One of the funniest aspects of television/YouTube just became a sad reality that I admit I hadn’t given much credence to: the shitty closed captioning function offered up by media platforms. I sometimes watch videos and shows with closed captioning on because there is a frequent issues of the words and captioning not matching up at all. So instead of getting some coherent sentence, you get a random guess at what some computer algorithm “thought” was a real sentence. “I wish I had a gun to kill all the evil thoughts in my head” becomes something like “Elf fish again to kill all the eagle thoughts inmate head.”
But, obviously now, this is a real issue for actual deaf or hard of hearing YouTubers who actually rely on the system. And beauty/makeup guru Rikki Poynter, who deals with her own hearing issues, certainly isn’t laughing. So that, rightly, makes me feel like an asshole.
Because the only other option seems to be YouTubers themselves adding in the closed captioning, and right now, they’re doubtlessly too busy f**king around with YouTube’s new “multiangle” camera option that benefits nobody. Yeah, so that’s awkward.
