7
Living with Arrhythmia
Prospects for Renewal
A well-known adage declares that “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” The same may be said of YouTubers. A YouTuber’s presence may remain long after the intensity of the person’s participation has faded into the ether. Videos and their commensurate potential for interactivity linger on—perhaps asymptotically. Engagement with a video’s half-life approaches but may never reach zero. Some day, somewhere, a viewer might watch the video and then comment on it or share the link or both. When YouTubers take a break, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether their absence is permanent or just a temporary hiatus from which they will return in force. It is interesting to watch people who have not vlogged in a while regain their footing. One video maker struggled to remember his signature taglines and chuckled to himself when he remembered how to sign on and off.
An advantage of longitudinal research approaches is that they deepen understanding of media use by analyzing the evolution of participation and the video genres that appear in reaction to change, both personally and on specific sites. An example of a genre that contextualizes individual participation trajectories is the return video, in which a video maker has taken a hiatus from posting videos (ranging from few weeks to a few years), and then returns to record a statement that fulfills a social purpose. Return videos deserve study in their own right, particularly for their aesthetics and social meaning. They contain important temporal elements, such as accounting for a past absence and updating viewers on future plans. Video makers often begin by apologizing or explaining why an account has atrophied. Next, they catch the viewer up on what is happening currently in their lives. Return videos end in varied ways. For some, the return is brief and the video serves as a final good-bye. For example, one YouTuber posted a return video stating that his time on YouTube had become less intense ironically because of the opportunities he had received and the people whom he met and now socialized with through the site. In his video this creator says that due to his gratitude to YouTube for what he has achieved personally and professionally, he will never officially close his account. He nostalgically admits that he misses “the old YouTube” and he signs off, thanking his audience for watching. Deliberately leaving his account open invites the asymptotic possibility of future engagement with his work.
As a YouTuber in a specific media generation, he found meaning in the concept of YouTube in part due to a cohort of friends who met and traveled on a video adventure together. He and his YouTube friends constitute a media generation, which may include people of many different ages. Early vloggers on YouTube of the same media generation included people in their teens and twenties and older, including people in their seventies. Media generations are not defined as much by age as by the mediated parameters—including features and other people—that they encounter when making videos and socializing. The idea of “the old YouTube” is intertwined with a social group.
A return video may acknowledge support that a video maker has received. For example, one YouTuber posted a video in 2012 after a three-year hiatus. He opens by saying that he “never expected to make another video for this channel,” but he felt the need to thank the YouTube friends who had supported him by promoting his books on health. He is “blown away” by the fact that the friends he made online years ago can still be counted on to help him, and he felt that the easiest way to thank the YouTube crowd was to make a video.
Return videos may conclude with a reassurance that one has not really left YouTube as well as a promise to post new material. For example, one interviewee returned to say that he needed a break to reflect a bit, explore other interests, and get some work done. He hoped that his viewers had not forgotten him because he is “back,” even though he admitted that his pace would be slower. He said he would post three or four times a week instead of five or six. Another video maker posted a video in 2014 after not posting since 2012. She was in her twenties when I interviewed her in 2009. In her return video in 2014, she is in her mid-thirties. She catches viewers up on her professional achievement of making a film and her change in personal status; she is now married. She turns toward the future, stating: “I’m going to try to make videos now. But, like, just in one take, ’cause who the hell would want to edit anything?” At the end of the video she seems uncertain if she will continue posting videos.
Lefebvre’s approach urges analytical attention to temporal trajectories and change.1 Observed parameters of video sharing invite theoretical supplementation to Lefebvre’s rubric. Specifically, this chapter will discuss the prospects for and dynamics of rebirth or renewal. It extends beyond studying traditional linear trajectories that move from birth/beginning to death/end and calls on ethnographic data to analyze interstices between cycles—real and envisioned. It analyzes the possibility of renewing vitality in video sharing by highlighting characteristics and features that are meaningful to socially inspired creators. As new media generations appear, they too will launch new cycles of participation, some of them coexisting with those of veterans on the site. Similar to marriage vows that must tacitly be renewed every day as one chooses whether to continue a relationship, so too must YouTubers decide whether to end participation or to remain and under which circumstances it will be acceptable to do so.
The purpose of this chapter is to analyze how socially oriented YouTubers responded to several of the site’s major monetization changes in ways that highlight how they conceptualized an ideal of YouTube. What constitutes interviewees’ notion of “the old YouTube” did not precisely exist in the way that they conceived of it—as evidenced by the details discussed in this chapter. YouTube’s monetization trajectory was a continuous process that began very early in its life cycle. The argument is not that socialization is incompatible with monetization; indeed, several interviewees were YouTube partners, which means they received a share of profits from ads associated with their videos. Advertisements include several forms such as pre-roll ads, overlay ads, and display ads. Unskippable pre-roll ads play in their entirety in the viewing window before a viewer may view a video. Skippable pre-roll ads allow viewers to hit a Skip Ad button and watch the video after the advertisement plays for a few seconds. Overlay ads run on the bottom of a video as it plays. Display ads appear to the right of the video or above the video suggestion list. Although several YouTubers in the study were interested in both monetization and sociality, it is clear that the site’s commercial choices strained interviewees’ perception of social opportunities on the site.
The chapter addresses numerous events that ushered in tensions during the study period, including a move toward commercial video-streaming services, revenue-sharing partnerships, prioritization of popular creators, the rise of networks, monetization of meet-ups, algorithmic impacts on extremism and video quality, and burnout. In each case the chapter outlines the changes, provides ethnographic data showing video makers’ reactions, and analyzes how the responses reveal YouTubers’ ideals for video sharing.
The vision of a socially oriented site includes democratized media sharing that requires active attention and shaping in light of tensions resulting from other participants, monetization pressures, and video makers’ own creative cycles. Although monetization and socialization may theoretically coexist in hybrid environments, the choices made at times in the YouTube case show discomforting misalignments in the pace of operation between humans and the corporate entity of YouTube. Temporalities—both human and machine—influence the meaning of mediated interaction. When multiple rhythms conflict, they may result in distressing temporally asymmetrical experiences that Lefebvre termed “arrhythmias.” Arrhythmias occur at multiple levels. For example, they may occur between video makers and the operations of a platform or between video makers and viewers. Human creators cannot always keep pace with the rapid demands of audiences and algorithms.
Given that a permanent state of arrhythmia is likely to persist in hybrid commercial and social video-sharing environments for the foreseeable future, it is crucial to analyze YouTubers’ reactions to changes in their media ecologies. Of particular importance is examining how specific changes conflicted with what YouTubers believed video-sharing sites should accomplish. Critically interrogating these changes, resulting arrhythmias, and interactive effects aims to prompt future discussion about solutions that visualize new or renewed creative spaces that achieve what socially motivated YouTubers imagined and desired.
YouTube’s Ever-Changing Landscape
Between its public launch in December 2005 and 2018, the YouTube platform underwent continual change. Keeping pace with all the nuanced ways in which features were changing—each with various levels of visibility to users—was extremely difficult. This situation has been characterized as “permanently beta,” or the feeling of constantly being in test mode when using technology and experiencing flux as companies make product changes in response to the commercial environment.2 YouTube participants sometimes noticed changes before an official announcement had been made. In other cases YouTubers thought they were operating in a particular mediated environment that had already changed—without their awareness.
