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Hello, I’ve been told off.
Don’t go on ‘kickyoutube’ or ‘saveyoutube’ or similar...
and take videos- or even record things from your screen-
if you do not intend to use them for educational purposes.
This video is educating you about my education so we’re all ok here…
Nothing to see…
I said I’d cover ‘fame’ on YouTube today and that comes in two parts:
the way the site connects us, the public, to celebrities and current events...
and also the promise that we can become famous ourselves.
When I say ‘current events’ in the first part I mean it in the sense that we are both able to break news stories and share our thoughts on the world.
Also, harking back to my ‘scrapbook’ comment on… I think Day 8...
We can feel a sense of ownership by having and being able to create the raw material of a television programme.
We could even take news clips and stitch them together and feel proprietary because we are involved.
We’re doing and we’re creating.
Even on the BBC news website, by watching different clips and reading different posts...
we are creating our own news programme, based on what we want to see and what feels relevant to us as individuals.
[News Headlines]
Likewise, (in the considerably less ‘dry’ field of entertainment…)
YouTube hosts things which were televised once and which the general public would have no access to without it.
If the ability to share things so feely didn’t exist then how would we ever see old WB press tours from 1999-
-in what I’m going to call ‘terrible quality’ but, considering its age, is actually, probably, ‘fantastically well preserved’-
unless we worked for Warner Brothers and could raid their archive?;
[Voiceover] With the new Millennium line-up at The WB! Except for two of it's biggest stars...
[David Boreanaz] Oh, you can get a new boyfriend but I can't get a new girlfriend?
[Sarah Michelle Gellar] Yes. - That doesn't make any sense! - It makes complete sense!
[SMG] We never argue.
[VO] Catherine Culver for The WB11, News at 10.
Such clips, from before the YouTube era, allow young fans to see things they may have missed at the time.
When we get towards ‘becoming famous via YouTube’ however it all gets just a little stickier…
I’ve read to you before from Burgess and Green’s ‘YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture’
and they’re not exactly… fans of the site.
I’ll put it that way.
They distinguish between the ‘ordinary world’ and the ‘media world’.
YouTube is a platform where the ordinary man can post a video...
or the media man can post a video- and generally be more successful.
As the ‘9 out of 10 most viewed videos ever’ prove,
the media world and things related to it, holds to a slightly higher calibre;
“The promise that talented but undiscovered YouTubers can make the leap from their ‘ordinary worlds’ to the bona fide ‘media world’...
is firmly embedded in YouTube itself, evident in a number of YouTube’s talent discovery competitions and initiatives…
[Yet] even when ordinary people become celebrities through their own creative efforts, there is no necessary transfer of media power:
they remain within the system of celebrity native to, and controlled by, the mass media…
...the marker of success for these new forms, paradoxically, is measured not only by their own popularity...
but by their subsequent ability to pass through the gate-keeping mechanisms of old media-
the recording contract, the film festival, the television pilot, the advertising deal.”
#Justin Bieber, Never Say Never#
Basically, Bieber may have been ‘popular’ as an ordinary person on YouTube but he wasn’t ‘famous’ until he had become part of the ‘media world’.
And I’m not even going to go into that idiotic film…
What sort of a tag-line is ‘Find out what’s possible if you never give up’?
He’s about 5!
He’s never had the chance to give up!
The poor boy will probably get to eighteen and decide that, yes, he’d rather like that chance actually...
it’s time for a little muchier;
and he will sit on the sofa and play on the playstation...
and not wash his hair every day but let it fall whatever way it will.
Perhaps rediscover a parting.
So YouTube can bring you notoriety as the common man but, until the mass media takes you up and does something with you, you are, in effect, a ‘sham celebrity’.
It all comes back to conventional media.
Which is not to say that YouTube cannot be a good place to find people ‘before they are famous’,
merely that they won’t become famous until they have done something within the circle of the mass media.
There is an awful lot of talent on YouTube but it is also an incredibly large wasteland.
Which... actually probably facilitates a lot of social networking, come to think of it,
because once you find something wonderful- needle in a haystack- you then pass it along to a friend!
As one of you did for me with the Kassem G who is a comedian who posts comedy sketches on the site along with his very popular ‘California on…’ series,
where he takes to the streets to quiz random passers-by on topics supplied by his YouTube following;
-I was... unfortunately a Freshman in High School.
[Kassem G] And that makes you... what? 13? 14?
-makes me a ***.
- I was 23.
[Kassem G] and you're how old now? - 23.
- 12. [Friends laugh]
[Kassem G] Are you really... are you serious? 12? - Yeah! - She had a boyfriend at a young age.
[Kassem G] were you as high as you are right now?
- (*** laugh) No. [Slowed Down] - (*** laugh) No...
Like Justin Bieber, Rebecca Flint was discovered through YouTube.
She began filming herself dancing to Japanese pop-songs in her bedroom,
became hugely popular within the subculture and was then signed to an agency in Japan.
She has released three albums as ‘Beckii Cruel’...
and BBC3 have made a documentary charting her rise to fame, which was premiered in August 2010.
[Presenter] It's a remarkable story about this young lady Beckii, who, literally, uploaded videos of herself dancing in her bedroom-
-she wanted to apply for X Factor- and has become massive in Japan.
She got signed by this Japanese music agent... she's now sponsoring everything from bubble gum upwards...
It's an incredible story. And we'll find out more about that in a minute. She's only 14!
Truly, they love her.
Non-profit film companies such as ‘Power Up’
which has a film grant that allows it to “select scripts and directors based on merit”...
rather than... for profit... I'd imagine...
and young film makers who are just starting their careers, have the opportunity to get their work seen and heard by the world on YouTube.
Which in turn… leads to it being taken up by a mass media distribution company…
I feel as if I’m crushing dreams every time I say that!
So, I shall stop.
Except to say that tomorrow we will be watching an extended version of this;
#Rebecca Black, Friday#
I’ve warned you...!