Billion Eyes of the Beast
Jamie | 21.12.2006 13:18 | Culture | Other Press | Technology | World
On the Web, anyone with a digital camera has the power to change history.
In 1991, when a bystander videotaped the police beating of Rodney King
in Los Angeles, the incident was almost unbelievable‹ not the violence
but the recording of it. Imagine! That four policemen would pummel a
subdued man, and someone would just happen to have a camera! What were
the odds?
In 1991, when a bystander videotaped the police beating of Rodney King
in Los Angeles, the incident was almost unbelievable‹ not the violence
but the recording of it. Imagine! That four policemen would pummel a
subdued man, and someone would just happen to have a camera! What were
the odds?
Do a YouTube search today on the term police brutality, and you get more
than 780 videos, from Houston, Hungary, Egypt and beyond. This is just
one sign of how much YouTube‹ and similar video-sharing sites‹has changed
the flow of information. People have had cameras for decades and Web
access for years. It's the combination of two simple things‹easy, cheap
recording and easy, free distribution ‹that makes YouTube so potent and
its impact so complex. It's not just a new medium; it's several in one.
It's a surveillance system. If you credit YouTube with revolutionizing
the media, you must first credit every cell-phone company that has
handed out deep-discount videophones like Cracker Jack prizes; they've
turned us into a culture of Zapruders. When millions have the power to
quickly, easily send any image around the world, you have something akin
to global telepathy. (The cell-phone messages from 9/11 victims were
chilling enough; imagine the visuals, had the attacks happened in 2006.)
It was a comedy fan's camera phone, for instance, that caught Michael
Richards spewing racial slurs at African-American hecklers. Incidents
like this are wearing away the distinction between amateur and
professional photojournalists. As Clay Shirky of New York University's
Interactive Telecommunications Program puts it, "It's hard to argue that
a paparazzi is more of a photojournalist than the person who takes a
picture of the London train bombing and uploads it."
But if YouTube made celebrities and journalists nervous, it was open
season on politicians. Montana Senator Conrad Burns became a YouTube
star for nodding off in a Senate hearing; Democratic Connecticut Senator
Joe Lieberman, for getting a smooch on the cheek from President George
W. Bush. (Burns lost re-election; Lieberman won but only after losing
the primary.) Stage-managed politics became reality TV, and veteran pols
seemed unsure what had hit them. When you watch Virginia Senator George
Allen calling a rival's camera-wielding staff member a macaca‹a reputed
racial slur that may have made the difference in his razor-thin loss‹he
seems, in retrospect, almost pitiable, like the first proud, doomed lion
ever to stare down a hunter with a rifle.
It's a spotlight. When TV comic Stephen Colbert addressed the 2006 White
House correspondents' dinner, his searingly sarcastic "defense" of the
President drew nervous laughter and awkward silence. Journalists in the
room said he bombed. And that verdict might have been final, had the
performance not been ripped from c-span and uploaded to YouTube. To
online fans familiar with The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, the
pained reception was part of the act. And to this vast audience, it
killed. The ensuing debate (Was he funny? Was he rude? Was the press
corps out of touch?) kept his critique in the news for days.
If YouTube provides distribution, the YouTube community's value-add is
attention, finding significance in moments and creations that media
gatekeepers shrug off. In 2005, the now defunct WB network rejected
Nobody's Watching, a self-referential sitcom about the making of a
sitcom (too inside, too confusing, probably too smart). This year the
pilot was leaked to YouTube, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers
who raved about it. It was promptly bought by nbc. In Washington or
Hollywood, the days when you could expect your bad decisions to
disappear into the mists of time are disappearing. Somebody's watching.
It's a microscope. Web video proved the perfect medium for watching
world news in extreme close-up, through video diaries from Iraq, Israel
and Lebanon. Even with major news stories, TV news is constrained by
budget and time concerns. Not so YouTubeland: 30 viewers or 30 million,
it stays on the air, and the only limit is the enthusiasm of the
uploader. So while mainstream media offered the sweeping panorama, video
diaries took us where TV couldn't or wouldn't‹running into air-raid
shelters in the Israel-Hizballah war, crouching behind an armored
vehicle with a soldier in Samarra, bullets dinging into metal off camera.
