I have a confession to make.
I am a YouTube junkie.
While I look at all kinds of videos running the gamut from New Hampshire stuff to cat videos to military news to the goings on in China to the history of World War II to the relationships between men and women, there are videos covering two particular subjects I like watching above all the others, those being dashcam and reaction videos.
If nothing else I like dashcam videos because the show us just how clueless, idiotic, dangerous, lucky, or good some drivers can be. Some of the incidents are not much more than fender-benders. Some have me wondering how anyone survived some of the worst accidents depicted. Yet others have me shaking my head when road rage incidents take place for no reason I can figure. And yet others have me scratching my head wondering how so many accidents take place at certain intersections.Two intersections in particular make it onto YouTube constantly, one on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast.
The East Coast intersection is in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a webcam located at 783 Meeting Street pointed at an intersection next to that address that shows accident after accident after accident. Two side streets have stop signs while the main road – Meeting Street – does not. Vehicles constantly run the stop signs on the side streets and are either hit by vehicles on Meeting Street, or they hit vehicles on Meeting Street. Sometimes there are multiple collisions at the same time. But as many accidents that take place there, the West Coast intersection has even more accidents.
The West Coast intersection is in Fresno, California where Friant Street and Shephard Avenue meet. It is a tee intersection with Shephard being the side street and Friant being the main drag. What makes this more ‘interesting’ is that there is a traffic light at that intersection and people on Friant Street moving away from the webcam run the red light there with regularity. You will see that sometimes the videos from that webcam are labeled as “Friant Roulette”, an apt title. For the life of me I can’t figure out why motorists run that red light constantly. I haven’t seen any of the vehicles approaching the webcam in the other direction ever run the red light. I haven’t seen any videos showing vehicles on Shephard running that red light. (Yes, it could be that they do take place, but with nowhere the frequency we see in the ‘dangerous’ direction.) While there have been only 42 collisions on record between 2020 and 2024, I have seen dozens of accidents well above that number showing up on YouTube.
The reaction videos cover both music and movie clips. I admit that I really enjoy music reaction videos when Gen Z and Millennials listen to music or watch music videos of songs from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Probably the biggest reactions I see are when they react to music from Pink Floyd, ELO, Queen, and Boston. More than a few have made the observation that their own music sucks. Then again, back then there was no auto-tune, artists had to be good, and synthesizers either didn’t exist or were in their infancy. They are amazed at how good the music was back then.
The movie clip reactions are also fun, seeing people react to scenes from movies they have never seen or watched years ago but barely remember. I think some of the most popular movie clip reactions I’ve been seeing recently come from Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, SpaceBalls, John Wick, The Avengers, Thor, the Jack Reacher movies and TV series, and Ghost Rider.
I also like some of the so-called HFY stories (HFY = Humans, F*ck Yeah) where humans are feared not because they’re an evil race, but because they come from a Death World (a world where everything is trying to kill them – the weather, the flora, the fauna, bacteria, viruses, earthquakes, floods, and other humans) and survive things that would kill alien races. They are also very good at war.
One other thing that has been popping up on YouTube are AI generated videos showing Chuck Norris showing up in all kinds of other movies. Some of them are quite good.
I could go on and on ad nauseum, but I think you get the idea.
Frankly, I am more entertained by some of the YouTube videos than anything I see on TV.
