YouTube! (and an off-balance summary: response ratio)

This video provides an anthropological approach to analyzing YouTube as a medium. It addresses a variety of aspects of YouTube and the community which has sprung up on the site. Several aspects of the community (vlogging, emotions (positive and negative) associated with that, drama, system-gaming, etc.) are discussed and analyzed. Wesch provides some overarching analysis on the ideas behind the propagation of YouTube: because our culture is becoming more and more independent and self-focused, people seek outlets for things they miss: socialization, community, etc. Even while being alone and speaking to a small glass dot, people are potentially connecting with a billion others all over the globe, and that is no small feat.

Watching this made me realize that I do not remember a time before YouTube's existence. I remember hearing the "Numa Numa" song all over French airwaves in 2004 (my exchange student groaned each time it came on), and I remember the video appearing on YouTube in 2005, but in my memory, the delay was just a cultural one, the general delay that sometimes occurs between things popular in Europe vs. the US. In my mind, "Numa Numa" is a relatively new cultural thing (possibly just because it wasn't new to me when it first went viral), but the more I think about it, I really can't remember what sort of viral videos could have existed before it.

I truly do not fully remember a time when any content I could possibly want was not immediately accessible via YouTube or other internet resources, which I think plays into the idea that our generation is one growing up with the idea of prohibition, the knowledge that much of what we do in our daily lives is in fact illegal. I'm personally quite nervous about the next few years' worth of lawmaking, given that we're already moving in the "make streaming a felony" direction. Sure, much of what is produced on YouTube is illegal, but as Wesch points out, much of it is beautiful as well. Between these laws and potential future tiered internet access plans from major ISPs, this creativity will be cut off.

I feel like it's interesting that the video is less than three years old and it clearly dates itself. Obviously the interface is different, but that's not what I mean. There's no mention of many sites which are huge today (eg Twitter), and some of the examples it presents are so much more clearly served by new examples today (Soulja Boy vs. Justin Bieber). There are a variety of ways to view the site now, especially when considering new browser add-ons which modify it: for months I've been using a Chrome extension which blocks all YouTube comments, and I love it. Maybe this shows a sign of weakness (or ease of irritability) on my part, but it delights me that I can see what I want to see of YouTube while filtering out the (mostly hateful) comments en masse.

These chapters examine two more parts of Made to Stick’s acronym SUCCES: S (Simple) and U (Unexpected). The idea behind “simple” is pretty straightforward: it’s easier to try and put across an idea in its core form—meaning weeding out both trivial and substantial components to get down to the simplest form—without sounding too simplistic or silly, like a sound bite. The technique of journalism’s inverted pyramid is suggested: tell the most important aspect first, then edit, then add details. In presenting the information, it’s easier to use techniques to make the simplest-form idea memorable. Examples include a newspaper editor who likes his paper reflect local issues only—motto “names, names, and names”—and a movie pitch describing a concept in terms of other films—“Speed is Die-Hard on a bus.” The concept in play here is memory schemas: playing with people’s pre-conceived ideas to help them to understand other topics and to reinforce an idea in their heads.

“Unexpected” also makes sense to have ideas stick because it is so integral in keeping an audience’s attention. In this case, you flip mental tendencies on their head: because people like to think in patterns, you break those patterns. Example: a flight attendant doing something different with the pre-takeoff safety announcement. It is important, however, to make sure that in keeping the unexpected unexpected, you stick to something relevant to your message. Random unexpected acts will come off as gimmicky. Mystery is appealing to people because they like trying to figure out what will happen next; if you provide a different conclusion than the one they come up with, they are forced to refine their thought process.

Between "simple" and "unexpected," the most recent ad campaign that came to mind for me was the new Old Spice commercials, although their old marketing operated strongly in this way as well. Both the old and new promote masculinity and a type of suaveness that will somewhat possess men who use their products. Both rely on interactivity as an unexpected quality: the old Old Spice campaign had a site with humorous masculinity-related quizzes and a phone hotline to call. The new campaign initially captured viewers with its unexpectedness within commercials ("I'm on a horse") and has since progressed to individualization via YouTube.

