I hate glitter more than any human being who has ever walked the plank. That might sound like hyperbole, but it’s actually an understatement. Glitter is vile and evil. Those little shiny specks gets everywhere and are impossible to clean up. And forget getting it off your skin. It lives there until it’s absorbed into your body where it wreaks havoc. Probably. I loathe glitter so much it legitimately makes me ill, because I freak out someone will throw it on me. That’s why the latest video from The Slow Mo Guys is a literal nightmare for me to watch. They tossed mounds and mounds of glitter into the air with no regard for the eternal mess they were creating. But that’s not why it will be physically hard for everyone else to watch.
Dan and Gavin tried to “break” YouTube by destroying modern video compression. And the end super slow-motion result is both beautiful and hard to look at.
Epilepsy Warning: This video contains flashing lights that could induce seizures.
The Slow Mo Guys set out to “absolutely annihilate modern video compression” by throwing/dropping glitter at their camera. “Tons of fine detail” changing their positions lowers the bitrate of videos. With thousands of super tiny, colorful pieces, glitter was the best bet to make to create the greatest “watchable unwatchable video.” Making it the first time that shiny crap was useful for anything.
It also gave me a visual to show someone my actual worst fear.
The Slow Mo Guys
Even I must admit the resulting videos are actually quite beautiful. At best they are majestic and mesmerizing. At worst they look like as if a sci-fi movie became sentient and did LSD. But the more colors that were mixed in, the harder they became to watch. It’s physically difficult to stare at some of these with so much going on. Forget YouTube compression. Our eyes and brains can’t process all of it.
And we didn’t even see the “real” thing. Dan and Gav uploaded this video in 8K to increase the available bitrate. In reality it was so much worse.
But that’s always true with glitter. It’s not just ideal for ruining YouTube. It’s ideal for ruining everything.
Featured Image: The Slow Mo Guys