I Tube, You Tube, We all Tube for YouTube

At this point, I’m sure almost everyone between the ages of 13 and 35 has seen the insanely popular music video Here it Goes Again by OK Go. And the Crying Britney Fan. And Ninja Kitty. And countless other inane yet admittedly amusing videos that owe their fame—or infamy—to the ever-popular YouTube.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, YouTube is something of an Internet phenomenon. The video sharing website jumped into the cyber-scene in 2005 when three former PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim founded the site. By 2006, with its popularity growing by leaps and bounds, Google acquired YouTube for US$1.65 billion.

The site’s popularity is hardly surprising when we consider two important facets of human nature:

1. the desire for social interaction; and


2. the desire to gain recognition by making an utter ass of oneself in front of an international audience.

But perhaps more important is what we can learn about ourselves as individuals through YouTube.

First, the site allows anyone anywhere to see playlists that you have made. The wackiest, most disturbing video you only added because someone dared you to is part of your online identity by virtue of the fact that your playlists are public knowledge. This not only tells others that you have interesting taste, but it also tells you that you have a propensity to be swayed by others. YouTube is sort of like Facebook, then, since what you post can be affected by others’s perceptions and influences.

Second, YouTube taps into the desire for social interaction by allowing comments and giving users the ability to have “friends”—other YouTube users with profiles on the site. The number and type of these friends may indicate a friendly disposition, low self-esteem, the tendency to associate only with a certain type and many other aspects of identity. The ability to comment on videos adds an aspect of interactivity to the site as well as allowing users to create a persona through the choice of which videos they comment on and how they construct these comments. In this way, YouTube is like a chat room where the language you use says as much about your identity as the topic discussed.

YouTube also brings up issues of popularity. The number of views and favourites that a video receives goes a long way in manufacturing popularity. People are simply more likely to watch a video that many other people have watched, since the number of views seems to translate to an increased popularity. We can say that YouTube profiles are a bit like blogs, since the authority of the user often depends on others’ perception of what you say and what you like.

YouTube boasts many other features with diverse effects on cyber identities. While these are only a few, it gives us a good place to start when it comes to analysing such a complex medium. If YouTube is like Facebook, a chat room and a blog, all rolled into one, perhaps its success lies in its ability to combine aspects of other popular media and bring them all together in one friendly, easy to use service.

Or maybe it’s the appeal of sitting back and enjoying the show. With 200,000 of your closest friends.

The Blog Whisperer: What Blogs Say When We're Not Listening

Since I’m new to trying my hand at blogging, it seems fitting that I talk about the implications of blogging on identity formation. I stumbled across a particularly interesting and somewhat surprising article that asserts that 92% of bloggers choose to reveal real-life information on their personal blogs. I have a hard time believing this, especially considering the degree of technological savvy expected of today’s adolescents. Teenagers know the dangers inherent in revealing too much information, whether it be cyber-bullying or stalking or identity theft. Call me an optimist if you want to, but I think we need to give young people a little more credit.

All of this had me wondering about what blogs reveal implicitly, what the choices we make regarding our blogs say about us. The interesting part of this line of thought consists of considering how what bloggers don’t say about themselves combines with what they do say to help from a new online identity that exists somewhere between fact and fantasy.

I’ll start with a statement that will blow your mind.

Though you may not know it, I have already shaped your perception of me.

Queue X-Files music. Kinda creepy, huh? No, it’s not some alien mind trick. There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this. So how did I do it you ask?

Some of you may have seen me in class, or around campus, but don't know anything about me. To many of you, I am no more than a name. Still, you have formed an impression, a feeling, if you will, for who I am and what I'm like. All of this, from a single blog page.

Just by changing the template of my blog, I can change your opinion of what I'm like. You might have ascertained that I'm a serious individual from my current template. It is simple and sparse, containing only necessary elements. The colours are sober and traditional, indicating that I am calm and reserved. The sans-serif font is simple and easy-to-read, demonstrating that I value function over form. If you know a bit about Blogger and how it works, you might also be aware of the fact that this template is built-in and requires no programming knowledge to set up. This is an identity I have built through my blog in order to reflect not only my subject matter, but also my desire to present myself in a reasoned academic matter.

A few clicks, and I can erase this identity. Were I to change the template of my blog to include bright polka dots, a fussy, feminine font and vibrant colours, your perception of me might change. You might consider me a girlie-girl, someone who pays more attention to superficial, physical characteristics than putting any substance into my posts.

I am conscious of the way the choices I make when constructing my blog shape the perception of myself and my message. My choice of template reflects who I want to be online, but doesn’t necessarily give you the whole story. For example, while I am using a default template, I have considerable experience in coding HTML and CSS and building websites both with web authoring tools and by hand. Those who know me well can attest to the fact that I’m generally a quirky individual and tend not to be boring and staid (except on my bad days). While we’re at it, my favourite colour is a bright, vibrant orange, not a calm but admittedly predictable shade of blue. For the most part, you can glean some information from my blog. I am pretty reserved, and I’m serious about my studies. I found the layout attractive, after all, so that says something.

What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means I had you duped until I opened my big fat mouth (or flexed my clumsy typing fingers) and told you.

But a blog reveals more than the choices I make in constructing it. I have to consider what the subject matter of the blog reveals about me and my interests. This is harder to fake. While I could conceivably start a blog about something that holds no interest to me (like, say, Thomas Carlyle) it’s pretty darn unlikely that I’ll ever get up the gumption to post much of note.

Incidentally, creating a blog is, in a way, an implicit construction of ourselves as experts on some subject. Even I the blog is just a personal diary, it conveys the idea that you are an expert about yourself. Not glamorous, but it’s still something.

The gadgets on my blog also reveal a bit about me. One could conceivable gain insight into my psyche by analyzing my blogroll, (to see which blogs I like to read) or my choice to allow people to subscribe to my blog.

As you can see, almost every detail of a blog has meaning. Even if I choose to give out real-life personal information, any information about my real-life identity is tempered by the impressions that my blog imparts. There’s more to blogging than just posting a few messages and hoping for replies. You really have to think about exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it. After all, in this day and age, you never know how the information you provide can be used against you.