Pretty much par for the course on most youtube videos then, along with youtube voice.
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Oh, I don’t know. Some manage to not do it. A few channels I watch have referral ads, like Still Untitled, with Adam Savage, and Security Now. Still others do name product sponsors in their videos without direct pleas for donations … Frank Howarth, Jimmy DiResta, and Wranglerstar are good examples of that type. And one standout producer, Food Wishes, has no ads, product endorsements, or pleas for subsidies, which I really appreciate. I understand that a lot of these people are trying to make a living out of generating 15 minute videos, but I’d prefer it if they weren’t so overtly commercial about it while at the same time, not begging for donations.
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Yeah and i guess those vids gets pushed towards the top of search results anyway so you’re seeing mostly the ones with sponsors.
It’s not the NPR-ish parts that bother me. It’s the, I don’t know, overdeliberate pacing with weird pauses for emphasis, combined with a kind of flat, almost deadpan delivery. Even TAL at its worst doesn’t sin so egregiously.
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Or the best
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OK. That made me laugh. Out loud.
Well played.
Eh. I disagree. The explanation didn’t take anything away from the joke, it just made it longer so I could savor it more.
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The “emphasis” technique requires a light touch.
If you ever watch Last Week Tonight, John Oliver employs this technique constantly.
When he gets a hard laugh, he will routinely repeat the last part of the line that got the laugh (sometimes more than once).
I’m a big fan of LWT/Oliver, but once you notice this, you cannot unnotice.
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I reject the idea that the nerdwriter actually explained how Louis CK tells a joke. All he’s done here is tell us why he thinks the joke works for him, and even then, the idea that a joke depends on a specific ordering of words does not match my observation of the world.
I would accept that this is both true and useful if instead we could take an unfunny joke, explains why it is funny and my sense of humor would be changed by that explanation such that I could now appreciate something that I wasn’t able to before.
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well, thanks for pointing it out.
Isn’t that true of everything? You can only ever offer your own point of view. Universal truth is a rare commodity.
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Right! And the background music. Like @anon89609066, I blame TAL for influencing media producers to put radio and video together this way. Totally hate it.
Like this?
I associate Nerdwriter’s voice with more of a Standard Video Essay style. Same with dozens of other YouTube channels trying to imitate the once-distinct mannerisms of Tony Zhou, Kirby Ferguson and the like. I find it oddly relaxing myself, and ripe for parody.
Amazingly this hits every other awful YouTube trope but seems to dodge the actual YouTube voice phenomenon that I’m thinking of.
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Is part of it that we’re often listening on radios that are EQed for music rather than voice? Sometimes I’m tempted to turn up the volume on NPR and I realize I just need to boost the mids and scale back the bass and treble and it makes it much clearer without changing the volume.
… and, well, the entire audience that heard the joke.
I have been following a friend’s comedy career for 6-8 years. His style is in the ball park of Louis CK. Longer confessional stories that may take little side detours for a smaller jokes, eventually building to the big punch line at the end. Watching him perform some of his more popular bits over the years I have noticed how he tunes the stories over time. Watching him go through this process has given me a greater appreciation of the big comedians like Louis CK that have this down so well that I think it can be easy to take for granted.
Edited to fix typos.
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I didn’t want to presume. 
Aka “nerdery”
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It’s a studio preamp tuned for voice. They first eq the bass way up, then compress the crap out of the dynamic range.
I don’t know a lot about audio production – though I get the value of compression in a case like this. Why crank the bass for voice though?
