Youtube thoughts

I discovered Youtube awhile back. John wanted me to see this video of a band playing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on kitchen untensils and applicances! He didn't know the band's name but simply typed the song name into YouTube and we found the video quite easily.

I think Youtube is fascinating. I don't really use the website on a regular basis though. Even going to it right now and poking around, nothing interests me that much on the site to spend too much time there. Most of the videos are just random people (that's the point) but the videos aren't particularly entertaining.

The site is pretty easy to search. Case in point: last night on American Idol, during Sanjaya's performance, the camera zoomed in numerous times on a little girl who was crying in the audience...actually crying tears of joy, I think. Sanjaya has fans?!? The footage of the crying little girl lasted for about 30 seconds, inconsecutive seconds, but still a lot of camera time for some random audience member. I said to John, "I guarantee that footage will be on Youtube like crazy tomorrow." I just went to the site and searched with the term "american idol girl crying" and a few videos instantly popped up with the footage I was looking for.

Generally, I only use Youtube if I am feeling nostalgic...it's easy to find clips of TV shows from the 80s. One evening John and I must have played the Mr. Belvedere themesong (and sang along) 30x. Our downstairs neighbors must have loved that!

The second thing I go to Youtube for is "scandallous," gossipy news. Things like World Cup soccer fights and Britney Spears drama. It's like an interactive Star or US Weekly magazine.

I know some of my students have posted stuff on Youtube, which is pretty cool--the fact that they're making "creative" things and getting online audiences. What worries me about the Youtube era is that people are sometimes put on the site unwillingly--through someone else using a camera phone, digital camera w/ recording devices, etc.

A recent article in Radar magazine, "Prisoners of Youtube," best summed it up: "With 780 million camera phones sold worldwide in the last two years, no one is safe from senseless and random ridicule. The surveillance state we've been fretting about for so many years has snuck up on us. But it's not concerned with political control. It just wants to see people screw up."

I, like millions of others, like seeing people screw up... I just hope I don't end up being the screwed up one showcased on the site, for all the world to see.