The rapid pace of change was discomforting and difficult to follow, representing a kind of arrhythmia between the tempo of the site and what YouTubers could process. Rapid change rendered it difficult to contextualize how alterations impacted the environment for social video sharing. YouTubers reacted in diverse ways to specific changes. For instance, in 2006 YouTube had a “friending” feature similar to that of other social media sites in which people could make a friend request to another YouTuber. If the request was accepted, a hard-coded link between them was established on the site. YouTube “friends” could send out “bulletins” or updates on their activities to each other. However, many interviewees did not particularly care for this feature and characterized the bulletins as spam.
YouTube eliminated social media friending, but it retained subscriptions (lists of channels that one wishes to be alerted about new video postings), basically merging both lists on a user’s channel in 2011.3 In contrast to interviewees in the study, many commenters on YouTube’s user forums were quite annoyed that YouTube had eliminated friending. YouTube’s staff explained the rationale for the merge by citing confusion between the friend and subscription lists. An alternative explanation is that the march toward monetization played a role in how the site’s features and layout were framed. The change signaled that YouTube’s parent entity, Google, privileged the connotation of paying for content over that of being a social media friend. Even though subscriptions to individual video makers were still free as of 2018, paid subscription services that removed ads and offered exclusive content were also introduced in 2014–2015.
Internet entrepreneur and marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk reportedly coined the expression, “If content is king, context is God,” thus updating or even challenging Bill Gates’s observation about the priority of online content.4 Vaynerchuk defines context as “the circumstances and facts that surround a situation.” Of course the importance of context has long been explored by anthropologists, linguists, and other scholars. Unstated and rapid contextual changes represented problems for users (and scholars) who were trying to make sense of the circumstances under which YouTubers were interacting and participating on the site, particularly in terms of the media logics, financial environment, and structures that influence interaction.5 Operating under changing but undisclosed circumstances can be disconcerting. Many of the changes that this chapter describes revolve around how monetization impacted interviewees and their interactions as they continued to use YouTube for self-expression and sociality.
Morphing into a Streaming Service
YouTube’s business model appeared to drive toward offering video-streaming services. For example, YouTube rebranded a music service called YouTube Music Key (launched in 2014) into YouTube Red in October 2015.6 In 2017 YouTube launched a service called YouTube TV, a video streaming service costing $35 per month and aiming to compete with established video-streaming services such as Hulu and PlaystationVUE.7 YouTube TV offers what is available on broadcast television stations plus sports, news, and special cable entertainment programs.
YouTube Red was a subscription service costing $10 per month that allowed viewers to watch content on the site without advertisements, offered offline viewing, and enabled viewers to play content such as music in the background of other apps. It also provided original programming content from YouTube stars such as Joey Graceffa (his official name and YouTube channel), a white American actor and singer in his twenties who is known for vlogging and gaming themes. Graceffa joined in 2009, and as of June 2018, he had more than 8 million subscribers. Original content was also offered from Smosh, the YouTube channel of two white American comedians in their early thirties, officially known as Ian Andrew Hecox and Daniel Anthony Padilla. They are known for their comedy sketch and gaming videos and are YouTube veterans, having joined when the site was still in beta phase in November 2005.8 As of June 2018, Smosh had 23 million subscribers.
Just as YouTube Red was being introduced, complaints were appearing that the service would not likely succeed and could adversely affect creators. Reviews of YouTube Red were uneven, with one pundit arguing that eliminating brief ads was not worth the price, especially given YouTube’s announcement to eliminate unskippable ads in 2018.9 Other creators reportedly had not yet heard of the changes; as one Twitter user stated: “It worries me that as a YouTube creator I have no idea what ‘YouTube Red’ is, or how it will affect my channel, beyond what’s in the media.”10 Informational lags exemplify arrhythmias or misalignments in participatory rhythms between video makers and site operations. Although YouTube sometimes announced changes on their blog, creators complained about YouTube’s lack of timely communication. Features changed quickly and reportedly without warning or contextualization, thus complicating creators’ ability to respond to the site’s new parameters.
A video maker who discussed YouTube’s commercial changes was Chris Sanders (his official name and YouTube channel name), a black man in his early thirties who was an early adopter of the site, having joined in May 2006. He had been participating on YouTube for over nine years when he posted a video entitled 4 Reasons YOUTUBE RED IS GOING TO FAIL | Rant on October 21, 2015. On his YouTube page he described himself as a motivational speaker, anime fan, and nerd “hoping to inspire others through the promotion of nerd culture and positive thinking.” His videos receive thousands of views each, with a few seeing tens of thousands of views. As of June 2018, he had 61,455 subscribers—a significant following.
Sanders believed that being able to listen to videos while multitasking should be a basic feature of a free YouTube. Further, he argued that the landscape of viewing competition is so saturated that most young people will simply find something else to watch if they encounter content behind a YouTube paywall. Some viewers may see these paid services as a way to support their favorite creators. But in Sanders’s view, subscription fees would likely be split between all the creators that a person subscribed to, such that each creator would effectively receive less revenue than that generated from ads on videos or related merchandise. In his video Sanders stated that for creators, this business model “lowers our revenue and then in turn, and I’ll be really honest here, makes some people not want to do YouTube.”
The pace of YouTube’s rebranding presented arrhythmic challenges for people tracking the latest changes, with one journalist complaining: “YouTube has branded and re-branded its feature so many times that it is hard at times to understand what is what and how is it different from the previous one.”11 Illustrating his lament, YouTube scrapped YouTube Red in 2018 and rebranded it as YouTube Premium, charging $11.99 per month for new members.12 It promised ad-free viewing, an ability to listen to music in the background, original content, and access to downloading YouTube videos. In May 2018 YouTube introduced YouTube Music, which offered access to listening to music, finding recommendations, and experiencing playlists (curated groups of songs). The basic service was ad-supported while YouTube Music Premium was ad-free but cost $9.99/month.13 One reviewer complained that although YouTube’s music catalogue is vast, the service omits key metadata and includes crowd-sourced, inaccurate information about music, artists, and song chronologies.14
YouTubers do not necessarily accept these services, citing concerns about lack of control for creators and viewers. Some commenters feel they are already funding their favorite YouTubers through sites such as Patreon, a crowd-funding service started in 2013. Patreon allows supporters—or “patrons”—to donate funds to creators on a one-time or recurring basis.15 By donating to creators, some viewers feel that they should not have to doubly pay for premium viewing services on YouTube. Further, some creators do not necessarily want to participate in ad programs, and video makers fear that services such as YouTube Premium threaten creator control over distribution of funds. An example of eschewing ads is found in the vlogbrothers channel on YouTube, which is run by two white American brothers whose official names are John Green (forty years old) and Hank Green (thirty-eight years old), both apparently multimillionaires.16 The Green brothers reportedly did not originally run ads. Even when they eventually did, they donated ad profits to charity.17 Concerns exist that paid subscription programs will vastly reduce creator control over monetization choices, benefit only the top creators, and negatively impact participation in the YouTube community. Monetization changes that reduce control and complicate interaction were perceived as threatening to socially oriented—and even some professional—participants.
