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Is youtube ruining the canals?


doratheexplorer

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I don't think anyone has got super-rich from canal vlogging but a small number have probably made a modest income for a few years and it's a bit enviable (if you don't mind talking on screen) to earn your living pottering about on the canals, making a video once a week, no boss, no ties etc.  It's no wonder lots of other boaters have tried their luck at the same thing.

 

I follow a few hiking/backpacking channels from around the world and again, it must be pretty sweet to earn a decent income from doing the thing you love.  Equally, only the best ones will be making much money from it.

 

I do notice the Foxes have a website selling merch and a patreon page with the top membership at £38.50 a month.  I wonder how many top members they have?  The patreon offers a private 20 minute video chat with the Foxes (the mind boggles what might be going on there, but I don't think they have an Only Fans page yet!).  This personalised experience does seem to draw people in very closely, which I think is what Dora was getting at when she started this thread.

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2 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Nonsense.

 

You are on a boat making episode 319 of your successful vlog when you think something dramatic and frightening is happening.  You also think it is directly the fault of the navigation authority.

 

Do you:

1) Try and stop the boat from (in your opinion) sinking,

2) Ignore the incident and immediately go and switch off the cameras that are filming the most important video you will ever shoot before doing anything about the boat, the water or the lock?

 

They have the footage, they just didn't publish it. 

 

In my opinion the footage either shows it was a complete non-issue, making the whole episode pure clickbait, or shows him being abusive to the lockie so they didn't want it out there damaging their brand.

 

If that film showed what they actually described (as talking heads to camera on their not sunk boat) it would have been far and away the most watched video they ever did, and probably exhibit 1 in the following court case seeking damages.

 

What I think is nonsense is to assume that they would suddenly decide to go full clickbait after generally not doing that in the previous 300 episodes.

I've no idea of the rights and wrongs of the situation. 

I am not a fan of arguing with or abusing CRT staff (who I generally have found so far to be very helpful). 

 

Their handling of the situation may have been wrong or right- that is not my point.

 

My point is that clickbait is knowingly using dramatic titles for boring videos.

The woman genuinely believed their boat to be in danger, and that is why they felt that a dramatic title was appropriate.

They may have been wrong about the danger, but their belief about it was sincere.

Thus, not clickbait.

Or nonsense. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Dave_P said:

I don't think anyone has got super-rich from canal vlogging but a small number have probably made a modest income for a few years and it's a bit enviable (if you don't mind talking on screen) to earn your living pottering about on the canals, making a video once a week, no boss, no ties etc.

 

 

My own limited experience of making videos for youtube is that is takes around an hour to edit about a minute of running time, and that's just a home-made video of me talking to my phone plus some stills inserted illustrating what I'm droning on about. And that's without any of the time spent planning the video or setting up/looking after the gear that the more professional vloggers use.

 

I reckon producing a half hour video to the standard of CTC once a week adds up to more or less a full time job. 

 

 

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14 minutes ago, Tony1 said:

I think their view was that there was a real risk of that 3 inches of water turning into 12 inches within the next few minutes, especially as they were rising very slowly.

Personally, I have no idea what the real risks were. Could their cratch really have flooded? 

Most boats have self-draining front well decks, so probably not much risk unless the drains were obstructed. Its a much bigger issue going downhill for most cruiser stern boats where much of the water would end up in the bilges.

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6 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

This was well discussed at the time the episode went out.

 

Although I subscribe to their you tube channel and generally like their vid's I do think this was a classic case of over 'egging the pudding' and over dramatisation for the purpose of generating views from the thumbnail.

 

It was a bit out of character.

 

For me, the thing to bear in mind is that it was out of character for them to use a clickbait title.

They seem to generally avoid doing that, so why take one opportunity in 300 videos to do so?

As you said, posting misleadingly-dramatic titles seemed out of character for them- and so my assumption is that they did it this time because they felt the risk was real. 

My personal view is that the woman's assessment of the risk was incorrect, but my point was that although she may have been incorrect, the title was a genuine reflection of her feelings about it.

 

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1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

 

My own limited experience of making videos for youtube is that is takes around an hour to edit about a minute of running time, and that's just a home-made video of me talking to my phone plus some stills inserted illustrating what I'm droning on about. And that's without any of the time spent planning the video or setting up/looking after the gear that the more professional vloggers use.

 

I reckon producing a half hour video to the standard of CTC once a week adds up to more or less a full time job. 

 

 

Having previously worked for BBC TV I can confirm that editing can be pretty time consuming, but I suspect CTC has a decent set up and his vlogs are typically long-take talking head type things which don't take that long to edit.

