For context -- over a month ago, this YouTube channel called "Time To Smile" popped up, posting those spammy Facebook style positivity videos that are just viral clips with voiceovers on them. The weird thing about this channel is that all the voiceovers, for a while, were done by Jschlatt. (Some people assume that this was AI TTS - and the acronym of Time To Smile is... well I feel like it's fairly obvious).
I find it heavily unlikely that these videos are actually TTS, though. Here's a list, with examples, of each person featured on the channel (more than just Schlatt have appeared since the first few weeks of posting, though he remains the primary narrator). Pick whoever you're most familiar with, or SwaggerSouls if you're not particularly familiar with any of them.
You'll notice that while the content of what they're saying is particularly generic, it's far too natural to be a text-to-speech generator.
Jschlatt
Jack Manifold
Yumi
TommyInnit
Slimecicle
Wilbur Soot
Ludwig
SwaggerSouls
As to not clog things, I'm putting the rest of this post under a read more link :)
There's lots of aspects of this channel that point to it being more of an obscure bit than an AI text-to-speech spam channel.
From the subtitles, which have the modern TommyInnit style bounce, the high focus on primates in the channel's earlier uploads (less so now, but still notable. Perhaps a reference to Schlatt's obession with monkeys), and the fact that multiple YouTubers (who are roughly in Schlatt's orbit) have leant their voices for this project.
The profile picture also gives off a deeply unsettling vibe, being an apple 3D emoji avatar thing on a sky with clouds, and a neon green ring around it. (Gonna mention here that there's an account on TikTok, @/timetosmile.tr, that reposts their videos. It's not an official account, which is obvious when you look at the profile picture).
They also respond to comments sometimes. Like This.
Every single video uses the same song as background music - First Step by Hans Zimmer. And the exact same snippet of it as well.
At some point, every video started to end with things like "subscribe if you think pigs are like people!" or "subscribe if you think Harpo deserves the world!", or just "Subscribe!". Eventually, the videos started to end with just "subscribe if you think-", without allowing the narrator to finish their sentence.
In the community tab, they often post polls (a tactic of YouTube channels to farm engagement, since you get channel posts on the mobile homepage from channels you've only watched once or twice... it's this whole thing.)
That is the only poll they post, over and over, occasionally interspersed with text posts that say "What made you smile today, Smilers?". More recently, the posts have gotten a tad sadder.
So you might be wondering, why?
I speculate a number of things:
It's a weird obscure parody Schlatt came up with that's he's roping his friends into for shits and giggles
It's an experiment to see if stupid "viral" content can really get 10M subscribers purely through YouTube shorts, to demonstrate how vapid and regressive the website's algorithm is (Schlatt is very vocal about the way YouTube is run in their Twitter replies)
It's a commentary on the mindless cycle of reaction content that Schlatt and a lot of his collegues have found themselves in. Commentating over others' content, but adding basically nothing to it -- but it pays the bills. It's heartless, lacks effort and passion, and yet if it stops, the views tank, and the channel fades to obscurity. It wears you down, constantly churning out content. Always content. Slop. Something so substanceless that huge quantaties of it exist and yet those who consume it are always hungry for more, constantly, unendingly, without slowing the pace or allowing time to digest or process any of it. Always starving, always being given more but never being satisfied. It's a nightmare for everyone, nobody is winning and yet the wheel keeps turning.
