Media Meditation 2

It's a Video, Luigi. You didn't make it.


Back in the summer of my Junior year of High School, one of my friends found a video. It's not a very well known video, atleast out of certain circles. It is hardly what you would call "mainstream". However, it has really affected the way I look at video media, for it was my first exposure to 'Youtube Poop". Youtube Poop is a video mashup. The creators (called Poopers) take video freely available in the Web 2.0 media landscape and smash them together humorously.




This is something that would have never happened without social media. As I have taken this class I have been thinking about things like this. The new landscape of media that is starting to form and take off, with the unprecedented freedom inherent in it has allowed things like this to exist that would have been impossible even 10 years ago. Sure, people could create these videos, but how would anybody else see them? There was no ability for this sort of content to exist. There is nothing more user driven than this kind of video. There is no corporate sponsorship, or even corporate presence. This is completely created for entertainment. There are few examples of media like this left, and I think it exemplifies the personal and aesthetic shifts, as there is a blog styled website, Youtube Poop News that serves as a sort of nucleus of the community.

This kind of content is something that I think will stay as long as there are free an accessible media outlets like Youtube. Even if companies do crack down on copyright infringement as they have been doing of late, once created, this sort of content doesn't die easily. Its created by people for people, with no other real goal in mind. It doesn't try to sell anything, and it doesn't really try to influence you in any way. Its pure entertainment.