The YouTube Secret Words: How To Passive-Aggressively Stick It To The Man

October 19th, 2006 // 3 Comments

One of the handymen at Idolator’s flophouse has been helping us with our YouTube uploads–we’re not very good at that stuff, and by the time we figure out how to get a SNL clip up, the show is already on the next season–and he has a helpful tip for those of you still trying to get your music videos/wacky clips/whathaveyou on the site: Stop tagging. That may seem obvious, but people are still putting up music-video premieres and the like with such give-away tags as “Jay-z,” “MTV” and “TRL.” No wonder these things only stay up for two hours (though, bizarrely, you can still find a bootleg clip of Keith Richards throwing a TV out of hotel, which is a minor miracle when you consider the movie that spawned this footage).

His suggestion is to start a database of words that he’s found will automatically get your lovingly stolen material yanked from the video-sharing service–words like “Oprah,” “Lazy Sunday,” “NBC,” “Digital Short” and, often, “CBS.” Feel free to add your suggestions to his below; once we get a few more, we’ll keep updating this post. Viva la YouTube! We haven’t given up on you! At least, not until Soapbox starts getting some old Prince videos.


  1. relaxing

    Cocksucker blues.

  2. Tyler Knew and Turk! Wendell Ate Won Too

    Call me the ADD-generation, but it took 43 seconds for them to drop the TV. The whole thing looked as staged as a My Chemical Romance TRL appearance.

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