Reading Response 2

L. Christie Linger
Dr. Barnes-Pietruszynski
English 303-01
11 November 2010
Reading Response 2
YouTube: A New Kind of Community or a New Way to Communicate?
Want to be unique and individual but desire to be a part of a community? Then YouTube is the place for you. Michael Wesch, professor and creator of the Digital Ethnography of YouTube Project has come up with the concept of networked individualism. This is the idea that YouTube has become so popular because it provides us with the experience of a community yet thrives off of everyone contributing unique and individualistic content. YouTube has not changed the community atmosphere that we have been used to for centuries; it has only changed the medium in which we interact with one another.
Youtube feeds off of the desire of individuals seeking to gain video popularity. To do so, people share video blogs and comment on one another’s videos. People try to get the most unique, creative or individual idea. By creating a unique video people are enhancing their feelings of being an individual. At the same time the video is becoming popular and allowing individuals to feel a part of a community. Therefore, YouTube has created a cycle in which it takes being an individual to be a part of the community and being a part of a community to be an individual.
Since online communities like YouTube enhance and create networked individualism it allows for individuals to create who they are. Online, you can be who you want to be to the community that you are in. This creates a question about if the individuals on YouTube are being real or fake. There have been instances where it has been found out that people on Youtube were posting fake videos. An example is when the creators of lonleygirl15 made up a teenage girl blog and produced it. People got upset when they found out people on YouTube were pretending to be something they were not. But isn’t everybody? We are only showing people what we want them to see. So in a sense we are all hiding our whole selves just as the pretenders. This raises a series of other questions. Is anyone on YouTube real? Are we all fake? The makers of lonleygil15 wrote “She is no more real or fictious than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us” (“An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube”). If we as individuals on YouTube are fake, pretending to be something we are not, only showing a particular side of ourselves, or how ever we want to see it, then it is a realistic conclusion to come to that the community we have created in Youtube is fake as well.
Whether or not we as individuals have created a community in which we believe ourselves to be real even when we are not, we have created a community that has changed the world. We have not created a community that has changed how we as humans treat one another but instead have changed the medium in which we interact. For example, internet interaction has had little effect on gender roles. We have kept the same things that are a part of our culture we have just changed the way we communicate them. We reach more people, we reach them faster, but we are still communicating the same things. We have not changed out morals we have just changed the way we communicate them. For example, the Hug Project was started on YouTube as a way to promote peace, happiness, and a since of community. Because it was posted on YouTube the project was taken worldwide in a matter of hours. People all over the world took part in the Hug Project. YouTube has become a huge part of how we as individuals connect with one another; it has changed the way we as individuals have connected in a community.