This chapter in Design to Thrive describes the “S” of RIBS, Significance. One of the most important qualities which draws users into a group is significance; it’s important that people feel that their membership in this group means something and places them into a unique group. The paradox of exclusivity comes into play here: as Dr. Howard puts it, people “want to be part of a group, but they don’t want to be another face in the crowd.” People want groups to be exclusive and want to feel special for being a part of a group, but as a leader it’s important to be simultaneously inclusive and involve as many valuable group members as possible. Tied in with this is the idea of social capital: the more connections made within an exclusive group elevates an individual’s “social capital” as they “collect” these connections. Connections which are significant value quality over quantity, preferring individualized communication and campaigning. This individualization can manifest through extant members of the community, as seen via the “six degrees of separation” experiment: quality interaction with individuals or friends who are already members of a given community will give on-the-fencers more reason to join or behave in a certain way. This chapter also brings up the idea of Clive Thompson’s “influentials theory,” which suggests some nodes within the degrees of separation are more valuable than others when it comes to word of mouth: connectors (people who seem to know everybody), mavens (enthusiasts about a certain subject), and salesmen (people interested in sharing information and persuading people to act). There are a variety of ways to locate and convince these influentials to participate in the community; however, part of what you choose depends on whether you want a small, exclusive community with a focused purpose or a large, open community.

As I did in my post about the previous chapter, I’m going to try and combine my summary of the techniques listed for developing significance in Design to Thrive with my own personal experience both running and being a part of an online community.
1. Provide a story that shares a vision – we’ve dealt extensively with storytelling in other chapters, but the more I think about it I’m unsure any community I’m part of has a true overarching vision. I tend to encounter smaller stories which make me feel like I’m part of something important, which have power for me when I factor in quantity in addition to quality. A group can do a positive overarching thing or many smaller positive accomplishments; either is adequate in my experience.
2. List members’ accomplishments – in my personal experience I’m not sure I’ve encountered this much either, although it has also been addressed in other chapters. I certainly understand the appeal in joining a group which contains accomplished members and which I know will celebrate my future accomplishments whenever I… accomplish them.
3. Participate in influential communities to create trails back to yours – this is something I’m hugely familiar with; most of the communities I have run have relied on gathering members from other communities. Most of our membership booms happened not due to explicit advertising but due to polarizing events in the other large communities. Word-of-mouth spread that our other community existed where the moderators (myself and some friends) were friendly to the point of view held by these sometimes-disgruntled users, and we would have an influx of members with one drop of the community’s name due to these users’ previous knowledge of us (the moderators) via our participation in these other, larger communities.
4. Build your social network or community in a custom space – all the communities I’ve run have been through livejournal, and I cannot stress this point enough. Services do not always consider the complaints of their users and are not always shy about implementing huge and horrifying changes in policy. I am still there only because the communities I love are still there.
5. Make connections with other leaders in social media – connections with other social media outlets adds credibility to your group. I haven’t experienced this much personally aside from occasional special coupons offered to members of a certain group or specialized advertising, but based on Dr. Howard’s LinkedIn/Amazon example in the book, I certainly understand how that would be appealing.
6. Celebrate celebrities – I’ve only been a Redditor for about 4 or 5 months now, and this has been one of the most delightful things about the site for me. Reddit seems to foster camaraderie (or hivemind, if you want to be more cynical), and it’s appealing to know that you are part of a group including many actual celebrities within the community and that you can theoretically interact with them personally. Stephen Colbert has been a big supporter of the site; more recently I’ve seen both Ken Jennings and the IBM team behind Watson supply AMAs (Ask Me Anything posts, in which users can ask questions and upvote the best). In smaller subreddits, the effect can be more subtle; for example, in r/ArcherFX (a subreddit devoted to FX’s television series Archer), some series animators and writers are members and are denoted as such in parentheses next to their usernames.
7. Create a contest, game, or video – contests have been huge fun in every community I’ve ever been part of, especially ones where I have a more personal connection with the group members. I’m honestly a little afraid to get into the sorts of things I’ve done for these contests and games for fear that traces would be found on the internet, but rest assured my participation has been extensive, and it was all a huge amount of fun.
8. Mobilize your existing members – this is something that frequently comes up in most communities I’m part of, but it’s usually not super effective because it doesn’t effectively provide the win-win scenario described in Design to Thrive. Obviously, by participating in a group, people will automatically tend to see that group as more valuable in a sort of conformation bias-y way.

