I watch a lot of motorcycle related YouTube videos but I guess I must be hard to please. The list of things which irk me is endless: strident music, gratuitous engine revving, tediously long intros, some “expert” saying “Wha’s up folks,” “Hi Kids” or “Hi there guys and gals,” mindless wheelies, nondescript desk jockeys pretending that they’re industry insiders, fast-talking hosts with suspiciously excessive enthusiasm, people showing off by standing on their pegs when it’s totally unnecessary—any of these and I’m likely to be clicking onto the next.
However, once in a while, you come across a real gem such as Joe Ryan’s travels in Australia or the incredible Itchy Boots, who manages to astonish, entertain, inform and inspire. I avoided watching her videos for ages as I’d assumed – quite incorrectly as it turned out – that she would be trading on her looks to satisfy the drooling, prurient interests of the aging male motorcycle crowd. She doesn’t, and she’s is an object lesson on how to respond to and engage with people in other lands and cultures.
There’s truly some great stuff out there in YouTube world, but to find it, you have to wade through a vast amount of dross, which, increasingly, seems far more geared towards making money than sharing a passion in motorcycling.
This is the sort of non-commercialized channel you need to be watching, says Nick!
I came across one the other day. The video’s thumbnail and accompanying text looked interesting. It suggested the makers would be doing a value comparison of some old, cheap, massive relic, bought for next to nothing off Facebook Marketplace, with a brand new, super deluxe, top-of-the-line touring bike from one of the major vendors. As a rider of a cheap old relic bought off Facebook Marketplace myself, I’m always curious to hear what others think, and what, if any, are the advantages of shelling out a considerable fortune for a new one. Have big touring bikes really improved so much that a new one is worth ten, twenty, a hundred times more than its well-maintained thirty-year-old equivalent? So I clicked.
I could just about look beyond the fast-talking, hyper-glib, ironic presentation style of the hosts. I could even get beyond the pointless and childish burnout against the wall of the garage. But when, after no more than a couple of minutes the hosts were trying to sell me their sponsor’s car tires and motorcycle gear I clicked off. No matter how interested I was in the comparison test, there was no way I was going to suffer through endless shilling for their sponsors.
It’s bad enough to have to sit through the one or two advertisements YouTube inserts before each video before you even get to determine whether it is something you actually want to watch, but to have flagrant and unbridled promotion forming the core of the video is more than I’m prepared to suffer.
I’ve noticed that this kind of intrusive sponsorship advertising is even insinuating itself into some of the more entertaining and trustworthy video channels. Revzilla are guilty, although at least they keep it brief. And even FortNine, who can usually be guaranteed to be entertaining and informative—if needlessly salacious—are also guilty. They slide their promotions into their videos under the guise of public service announcements, implying that they really wouldn’t have been able to bring us this video without product X or Y. Sneaky, but irritating. And even minor-league YouTubers are throwing in sponsorship ads whenever they can snag something for free. It’s a sad indictment on our society that our most enjoyable activities have to be tainted and diminished on the altar of mammon.
In the interests of full disclosure, and lest I be accused of hypocrisy, I, like many here, post videos of my motorcycle exploits, and yes, I too include ads. I stick mine at the end of the video, so you have to struggle all the way through before you get my personal promo.
Nick’s gorgeous Moto Guzzi 750S, at the end of Quebec’s Route 138. You can watch a lot of Nick’s own adventures on YouTube. Photo: Nick Adams
While I’m on the subject and venting my no doubt wrinkled and malignant spleen, here are a few more things which drive me bananas.
Videos which promise to tell me which, out of a group of similar motorcycles is the “best.” What is “best” anyway? I remember one comparison video from a few years back which particularly amused me. By all the supposedly empirical standards the testers were applying, one bike solidly nailed bottom place. It was the slowest, it didn’t have the latest tech, it’s suspension couldn’t be adjusted in a multitude of ways. Yet, once the ranking was complete and the “best” motorcycle of the group had been declared the winner, just about all the reviewers agreed that the bike they’d dismissed as a dog and ranked last, was actually the one they’d enjoyed riding the most. No video, no performance figures, and no list of features can tell you which is the best bike. Whether we like to admit it or not, moto-journalists’ “shoot-outs” (another term I despise) do have an impact in forming our attitudes and preferences. If the bike we’re interested in is ranked towards the bottom of the test list, we’re likely to look elsewhere, even though it may really be the “best” bike for us. Only you can determine which bike is best for you.
And while I’m on the topic of road test videos, is there anything more stupid and useless than testers riding low-powered commuter bikes or scooters as if they’re road racers, and then complaining that they’re not very fast and the handling isn’t up to their expectations? It happens!
Entry level! This term always makes me groan. Implicit is the notion that you’ll buy a cheap, small “entry level” or “beginner” bike then “graduate” to something larger and more powerful. Only the other day I read a “for sale” advertisement where the vendor explained that he was selling bike A because he wanted to upgrade to bike B. Upgrade? We all aspire to a Panigale, a Road Glide Limited Anniversary Edition or a ADVGodzilla 1300, don’t we? Of course not. Not everyone thinks a track-ready 160 hp rocket, or a chrome-laden, leather-fringed, bat-winged behemoth is the ultimate expression of personal motorcycling achievement. For many people 50 hp is plenty.
With so many people in the first world down-sizing as they get older, and with vast new markets opening up in developing countries, companies are falling over themselves to produce lighter, large enough, powerful enough bikes with smaller, more efficient engines as the rockets and road couches clog the ads on Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji. Perhaps this new generation of smaller motorcycles should be called “exit” bikes.
Well, that’s quite enough griping for now. I’m off upstairs to my TV room to see if I can find some motorcycle videos to watch that aren’t a pretext for selling something, don’t include “Solo” in the title (because who cares?), and don’t include wheelies, burnouts, gratuitous peg standing or hyperactive, shouty hosts. It’s a tall order, but they must be out there somewhere.
