Popular Culture Weekly Analysis Week 4-Assignment 4-3 YouTube?

My popular culture artifact this week is YouTube. Youtube.com is one of the top 10 sites in the world and is in the Video Sharing category. (alexa.com) This for those of you living under a rock, is a location on line where you can look at videos, upload your own videos, search videos and comment on same. These videos can be viewed world wide with anyone out there with internet access.

Personally, I think this is basically the most hedonistic thing around, especially those people that upload videos of themselves doing just about anything. This topic also fits in with this weeks’ paper about celebrities and heroes, as people are so enamored and envious of celebrities that they think this will give them their 15 minutes of fame or more. It’s hard enough getting through friends 12 hours of videos of their new baby, much less people you don’t know at all doing things you don’t care about. I mean really, the only person interested in your baby’s videos are you; hence the only person that is really interested in idiots seeing if they can sing and dance or jump from a trampoline to the top of the house…is them.

I really view YouTube very much, but on occasion have looked for some things of interest or suggested viewing. I know there are people, my daughter being one, that look at the same YouTube personality over and over again. There are many examples of people being interviewed or just going about daily life that has been put on YouTube and some of these videos have proven to be detrimental down the line. No ones every move or utterance is meant to be for public discrimination. Each one of us would be ashamed or embarrassed if all our moves were subject to taping and viewing by millions.
I think the internet is great and some of the YouTube videos can be informative or entertaining. But I do think, however, that there is way too much crap out there and now we are being bombarded with it on our computers. Its just one more example of how fascinated the American public is with celebrities…and themselves.