Most Popular Video Yet
"Yankee Lore" Is Evidently A Big Draw... 2024 in Review, Part Two
Though not exactly a viral sensation, June 2024 saw the creation of my most popular video yet — Ancient Stone Mysteries of New England — Episode 06: “Yankee Lore”. As of this January 2025 writing, it’s received over 42.6K Views and captured over 4100 Hours of Watch Time on YouTube. Metrics which, while nowhere near “Influencer” levels, are well above what most of my other videos elicit for responses.
You know that stuff "everybody knows" - but isn't true? The cultural equivalent of this in the Northeast of what's now North America is what's called "Yankee Lore"... This is stuff "everybody" in New England "just knows" about the history of the area... but which isn't true. Or, at the very least, is often inaccurate. From "Indians around here didn't build with stone", to the Pilgrims, the myth of the Pristine Wilderness, and more, stone site investigator Mike Luoma looks beyond Yankee Lore to get a truer picture of the past… (from the YouTube video description).
I’d been visualizing this video in my mind for a while, as it’s one of those special ones created because I wished I could have watched it. As if it should exist. And in actually writing it, and rewriting it, over the course of a couple of weeks, honing the script, the visualization grew very strong. I was seeing this play out in my head.
While writing, I searched out public domain images to use in the video, finding a veritable treasure trove in the Library of Congress. As I selected and downloaded each image, I had a pretty good idea how I’d be using it. I also knew what footage and photos that I’d shot through the years I’d be using, as well.
One challenge then became what to leave out. It grew obvious there would have to be, at some point in time, a “More Yankee Lore” — a sequel — part deux.
Given my mental previsualization, when the time came to narrate and produce my script and then build the video, it all came together fairly quickly, as these things go.
Upon its posting, it took off fairly quickly, immediately garnering ten times the views my videos usually did… a pleasant surprise!
As viral as I evidently get…
The second video — Stone Wall Mythology — More “Yankee Lore” — came out in early October. It’s gotten 796 Views, and has accrued 88 Hours of Watch Time. Which is still pretty neat, if you ask me. But nothing like its predecessor.
I don’t know when I’ll do my next installment in my Ancient Stone Mysteries of New England title video series — these are the special ones I do when I feel they need to be done. When? When I feel like I’m supposed to do it. About what? What it’s supposed to be about. I’ll know when I know. For now, enjoy some debunking of “Yankee Lore”.