Most of the videos are poorly lit and badly composed. And they convey
the confusion of war far better than expensive, competent TV.
Journalists are trained to make sense, to frame stories and order facts,
smoothing over random happenings and odd twists. In Web video, war is
not a playing out of political-historical forces. It's Marine engineers
sloshing down an improvised waterslide in a MySpace video. It's a
soldier kicking back with an "Iraqi freedom cigar." In a terrifying,
seven-minute YouTube clip, it's riding in the cab with a civilian driver
as his truck takes fire and breaks down. "Come help me out!" he shouts
to his military escort as the camera dives under the dashboard with him.
"I'm going home when this s___'s done. When this s___'s done I'm f______
out of here!" On YouTube, war is also, appropriately, unbleeped.
It's a soapbox. Senator Allen's videographer, S.R. Sidarth, wasn't a
disinterested observer. He worked for Allen's opponent, Jim Webb, whose
campaign posted the video and used YouTube to fan the controversy
expertly (and cheaply). YouTubers discovered the site's political power,
from pundits to satirists making "mashups" (intercutting, say, a Dick
Cheney speech with lines from Scarface).
Creative Response Concepts, the political-consultant group that gave us
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, produced online video against a Missouri
stem-cell-research amendment this fall; next month it's opening a
YouTube division. "It's basically the 21st century equivalent of direct
mail," says CRC president Greg Mueller. The most effective YouTube spot
in the Missouri election, however, was a TV ad with Michael J. Fox,
which became an online sensation when Rush Limbaugh mocked Fox (who has
tremors from Parkinson's disease) on his radio show. The ad got more
than 2 million views and turned a state race into a national
controversy. Does this mean that YouTube decided the midterm elections?
There's no way of proving that. But given that control of the Senate
turned on a few thousand votes in a few states, it's hardly far-fetched.
Perhaps more important in the long run is that the Fox ad was a bigger
hit as a viral video than as a TV spot. YouTube had arrived, as a media
outlet and as a social force‹a place where ideas and images can spread
instantly, cheaply, democratically and anarchically. Does YouTube aspire
to become TV? These days TV should be so lucky as to become YouTube.
than 780 videos, from Houston, Hungary, Egypt and beyond. This is just
one sign of how much YouTube‹ and similar video-sharing sites‹has changed
the flow of information. People have had cameras for decades and Web
access for years. It's the combination of two simple things‹easy, cheap
recording and easy, free distribution ‹that makes YouTube so potent and
its impact so complex. It's not just a new medium; it's several in one.
It's a surveillance system. If you credit YouTube with revolutionizing
the media, you must first credit every cell-phone company that has
handed out deep-discount videophones like Cracker Jack prizes; they've
turned us into a culture of Zapruders. When millions have the power to
quickly, easily send any image around the world, you have something akin
to global telepathy. (The cell-phone messages from 9/11 victims were
chilling enough; imagine the visuals, had the attacks happened in 2006.)
It was a comedy fan's camera phone, for instance, that caught Michael
Richards spewing racial slurs at African-American hecklers. Incidents
like this are wearing away the distinction between amateur and
professional photojournalists. As Clay Shirky of New York University's
Interactive Telecommunications Program puts it, "It's hard to argue that
a paparazzi is more of a photojournalist than the person who takes a
picture of the London train bombing and uploads it."
But if YouTube made celebrities and journalists nervous, it was open
season on politicians. Montana Senator Conrad Burns became a YouTube
star for nodding off in a Senate hearing; Democratic Connecticut Senator
Joe Lieberman, for getting a smooch on the cheek from President George
W. Bush. (Burns lost re-election; Lieberman won but only after losing
the primary.) Stage-managed politics became reality TV, and veteran pols
seemed unsure what had hit them. When you watch Virginia Senator George
Allen calling a rival's camera-wielding staff member a macaca‹a reputed
racial slur that may have made the difference in his razor-thin loss‹he
seems, in retrospect, almost pitiable, like the first proud, doomed lion
ever to stare down a hunter with a rifle.
