4
Syncing Up through Reciprocity
If you do someone a favor, do you secretly expect one in return? If someone does you a favor, should they expect payback from you? Or should people give freely, with no strings attached? Does the quality of the favor matter? YouTubers in the study believe that it does. According to populist notions about the “law of reciprocity,” people are intrinsically inclined to return a favor. On social media, creators are expected to reciprocate attention that they receive from viewers and commenters by responding personally. Social media experts often wax rhapsodic about engaging in reciprocity—or mutual exchange of things—to maintain strong relationships and enjoy success. Of course, one must not feign interest but rather show true “regard” for the other person.1
Yet what exactly constitutes regard? Economic historian Avner Offer defined “regard” as “an attitude of approbation,” or a sense of approval or appreciation that people express when they pay close attention to someone.2 In this model attention is a scarce life resource, so the granting of one’s regard becomes a carefully considered gift. Anthropologists are keenly aware, however, that reciprocities take many forms, some of them accompanied by warm and mutual regard and some of them quite self-serving.
This chapter analyzes whether sincere forms of reciprocity are possible in the commercialized, social media environment of YouTube. To display sincere regard means showing genuine curiosity or interest in someone’s work rather than feigning attention only to drive up one’s own traffic. YouTubers believed in democratized media, but within limits. A creator had to demonstrate sincere interest in making videos and encouraging meaningful sociality to receive reciprocal attention.
This chapter demonstrates that despite fears of rampant self-centeredness in media, in fact positive, interpersonal forms of reciprocity are alive and well online. YouTubers’ sociality demonstrably involved media reciprocities that bolstered interaction. However, the chapter will also show—contra many pundits—that in certain cases YouTubers believed it was better to withhold reciprocity to improve the sincerity of interactions and the quality of YouTube. The chapter will argue that strategic withholdings of reciprocity—similar to cases in the anthropological record—were sometimes just as important as bestowing it for creating a meaningful environment for sharing the self through media.
Reciprocity is considered to be the cornerstone of society. Anthropologists have studied this concept for over a hundred years. Anthropologist Mary Douglas famously asserted that with respect to small-scale communities, “The cycling gift system is the society.”3 Yet observers worry that media makers focus on themselves, thus challenging the vitality of reciprocity in contemporary social media environments. This chapter shows that reciprocity remains a key aspect of digitally mediated sociality.
In Lefebvrian terms this chapter analyzes how the “growth phase” of social phenomena intensified and how YouTubers deepened their connections to each other through forms of reciprocity. Enacting mediated reciprocity was one way in which socially motivated YouTubers grew closer and invited connections to a wider social circle that prompted feelings of being in a community, as discussed in the next chapter. In the video idiom of YouTube, participants could execute reciprocal support by paying attention to each other’s work, including taking the time to watch videos and post comments. Lefebvre urged attention to temporalities and to the way in which consideration to time reveals cultural values. This chapter analyzes such sensitivities, including, for instance, the recognition that taking the time to watch an entire video or respond to comments in a timely way sacrificed one’s own life time, which shows social support for a video maker.
Lefebvre maintained that a crucial element of rhythm analysis concerned examining repetition and its functions. Actions that are ritualistically repeated reveal salient beliefs within a culture. This chapter examines how decisions to bestow reciprocity were carefully considered and were systematically repeated across different participants over time. Consistently reciprocating attention offered repeated opportunities for building a sense of mutual connection and sociality.
Notably, although reciprocities may strengthen communal bonds, anthropologists have also observed many negative forms of reciprocity in numerous cultural contexts across time and space. Reciprocity is at times a contested practice. It is not the participatory panacea that many pundits and some scholars assume that it is. It is not reducible to a guaranteed formula or law as characterized by social media consultants.4
The chapter will begin with a methodological discussion describing how I engaged in varied levels of reciprocal engagement across two vlogs to understand reciprocity’s effects. It will then provide scholarly contextualization of how reciprocity has been applied in social media in general and how it might be conceptualized in the video-sharing environment of YouTube. The chapter focuses on analyzing multiple forms of video-related reciprocities, and it will examine the criteria that YouTube participants used to determine when to bestow it and when to withhold their attention and regard. Understanding these calculations provides insight into the interpersonal dynamics of video sharing. The chapter concludes by drawing on the ethnographic findings to engage in a broader philosophical consideration of classical anthropological ideas about reciprocity as well as its origins and categorizations. This chapter analyzes multiple forms of reciprocity on YouTube to illustrate—and challenge—what is known about reciprocity’s roots, motivations, and effects.
AnthroVlog versus AnthroVlog
Anthropological research often involves comparing different groups to observe subtle cultural characteristics. For the study, I maintained two versions of my video blog (vlog)—both called AnthroVlog. I used the different versions to see how interaction might change when I varied my intensity of participation and levels of reciprocity. I maintained one version of AnthroVlog on YouTube and one on a blog-hosting site called WordPress, a common platform used by early vloggers. A group whom I refer to as first-generation video bloggers began sharing their work prior to YouTube’s emergence, preferring blog-hosting sites.5 Early vloggers provided inspiration and models for vlogging to YouTubers. Popular comedic creator Mark Day (40,000 subscribers) directly credited one early vlogger—Ze Frank—as a key video-making influence.6 After YouTube launched, several first-generation vloggers whom I interviewed were slow to join the site or even avoided it. Video-sharing sites exhibit technical, commercial, and participatory parameters that influence the reading of videos. For early vloggers, YouTube was characterized by poor quality, hostility, and lack of control over one’s media. A common strategy was to post videos to video-hosting sites such as blip.tv and cross-link them to vlogs on WordPress. Because I wanted to compare vlogging experiences both within and outside of YouTube, I too established a version of my vlog on WordPress and crossed-linked my videos from blip.tv.
My behavior was similar across AnthroVlog (YouTube) and AnthroVlog (WordPress). For both vlogs I attended video-themed events, interviewed video makers, and created videos. However, I engaged in a key participatory variation. I was socially conservative when participating online within first-generation, video-blogging circles on the WordPress version of AnthroVlog. I spent time in person with first-generation vloggers by attending in-home tutorials, parties, and other events where this group gathered in Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, I posted very few comments to other people’s videos. I exhibited a much quieter approach in comparison to my YouTube participation. Within the WordPress-based vlogging environment, I uploaded videos, but I did not engage in forms of media reciprocities as they did.
In contrast, on YouTube I was highly active and responsive to the media reciprocities that appeared between socially oriented YouTubers. I commented on other people’s videos and took care to answer comments posted to my videos. An example of an exchange of comments is the one below from my video entitled Video Reciprocity, posted on February 27, 2008. The video had garnered 15,986 views as of July 2018. As part of my “open field notes” series of videos on YouTube, this video included a compilation of prototypical interview responses from attendees at a San Francisco gathering. Interviewees were asked to share their views on YouTube reciprocities. Sample questions included the following: (1) If someone comments on your videos, do you feel a need to comment on their videos? (2) Do you owe your subscribers anything in particular? (3) If someone subscribes to you or “friends” you (in the social media sense), do you typically subscribe or “friend” them back? When the video was created, YouTube had a friending feature in which YouTubers could accept a friend request, and a hard-coded link was established between the accounts. In 2011 the feature was eliminated; subscription and friend lists were merged.7
In the immediate aftermath of the video’s posting, I answered many comments on the video, taking care to reply to the content rather than to offer only generic thanks for commenting. The following illustrates how I responded to commenters to my video. In this exchange ShortbusMooner lends her opinion to the video’s discussion on reciprocity:
Some people think that you have to sub back to them, if they sub to you, but I don’t play like that. You have to earn my interest. But I do always return the comment favor. I also don’t friend just anyone—there’s so many that are just bulletin hogs! LOL!
AnthroVlog: Bulletin hog. *grin* I hadn’t heard that term. Thanks for alerting me.
ShortbusMooner disagrees with the view that when someone subscribes to your channel, you should automatically subscribe back. Yet she believes in bestowing reciprocity in terms of comments posted to her videos. Her actions indicate a generalized, repeated pattern of support whenever she receives a “comment favor.” When she posted her comment, the friending feature was active and YouTubers might receive “bulletins” about their YouTube friends’ activities. She notes that one has to be careful about friending just anyone, lest they become “bulletin hogs” who inordinately saturate one’s feed with their announcements. In her comment ShortbusMooner explained an insider or emic term, and I thank her for sharing this information.
Reciprocities sometimes traveled across different modalities of interaction. For example, during a meet-up in Santa Monica, a viewer of AnthroVlog whom I did not know introduced himself and said that he had watched my videos and enjoyed them. It was a casual and sincere comment, the timbre of which prompted me to check out his videos and leave a comment when I returned home. I felt the need to reciprocate his regard, even though I was not necessarily interested in the video themes he preferred. I found this exchange enlightening because I viscerally felt a need to respond, even though we did not share the exact same interests in content.
Activity on my videos on AnthroVlog (YouTube) was more intensive than interaction on AnthroVlog (WordPress). Although vloggers from the WordPress crowd were interactive with each other on their vlogs and with me during in-person activities, my WordPress vlog was quiet unless I started opening up and posting comments to other people’s videos. I eventually abandoned my AnthroVlog on WordPress in 2009, in part due to lack of activity. In 2013 the video-hosting site blip.tv began pulling unprofitable videos from its site.8 My videos were also deleted, rendering my vlog a dead thing—even as an archival site. Ironically, in line with the vlogger’s ideal of keeping a vlog outside of the Google/YouTube machine to secure more control over one’s work, moving off of YouTube ultimately yielded far less control over my WordPress vlog. Subsequent remarks about AnthroVlog in this chapter thus refer solely to my channel on YouTube.
The experiment proved quite fruitful ethnographically. Both vlogs were equally “public” in terms of their global accessibility. I often posted identical videos to both sites. Despite these similarities, nuances in reciprocal attention were revealed in text comments, view counts, and participatory interactions. Commenting on videos often prompted others to reciprocate more intensively than when I interacted with them only during meet-ups. In-person interaction is assumed to be a gold standard for achieving maximally close types of interpersonal bonding, but it was insufficient in this media milieu. Achieving intensive forms of sociality resulted from engaging in a combination of different modalities of video reciprocity. In these mediated groups one needed to engage with media to feel fully integrated socially. In terms of reciprocity, the experiment proved eye-opening. The more I gave, the more I got.