These chapters examine two parts of Made to Stick’s acronym SUCCES: C (Credible) and E (Emotional). Credibility is obviously important for an idea to stick, and this chapter examines ways to make people believe ideas are credible. The obvious route is to go with an authority figure to convey the message, whether that figure is an expert in his field (e.g. Stephen Hawking on something physics-related) or just a general celebrity endorsing a product. Without access to these authority figures, other methods must be used to establish credibility:

1. Using anti-authority – use an example of someone who did not follow the advice you’re trying to offer, e.g. someone dying of a lung disease as part of an anti-smoking campaign
2. Using concrete details – more details, even irrelevant ones, will make the story seem more authentic
3. Using statistics – statistics are often seen as objective and can support a point well, but it’s important to not seek out statistics that support your point and ignore others that may exist which contradict it
4. Using the Sinatra Test – named for the Frank Sinatra song “New York, New York,” specifically for the lyric “if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.” The idea is that credibility can be enforced by not necessarily using an expert in the arguer’s specific field but rather by addressing a related issue which will make credibility indisputable.
5. Using testable credentials – suggesting that consumers test your idea themselves, e.g. Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” commercials claiming Wendy’s burgers had more beef-to-bun than other chains. Fast-food eaters could try this out for themselves.

Emotion is obviously a “sticky” thing when it comes to perpetuating ideas, but the idea isn’t to make people emotional in a sad way, like a tear-inducing movie. The idea is to make people care about the idea and about the issue; by presenting individuals affected as part of your argument rather than simply statistics or familiar faces spouting off information about the situation, a listener will have empathy for this other person/people and their situation. There’s also an element of appealing to an individual’s self-interest: using “you” when presenting an idea is more effective than a generic noun such as “people.” This leads someone to think not only about what their self-interest is regarding the person they are, but also the person they consider or desire themselves to be.

This chapter in Design to Thrive is about belonging, the “B” of “RIBS.” It explores what qualifies the sense of community and camaraderie among members of a community and suggests ways to reinforce and encourage this. Dr. Howard summarizes it really thoroughly with his checklist of techniques to create a sense of belonging. (I’m going to mix up my summary/personal anecdotal response a bit through the following list to incorporate my own personal experience (or lack thereof) with each of these techniques.)

1. Create and distribute a story of origin—when members know the roots of the organization they are becoming a part of, they tend to understand the goals and history of the organization much better. My favorite community I frequent on livejournal was established in a somewhat reactive way; another community with a similar purpose had gotten way too serious and too particular about its members, so some of them left and started their own community with a clear set of rules and direction. This story of origin isn’t told very often because it’s not entirely relevant to the community as a whole anymore, but it’s frequently reposted when the community has a “birthday.”

2. Create an initiation ritual—initiation rituals test potential members and prove that they are capable of becoming a functioning part of the community. They could be physical, mental, emotional, intellectual tests, etc. but the important thing about them is that it’s an experience members can bond over. I haven’t experienced much of this on online communities, but many of them have been somewhat selective: applicants fill out a form, and moderators go look at their user profile to see how active they’ve been elsewhere on the site. In some cases of smaller, more exclusive communities (particularly on livejournal) there’s a sense of camaraderie in the fact that you were all chosen as members.

3. Encourage your leaders and elders to share mythologies—by telling stories to new members, the new folks can get a feel for what the community is trying to accomplish and what it has already accomplished. In my experience, this is a really good way to make users feel like they belong: inside jokes abound on the internet, and as users start to recognize a certain story or meme as familiar, there will be a sense of shared secret knowledge bonding them together.

4. Encourage members to share myths and stories about themselves—this one seems the most obvious to me: as members share stories about themselves, they get to know each other better, and the community becomes tighter as a group. I’ve experienced this many times across many communities; I have several people I’ve met online who I count among my closest friends, but I also now can recognize others within the community (and details about their lives) whom I’m not necessarily close to.

