Rubbish user generated content is killing the internet – and the rest of the media world

Gary Cutlack writes…

I’m bored of simpletons videoing their mates on mobile phones, uploading it somewhere, and expecting me to somehow be impressed by this.

It’s just rubbish. The whole web – and print and TV and every other kind of media – is falling over itself to involve the audience and get them submitting stuff to pad out their sites, publications and shows for free.

The problem with this is that most people out there are useless, and should be limited to only having a traditional telephone in their house to stop them attempting to ‘interact’ with others in any way (yes, now would be a good time to link to my YouTube video as proof of this).

Don’t text your opinion to Channel 4 News, mate, you don’t really have that much of an understanding of the basic issues behind the Israeli situation. Leave it to Jon Snow. He’s a professional.

So many TV news shows let viewers text in their poorly thought out opinions now, as if, by some chance, you’d rather hear the thoughts of random maniacs from the home counties who’ve already hit the wine, rather than the insight of professional journalists and reporters.

When I watch TV, I’d rather watch something proper, made by people who know what they’re doing. I want to know that the people involved in making my entertainment and informing me have been trained, done a course, and preferably have a certificate of some sort to show for it.

And if I’m going to be away from the internet for the amount of time it takes to watch a film, quite a long-term commitment these days, I want to know that the film makers are proper film makers and aren’t using mobile phones and editing the thing together using the phone’s supplied Nokia U-Movie editing tools.

Games are getting swamped by the whole “UGC” scene, too. Halo 3 will, apparently, let players record their matches and share their favourite kills. It’s the modern day equivalent of being sat down and made to look at your uncle’s holiday photographs. I can’t imagine anything worse than getting sent a constant stream of clips of peoples’ favourite Halo 3 kills.

“Yes, well done, you used the rocket launcher. Yes, I did see you. Yes, I am looking. Yes, you are very clever, aren’t you? Well done. Now please excuse me, I’m going to go and sit outside in the dark on my own for a while.”

Upcoming Xbox 360 game Project Gotham Racing 4 will, so they say, be able to record every race you enter, giving tedious obsessives more than enough bland, self-important material to fill the servers of a thousand YouTubes fifty times over.

Stop this nonsense. What kind of person sends a text message to The News? Who wants to record every video game they play and send clips off to people? Maniacs, that’s who. Lunatics. Weird people who think they should always be the centre of attention and that everything they do and say is funny and interesting. Big Brother contestants, basically.

Put your phone down, stop recording things, close your YouTube account. It’s all pointless, no one’s watching and you’re not going to get head-hunted by T4 to present their new Sunday morning pop music show.

You’ll just be very embarrassed by it all when someone Googles your name 20 years from now.