lonelygirl15

Transcription

[clapping] (Michael) Right, I just want to start out with a little story, in 1989 just as Tim Burner is sort of launching the foundation to what will become the World Wide Web, ah Kevin Kelly is invited by ABC to consult about where to go with this internet thing. You know, this internet is starting to get traction and ABC wanted to know what to do about it. And Kevin Kelly gave them the best pitch he could but ABC wasn't buying into it. In fact later Stephen Weiswasser suggested: "You are not going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the- on the internet." So we can kind of look at the score card today, we check where we stand right now. In 1948 ABC started broadcasting and they became the third network to do so, so they were like third major network. So if you think of this it was 60 years ago. So it's 2008 minus 1948, 60 years. Those 3 networks, if they had been broadcasting everyday for every hour of the day for 60 years, there'd be over 1.5 million hours of programming, which is a lot, but YouTube produced more in the past 6 months. And they did it without producers, they did it with just like, people like you and me, anybody who's every uploaded anything to YouTube. And so on YouTube today there's over 9000 hours that are uploaded everyday. It's the equivalent of almost 400 always-on TV channels. But it's not really 400 always-on TV channels because it's actually 200,000 3 minute videos. And trust me, I've watched about 8, 000 videos in the past 3 weeks and this is not "mass media." It- [laughs] a large percentage of this is meant for less than a hundred viewers so it's really an interesting phenomenon. And 88% of the content that's coming through the front door is new and original. It's actually better than the networks do. [laughter] So, So that's a story of the numbers and this is really a story about new forms of expression and new forms of community and new forms of identity emerging. And so instead, I want to start with another little story. And this one instead we're gonna start with a Moldoven Pop song from 2003, and everyone's groaning [laughs] So this this was launched in 2003. It became a big hit in Italy in 2004. It spread throughout Europe latter that year. Then travels over to Japan where it mixes with the culture of animation where people start making videos of this. This- one of these videos travels all the way to the suburbs of New Jersey and there Gary Browsma, looks into his webcam and says "Alo." [laughs] And this is ike this great moment, I'll just let you hear the music for a second. Can you hear it? [laughs] Okay. And there's this great moment, Ah Gary Wilk has written about this, he says: "Browsma's video single handedly justifies the existence of webcams." He goes on to say, ah "cause here he is sitting in this dismal looking suburban bedroom but he's really going for it, flirting with the camera, utterly giving over to the- the music. It's a movie of someone who's having the time of his life, wants to share his joy with everyone, and doesn't care what anyone else thinks." [laughter] So this video obviously becomes a huge phenomenon. Um, some people have suggested that it's been viewe 600 million times. I'm not sure what the proper statistic would be. Ah but here you see some of the... A teenager from New Jersey is finding himself in email boxes everywhere. And folks, this one is the real deal. (Michael) So he's on the Today Show, he's on VH1's Best Week Ever. He's like the new cyber star compared to the ah, the Star Wars kid. Now meanwhile, this is February 2005, and meanwhile YouTube is just being created. So Chad, Steve, and Jawed were just registering it. And on April 23, 2005 they launched YouTube, they have the first video is posted on that day. And this is really interesting because it actuallycreates a new type of platform, up to this time it's actually really difficult to upload video to the web. And suddenly everybody can join in this new Numa Numa Craze and they did. As you can see, over 58,000 ah, videos have now been uploaded and you'll see people from all over the world just joining in this dance. And this then becomes something sort of important, what's going on. And again Gary Wilk has this great line when he's talking about this he starts, he says, "It starts to look less like an infectious joke then a new cultural order. These kids aren't mocking the Numa, Numa guy, they're veneration him. And they're beautiful to see, because they're replicating and spreading his happiness. They're following a ritual that's meaningful, if not yet venerable. They are learning the dance, lip-singing the song, documenting their performance just so, making it available for the world to see." So I kind of like to think of Gary as the first guy on the dance floor of this global mixer and- [laughs] and there's a lot more going on than just dancing. And you know, you think about the joy that people are expressing and the fun that they're having a- as they do this dance and I like to think of it as more than just a dance, it's a celebration. It's a celebration of new forms of empowerment. You- you know anybody with a webcam now has a stronger voice and presence. Ah it's a celebration of new forms of community, ah and types of community that we've really never seen before, global connections, transcending space and time. It's a celebration of new and unimaginable possiblities. And you know, you can say this is all hype. Like these are just people dancing and having fun, but think about what they're dancing in front of. They're dancing in front of about a billion boxes in places all over the world that are networked together and allows us to connect in ways we've never connected before. And in fact, they can actually invent new ways to connect with each other and it's getting easier and easier to do so. And s som- that's what I like to think that this is really just a very important moment. [music continues] So I tried to capture some of the changes that are going on on the web with this video last year, that about half of you have seen. This is, "The Machine is Using Us." And I started with text and thinking about how it was different than a world based in text. I could have started with TV, it might have been interesting video as well. Um but I started with- with ah text on paper and what it meant to move to digital text and what