Has a Youtube video ever convinced you?

**Loddfafner** · 01-30-2011, 08:50 PM

One of the most inane debating tactics on this site is the practice of posting a link to a YouTube video that, if it loads at all, assaults the viewer with a blatantly propagandistic mix of spooky music, flashes of idols and folk demons, and quotations taken wildly out of context. The style is often akin to that of American election ads. Goebbels, Mao, and Stalin were at least a bit more subtle.

The debate tactic is to post the video and expect it to be convincing on its own, and anyone responds with statements about how the video blew the fuse for their bullshit detectors, the original poster just asserts that the critics didn't pay close enough attention.

I am wondering if anyone was ever convinced of anything by these videos.

**~~Beorn~~** · 01-30-2011, 09:00 PM

Sure: NXSchell: Maximum Hell.

**The Ripper** · 01-30-2011, 09:12 PM

A Youtube video can be anything. Sure, some of them are convincing.

**Psychonaut** · 01-30-2011, 09:15 PM

I voted for the "what a stupid question" option, because Youtuube is obviously some kind of insidious Finnish propaganda site.

**Simonsson** · 01-30-2011, 09:41 PM

Well, most of those 'ultra-serious' sort of videos do such a great job in overblowing their video with all of what you've mentioned that it's virtually impossible to take it for anything sensible.

**~~Austin~~** · 01-30-2011, 10:14 PM

I like them and the new practice of this method used on forums but not because it is always accurate but instead because it does illustrate sides of arguments to which otherwise the established view could and would easily dismiss.

From growing up on the internet there is generally one prime indicator of the success of a newly adopted internet phenomenon and that is how much it infuriates the olden guard. In this case the posting of youtube videos has been a nuclear bomb and then some effect-wise.