This portrait, “YouTuber,” reflects a mix between the impulse of early actuality films when the form was still novel, and Warhol’s screen tests, which are motion portraits of fame. This video, of course, is an incomplete picture because there is a lot of other stuff going on at YouTube, mainly sharing media detritus and ephemera of interest to niche audiences. For example, as an old school punk, I’ve been fascinated by the veritable oral history that YouTube has facilitated as many have posted old home movies and videos from the scene and in the commentaries people impart and contest stories from the past.
Media critics tend to focus on the superficiality of people talking about boring stuff going on in their lives, but remember back in the day when we wrote letters with pen and ink? I’d venture that the majority of human communication is mundane and self-centered. That it’s amplified by YouTube challenges our notion that media should be special or interesting. What is happening is the de-specialization and de-professionalization of media. Not surprisingly many ads these days are appropriating the rough aesthetic of homemade blogging sites. Perhaps we are witnessing the composting of media glamor. This was Warhol’s prediction, but perhaps he didn’t imagine it coming in the multisensory, networked environment that McLuhan foresaw.
This video also reminds me of when the national zine movement peaked in the early ’90s. Various citizens of earth documented their lives in little photocopied journals and traded them through a vast postal network. At the time I had a small independent distribution company and saw hundreds of these cross my desk, mostly awful. Although I was and remain a firm believer in DIY media, I recall that at the time my sentiment was that even though anyone could produce media, not everybody should. Still what strikes me about this compilation of self-made video portraits is something very human and basic, which is a desire to connect with others. Forget the narcissistic aspect of it, even self-centeredness comes from a need to be loved. I don’t feel it’s right that many critics (from both the right and left) judge people who ultimately crave the same thing that we all do; we just sometimes get too caught up in our theories and ideologies to remember how simple the desire really is. I find it quite beautiful that YouTube can be an outlet for that expression, no matter how trivial it may appear.
Technorati Tags: DIY, McLuhan, Warhol, YouTube, YouTuber, zine
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