It's a spotlight. When TV comic Stephen Colbert addressed the 2006 White
House correspondents' dinner, his searingly sarcastic "defense" of the
President drew nervous laughter and awkward silence. Journalists in the
room said he bombed. And that verdict might have been final, had the
performance not been ripped from c-span and uploaded to YouTube. To
online fans familiar with The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, the
pained reception was part of the act. And to this vast audience, it
killed. The ensuing debate (Was he funny? Was he rude? Was the press
corps out of touch?) kept his critique in the news for days.
If YouTube provides distribution, the YouTube community's value-add is
attention, finding significance in moments and creations that media
gatekeepers shrug off. In 2005, the now defunct WB network rejected
Nobody's Watching, a self-referential sitcom about the making of a
sitcom (too inside, too confusing, probably too smart). This year the
pilot was leaked to YouTube, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers
who raved about it. It was promptly bought by nbc. In Washington or
Hollywood, the days when you could expect your bad decisions to
disappear into the mists of time are disappearing. Somebody's watching.
It's a microscope. Web video proved the perfect medium for watching
world news in extreme close-up, through video diaries from Iraq, Israel
and Lebanon. Even with major news stories, TV news is constrained by
budget and time concerns. Not so YouTubeland: 30 viewers or 30 million,
it stays on the air, and the only limit is the enthusiasm of the
uploader. So while mainstream media offered the sweeping panorama, video
diaries took us where TV couldn't or wouldn't‹running into air-raid
shelters in the Israel-Hizballah war, crouching behind an armored
vehicle with a soldier in Samarra, bullets dinging into metal off camera.
Most of the videos are poorly lit and badly composed. And they convey
the confusion of war far better than expensive, competent TV.
Journalists are trained to make sense, to frame stories and order facts,
smoothing over random happenings and odd twists. In Web video, war is
not a playing out of political-historical forces. It's Marine engineers
sloshing down an improvised waterslide in a MySpace video. It's a
soldier kicking back with an "Iraqi freedom cigar." In a terrifying,
seven-minute YouTube clip, it's riding in the cab with a civilian driver
as his truck takes fire and breaks down. "Come help me out!" he shouts
to his military escort as the camera dives under the dashboard with him.
"I'm going home when this s___'s done. When this s___'s done I'm f______
out of here!" On YouTube, war is also, appropriately, unbleeped.
It's a soapbox. Senator Allen's videographer, S.R. Sidarth, wasn't a
disinterested observer. He worked for Allen's opponent, Jim Webb, whose
campaign posted the video and used YouTube to fan the controversy
expertly (and cheaply). YouTubers discovered the site's political power,
from pundits to satirists making "mashups" (intercutting, say, a Dick
Cheney speech with lines from Scarface).
Creative Response Concepts, the political-consultant group that gave us
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, produced online video against a Missouri
stem-cell-research amendment this fall; next month it's opening a
YouTube division. "It's basically the 21st century equivalent of direct
mail," says CRC president Greg Mueller. The most effective YouTube spot
in the Missouri election, however, was a TV ad with Michael J. Fox,
which became an online sensation when Rush Limbaugh mocked Fox (who has
tremors from Parkinson's disease) on his radio show. The ad got more
than 2 million views and turned a state race into a national
controversy. Does this mean that YouTube decided the midterm elections?
There's no way of proving that. But given that control of the Senate
turned on a few thousand votes in a few states, it's hardly far-fetched.
Perhaps more important in the long run is that the Fox ad was a bigger
hit as a viral video than as a TV spot. YouTube had arrived, as a media
outlet and as a social force‹a place where ideas and images can spread
instantly, cheaply, democratically and anarchically. Does YouTube aspire
to become TV? These days TV should be so lucky as to become YouTube.
Jamie
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