bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

The Guardian

Videocracy
by Kevin Allocca
Bloomsbury
3/5 stars
The most infuriating consequence of broadband internet is that people now consider it acceptable to send each other links to YouTube videos of people talking about things, rather than links to articles in which these things are explained. Compared with prose, video is a terrible way of transmitting ideas. Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s “head of culture and trends”, claims in his new book, Videocracy, that YouTube is “the largest database of culture in the history of humanity”. In terms of sheer gigabytes, it may be true, but you don’t have to be a fusty old bibliophile to suspect that, say, the Library of Congress might be vastly superior. If aliens wanted to understand humanity, Allocca says, he’d give them YouTube. God help us all.

But of course “culture” ain’t what it used to be (it never is). Allocca’s book is breezy and packed with stories about fun viral videos, plus a lot of tech clichés about the virtues of “sharing” and “interacting” and “participating” and so on. He is right, though, to point out that YouTube is the home for some truly new forms of expression.
It’s not all films of dogs on skateboards; there are comedy video game commentators, unexpected musical cover-version artists, people who make “supercuts” of, say, the way a weather presenter announces a certain word, or “ASMRtists”, who whisper and stroke fabrics in a way that makes some people’s spines tingle.
The must-read books to come in 2018
That so many of these novel genres are entirely parasitical on material from existing media corporations will not trouble the new-media booster, who will trot out the ridiculous canard that all art has always been a “remix” of other art. That claim assumes there is no difference between artistic influence and literally reusing the same material, to the large financial benefit of companies – such as YouTube’s parent, Google (now Alphabet) – that have historically held a contemptuous attitude towards intellectual property.
It is revealing that YouTube, like Facebook, was originally designed as a way to help nerds meet women. It was created in 2005 as a dating site, and co-founder Jawed Karim emailed his friends: “Can you help us spread the word? Since we just launched, there are no girls on it … YET.” Now there are, but not in the way he hoped: millionaire beauty vloggers, video gamers, musicians and all the rest, who have achieved internet celebrity through talent and the luck of the network.
The story of China’s opening up told through one family’s history in Scott Tong’s A Village With My Name – book review
YouTube does have significant potential value as an educational tool specifically for practical skills, whether it be tying a tie, doing your make-up or learning yoga. And a widely distributed video of some outrageous event – as with those of unarmed black men being shot by police officers in the US – can generate real political action.
But not all political action promoted by widely shared video is desirable. YouTube, it says here, helps all of us share our “passions”, but some people have notoriously had a passion for murdering others and uploading the videos for the purposes of Islamist propaganda. Yet the dark side of YouTube is, oddly, hardly mentioned in this book at all.

We hear nothing, for example, of the pressure exerted in recent years by authorities on YouTube (as well as on Facebook and so on) to take down “extremist” and other nasty stuff, which results in the corporations hiring a new class of moderators placed in awful psychic jeopardy by having to watch such material all day. (YouTube is currently looking into “further consequences” for Logan Paul, the vlogger who filmed a dead body in Japan’s Aokigahara forest.)
Last November, YouTube announced that it would remove videos by certain jihadist clerics even if they were not directly preaching hatred and violence. In adopting such editorial stances the tech giants make it clearly untenable for them to keep up the fiction that they are merely neutral “platforms”, rather than publishers.
2017’s best books: big-name writers returned to spotlight, and Liu Xiaobo’s untimely death casts a shadow
But what really gives the lie to all the guff in this book about how YouTube et al have created a totally new world is the curious fact that all the modern tech giants are desperately aspiring to the status of … well, old-fashioned television companies. Far from having destroyed what Allocca calls the old assumption that “art and entertainment were thoughtfully considered collaborations from teams of professionals” (like, I don’t know, the latest Star Wars movie?), YouTube now commissions its own “content”, as is mentioned very briefly; Apple and Facebook, too, have launched their own TV studios to cash in on the binge-drama gold rush along with Amazon and Netflix.
It seems that old-fashioned hierarchies of creative professionals – or what the tech overlords refer to dismissively as “gatekeepers” – do have their uses after all.


A very Chinese time? How memes are paving the way for a soft power shift

How group live-streaming thrives in China, reshapes global industry dynamics

Japan workshop helps young voters spot deepfakes ahead of general election

Who is Spanish Minions figure skater, Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté?

Social media

Book review: Videocracy – YouTube’s head of culture and trends Kevin Allocca shares his views on YouTube phenomenon

Vlogger Logan Paul has lost the backing of YouTube after posting a video of himself giggling at a dead body in Japan’s ‘suicide forest’. Photo via YouTube

(FILES) This file image shows an image grab taken on October 2, 2013 from a video uploaded on YouTube on July 8, 2012, of the spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), Abu Mohammad al-Adnani al-Shami, speaking next to an Islamist flag at an undisclosed location. The Islamic State (IS) group announced on August 30, 2016 spokesman Adnani was killed in Syria's northern city of Aleppo. / AFP PHOTO / YOUTUBE / HO

Kevin Allocca

Generic YouTube image

Videocracy cover

TS Eliot prize goes to Vietnam-born US poet for debut collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds

Vietnam-born Ocean Vuong has won the TS Eliot prize for poetry for his debut collection, which reflects on the aftermath of war over three generations.

Ocean Vuong

Night Sky cover

This image shows Hong Kong born poet and writer Sarah Howe, author of the book Loop Of Jade, as she poses in Admiralty on July 22, 2016. 22JUL16 SCMP/Dickson Lee [FEATURES]

Culture

Books

Kevin Allocca’s book delves into the power of YouTube, looking at its history, how it has evolved new forms of expression, its value as a library of practical lessons. It does, however, gloss over the darker side of the video sharing website
