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.
It's *amazing* how fast technology changes, isn't it? There's an old joke that says that 1-year on the Internet is 3 months in real time.
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