Tensions between Monetization and Socialization
Sharing profits through a partnership program may function as a kind of mutual reciprocity between YouTube (which provides the platform) and the creators (who provide content). Each entity ostensibly benefits from the other. Yet it is video makers who bring viewers to the site through their hard work and creativity. However, tensions emerged after the initial launch of the partner program in 2007, which video makers said created social hierarchies on the site and constituted a “rough issue” for some interviewees. YouTube has frequently revised its partnership rules. Originally limited in 2007 to a select group of invitees with high view counts and subscriptions, the site expanded late in 2007 to allow anyone with sufficient views and terms of service compliance to apply for the program.18 In 2012 YouTube expanded the program to allow anyone to click a button and authorize Google to place ads, even on single, popular videos—a move that invited criticism from those who previously had to apply to the program and await authorization.19 Resentments between partners from older media generations and those who could monetize immediately yielded arrhythmic, participatory conflict. The situation created temporal unevenness as prior partners had to wait and be evaluated while others could instantly achieve single-video monetization. Participants are not always aware of their options. A team of creators attending VidCon 2016 noted that they only realized they could monetize their work after one of their videos had already gone viral; thus, they missed out on potentially significant ad revenue.
In some cases tension ensued because people wanted partnership but were not popular enough according to YouTube metrics to receive it. Others felt that the program created social hierarchies that divided YouTubers and put a strain on interpersonal sociality. Critics believed it provided too much support to creators whose videos received many views but who were not necessarily perceived as having the technical or creative skills to merit increased visibility or compensation.
Tensions worsened as the partnership program expanded and individual profit potential became more competitive. Revenues are estimated to be quickly declining for smaller video makers as there are now more than a million people in the program.20 Although official statistics are not provided, content creators claim that YouTube takes about 45 percent of the ad revenue from a partnership, sometimes rendering the actual ad revenue stream quite modest.21
The drive to monetization at times yielded unfortunate interactive dynamics. In his video A Rant Response for Renetto . . . , which was posted on August 16, 2009, OhCurt (his YouTube channel name) expressed frustration about YouTube’s increasingly commercial atmosphere. At the time of the video, OhCurt had been participating on YouTube for at least two years (although he mentions having a prior account that he had deleted). OhCurt was a white man who vlogged about themes such as YouTube culture, being gay, and humorous observations of life. Each of his videos typically received hundreds of views, with his more popular videos garnering thousands of views. Although his account had been deleted by June 2018, he had 2,648 subscribers as of January 2009.
OhCurt participated socially at meet-ups and in his videos. He was also a YouTube partner—which he said garnered him very little profit. He expressed concerns about monetization’s impact on the site’s sociality. In a post on his blog outside of YouTube, he expressed the wish that Google would spend more resources to engage with the YouTube community. In A Rant Response for Renetto . . . , OhCurt stated that in the past people had responded to each other thoughtfully through comments and videos, but interactivity declined when monetization metrics encouraged video makers to aggressively exhort viewers to “Rate! Comment! Subscribe!” at the end of every video. OhCurt felt this practice was detrimental to the site’s social atmosphere.
Concerns over monetization’s impacts on video-making creativity and quality have been part of the conversation since the site’s inception. Indeed, such discourse is as old as art and commerce. An interviewee whose YouTube name was thetalesend posted a video on June 16, 2011, titled I hate what youtube has become, which he characterized as a “rant.” He said he began migrating to other sites once YouTube began focusing in earnest on commercialization. Thetalesend (whose official name was Ryan Basilio) was a Filipino male in his mid-twenties who often vlogged about socially conscious topics such as gay rights and the importance of voting. His videos each garnered several thousand views, and he had 1,936 subscribers as of June 2018. He noted that he was happy that 150 to 200 of his subscribers watched him consistently. When I interviewed him for the second time in Santa Monica in 2009, he had been participating on the site for about three years.
In I hate what youtube has become, thetalesend said he had observed an increase in mean-spirited videos capturing unfortunate life moments, interpersonal sniping, and envy, all of which combined to poison YouTube’s social atmosphere. The problems emerged in 2008, he argued, when people began launching accusations that certain people did not deserve to be partnered and were cheating to achieve success on the site. He was disappointed that YouTube was resembling commercial video-streaming sites rather than serving as a venue for “normal” people to put up their own messages and form a sense of community.
In an interview for my ethnographic film Hey Watch This! (2013), Ryan said he believed that in its more heavily commercialized instantiation, YouTube could no longer realistically promote community. In answer to my question of where YouTube was headed from a social perspective, he stated:
YouTube is still gonna go strong. But it’s not going to be mainly from user-generated content. It’s gotten more commercial, you’ve seen all the ads, pop up a lot more. As a community-based, kind of social media thing YouTube is pretty much done. But as a place for people to find interesting videos and videos that may be promoted by YouTube, it’s not gone yet. But it may be. Someone is bound to make a service that is more user-friendly and whenever someone finds or adopts that area people will move on. It’s like the rest of the internet. We had MySpace and now we have Facebook. No one’s on MySpace anymore and now we have Twitter, so. Whoever gives the next best step, that’s who’s going to go on. That’s just the way the internet is.
His prediction about YouTube creating streaming services proved correct. Although he felt that YouTube would continue, he believed that its commercial emphasis had destroyed its prospects as a community-based social platform—a contention that may or may not bear out for future media generations. He believed that some day a more “user-friendly” site might materialize. Sadly thetalesend passed away in 2012, before his ideal could take shape. It is especially moving that he envisioned a place where vernacular voices could be continued, given the fact that he himself—even as a partner—used YouTube to reflect on important matters of the day.
In 2017 YouTube updated its rules to require that creators achieve 10,000 combined lifetime views on their channel before they could activate monetization.22 In 2018 YouTube began requiring a channel to have at least 1,000 subscribers as well as 4,000 hours of watch time in the past twelve months for the creator to participate in ad-revenue sharing.23 Part of the motivation for the tightened rules stemmed from concerns that more than 50,000 ostensibly family-friendly channels had reportedly posted inappropriate content such as terrorist materials, hate speech, and sexualized images of children.24 In addition, the site announced plans to hire human editors to moderate content and train algorithms to detect inappropriate videos, all in an effort to make YouTube a more ad-friendly atmosphere.
Monetization is not necessarily incompatible with socialization. Several YouTubers interested in sociality ran ads on their videos. Anthropologists are also well aware that the human spirit finds workarounds to facilitate sociality, even within restrictive, commercialized regimes. At the same time, YouTube’s corporate decisions created tensions, which will likely spur new video-sharing approaches. Given its critical mass of videos and viewership, it is not likely that new sites will initially compete directly with YouTube. Rather, the landscape may see the emergence of niche-based, socially supported, and thematically circumscribed sites that can manage scale and interaction more effectively, whether or not monetization is a primary goal. Conversely, concerns remain that thematically targeted sites may complicate the diversity, discourse, and debate that characterized YouTube’s initial environment.
Catering to Larger Creators
YouTube steadily targeted their services to support larger and more popular creators—who often became popular after starting modestly and building an audience through grassroots efforts. Privileging mature creators does not take into account the temporal need to support creators at the beginning of their video-making trajectory. Congregating resources in the hands of top creators risks ignoring the cultivation of new voices who exhibit monetization potential. A sustainable model would likely require supporting creators across multiple points on the temporal spectrum of development.