 

CTC's videos are typically about 15 minutes long and I'd guess they take about 5-8 hours to edit each one.  Add the filming time on and you're looking at one longish day's work a week.  But then he has to interact with his fans, run his website, attend boat shows etc, so it will add up to a bit.  It's still an attractive life option for those looking to escape the rat-race.

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5 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Most boats have self-draining front well decks, so probably not much risk unless the drains were obstructed. Its a much bigger issue going downhill for most cruiser stern boats where much of the water would end up in the bilges.

 

They did touch on this in the video- she said that the drain holes were clear and were working, but the rate of entry of water was outpacing the rate of drainage- it had reached 3 inches deep in a few minutes, and she felt it could flood the well deck completely in another 5-10 minutes. 

It's hard to share her assessment of the risk when you see the footage of the spurting water, but who knows. 

 

Edited by Tony1
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1 hour ago, Tony1 said:

I may have to start my own channel. It seems the only way I am going to convince the big wigs at CRT that I am in fact a VIB (very important boater), and so I should have a dedicated team of lockies assigned to assist my passage through each lock flight. 

My last email was to ask that my licence should be amended to display the phrase "VIB- very important boater", but I was again refused. 

Its just a red tape thing, I'm sure.

Come and do the River Weaver, you'll get a pair of lockies follow you round in a CRT van!

 

I did meet an actual VIB (complete with proper TV film crew) at the top of Foxton who was getting increasingly worried that the number of boats coming in the direction meant that she wasn't going to get the amount of filming time down at the bottom she'd called CRT in advance to arrange. Sounds like a hassle I can do without ;)

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18 minutes ago, Tony1 said:

 

They did touch on this in the video- she said that the drain holes were clear and were working, but the rate of entry of water was outpacing the rate of drainage- it had reached 3 inches deep in a few minutes, and she felt it could flood the well deck completely in another 5-10 minutes. 

It's hard to share her assessment of the risk when you see the footage of the spurting water, but who knows. 

 

 

 

Did they have the front doors open at the time perhaps? This would have dramatically altered her perception of the danger to the bote. 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

Did they have the front doors open at the time perhaps? This would have dramatically altered her perception of the danger to the bote. 

 

 

 

We shall never know, since the lady said she put down the camera the moment she saw the depth of water in the cratch and she began to panic...

But I doubt it- they've cruised every navigable mile of English canal (and thus every single lock) in their 3 year journey, so they're not newbies, and they've probably been in quite a few hairy-ish situations over those years.

 

But then we all make mistakes, so who knows...

Certainly it could explain the panic if the bow doors were open. But some people look at the same situation as me, and they see different risks, or lesser risks (or indeed greater risks) than I see myself. 

I have to say, they've never seemed to shied away from making their daft mistakes public before, so it seems odd that they would do that for this one  video. 

I think it kind of boils down to whether you think they are honest people or not, and my own view is that they do seem to be honest.

 

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30 minutes ago, Tony1 said:

 

They did touch on this in the video- she said that the drain holes were clear and were working, but the rate of entry of water was outpacing the rate of drainage- it had reached 3 inches deep in a few minutes, and she felt it could flood the well deck completely in another 5-10 minutes. 

It's hard to share her assessment of the risk when you see the footage of the spurting water, but who knows. 

 

 

As I said she was over egging it.

 

And I think she got in a bit of strop because the locky allegedly suggested if they had a cratch cover fitted it wouldn't have been so bad.

1 minute ago, Tony1 said:

 

I think it kind of boils down to whether you think they are honest people or not, and my own view is that they do seem to be honest.

 

 

Same here but being unnecessarily concerned is a different issue. Which from memory was the point most made last time this vid. was discussed.

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30 minutes ago, Tony1 said:

For me, the thing to bear in mind is that it was out of character for them to use a clickbait title.

They seem to generally avoid doing that, so why take one opportunity in 300 videos to do so?

As you said, posting misleadingly-dramatic titles seemed out of character for them- and so my assumption is that they did it this time because they felt the risk was real. 

