artist: various encoder: lavf61.7.100 genre: science fiction avg bitrate: 549 kbps the mere idea that youtube videos exist with zero views often expresses a common form of digital melancholy - a silent moment in an _apparently_ busy crowded (and cosmically indifferent) digital universe where 20 million or more videos can be uploaded daily - though admittedly most of these are entirely pointless and not worthy of anyone's time (or the effort needed to create and upload them) the particular sadness of the reality of this unique experience directly reflects the substantial weight of undiscovered effort many so-called 'content creators' experience - a void of investment a zero-view video can take hours days or even weeks of planning scripting filming and editing. for such efforts to then receive no views or validation feels dishearteningly empty the frustration felt over zero views feels akin to being blocked or 'socially shadow-banned' by the internet. even the systematically inhuman algorithms actually running the whole shit-show have not pushed the video to anyone many artists feel a personal loss moving through denial - "i'll just wait for it to pick up" - anger - "why did i bust my arts making this video when some vile ai techbro munt squatting down on his brand new apple laptop to casually pinch off 50 videos a day about some jacked cat having bullshit adventures gets paid like a mother" - to bargaining "perhaps i should just buy fake bot views to give it a boost" - depression "flock this for a laugh i should just spread my dirty goatse on onlyfans andor become a far alt right negative influencer expressing disputable views to get that hot ragebait click ad revenue" and finally acceptance - to one's stupidevil capitalist lizard overlords it's never not just data it's always personal just data: human designed computers and ir software reacting to metadata and packaging content - a direct judgment of the creator's worth to that system the idea that the only way out is to 'keep creating' improving and focusing on creating a library of content' is also bullshit; zero views is often a permanent state - a snapshot of artists in the forever challenging stages of trying to break through the digital white noise of 'the house always wins' and 'the rich get richer' aka the power law distribution (ie. the law is 'power over those less weak') the notion of some odd immaterial nonthing which tentatively 'exists' for no reason is - actually i don't know what it means probably something to do with ancient near-future alien anthropologists passing through our dimension and discovering an undead network of cosmically useless videos - countless thousands of hours of footage stored in massive environment-destroying data centers perhaps they figure that such an unnecessary default excess is itself capitalism - the fact that nothing spiritual emerges within _even as we_ become aware of the material inertia and bare dead dysfunctional presence of infinite useless objects which surround us like a vast library of borderline nonsense; stories which go nowhere - shaggy dog tales without beginning or end incidentally watching these videos is akin to being stuck at an east german railway station - idly watching videos on one's crappy mobile phone - perhaps unconsciously pondering one's worldly material decay - the melancholic litany of failed decisions we demanded of ourselves to never quite escape from our all-too ordinary lives of terminally boring repetitiveness a desperately tiresome and glacial existential inertia such psychologically mute largely meaningless videos express the dull flat factual dryness of existence under modern life persisting beyond immediate symbolic meaning - a traumatic and dysfunctional residue akin to junked luxury cars or long abandoned factories once making plastic rubbish to be brought off ebay and hoarded - the packages not even opened - that (in zizekian terms) actively _reinforces_ the fantasy of smooth purposeful reality and acts as a convenient diversion and forever-delaying bulwark against confrontation with the void of the real - the lack that drives human desire for (seemingly) authentic and 'dramatic' video content in this paradoxical sense such videos are dangerous and are to be avoided so it's probably just as well i deleted it; i even tried making a snapshot of one of it's frames but then couldn't find it - i took this as the universe giving me that head-nodding "it's ok just let it go" look // republic of bob