Yay! We got a pressie!

Isn’t that great? YouTube gave us all a super-special surprise today, with their newest, bestest feature: an automatic scrolling ticker of possibly-related videos running across the bottom of every one of our own YouTube videos, right there in our blogs! How sweet is that, eh?

It’s just too bad that there is absolutely no screening for/against porn or graphic, real-life violence anywhere in this process.

Imagine my feelings upon discovering over on the WordPress.com technical help forum that a few of my friends had been enjoying the delights of superfatty porn (900+ pounds! I had a horse that weighed that) on my very blog while I was innocently watching nothing more exciting than the admittedly-delightful Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre performing their classic version of the Seventies outcast anthem Bohemian Rhapsody.

So YouTube thinks it can porn me and send a surprise
So they think they can pwn me and I’ll not get wise?
Oh baby – can’t pull shit like that, baby
Just gotta get it out – just gotta get it outta here

YouTube=BoobTube
Snuff films really matter
Your lawyer can see
This shit really matters – to your p/e.

Yes, snuff videos are also featured in the lineup, although not on that particular video; there are many such easter eggs to find if you troll around a bit. These have even more impact when you find them on a child’s blog or a church, mosque or temple blog. How delighted they must be!

YouTube has thoughtfully added a way to shut off this feature, but alas it doesn’t work in WordPress.com blogs at all, so it seems. And it must be shut off video by video, even those in the archives. UPDATE: WordPress itself has figured out a way to circumvent this en masse, and now the feature works on precisely No WordPress.com blogs. Why they thought this “feature” should be the default rather than the option I do not know; or rather, I do: eyeball grabs. Literal versions of this metaphor are visible in the “related videos” to any number of children’s program clips.

How charming: it’s PeeWee’s Playhouse featuring today’s special guest, Willy Pickton!

Update 2.0: and YouTube caves to global outrage. Kinda

YouTube seems to sense disdain towards the new player and decided not to push users to hard (for the time being). So, rather than showing related videos at the bottom of the player (and the two annoying arrows on the two sides that on-click would seamlessly play the next related video) every time users hover over the video, you will see them only if you click on the ‘menu’ button or when the video finishes. In this case, the original video is zoomed out and also displays embedded code and URL of video.

As for the fatty porn: well, they say any more than an SUV-full is wasted…still, I was completely verklempt at the thought that these alleged respectobiggles were scratching their kink porn itches on the ol’ raincoaster blog, for all the world as if it were a sandstone dildo or sumpin. For shame, YouKnowWhoYouAre! And you over two thousand other video watchers today…

And I thought you loved me for my mind.

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