In 2012 YouTube introduced new resources for top creators in the form of several production-based YouTube Spaces, including facilities in London, New York, and Los Angeles as well as Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Mumbai, Paris, Berlin, and Toronto. In 2018 YouTube launched a YouTube Space in Dubai.25 The purpose behind these creator spaces is to provide successful YouTube participants with “high end audio, visual and editing equipment in addition to training programs, workshops and courses.”26 These facilities are large-scale. The YouTube Space in Los Angeles is 41,000 square feet. The facility launched in Canada is 3,500 square feet and provides select participants with free equipment, such as lights, cameras, and microphones.27
To use the recording space and participate in workshops, users must have at least 10,000 subscribers. Established mainstream actors who have YouTube channels, such as Amy Poehler and Rainn Wilson, have used this space. The top twenty-five YouTubers invited into the Los Angeles Space when it opened boasted tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of subscribers.28 Reports indicate that although the space is free, creators must cover key expenses such as actors, crew, and costumes, resulting in even popular YouTube stars feeling underpaid.29
Complimentary use of such creator spaces are largely out of reach for YouTubers with a more modest social following. YouTube does provide resources via its online Creator Academy, which includes videos on topics such as starting a channel, working toward monetization, understanding analytics, and developing production skills. Weighting resources to established creators, however, represents an arrhythmic pattern, as this creates tensions with smaller creators at the beginning of their video-making trajectories and risks ignoring support for future media generations on the site.
The Rise of Multi-Channel Networks
Monetization also gave rise to controversial entities called multi-channel networks (MCNs), also called multi-platform networks, or simply networks. YouTubers complain that networks take their profit but offer little in return. Multi-channel networks are independent entities that are not owned, endorsed, nor affiliated with Google or its YouTube division. Acting as a middleman between YouTubers and YouTube, networks promise to promote channels, derive content, manage digital rights and monetization, and develop audiences in return for a share of a YouTube channel’s profits.30 Each network assists multiple YouTube channels, sometimes focusing on a theme such as the Machinima MCN, which manages several gaming channels. Networks have broadened their business strategy to become multi-platform networks as some support work posted on other social media such as Instagram. Reports indicate that even the names “multi-channel” and “multi-platform” are misleading, as some networks pre-date YouTube channel support and others have pivoted to represent lucrative combinations of entertainment businesses such as production companies, talent firms, and social-video enterprises.31
One of the first, largest, and best-known networks is Maker Studios, which was founded in 2009 in Culver City, California, by popular YouTube star Lisa Donovan (her YouTube channel name is LisaNova), her brother Ben Donovan, and Lisa Donovan’s then fiancé Danny Zappin, along with YouTubers Shay Carl Butler (known professionally and on his YouTube channel as Shay Carl), Kassem Gharaibeh, and Philip DeFranco (formerly known on YouTube as sxephil).32 As of 2014, Maker Studios boasted 4.5 billion monthly views from videos generated across thousands of channels that the company represented.33 Maker Studios represented top YouTube performers, including channels with millions of subscribers.34 Disney purchased Maker Studios for $500 million in 2014.35 A few months later Lisa and Ben Donovan left the company; Zappin had already departed under bitter circumstances, claiming he was forced out in 2013.36
Networks are controversial on YouTube. Creators complained that they did not receive timely support from networks to assist them with their projects—yet the networks took substantial profits. Several years after the Disney acquisition, in 2017 it was announced that many YouTubers were being let go. The announcement was met with relief from those creators who reported that Maker Studios collected as much as a quarter of their earnings, yet were allegedly unresponsive when contacted for help and never provided useful developmental and marketing services.37
In general, interviewees did not discuss networks or Maker Studios in their videos. An exception is a video maker who asked that I refer to him in the study by his nickname, Thor. I interviewed Thor at a meet-up in New York City in 2007. He was a white man whom I surmised to be in his late thirties or early forties and who had joined the site in October 2006. His videos focus on product reviews and demos on devices such as cameras, drones, and quadcopters. He also vlogged about visiting people and places. His videos—which run ads—each receive several hundred to a thousand views. He had 12,630 subscribers as of June 2018. Thor is an example of a YouTuber who collects revenue through ads but who also makes videos emphasizing sociality and friendships.
Thor posted a vlog called Visiting Maker Studios Los Angeles California on April 15, 2012, in which he toured the facility. He trains the camera on himself and his surroundings, video-blogging style, and interviews Lisa Donovan, Ben Donovan, and Danny Zappin. Thor exhibits an easy sense of engagement with them given that he had met them early in YouTube’s life cycle. As he puts it, he has known them “forever” and is very “proud” of their success. He truly knew them when, as they say. As the video opens, pulsing music plays as he pans the camera around numerous individuals hard at work at their computers. Zappin gives him a tour and points out different groups, such as producers and animators, and areas of the facility including prop storage and production studios.
During the tour Thor mugs to the camera saying, “This is like a real business.” Thor asks questions about the purpose of networks and how they work—anticipating his audience’s curiosity. He asks Zappin whether networks such as Maker Studios will be the “death” of solo YouTubers. Zappin explains that the YouTube environment changed drastically between 2005 and 2012. He recalls that when Lisa Donovan was among the twenty video makers on YouTube with the most subscriptions, she had 700 subscriptions. By 2012, he says, networks became advantageous because it took at least 1 million subscribers to achieve top-100 most subscribed-to status. Zappin tries to position Maker Studios as focused on creating content as well as monetization, in contrast to networks that concentrate on profit. Notably, the lucrative Disney buyout shows Maker Studios’ successful monetization—or at least an assumption about its future potential.
Thor’s framing of his visit arguably sets him apart from the serious businesslike scale and atmosphere of Maker Studios. Thor jokes to some of the studio’s writers that he is doing “old school YouTubing” in case they “don’t recognize it.” Thor surmises that these writers and studio workers must be baffled at how YouTubers of his media generation coped with creating one-camera, self-operated YouTube productions. He ends the video by humbly telling his viewers that he must “get out of their hair.” He is touched that they generously took time out for “an old guy” like him. He characterizes their gracious interviews as demonstrating “loyalty, fun, and friends.” Notably, although he asks about the future of the solo YouTuber, in fact in prior videos he had experimented with collaborative productions and had already predicted that more large-scale production of content was the direction in which the YouTube platform was headed. Although positive case studies exist,38 YouTubers complained bitterly about the performance of networks.39 Thor’s video aesthetic and content choices in his vlog sets the social activities of his media generation apart from the large-scale efforts of profit-oriented networks.
Monetizing Meet-Ups
Where profit opportunities exist, businesses will mushroom. As it happens, meeting up makes money. Video blogging and creating YouTube videos are certainly not the first artistic contexts in which commerce draws on models of friendship for success. Sociologist Howard S. Becker, a musician playing piano in Chicago night clubs in the 1940s, discusses tensions between artists and the friends whom they “use” in their work, such as characters in novels or subjects of photography.40 On YouTube, conflict emerged when individuals profited from sociality in ways that interviewees believed could threaten democratized and accessible interaction.
Commercial organizations began holding large-scale conventions that required a paid ticket to attend and structured the amount of time that might be spent with individual creators. Conventions typically included performances, workshops, parties, and informational panels. They also featured celebrity meet-and-greet events, which one YouTuber described as waiting in line for hours to speak with a YouTube star for five minutes.41 These included (listed by launch date) Summer in the City (2009, in the United Kingdom), VidCon (2010, based in Anaheim, California), Playlist Live (2011, in Orlando, Florida, and Washington, DC), and FanFest (2013, in Singapore and then expanded to India, Australia, Korea, and Japan, Toronto, and Washington, DC).42 The YouTube Black FanFest made its debut in 2017 at Howard University in Washington, DC.43 It was launched partly as a reaction to critiques about YouTube’s lack of diversity.44 In 2016 fifteen large-scale YouTube-themed events took place around the world.45
Playlist Live was created by AKT Enterprises, an Orlando-based entertainment and merchandising company that sells products such as T-shirts for musical acts and businesses. Playlist Live events originally launched in 2011 to promote YouTube, and in 2017 attendance was estimated to be 13,000 guests and 500 creators.46 Like other commercial conventions, it includes celebrity meet-and-greets, panels, workshops, and live performances.
