Broke-Ass Pop Culture: YouTube

Everyone has done it. You click on a video that someone posted on Facebook and as soon as it’s over, you click on one of the referred videos. And before you know it, you’ve just spent 3 hours looking at videos of cute puppies.

We live in a wonderfully on-demand world. If you want to see something right now, the interwebs will provide. YouTube satisfies any media craving – TV shows, movies, movie trailers and music. When an old TV show pops into my head, I know the odds are good that some weirdo taped it and has put it on YouTube for the world to see. This is especially handy if you’re prone to feverish outbreaks of nostalgia, like I am.

Music is kind of a big deal with YouTube. As much as we wish we could unhear it, without the internet popularity of her song “Friday,” Rebecca Black would still be just a mediocre singer from Southern California… now she’s a rich mediocre singer from Southern California. And lest we forget, Justin Bieber got discovered on YouTube. Right… these are bad examples. But it clearly illustrates how this service (along with the world’s frightening susceptibility to trends and fads) has made careers from nothing.

It seems that YouTube (and its popular VEVO channel) is one of the only places you can still see music videos these days since MTV’s schedule is dominated by reality and scripted programming. A few years ago I couldn’t figure out how MTV, who does not show music videos, still held the Video Music Awards (or VMA’s as they are now called… sort of like KFC’s rebranding so as not to confuse patrons that there is not actually chicken in their chicken… there isn’t music on MTV anymore). OK, I digress.

It used to be fun to watch MTV all day hoping your favorite video would pop on… now you can just plug it into the YouTube search field and not only will you see the band made video, but you will likely see a couple of live versions of the song and probably some crappy student film set to the song.  Either way, YouTube killed the MTV star. But it’s ok, I can accept the change.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch the “Lonely Boy” video for the 100th time.

Photo credit: stayonsearch.com