I'd just like to clearly express WHY I think youtube LPs are cancer, and the people who enjoy them are the lowest of the low, because I think a lot of people here hate them but nobody ever gives a clear answer why. We know innately and don't feel it requires explanation. This is for the newfags, outsiders, anyone who might be watching from another website who isn't imageboard-savvy.
LPs are acceptable if they're done by someone legitimately entertaining. A comedian. A truly skilled player showing off incredible combos in a fighting or action game. Someone who offers something the rest don't. It's like the Red Letter Media guys. Why would you watch someone talk about a movie instead of watching the movie yourself? Because they're funny in their own right.
I have no problem if the LPer is genuinely entertaining. But most of them are not. Screaming yourself hoarse isn't humor. Playing the game badly is not fun to watch for anyone. Even in DSP's case, we might laugh, but the laughter is like a defense mechanism because of how pitiable he is. We laugh because we refuse to believe anyone could suck that bad, it's not genuinely funny. Most LPs do not even attempt to deliver humor or skill or even anti-skill, they're just some average joe doing it because everyone else is doing it. These videos have no value to anyone.
Which brings me to the main point, why do people watch them?
All forms of entertainment are escapism. With books, we could imagine fantastical stories and events by reading the text. With movies and TV, we could see and hear things we can't do in real life. And with video games, we could finally, sort of, experience them for ourselves. You don't play a video game to do things you could do just as easily in real life if you got off your ass. That's why sports games are dumb, but that's a whole different argument. The point is, video games let you DO things you can't achieve in real life. With minimal physical requirements for entry, you can be a racecar driver, an elite soldier, a spy, a medieval warrior, a pilot, a space explorer, the list goes on forever. It's the ultimate escapism. Instead of imagining things with a book, or watching events unfold in a movie with no control over the outcome, you DIRECTLY CONTROL a protagonist in a fantasy world. And you have to put in so little effort that it doesn't even count as physical activity, just like television and books.
Now with the above paragraph fresh in your mind, doesn't watching someone play video games seem like a step backwards? You're rejecting the very thing that makes video games great, regressing to "watching TV and movies." Except the only reason we utilize entertainment in the first place is because we can't do those things in real life. And you CAN, extremely easily, play a video game in real life. And you can even afford it, with piracy being so rampant on almost every platform. If you're really so put off by the cost, just torrent it. So why the fuck would you choose to watch someone else play a game and not experience it for yourself? We've already established that in most cases, the person playing does not offer any entertainment value themselves. Yet here we are with an entire generation of children who prefer to watch a youtube video of someone else enjoying a video game, rather than enjoy it themselves.