VidCon is held annually at the Anaheim Convention Center, which is very near Disneyland. The event was started by Hank and John Green of the vlogbrothers YouTube channel.47 In 2017 the event expanded into Europe and Australia.48 The VidCon I attended in 2016 boasted approximately 25,500 attendees,49 compared with the estimated 1,400 that reportedly gathered at the first VidCon in 2010.50 Originally catering to video bloggers, many of whom were on YouTube, VidCon expanded to include other types of videos and social media, with a more central focus on celebrities. One of the biggest themes in 2016 was live streaming. YouTube was still a major sponsor of the event in 2016. In 2018 Viacom acquired VidCon, which remains a stand-alone subsidiary.51
Despite visible vocal objections to the commercialized meet-ups, a few interviewees did attend these commercial events, in part to boost their professional work. OlgaKay, MysteryGuitarMan, and Thor were among the few interviewees who made videos about their activities at these conventions. In most cases video makers recorded activities and structured content that resonated with their status on the site. For instance, one of OlgaKay’s Playlist Live videos is titled Playlist LIVE Highlights w/Pillow Fights, posted on March 30, 2011. It is a compilation of her adventures at Playlist Live, both presenting to the public as a YouTube celebrity and collaborating to produce content with fellow popular video stars.
OlgaKay (her YouTube name and stage name) is a Russian American, white woman in her twenties who had been on the site and successfully monetizing her work for nearly five years before posting this video. Her videos routinely garner tens of thousands views each, with some even reaching hundreds of thousands to a million views. She had 824,413 subscribers as of June 2018. Part of her success involved crafting videos with widespread appeal: comedic vlogs such as eating pizzas with weird flavors and juggling odd objects like soap and cameras.
Her PlayList Live video shows her speaking on a panel about issues such as dealing with haters, which she believes are mostly kids. She found that if you reach out and acknowledge that they are “probably having a bad day,” they apologize for their behavior. She also interviews YouTube celebrities and vlogs at a dinner with similarly high-profile YouTubers such as Shay Carl, cofounder of Maker Studios. Dinner guests pass around the camera and vlog into it, often without seeming to know whose camera it is.
One interviewee who frequently recorded his attendance at large-scale commercial events was Thor, who made five VidCon videos in 2011. In two videos he does not actually attend VidCon (in 2013 and 2014) but instead gathers with friends. He also made sixteen videos about Playlist Live in Orlando, documenting yearly attendance from 2011 to 2014 and again in 2016. He notes in his videos that he is from Florida, so the fact that he lives relatively near the Playlist Live venue perhaps facilitated frequent attendance.
In his Playlist Live and VidCon videos, Thor walks around with a camera, chats with YouTubers whom he knows from the past, and reports on changes, such as how conventions differ from prior grassroots gatherings. He wears a white T-shirt bearing the YouTube logo and his signature baseball cap worn backwards with the word “Thor” written across it in white letters. He enjoys pranking attendees. At one point he pretends to cut into a multi-hour-long line of fans waiting to see YouTube celebrities such as Jenna Nicole Mourey, a white American actress and comedian in her late twenties who has over 18 million subscribers. Better known by her YouTube channel name of JennaMarbles, she shares comedic thoughts and beauty vlogs. Thor jumps to the head of the JennaMarbles fan line, records fans’ exasperated reactions, and then steps out, noting that he is only kidding. In another prank he fools fans into thinking that they are in the wrong line, and they confess that the lines are so long they do not know where they should be.
In keeping with social YouTubers’ more democratized outlook, he takes a polyrhythmic approach to interviewing. He makes a concerted effort to socialize with people exhibiting different temporally based status levels, including event organizers, YouTube celebrities and veterans, and new fans. He interviews people from different media generations, including old friends and people who have just joined the site. He enjoys helping younger fans meet the YouTube celebrities whom he knows. When YouTubers from his era approach him, they hug, chat, and often recall how they met at a specific meet-up, thus calling up a chronotopic chain of sociality that links their shared history. Thor’s interactions echo those I observed earlier at grassroots meet-ups in which YouTubers treated all participants as important. For instance, one participant at a Minneapolis meet-up took delight in gathering signatures from YouTubers of multiple levels of popularity for his souvenir T-shirt (figure 7.1).
Unlike YouTubers who criticize commercial events, Thor appears to enjoy meeting up, on camera at least, even in the large-scale venues. Nevertheless, he often sets himself and his cohort’s vlogging activities apart from those he observes at the commercialized Playlist Live conventions. For example, in a video entitled Playlist Live 2013—@shanedawson Hello, @Harto, @JoeyGraceffa, posted on March 25, 2013, Thor observes YouTube celebrity Joey Graceffa talking to fans outside of the venue on the lawn. Thor remarks that this type of interaction is how it used to be done, when YouTubers did not wait in long lines but more casually greeted fellow video makers—even celebrities—in public settings such as parks.
Although media generations are not necessarily age-bound, Thor frequently uses age-related observations to describe his reactions to Playlist Live dynamics. Often his characterizations exhibit arrhythmias in the sense that he feels temporally out of sync with new YouTubers arriving on the scene. In a video posted in 2013, he says he “feels like a middle-school principal” when vlogging amid a sea of young teens. Thor seems delighted when younger attendees recognize him from YouTube and chat with him for his vlog. On the other hand, he admits that he no longer recognizes the top YouTubers at the event. In a Playlist Live video posted in 2016, he wonders aloud if he is “aging out” of coming to YouTube conventions. He expresses arrhythmic social distance from the teens and the objects of their affection in the commercialized conventions.
In terms of feeling tone, commercial motivations, and sheer volume, events such as VidCon 2016 offered vastly different experiences from the grassroots YouTube meet-ups that I had attended. The energy at VidCon radiated from mobs of thousands of frenzied fans who came to watch their favorite YouTube stars. Grassroots event organizers whom I interviewed tended to actively discourage the kind of promotional energy that the large-scale, fan-centric events exhibited. Grassroots organizers’ rationale was to provide a democratized aura for the gatherings that did not single out the site’s top performers but rather felt more inclusive.
It would be inaccurate, however, to assume that as meet-ups grow in size they cannot foster interpersonal forms of community or that grassroots meet-ups displayed no exclusivity or orientation toward celebrities. At VidCon it was possible to find communities of interest if one knew where to look. For example, I attended a panel called “Fighting for a Cause,” in which women video creators, including one academic, talked about the challenges they faced in using video to promote causes such as feminism, transgender issues, and exploring Latinx identity.52 I was very interested in these subjects and video makers, and I felt there were moments when I could connect with other people holding similar video-related interests.
Observers noted that such events could create warm, interpersonal feelings. For instance, during one lunch at VidCon 2016, a young girl told her adult companion at our table that she felt a special “joy” in coming to VidCon. No one would be able to “judge” her, she noted, given that the event was filled with people just like her who liked to watch videos and spend a lot of time at a computer.53 This rhetoric closely resembled the discourse I heard among socially driven, early adopters. Eleven years after YouTube’s launch, people still expressed concerns about being “judged” by others who did not understand their media-making interests. One academic observer who attended VidCon felt that the event was not about video at all but rather about fostering “relationships and communities in a way that no other medium can claim.” Further, he stated that people came to VidCon “not to consume content but to commune around it,”54 suggesting that, for some, VidCon’s size did not preclude meaningful sociality.