Reciprocity in Digital Media
Reciprocity has captured the attention of digital media scholars over the past several decades. Writing from a sociological perspective, Peter Kollock examined online communities based on computer-programming discussion groups and observed a general disposition among members to behave reciprocally.9 For instance, online participants contributed public goods such as providing information or assistance. Motivations for helping included the expectation of receiving assistance from group members at a later date as well as building one’s own reputation. People might feel a personal sense of “efficacy” by impacting their environment.10 These examples are premised on the low cost of contributing to the group (it is easy to post a message) and on “identity persistence.” If people cannot track who has contributed, it is difficult to reciprocate.
Emotional reciprocities also appear in digital media. In a study of therapeutic environments, therapists’ self-disclosures often prompted their clients to open up, thus increasing opportunities for meaningful communication.11 Similarly, a study of women vloggers that I conducted suggested that when women shared personal thoughts about civic concerns through videos, commenters tended to respond by discussing important issues. It was not only through words but also by connecting with someone’s face in a direct camera-address vlog that prompted people to open up about concerns they shared with the vlogger.12 In her research on social network sites, technology and social media researcher danah boyd observed a “spirit of reciprocity” among teens who felt that if someone was “nice enough” to provide commentary, one had to be “nice” and respond back.13
In contrast to examining general inclinations toward reciprocity, researchers who are engaged in large-scale studies of social media measure reciprocity in a specific way. Reciprocity is frequently calculated as a proportion of users who follow each other back using the hard-coded links of a social media service. For instance, researchers studying Tumblr, a blog-based platform, measured reciprocity as “the likelihood that if user a follows user b, then b also follows a.”14 Researchers compared Tumblr to Twitter, a microblogging site in which messages (“tweets”) were at that time limited to 140 characters. They found that on Twitter 22 percent of participants had reciprocal links compared with 30 percent on Tumblr and 3 percent in the blogosphere in general.15 YouTubers in the present study did not define reciprocity in terms of following another video maker’s account when friending was still active. Instead, they engaged in behaviors such as comment and viewership reciprocity.
Communication scholar Etienne Pelaprat and sociologist Barry Brown studied reciprocities in online discussion forums, gaming, and social networks. They argue that reciprocity is crucial to many types of digital interaction, specifically because it encourages people to “recognize” others and to “share in social life.”16 Describing dynamics that closely resemble the practices observed on YouTube, Pelaprat and Brown state that opportunities for expressing reciprocity become sites of “encounter.” Exchanging recognition within such encounters invites online participants into potential relationships. Reciprocating by answering questions in an online discussion forum or sharing personal experiences on a social media site may indicate a desire “to encounter, engage, and be-with.”17 Pelaprat and Brown observed that online query sites often provide answers to people’s questions. Answers frequently evolved into a reciprocal, conversational exchange. According to Pelaprat and Brown, posting one’s status on a social media site is not a narcissistic act but rather an “offer for others to respond” because participants wish to “express a desire to live life with others through forms of giving and exchange.”18
An obvious gesture of reciprocity appears at the end of many YouTube videos. People often say, “Thanks for watching!” They express gratitude to their audience for taking the time to watch their video. On the surface, a repeated, ritualistic way of ending a video may appear to mimic standard broadcasting tropes; professional television shows often end with a standardized thanks to their mass viewing audience. Although some video makers offer generic thanks, YouTubers interested in sociality felt and expressed sincere gratitude to people who watched their videos.
Within a limited “attention economy”19 consisting of professional and amateur video creators, viewers must choose which works to watch. For socially sensitive video makers, when a viewer watches a video, an attentional debt is often created. Video comments and interview remarks reveal that creators often redress these attentional forms of debt by acknowledging their viewers’ regard, at least in terms of a polite thanks, but sometimes by doing even more; video creators in turn comment on or watch their viewers’ work, engaging in patterns of video reciprocity. Extrapolating from a definition of reciprocity proposed by sociologist Alvin Gouldner,20 video reciprocity is defined here as a behavior, belief, or ideal in which something is given deliberately and interpersonally to another person in response to a prior video-related event. For example, an event may be a comment on a video. A creator may see the comment and in turn watch and comment on their viewer’s video.
Video makers thanked not only their viewers at the end of videos but also often thanked text commenters within the comment section and sometimes engaged in discussions with them. Comments became moments of “encounter,” to use Pelaprat and Brown’s term. Video makers also created and exchanged video footage for collaborative projects. When asked whether they “owed” anything to viewers who took the time to watch their work, most interviewees were reluctant to identify such reciprocal practices as “obligations.” Nevertheless, they repeatedly and systematically engaged in video reciprocity to invite or maintain sociality. Of course, what constituted a meaningful video that deserved attention was subjective and was adjudicated by each YouTube participant’s personal interests and preferences. As a rule, however, video reciprocity remained important for establishing social connections through media.
Reciprocity in Video-Sharing Contexts
Video reciprocities include interactional forms of exchange and acknowledgment of reciprocal feelings through video.21 Interactional moves create a kind of debt with respect to regard, and this attentional debt ideally yields repayment. For example, people may believe that they owe a person thanks after receiving a compliment. A person has bestowed a “gift” of regard through a compliment, and that attention has created a momentary, attentional asymmetry between the two parties. In many US cultural contexts, staring back blankly after being paid a compliment would seem odd. It is customary to ritually reciprocate a compliment with thanks. An expression of regard might prompt a generic expression of thanks, but it is not necessarily less sincere because it is a widely accepted and repeated form. Similarly, if someone watches a YouTuber’s video, the creator may feel it necessary to provide thanks. Regard is inevitably a scarce resource. One has only so much time to grant other people attention during one’s lifetime.22 Viewers who watch a video use part of their scarce life resources, and this “sacrifice” should be acknowledged.
Researchers have identified multiple categories of reciprocities. They may be “homeomorphic”23 in that things of a similar kind are exchanged. An example in a video-sharing context might include subscribing to someone’s channel when someone has subscribed to yours. Subscribing to a YouTube channel was free and meant being alerted (such as through email) when a video maker had posted a new video. To subscribe, one simply pressed a Subscribe button located under every video as well as on a video maker’s channel page. From a commercial perspective, the subscription feature attempts to lure people back to the site through notifications of new videos that may interest viewers who had subscribed to particular video makers. At first glance it would seem that homeomorphic, or ostensibly similar things in the form of mutual subscriptions, are exchanged.
Reciprocities may also be “heteromorphic” in that dissimilar things are exchanged.24 For example, when I returned from the SouthTube meet-up, I subscribed to the channels of many of the attendees whom I met. The site enables people with YouTube accounts to comment publicly on a video maker’s channel page under a Discussion tab. These comments are visible to all viewers, with or without accounts. Upon returning from SouthTube and subscribing to numerous attendees’ channels, I noticed several comments posted to my channel’s Discussion page. Out of sixty comments posted, fifteen thanked me for subscribing, which represents 25 percent of the comments. People demonstrated public gratitude for the favor. Examples included “Thanks so much for the subscription,” “Thanks for subscribing!,” and “Thanks for the subby!” These are examples of repeated, patterned heteromorphic forms of reciprocity in that they return my favor of a subscription to their channel with a comment of thanks on mine. Similar expressions of gratitude for subscriptions repeatedly appear on other video makers’ Discussion pages, and they in turn may offer reciprocal promises for the regard. For example, one YouTuber called The Turner Based Gamer received numerous thanks for his subscriptions on his channel’s Discussion page. One creator stated: “Many thanks for the subscription. I’ll try my best to keep things interesting for you :).” This comment potentially launches a new cycle of reciprocity through the video maker’s promises to deliver interesting content in response to receiving The Turner Based Gamer’s subscription.
Video reciprocity on YouTube exhibited temporal dimensions. YouTubers displayed temporal sensitivities to acts of viewership. Temporal sensitivities are defined as acknowledgments of the timing of video events and their socio-temporal impacts. Temporal sensitivities include noting how long a viewer watches a video, whether viewers watch regularly over time, and whether reciprocal responses are posted quickly.25 Creators appreciated it when someone watched an entire video, thus giving of their time and exhibiting sincere appreciation for the work. A well-known trick was to watch the first part of a video and comment so that it would seem as though the viewer took the time to watch the video. Viewers could save time and appear to be social. YouTubers might evaluate comments in terms of whether they demonstrated knowledge of something occurring late in the video, which suggested that a viewer actually watched the entire work.
A video maker and author named Kevin Nalty (whose YouTube channel name is nalts) addresses temporal sensitivities in a comedic video called YouTube Etiquette, which he posted on July 12, 2007. An early adopter of the site, nalts had been participating for a year and half when he posted this video. Nalts was a white man in his late thirties who created humorous videos and vlogs. His oeuvre aimed to garner mass appeal. He often created video pranks such as nose-picking in public or having a relative pretend to pass gas in a library. He also posted funny vlogs with his wife and family. His prank videos were quite popular, each often amassing millions of views. As of June 2018, he had 236,739 subscribers, which indexes a mass audience following. A professional marketer, Nalty also wrote a book called Beyond Viral: How to Attract Customers, Promote Your Brand, and Make Money with Online Video (2010). Nalts worked the site in multiple ways for revenue. Providing advice at a conference in 2012, he emphasized that money from advertisements was usually modest. More profit could be gained from product sponsorships, such as when a YouTuber is paid to make a video about a product.26 Nalts also worked the merchandise angle (colloquially called “merch”) by selling T-shirts, hats, mugs, magnets, mouse pads, stuffed animals, and clocks on CafePress, an online retailer founded in 1999.
In my observation, nalts was a friendly and personable character who appeared to enjoy participating in the social side of YouTube at meet-ups. Interviewees reported attending private gatherings at his house. One family told me they intended to surprise him by arriving at his house in nalts merch such as T-shirts. He exhibited keen understanding of the informal social rules of participation as well as the business side.
In his comedic video YouTube Etiquette, nalts states that it is socially important to watch people’s videos, which presents a problem because they can be “insufferable”—especially when they are “8-minute vlogs.” He proposes a viewing strategy that he dubs “the nalts ¾ rule.” He says that he plays a video in its entirety but he’ll “walk away from the desk so that [he] doesn’t have to endure it.” When he returns he skips to about the three-fourths mark of the video’s time index. He comments on something in that section, thus “leaving the impression that [he’d] watched the whole video.” He also advises viewers to scan the video maker’s collection and find something mentioned across videos, such as a beloved pet. He suggests making a comment about it. The comment will give the impression, he assures viewers, that one is a “regular watcher” and has attended to the creator’s work over time.
