Is YouTube Killing Video Originality?
The Atlantic Monthly recently asked the question “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I can’t answer that (I couldn’t finish reading the article), but I’d like to ask a parallel question: Is YouTube killing video originality?
The promise of web video was that cheap cameras, easy editing software and free online distribution would open up new vistas of creativity. The Hollywood gatekeepers would be tossed out and the masses would finally get to express themselves.
So what happened? Because it seems like we’re just seeing the same things, over and over.
Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing is a fantastic spoof of cheesy infomercials. But it was followed by Master the Internet, which is not. Now we have Kanye West doing another version of a hammy infauxmercial for hawking vodka.
Noah takes a picture of himself everyday, so Olde English spoofed the idea with a guy taking a picture of himself every day as his life deteriorates. Matthew Harding dances around the world, and now there’s a video of a guy dancing around Los Angeles… as his life deteriorates.
The Shining becomes a comedy, Back to the Future becomes Brokeback to the Future, and Batman fights not only himself, but also Hellboy.
Dora the Explorer gets yelled at over the phone by Alec Baldwin; a fast-food worker gets hit on by Demetri.
Need I go on?
Some of these are parodies; some are just recycling the same ideas. Some are actually quite funny; others are just…bad.
So why drag YouTube into all this? Well, because of its size, mostly.
There have always been spoofs and “borrowing” from existing sources. That isn’t changing with the web, it’s just becoming faster and easier, which is spawning more of it.
Parodying or revisiting a popular gag works because the audience already has a certain level of familiarity with it. People have seen infomercials, they know Back to the Future, or they were forwarded the picture-a-day. It’s much easier to attract eyeballs when people recognize the source material. It’s a lot harder when they have to learn something new, and who has patience online?
To be fair, thanks to YouTube, more people are creating and watching video than ever before — and that’s good. The issue becomes when people start creating for the playcounts. What’s the fastest way to rack up a million plays on YouTube, land an agent and get on Oprah? It’s not by making something new.
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I think this question of originality is valid across everything humans do. We see, we like, we copy. Painters have copied paintings. Musicians, music. etc.
The people who are first and the originals may or may not succeed at what they do. Sometimes it is those that copy that become the famous ones.
yeah, its like saying music remixing or mashing destroys musical creativity – i don’t buy it. Continuing the musical analogy, sure there was a lotta crap made in early era of sampling and digital playback, but look how its moved on and spawned an explosion of creativity and musical genres that are genuinely loved. The cream always rises
I co-created a sketch comedy show, Good Commitment, that ran for a year and a half and produced about 50 sketches. The ones that stuck best were ones based around something familiar. Usually a spoof of something. It was satisfying to get some eyeballs and make people laugh spoofing the Westboro Baptist Phelps family but not quite as satisfying as it would have been for one of our original sketch ideas to take hold.
Any time something gets opened up to the masses, there’s going to be vast amounts of derivative crap. It’s a fact of life. Look at public access TV.
maybe public access in your neck of the woods, but where are you located. Somewhere that there are a lot of people that are trying to break into the industry, or is it a place that people are trying to inform their neighbors. Kind of general when PACT was the first to have UGC.
In a typical market, quality would be rewarded, while crap gets discarded. This means that regardless of the copycat stuff dominating the YouTube webspace, it’s quite natural for quality to come out on top. IMO, if people are going around and spending time watching these me-too hacks, then maybe that’s what they want. Or maybe there’s nothing else that’s good enough to watch (which is impossible to believe – that’s just a discovery issue).
Creativity is hard.
I think that’s the way humans learn, first we copy, then with a lot more work we can be creative. Video sharing is still too fresh for that, most users have no experience, but i believe it will come.
I think Youtube is not killing video creativity anymore than the keyboard killed literacy or blogs killed news. There are lots of texts not worth reading out there… and that nobody reads, actually! We stick to the good stuff.
So we can expect a kind of darwinism to take place, bad videos will be replaced by better, more creative ones, and so on…
I’ve got to disargee with you on one point, Chris. Gabe & Max looks and feels like something two guys did in their basement. Master of the Internet is an amazingly good recreation of something that looks authentic.
I didn’t laugh once during Gabe & Max because it just wasn’t done well. It dragged on and was boring. The writing is alright, but could have been much better. The “sets” they used did not fit the mold. The audio was poor. The graphics were poor. The talent looked like kids trying to look like adults. It just didn’t work.
I don’t know the timeline about who came first, but it wouldnt surprise me if:
a) Master came first and Gabe+Max wanted to rip it off
b) Gabe+Max came first and Master creator realized all the problems and decided to do it right
This all comes back around to the point of your article. Is youtube killing originality? No. It may be heavy handed in spoofs, but it fosters originality because of its distribution appeal. The problem is it doesn’t foster good, intelligent creativity- Yet. As some of readers above pointed out, it’s all about choice. If good content is there, that’s what will be watched. But if it’s not, the next thing in line is what gets all the hits. One issue you have is that not many creatives are interested in putting stuff on youtube when they can go out and work on actual spots. Most top creative is paid top dollar – and they have their own mainstream distribution routes in place for getting out their ideas. let’s see, make something on youtube or put something on during the superbowl? why put any effort into youtube at all (unless it fits in the with the campaign)?
But to get back to the ‘youtube doesnt directly help originality’ claim– I was fortunate enough to be part of a excellent high school video program in the 90s. We had digital cameras and nonlinear editing suites before many colleges even adopted the technology. If we use that program as a youtube equivilent, but obviously scaled down, it isn’t hard to see why some kids did well and others did not. The access to the technology alone did not make videos good. In terms of individual projects, bad spoofs were still bad spoofs. Good spoofs were funny. And original content was good only if it was good- not just bc it was original. However, when it came time to do group projects, or when you watched content from the more advanced classes, all of a sudden it wasn’t about videos being bad. it was about which video was best. (Though, occasionally some videos in the advanced class were still bad)
In group projects, each person could focus on what they knew best. One person would be all about writing; others costume and set design; another, cinematography (though we called it lighting and camera). People even went out to scout locations. The end result of putting in effort and paying attention to detail is that the videos got better. When we got our first avid, only the advanced kids could use it- because they were the only ones whom it would benefit. The same went for the higher end camera. If you don’t know the basics, all the technology in the world won’t make things better. When the rules got more lax and younger kids starting to use the new equipment, it wasn’t a surprise that there wasn’t a sudden boost in quality. Fortunately, the advanced classes got first choice when it came to scheduling time.
Bottom line: Kids that are talented will make use of youtube to its fullest extent, and shortly thereafter go into high paying jobs and never post another video again on the site. But so long as top quality is rare on youtube, it’s going to be harder to find, and therefore, the ‘next-in-line’ effect leads to lower quality getting higher hits and, unfortunately, a decreased level of expectations for all those who are GROWING UP on youtube. There is no “advanced class” preference on youtube, so there isnt any natural advantage in place for the top talent to get seen- short of getting picked up by blogs. (Idea: If you make a good video on youtube, have all your friends comment and star it, then spam every popular blogger you know with links to the video.)
Good question, Chris. But it’s kinda like asking “Is National Lampoon killing film?” Nah, it’s just making cheap stuff that’s palatable to the most coveted demos and accessible to the lowest common denominator. Same goes for this derivative YouTube stuff.
And you should finish Carr’s article. It’s fantastic.