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Interview: Kevin Nalts of WillVideoforFood

by Karen M Cheung
Published on Feb 22, 2008 11:20 AM

 
Intro The Daily Life of Nalts
Workflow The Highway of YouTube
Making Money
Political Correctness
What's Next
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Political Correctness

CCI: You bring up a good point, especially with Metacafe recently.  For example, girls in bikinis might not make the cut. People call it censorship or can call it guidance. What’s your feeling?
 
KN: I think the smart way to do it is to let the community decide. If you need to have editorial squad decide what’s appropriate and what’s not, that’s just not sustainable. If you have a community that actively polices content and raises a flag if it’s offensive, it can be self-governing. 
 
There are different audiences. The Metacafe audience, when they comment, it’s usually not positive, whereas YouTube tends to be a lot more engaging and supportive. Most sites are just distribution platforms. There’s not a lot of discussion. There’s where YouTube stands out.   The people that comment and respond on my videos, we’re talking less than 1 percent [of viewers]. As you start to develop a bit of a following, that becomes a lot. Each day, I’ll have several hundred people making remarks or making other videos in response to mine.
 
CCI: Are those comments an accurate representation of your audience as a whole?
 
KN: It’s funny. If you look at my comments and my ratings, you’d think I was the greatest thing in the world, but that’s because the audience that participates in active discussion tends to like my stuff. 
 
For example, I’ll post a video, and it’ll get quickly rated highly by my core audience. As a result, it’ll jump to the top of YouTube. The most popular videos of the day are not necessarily a reflection of what all of YouTube thinks is the most popular. Your subscribers help put you up there. 
 
Most of the comments are positive. Every once in a while, I’ll do a video that’s on the edge. I’m finding that people don’t like to joke about death or joke about animals. 

Any reference to death…I mentioned that a YouTuber had died, and people got really touchy. I had done a video in a cemetery, and I got a lot of flack for that.

We make jokes about animals, but the PETA people don’t much care for that. 
 
CCI: Right, I saw the hamster on the leash, the Hamster on a Walk video.

KN: You have to make it edgier or it’s not interesting. There are some lines that I’ve crossed in my experimentation that I regret. 




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