His video humorously and parodically emphasizes the idea that truly engaged YouTube participation meant giving of one’s time to watch an entire video as a way of fostering sociality between the viewer and the creator. The video reveals how attentional and temporal sensitivities are important for boosting sociality. On YouTube, attempts to create social encounters by providing sincere gifts of time, attention, and critique were often met with an urge to reciprocate. Insincere attempts at reciprocity were challenged, rejected, or ridiculed.
Many early anthropological studies of reciprocity focused on small-scale communities in which the market works differently than it does in large-scale capitalistic societies. Studying perceptions of reciprocity in contemporary video-sharing cultures thus assists the anthropological project of analyzing reciprocity’s role in digitally mediated sociality. Rather than assuming that reciprocity inevitably promotes connection, it is treated here as a phenomenon to be investigated and explained.27 This chapter analyzes the degree to which video reciprocity—and its withholding—were perceived as necessary for promoting interactive participation, preserving video quality, and creating a social atmosphere on the site.
Video Reciprocities on YouTube
Video reciprocities exhibited several dimensions, including responding to comments on videos, reciprocal watching of videos, and willingness to share video footage in communal ways. When a video was posted among YouTubers, an interactive chain was often launched in which viewers’ comments appeared in reaction to a video and then video makers responded to prior text comments with comments of their own. Each interaction exhibited its own dynamic of reciprocity and provided insight into video-sharing cultures.
In popular accounts and scholarly works, anxiety exits that contemporary social media environments solely breed narcissism and feelings of entitlement to the point where “reciprocity gets diminished and life gets a little harder and more isolated for everyone.”28 In this model only positive forms of reciprocity are acknowledged. The claim is that many people in the United States are losing warm, interconnected feelings. The fear is that “reciprocity is the glue that binds society together, and entitlement dissolves that glue.”29
Despite widespread anxiety that sincere reciprocity is not possible in a commercialized, digital milieu, the data revealed that numerous forms of reciprocity existed between socially active YouTubers. In addition, although the popular imagination defines reciprocity in a singular way, in fact, the anthropological record identifies several types of reciprocity. These included balanced forms in which assessments are made to return relatively similar types of attention and regard. Also apparent were generalized forms in which artifacts such as video footage were shared without an immediate expectation of a return favor.
Reciprocity is a broad term, with nuances that are often elided in populist accounts. Contra the notion that reciprocities are only warm and interpersonally enriching, the anthropological record has long analyzed reciprocities that instrumentally attempt to achieve a return on a reciprocal investment. Anthropologists have additionally observed negative reciprocities that attempt to gain something for nothing. The present data showed that YouTubers accepted certain forms of instrumental reciprocities, which could include sincere sociality. However, most interviewees detected and staunchly rejected self-centered, negative, and harmful forms of reciprocity that threatened the creative and social atmosphere of YouTube. The study argues that reciprocity exists in contemporary digital environments. However, per the anthropological record, maintaining positive reciprocity required repeated, ongoing negotiations to foster meaningful, interpersonal connections through media.
Comment Reciprocity
Comment reciprocity refers to feeling motivated to respond to text comments posted on videos, thus returning the favor of regard that commenters bestowed on a video maker. Many interviewees felt a strong urge to at least attend to the comments posted to their videos, especially if they were interesting, personally appealing, or emotional. Reciprocities and general viewership on YouTube often exhibited patterned temporality. In interviews with me and in their own videos, YouTubers said that most videos are watched within two days. Thus, their pace of receptive vitality is reasonably brief. Similarly, on AnthroVlog most text comments posted to my videos typically arrived within a few days. As of 2010, 50 percent of most videos’ views are reportedly accumulated six days after a video is posted.30 Video makers interested in engagement tended to respond quickly to text comments that appeared on their videos, and they displayed temporal sensitivity by apologizing if they took too long to reciprocate.
Comments have particular tempi. It is challenging to articulate what it feels like to receive emotional and responsive commentary in nearly real time after posting a video. When comments appeared just after I posted a video, I felt an emotional impact that the flatness of text cannot convey—even when a comment had a time stamp noting that it was posted only a day ago. It is not just that the comments appeared, but that they appeared quickly, indexing an attentive audience that exhibits active enthusiasm for one’s work.
An encounter in which a debt is repaid in a direct and relatively timely way has been referred to in the anthropological literature as “balanced reciprocity.”31 An adequate repayment follows a gift—in this case, of attention—within a socially acceptable time window. Timing is a key factor. To receive a reciprocal comment a year later may not have the same impact; indeed it might not be noticed.
Even interviewees who insisted that reciprocity was not obligatory nevertheless responded to numerous comments on their videos, especially the emotional ones. At times video makers responded to and discussed the content of a comment. In other cases video makers responded to a text comment with simple but heartfelt acknowledgments, such as “Thanks so much for watching,” “I really appreciate it,” or simply “Thank you.” The participatory and interactive platform of YouTube facilitated resolution of attentional debt by allowing people to acknowledge a comment or offer thanks.
In a revealing case study, I interviewed a YouTuber named bnessel1973 at a meet-up in Toronto in 2008. Bnessel1973 is his YouTube channel name; he refers to himself as Brian in his videos. At the time of the interview he had been on YouTube for nearly two years. Bnessel1973 was a white man and father in his mid-thirties who posted vlogs about family moments and comedic skits involving humorous characters he created. He was working on a film script and was open to professionalizing his media work. In one genre of his videos, he cuts back and forth between comedic personae he portrays, thus engaging his characters in humorous dialogues. His videos typically see 1,000 to 2,000 views each. As of June 2018, he had 2,445 subscribers. By 2018 his interests had changed, and he referenced becoming a nutritionist and body-builder.
YouTube creators frequently recalled how their participation began and evolved. Brian’s version of this genre was called My YouTube Story. It was posted on August 25, 2007, and as of May 2015 it had received more than 71,000 views and 471 comments. In the video Brian recalls how his autobiographical trajectory on YouTube began with weight loss videos and quickly proceeded to include footage of his children. He also recounts the disturbing news that he lost his baby boy to SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). He explains how he used YouTube in comedic ways to reconnect with his former self. His humorous videos helped him find joy again in life, even though he missed his son “every single day.” Bnessel1973 received many supportive comments that exuded emotio-temporal dynamics. Comments have rhythms, and the waves of energy that a video creator might feel in reading them are often difficult to appreciate when viewing them weeks later as static text.
Commenters to the video included people with whom Brian socialized at gatherings and privately. Commenters included several of the people profiled in this book, such as Jane (a researcher-assigned pseudonym), Jill Hanner (her official name and YouTube name), and musoSF, DaleATL2, K80Blog, WpgPeanut, and nbwulf (all YouTube names). Comments sometimes arrived from those who connected with the video from having experienced a similar loss, such as Jane, as well as from those who had not encountered such tragedy but wished to extend their support. Under the right circumstances, asynchronously posted comments could feel “live,” especially in the immediate moments after a video was posted. The liveness of comments could also prompt an urge to return the support one receives through them.
Many of the commenters reached out to Brian with supportive messages. The following exchanges alternatively illustrate content-based and emotional reciprocities. In the first example a commenter called LindaSVorhies identifies herself as a person who has also lost a child. The content of her post expresses encouragement to Brian to “have courage” even after such a tragedy:
LindaSVorhies: Wow! I just clicked on this video because of the photo of the beautiful baby—never thinking it would be this lovely and heartbreaking and hopeful piece. I talked today with a friend who is another one of us—those who have lost a child. We worried about how our husbands have coped with the loss and the grief. How wonderful that you found this creative way to heal yourself and to help others, too. Have courage—life does go on and Life really is Good!
bnessel1973: I appreciate you sharing this with me. I’ve found there is comfort in hearing other people’s stories about their journey. It lets you know you’re not alone, and that there is still life after loss. Thank you so much.
As in therapeutic environments, Brian’s decision to open up prompted viewers to reciprocate vulnerability and share their sense of loss. In his reply to LindaSVorhies, Brian reciprocates her emotional outreach by expressing appreciation that she shared her experiences with him. By showing vulnerability, he exhibited “mutuality”32 with others who endured similar experiences. He discusses the benefit of hearing similar stories from others who have suffered to avoid feeling “alone” and to experience a sense of “life” after a significant loss. Bnessel1973 found comfort in reciprocally hearing other people’s experiences of loss and extended his own gratitude for kindness expressed through comments.
This example exhibits reciprocity in terms of comment content and the importance of receiving and providing support to others who have endured loss. In contrast, the next two examples illustrate how reciprocity plays out not in terms of content or the events that are discussed but rather in feelings for the other person. For example, WpgPeanut thanks Brian for his contribution to her corner of YouTube, and, in turn, Brian tells WpgPeanut how he feels about her.
WpgPeanut: I could have not said it better myself . . . you are a wonderful person that has made me cry and laugh on many [occasions] and I thank you for being a part of my youtube.
bnessel1973: And I hope you know I think the world of you. Truly.
This exchange exhibits what economic anthropologist Marshall Sahlins called “balanced reciprocity,” which aims to reciprocate with the “customary equivalent of the thing received and without delay.”33 Ideally, reciprocal comments are posted relatively quickly and exhibit roughly equivalent qualities, such as in how bnessel1973 and WpgPeanut display mutual admiration. In the following example Brian’s sister also posts a comment that Brian returns, but in a way that does not strive to achieve content balance or parity as much as it reveals his general regard for his sister.
SuziNess1968: Brian, I am so proud of you. I’ve watched you, video by video, since the very first day you started your YouTube adventure. [Your nephew] signs on three times a day just to see if Uncle Brian is on “cause he might be posting something!”—Today, watching this, shows EVERYBODY what I already knew: You are amazing! And I know I’m your sister, but I think I speak for MANY when I say WE LOVE YOU—and Thank YOU—for just being you.
bnessel1973: I was going to make a long comment, but you know how much I love you and how much we appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I couldn’t have made it without you.
This exchange illustrates what Sahlins called “generalized reciprocity,” which does not necessarily strive for balance but simply provides regard in a way that is not “stipulated by time, quantity, or quality.”34 In this case Brian notes that he intended to make a lengthy comment, perhaps because his sister’s comment was several lines long. Ultimately he feels that it is unnecessary because his sister is aware of how much he appreciates her love for and support of him and his family. It is apparently less important for Brian to match length of content than it is to simply show his gratitude through a posted message directed lovingly to her.
