YouTube: Where Expertise Goes to Die
/Lately, I’ve been having some pain around the outer part of my right knee. I’ve experienced this pain before, and know it involves my IT band, a piece of connective tissue that runs along the leg.
Naturally, in looking for a solution to this pain, I went to YouTube. Unfortunately, this is what I was met with:
Probably about 1% of the total results
That screenshot actually only encompasses a small fraction of the hits I got off my “fix IT band pain” search. The immediate deluge of information was overwhelming. Moreover, as I attempted to filter through it all, it became evident that many of the videos offered conflicting information. Here are some of the video titles I encountered:
“Foam Rolling Your IT Band”
“Fix Your Lateral Knee Pain with a Foam Roller”
“Permanent Fix for IT Band Pain (NO FOAM ROLLING)”
“The Three Best Stretches for Foam Rolling”
“FIX IT Band Syndrome (No Foam Rolling or Stretching)”
In the space of five videos, I am being told to:
Foam roll my IT band
Not foam roll my IT band
Stretch my IT band
Not stretch my IT band
Additionally, many of these videos are extremely alarmist in just how bad it could be to foam roll your IT band. Or, they’re extremely adamant that I definitely foam roll my IT band everyday.
In the end, do you know what I did to my IT band?
I’ll bet you can guess.
Not a damn thing. I mean, I looked at it for awhile. I gently stroked it while grimacing. I experienced anxiety over the pain, and then much more anxiety over the myriad conflicting ways I was instructed to alleviate the pain. But ultimately, in terms of actionable steps, I did nothing.
My experience here is just a microcosm of a much larger problem: YouTube is where true expertise goes to die. The openness of the platform means there is essentially no barrier to entry. Hell, right now, if I wanted to, I could film myself slathering mayonnaise all over the outside of my knee, throw it up on Youtube, and title it, “MAYONNAISE: THE REAL IT BAND SOLUTION,” and it would just sit there. Nothing would happen to it. There’s so many damn people on YouTube, and such an enormous amount of content, that the quality assurance team YouTube has no effective way of policing which videos are worthwhile, and which are misleading drek.
These intractable, systemic problems inherent to YouTube’s essential function aren’t the only thing leading to a lack of confidence in what’s true and what isn’t on YouTube, though. For years, if not decades, American faith in expertise has itself been on the decline. Many people seem to recoil at someone even labeling themselves an “expert,” even if that person has a PhD. in their field of study (which is about as literal an embodiment of expertise you’re going to find). This has opened the door for just about anyone to say, “Sure, I know how to do that,” and have a bunch of gullible people believe them.
Is this devaluing of expert knowledge solvable, especially in a massive content farm like YouTube? On a large-scale, I’m not sure. It seems like this country is very poor at coming together to fix macro-level problems these days.
But on an individual level, yes, we can deal with the questionable legitimacy of many YouTube videos.
Remember my IT band pain? Well, ultimately, I revisited all those videos and eventually found one made by a medical doctor:
Hey look! An actual expert!
After looking at Dr. Courtney’s video, I had faith that her recommendations (“yes” to foam rolling) were trustworthy. I then looked up a licensed physical therapist’s videos of foam-rolling exercises. After doing these for a couple of days, it’s hard to say if my IT band feels much better. but I’m positive it doesn’t feel worse and have faith it will improve over time.
It appears the onus is now on us to ferret out what is true and what is false, especially on YouTube. This is somewhat of a drag, but it’s also well worth it.