Despite YouTubers’ rhetoric of democratized participation, celebrities attended grassroots gatherings in part to promote themselves. YouTubers are fans as much as they are video makers, and they often greeted YouTube stars at smaller gatherings, sometimes asking for autographs, photographs, and selfies. In the first few years of YouTube, meet-ups exhibited plenty of excited fan energy as YouTube-famous stars mingled to promote their work and expand their social networks. At several gatherings small crowds of fans crowded around select individuals to talk, create videos together, or request photos and autographs. For example, in Minneapolis, Adam Bahner—known more widely by his YouTube channel name of TayZonday—happily greeted fans of his “Chocolate Rain” song, which he sang in a video with the same name. His Chocolate Rain video, posted in 2007, went massively viral and caught the attention of mainstream media. By June 2018, he had accrued over 1 million subscribers, and his Chocolate Rain video had amassed over 100 million views.
According to a video interview on a website exploring viral video stories, TayZonday grew up in a biracial household (his mother is black and his father is white) and his “Chocolate Rain” song was a statement on racism.55 His videos, often of him singing songs in his distinctive basso voice, typically each garner hundreds of thousands to a million views. He was in his mid-twenties and had been participating on YouTube for about a year at the time of the Minneapolis gathering and his interview with me in 2008. He eventually moved from being a teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota to becoming a media celebrity. In the decade since Chocolate Rain went viral, he has been singing, acting, and doing voice work in the entertainment industry. At the Minneapolis gathering, he wore a Chocolate Rain T-shirt and was happy to meet and talk with a group of fans who gathered around him.
YouTubers sometimes perceived celebrity performances at gatherings as threatening to democratized participation. Although they were common at commercial events, they sometimes garnered criticism at grassroots meet-ups. For instance, at the gathering at the Science Centre in Toronto, a microphone was set up and several better-known YouTube participants performed songs and bantered with other creators. However, a few interviewees complained to me that such performances threatened the spirit of the event, which was not about self-exhibition or promotion but rather socialization. Although it was pleasurable for some attendees to see YouTube stars perform, others felt that they were out of place in socially motivated contexts.
In contrast, commercial events intensely promote celebrities in a way that some YouTubers felt created social divisions. At VidCon I observed that celebrities were protected as stars with security guards, and access was carefully orchestrated as they were escorted through back entrances to panels and performance stages.56 For example, I interviewed a Brazilian filmmaker officially known as Joe Penna, whose YouTube channel name is MysteryGuitarMan. At VidCon he headed a panel giving advice to aspiring video creators. He had been on the site for about a year when I interviewed him at a gathering in New York City in 2007. At that time he was a teenager in college and was contemplating changing careers to go into making media professionally. MysteryGuitarMan found fame on YouTube experimenting with video technique and form. He made creative musical videos in which he played unusual instruments, used objects as instruments (such as blowing into bottles), created stop-motion effects, and used split-screen techniques to create the effect of being an entire band playing a song with multiple instruments. As of June 2018, he had 2.7 million subscribers, and each of his videos regularly garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
In 2007, although there was a great deal of fan energy at the gathering he and I attended along with about a thousand others in New York City, most people simply milled around and chatted with their favorite YouTube personalities, often on camera. By 2016, MysteryGuitarMan was a YouTube celebrity and our follow-up encounter at VidCon emerged during an organized meet-and-greet in which fans stood in line to speak with him. Interaction was limited to chatting briefly and perhaps taking a selfie.
When I caught up with Joe in 2016, he was in his late twenties. He had married and started a family. He had parlayed his successful YouTube activities into a professional media career that included making commercials and films. During his talk, he mentioned lean years in which he worked hard and money was scarce, but he ended up achieving life goals such as making films. Although he did not recall his ethnographic interview with me, I reminded him that I was an anthropologist collecting data on YouTubers and that when we last spoke he was contemplating a career change. I asked him what the single greatest factor was in convincing him to change direction and pursue making videos. He said that it was his family’s support of his new career plans that helped him decide to professionalize his work.
Naturally wanting the full ethnographic fan experience at VidCon, I was pleased that he agreed to pose for a selfie (figure 7.2). Usually I am camera shy. No doubt drawing on years of experience taking fan selfies and using his sense of humor, MysteryGuitarMan put me at ease, even taking several shots for me to choose from. I was grateful to him for participating in my research for my book Kids on YouTube (2014), so the image is special to me. Even at a large-scale convention, brief moments of meaningful interaction were enjoyable and created emotional connection to the event. I felt I had a window into the fan experience and appreciated why someone would feel excitement and a sense of connection by talking to a favorite creator.
Lack of vlogs by interviewees on these commercial conventions suggests that YouTubers in this study had either moved on from YouTube or preferred more intimate emplacements of their sociality and community formation. In contrast, many vloggers have created videos about grassroots gatherings that are lovingly crafted and posted to YouTube. Even the larger grassroots meet-ups, such as the one at Toronto’s Science Centre, was organized by a YouTuber who worked there. It felt more democratizing in part because it did not require paid admission, enabling anyone to attend.
When VidCon began preparing for its inaugural 2010 launch, YouTubers reacted in diverse ways. Some were concerned that it co-opted YouTubers’ grassroots sociality for profit aimed at a select few. Ryan Basilio (whose YouTube channel name was thetalesend) was especially disturbed when the organizers of VidCon began advertising for their event. He feared that it would be an expensive “boondoggle” that would violate the democratizing spirit of meet-ups. In 2009, after being on the site for about three years, he posted three videos vehemently protesting the monetization of sociality in the form of VidCon. Although he acknowledged that the event might not necessarily be bad, he was concerned about its organization and budgeting.
The first video, Vidcon What a Rip Off, was posted on December 9, 2009; the second was Response to Vlog Brothers Vidcon Is a Ripoff! and was posted on December 10, 2009. In these videos Ryan complained that the admission price was steep. The event was slated to be held in a high-priced Los Angeles neighborhood without access to public transportation. Attendees were meant to stay in an expensive hotel costing $150 per night. Since YouTubers could only afford to attend meet-ups annually, he argued, they should not have to spend so much money to gather with friends. He proposed options such as enabling YouTube creators to attend for free in return for donating their skills, such as playing instruments or singing at concerts.
In Ryan’s third video, entitled What I Have Done So Far to Block Vidcon 2010 and posted on December 11, 2009, he discusses concrete steps he took to legally stop the event. He describes having contacted several government organizations, such as the Los Angeles County Planning Commission and the Beverly Hills City Council, to discuss his concerns about the impact of the event and the likely beneficiaries of its profit. He demands that VidCon organizers be more transparent about their budget.
He received forty-seven comments in total on the videos; seventeen of the comments agreed with his position while eighteen disagreed. Six comments expressed both agreement and disagreement with his point of view. The rest were neutral (three) or indeterminate (three). Those who agreed with Ryan’s position cited cost, profits being funneled to a select few, lack of public transportation, and anticipation of crowded events with poor content.
Comments reveal the posthuman, asymptotic aspect of video sharing. The majority of the forty-seven comments (93.6 percent) appeared within the first year after the three videos were posted.57 However, two comments were posted to his third VidCon video one year later, and one was posted to it four years later. Clearly, the intensity of participation occurred relatively soon, but a few responses appeared much later. Even after Ryan tragically died from an illness in 2012, a commenter (who may or may not have known about Ryan’s passing) felt motivated to provide his assessment four years after the video was posted. Ryan had addressed a topic that inspired others to consider and discuss. In 2014 a commenter stated: “The first few years were actually very fun because it was small and intimate, now you just wait in line for hours to pay to take a picture with some online douche.” This comment provides a comparative, longitudinal assessment that is relevant to this analysis. Even years later, the comment is greatly appreciated. The comment describes a social arrhythmia in which attendees have to wait a considerable time for an encounter exhibiting little interpersonal quality time with a creator, in contrast to the relaxed temporality, opportunities for engagement, and casual atmosphere of early VidCons and of grassroots meet-ups.
