DollarTube: quantity without the quality

One of my first freshman-year memories is of a trip to Dollar Tree. One night while cruising down Iowa, my roommate and I noticed a green neon sign, beckoning us with the words "Everything's $1." They weren't lying. Cheap snack food, coloring books, fake flowers and even deodorant. There was so much to buy and the aisles of random knickknacks kept us entertained for most of the evening.

I had a similar experience the first time I visited YouTube. Before me was a plethora of silliness, and all I needed to do was search for it. I was horrified at how much time I wasted watching videos of funny commercials, hilarious dancing and even my favorite singers performing.

There seems to be a strong connection between YouTube and stores like Dollar Tree: quantity without the quality. You can find just about anything on YouTube, but when you search for ‘news and politics,' most videos consist of opinionated rants, TV bloopers or celebrity gossip. Just like hunting for anything of value in Dollar Tree, it takes awhile to discover videos with true news content. Sure, CBS has a channel. But why would you watch news clips when you can see Borat wrestling with a CBS anchorman?

If anything, YouTube is replacing entertainment television. A quick look at YouTube's top videos in 2007 shows that viewers are definitely not tuning in for news, but rather to watch lions fighting with buffalo and boys crying about Britney Spears.

I feel the same way after wasting time on YouTube as I did when I spent too much at Dollar Tree: entertained yet unfulfilled. YouTube has an incredible inventory of videos, but as long as they continue to be of poor quality and minimal credibility, TV news has about as much competition from YouTube as Target does from Dollar Tree.