5. Create leveling up ceremonies—within communities that have levels of membership or different ranks that members can achieve, it’s important to celebrate those ranks. I don’t have a lot of personal experience with this, excepting perhaps reddit, which grants “trophies” for users who complete various tasks or participate in certain community events. These trophies don’t really change much about the user’s membership status.

6. Establish routines and protocols—it’s important that users know how to deal with each other and with conflict, and through routine and protocol, the community will become more organized. In my experiences, clearly established protocol has been great for community camaraderie; however, when someone breaks the protocol and resists correction, the rest of the users tend to band together against that person in an us vs. them sort of situation which can escalate quickly if moderators do not interfere. That said, if someone outrageously breaks posting protocol and makes a “flounce” post (a post declaring that they’re leaving the community for whatever reason, usually one which is horribly dramatic), protocol on the part of the rest of the community is generally to mock them incessantly. We’re kind of cruel sometimes.

7. Establish symbols, colors, and visual identities—creating a visual sense of identity pulls users together, and using easily identifiable symbols can identify a group at a glance. In my experiences, this sort of branding works really well… unless that brand is changed, in which case users tend to react en masse. I remember having endless conversations with people about Google’s icon when it changed for bookmarks and tabbed browsing. While it’s seemingly a small thing and not a big deal, it shook our mental perceptions of Google at the time. Now we’ve obviously adapted and it’s no longer a big deal.

8. Use a membership application as an initiation ritual—this is pretty self-explanatory, and I covered my personal experience with it above somewhat. This is clearly more efficient online than many other physical- or emotional-based forms of initiation, as it’s fairly hands-off and doesn’t necessarily require much of the applicant.

in which I finally make a post which doesn't reference internet-based revolution

This week’s readings focused on humans’ innate mental tendencies and how to create a site or a community system that appeals to those tendencies and keeps the site running functionally. Neuro Web Design described the “three brains” we each have: the old brain, which governs basic functions, fight or flight responses, etc.; the middle brain, which rules emotions; and the new brain, which is basically the conscious mind as it is commonly imagined. Like every philosophy class I’ve ever taken (admittedly just two, but both have been during this academic year, so I feel a little inundated), the book establishes early on that the sense that the mind and body are two separate things is completely false. Weinschenk does share a lot of interesting information on studies showing subconscious thinking and its influence over behavior, and she correlates that to how websites should optimally present information, especially in commercial situations. Much of the focus is on how people make choices subliminally based on either what they themselves will get out of the decision, how much they feel they belong to a certain group, or how much they feel they owe someone. Design to Thrive takes a similar approach in this chapter, examining the same principles in regards to setting up a social network or community. Dr. Howard provides a list of twelve techniques which involve using renumeration and a sense of community belonging to get lurkers involved and maximize the community experience for everyone:
1. Make the text editor fun; add emoticons
2. Use a subscription application form
3. Mentors teach
4. Seed the discussion
5. Use stars to show membership contribution levels
6. Rank the value of members’ messages
7. Remove the fear factor by providing examples of how to participate
8. Create a safe environment by sending out “tickle” messages
9. Create a regular event
10. Don’t automatically archive
11. Discourage attempts to send conversations to other blogs, web sites, or discussion groups
12. Ban redistribution servers and cross-postings

This last bit with the listed techniques really reverberated with me, as I could think of specific examples for each applying to (mostly successful) online communities I have personally been part of, specifically on livejournal and reddit. Aside from the F7U12 subreddit, I haven’t had much experience with in-text emoticons, aside from most of my livejournal community experience which tends to somewhat substitute emoticons with gifs showing users’ mood, tone, or reaction to another comment or post. Several livejournal communities I’ve been part of have required an application or at least a pre-screening process involving moderators looking at an incoming user’s profile to ensure that an incoming user is active on livejournal (examining comments left/received, etc.) and that their interests line up with that of the community. I’ve experienced some mentoring on livejournal, although most of mine occurred by happenstance. Discussion-seeding is common among moderators of both sites, and reddit particularly employs the next methods, granting users karma or taking it away based on how much other users upvote or downvote comments and submissions. Sample posting is common in both, and livejournal uses “tickle” messages about once a week. Reddit opts for posting on the reddit blog, a defaulted subreddit for all users. Regular events are more common in the livejournal groups I’ve been a part of; some users posted identical “how was your day?” posts each day, and for a time users would be encouraged to create themed “mixtapes” and post a list of songs each Tuesday which fit the week’s theme. I’ve never really been part of a group which didn’t automatically archive, but I certainly see the appeal. The issue present in cross-posting or taking an issue to another site has been a huge one during my livejournal experience; communities like sf_drama exist just to highlight dramatic arguments, generally making the entire original community look bad. Sitewide, livejournal had an issue recently when it implemented a connect-to-facebook sort of feature which would automatically post user comments (and the entries which they commented on) to facebook; the userbase was outraged, not wanting their private entries being automatically posted on some commenter’s facebook page for the entire world to see. Based on this outrage, livejournal eventually disabled the feature in favor of continuing to maintain the notion that internet users have some amount of privacy on the web.