Reciprocity through commentary might orient to content, such as in the comments that share in the pain of loss, as well as to interpersonal regard. They also suggest a patterned tendency among socially motivated YouTube participants to reciprocate regard. Repeated, ritualized reciprocity bolsters these creators’ values of making social connections through video. Bnessel1973’s video on his YouTube journey received 471 comments. Notably, he posted over 100 comments that responded to people who reached out to him. This means that he responded directly to over 20 percent of the commentary he received. This is a high return rate on commentary and shows a tendency to acknowledge those who engaged in meaningful commentary on his video. The data demonstrate that despite fears that we are losing reciprocity, in fact for socially motivated YouTube participants, interactional reciprocity is consistent and warmly personal.
Participatory temporal sensitivities were well illustrated by NorCalCorsello (his YouTube channel name), a man whom I interviewed at a meet-up in San Francisco in 2008. He had been on the site for over a year. Generally receiving a few hundred to sometimes a thousand views for each of his videos, NorCalCorsello was a white man in his mid-thirties who enjoyed vlogging on topics such as resuming skateboarding after a long hiatus. He also vlogged on current issues of the day, including high-speed train proposals, globalization, and border patrol. As of June 2018, he had 619 subscribers. Responding to whether he would comment back when someone commented on one of his videos, NorCalCorsello stated:
I do just because I like the interaction and I feel if someone’s taken the time to look at what I’ve done and actually put in a comment, then I’m gonna see who they are and what it is they have to say as well. So I don’t know if it’s a “have to” as [it is] just because if they took the time, I want to take the time.
Note that NorCalCorsello bases his calculus around time. If someone “took the time” to comment, he felt motivated to reciprocate by donating his time. He proceeded to learn more about them and check out their work. NorCalCorsello articulates Peralta and Brown’s argument that reciprocity serves as an opening volley in a potentially ongoing encounter. Reciprocity functioned to initiate a dialogue.
Interaction was highly valued across interviewees; yet they were often inclined to respond more interactively if a comment was interesting or inspiring. Reciprocity was selectively bestowed according to merit. Interviewees described themselves as “picky” with regard to the extent they would comment back. If interviewees sensed that a video maker simply wished to promote a channel and gain viewers without displaying a genuine interest in interacting, then they were disinclined to comment back.
Writing from the perspective of new media studies, Geert Lovink expresses skepticism about the value of comments. He argues that commenting constitutes “a necessary yet wasted human compulsion” and that their sheer volume means that we do not care about comment content.35 Creators are assumed to be more concerned about the impact of commenting in terms of their commercial advantages. Voluminous comments index popularity and the potential for monetization of videos through advertisements. However, precisely because commenting is time-consuming, people who took the time to comment interpersonally tended to invite sociality. Commenting was not wasted on the people who valued it. Yet mutual regard was not automatic; comment systems were used to test and sometimes establish further channels of sociality through forms of reciprocal attention.
Visual Reciprocity
Pundits often see reciprocity in warm and mutual terms. Yet, commensurate with the anthropological record, the present data revealed reciprocities that were based on calculations of potential returns and benefits. One form of reciprocity involved mutual viewing of videos, sometimes accompanied by pledges of mutual subscriptions, a practice known as “sub for sub.” By activating the structural feature of subscriptions, it was possible to visually display a mutual commitment to viewership.36
On the surface, it would seem that mutual obligations to subscribe did not exist. In interviews most respondents said they felt no obligation to subscribe to the channel of someone who had subscribed to theirs. This viewpoint resembles patterns on Twitter, in which there is generally no presumed obligation to engage in mutual following. Media scholars Marwick and boyd state that on Twitter, “There is no technical requirement of reciprocity, and often, no social expectation of such.”37 Since subscribing to someone’s channel on YouTube meant being alerted to new videos, interviewees did not want to be alerted about new videos that were of poor quality or exhibited content that they were not interested in watching. The quality of the content influenced individual assessments to reciprocate.
Nevertheless, some YouTubers attempted to use “sub for sub” as a strategy to gain more views. Invoking sub for sub, a creator might subscribe to another video maker’s channel with the understanding that the person receiving the subscription would feel reciprocally obligated to subscribe back. The hope was that mutual subscriptions would encourage both video makers to watch each other’s content, provide channel visibility through increased subscriptions, and drive up viewership for each other’s work—potentially boosting monetization opportunities.
Although most interviewees and video makers in the study eschewed this practice, a few creators saw this as a clever strategy for mutual promotion of each other’s work. For instance, one interviewee, a white woman, homemaker, and mother in her early thirties named spricket24 (her YouTube channel name) supported the practice. Receiving tens of thousands of views on each of her videos, she said she would readily contemplate a professional media career. She vlogged in humorous ways about family life and meet-ups as well as topics such as voting, sex in the dark, how she quit her job, and an iPad Christmas debacle. She opened the spricket24 account in March 2008, three months before I interviewed her in Minneapolis. As of June 2018, she had amassed 44,824 subscribers.
Spricket24 took pride in “pioneering” the sub for sub practice, as she believed it was a good way of building a following. However, she admitted that the social aspect became more difficult as her audience grew. During her interview I asked her about the practice of sub for sub. Spricket24 replied:
I would like to say that I pioneered that. I have a video from when I first started where I was, like, if you sub to me, I’m gonna sub to you. But after I reached 3,000, I couldn’t keep up! So I think it’s cool that people are still doing sub for sub. And I think that as long as you post videos that you are proud to post and you’re happy about them, and it’s not, like, filled with hate speech or it doesn’t hurt anybody else, then sub for sub is great.
Although she felt it was a viable strategy, she also believed that videos should have merit, insofar as one is “happy” with them as a creator and they are not “hurting” others. Contrary to fears of self-centeredness overtaking opportunities for sociality in a mediated community, the data show that even some sub for sub supporters had creative and participatory limits and refused to reciprocate if the videos were of low quality or hurtful. Videos needed to exhibit a baseline of attention-worthy content to merit visual reciprocity.
One video I encountered from outside the study promoted the strategy. A video maker named Ontus (his YouTube channel name) was a white man who posted a video entitled sub4sub? on YouTube on March 28, 2008. He characterizes the practice as “brilliant” and “awesome” because, if executed widely, it could provide a “launch pad” of subscribers and facilitate meeting new people. He saw his subscription count rise from 73 to over 200 by deploying this practice. However, even within an assessment that privileged viewing metrics and increasing followers, Ontus also references the benefit of new social encounters as important.
Ontus implicitly supports what scholars label “instrumental” forms of reciprocity, in which the gift giver seeks to gain something by manipulating interpersonal relations in a way that does not preclude sociality.38 Such “instrumental” gifts become a “quasi-commodity” because each party seeks to engage in the transaction for personal gain.39 Anthropologist and Chinese studies scholar Yunxiang Yan argues that instrumental gifts, which aim to achieve “utilitarian ends,” can be distinguished from expressive gifts, which are “ends in and of themselves” and thus cement long-term relationships.40 Although reciprocity is often characterized as warm and interpersonal compared to cold and impersonal capitalist exchange, sociologist Marcel Mauss observed that reciprocity frequently cements economic as well as political relationships in societies based on reciprocal exchange.41
YouTubers tolerated simultaneous instrumentality and sociality as long as the social interaction seemed sincere and not feigned solely to obtain views. According to Yan, instrumental giving may exist in a “grey area” between a commodified transaction and a gift meant to propagate social relations. Fueling this tension was the fact that the mechanisms that video makers and viewers used to express interpersonal interest were also used for commercial purposes within YouTube’s attention economy. Comments, likes, and subscriptions could all be used for inviting sociality, for assessing monetization potential, or for multiple purposes.
The site’s design features, in combination with varied user goals, create what researchers have called “context collapse.” Communication and media studies scholar Alice Marwick and technology and social media researcher danah boyd argue that context collapse occurs when social media technologies “collapse multiple audiences into single contexts.”42 Similarly, anthropologist Michael Wesch describes this dynamic as “an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording.”43 Most interviewees sought reciprocities that yielded feelings of “mutuality,”44 or similar ways of using YouTube for social interaction. When context collapse complicated these preferences, conflict ensued. Peralta and Brown’s argument about reciprocity revolves around how “relations of reciprocal recognition resist institutionalisation.”45 Yet it becomes complicated to resist institutional control amid deliberately orchestrated context collapse. The YouTube engine encouraged monetization through social mechanisms.
YouTubers had to determine motivations when the same features could be used for multiple purposes. According to interviewees, it is possible to assess the sincerity level of those who promote their work, based on the quality of comments and overall interactions over time. Creators who invoked reciprocity exclusively for their own gain—such as to increase view counts on their videos while only pretending to care about the YouTube community—would be read as insincere. For instance, generic text messages posted on videos such as “Have a nice day!”—accompanied by the winking emoticon ;-)—could cause skepticism. These comments do not reveal knowledge or appreciation of specific video content. In comparison, heartfelt interactions typically included interpersonally meaningful details about one’s videos or recollections of mutual experiences at meet-ups. Interactions were interpreted as sincere as long as they were perceived as interested in getting to know creators through their video content.
Generic comments would be especially suspect when left in the same form across many videos. Viewers might detect instances in which basic messages were probably posted by a representative of a famous YouTuber or even an automated software program known as a “bot.” A celebrity YouTuber officially known as Lisa Donovan (her YouTube Channel name is LisaNova) reportedly deployed a bot to leave automated comments on each of her subscriber’s profile pages during a two-week period.46 According to viral video expert Kevin Nalty, the action faced deep backlash in the YouTube community, whose members classified the comments as spam.47 He recalled that she even made a public apology for the spam bot.
Invoking a common (and frequently flawed) argument about the ease of identity manipulation in online milieus, researchers on narcissism fault the cover of the internet and social media as enabling viewer manipulation. Online participants strategically promote only their best selves to gain attention. Yet, paradoxically, narcissism scholars also report that viewers can easily detect problematic overpromotion using clues such as (1) content of postings (e.g., salacious nudity, achievement-oriented announcements, excessive partying); (2) orders of magnitude of friends they have; and (3) types of email names they use.48 Clearly narcissists could not hide behind a facade of being their “best” selves because they were easily identified as narcissists! These identifications suggest that attempts at online identity posing, aggressive self-promotion, and negative interaction behaviors have limits and become difficult when interaction is anticipated to continue over time.49 Members of social groups can identify obvious violations of local media-sharing norms. Yet viewer agency is often ignored in laments about narcissism.