that move really means. I'm just gonna speed this up so you don't have to watch the whole thing. Um but in general what I was trying to get at was when you unpack the impacts of the ah of digital text and you think about the separation of form and content: blogs, wikis, tagging, all of these things, it leads to a necessity of what the web is all about. It's not just about information but it's actually about linking people and it's about linking people in ways that we've never been linked before. And in ways that we can't even predict cause it's changing almost every 6 months now there's a new tool out there that connects us in some new way. So I suggested at the end of that that we're going to need to rethink a few things. And as an anthropologist I sort of see everything as kind of connected so I really have the sense that we're gonna have to rethink all of these things. And I actually have a theory about each one of these if you want to pin me down in questions, even about love [laughs] So um what really surprised me after the video was- and I think what really drives home the point is not the video itself but what happened afterwards. And so I uploaded this on a Wednesday and it was the Wednesday before Super Bowl Sunday, that becomes important and I'll tell you why in a second. So I actually ah made it by myself and this kind of- frankly it's not a very nice computer, um in the basement of my house here in- in Kansas. And I was working alone except for I was actually sort of collaborating with a guy on the Ivory Coast of Africa because he had uploaded some of his music, I'm a horrible musician but he had some great music he uploaded it and he put a creative comments license on it. Which means that I could use it for my video. So we were able to collaborate across time and space essentially. So this is then on Friday, so 2 days after I uploaded it, you can see it had 253 views and I had to take the screen shot because as an anthropologist if your work reaches more than 200 people, this is a really big deal. [laughter] so- so I took the screen shot and I actually sent it to my department head you know, put it in the tenure file. And ah- and ah that was on ah Friday, um Saturday it had jumped to over a thousand and I thought, 'okay, something's going on here because it was actually growing exponentially,' and I could actually see the count speeding up, it was going faster and faster. And so I started looking around on the web to try and figure out what was going on and I found it at digg.com. So what digg.com is, digg is a place where ah it's basically like 'user-generated filtering.' So what you just saw in the video was user-generated content. This is like user-generated filtering where the users can get together and they can give it a thumbs up if they like it, if they digg it, or if they don't like it they can bury it. And the stuff that gets dug up is up on the front page and here you can actually see it's coming out to the front page by this user-generated filtering process and then several thousand more people see it. And then the same thing's going on over on del.icio.us where a lot of people are tagging it. So do you guys know how tagging works? They're watching the video here, they can push a button and it tags it for them, basically it bookmarks it but those bookmarks are shared with the world. And when they tag it with a word like web2.0 it goes back to del.icio.us and the web2.0 list. And there's a lot of people actually sort of watching this list, who are interested in web2.0, or what ever it is you're interested in, you watch that list and you'll see these things appear. So this is user-generated organization, but because this stuff is actually being distributated out and coming right on to people's front page in many cases through RUSSfeeds and this type of things, it's also user-generated distribution. So you think about this massive media machine that we've existed with for so long and the massive distribution system and organization system and all this, there's now a user-generated alternative to all this and that's what really moves this video around the web. So there's also, going throughout the blogoshere and it's- this is user-generated commentary ah but the cool thing about that is that each time somebody blogs it, it actually scores a point you might say on Technorati. And so Technorati is actually counting the number of times people are actually blogging these things and keeping track of these so there's a ranking system. So this is now Super Bowl Sunday Morning and it actually appeared in the top five and I was just totally blown away by this. But we knew this was ah Super Bowl Sunday so we're thinking, 'oh gosh, by you know, 7 o'clock tonight all the viral videos from the Super Bowl, all the commercials are just gonna bombard the web and we're gonna be blasted out of the top 20. So we're just hitting refresh, refresh, refresh [laughter] my wife and I are just sitting there hitting refresh, refresh, and we're hoping it will get to number one and it actually did. So by noon that day it was the number one video in the blogosphere, um and then actually the next day ah most of the videos were from the Super Bowl but standing on top of that ah was my video. So here we had these commercials which, on average, cost $3.6 million to produce and get out on the web and my little video, which cost nothing to produce was sitting on top. So there's really something interesting going on here. This was taken some time ago, you can see it had almost 5 million views at that time, ah over 13 thousand people were writing about it, ah it went on the local news, and at which point she noted, 'who knew anthropology could be so much fun.' [laughter] And there you sa- you saw the interduction earlier, it was wired and translated into 12 different languages within a matter of months, ah went all over the world from there. So we're really living in a different kind of mediascape here. YouTube is a part of it but it's actually- you have to think about the whole mediascape, you can't just think about YouTube if you're thinking about the anthropology of YouTube. And so my video is an example where: I posted it on YouTube, I sent it out on email, it travels then through the blogosphere, it goes through facebook and myspace and digg and so on, and this is showing that there's this really int- interesting, integrated