I have watched YouTube rewind a single time, and I'm making this video immediately cos that's how discourse works. We must have immediate opinions. In the moment when the thing is news, and if we do not, (then it) there's no relevancy. So have an opinion, fast and have it now and if you want to spend some time thinking, well get the fuck out, that's not what this is about, that's not, 2019 this is internet discourse.

 

I liked it. I liked it. It's got like a fifty-fifty like-to-dislike ratio right now. I think a lot of people disliked the video before it even, uh started playing. It's a meme to dislike YouTube rewind, my favorite kind of meme where you just don't like things, and that's part of your identity. So one of the reasons why people don't like YouTube rewind uh, and one of the reasons I really do, and I understand why it makes people, like, uncomfortable, a little bit unhappy upset is when you watch when you have an idea of what something is and, then you are confronted with the reality that that thing is different than you thought its uncomfortable. And YouTube is not what we imagine it to be. You know, you, you watch the thing you realize that like, this place is much bigger than we think, and no individual person is a huge part of it.

 

 There are lots of people out there who really like Mr. Beast, and there are lots of people out there who really like BTS, and they both want that thing to be the subject of YouTube rewind. And they both think that like this is the most important cultural thing, and they're both wrong and so you have to put BTS and Mr. Beast in the same video and then you end up with a thing that is celebratory of, get this, um, the diversity of things people like in culture rather than the thing you like, the thing that you, and the thing that you thought YouTube was. I loved especially the part where they went through the biggest channels in other countries. I got honestly a little bit choked up when it was like this was the first YouTube creator in Thailand with ten million subscribers. I was like 'I've never thought about that!' That there was no YouTuber in Thailand with 10m subscribers. I had no idea who that person was of course. And then there was the first YouTuber in Germany with 10m subscribers which is a good friend of mine. Like that's just, that's a wild thing, alright that's like, the guy who runs the company is a good friend of mine, I should say, Kurznerhfeua isn't done by one person. That was the part that hit me the hardest, that there are still these places where this is becoming an uh, like an increasingly culturally relevant thing.

 

 And then like, it really did show a lot of cool things that happened on the platform this year. The other thing I got from this video is a little bit of a nod to reality which is that YouTube isn't a community. Like, YouTube isn't a community. Lots of YouTubers have communities on the YouTube platform but this idea that YouTube is a single definable thing. Like, a single definable cultural movement is, is, has not been true for many years and what YouTube is kind of saying here is "we're not trying to be that anymore we are a video hosting platform. here are the statistics of the cool things that people did here and that's not really us" and I like that. I, it seems like a nod towards the reality of YouTube in 2019 headed into 2020. which is that this, it is not so simple anymore. that you can pretend we were always pretending but we could we used to be able to actually pretend. This is a thing that everyone sort of imagines the same. it's just not- it's so far away from that that I, I think that eventually, they had to get away from that old format of YouTube rewind and, and either do nothing or do something else.

 

 A couple of the comments I saw were basically like "YouTube is so weak, this is a weak move,” and they say, "they've not done the risky brave thing". and I'm just like what do you think that is? The brave thing to you is so different to the brave thing to me or the next person or the next person like like if you think what you are saying there is that there is a true YouTube and that all the other people have got true YouTube wrong. and that's like I'm sorry man, you have your true YouTube but that's not YouTube, it's not, it's your thing the community you're a part of and YouTube is just like somewhat extracting itself from this idea that like YouTube the company the platform the brand is part of those communities and it's saying no, we are, we enable those things, we are the foundation that they're built on we're the land that this stuff is built on, we're the buildings that that like these these communities inhabit. We are not the community itself. That’s a little sad because like I used to imagine it differently, I used to imagine it like this town was a community but it’s not anymore. there has been over the years a lot of conversation about whether YouTube rewind should be silo’ d in some way where whether it should be regionalized basically so you have a Europe rewind, and you have you know English-speaking rewind, and you have a Middle East rewind, and an Asia rewind or whatever. I think that that would be YouTube trying to go back to this old way of imagining what YouTube is, which is, which is, a false imagination. Now I'm not saying that that would necessarily be bad for their brand, I think people like to imagine that YouTube is part of the fabric of the community, and it is it is like part of the identifying nature of what makes these communities, like themselves. I don't think it is, like I obviously, like how the platform functions defines how the communities build themselves, what kind of content gets made, how people communicate with each other, and so that that's real. and like that's kind of an to extend this city metaphor, this is like an urban planning problem of, like how do you build the roads you know, where, how, where do you put the zones, kind of thing. but I think by basically making this a like a top ten list of sorts, YouTube is saying, like this is a thing where amazing things happen, but like, YouTube is not the defining characteristic of these creators, the defining characteristic of the creators isn't that they're YouTubers, it's that they are creators of content. It’s a little bit like the Spotify thing that is also happening right now, where it's it's saying like, you know, you're not a Spotify artist. like there are people who sort of make their stuff specifically for Spotify of course, but like you are a musician. and YouTube could either try to like go the nationalist route, and be like here's what a real YouTuber it is, or it can go this sort of globalist route, and say okay we are just the raw materials with which you can create and how you do that is up to you, and what succeeds is not us, it's not about us it's about of the people who succeed. I like that I think that's I think that's good it, and this feels extracted from that old idea of YouTube being sort of the central identity of what makes these communities work. because it isn't like YouTube is the buildings and the roads, it's all the nonliving stuff that communities inhabit. and this feels more honest about that even if it is a little bit of a leaving behind of an idea that meant a lot to me, still means a lot to me, but ultimately like we have to find other identifiers, other like identities on this platform that aren't just YouTuber. if that's going to be our identity and if we're gonna sort of like try to apply what I think a YouTuber is, to the whole platform, and be mad when it's wrong, that's because my idea of what YouTube is is wrong. what my idea of what a Youtuber is is wrong, it just it doesn't fit the breadth of reality. and this is a video that, for better or worse, reflects reality. So, by going to something that tries to accurately represent what YouTube actually is, it not just tries to but like says it like, here are the numbers, you can't argue with it. We, that, that's our job is to take all the numbers down. you get an accurate portrayal of like what like YouTube viewership is actually like, and that, you can either look at that and say like I don't like that, and I don't want to recognize that, or you can look at it and say like wow YouTube is much different than I thought it was, and that's like a, it's a big diverse world, and it's a big diverse platform and YouTube is a global platform. It has a lot of creators on it, and that's doing all the things that are like completely outside of my notice, and that's that's neat. I'm gonna check now that I've been recording for 10 minutes to see if the like the dislike ratio has gotten any better, I've got too many tabs, open we're at 318 thousand views right now 41-up 32-down. Refresh. Oh, it's getting worse you guys it's getting worse it's doubled in view count and now it's 69-up in 77-down, I think it's doing its job it's out there saying YouTube is a cool place and it's doing it accurately. And, and I'm amazed, I'm amazed, to find how different things are than how I imagined them. and like that's always a that, to me is a cool thing where I find out the world is different than I thought it was. And you know if, if your reaction to that is is like but this isn't actually how the world is, it is though. I again have not looked at anybody else's thoughts about YouTube rewind, this is all from scratch, 2019 Internet discourse immediate reaction. So, I will be interested to hear other people's thoughts.

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