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Is YouTube Good for Humanity?

2015-07-17 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:57 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook

Anxious a week before VidCon, Hank weighs whether online video and the internet are good for humanity: he sees connection, access and tolerance alongside platform consolidation, bias and creator success turning into traditional fame, and says culture can't be controlled but its members should consider its effects.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank's pre-VidCon anxiety, four unused scripts, and the question whether VidCon, online video and the internet are good for humanity

  • ★★ Hank says VidCon is a week away, which as per tradition gives him a great deal of general, non-specific anxiety that he can only wait out. — 00:00:01 · VidCon
  • ★ To distract himself Hank wrote four Vlogbrothers scripts in the last week but felt dishonest using them instead of talking about VidCon. — 00:00:19 · Vlogbrothers, VidCon

00:00:39 — The internet's benefits and harms: connection and access, platform consolidation, Reddit, bias, tolerance, and online success turning into fame

  • ★★★ Hank says the internet creates more connections, more cultural and creative diversity and much wider access to information and free tools, so it seems to him to have had a very positive effect. (hedged) — 00:00:42
  • ★★★ Hank dislikes that the internet's focus on the cheap and free forces platforms to consolidate culture on huge platforms whose economies of scale make a few people very rich and employ few middle-class people. — 00:00:56 · economic inequality
  • ★★ Hank is ambivalent about some cultural effects: the recent user revolt at Reddit over the site's move against hateful and abusive communities confuses him. — 00:01:21 · Reddit
  • ★★★ Hank says the internet is extremely effective at creating pockets of bias and misinformation that lead to the dehumanization of the opposition. — 00:01:32
  • ★★ Hank thinks the internet can also make people more tolerant of other perspectives just by making those perspectives more visible. (hedged) — 00:01:39
  • ★★ Hank says what used to be called fame, a word he is uncomfortable using, has started to seem really weird to him, probably because he now experiences its effects. (hedged) — 00:01:47 · celebrity
  • ★★★ Hank says online success used to come with a community and a real creator-audience relationship, but as the culture grows that relationship feels less real, so online success looks more like traditional fame. (hedged) — 00:02:13 · celebrity

00:02:25 — Online culture going mainstream: Katie Couric interviewing Ze Frank, de-mainstreaming Vlogbrothers, steering VidCon, and people shaping their culture

  • ★★★ Hank says online culture is becoming mainstream culture with VidCon part of it; he doesn't necessarily want online new media to become mainstream media, but it is happening. (hedged) — 00:02:25 · VidCon
  • ★★ Hank notes, as a sign of mainstreaming, that at VidCon this year (2015) Katie Couric is interviewing Ze Frank. — 00:02:39 · VidCon

  • ★★ Hank says that with Vlogbrothers the brothers can actively 'de-mainstreamify' themselves by making more off-the-cuff, weird content that is less popular but still rewarding for the existing community. (hedged) — 00:02:44 · Vlogbrothers

    “actively de-mainstreamify ourselves”

  • ★★★ Hank says VidCon is bigger than the brothers and will change, sometimes annoyingly; he is lucky to be able to steer it and takes that seriously, but it moves in a current he can't and shouldn't fight. — 00:02:57 · VidCon

  • ★★ Hank says that in the end he is extremely proud of VidCon and of online video. — 00:03:15 · VidCon
  • ★★★ Hank says eight years in online video taught him that culture can't be bottled up and controlled, but its members can and should be asked to consider its effects. — 00:03:19
  • ★★★ Hank says the internet, for the first time in a long time, gave many normal people the feeling that they could significantly affect their culture and change things. (hedged) — 00:03:29
  • ★★ Hank hopes everyone leaves VidCon with that understanding reinforced: these platforms and this unprecedented cultural phenomenon are something we are all part of, not just experience. — 00:03:39 · VidCon

00:03:52 — Sign-off: 'Oh god. VidCon.'

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: celebrity · Internet · VidCon

Also: People: Katie Couric · Ze Frank

Organizations: Reddit

Concepts: dehumanization · echo chamber · economic inequality · economies of scale · misinformation · online community · participatory culture

Also centred on Internet: Watermelon Internet Trolls · WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism · 19 Ways to Not Suck on the Internet · Logging Off · History Is Happening · LEAVE IT IN 2017

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