Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

216 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond Youtubetechnological approaches217The poem ‘I love my Motherland’ originated on the message board Tianya.cn, and quickly becamea viral hit spawning many remixes. 22 This exchange, however, took place for the mostpart on Chinese video sharing sites Tudou and Youku, whereas there was much less of animpact on Western sites. Tudou.com is a video sharing site based in the People’s Republic ofChina, and is one of the most popular non-English sites for video sharing. Their recent moveinto the creation of original content 23 for their own site – created in an episodic televisualstyle – shows that their interest is in a traditional broadcast relationship. A low viewership for acommercial program would be quite embarrassing, but in the face of this particular community,personal video sharing is less important. At the extreme end of this scale is Zeroviews.biz, a blog that shames YouTube videos that have not received a single view. Ironically, bypromoting these videos, or even just by finding them, zeroview.biz negates their value as havingbeen unwatched. 24 The specific promise of YouTube (broadcasting) steers expectationsof high viewership. A zero views blog for Vimeo or Tudou would not nearly be as interesting,as the implicit arrangement is not predicated on popularity. 25The most obvious difference between platforms is language. For example, Rutube 26 operatesin Russian, but popular memes like Standing Cat 27 and Double Rainbow 28 are still foundthere. Thus, sites do not exist in a vacuum, even across the easily prescribed boundaries oflanguage. ‘Lipdubs’ which began on Vimeo 29 , have spread across all platforms. The samecan be said of popular YouTube memes such as Keyboard Cat and Double Rainbow. The watersare indeed quite murky when trying to differentiate between communities, and draw easylines of classification. Even on sites considered ‘mainstream’, 30 these lines are blurred. In astudy of anime music videos, Mizuko Ito has found that, although the practice of creating andsharing these clips had moved to other video sharing sites, 31 the centre of the communitycontinues to be animemusicvideo.org. When community behaviours occur across a numberof different sites, it is clear that community has become more important than medium.Having considered a number of video sharing platforms, it is possible to see that the highlevel of degeneracy is key to the continued growth of online video as a cultural practice. Inorder to understand the effects of video sharing, it is important to observe it at a macroscopiclevel that takes into account all forms of practice. There is a danger in branding YouTube (oreven one particular community on YouTube) as typical of video sharing culture. The choicesavailable in video sharing sites are typical of ‘long tail’ economies. 32 In fact, freely availablePHP scripts allow anyone who is reasonably tech-savvy to run their own video sharingwebsite. 33 It is important to note that in each instance of this culture taking hold, there is anegotiation between the social and technological rules of participation.Applying Shirky’s concepts of tools, bargain and promise to the context of video helps toidentify similarities across disparate platforms. The messy technological, social and emotionalpromises are the life or death of any site. The reasons not to be ‘mainstream’ have tobe enticing, offering opportunities that cannot be reasonably attained elsewhere. As Shirkypoints out, ‘it is now cheaper to keep things by accident than to delete them on purpose’. 34The increased cost of medium specificity cannot be recouped by appealing to quality. Theplurality of available circulation methods provided by different platforms means that concernsrelated to the medium have been superseded in importance by the needs of a community. Inother words, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.In response to Michael Snow’s statement, Kevin McGarry states: ‘As an immaterial thing, howa moving image looks constitutes what it is, and what concern could be more primary thanwhat the thing is?’ 35 Although I am not arguing for medium specificity, I am suggesting that‘what the thing is’ is only as important as its availability. To be inaccessible is to be invisible.Moving to a landscape that takes media migration for granted offers video culture the opportunitiesfor growth in audience participation and awareness that outweigh other concerns.22. Fauna, ‘I love My Motherland’ Poem Rejected, Becomes Viral Hit’, http://www.chinasmack.com/2009/stories/i-love-my-motherland-poem-viral-hit.html.23. ‘Tudou “That Love Comes” Original Drama Series Debut’, http://www.prnewswire.com/newsreleases/tudou-that-love-comes-original-drama-series-debut-105015184.html.24. ‘Zero Views: Blog Celebrates The Best Of YouTube’s Worst’, videos, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/videos-0-views-viral_n_697455.html.25. This recalls early self-referential video art, such as Vito Acconci’s Theme song, athttp://blip.tv/file/3608518, or Richard Serra’s Television delivers people, http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/c-R1GWCHAn8/.26. rutube.ru.27. , http://rutube.ru/tracks/3687916.html?v=14cb1a677afea4a4009d2ef69acf8d27.28. , http://rutube.ru/tracks/3424781.html?v=8daab3c65a03f62bc44fdb13d717526c.29. ‘Lip Dubbing: Endless Dream’, http://www.vimeo.com/123498.30. Mizuko Ito, ‘The rewards of non-commercial production: Distinctions and status in the animemusic video scene’, First Monday 15.5 (2010),http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2968/2528.31. Edited anime television shows and movie set to music.32. Chris Anderson. ‘The Long Tail’, Wired, October 2004,33. http://www.mediamaxscript.com/Video-Hosting-Script.34. Clay Shirky, ‘Private, Public, and the collapse of the Personal’, in Lauren Cornell, MassimilianoGioni and Laura Hoptman (eds) Younger Than Jesus: The Reader. New York: Steidl & Partners,2009.35. Kevin McGarry, Medium Quality: The 2010 International Experimental Media Congress, 21 April,2010. http://rhizome.org/editorial/3478.