YouTube: YouCan Do Anything!

Okay, I know this is a topic that’s been played to death because it’s basically the number one example of social media and online participatory culture in action in our society today, but today I’m going to talk about YouTube.

There’s so much rhetoric going around about YouTube and other user-generated content sites as the being the prime example of audiences moving away from being simple passive consumers of media content, to being consumers who also have the ability to become producers in today’s social media world. There’s you, your media creation, and potentially billions of viewers if you’re lucky enough to ‘go viral,’ the term used to describe a video when it suddenly gets a ton of views very quickly.

Now the reason I’m interested in this topic today is because my friend, a film student who graduated from my school in 2008, recently uploaded a music video that he’s been working on tirelessly for about 3-4 weeks now. This particular video is a tribute to Beyonce (so clearly a fan work), one that uses one her song ‘Schoolin’ Life,’ and that he interpreted with the theme, “When I grow up I want to be…”

Basically what he did was decorate his bedroom with toys, stuffed animals, child-related props basically, and recruited about 30 of his friends to come over dressed up as what they wanted to be when they were children. I had the privilege (or horror, considering my utmost dread at having to go in front of the camera) of being one of these friends, and he basically directed us to jump and dance around his bedroom apartment acting like the character we had chosen. I was a professional soccer player. (If you saw me now you’d probably be skeptical about me having ever engaged in any kind of physical sport, but I actually did play for about 6 years when I was a kid.)

Then after those two nights of ridiculous filming, he hid away in his editing cave, only to emerge three weeks later to email us about when the video would go live. His first email said he would premiere it on February 21^st, after President’s day when people would be back at work, ‘in order to harness the most viral potential.’ Unfortunately, YouTube gave him some copyright issues over the use of the song (one of the main reasons fan-created music videos and tributes are taken down—regardless of the fact that if something is changed enough from the original product, copyright law does not apply), which delayed its premiere by a couple days.

When he finally got it up and streaming, I was amazed at how great it turned out. A tribute to Beyonce, at the same time an homage to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, and a celebration of our childhood dreams. This to me is a case in point of the amazing ways YouTube and other user-generated content sites allow young creators and producers to publish their media texts, with a potential worldwide audience. Essentially, his publication remixes some of Beyonce’s top songs with a concept he imagined, using footage entirely shot for the purpose of creating this fan work. Comments range from “I can't believe you shot this in your own bedroom,” and “BEYONCE NEEDS TO SEE THIS!” to “I'm definitely showing my daughter this, what a wonderful, positive message!" And YouTube tried to pull the copyright card on him. Tsk.

Of course, that’s because the music industry has been getting their panties in a bunch since Napster in the late ‘90s and wants to protect their financial interests, wants very much for the producer-consumer model to remain a locked system in which they control the content audiences have access to.

At the same time, social media allows the creation of YouTube celebrities such as Rebecca Black, who’s music video “Friday” went viral instantly because of how damn stupid it was and people’s exasperation that her parents would hire an amateur director or producer or whatever to make this crap. Suddenly, this talentless twelve-year-old is famous, the video is generating tons of parodies and general WTF-ery, and next thing you know she’s in a Katy Perry music video. Now a lot of these parodies are actually hilarious, which I guess is the amazing thing that comes out of the remix culture enabled by today’s new media technologies combined with the attention spans and sense of humor of our generation.

Saturday Night Live actually did a mock-talk show skit called “You Can Do Anything!” that addresses these YouTube and internet celebrities who are for the most part untalented, inexperienced, and delusional. "The only show that celebrates the incredibly high self-esteem of the YouTube generation," the hosts say.  "Because now, thanks to technology (…) it doesn't matter if you don't have skills or training or years of experience, you can do it!"

So yes, it is annoying how suddenly all these tweeny-boppers think they matter and are, in some cases at least, undeservingly shot to stardom (justin…bieber…). But overall, of course the ability to publish your creations is ultimately a good thing. Fans in particular might actually have a wider potential viewing audience for their publications, because other fans will be searching for content related to what they are interested in. So, bar the music industry trying to hit you with a million-dollar lawsuit, what we can take away is from this is that you can do ANYTHING!