A Brief Qual and Quant Overview of Today's Hot Vids!

Fact: I began this post not knowing exactly what my topic would be. The enormity of online media can be paralyzing. As the online space expands like a supernova in every natural aesthetic, organizational and ideological direction, one of the most complex and fascinating core problems remains the issue of how to filter, silo and interlink the literally endless amount of content. How to know what's really going on online? How much of this stupid shit/cat photos--to paraphrase Rimma--really matters? Perhaps he mother of all video channels, the third-highest trafficked site on the web, YouTube, can serve as some sort of barometer. Here's a screen shot of the most-viewed videos as of Sept. 28:


It's kind of hard to make out, but as of this date, the first five videos were Sarah Palin-related: replays, parodies or reactions to her Katie Couric interview. The top 20 videos, categorized first by content and then by source, are as follows:

Sports clips: 5
Political or Political Mash-ups: 4
Sarah Palin: 9
Personalities*: 2
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User-Generated or Edited: 5
Pulled from Broadcast television: 15

This rough breakdown indicates that Youtube may serve popularly--predominantly--as a distillation of what appears on broadcast television, like a greatest hits reel. User-generated videos, on the other hand, can come in the form of either pure busts of individual self-expression (vlogs), interpretive mash-ups of outside content (often political messaging), or some combination thereof. To roughly paraphrase Marx, the means of production is now hypothetically in the hands of the people; the platform is potentially rendered egalitarian. The extent to which this is true is a whole 'nother debate--seriously undermined, of course, by the gaping digital divide and by the misguided lionization of the amateur, Andrew Keen would argue. I'd love to hear more of Lawrence Lessig's (usually optimistic) thoughts on the potential of the online space, as well as those of the self-described "leading internet critic" Keen.

But back to User-Generated Content. UCG comes in many forms, of course: political messaging mash-ups, silly remixes that take a newly birthed catchphrase (e.g. You Base Are Belong to Us, The Whistle Tip courtesy of our very own KRON, the "I like Turtles" kid and its remixes), mashups with no particular satirical target or an apolitical target.

There is also the phenomenon of YouTube stars, defined as those individuals who have used YouTube exclusively as a launch pad towards notoriety. Of those personalities, one is a familiar face first launched to YouTube stardom with a widely viewed video of herself hysterically imploring the public to Leave Britney ALOOONE!!!!! following her disastrous 2007 VMA performance. Crissy Crocker, the world's most infamous Britneyphile, is still on top, so she claims in her latest vlog, entitiled "I am YouTube."



The self-professed Most Popular Person on YouTube--which she questionably claims couldn't exist without her--Chris addresses charges that she's changed as a result of her fame. Advertisements for her new single (who knew?) litter the backdrop of her channel page. For all her grandiose claims of existensial solidarity with one of the web's most powerful platforms, Chris is right about one thing: She remains the most popular single YouTube personality if current "most watched" tracking is to be believed. By YouTube personality, of course, I am referring to those who built their fame by gazing existentially into their webcams and letting loose whatever outrageous chaos roils inside their minds. Through the inscrutable, practically unknowable process of meme pollination that Rimma expounds upon in her post, Crocker and a few others (Tay Zonday, Tina, Tricia "Crazy Eyes" Walsh-Smith) have become legitimate celebrities in their own right. Crocker and Walsh-Smith's channels have thus become hotbeds for advertising content.

What about these people in particular led to their popularity? At some point, they are deemed worthy of scrutiny in the blogosphere and sometimes, eventually, in the "traditional" press. Tina, for instance, the delusional teen girl who sings Backstreet Boys into her webcam, was first noticed and snarkily commented upon by Perez Hilton, whose blog is among the most popular in the world.

But why these individuals in particular, and what does it all mean? The long and short answer is that they get attention because, obviously, the poor things are all nuts, and seemingly (with the possible exception of ultimate YouTube Mean Girl Crocker) unaware of that perception. But by the same token, they are--as far as we know at least--authentic in their outrageousness. Yes, they really are genuinely nuts, and thereby compelling to watch.

As Rimma points out, and as I have alluded to in previous posts, this is the sense of authenticity that marketers are desperately trying to appropriate and mimic. LonelyGirl turned out to be a fraud. But what is the next step in the effort to close the gap between authentic experience and the image of life that advertising contrives and attempts to proliferate? Now that voice, agency and thereby power, so claims Crissy Crocker herself, is in the hands of "the people"--that is the consumers, the End-User rather than developer--advertising therefore must accept and pander to the individual empowerment and resistance to authority (advertising, copyright laws, for instance) that this all yields. So how can brands most effectively insert themselves into this process of identity-building and impression management that occurs online--of which Crissy Crocker perhaps stands as a high-profile, if extreme, case study?

Will individuals even more brazenly offer themselves up for branding? My Life and Personhood sponsored by Marshall's, Doritos, Kia?

If the right brand were to make you an offer, would you accept it?