mediascape that we now live in. And at the center of this mediascape is us. And that makes things especially interesting. And as an anthropologist I- I think of media slightly differently than most people. I don't think of it as- as content. I think of- and I don't even think of it as tools of communication. I think of media as mediating human relationship and that's important because when media change then human relationships change and that's where the anthropology of this comes in. And that's why I wanted to suggest that we're gonna have to rethink all of these things, including ourselves. So, as a- what we've been doing for the past 2 years now with my students, I have about 10 graduate- or 10 undergraduate students ah every spring and we just launch into a study of YouTube each spring. And...I'll show kind of what we do um this is just some of the quantitative work that we do for example, like we'll watch a YouTube video on this part of the screen here and we'll have a data uploading thing here and the students can upload at anytime, anytime they can be taking notes on the videos, and all that goes to a data base that we can then analyze. And ah just to give you a sense of who is on YouTube, it's kind of interesting because this is about digital native but it's very interesting to look at the- the ah- age ranges here. If you look at 35 and older about 25% of videos feature someone 35 and older, which is actually the same as the teens, 12 to 17, the really strong group presence on YouTube happens to be in the 18 to 24 age group and also the young adult so, kind of 25 to 34. Those are the most- the strongest age groups, over 50% of videos have an 18 to 24 year old in them. Now, what's on YouTube? This is where things get kind of interesting. [music starts] So I'm just gonna give you a quick little tour of what's out there. So here's a 92 year old, Ivering Fields, singing about YouTube, there's a lot of songs about YouTube on YouTube if you're interested in those. But the most commonly uploaded videos on YouTube are actually home videos. And this is a famous example that many of you may have seen. Most of- most of the videos are actually meant for less than a hundred viewers. Ooo. Ouch. OUCH! OUCH Charlie! OOOUCH! Charlie, that really hurt! [laughter]. (Michael) Now what's really interesting about this sort of participatory nature of YouTube is this has been re-done or remixed about ah about 2,000 time. Charlie! Ouch! Oow. Charlie! Oooch! Charlie! [laughter] That really hurt, and it's still hurting. [laughter] (Michael) Some of these remixes actually get really sophisticated so here's somebody who's actually remixed it using free-d loops if you know what that is. I 'll show you what that is in a second. But there's actually the simple- simplicity of drag- and-drop editing, almost like cut and paste work with video and audio can lead to all sorts of things. So for example this is a 16 year old, Dion Cortez Whey, who created this song in the beginning of 2007 using this program here. And then he uploaded this little video to YouTube and myspace. And some of you know this song. So he uploaded this little video and it starts to spread. And it just goes and goes and goes. And then pretty soon like it seems like everybody in the world is doing this dance. Including prisoners in the Philippines. That's a real video, these are MIT professors and graduate students studying participatory culture. [laughter] And here's some high school teachers getting in on it. But this just goes and goes and goes. It's just a complete phenomenon. This is the Harry Potter version. A Lion King version. And so these are just massively massive generation of remixes about this. This is the Sponge Bob version, it just goes on and on. [music continues] K, so that was April 2007, August 2007- by August 2007 he's signed by a major label because he's a total phenomenon at this time. And- and when they made the official video through the record label, they sort of made fun of themselves. The record label made fun of themselves because they'd been been blind-sided by this user-generated content had become bigger than anything they had produced. So they produced this video and actually you can see it's a total commentary on how it actually emerged through the web. And then finally sort of catching up. [music] Just a few more notes about this. Um as you can see, it's all about new media. But this ended up 7 weeks up at the top of the billboard of top 100. Um not bad for something that started off as user-generated content. And it was also nominated for a Grammy Award. [laughter] So here's what really interesting that out of almost 10,000 videos on YouTube out of the 200,000 are addressed to the YouTube community everyday. They are videos like this. Hi there- Yo, quick side job, Monkeydo1212 here. Hey YouTube, this is Pri- So just thinking about why you know, we can start with- with some studies of um the lack- the loss of community over time, so Robert Putnam is famous for this, but a lot of other people have been looking at this as well. Um and you know, some of the explanations that are around for this general sense of a loss of community are things like, when women joined the workforce there's- there's suddenly less free time, um moving from the corner grocery store to these large super markets and ultimately these huge big box stores. There are a number of things contributing to this. And suddenly we're in these- these massive communities of suburbia where we're disconnected and connected only by- by roadways and TVs. And the TVs themselves are isolating. So there's many different analyses of why culture- of why community has been in decline. Um and mean while new forms of networks and communities are emerging. So for example, we now have all these cell phones around and Barry Wellman has this great ah comment where he talks about moving from place-to-place to person-to-person connectivity, ah a phenomenon he calls 'networked individualism.' So you think about this state that we're in now, where we're increasingly networked but also individualized. Ah we- there's this cultural inversion going on where we're becoming increasingly individual but many of us still have this very strong value and- and desire for community. So the more individual we become, the more we long for this community. Um we become increasingly