Those who disagreed with Ryan’s protest reminded him that this was a convention rather than an informal gathering and that VidCon’s ambitious plans to hold concerts and panels would naturally require expensive audio-visual equipment and appropriately large venues. Further, conventions were more about professional networking than having fun. A few commenters outside the study expressed confusion about why the introduction of VidCon was so upsetting to him. Commenters who disagreed with Ryan also noted that traveling to any gathering, even if free, incurred expenses such as travel costs.
Thetalesend responded that, contrary to accusations, he was not protesting to receive an “ego boost”; in fact, his main concern was for “equality” for YouTubers, many of whom cannot afford to attend expensive events. Illustrating his point, videos documenting grassroots meet-ups often depict YouTubers sharing hotel rooms and carpooling to events. Joint travel experiences were often just as important as the actual public event. YouTubers vlogged in their cars, building anticipation by singing, joking, and recording their friendship. For thetalesend, much of the problem revolved around helping a select few profit while not giving back to YouTubers who helped create the site. As one commenter put it: “In these trying times in the world, we need to connect w/people not profit off them!”
The data suggest that large-scale meet-ups can support some measure of sociality, perhaps contrary to the arguments by interviewees. However, YouTubers expressed the view that grassroots gatherings offered more intimately emplaced interactive framings and therefore significant advantages. For some participants, meet-ups should not represent avenues for monetization but should support creative expression and sociality.
YouTube Extremism
YouTube has always been known for its shocking viral fare. However, despite opportunities for simultaneous sociality and commercialization, the addition of formal monetization metrics did yield incentives for creating extreme forms of video content. The site uses automated systems—including algorithms that recommend increasingly outlandish videos—to keep people watching. Reports in 2018 indicate that YouTube’s algorithmic learning systems privilege videos that represent extreme positions, conspiracy-theory laden claims, and videos obviously lacking in facts. Yet viewers do not necessarily agree with or enjoy such extremist videos. Algorithmic and human viewership patterns combined at times to incentivize video makers away from doing thoughtful work and toward making videos that were “light on facts but rife with wild speculation.”58 In 2011 thetalesend’s video I hate what youtube has become observed these trends and noted that YouTube had become a “dangerous place,” showcasing inflammatory videos as well as demagoguery.
The rapidity at which algorithms exacerbated the site’s extremism has prompted concern. Human tendencies toward viewing the outlandish help train algorithms but are only part of the equation. Experiments with newly opened accounts demonstrate how quickly Google’s algorithms recommend increasingly extreme content for new viewers, even with accounts containing a sparse viewing history.59 Algorithms invite arrhythmic viewing patterns that discourage videos exhibiting measured thoughtfulness or containing ideas cultivated over time. Nor do algorithms appear to take into account human preferences that do not always seek immediate gratification of the extreme variety. These patterns even became too perverse for advertisers, as companies reportedly boycotted YouTube when their products were used to advertise discomforting videos.60 Algorithmic trends also have political implications when videos return information about political candidates in false, extremist, and asymmetrical ways. Algorithmic incentives for promoting biased videos have civic impacts beyond aesthetics and sociality on the platform.61 Extremist videos may unduly influence wider voting populations. To counteract such problems, more research is required on algorithmic effects and how they might be trained to return more balanced or well-researched content. Ironically, by repeatedly watching these videos for analysis, researchers risk indirectly contributing to the perpetuation of extreme content. For example, although one researcher clicking on extreme videos for a research project is an algorithmic drop in the bucket, it is also arguably true that, collectively, researchers frequently viewing disturbing videos within an algorithmically organized environment may be creating a negatively polarizing research effect. The way in which algorithms are currently being deployed is rapidly creating a field in which thoughtful content is decreasingly offered as even an option, which greatly concerned YouTubers who believed the site should offer timely access to democratized content.
Temporal Padding of Content
Manipulating length of videos is another way in which monetization offered incentives for creators but challenged quality and the viewing experience, thus creating arrhythmias between creators and viewers. When YouTube celebrity and viral video maestro Kevin Nalty published his book Beyond Viral (2010), it was practically a truism that brief videos were optimal, given viewers’ limited attention spans amid an intensely competitive online viewing environment. Nalty (whose YouTube channel name was nalts) was an early adopter who joined the site in January 2006. He was known for popular comedic and pranking videos, each of which saw millions of views. With 236,739 subscribers as of June 2018, he had clearly mastered the viral formula. In his book Nalty stated that views were “inversely related to the length of videos,” which he said should ideally be two to three minutes long.
By 2016, video makers were extolling the advantages of so-called long-form videos (ten minutes or longer). Videos that lasted at least ten minutes or even a few seconds longer were believed to retain viewership for a prolonged period, thus driving up ad revenue.62 Of course this “ten-minute trick,” as pundits refer to it, only works if people actually keep watching. Its impact was assessed by video makers such as Felix Kjellberg, better known by his YouTube channel name of PewDiePie (63 million subscribers), a Swedish YouTube mega star in his twenties who found fame by making vlogs and videos with gaming commentary. It feels a bit ironic to quote criticisms about YouTube quality from PewDiePie, given that he has seen substantial controversy over what critics label his abrasive and anti-Semitic commentary.63
Nevertheless, PewDiePie’s concerns were widely quoted. He complained that monetization incentives reduce the quality of videos by encouraging time “padding”—sometimes to ridiculous degrees. Examples of what is here termed temporal padding include video makers answering the door or taking a bathroom break but leaving the camera running and not editing these moments out. Such time-based tactics may add thirty seconds to a video’s length, tip it over the ten-minute mark for more revenue, and leave viewers staring at uninhabited screens.64
These patterns represent participatory arrhythmias because an ideal video length for creators may not be read the same way by viewers, who seek continually robust content within a video, as measured temporally. Tension emerges when people use YouTube to support their livelihood and engage in temporal padding in ways that viewers may feel threaten the quality of individual videos and the site as a whole. Certainly viewers may stop watching or flag bad videos, but these acts impact a creator’s need to make a profit, including those who wish to engage simultaneously in monetizing their craft and enjoying human sociality.
Burning Out
Arrhythmias may occur when human creators cannot temporally satisfy demands of audiences, algorithms, and the platform of YouTube.65 When I began my research in 2006, putting up a video once a week was a standard practice for vernacular vloggers—a grinding pace for me. In 2018, top-performing, professionally oriented YouTubers reported feeling a pressure to post once per day. As one pundit put it, “It is strongly believed that YouTube accounts with more than 10,000 subscribers should post daily because YouTube’s algorithm favors frequency and engagement.”66
Participatory arrhythmias may result in creator burnout, a documented problem on the site. OlgaKay, a YouTube celebrity and interviewee, found the constant pace of producing new content challenging; at one point she was posting twenty videos per week.67 She was worried about slowing her pace lest she “disappear,” and she reported in a media interview that her life’s activity became oppressively work-related. Party invitations required her to make time calculations about her YouTube work, prompting her to wonder: “Can I film there? . . . If somebody’s uncomfortable with me filming I don’t think I can go and have fun with you guys because I need content.”68 She took a break and returned by reconceptualizing YouTube as one part of her profit-making activities. She also focused on creating and selling new merchandise, such as her colorful and playful line of Moosh Walks socks. The pace of vlogging required to ramp up and commercialize one’s channel was not always compatible with the human pace of maintenance, which represents a participatory arrhythmia across different points in a YouTuber’s video-making cycle. The resulting exhaustion created burnout and prompted new income-generating options that were not as temporally aggressive but were humanly sustainable.