Viewers detected reciprocity manipulations, and the attention spammer could receive public social sanctions. Indeed, the LisaNova spam debacle lasted merely two weeks and reportedly ended with a public apology. Scholars who decry the loss of reciprocity often focus on the alleged perpetrators rather than acknowledging the agency of online participants who can detect and actively resist blatant stunts. While attempted manipulations will likely continue, community members will correspondingly deal with them on a collective level as they deem necessary.
Eschewing Visual Reciprocity
Aside from the exceptions discussed in the previous section, most interviewees saw sub for sub as self-promotional. The practice was perceived as insincere because requestors seemed to be engaging in a social exchange but were actually sweetening their viewing metrics at the expense of sociality. This was especially true of a more devious form of the sub for sub practice in which the requestor unsubscribed after locking in a reciprocal subscription. This was done to inflate their comparative subscription counts. By immediately unsubscribing, only the requestor gains an additional subscriber from the deal. A video maker may not notice what has happened and may continue subscribing to the sub for sub requestor. This is a competitive practice that ultimately helps one video maker at the expense of another.
The devious form of sub for sub requests that benefited only the requester may be anthropologically categorized as “negative reciprocity.” Sahlins defined negative reciprocity as an “attempt to get something for nothing with impunity.”50 Scholars and pundits who demand increased reciprocity need to consider the anthropological insight that negative and highly competitive forms of reciprocity also exist. These forms are understandably concerning to those who track complications to achieving sociality on social media. Negative reciprocities were generally not tolerated among YouTubers seeking to maintain sociality.
Numerous videos on YouTube decry even mutual forms of sub for sub in which both parties adhere to the deal. Even successful professionals who monetize their content are suspicious of the practice. For example, Roberto Blake (his YouTube channel name and official name) criticizes the practice in a video called Why YouTube Sub4Sub Is Bad, which he posted on March 20, 2015. An experienced YouTuber, he joined the site about six years prior to posting this video. Blake is a professional media maker and graphic designer in his early thirties who is sponsored, which means he promotes products within the content of his videos. He earns money from advertisements on his videos, which focus on educating and motivating creative professionals. Characterizing himself as a “black nerd,” his content is targeted at widespread YouTube audiences through topics such as providing tips on growing a channel quickly, vlogging on creative thoughts, net neutrality, product reviews, personal branding, graphic design, and making money through sponsorships. He also posts an occasional vlog about personal issues, such as needing to take a YouTube break and dealing with haters. Blake’s videos typically receive several thousand views each. As of June 2018, he had amassed 315,116 subscribers.
In his video on sub for sub, he argues that subscriptions do not guarantee viewers and thus do not grow one’s audience. He elects to refrain from ranting, given that he believes that people using sub for sub are typically younger, gaming-oriented, or inexperienced with the online entertainment space. Part of the problem, Blake argues, is that the YouTube service examines a variety of metrics in addition to subscriptions, such as watch time over a specific time interval, user engagement (such as commenting), and view-to-subscriber ratios. If the ratios are off, high subscriber numbers will not guarantee monetization. For example, if an account has many subscribers but only a few views for each video, then the videos will be ranked lower and perceived as less relevant in terms of content.
Blake also offers philosophical reasons for eschewing sub for sub. Subscriptions add value to viewers because they will be alerted to personally interesting content. But a viewer who is only engaging in a “quid pro quo” behavior is not really interested in the content and will not likely engage with the creator over time. Ultimately, he argues that sub for sub is a type of bribe and a meaningless quick fix. He warns viewers that those who “hijack” his comments with these requests are banned, and he deletes sub for sub requests. Based on his success, he persuasively argues that creators should earn subscriptions by providing value to viewers and garnering relationships rather than “begging” for attention.
Mutual attentional agreements like sub for sub appear on other social media and are reportedly received with similar suspicion.51 In a study of social media sites by boyd, interviewees noted that people sometimes posted comments on other people’s media for self gain. They wished to attract attention to their own work.52 On Instagram the practice occurs through hashtag manipulation. Creators use hashtags (the octothorpe or pound sign symbol #) to post key words to their images so that viewers may locate content of interest to them, as in #smile or #food. Invoking the sub for sub principle using Instagram terminology, people affix hashtags such as #likeforlike, #like4like, or #follow4follow to their photographs so that others interested in this practice will “like” their images. The expectation is that their photographs will be “liked” or that their account will be mutually “followed” back. “Likes” constitute a key metric that Instagram tracks to gauge popularity and engagement. On Instagram the practice is often used for self-promotion without necessarily attending to media content.53 People who engage in this practice are labeled “like hunters” who use these hashtags to gain views in order to achieve micro-celebrity status.54 The practice is not widely accepted. Indeed, writing from a graphic design perspective, Eric Andren observes that such hashtags are commonly blacklisted on the site.55
Sub for sub requests often upset socially motivated YouTubers, as explained by an interviewee named musoSF (his YouTube channel name), whom I interviewed at a gathering in Minneapolis in 2008. He had been participating on the site for about two years. MusoSF was a white man from San Francisco (whom I estimated to be in his thirties to early forties). In his videos he sings songs and vlogs about contemporary topics such as gay marriage, socially oriented material, and reflections on YouTube meet-ups. His videos typically receive a few hundred views each, with a few in the thousands. He had 1,722 subscribers as of June 2018. Notably, he objected to being reduced to subscriber numbers in terms of how people viewed him and his work. In response to a question about his views on sub for sub, musoSF stated:
In my case, that—that just pisses me off because I . . . that’s not what it’s about for me. It’s not about, let’s try to [have that], that number, that—that statistic of, I’ve got the most subscribers or I’ve got more subscribers than you. That actually conflicts with the whole friendship aspect. It’s like, it’s not a competition, it’s making friends, and some of my friends have a lot more subscribers than I have and they probably always will. And some of my friends have fewer than I have and some of them have changed and we’ve swapped places. And so, yeah, so that annoys me ’cause that’s not why I’m there, it’s not why my friends are there, and so I just either ignore those things or delete ’em. They bug me.
MusoSF expressed frustration over video creators’ attempts at using sub for sub to commoditize their work at the expense of the interpersonal, friendship aspects of YouTube.
Bids for reciprocal viewership could also disrupt people’s preferred temporal rhythms of interaction and discovery of new content. Attending to interactional rhythms often reveals important clues about cultural dynamics and how and when videos were appropriately identified as worth watching. The timing and pace of encountering other video makers was viewed as important to WpgPeanut (her YouTube channel name), whom I interviewed at the gathering in Minneapolis in 2008. WpgPeanut was a white woman with children who was very active in the social aspect of YouTube. She participated both online and offline with several YouTubers whom I interviewed for the study. Although she later deleted her account, she rejoined YouTube in 2017.
On her reopened channel, she posts videos apparently made several years ago (such as birthday greetings to a friend from YouTube) as well as new videos of her children, comedic videos of her singing to friends, and vlogs on subjects such as a computer virus. Videos on her new account typically receive a few dozen views. As of July 2018, she had one subscriber, most likely because she had deleted her account. In her interview she said she typically deleted sub for sub requests because she wished to discover videos of interest in her own time rather than be told what to watch instantaneously. WpgPeanut stated:
I’m gonna watch what I’m gonna watch. Not because you’re going to tell me to watch. If I find you later down the road and I like you, then I’ll subscribe then.
WpgPeanut’s remarks imply a preference for a particular “internal”56 rhythm for encountering videos spontaneously and deciding whether to make connections with other video makers. By proposing an immediate interactional rhythm, sub for sub requesters were arguably trying to force a pace “external”57 to WpgPeanut’s organic viewing practices. Attempts to rush this external rhythm of discovering videos and making social connections to someone with a different internal rhythm create what Lefebvre refers to as “arrhythmia” or a pathological rhythm that reflects underlying problems.58 Such arrhythmias represented an interpersonal rhythmic rupture and were met with a withholding of WpgPeanut’s regard.
Contrary to scholars and pundits who maintain that reciprocity is a participatory “law,” the present data jibe with revisions in the anthropological record in which withholding reciprocity is at times just as important as is bestowing it to promote an interactive atmosphere. Maintaining social connections within the creative space of YouTube required explicit denial of even mutual, reciprocal sub for sub requests from makers of poor-quality videos. Interviewees generally took both their participation and creative reputation seriously and did not wish to promote bad videos. In contrast to scholars who feel that reciprocity is the key to maintaining sociality, the data show that strategic withholdings were often crucial for maintaining creativity and sociality on the site.59
Inalienable Forms of Exchange
In separate studies anthropologists Annette Weiner and Maurice Godelier focused on different communities, but both concluded that what is withheld from circulation is often just as crucial to societal maintenance as that which is shared.60 For example, Godelier contends that withholding symbolic items such as crown jewels and government constitutions from everyday circulation is important for sustaining group identification.61 Weiner argues that some objects have an “inalienable” quality, which means that they “are imbued with the intrinsic and ineffable identities of their owners” and are thus “not easy to give away.”62
Although these scholars were referring to objects, similar observations may be made about human attention and the technical factors that index it. In digital realms technical features such as subscriptions and comments may exhibit inalienable qualities. Opinions or comments about a video are issued from particular individuals and are not necessarily interchangeable, even if the comments are similar or even identical in content. Praise from a close relative who calls one’s work a “terrific video” is not necessarily interchangeable with the same feedback from a stranger who is a successful professional video maker. For example, I was delighted when I received a compliment from popular YouTuber nickynik (his YouTube channel name) on my featured video on community.
Nickynik was a white man in his early forties whom I had interviewed in New York City in 2007 after he had been participating on the site for nearly a year. He garnered a following on YouTube through content targeted at mass audiences such as featuring pranks, stunts, a video journal on a movie he wished to make, and vlogs with YouTube celebrities. Each of his videos saw tens of thousands of views. As of June 2018, he had 15,475 subscribers. He posted a compliment to the Discussion page of my AnthroVlog channel, calling my video “excellent.” He noted that it was a “big deal” to get a video featured on the front page of YouTube and that my work was deservedly being recognized. In a Lefebvrian vein, he attended to the timing of his compliment by apologizing for “not seeing it sooner.” He encouraged me to “keep up the great work” in the future. Knowing that a YouTube celebrity had recognized my work was admittedly gratifying. His comment held a different meaning for me than one from a family member who might feel obligated to provide support by posting an encouraging comment.