 

Top ten minimal list videos sorted by popularity (views):

 

  1. 216 - Narrowboating in a Rush leads to Lock Rage! - 140K views
  2. 021 - What happens when you moor next to a very leaky lock? - 84K views
  3. 001 - Day One on our Narrowboat - 67K views
  4. 315 - The Day Everything Went Wrong - 58K views
  5. 390 - Part 1 - We Took Our Narrowboat Out To Sea || Crossing The Wash - 46K views
  6. 402 - They Tried to Board our Boat - 42K views
  7. 370 - We Gave Up Continuous Cruising for Marina Life - 38K views
  8. 382 - Getting into Trouble Off The Beaten Track! - 37K views
  9. 008 - UNDER FIRE ON THE BASINGSTOKE CANAL - 34K views
  10. 377 - Speedy Boats leads to River Rage on the Tidal Trent - 33K views

I'll give them a free pass on "001 - Day One on our Narrowboat" as many new viewers would go and watch the first episode on a channel.  

 

The bottom half of their (mostly not clickbait titled) videos seem to get around 13K - 14K views, so a sufficiently exciting title seems to boost viewings between 3 and 10 times.

 

It seems a good (Clickbait!) title is key for good viewing numbers.  It doesn't surprise me, all the mass media do exactly the same.

 

 

 

 

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20 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Top ten minimal list videos sorted by popularity (views):

 

  1. 216 - Narrowboating in a Rush leads to Lock Rage! - 140K views
  2. 021 - What happens when you moor next to a very leaky lock? - 84K views
  3. 001 - Day One on our Narrowboat - 67K views
  4. 315 - The Day Everything Went Wrong - 58K views
  5. 390 - Part 1 - We Took Our Narrowboat Out To Sea || Crossing The Wash - 46K views
  6. 402 - They Tried to Board our Boat - 42K views
  7. 370 - We Gave Up Continuous Cruising for Marina Life - 38K views
  8. 382 - Getting into Trouble Off The Beaten Track! - 37K views
  9. 008 - UNDER FIRE ON THE BASINGSTOKE CANAL - 34K views
  10. 377 - Speedy Boats leads to River Rage on the Tidal Trent - 33K views

I'll give them a free pass on "001 - Day One on our Narrowboat" as many new viewers would go and watch the first episode on a channel.  

 

The bottom half of their (mostly not clickbait titled) videos seem to get around 13K - 14K views, so a sufficiently exciting title seems to boost viewings between 3 and 10 times.

 

It seems a good (Clickbait!) title is key for good viewing numbers.  It doesn't surprise me, all the mass media do exactly the same.

 

 

To be fair, my take on it is that they generally avoid clickbait, not that they avoid it completely. 

 

And in fairness to them, the events in some of those videos do include some real-life drama, so the dramatic titles are to an extent justified, and are not misleading. If something is genuinely dramatic, is it clickbait to give it a dramatic title? I would say not. 

 

The one I think is pure clickbait is no 7 and 9. I watched 7 myself, and they were spending a day or two in a marina. So yes, you do make a fair point here, and they are clearly not totally averse to falsely dramatic titles, although I personally can forgive that, because they don't do that too often. 

 

So were they being  dishonest about the seriousness of the risk, and did they use that title purely to gain views? 

Or did they think their boat was in danger of sinking, and so they felt the dramatic title to be justified?

 

Personally I think they were being honest. They could be very good actors of course, and purely financially motivated.

But after watching so much of them, my personal view is they are two decent, honest and fairly ordinary people, who keep it pretty real, and have shown no tendency to be misleading in anything else I've seen of them. 

 

I agree with you that they over-reacted, but I dont think they saw the incident as a financial opportunity to put out a dramatic video.  

But maybe I'm too willing to see the positive in people, and am not alive enough to the more cynical motives they might have?

 

For the answer, you'll have to wait until I publish volume one of my forthcoming epic: "My Life and Death Struggles on CWDF- Can I Survive This?".

 

 

 

Edited by Tony1
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My take on the Minimalist Bingley video was after the event what they were most concerned about the way the local lockies behaved, being very dismissive about the level of danger involved.

 

I have had an incident not at Bingley but in one of the triple staircases (Newlay or Forge) where the water into the welldeck was too much for the drain holes and the water just reached the bottom of the ventilation holes into the cabin. It also found its way into the bilge via a dodgy seal around the water tank filler. I was mopping water out of the cabin bilge for a couple of days as it gradually worked back. Those locks on the L&L can deposit huge amounts of water onto the welldeck when tbey are a bit leaky. In my instance I was trying to stay away from a grp speedboat that was sharing the locks with us (a whole other story).

  • Greenie 1
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When j watched the video when it was discussed on here before I reckoned the whole thing would have been avoided if he, the steerer had been paying attention to what he was doing instead of laughing and joking with the guy on the other boat . He would then have noticed the top gates were leaking and kept his boat back out if the way and water would not have hit his boat. Many on here at the time said how experienced they were and how none of it was their own fault. To my mind how he brought his boat into the lock indicated a level of " I know what it is all about " rather than experience. You can boat for years and still show little sign of being experienced. I don't dispute that she panicked when she thought the boat would sink but they certainly blamed the wrong culprits in the video.

