14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube has been trying to be more like TV in hopes of making people stay for longer and hopefully bring in some of the big money advertisers spend on the traditional medium. But this latest move to make watching YouTube videos feel more like watching TV may have gone a bit too far. If there’s one thing that the 2010 World Cup will be remembered for it’s not the matches, not the teams, but the vuvuzelas, the annoying noise-makers that football fans have been abusing indiscriminately.
So, YouTube thought, why not make videos on the site feel more like watching a World Cup game, and it has added a Vuvuzela Button, the sole purpose of which is to make the loud, highly irritating noise that a swarm of vuvuzelas does. And it’s done this simply for your enjoyment torture.
No, it’s not April Fools and this isn’t just some small prank YouTube is pulling, the button is present on each and every YouTube video out there, football-related or not. The only caveat, or maybe welcomed relief, is that the button only shows up with the new YouTube player, so most of the commercial stuff is spared.
Other than that, it’s everywhere, even on Vevo and even on Barack Obama’s YouTube channel. Now, you can make any annoying song from your favorite pop star even more annoying with yet another awful sound you won’t be able to get out of your head. And Obama’s oil-spill speech that has been universally badly received is, suddenly, not so boring anymore.
It’s easy to enable the ‘feature,’ just look out for the small football button next to the video size button. Clicking on it will play the unmistakable sound, which has been compared with a swarm of insects buzzing. The button has been live for several hours now, but it’s unclear for how long this will stay up. One thing’s for sure, it’s probably going to drive down the number of ever-so-funny vuvuzela parodies that have been flooding the site. Or, maybe, this was the plan all along. Regardless, it’s surely going to appeal to the immature child in all of us.
