The first section of Plato’s Phaedrus we read in class involved Plato ( through Socrates’ voice) throwing so much shade.
“I was only attending to it as a piece of rhetorics, and as such I couldn’t think that even Lysias himself would deem it adequate… it seemed to me that he said the same things several times over.”
I gathered that Plato thought Phaedrus was all about performance and not about the quality of ideas. To Plato, Phaedrus was merely repeating the same thing over and over in a thematic way.
I just happened to be catching up on my Youtube subscriptions, and I watched a video that reminded me of Plato’s complaint.
In this video, Carrie discusses how people are hesitant to start making Youtube videos because the quality of current Youtubers is so outstanding. Carrie argues that these Youtubers started off on webcams and iPhones but gradually improved their quality to the point they’re at now. Youtubers also used to say random things that came in to their heads on the spot instead of scripting their videos.
“Maybe more people would like my videos if they were in better quality or I had a better light shining in my face…”
Carrie continues to argue that the good quality is not necessarily what makes a video good.
“Anybody can buy a fancy camera and fancy lights but that’s not what makes a video so good. What makes a video good is what you’re saying and how you say it and what kind of person you are and if that comes across well”
Content>quality and quality=awesome
but quality ≠ content
“None of that fancy stuff is what makes a video good. It makes it prettier and probably nicer to look at but none of that really matters if what you’re saying isn’t relatable or fun or entertaining to watch…”
Watching Carrie’s video reminded me of two other videos I had watched before that were similarly related.
In this video, Jenna makes fun of all the people who worry more about quality than content.
And here, Grace makes fun of people who go overboard and try to compensate bad content with crazy editing.
It seems that it is easier to distract views in a media heavy medium and use quality to cover up good content. Viewers will walk away with an imprint of the crazy editing on their corneas but only a vague recollection of the video’s message or purpose.
conversingwithstrangers 
I agree. Plato was throwing serious shade with that comment. Your ability to relate this to modern-day society was outstanding. You took Plato’s words (which may be hard for some to decipher correctly) and put them into a language the general masses could understand. My only question is, however, how can we still attract readers/viewers to a piece of writing that is focused on content with no attention-grabber?
Content is by far the most important thing, Most of the videos I watch on Youtube are Let’s Play series. If you aren’t funny or interesting with your commentary on one of those, I will just click away, doesn’t matter how good the editing is. Now, that being said, editing can be used to add hilarious effects or replays after the point. And higher quality footage is obviously nicer to look at, but I can still watch older videos that were shot in about 2007 and thus have lower quality but the content is still good so it makes up for it being filmed with a potato.
So, on the flip side, how do you think the people who made those videos would respond if you told them that they actually just gave rhetorical and stylistic advice for the digital world? Do you think they understand the deeper meaning of the videos they created, or do you think they would be surprised?