the philosophy of youtube
Because the medium is the message i remember when i started out doing youtube i was aware that, what i was making
Was very niche
And i've since learned that that is in fact a good thing and i embrace it now but at the time i was aware of
this
Nebulous thing called the youtube community and i was also aware that i didn't really, feel part of it. Political scientist Benedict Anderson
talks about imagined communities.
and he's talking about nations specifically but i think his ideas are applicable to youtube as well.
He thought that a nation
Was an imagined community because most of the people in my nation i will never meet i just
Imagine that they are there and i imagine that i have something
uniquely in common with all of them even though there are plenty of people outside
my nation that i probably have more in common with than many of the people
who are in it. I also imagine my nation as separate from other nations, when really
what goes on around the world massively impacts
what goes on here and they're perhaps not really as separable as i might have thought.
By imaginary, Anderson doesn't mean that communities or nations are not important or not real.
What he means is closer to what nowadays we might call socially constructed
and it's interesting to reflect on what we use
to, construct an imaginary community and
what we don't use and what we ignore.
When imagining a nation,
we pay attention to some similarities and differences and we ignore other ones like
Language is a big thing in imagining a nation into existence even though there are plenty of people around the world
Who speak the same language as me though, we would not say are part of my nation and there are people in my nation
Who speak, my language maybe as a second, third language, or even not at all who are still very much a part of it.
Race and religion are unfortunately big factors as
Well there are still people in my country wealthy educated
powerful people, who treat muslim and british as if they are necessarily separate categories.
Country of birth, interestingly,
not always a deal-breaker. Boris Johnson is British.
He was born in Manhattan.
Anyway i think it's very interesting to talk about what features
we use to imagine the youtube community. Dan Olson has a great video on how
there's an editing, style which is common to youtube. Which is kind of like a visual language.
There are some common worries and lines of chat in terms of art like when youtubers talk
about commenters or analytics or moan about advertisers and so on. People talk, about sub communities on youtube as well
I've heard of the skeptic community referred to, somewhat euphemistically sometimes. There's the beauty community.
The vlogging community. If you're, ever backstage at a youtube event you might hear youtubers talk about the gleam team
who are a small group of very very big youtubers, who all have the same management company Gleam Futures.
There have been two moments, where i have felt i've crossed a threshold and become part of a youtube community.
The first was when i won youtube nextup, which was a competition in the uk a couple years, ago and
Youtube took, me down to london and i got to see
Youtube space london and they gave me a manager and i felt at that moment that youtube the company
Had recognised me as a creator and it felt legit.
The other moment was i suppose a collection of moments but it was at summer in the city 2017
which interestingly
was my second summer in the city and i said to one of the organizers Tom Burns afterwards i said
thanks Tom you've really
made me feel like one of the gang this year because i was
asked to host panels at the event,
and I was on panels at the event and i got up on stage and played mario kart with a bunch of people.
and i just felt part of it all.
It's interesting how something as simple as playing mario kart on a stage with a bunch of acquaintances
Really, had quite a powerful emotional resonance for me and when i said thank you to Tom and said, he made me feel like
one of the gang he said you are one of the gang olly and that just made me feel great.
Events, like that and achieving community membership
That way is of course
Predicated on being able to afford to go to events like that and also being invited and being given a backstage
Wristband and all the rest of it
I got to know friends like Matt Ley, and Bird Keeper Toby and Steven Bridges through youtube nextup
And they were very much my kind of gateway to getting to know socially
other british youtubers.
There are social and material gateways to that kind of community membership and the social ones are very very important there are some british youtubers
Who are in my opinion rightly
Excluded from the backstage goings-on of events like, summer in the city because of the way
they've used their platforms in the past to hurt people both inside and outside that community.
As an actor i often get told that acting is an industry of relationships and i
Think, arguably the same is true of youtube it's, also interesting
What is not seen as a factor to help?
Construct the imaginary youtube community. For instance the fact that
We make money for google is not really talked, about very often or at least, i haven't seen it talked
About the fact that, we are the workers in the workers capital
Equation just doesn't really come up i have spoken before in print and on youtube about the need for a
Youtube trade union to kind of tie us together, and make people realize that hey
we are the workers we're the ones putting in the work and therefore, we have common interests but
people so far are somewhat reluctant to talk about that sort of thing so the youtube community is imaginary and that imagining is
Haphazard and weird and inconsistent and oddly weighted but that said
The moments when i do feel part of it and and it's not always sometimes like you know i seem to go in and out
the moments, where i do feel part of it i
Feel really good and i think of other youtubers who i know
Not as my colleagues arguably i should think of them that way but
More as my friends and not as imaginary friends but but real ones.
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