Pelaprat and Brown make a similar observation in their study of reciprocity in contemporary digital media environments. They state that the objects being exchanged “stand in for the person giving or reciprocating. Hence they cannot be the same, for they have to be tied to the identity of the person in the exchange.”63 In addition, the value of what is exchanged is inherently “ambiguous.” This ambiguity is key, they argue, because it prevents an accurate accounting of giving and receiving, which invites perpetuating cycles of interactional exchange.
The present study contributes to the anthropological record by demonstrating that the classical categorization of so-called “homeomorphic” gifts—or exchange of similar things—are actually only ever “heteromorphic” in the digital environment of YouTube. At first it might seem that sub for sub represents a homeomorphic type of reciprocity since the practice involves exchanging the same technologically conceptual thing—video subscriptions. Yet each subscription originates from an individual, which makes them inherently different. For example, when a person using the practice purely for monetization makes a request to someone who sees it as a gateway to sociality, their goals are not in sync. Some people will follow up and watch and support the creators to whose channels they subscribe; others subscribe in name only and do not watch any videos. Some creators are knowledgeable about technical aspects of video making while others are not. Their support through subscriptions exhibits different meanings and ramifications.
What constituted the interpersonal value of a subscription differed across individuals. Although most interviewees said they could spot and avoid insincere requests, bids for attention through comments and subscriptions might prompt an exploration of that video maker’s videos or channel page. For example, in response to a question about subscribing to the channel of someone who had subscribed to his, NorCalCorsello noted that although he did not always automatically return a subscription, he “usually” subscribed back. His assessment was ritualistically repeated across offers in a way that highlighted YouTube participants’ belief in encouraging encounters and connections. He stated that a subscription to his videos would at least prompt him to examine his new subscriber’s YouTube channel. If that person created “unoriginal work” or the channel was merely a list of the subscriber’s favorite videos, he would be disinclined to subscribe back. To subscribe back to such a channel would mean getting announcements about bad videos or no announcements at all if the person was not making original videos, thus rendering a “subscription” pointless.
Subscriptions differed in value according to the requestor’s participation. The subscription might prompt an initial favor of attention, but ultimately videos had to exhibit content that merited attention over time. What qualified as earning attention might differ across media makers. It might relate to mutual interests or willingness to exchange personal self-expressions through grassroots video blogging. Whatever the calculus, a subscription’s value depended on the requestor’s participatory intentions.
The data demonstrated that subscriptions were never equivalent because they originated from different individuals, thus exhibiting inalienable qualities. When a creator received a request to subscribe, it was common to investigate the requestor’s work. A central aspect of the calculus revolved around assessing the participation of the people motivating technologized features such as subscriptions, which ultimately varied in meaning according to the goals, output, and intentions of the individual video maker who made the request.
Patterned Reciprocity
Interviewees’ comments suggested that a repeated pattern of attentional reciprocity existed on YouTube, even beyond the social group under study. A description of this pattern surfaced in an interviewee’s description of so-called cheaters on the site. An interviewee named robtran (his YouTube channel name) was a white man in his early forties. He created film parodies and vlogged about current events and personal observations. He enjoyed practicing his filmmaking skills on YouTube. Receiving hundreds of views on each of his videos, he had 416 subscribers as of June 2018. He had been participating on the site for about a year and a half when I interviewed him in 2008 at a meet-up in San Francisco.
Robtran explained that “cheaters” used both bots and human-centric methods to gain attention. He became frustrated when people mindlessly subscribed to many creators. This strategy perversely worked because YouTubers often exhibited a willingness to return subscriptions as a “courtesy” to others. He characterized mass-subscribing to large numbers of people as a form of “cheating” because he believed that the practice artificially inflated viewing metrics and thus deserved redressing by YouTube staff. Robtran stated:
The unsophisticated way of [cheating], is to simply go through and spend X number of hours a week or a day going through and randomly subscribing to as many people as you possibly can every day. So you have thousands and thousands and thousands of subscriptions. Well, let’s say you have 8,000 subscriptions; you’re bound to have at least 1,500 or 2,000 people subscribe back to you because a lot of people do it as a courtesy. If you subscribe to them, they’ll automatically subscribe back, just to be nice, you know. [What’s] happening is YouTube is partnering these people. And they’re ignoring the whole cheater issue.
Robtran identifies an underlying pattern of reciprocity that has been observed generally on social media.64 Whether or not this behavior contextually constitutes “cheating” is arguably interpretive. Clearly, robtran’s negative judgment of the practice echoed those of social YouTubers, and his assessment of YouTube “partnering” sub for subbers in the early years contrasts with Roberto Blake’s observation years later that high subscriptions alone were insufficient to sustain monetization. In robtran’s view, a significant number of YouTubers reciprocated a new subscription as a courtesy, even if they did not know their new subscriber. The strategy partly worked because a certain percentage of people automatically subscribed back, “just to be nice.”
Critics concerned about video-fueled narcissism might argue that although returning such subscriptions may appear to emerge from “courtesy,” people are actually in it for themselves. Social media features such as friending appear to be “inherently competitive.”65 However, if selfishness and competition were the only driving factors of subscribing to other people’s channels, there would be no logical incentive to subscribe back. Receiving a new subscriber means that the other person has already agreed to be alerted when new videos are posted. If one has already secured ongoing attention, why would one need to return the favor?
A self-centered, competitive behavior—which was not practiced by interviewees—was to collect asymmetrical, unreturned subscriptions to demonstrate one’s competitively higher popularity compared with that of other video makers. An analogy is seen in Twitter, in which people may “follow” another Twitter user and be alerted to their latest tweets. In the Twitter-verse, popular account holders may be “followed” by many Twitter users, but they may follow only a very few back.66 It is a social media status symbol to be “followed” on Twitter or “subscribed to” on YouTube by many people without following or subscribing back. By locking in a new subscriber, attention of at least one kind is secured. If monetization or self-centered attention are key goals, it is arguably more advantageous to have many more subscribers than other people do. Thus, it would not be in one’s instrumental interest to subscribe back.
Of course, it is also possible that multiple desires are at work in a given encounter. People may wish to enact a courtesy and may hope that the mutual subscription will increase interest in their work. Reciprocity, while often idealized in scholarship and public discourses, may also emerge from a desire to ensure one’s long-term interests through acts of mutual exchange. Video makers tried to gauge others’ intentions in terms of mutual bids of regard. When an interaction was perceived as sincerely interested in sociality or exhibited creative merit, interlocutors intensified interaction.
Forms of attention such as comments and subscriptions did not always prompt unilateral reciprocity, but they represented invitational “encounters,” to use Pelaprat and Brown’s term. People whom I interviewed often sought ways to pull in new YouTube participants or lurkers. Contrary to the concerns expressed in narcissism discourses, interviewees said they might subscribe to others’ channels as a subtle way of encouraging newcomers to upload videos with their own point of view.
Participatory invitations and acceptance exhibited a cyclical, interactional pattern. Like the jugglers at a meet-up in San Francisco (figure 4.1), video makers worked in tandem to produce and share videos and promote interaction on the site, effectively creating something greater than that which each creator alone could achieve.
The image of the jugglers serves as a metaphor for patterned forms of socially motivated video exchange. Sharing a video is like tossing a ball in the air to another person, who might catch it and toss another back. Or they might toss commentary back and forth. To stop tossing or providing attention is to interrupt YouTube’s cycle of interactivity. Patterned forms of interactional reciprocity were thus an important mechanism for making the site compelling for sociality.
Sharing Footage
YouTubers interested in sociality defied pundits’ fears of lack of reciprocity by sharing footage and making heartfelt video collaborations. Scholars define generalized forms of reciprocity as those that involve a bestowal of a gift or assistance motivated by a spirit of sharing rather than expecting something directly in compensation.67 Immediate exchange is not expected, but it is implied that the attentional gift might be honored in some fashion at an indeterminate future date, such as children caring for aging parents. In generalized reciprocity within video sharing, receiving a return gift of attention rested “on a diffuse obligation to reciprocate when necessary to the donor and/or possible for the recipient.”68
Video practices exhibiting generalized reciprocal sharing included contributing time or footage or both to create collaboration videos, or what YouTubers referred to as “collabs.” It was not uncommon for people to request footage from fellow video makers to create collab videos in which individual recordings were compiled into one video message. Common collab themes included birthday greetings and charitable pleas.
In one video a video maker whose YouTube channel name was DaleATL2 thanked people who had compiled a set of birthday greetings into a video for him. Receiving hundreds and sometimes tens of thousands of views for each of his videos, he had 2,404 subscribers as of June 2018. DaleATL2 was a white man in his early forties with young children. He typically created comedic videos and vlogs of his family on adventures such as attending fairs and parades. He also created a music video promoting a SouthTube meet-up in Georgia.
One video—entitled You People Are CRAZY (and GREAT)!!! Thank You So Much!— was posted on May 21, 2008, two years after he had begun participating on the site. The video provides thanks and recognition for the people who contributed footage for the birthday video sent to him. In the text description of his video, DaleATL2 lists the contributors to his birthday collab and thanks them for “taking the time to edit this wonderful video together.” He promotes the birthday video’s contributors by displaying links to their YouTube channel names so that interested viewers may check out their videos. Included on the list are people profiled in this book, including bnessel1973 and GeneticBlend (their YouTube names).
DaleATL2 is genuinely moved by his friends’ work, which he acknowledges as time-consuming. As the present temporal analysis argues, taking the time to do something difficult for someone else yields a visible, personal sacrifice. DaleATL2 recognizes particular individuals in his “thank you” video, which resembles an award speech. He praises specific contributions that helped make his birthday video special. The birthday video functioned as an attentional gift that DaleATL2 honored through his reciprocal video of gratitude. He states in his video:
I am blown away. You guys, all my friends, [were] so giving of their time just to put something together. I mean, birthday videos on YouTube are a dime a dozen, and everybody who knows everybody is doing birthday videos for everybody, and it takes so much time just to live your normal life, much less take some time out to [be] creative just for one other person, and for you guys to do that for me blows me away. I don’t feel like I “delerve” [sic] it. Even though you say that I do. I did have a great “dane” [sic], it was a great dane back when it happened a month or so ago, however long ago my birthday was. Doesn’t matter. Because today feels like my birthday. All over again.