independent while longing for stronger relationships. And we see increasingly more commercialization around us and we long for authenticity. And YouTube comes into the midst of all this all this. And- and I think the- what we see on YouTube is shaped by this. This is Robert Putnam's comment, he says, 'My hunch is that meeting in an electronic forum is not the equivalent of meeting in a bowling alley.' And we agree with him and that's why we had to actually sort of get involved and this is one of my students, ah this is me. we actually just started getting on YouTube and participating in this community. This is- in anthropology we call this participant observation it's like, it's the core of our methodology, you have to experience a phenomenon to understand it. This is me doing participant observation in New Guinea and [laughter] here we are back in- in YouTube. So we went ahead and introduced ourselves to the YouTube community in the spring of 2007 with this video. [music] Hey, I'm Mike Wesch. I'm a professor at Kansas State University and I'm teaching a class called Digital Ethnography. And ethnography is the study of a culture and we are studying the culture of YouTube. So I have a whole team of students here and I'm gonna take you down the hall over here, and you're actually gonna meet the students and this is kind of important because one of the things we do in anthropology is ah what we call participant observation. that means that we don't just observe the things that we're studying, we actually participate in the things we're studying. So the people you're gonna meet today in class are people you're gonna see inside YouTube, and they're gonna be, you know, responding to your videos, they're gonna be posting questions themselves, they're gonna be vlogging, they're gonna be there in the community, right there with you. Alright, hopefully you can join us online, we'd like to see you around. Ah what else do we want to tell them? We really need your help. [laughter] Yeah, we really need your help, just come visit us online, come talk to us, and we'll have a good time. And bring your friends. [Laughter] Alright, cool. Bye. Alright, so then we're thinking about back to that idea, when media change, human relations change. We wanted to look at the actually medium of community for YouTube, which is primarily the platform itself but also webcams and screens. We wondered what it is like to build a community through webcams and screens and that meant actually participating. And we got this ah great insight early on as you'll see from this student here. You know, I'm, you know, looking at camera and ah, I had a mirror around here to sh- to show you guys but- oh there it is. This, is what I'm talking to, not you, this. Well you, but this. I'm talking to you but for the time being, I don't know who you are. (Michael) So if you meditate on this for just a second and just think about what this means. Um, first off, you/re- every time you talk on a webcam, you're talking to some- some place that's unknown, you actually don't know who's gonna to be talking back to you. Um so you sort of have an invisible audience phenomenon. It's asynchronous so you never know when they're going to watch you. And you think about when you talk, every time you talk you're- you're sort of sizing up the context and in this case you actually don't know what the context is. You can be launched into many many different context, including your video can be...remixed by somebody. So you don't actually know what's going on. And this is what we came to call context collapse. And when we started watching first vlog and did first vlogs ourselves we-it's like this deep experience of context collapse. The moment you look into a webcam for the first time and you try to start talking you have this sense, like, you just don't know who you're talking to and therefore you come out sounding all awkward. Do- do a search for first volgs on YouTube and you'll see what I'm talking about. And here's an example from out first vlogs. Start with mine but [laughs] Hey! [laughter] Hey, I'm Mike Wesch. I'm a professor at Kansas State University- And I actually wore that fake smile through the whole thing I just- didn't know what to do, you know. [laughter] [music] Hi. [laughs] [laughs] Hi, my name's Jessie and... I feel like I should put a picture of a person. Right here, you know maybe an eye. It'd be so much better with this thing blinked and smiled, responded to what I said- This is like the seventh time I tried to tape this [unintelligible]. Okay, so I thought I'd do this before my roommate gets back and finds me talking to myself. So I am in my closet, um I feel a little strange out in the family room just talking to what seems like myself. So... I don't really know what to talk about. What do people talk about their first vlogs and... what do people talk about anyway. [laughs] [guitar music] (unseen female) Beautiful. Man I totally glazed past introducing myself um... [laughs] Um yeah, oh, yeah, my name is Mellisa, by the way. Um and I'm a college student. College student, enunciate. Ah so I'm just gonna talk okay? [laughs] And to tell you the truth I actually spent about 5 minutes deciding how I was going to wear my hair, back or up, all forming this identity, this new mask, to my new community. And this is actually really deep right? Because you have this situation where you're trying to form the new mask, you're new identity in a space where it seems like everyone is watching and yet nobody's there. And so it's like, it feels like at once the most private space because it's your own bedroom or wherever it might be, but it's also quite possibly the most public space on the planet. You know, you think about the number of people that might actually see this. And so there begins to be a lot of reflection about self on YouTube and you can just- it's a- it's a great place to study self and identity if you're in to that. Um, well I'll give you just a little bit of background on this. I think it was Charles Coolie's idea, the looking-glass-self. It's this idea that we actually know ourselves through, be it through our understanding of how others understand us. And this is ah, becomes really complicated and when you're looking through a webcam, mediating your life through this webcam. I'll show you just one example and then I'll add on to that. And you know that