YouTube: Serving to define and captivate today?s youth

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When I was in eighth grade, the seeds were sown for a phenomenon that, for better or worse, will define our generation. It will be what World War II was to the 1940s, what drugs and protests were to the 60s, and what big hair and Blondie were to the 80s.

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In all of our young lives, there will come time when our guts tell us that it's time to take control over our own lives, to squash the foes that stand in our way. It's a time that will take stoic discipline, a daring display of initiative, and an invaluable dash of smug confidence.

A Sojourn in Civilized Life

YouTube: Serving to define and captivate today?s youth

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Annie Monjar

Columnist

November 9, 2007

"Let me borrow that top. It's a cute top. I wanna borrow it."

"Shoes. Let's get some shoes."

Sound familiar? If not, don't worry. It's an inside joke. And you're on the outside.

Inside the joke are approximately 6,000,000 idle high school and college students who have been awed, repulsed, humored, and annoyed by Kelly, the now internationally renowned YouTube star. She's heart-warming, sassy, mischievous, and knows what she wants. Imagine a hybrid between Pippy Longstocking, Avril Lavigne, and the Babysitters' Club.

But while the Kelly videos are unquestionably ingenious, they make up just a miniscule fraction of the millions and millions of inane, gross, and creepy clips that YouTube offers us access to.

I'm not sure I knew that YouTube existed before I came to Bowdoin?if I did, it didn't take up nearly the amount of time and space in my personal life that it does now. Back in the day, people used to exchange locks of hair as a symbol of friendship; snipping off a tress of hair for someone meant business. Now, instead of ribbon-tied locks wrapped in handkerchiefs, we have YouTube videos.

If someone were to hand me a lock of hair, I would be infinitely grossed out, but when I'm shown a little-known but precious clip on YouTube, I get the warm, tender feeling that one gets when they have solidified a friendship. You wouldn't think that a seedy looking man scream-rapping about his new haircut and all of the ass it's going to get him would fuse my bond with whoever showed him to me, but it's true.

What's also true (though perhaps a really bleak reflection on the state of my social life), is that some of my fondest memories at Bowdoin involve a group of people, glaze-eyed and giggly, hunched around a laptop, watching someone try to pull spaghetti out of their nose. Fine, that's not actually a video on YouTube, but I'm sure there's someone out there brilliant enough to make it one.

I highly doubt this is just the case at Bowdoin, also. The fact of the matter is that when you have a really great YouTube video to suggest watching, you have brought something to the table. It's equivalent to bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party, making a donation at a fund-raising gala, or even just bringing up a stimulating conversation topic.

Many decades ago, people were constructing social interactions with questions like, "Have you read Harriet Beecher Stowe's new work? Interesting little novel." Now, the thing to establish a conversation with is, "Have you seen the video 'Cat in a Bowl'? It's totally cracked out."

And while this is the case, I'm not sure I'm completely at ease with this state of things; the dark underbelly of YouTube is the fact that about 97% of the videos consist of someone who has had about six or seven shots of Orloff, grabbed his camcorder, and decided to stick either his pet or young child up in an oak tree. Many of them are truly dumb, frightening, and disturbing.

What's even beyond the appalling or, more frequently, stupid nature of the videos is the comments that reside below them. There is no such thing as censorship on YouTube, and they're clearly not requiring an academic transcript to post comments.

Beneath a section of a documentary on a rehab facility for women with eating disorders: "I don't get it. Why don't they just eat?" Under a video (a "feature" on the website, nonetheless) of a man sneezing while urinating: "AHAHAHA WHITE SUPREMACY!!!!" These are, I swear on a stack of Bibles, direct quotes. The comments on YouTube have little to no rhyme or reason, sense or sensitivity.

Other comments are just completely pointless: "lol." Really? You couldn't just chuckle to yourself, close the window, and get a life? You had to share your murmur of a laugh with the 15,000,000 viewers that go on YouTube every day?

None of this is to underscore what I said earlier about YouTube being the epicenter of young adult social interactions. When used with discretion, this Web site can provide a valuable means of staying on the forefront of pop culture. I am, however, advising everyone to approach YouTube videos with an awareness of the inane, inconsequential, and frequently offensive nature of its content.

If not, to quote the spokeswoman of YouTube, "I'm gonna betch slap the dumb outta ya."

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