Knowing the time and effort it takes to collect and edit footage into a video made the gift of attention that much more touching for DaleATL2. He acknowledged the contributions and friendships that motivated the gift. He noted that it takes time to live one’s “normal life,” much less to go to these lengths for one person. Even though his birthday passed weeks ago, he stated that the birthday video was a gift that kept on giving; the day he received the video felt like his birthday “all over again.”
In addition to praising people’s contributions in the text description and in his speech within the video, DaleATL2 makes an interesting visual editing choice of his own. As he thanks people, the lower right corner of the screen contains an inset box that incorporates images from the original birthday video (which I could not view because it was marked as private). The split-screen technique creates a visual tribute to the video that was created in his honor. Private footage from the original birthday video is incorporated into his public thank-you video, which shows the fluidity with which private material can easily become public. By incorporating this footage, attention is physically split between DaleATL2 and the images of the birthday video’s creators. DaleATL2 edits the video so that he literally shares the screen with those whom he felt he owed a debt of thanks. His choice to showcase his birthday collaborators reads as a touching tribute to their thoughtfulness, time, and hard work.
Collabs were also created on YouTube to promote special causes or exchange civic messages. An example is the video entitled Angelcheeks, which was posted on February 27, 2008, by bnessel1973. Between its initial posting and July 2018, the Angelcheeks video received 83,416 views. The video begins with cute baby pictures of the video maker’s son, whom the viewer quickly learns has passed away from SIDS. At a meet-up in Toronto in 2008, bnessel1973 told me that after his son died, his family had to deal not only with the emotional fallout from his passing but also with numerous unexpected expenses that fortunately, they were able to handle. However, they encountered other families who were not as financially prepared to deal with the counseling and funereal expenses emerging from a child’s passing. They were moved by the plight of these families and established a charitable organization, the Angelcheeks Foundation, to assist families who have lost a child under two years of age. The foundation provides information about SIDS and life insurance and offers opportunities to network with other families who have experienced similar tragedies.
The Angelcheeks video is a collab in which more than twenty individuals contributed special messages promoting the foundation and its goals. Video contributors included many people who were part of the friendship group of YouTubers whom I studied, including (as listed by their YouTube names): DaleATL2, GeneticBlend, musoSF, kenrg, WpgPeanut, OhCurt, and nalts. Each contributor recorded a few words with their face in medium close-ups. Taken together, their segments provided information about how the foundation aimed to preserve the “memory,” “dignity,” and “spirit” of deceased children by helping families deal with medical, counseling, and funeral costs for their loved ones. The video also provided information such as Center for Disease Control statistics about SIDS as well as a link to the foundation’s website, which invited donations and provided information about SIDS prevention.
Similar to DaleATL2’s approach in his thank-you video, bnessel1973 also recognizes individuals who participated in the collab. He provides a screenshot of each video maker and a subtitle of their name on the image. He also thanks YouTuber CyndieRae, who provided the video’s music. As an image of her singing and playing a keyboard appears, a subtitle extends thanks to her “For writing and performing the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard.” Video contributors to the Angelcheeks video enjoy varying levels of YouTube popularity. While some boast several million views on their videos, others see a modest few hundred. YouTubers were clearly not chosen because of their metrical popularity but because they wished to support a friend in need.
Friends’ time and effort were graciously acknowledged, and each person received a “shout-out” or positive mention of their YouTube channel name. A shout-out using a YouTube channel name enables viewers to check out the contributor’s videos by accessing the channel page on the site. In the description of the video, bnessel1973 states, “My eternal gratitude to everyone who was a part of this video. You will forever have a piece of my heart. My family thanks you.” A kind of interactional debt arguably manifested when people gave their time to participate in the Angelcheeks video, and that debt was addressed through multiple forms of mediated thanks both within the video and in the accompanying text description. Heteromorphic reciprocity is enacted through thanks, public recognition, and shout-outs to the accounts of YouTube participants, which exhibited a form that was different from the video footage that contributors originally provided. In his way, bnessel1973 ultimately addressed each individual’s gift of donating footage to the collab.
In the video-sharing culture of YouTube, generalized reciprocity also took the form of providing footage of an event without necessarily expecting direct sharing of footage in return. For example, I was recording a YouTube meet-up in Hollywood in 2008 when an interviewee named OhCurt (his YouTube channel name) took comfort in the fact that I was recording, freeing him from operating a camera himself. Typically receiving hundreds and sometimes thousands of views for each of his videos, OhCurt was a white man whose vlogs included varied themes, such as expressions of his personal opinions on YouTube culture, discussions about being gay, and humorous observations of life. He had joined YouTube about five months prior to our interaction (using his OhCurt account—he reportedly had a different prior account). As of January 2009, he had 2,648 subscribers. His OhCurt account had been deleted as of June 2018. As I panned the camera around the attendees at the Hollywood meet-up, I eventually trained the camera on him, prompting the following exchange:
OhCurt: See, the thing is, I know you’re shooting footage. If I post nothing on my channel, we’re still covered.
Patricia: Maybe. You trust me that much? There’s been mistakes. (laughs)
OhCurt: That’s true. And I actually thought I was recording in Atlanta, when it turns out, I had hit the Stop button.
Patricia: Oh yeah?
OhCurt: Some of that footage was very confusing.
Patricia: It happens.
OhCurt: Yes.
OhCurt’s reaction demonstrates interactional reciprocity in a way that invites sociality. OhCurt and I jokingly reminded each other that people’s media were not necessarily reliable. After I initiated vulnerability by admitting to prior mistakes, OhCurt socially reciprocated by pointing out a time when he had made recording errors. Such reciprocal admissions of mediated vulnerability created an encounter that served to momentarily equalize us socially. It reciprocally emphasized our “mutuality” rather than reinforcing a hierarchy in which one person appears definitively more capable with a camera.
OhCurt was clearly more of an expert than I was. His well-executed videos received many more views than mine. Nevertheless, he was gracious, and his act of reciprocal media vulnerability served to move us toward sociality rather than technical competition. In my book Kids on YouTube (2014), I discuss how people perform technical affiliation to beliefs or practices assumed to be associated with technical cultures.69 Often the goal in such technical performances is to showcase one’s own prowess by revealing what one knows or what one has achieved through technical activities. The key is to demonstrate comparatively superior knowledge or skills. By admitting to technical mistakes, OhCurt levels the social field and does not reiterate his (considerably greater) technical expertise. His remarks resist interactional competitiveness and performance of technical ability, and the effect was to foster a feeling of sociality.
This exchange also illustrates how generalized reciprocity was enacted through sharing footage. Since someone would likely be recording something interesting in this heavily mediated milieu, he did not have to record footage himself. Because other people were operating cameras, the events and memories were appropriately “covered.”
A willingness to share footage is another way to demonstrate an interest in participating in a video-sharing culture. My communal participation was put to the test when a YouTuber asked me to share footage that he saw me recording at an event in Toronto. He asked me to share this footage, given that he was unable to record it. Regrettably, I felt I should decline because I did not want my footage to circulate widely online before I could review it and create and distribute my own visual ethnographic statement. In this moment of reciprocus interruptus, I was arguably displaying an outsider perspective to socially oriented YouTubers. They apparently shared footage more freely, such as for collabs. My withholding highlighted the fact that video sharing, conducted in a spirit of interpersonal giving, was seen as a common practice among socially driven participation on YouTube.
Expressing Gratitude for External Support
Contrary to fears of losing reciprocity in digital realms, YouTubers clearly supported fellow video makers who were in need. In hard times such as illnesses, YouTubers might receive aid in the form of donations. In turn they may express the need to reciprocate that regard in videos by thanking those who helped them. YouTubers might use the video platform to respond to external support they received outside of YouTube. For example, an interviewee named ZenArcher (his YouTube channel name; he also used the nickname “Po”) was a white man in his early fifties who was a very popular early vlogger on YouTube. He joined a year and a half before I interviewed him at SouthTube in 2007. Recognized as a vlogging pioneer who helped shape the standard of vlogs on the site, he was inspirational to many people. Appearing on camera in his charming, signature cowboy hat, ZenArcher’s video blogs were down-to-earth views of his life and memories. He discussed many subjects, including religion, ethics, life choices, and memories of near-death experiences, such as nearly dying while drag racing. Tributes characterized him as a master storyteller with a personality that radiated empathy, vulnerability, and a willingness to handle confrontational issues, such as incarceration without legal representation.70 He was surprised and delighted when his video explaining YouTube’s terms of service to another video maker was featured on the YouTube home page, which brought in many new viewers and subscribers. Each of his videos received several hundred to thousands of views. He had 3,124 subscribers as of June 2018.
ZenArcher posted a video entitled Crisis Avoided—THANK YOU on July 29, 2014. Videos leading up to it revealed serious health issues that were troubling him, including heart problems and two forms of cancer. The video thanks people who sent money and helped him survive a crisis that included a struggle to pay rent. He opens the video with an admission. He states: “I should have made this video days and days ago but the truth of the matter is, I just couldn’t.” He explained that the pain in his hands complicated his ability to make videos.
The point of his video was to thank the people who had helped him. He admits not actually knowing the identity of all those who had donated to his cause. Using first names, he extends thanks, stating: “I’m humbled by the way that you came forward to help me when I needed it the most.” He expresses gratitude and explains that the money was used to help pay rent, buy gas, obtain medicines, and make his doctor’s appointments. Even though he appears to be gravely ill (YouTubers reference his eventual passing in February 2015), he nevertheless feels motivated to reciprocate the regard he received by thanking everyone. Notably, he attends to the temporality of the reciprocity by apologizing for his lateness, stating, “I’m humbled by it and I’m sorry that I didn’t say so sooner.” ZenArcher exhibited temporal sensitivity by acknowledging the importance of bestowing reciprocity quickly. At the end of his video he says in an emotional voice: “I’m sorry it took so long for this to get there and again, thank you.” It is heartening to see that he received help from fellow YouTubers, yet deeply poignant to see how someone who is suffering expresses the need to extend gratitude and reciprocity for the assistance he received. It is heartbreaking to see how much it meant to him to be mindful of extending reciprocal thanks in a timely way.
The Roots of Reciprocity
Engaging in a visual research project on YouTube facilitated interrogation of core anthropological concepts, such as the origins and dynamics of reciprocity. At times the origins of reciprocity and the substance of what was actually reciprocated were difficult to pinpoint, an observation that is consistent with findings in the anthropological record of past societies. Seeing a comment such as “thanks for this video” posted to a video seemed to suggest that the comment was providing thanks for a gift that was given in the form of a video. The video appeared to be prompting heteromorphic reciprocal interaction in the form of thanks.