Chapter 3 of Here Comes Everybody begins by defining “profession,” so Shirky can further explain the unexpected incongruity that arises when non-professionals begin to do the work of professionals, frequently unprompted and unpaid. With the rise of online publishing and the accompanying drop in costs to publish, news (and most other text) has become completely free. This opens up an unlimited potential for information: as Shirky puts it, there is “a switch from ‘Why publish this?’ to ‘Why not?’” (60). Professional online journalism aside, the influence of amateur bloggers can sometimes direct traditional media as well: if enough buzz can be generated online, information suddenly can become important enough for the national stage. The question also exists as to whether or not these amateur reporters can truly be considered “journalists” and be given all the rights and respect that that entails.

Chapter 4 goes on to describe the varied nature of some of this published blogging content, highlighting users’ tendency to publish unedited and inane content along with the interesting stuff. Shirky offers reasoning for this and ties it back to the idea of community: although many blog posts are available to be read by anyone on the internet, they are only intended for a small, familiar audience; other blogs exist to generate information about specific topics and are intended to distribute information to the internet at large. It is therefore necessary for individuals to filter information; it would be impossible and unhelpful to browse the internet at random.

Chapter 5 discusses Wikipedia and the power of collaboration in user-generated content. Wikipedia works effectively because there are a huge number of users actively working to improve the articles and edit the site, the vast majority of them unpaid. A core group does much of the work for each article, generating the content, and then others make edits as needed.

Much of the reading from Design to Thrive echoes concerns from Here Comes Everybody. Dr. Howard’s most-delved-into example is Iran’s Twitter-driven revolution attempt in 2009. The chapter examines social media’s potential to effect actual societal change and looks into some problems which arise when social media becomes a somewhat legitimate form for journalism and otherwise. I’ll address Iran further in my response, but the issues described as “the social networking battlefield of the future” stood out to me more clearly as I read, given current events (and my tendency to panic about the future of the internet):
1. Copyrights and intellectual activity
2. Disciplinary control vs. individual creativity
3. Visual, technological, and new media literacies
4. Decision-making contexts for future markets

I feel all of these are important and currently in play, but with so much recent government intervention into the internet, I worry that the second issue (control vs. creativity) will eventually fall too hard on the side of the former to allow for much of the latter. This issue is really outside these four; these all assume fairly unlimited internet access, with the “control” referencing more censorship than flat-out limitation, but the recent situation in Egypt and the current situation in Canada are placing an artificial scarcity to this information that we’ve acclimated to as a society. The issue in Canada and the US are ISPs trying to get more money and possibly curb illegal filesharing, but the shutdown of telecommunications in Egypt successfully caused mass confusion and hampered protesters’ efforts. It’s hugely notable that the day before the government shut off the entire internet, they blocked just Facebook and Twitter. Egypt’s revolution in 2011 could have been as closely followed as Iran’s was in 2009 by gathering these citizen journalists’ reports from the ground, but by shutting down everything (and capturing, beating, and confiscating the equipment of professional journalists) much of the information spread could be controlled and manipulated by the government. Citizens can use social networking tools to effect great change, but once they're used to them, it can be difficult to effectively organize a massive movement without.

EDIT (9:15am 2-3-11): Perhaps I should have more faith in government, or at least in Canada's. Or maybe our blog posts are inexplicably linked to current events and I should wait until the due date to post them.