other people are going to be observing you but they're not right at the second you're making your video so...you're more yourself. So this- this self-reflections happens on- while they're looking through these webcams. But adding to it, it's not just the fact that anybody and everybody might be looking at you through that webcam, it's also the fact that you yourself might look and see that video again someday. So there's really this hyper-self-awareness that's developing as people are doing this. (male) We live in the world of the instant replay. Around the planet, all the events are not only being recorded but replayed. And the amazing thing about the replay is that it offers the means of recog, re-cognition. The first time is cognition the second time it's recognition. And the recognition is even deeper. I decide to make vlog, not only for myself but for anyone who cares to watch. Document my transition and um and I'll be able to look back and I suppose you will too, to see, you knonw, how far at all I've come. So replay offers a deeper level of awareness than- than the first play. We had the, you know, getting into some very large matters about the effects of this new environment, this new electric environment on man and his awareness of himself. I guess what makes me so uncomfortable talking on camera it's like, I 'm right- I'm looking at my face and I'm like, good God. [sigh] Cause when I think of myself, I guess I don't really think of myself the way I appear to other people which is... yeah, young, naive... oh she's so cute. Cute little girl. Not cute. [laughs] So generally people on YouTube, when they're on their ah cameras they're in a very self-reflexive kind of mood, and you'll actually see that in a lot of the videos. But there's also this other side which when we watch YouTube we- we're generally anonymous, people can't see us watching it. And this has its own impact as well, most famously is probably Luv Grossman's observation in time, which he says, "some of the comments in YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and a naked hatred." [laughter] So- so this is the actual page I was on when I decided to make this clip, and I'll just take you through what was said here. Um, really interesting dialog. Ah ... this is responded by wingman8788: u guys are so gay. it sucks. Quertyu121: wat the fuck r u talking about frecklygirl14 says YOUTUBE COMMENTS MAKE ME ANGRY GRRRR And quertyu responds by saying then don't comment on youtube u shitstain [laughter] So, there is the anonymity plus this physical distance plus a rare and ephemeral dialogue creates- enables the possibility for this type of hatred but there's something else. That same anonymity, physical distance and rare and ephemeral dialogue allow people to feel sort of really relaxed and have this freedom to experience humanity without fear of social anxiety. You can actually sort of stare at people and sort of see them for who they are. It's slightly voyeuristic, you know. Um...it allows you to watch other people, without staring at them, or making them uncomfortable. Because they don't see you watching them, you can just watch their video and it's really interesting. It's like this... sociological experiment where you can just like, see their being, you can see their person. (Michael) But you almost get this sense of, in James Joyce's terms, of aest- aesthetic arrest and you get this sense that people are actually experiencing the sense of being... just totally overwhelmed by the beauty of the human in front of them. Like people have this really profound deep connection with other humans through YouTube that maybe they couldn't experience in everyday life because they're not allowed to stare, because they're not allowed to just experience this person as a human being. And so we started looking at why this might be. And we're looking at this cultural inversion, as I mentioned earlier, where we tend to express individualism, independence, and commercialism, while desiring community, relationships and authenticity. This is really a tension that and and as these sort of lonely individuals we cr- we crave this connection, at the same time as individuals we see that connection as constraint. And what- what we're seeking then through technologies often is a form of connection without constraint, a some way of connecting very deeply ah without feeling the deep responsibilities of that deep connection. So YouTube offers this possibility and what we see on YouTube is people connecting very very deeply. It's just amazing to me how powerful this- this medium is. I mean, I'm- I'm sitting- I'm sitting in my living room here, talking to a camera. My God, the interaction, it - it's unbelievable. (male) This will get you in the mood, so you're like this is how it's done. It's casual, we just talk to camera here. I'll put that there, see if it helps. I got to figure this thing out eventually. Just came by to say ah- came by, what do I mean came by I didn't come by I'm sitting right here. January was a hard month for me. Right now, I should be preparing for the birth of my son Zachary. but I'm not, as you guys already know. Hi Mel, I watched your video and ah I'm sorry I'm running behind on my schedule here. I was listening to it and I felt...my tears coming. It's a big fucking experiment in getting myself out. We're all alone, from each other and by ourselves, and that's what I think fucking YouTube should be about. Thank you guys. Bye. A lot of people report about having this deep profounding experience on YouTube, which maybe surprises those of you who have only seen the skateboarding dog or the Star Wars kid, or something like that. Ah, but if you ask the- these people in the YouTube community there's this ah, there was this thread that went through recently, 'What does YouTube mean to you?' and a lot of people said free hugs. And what were they talking about. There's sort of a hero that sort of emerged in all this, and it's juammann, J U A M M A N N. And this is a guy who came home to Sydney after ah being in Britain for some time and there's nobody there to greet him, he's one of those lonely individuals with no community. And so he felt like he needed a hug so he went- he started this campaign, he'd go down to the mall here and hold up this 'free hugs' sign and after some time eventuall people started hugging him. And he this profound