Is YouTube Replacing the Boob Tube?

YouTube is many things to many different people and nothing to some. Before this assignment my friends and family had shown me in total about twenty four videos posted to this site. The clips I viewed ranged from the intellectually stimulating actual space voyage of a toy robot tethered to a weather balloon to the famous Anthony Dodson remix (now boasting over seventy million views) giving people outside our state one more source of fodder with which to prove Alabamians less refined than residents of their own state.

This ever accessible source of video interaction serves the now typical user by providing long term storage of their uploaded short films. These works range from the polished and professional to the painfully amateur and mundane. Regardless of perceived quality of content or presentation, each and every clip uploaded (that is not censored out by YouTube due to inappropriate content) is immediately accessible by anyone plugged into this global community. Broadcast is granted and not deferred by the wait for an anticipated approval by network producers or film investors.

     Gone are the days of controlled viewing options, “Especially as our creative economies shift to more user-generated content, destabilizing the long monopoly of media industries as the exclusive producers of texts and authorized conduits of interpretation.”¹ (Snickars, Vonderau, and Uricchio 35)  With the click of a mouse you may not only select a short video in one of a seemingly limitless list of genres, but also sort your selections by more than twenty five other filters (click search options). In contrast, television allows us to watch what is being broadcast or watch nothing at all. Cable television offers a limited list of on-demand programming but still ultimately reins in our options.

                Hulu and YouTube in fact are “‘increasingly going after each other’s turf, including jockeying for video programming that could generate the most advertising dollars.’  But as the fastest-growing site in the history of the Web, YouTube also remains the default site for video and the prototype for all similar sites to come.”² (Snickars, and Vonderau 10-11)

Unlike the past when all video viewing was characterized by images being projected onto us without any direct opportunity to speak back to the producer, cast or actors, YouTube allows the viewer to do all of this. There is no sign here of the one-sided conversations where movies force their viewers to watch in a muted trance and limit any personal critique to one’s minuscule group of acquaintances. YouTube gives every viewer a voice, not only to the entities that created the piece but to their fellow viewers as well. Due to the relative anonymity of those posting comments, at times it seems that the language chosen is more polarizing than would be used if one were speaking directly to another live person and therefore reveals the harsh and abrasive nature of these often unproven critics.

This relatively new forum for video sharing and opinion posting begs several questions. Should anyone and everyone be allowed to post their video creations regardless of quality? If not, who determines the guidelines that define quality? Should the opinion of a nine year old carry the weight of a life long film critic? How are we to know the difference? Why should we relinquish our power of selection and filtration afforded on YouTube when we wish to watch a video on our television? How soon will these two worlds merge into one? 

References

1)                            Snickars, Pelle, Patrick Vonderau, and William Uricchio. The YouTube Reader. 1st. Stockholm, Sweden: 2009. 35. Print.

2)                            Snickars, Pelle, and Patrick Vonderau. The YouTube Reader. 1st. Stockholm, Sweden: 2009. 10-11. Print.