Yet precise origins of reciprocity have been critiqued as rather illusive. Actions that seem to immediately reciprocate a prior event may actually have their emotional roots in interactions that are not necessarily visible, especially since they occur atemporally. When people exchange gifts, typically feelings of regard for the other person accompany this interaction. As a result, within an exchange it can be difficult to disentangle exactly what is being reciprocated: a feeling, an object, a manifestation of a prior relationship, or some combination.71 For instance, if someone gives me a birthday present and I give them a birthday gift later, is my gift motivated solely by the prior birthday present or simply because I like the person (or both)? Temporally speaking, it may be tempting to evaluate reciprocal encounters immediately after an exchange.
Anthropologists recognize and analyze long-term, patterned cycles of reciprocity. They have observed that “gift-inducing reciprocity” is often “intermingled” with “liking reciprocity,” whereby the latter concept emphasizes mutual feelings of interpersonal regard that persist over time.72 For example, as mentioned above, at a meet-up in Santa Monica a YouTuber told me that he had watched my AnthroVlog videos and enjoyed them. After the gathering I looked at his channel page on YouTube and watched and commented on one of his videos. To observers outside of our encounter, it would seem that my comment stemmed from my reaction to the video itself and that I was reciprocating attention based on the video. Yet, as a YouTube participant, I knew full well that I was not invested in the video’s subject. However, I did feel motivated to watch at least one video and comment on it, simply because he had paid attention to my work and had introduced himself to me in person. It did not feel sufficient to thank him for watching my videos at the gathering. It seemed appropriate to address my feelings of gratitude by attending to his work in a mediated way. The reciprocity that I expressed displayed my appreciation for his underlying regard. The root of my reciprocal act of attention was not visible in my text comment on the video.
Pinpointing the origins and meanings of reciprocal acts is not straightforward. In fact, as philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel astutely observed decades ago, the feeling of gratitude for a received gift often emerges not from the act of receiving a particular item but rather more fundamentally from gratitude over “the mere existence of a person” whom we appreciate the opportunity to “experience” in encounters or relationships over time.73 Teasing apart the origins of video reciprocities can be challenging or even impossible. Gratitude is not just expressed for an object such as a video coming into the world but rather reflects deeper appreciation for specific histories of interaction or even qualities about a person that we are grateful to experience.
When a video retains relevance, comments may continue to be posted over time, as happened in bnessel1973’s case. Even though his video My YouTube Story was posted years ago, people provided commentary detailing their responses for several years afterward. That he continued to receive comments long after it was posted indicates its emotional force and underscores the importance of attending to temporalities of video-sharing practices, as Lefebvre urged.
Comments do not necessarily reciprocate gratitude only to the video but also illustrate how people appreciated bnessel1973’s personal qualities and gifts to the world. Many commenters responded to bnessel1973’s presence rather than to the video. Comments were directed at him and the way he bravely faced adversity. He was characterized as “amazing,” a “hero,” “special,” “wonderful,” deserving of “respect,” a “great guy,” and possessing an “infectious” spirit. Commenters called him “the real deal,” “the funniest guy on YouTube,” and “an inspiration to anyone who’s ever endured such a tragic loss.”
People felt “honored” to meet him or get to know him. One viewer stated:
It is nice to see you do videos like this. It is hard at the same time. I’m grateful to know you and your family. You all are truly special people.
Another viewer stated:
You are hysterically funny and imaginative, yet also human, warm and generous. You and [your wife] are very special people and I have felt truly uplifted after watching your videos. So thank you!
One commenter noted that a whole “sub-community” was springing up around him and his work. In an interview one woman told me that she connected to this social group in part because she too had lost a child and had made a video about it. Reacting to bnessel1973’s video, she posted the following comment: “You seem so much farther along on your journey than I am on mine, but I know that it’s never an entirely linear one so I’ll keep plugging away. I hope that your friends, your family and your outlet of YouTube continue to help heal you. Thank you again for sharing so much.”
Commenters sometimes thanked bnessel1973 for “being here” in the world or in their “YouTube.” Another commenter thanked him “for being part of their [life].” As Brian’s sister commented, “Thank YOU—for just being you.” These remarks illustrate how comments display gratitude for the opportunity to experience a person and not just a video. Commenters admired aspects of his character that were positive or inspirational. The comments showed that viewers were grateful to interact with Brian in their corner of YouTube and in their world more generally.
The research demonstrated that interactions formed a larger series of practices that were not easily emotionally teased apart as they traveled across modalities. What seemed like a reciprocal act that reacted to something specific (such as a video or comment) could actually be responding to something outside of the interaction itself, such as gratitude that the person existed. Of course, the commentary might also bundle gratitude for the person and the material item simultaneously in that they are inseparably bound together. Teasing apart such nuances may not always be possible or desirable, but their dynamics become clearer when scholars move beyond analyzing videos as single texts and attend to processes of video sharing over time, including interwoven comments, videos, and interview remarks. In YouTube’s “mediascape,”74 analyzing a video-sharing culture requires exploring interactions and practices that include multiple forms of reciprocity, both specific and generalized.
Reciprocity: An Insider’s View
Contra the naysayers, positive forms of reciprocity were frequently enacted among socially motivated creators. YouTubers exhibited generalized, balanced, and instrumental forms of reciprocity. For example, generalized forms of reciprocity75 included sharing footage in ways that did not rely on finely calibrated calculations to satisfy a specific prior, attentional debt. As expressed in interactions, videos, and comments, YouTubers counted on footage of interactions to be freely shared so that people who were participating in events could later enjoy the footage online, even if they were unable to record the moments themselves. The study contributes to the anthropological record by showing how positive forms of reciprocity played an important role in social encounters in digital milieus in ways that challenge discourses of video-centric self-centeredness. People attended to commenters, and they co-created videos for other people for a range of causes, including raising awareness about civic concerns and helping people in need.
Lefebvre urged an examination of how temporalities reveal important cultural dynamics. On YouTube, not only was reciprocity important; attentional debt also exhibited a temporal dimension. Temporal sensitivities were exhibited, for instance, through the creators’ belief that videos took time to watch and should be attended to in full in order for viewers to show sincere and engaged forms of regard. In addition, YouTubers believed that reciprocity in the form of thanks should be addressed quickly, within a few days or even hours of a posted video or comment, to ensure recognition of YouTubers’ mutual regard. Lefebvre also noted that rhythmic dynamics reveal and therefore demand analyses of ritualized forms of repetition. YouTubers interested in sociality demonstrated repeated and patterned forms of reciprocity in terms of reciprocating regard when comments were posted to videos. Creators perceived these moments of regard as possible encounters for strengthening social connections. As discussed in the next chapter, such connections might even build to yield a “peak” of sociality through achieving a sense of community on the site.
Although some scholars see reciprocity as a panacea for achieving sociality, in fact, commensurate with the anthropological record and given recent critiques of the concept, many forms of reciprocity exist, some of them negative. The present research revealed that withholdings of attention amid insincere or competitively negative forms of reciprocity were also important for maintaining an appropriately interactive atmosphere on YouTube. Scholarly concerns about narcissism inordinately focus attention on media creators while ignoring analyses of viewers’ agency in bestowing attention. Yet the present study demonstrated that viewers are not simply passive recipients of self-centered material; in fact they make conscious decisions about whom they will watch and under what circumstances. They carefully considered the personal and social impact of bestowing reciprocity. When interviewees received undeserved requests for attention, such as in the practice of subscription for subscription, they typically withheld their regard. Video makers preferred to deny attention to substandard work by a smaller proportion of video makers who seemed to be in it for themselves. Withholding perceived undeserved reciprocities appeared to be as important as bestowing positive video reciprocity for encouraging sociality and maintaining creative integrity on the site.
The present discussion about reciprocity in one mediascape not only illustrates one set of practices on a particular site but also aims to stimulate scholarly and classroom discussions about how reciprocity plays out in digital milieus. Much work remains on investigating the nuances of reciprocity across and within particular social media sites. Questions of interest include: What forms of reciprocity occur on social media? What are the norms of reciprocity for a site as a whole or for particular social groups that use it? What happens in an interpersonal sense when such norms are ignored or transgressed? Does media quality play a role? If so, how is quality defined? Under what circumstances are reciprocities accepted or withheld, and how do participants determine reciprocal motivations? What are the ultimate effects of engaging with reciprocities on a particular site? A key factor concerns analyzing to what extent media makers have control over their media and commensurate reciprocities in hybrid socio-commercial environments that collapse motivations within specific technical features.
By engaging across different groups, the study provided key insights about cross-modal participation and its effects on reciprocity. My experimental AnthroVlog/AnthroVlog debacle demonstrated the importance of involving multiple modalities when fostering sociality through media. It was insufficient to participate in person as I did with vloggers outside of YouTube. Contrary to assumptions that in-person interaction promotes the highest level of interpersonal engagement, in fact, to be perceived as social amid a media-oriented group, one had to engage and participate at least in part through media by posting comments and interacting online.
The present case study simultaneously draws on and yet also updates the anthropological record. As has been observed in anthropology in the past, certain gifts exhibit an inalienable quality. Even if YouTubers exchange the same category of gift, such as a subscription, they do so as unique individuals with inalienable qualities that are imbued within the gift. Although it has been stated that only some gifts exhibit inalienability, in this digital milieu most forms of apparently similar types of technologically encoded gifts of attention are arguably never precisely equivalent. They emerge from different people with individual personalities, investments in sociality, and interpersonal goals. The study supplements the anthropological record by showing how inalienability systematically appears in a broad way in a digital-sharing milieu. The findings challenge the general feasibility of the category of the homeomorphic gift in realms where technical features collapse multiple motivations, each originating from different individuals.
The study also reinforced the sociological contention that pinpointing the precise roots of reciprocity is illusive. A text comment that appears to directly display appreciation for a single video may emerge from a much larger spirit of gratitude that a video maker simply exists in the world and is willing to share their point of view through video. At root, appreciative commentary about single videos or even video makers may be grounded more fundamentally by a basic feeling of gratitude for the medium of video itself. Expressions of gratitude imply appreciation for what videos and their creators might accomplish socially, civically, and educationally when personal expression is freely and interpersonally exchanged.