connection- anonymous people and yet coming together and sharing a hug. And pretty soon it starts to spread. Other people start taking up the sign. [laughter] And you can see they put it on YouTube, it has nearly 30 million views now. And it goes world wide now, from YouTube it goes global. And so people all over the world start doing this. And the fact that this becomes like, an icon on YouTube is- is important in thinking about, you know, what this mean for people who are trying to connect and trying to build these strong connections and trying to reconnect with humanity in some profound way. This YouTube community is not without drama though. So here we get into the drama stuff. Is anybody here involved in YouTube, that is part of this drama and stuff? [laughs] Okay, so this will be fun. Ah so in general- there is- YouTube is a platform and in order to be seen on YouTube, in order to be seen, okay think about 200,000 videos being uploaded every day, and the only way to get to the front page is through the editors of YouTube and the only other way to be prominent on YouTube is to be one of the Most Popular, the Most Discussed, the Most Recent, the Most Responded, Most Viewed, one of the Top Favorites or Top Rated, and that's really challenging to do. And then there's also channels on YouTube here and these channels are also ranked. And if you want people to see your channel, again, you have to be one of these most subscribed. So there's all these people competing to be one of these stars so that they can be seen. So I'll give you an idea of what these YouTube stars look like because there really is like this burgeoning community of YouTube stars. Here's one of the first ones. Hey, my name's Matt and this is my first video blog. Um, I really don't know what to say, I've never done a video blog before but, you know, I'm just giving it a go to see if I like it or not. (Micahel) And so this gets interesting, six days later. So yeah, this poem is directed to Matt, emokid21ohio, and yeah, here's the poem. I saw your videos and thought you were hot You seem really deep and liked you a lot. But I'm kind of shy and did something dumb. I made fun of you and I thought it was fun. But this isn't the real me and I like you and I really hope that you like me too. (Michael) And so this actually turns into a love story. So over the next month, through YouTube you have these two talking back and forth creating a love story and thousands of people are tuning in to watch this. [laughter] And they become two of the first stars on YouTube, early days of YouTube. And then April 26, 2006 this is the video that was posted. Good evening, you're watching BBC News. We have a report that emokid21ohio was brutally murdered outside of his internet home today. Police suspect that the killer used some sort of truth to kill the internet sensation. Although the motivation remain unclear but it's the belief that emokid, an Englishman from Rugby was killed for masquerading as a self-obsessed American teen. Just before his death, he released this statement. Hello, it's me Matt again. As you can probably tell, um I'm not an emo kid from Ohio. Um I thought it would be amusing to masquerade as one. Ah but unfortunately somebody yesterday or the day before yesterday ah I can't remember which, ah found my real MySpace profile. (Michael) So this is where things get interesting. There becomes and authenticity crisis on YouTube which is still going on today. (girl) ...and I found lonelygirl15. It's about a 16 year old girl who had strict parents and was locked up in her room a lot. And she had to find means to amuse herself. Hi guys, um so this is my first video blog. Ah I found it was surprisingly, you know, kind of cute and funny and charming. I am such a big fan of LONELYGIRL, Bre is such an awesome and her videos- each one of her videos is so interesting. I went to lonelygirl15.com fan site slash forum, when I started posting there couldn't have been more than- I think there might have been 38 threads. And within a few days it had exploded to 200 threads Check this out, [phone playing ringtone] while I'm recording a video. Are you fake or are you real. Earlier today, bravegirl5 posted a video called 'LONELYGIRL15 is not kidding y'all.' Now I don't know if this news is true. I don't know if this is real. I don't have any substantial major evidence, except what people have told me but- LONELYGIRL is fake. To some LONELYGIRL15 was a kindred internet spirit, to others an obvious teen soap opera. Many believed she was a homeschooled American teenager but she's been discovered to be New Zealander's Jessica Rose. (female narrator) The soap opera was work of three wanna be script writers (man) This project was done in a bedroom with a $130 webcam and two desk lamps. Our attempt from the very beginning was to tell a very realistic, fictional story. Everybody's just mad because they got duped, they got fooled. People don't like being fooled. I don't like being deceived. YouTube is just not for fake stuff. It's for real stuff. It's starting to look like this whole thing could turn into a bit of a witch hunt and people could start trap- trying to track down all the people that are pretending to people who they aren't really. Is branado for real? Ah you know, is geriatric1927 for real? And is kenrg for real. If it's not real, you should come out and tell everybody now. (Michael) The creators released a statement saying, "Who is she, Lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone." It's very poetic. [laughs] Um, and they go on to say here, "She is no more real or fictitious than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us." Very like, sociological, anthropological and it actually sort of sparked a series of- of post of people sort of reflecting on YouTube and whether YouTube could be truly authentic given the production capacities. I'd like to reveal that I too am a fake. I mean I don't really act like this moron type character, in real life. Why would I use so many hand jesters and why would I be screaming at my- at my camera? It doesn't make sense, unless I'm acting, which I am. Everyone is an independent producer on YouTube. (man) First thing you probably notice is that big green screen in the back. And that's a collapsible green screen that allows me to set it up and have any kind of background that I want. I'm never gonna