Zero Views – watch YouTube videos nobody else has seen

1 November 2015, 10:07



It’s not the practice to review apps here on Mac Kung Fu… Unless they’re genuinely interesting or useful.

Zero Views falls into the former column and is built around an intriguing premise: it plays an endless cycle of YouTube videos that have zero views. That is, nobody has watched online what you’re seeing. Even the person uploading them presumably hasn’t checked to ensure the video plays OK.

Does this clever concept work? Shows like Big Brother have shown that the public can develop weird fascinations in what strangers are doing. And some of the videos turfed-up by Zero Views fall into this category. Why exactly is the group of Japanese friends hysterical about the sandals they’re wearing? Right now I’m watching some people learning to flamenco dance somewhere or other. It’s strangely compulsive.

… or it would be if it wasn’t for the many, many videos of little kids that appear. This is the bread and butter of the YouTube world, of course – dad shares a video of Ryan’s first time bowling so grandma can see it. The total number of views the video gets will never reach double figures. Dad might not even realise he’s made the video public, which makes extra-creepy something that was already a bit unpleasant.

If Zero Views could find some way of filtering out those videos – which is probably technically impossible – then it’d be better for it. (Maybe some kind of voting system? But then you wouldn’t be seeing virgin videos, I guess.)

I think the guys behind Zero Views might be onto something. Take a look. The app’s free.

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