Professional media maker Roberto Blake (also his YouTube channel name) posted a return video of the type described in the beginning of this chapter called WHY I TOOK A BREAK FROM YOUTUBE. He posted his return video on April 9, 2018. He opens by stating that if you do YouTube “long enough” (he had been on the site for nine years), sooner or later you will make a video about taking a break. Blake’s video collectively responds to viewers who were aware of his history of depression and had reached out to him when his pace of participation demonstrably slowed for two months. Perceiving an irregularity between Blake’s current and prior video-posting pace, viewers sensed a resulting arrhythmia and expressed concern. Notably, his break was relatively brief. It was the irregular pace of posting that caused viewer anxiety. The posthuman collective apparently begins getting nervous when a YouTuber’s participatory pace slows without explanation. In this example, arrhythmia occurred at two levels. One type of arrhythmia reflected an irregular pace between Blake’s past and current video-posting schedules. The other arrhythmia occurred between Blake and his viewers, who desired a faster video making pace from him than he was able to deliver at that time.
Blake’s videos typically receive several thousand views each, and he had amassed 315,116 subscribers as of June 2018. He is a graphic designer in his early thirties who characterizes himself as a “black nerd,” given his many technical and creative interests. He earns money from clients and from sponsorships and advertisements on his videos, which include occasional vlogs about personal issues. His content mostly aims to motivate creative professionals, such as by providing mentoring on growing and improving one’s channel. In his return video he explains that he was ill for a couple of months with the flu and took a break from YouTube, which he says impacted algorithmic assessment of his performance. He reassures viewers that he is not burned out, although he expresses concern for people on YouTube who are. Diversifying profit-making activities, such as speaking at conferences and mentoring clients, reduced his financial pressures. In his video he explains:
Doing less content and prioritizing other things, whether it’s my health or whether it’s the growth of my business, I’ll be real with you, that has hurt me a little bit in the YouTube algorithm. I know that and a lot of other creators are experiencing exactly the same thing. And it’s not great, it sucks, but you know what? Our supporters, our viewers can always help us beat the algorithm with doing one simple thing, sharing videos that you think deserve more views, that you think deserve support, or that you think can entertain or educate or motivate people. If you want a video to be successful, if you want a YouTuber to be successful, whether they have 1,000 subscribers, 10,000 subscribers, or 100,000 subscribers, then it’s down to you making a choice to share those videos with other people that you think will enjoy them as much as you do. And I think that, ultimately, that’s a big part of what YouTube is about at its core.
Conflating sociality with the mechanics of viewership and monetization, he notes that supporters—and tacitly members of a posthuman collective—can help “beat the algorithm” by showing support for videos that deserve to be shared. Notably, his discourse democratically encourages support for YouTubers (and potential clients) at various magnitudes of subscription rates. Expressing concern for the many people around him who struggle to maintain an exhausting pace, he advises them: “If you feel like you’re burning out, take a break. If you feel like you’re sick and you’re not up to doing something, if you can put it off and it’s not gonna hurt you too much financially, then put it off.” His advice for video makers to take breaks when necessary recognizes that algorithmic tempi and human pacing are sometimes arrhythmically out of sync.
Complicating these tensions were changes in the qualifications for partnership. Stricter requirements in 2018 included having 4,000 hours of watch time over the past year. The new rules garnered mixed reactions, with some YouTubers reportedly seeing them as far more demanding, thus rendering it difficult to take breaks. Videos appeared in which YouTubers pleaded with their audiences to at least run their videos in the background in order to preserve adequate watch-time metrics.69
Crowd-sourced assistance attempts to address misaligned arrhythmias between the pace set by audiences and algorithms versus what a human can accomplish. It is fascinating to observe Roberto Blake calling on viewers to help “beat the algorithm” and circulate content when a YouTuber needs a hiatus for health reasons. Taking breaks from making videos, diversifying across a variety of money-making activities, and setting time limits on video-creation efforts were all strategies that YouTubers proposed to deal with burnout. YouTubers’ experiences also show how the posthuman collective senses subtle variations in video tempi that reveal discomforting arrhythmias between video makers and viewers. Arrhythmias sometimes prompt the posthuman collective to reach out and provide support.
Creating New Contexts of Participation
Writing from the perspective of communication and media scholarship, Cunningham, Craig, and Silver argue that “fall from grace” narratives in which an innocent YouTube becomes compromised by commercialization are not always productive or accurate.70 It would indeed be incorrect to assume that the early YouTube years (2005–2010) were conflict-free or inherently democratic. As this chapter has demonstrated, even when interviewees say they miss the “old YouTube,” numerous problems had existed on the site, including conflicts that were not always related to monetization, such as haters. Interviewees’ statements as well as ethnographic observations contradict the existence of an ideal YouTube.
Nevertheless, such contradictions should not be summarily dismissed due to inconsistencies. Statements that emerge from nostalgic remembrance are actually crucial sites of investigation, as they are meaningful to the people who believe in or desire that reality. American literature scholar and oral historian Alessandro Portelli has observed, “The importance of oral testimony may lie not in its adherence to fact, but rather in its departure from it, as imagination, symbolism, and desire emerge.”71 Such idealistic portrayals highlight YouTubers’ desires for using video to accomplish equitable sociality.
Cunningham, Craig, and Silver state that rather than equating change with corruption, it is more beneficial to understand how new “screen ecologies” depend on the availability of platforms in which content creators “may be able to exercise a higher level of control over their career trajectories than previous models of professionalizing talent.”72 The key here is control—which YouTubers did not always experience in terms of their media, sociality, or representation in monetized milieus. The degree to which creators can navigate the demands of sociality and commercialization must be studied in each case, but such tensions are likely to persist in hybrid—and arrhythmic—environments for the foreseeable future.73
YouTube exhibited tensions early on. At the same time, its initial openness before monetization took root gave the platform a sense of possibility. Strategic changes expanding monetization complicated socially oriented YouTubers’ ability to express themselves and connect with others aiming for shared cultural experiences. For example, the 2009 revamping of the site’s layout organized the welcome page around personalized content. By 2010 an individual viewer’s welcome page featured what was most popular on the site as well as individual recommendations. By 2013 the site resembled the commercial video-streaming service Netflix—YouTube’s long-term plan visually realized in readiness for its introduction of streaming services. YouTube had morphed into a personalized, commercially driven service rather than one that encouraged mutual, collective, and shared forms of viewing across the YouTubian community.
Video makers who wish to reincorporate a central dynamic of sociality will need to grapple with the arrhythmias and conflicts documented in this chapter. Providing creative resources at various temporal stages of development, enabling more control over an account and its monetization, and helping creators deal with the pace of content generation to avoid burnout are all strategies that YouTubers felt could ameliorate participatory and creative tensions in a hybrid environment. Whether YouTubers stay on, take a break and return, or migrate away permanently remains to be seen. What is certain is that the narrative of successful monetization of professional content often ignores the role that vernacular video played in laying the foundation for YouTube. Withholding support from trailblazing voices risks ignoring the very forces that created the possibility of monetization at all.