get this right, let's try it again. Where as once I had 60 videos up on my profile, now I have 27. It's getting awfully easy to click 'remove video' from this segment. I'm actually an 18 year old girl from Connecticut. It's a difference as having many faces, as you might describe it to having ...one very diverse face. You know I feel I don't even know what to do anymore. I mean, would you all prefer if I did videos like this all the time? Is this more your cup of tea? I mean tell me, I don't know. Or do you like it down and dirty with a low cool mama? So you can see my dilemma. But you don't know what's real on here and what isn't real. You know, like I was a person, me and emogirl, made YouTube what it is today. We don't want any fakes here, we don't want any frauds here, we don't want any liars here. Get rid of all the fakes, get rid of all the liars. If you're gonna play a role, if you want to be an actor or actress on YouTube, tell everyone that you're playing a role. There's something else really interesting about this and when people starting gaming the system to get more views. So, for example, if you don't know this, the- the thumbnail that is used on your video is the exact middle point of the video that ya upload, so people start like putting these little flash frames right in the middle And if you look today, any tay- any day 2- 2 or 3 of the top 10 will be some sort of sexy thumbnail. And it works. So, for example, which was uploaded with this thumbnail, gets over 2 million views. [laughter] and in- and in the sort of gaming the system they're sort of exposing the system at the same time, sort of this playful nature of YouTube. So this one is actually legitimate medical knowledge about how to sleep better. This one is about ah net neutrality, it's a very serious political statement. And this next one that you'll see here, this is from LisaNova, who is actually attacking this particular phenomenon that people are putting these... ...Are you sick on all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all of the lists on this website, keeping your videos from the exposure that they deserve? Heck yeah I'm sick of that crap. Me too! Those lists used to be filled with wonderful user generated content like yours. (Michael) So she offers these little clips that you can put in the middle of your video so you can have a sexy woman with a machine gun. See how it works. Just pick your own LisaNova colab character, insert her into your video and get the exposure you deserve. The possibilities are endless. It's time to get YouTube back to the user generated members who built this site. So this is actually an example of something that's much bigger, seriously playful participatory ah culture, which is extending into the real world at ah um politics. So you guys have probably seen this, April 19, 2007.... ....that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran, Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb- anyway. [laugheter] (Michael) So this is uploaded to YouTube, it's all over the place 3 days later. ♪♪Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,♪ ♪bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,♪ ♪Bomb Iran,♪ ♪and Pakistan,♪ ♪Oh Bomb Iran.♪ ♪You've got me hidin' in my bunker,♪ ♪crying for my children Bomb Iran-♪ ♪bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.♪♪ (newscaster) No apologies though to many around the world who took a musical parody that many around the world took as a true sign of his thinking. When veterans are together, veterans joke and I was with veterans and we were joking. (Michael) So this was sort of the context collapse of everyday life that we all face now with, you know, you never know where a camera's gonna be, when it's gonna upload- when it's gonna be uploaded to YouTube. So we have this really profoundly affecting our lives. So here we have marketers who are also trying to sort of get on board and get these- this participatory culture to work for them. So here Chevy actually allowed you to take clips of their new Tahoe. Um make your own commercial, add your own soundtrack, add your own ah- ah- phrases and so on. And this is the result. Not exactly what they wanted. [laughter] And this is something really ah, really quite profound that's happening. Where we can remix this culture that's being thrown at us, where we can take it, re-appropriate it and throw it back. And this is one of the most poetic statements of this, this is by um blimvisible.... [unintelligible female singing] And you hear the Regina Spector lyrics there, where she says even though our parts are slightly used and then goes on and says- these are all clips from ah from different films, and she's saying we're living in a den of thieves rum- by reaching for answers in the pages. It's a really powerful and poetic statement, because most of what we do is actually illegal, any remixing is basically illegal. And I could talk more about the- the parameters of that, we have fairuse laws that should protect it but the simple fact of ripping a DVD is actually illegal which makes virtually everything we do illegal. So here we are in this- this state, here's Lawence Lessig talking about this. (Lawence) We need to recognize you can't kill the instinct the technology produces we can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using it, we can only drive it underground. We can't make our kids passive again, we can only make them "pirates." And is that good? We live in this weird time this kind of age of prohibitions where many areas of our life we live life constantly against the law, ordinary people live life against the law and that's what i- we're doing to our kids, they live life knowing they live it against the law. That realization is extraordinary corrosive, extraordinary corrupting. And in a democracy we ought to be able to do better. (Michael) And the best part about this video here, is by ah, by lim or by blimvisible, somebody commented, "My God! Are you doing that for a living? I never saw anything like this, you're an artist." He responds, "Nope, I'm a housewife." [laughter] And that's sort of the beauty of YouTube today. Now there's something more interesting. Not just people working alone and producing things, but the fact that thousands of people all around the world can collaborate together, and MadV has sort of become a platform for this. Um you can