ENTERTAIN ME
For someone who earns their crust predominantly as a print magazine editor, it might sound funny to some that I love the internet. While, yes, it has changed the media landscape forever, and by no means not all for the good, there is no denying that YouTube and suchlike are giving us freedom we never thought possible.
As a kid, I remember having only two TV channels, then later a third, and then a fourth. You were at the mercy of the programme director, and I tell you I can attest to watching some junk in my time. Fast forward 20-odd years and we are in a unique time in which the internet — namely, YouTube — has become the channel of choice in many households, including my own. We haven’t had an aerial for about eight years now, and I couldn’t tell you how Chris Warner is doing.
Time is scarce, so if I’m going to zone out to television it damn well will be something of interest to me, and that’s where YouTube comes in. It’s a channel shaped specifically to my viewing habits and, while the algorithms do suck at times, I never fail to find something worth my viewing eyes. You name it, you can find someone passionately busting arse making content about it. I guess a lot of the vlogging stuff reminds me of a younger self when I was busting arse night after night to create my old self-funded website. While none of it is as polished as the big TV stuff, that really doesn’t bother me, or the millions watching alongside from the comfort of their home.
My toddler will happily sit there and watch kids playing with toys, unboxing them, or, hell, even ordering them. Then I’ll jump on and watch some guy in his home garage with a potato camera rebuilding his engine, or some vintage doco from the ’80s or ’90s that you can barely make out any definition on but it’s a damn sight better than that reality TV BS!
Big-funded content from well-established brands, small-time Joe with a phone in his hand, and everything in between, what I do think is missing is New Zealand–produced content. I get that we as Kiwis are not exactly the best at talking about ourselves — unlike our American counterparts — but we do a bunch of cool stuff down here, and we should not let those pesky Americans think that they rule the automotive sphere.
We are on the cusp of a revolution, similar to the one that happened with websites and print many years ago, but this one is with television. Many Americans are now earning good wages to do nothing but film themselves playing with and building cars. So who out there is brave enough to pick up a camera and share their automotive journey with the world? Go on, pick up the camera, hit record, and entertain me!