Anandam Kavoori, the writer of Reading Youtube: Critical Viewers Guide, gives us great knowledge in his text. Throughout the book he gives us examples of how to read and understand the concept of Youtube. He also gives us in depth looks at specific genres of videos played and proposes the overall culture of Youtube. Kavoori talks about multiple things around participatory culture, and the nature of Youtube, but what I liked personally was the way producers become active in the production of YouTube videos and become famous online. We can see multiple cases that people become internet famous. I remember a video we watched recently about gaming and it showed us how these people had other personalities while they were online but in reality they were normal people. People are highly looked at from a participatory cultures perspective when they are YouTube famous, but there have been other situations outside of memes where people’s lives have been changed into another direction due to the activism in participatory culture. You see people become rich and famous but you also see people become emotionally unstable because of their embarrassment. This also involves with Kavooris thoughts about how videos are viral. He speaks about how fast the videos are relayed and the amount of feedback videos receive. Videos like the girl who gets hit by a shovel. Has made the girl famous. Even though she was not the producer, she was in multiple remixed versions of this video and became angry at all of the comments and things she was getting from the participatory culture, just as we saw in the Winnebago Man video. Another video that we see where someone becomes famous through YouTube is Charlie bit my finger. This little boy was filmed by his parents as he was being bit by his little brother. Since the video was made it has been a worldwide hit. There are multiple phrases that Kavoori refers to, that explains his concept of memes. For example, vernacular creativity, this is an everyday creative practice. This refers to the people that are recreating these videos that they find on Youtube, and also the ones who participate by commenting on the videos. In coherence with vernacular creativity, Kavoori creates the three elements of Youtube. Foundationality, referentiality, and participatory these three terms according to Kavoori explain by detail the reason why things become so popular. Foundationality, is the videos primary meaning. For these three elements I will use a popular youtube video that Kavoori introduces which is the “Hide Yo Kids Hide Yo Wife.” The original purpose for this video was to be an informative news report. Later, the news report was recreated for entertainment purposes. This is an example of referentiality. By creating this parallel video to the report, a mashup has been established because it is taking context from an original piece and recreating it, this is exactly what Kavoori describes as Youtube. In both of these videos we can experience participatory. Participatory is defined as “ the context in which the video was read (comments and response videos).” There were multiple comments on both of these pieces and different remixes of the already remixed version. In the beginning of his book Kavoori says “I Suggest that we see YouTube more than a website-- it is a key element in the way we think about our on-line experience and (shared) digital culture” (Pg. 3) To me he is defining participatory culture because Youtube has the ability share different versions of almost everything.
Here we start to see the multiple remixed versions of other memes that correspond to this event.
Here is a little video that was made not too long ago about a young boy who was an aspiring singer and became famous from his Youtube videos. Today, this boy is one of the most loved pop singers and as made a fortune. This all goes back to participatory culture and how opportunities are made through Youtube.
Here is the Original version of "Hide yo kids hide yo wife," again the original purpose of the film was for informational purposes.
And this is the remixed version of the Original video. This video has became a world wide hit and other versions of the remix have also been created. Kavooris 3 elements fall into place with this entire video series.