see he- he remains anonymous, which actually allows him to become more of a platform, people sort of participate through him. And he makes these calls, for example this one, he just says, "Make a simple statement on your hand and show it to the world." And so he demonstrates it here. This becomes the most responded to video in the history of YouTube, ah thousands of responses, people writing on their hands a message, just a simple message. And so you think about this webcam and think about them sitting in their homes wherever they might be and what do you think they might reach out with to say. And the messages are really quite revealing as well as powerful, I think. So here's a- some of it here. You can see the sense, You are not alone, you are connected, in this self-reflective place people are thinking about themselves, saying love yourself, love you, love all the people, and this connection here is key, we're all connected. And you know, when you see people expressing values like this, it's not necessary um it's often because they don't feel- like they're missing in their lives. So a value- a cultural value is often something not as prevalent as they would like it to be and that's why it has to be said. And you see at the end here, a lot of oneness, and the sort of breaking down of boundaries and so on. So this is certainly not a amoral or emoral community, by any means. They have very strong values that are emerging. So as I was looking at this I was reminded of- of some of the comments that were made about the first earth rise, when people first say the earth rise, that first picture. And Carl Sagan of course, is probably most famous for this for his ah poetry really about the pale blue dot from the Voyager picture of 1990, and he describes that pale blue dot- this is a picture of earth here, in the ray of the sun, and he says, ah "Consider again that dot, that's here that home, that's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone know, everyone you've ever heard of, everyone who's lived out their lives, everybody." And he goes on, it's very poetic, and he ends my saying, "The pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." So I was sitting there working on this project, looking up at my webcam, [laughs] and thinking about the little glass dot. And I just broke out in some poetry here, um [laughs] which I hope you'll excuse, but um, it too may not seem of any particular interest but consider again that dot, that's there, that's someone else, that's everybody. On the other side of that little glass dot is everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, everyone who's living out their lives who has access to the internet. Billions of potential viewers and yourself among them. Some have called this the most- the biggest and the smallest stage. The most public place in the world from the privacy from our own homes. It has been used for many things: a political soapbox, comedian stage, a religious pulpit, a teacher's podium, or just a way to reach out to the next door neighbor or across the world. To people we love, to people we want to love, or people we don't even know. So share something deep, or something trivial, something serious or something funny. To strive for fame or simple connect. It can be many things, but it cannot be just one thing. And it cannot be only what you want it to be. It is not just what you make of it, it is what we make of it. It's a little glass dot, the eyes of the world. And to close this out I wanted to introduce you to sort of a hero of mine, bnessel1973, um some of you may have seen his work. Um he lost his son to SIDS ah in early 2007 and I'll let him close it out with his words here. (bnessel1973) April 17, 2007. Creating characters gave me an escape. It allowed me to be silly. It allowed me to act how I wanted to feel. It became a form of therapy, a a coping mechanism. And after a while it brought fun back to YouTube for me. You accepted my characters, even embraced them. And by doing so, you opened your arms to me. You allowed me to have the escape I still need from the hard times, while giving me a chance to talk about what I've gone through. And I'm eternally grateful to you all. Some people have said that the videos we make on YouTube should be created in hopes to change the world. I've made mine to help me live in it. You know, whether I make a hundred more or a thousand more, I will know forever that this website, this community helped bring me life again. And there's something really special in that. ♪♪ [DRAGOSTEA DIN TEI by Haiducii] Ma-ia-hii♪ ♪ Ma-ia-huu♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hoo♪ ♪ Ma-ia-haha♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hii♪ ♪ Ma-ia-huu♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hoo♪ ♪ Ma-ia-haha♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hii♪ ♪ Ma-ia-huu♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hoo♪ ♪ Ma-ia-haha♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hii♪ ♪ Ma-ia-huu♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hoo♪ ♪ Ma-ia-haha♪ ♪ ♪Alo,♪ ♪ ♪Salut,♪ ♪ ♪sunt eu, un haiduc,♪ ♪ ♪Si te rog,♪ ♪iubirea mea, primeste fericirea.♪ ♪Alo,♪ ♪ ♪alo,♪ ♪ ♪sunt eu Picasso, Ti-am dat beep,♪ ♪ ♪si sunt voinic, Dar sa stii nu-ti cer nimic.♪ ♪Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei,♪ ♪Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei.♪ ♪Chipul tau si dragostea din tei,♪ ♪Mi-amintesc de ochii tai.♪ ♪Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei,♪ ♪Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei.♪ ♪Chipul tau si dragostea din tei,♪ ♪Mi-amintesc de ochii tai.♪ ♪ ♪Te sun,♪ ♪ ♪sa-ti spun,♪ ♪ ♪ce simt acum,♪ ♪ ♪Alo,♪ ♪iubirea mea, sunt eu, fericirea.♪ ♪Alo,♪ ♪ ♪alo,♪ ♪ ♪sunt iarasi eu, Picasso, Ti-am dat beep,♪ ♪ ♪si sunt voinic, Dar sa stii nu-ti cer nimic.♪ ♪Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei,♪ ♪Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei.♪ ♪Chipul tau si dragostea din tei,♪ ♪Mi-amintesc de ochii tai.♪ ♪Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei,♪ ♪Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei.♪ ♪Chipul tau si dragostea din tei,♪ ♪Mi-amintesc de ochii tai.♪ ♪Ma-ia-hii♪ ♪ Ma-ia-huu♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hoo♪ ♪ Ma-ia-haha♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hii♪ ♪ Ma-ia-huu♪ ♪ Ma-ia-hoo♪ ♪ Ma-ia♪♪