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Is youtube ruining the canals?


doratheexplorer

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2 hours ago, Tony1 said:

 

Can I just say- as a card-carrying old fogey myself- I never read the Sunday papers. 

A morning spent watching hilarious cat videos is much more fun, and I daresay more informative about current affairs.

 

As the guy who printed the "old fogey" cards, I'll raise your Sunday newspapers and say I never read  any newspapers and never have.

 

I discovered, in my youth, that I have an allergy to printers ink and have never been able to fix it.

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39 minutes ago, David Mack said:

When buying online I make a habit of sorting the reviews from bad to good. Looking at the bad reviews gives a much better idea of whether other people's problems have been with the product or the customer service, and whether their issues are likely to affect my planned use of the product.

That's bad for a host of different reasons.  You'll pick up:

 

1.  Mad people who just hate everything.

2. Stupid people who can't work out how to use the product.

3.  People with a grudge against the company.

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YouTube is a mixed blessing. Its great to learn new skills or see 'how its done', but I think far too many people live their life through someone else doing stuff and never actually do it themselves.... I know i'm guilty of watching these!

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59 minutes ago, David Mack said:

There's a whole genre of unboxing videos on YouTube. People even make a living out of filming themselves unpacking things and commenting on them! What surprises me is the number of people who have the time to watch all this stuff.

It's like everything on the web, including us. Almost addictive to click on something else, mostly to avoid working.

But if anyone doesn't know by now not to trust anything they read on the net without verification or knowledge of the source, they really are idiots. What happens is they look for reinforcement of preconceived ideas, and that's not really any different from any other research...

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1 hour ago, David Mack said:

There's a whole genre of unboxing videos on YouTube. People even make a living out of filming themselves unpacking things and commenting on them! What surprises me is the number of people who have the time to watch all this stuff.

Yes it take me long enough to read whats posted here in a day

 

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20 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

My insight came from Pru and Tim doing the first full passage of the K&A after the QM opened it. Then I hired and it rained 5 days out of 6, hired 3 more times and spent 8 years with a share boat

 

My introduction was when I fell in lust with a girl back in 1973. She was a mixed venture scout, so I joined the unit in order to see more of her. At my first meeting they wanted to know how many people would sign up for a summer holiday on a camping canal boat. She put her hand up, so I did to.

 

By the time the holiday came the romance was well and truly over but I wasn't going to lose my deposit.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite drinking limitations imposed by the scout leaders, so organised another camping boat holiday the next year for me and like minded friends. Steering a 70 foot working boat was my first experience of a canal boat.

 

Then I hired frequently until 1992 when I got into shareboating, before finally buying my own boat when I retired in 2014.

 

What is missing today is the equivalent of the camping boats, which must have introduced thousands of young people to the canals for very little cost. I guess YouTube is serving the same purpose but vicariously.

Edited by cuthound
Spillung
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5 minutes ago, Stilllearning said:

What , pray, is a jackery unit?

Having owned a camping car for over ten years without hearing the phrase, should I care?

 

It's basically a 200w inverter with a built in rechargeable battery. It has a 12v and USB output too. They were/are all over the vanlife/boaters YouTube channels a while ago, as Jackery gave free samples to them all to 'review'.   

 

 

71BKdm4FihS._AC_SL1500_.jpg

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6 minutes ago, cuthound said:

What is missing today is the equivalent of the camping boats, which must have introduced thousands of young people to the canals for very little cost.

 

Yes they totally fell out of fashion a long time ago......a bit like hotel rooms with just a sink and no toilet.  

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1 hour ago, Tony1 said:

 

I've started using a chrome add-on application called Fakespot, that works on pages like Amazon and ebay, and claims to be able to identify the untrustworthy reviews.

 

 

 

Did you install it on the strength of the reviews? 🧐

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7 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

Yes they totally fell out of fashion a long time ago......a bit like hotel rooms with just a sink and no toilet.  

 

I know that but the point is that hiring a modern boat costs more than many young people can afford.

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12 minutes ago, Bacchus said:

 

Did you install it on the strength of the reviews? 🧐

 

No, of course not. I'm not gullible enough to believe everything I read on the internet.

What happened was that Lord Google of Nigeria himself recommended it.

It would have been madness not to install it. 

 

Edited by Tony1
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19 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

It's basically a 200w inverter with a built in rechargeable battery. It has a 12v and USB output too. They were/are all over the vanlife/boaters YouTube channels a while ago, as Jackery gave free samples to them all to 'review'.   

 

 

71BKdm4FihS._AC_SL1500_.jpg

Ah, one of those! We keep thinking about getting one, but first on the list is getting solar power fitted this spring.

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2 hours ago, David Mack said:

There's a whole genre of unboxing videos on YouTube. People even make a living out of filming themselves unpacking things and commenting on them! What surprises me is the number of people who have the time to watch all this stuff.

 

That probably explains why some boats move so infrequently... 😅🤣 

Edited by cuthound
To put in bold the bit of the quoted post I wanted to comment on.
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2 hours ago, Tony1 said:

 

I've started using a chrome add-on application called Fakespot, that works on pages like Amazon and ebay, and claims to be able to identify the untrustworthy reviews.

 

 

 

Does it work for the news? 🤔😂😅

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3 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

Does it work for the news? 🤔😂😅

 

Thankfully a modicum of common sense, humanity, and balance is usually enough to weed out the media lies. 

 

So when I hear Comrade Putin telling the world how his valiant liberators are helping Ukraine to de-nazify themselves (with the assistance of thousands of tons of high explosive munitions), I'm still able to raise a quizzical eyebrow, and to wonder whether our dear Leader is being completely honest. 

 

 

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19 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

I know that but the point is that hiring a modern boat costs more than many young people can afford.

 

Hiring a modern boat is expensive, but a group of 10 young people splitting the cost of hiring a 10 berth boat is probably the modern equivalent of camping boats. 

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I think for boaters, these channels won't appeal, because they just show us what we see every day (minus the gross bits, usually).

 

I do really like Roger Barnes' channel on dinghy sailing/camping though, because it's a type of boating that I've never done: https://www.youtube.com/c/RogerBarnesMusings/featured And he's not advertising a whole lifestyle change.

Edited by Thomas C King
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15 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

Hiring a modern boat is expensive, but a group of 10 young people splitting the cost of hiring a 10 berth boat is probably the modern equivalent of camping boats. 

 

Looking at the hire costs for 10-12 berth boats in high summer, it seems to be around £2000 per week.

 

Assuming most young  people are earning around the minimum wage the £200 represents about 50% of their weekly income.

 

Back in 1973 I was earning just under £20 per week gross, and the holiday cost me £4, or 20% of my weekly income.

 

Most hire companies now only use relatively new boats, so depreciation is high and then the boats are stuffed full of luxury goods all of which add to the high depreciation.

 

The camping boats were already about 35 years old when I hired them.

Edited by cuthound
Clarification
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2 hours ago, The Happy Nomad said:

I completely lost interest in the Foxes after they sold their boat.

 

The “Foxes” have achieved what they set out to do. Got a big following on YouTube/Twitter/Instagram to help pay for their future projects. 

  Makes me laugh, that a lot of their followers were taken in by their “new boat” build. It was never going to happen. Good ploy on their behalf though, especially when they sold their boat to one of their gullible followers for way over the market value, to fund their fictitious new boat.

  According to their last Vlog they will be living on a Small holding in Scotland, I image they will be back on the Canals but employed by hire companies doing promotional stuff.  They saw a niche in the YouTube market and took full advantage of it.

  The next one to leave the Canals will be Minimalist I imagine.

  

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