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15 minutes ago, haggis said:

When j watched the video when it was discussed on here before I reckoned the whole thing would have been avoided if he, the steerer had been paying attention to what he was doing instead of laughing and joking with the guy on the other boat . He would then have noticed the top gates were leaking and kept his boat back out if the way and water would not have hit his boat. Many on here at the time said how experienced they were and how none of it was their own fault. To my mind how he brought his boat into the lock indicated a level of " I know what it is all about " rather than experience. You can boat for years and still show little sign of being experienced. I don't dispute that she panicked when she thought the boat would sink but they certainly blamed the wrong culprits in the video.

 

We can all have a bad day and things can go wonky - it happens.

 

I think that less faffing with cameras in the first place would probably have avoided this incident completely.

 

I also think that it was probably reasonable for Jo to stop filming from the lockside and go and do some paddles (she would need her hands free to do this.) It was very odd that Michael was allegedly more interested in stopping the boat cameras than in getting the boat out of the jet of water.

 

I'll take @Tony1's point that he doesn't think they are as bad as some vloggers with clickbait titles, but that only leaves me thinking that the boatcam caught a conversation they weren't very proud of as an alternative.

 

The most impressive water-related issue I have ever seen in L&L staircases was on Dobson not Bingley.  The boat I was sharing with - experienced boaters both - carefully checked their cratch cover and bow doors were correctly closed before setting off.

 

Straight into the bottom chamber, nose against the cill to tuck behind the other gate as you do with a longer boat and a large jet of water from the gates hit the roof of their boat just aft of the cratch.  They had solid edge rails rather than open bar handrails, so a few seconds later a sheet of water measuring about 5 feet wide by 2 or three inches deep started shooting off the aft cabin roof, going into the boat down the hatch and also flooding the cruiser stern quite spectacularly.

 

He quite correctly leapt forwards and pulled the slide closed to stop all the water going down into the boat then reversed out of the lock to get away from the water.  Then he went and changed his trousers ( No, not that! -  because they were soaked in canal water. ;) )

 

 

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5 hours ago, Tony1 said:

 

I do enjoy the Minimal List videos on the whole, especially because they impart a sense of the reality of living aboard, warts and all, and they dont go in for all that clickbait garbage that I absolutely hate

  We must of watched different Vlogs, as the YouTube Vlogs of theirs I’ve watched and skipped through show nothing about the reality of living on a Narrowboat in real life. Their Vlogs seam all about them and the one’s I watched while they have been around my area, gave very little information that would be useful to boaters visiting the area. I would rather watch Vlogs that are informative about the canals, the area’s history and informative to visiting boaters.

 The Vlogger I quite enjoy at the minute is Robbie and his BBC Canal Travels.

Edited by PD1964
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6 hours ago, Tony1 said:

Cruising The Cut mentioned earnings in one of his videos and was quite dismissive about it, calling it 'pocket money' if I recall correctly,

 

He certainly did, but that was quite a while ago, probably when he had around 50,000 subscribers. He's got over 200,000 subscribers now and reading between the lines I think his Youtube channel now earns him enough money to have a reasonable living. However it's taken him 6 years of producing regular, quality content to get there and it is quite a lot of work, not just making the videos but I think he mentioned he spends a couple of hours every day just replying to and moderating comments on his videos and social media. 

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5 hours ago, booke23 said:

 

He certainly did, but that was quite a while ago, probably when he had around 50,000 subscribers. He's got over 200,000 subscribers now and reading between the lines I think his Youtube channel now earns him enough money to have a reasonable living. However it's taken him 6 years of producing regular, quality content to get there and it is quite a lot of work, not just making the videos but I think he mentioned he spends a couple of hours every day just replying to and moderating comments on his videos and social media. 

 

 

He used to moor opposite me and ISTR him telling me he is a TV editor by profession, so when youtube came along he was 90% of the way there already. 

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11 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

He used to moor opposite me and ISTR him telling me he is a TV editor by profession, so when youtube came along he was 90% of the way there already. 

 

Yes, in fact he was an ITV local tv news journalist, so a complete pro at making videos!

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6 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

Yes, in fact he was an ITV local tv news journalist, so a complete pro at making videos!

 

Correct.

 

And here he is in action.

 

 

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