I'm no scientist, but I'd estimate that if you stacked one closed laptop computer on top of another for each homebrew cover song on Youtube, the resulting pile would be enough to go from Earth to the moon and wrap around it approximately a kajillion times. Really, cover songs are the perfect fit for Youtube. At best, they can show off one's technical talents without requiring any real creativity and most of them fit within a three and a half minute window so pesky video editing isn't even an issue. While I would have been perfectly content to scour Youtube for the worst cover songs I could find, I decided to go a different direction this time around. Like so many things on the Internet, I don't think Youtube is inherently a force for frustrating, near-evil things, but rather a medium with a lot of potential that is wasted to the worst elements of democracy. Every now and then, it just feels more worthwhile to use it for an intellectual exercise than a means to merely ridicule the world and all who inhabit it. Note I said "merely" ridicule. I still plan on being a jerk, just not exclusively.

Take, for instance, an actually talented young man who uploads under the moniker eebsofresh. His channel is full of cover songs using respectable recording equipment and a voice that qualifies as "good" even by professional (re: not limited to the Internet) standards. Mr. sofresh proves that not only can a cover song be creative and of artistic merit independent of its source material, but that Youtube may be the ideal outlet for exhibitions like his unusually interesting rendition of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" (plus some admirable hip hop influences). There's no secret why eebsofresh doesn't suck. For one, he has real, cultivated talent. Also, he's using more advanced equipment than a webcam and a computer mic from 1999. See that screen over his recorder? That clever piece of technology would make roughly 95% of all Youtube videos significantly less horrible by eliminating popped P's and mic breathing.

Of course, the vast majority of Youtube cover song videos involve a teenager, a crappy acoustic guitar and precious little dignity. Most of these abominations have no place in society, being neither classically entertaining nor ironically funny. A few can be repurposed as empirical proof that their source material inherently sucks, thus redeeming them on an academic level. Take user petuur's acoustic cover of "Chop Suey" by System of a Down. SoaD first crashed into America's cultural consciousness when I was a worthless high school student, so I had the privilege of being surrounded by inexperienced dolts with dangerously bad taste trying to convince me that the band was somehow good. I didn't believe them then and I certainly don't believe them now, but it wasn't until petuur's video that I had concrete data to back up my claims. First, note how petuur starts off his video in much the same fashion as every open mic performer in the history of public humiliation. If you have to preface your presentation with a list of excuses, hedges and stalls, you already suck and you shouldn't perform. On top of that, I'm pretty sure the guitar riffs here would be atonal and generally unlistenable even if petuur's instrument weren't horribly out of tune. Crappy song, artless video, junk presentation. Way to hit the trifecta, petuur!

And speaking of songs that suck from birth, let's talk about "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White T's. While I admit that it's an accomplishment in itself to create the Platonic Ideal of the insufferable frat boy song, that doesn't excuse this track from being possibly the most boring aural trash ever recorded. No matter what version you choose, and Youtube is replete with them, it still sounds like every first song written by painfully sincere 12-year-olds. Asian hipster chick rendition? Boring. Plain but pretty girl abstaining from her incessant texting for five minutes so she can indulge in her sensitive side? Nope, still boring. What about if she plays it on the piano instead? First off, that's technically a different person, and also the song remains one barbiturate short of a chemical coma. Thank you, Youtube, for exposing the raw worthlessness of an over-produced song consisting of two quasi-chords and inept picking.

In a perfect future, Youtube will be where professors direct their students to find examples of how not to do just about anything. Talented folks who post good videos will be abducted by some sort of inverted secret police commissioned to rescue the worthwhile from obscurity. Until then, we're going to have to accept that the eebsofreshes of the world will have to share common ground with this tripe.