Today I thought it might be fun to look at the seriality of youtube, since it’s the form of seriality that I encounter most often. (I don’t want to know how many hours a day I spend watching youtube videos – the answer is too many). There are many ways to consume content on youtube, whether it’s watching random recommended videos, searching for videos under a certain topic, or subscribing to channels. I’d argue that there’s seriality, or at least the potential for seriality in all three types of viewing.
The Randomly Recommended Video
Last night a video popped up on my home page titled: “Tattoo Artist Bang Bang Reviews Movie Tattoos, from ‘Moana’ to ‘Black Swan’ | Vanity Fair”
I thought it might be a funny video critiquing bad tattoos, since I had seen similar videos in the past, but the tattoo artist Bang Bang ended up being really thoughtful in his reviews. He was able to guess what year the movies were set in based on the type of tattoo and discuss the history of tattoos in that era. I really enjoyed hearing his thoughts so I watched a few more videos that he was in, which were recommended to the right of the video. Although he appeared on a few different channels, his presence across these videos is a form of seriality. This can be similarly thought of in terms of watching interviews by a particular celebrity. You can go back and watch interviews from years ago and seen how they’ve grown and progressed in their careers.
Sometimes when a very random video posted years ago gets recommended to a bunch of people and suddenly gets millions of views, the video will have comments which read: “see you all the next time youtube’s algorithm recommends a random video.” I find it exciting when I’m watching a video and I see a comment on it from my best friend or from another youtuber I watch. There’s a sense of seriality in comments as well.
Communities on Youtube
There is also seriality across channels based on the topic of the videos. For example, here I’ve included a screenshot of the search results for the word “minimalist.” All of these channels and videos that show up are all contributing to the overall topic of minimalism. Videos on a certain topic are often in conversation with one another, referencing other videos or channels or general aspects of that topic. For example, you might hear someone in a video on minimalism say something along the lines of, “When you see images of minimalism it’s usually a nearly empty room or a closet with three t-shirts in it. Minimalism doesn’t have to look like that.” With a comment like this, they’re referring to the overall community of minimalism and the commonalities in that community.
There are communities on youtube for just about everything. For a long time I was watching videos in the “zero waste” community, and after watching for a couple of years I started to notice different trends – things such as moving away from using the term “zero waste” and using the term “low impact” instead. Communities change and grow on youtube all the time. There is also seriality here in the way that new types of videos will start to pop up after one person in a community makes a new type of video. For example, once one person began to make “unhauls” (a video talking about things that they are choosing not to haul, such as buying a new halloween costume every year), a lot of other channels started posting “unhauls” too.
Subscribing to a Channel
Individual channels are serial in that they’re releasing one new video at a time. A lot of people release videos on schedules, such as once or twice a week. (There are even people who release videos daily!). As you can see in this screenshots here, a lot of channels will post reoccurring types of videos or series, and they tend to group these videos in playlists. For example, Pypah’s Art released videos in an inktober series where she drew something in ink every day of October based on a certain theme. These videos are a seasonal sort of series in that they’re only posted in October, but there are also sporadic series such as sketchbook tours. Subscribers don’t know exactly when a new sketchbook tour will be posted since it depends on when the sketchbook is filled, but they can expect to see this type of video since it is a series on that channel.
Final Thoughts
Youtube is serial in many forms! Whether it’s across channels, communities, or random videos and comments. Youtube, like all forms of social media, is just another platform for individuals (or groups, or companies) to post serially.
Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,
Dessi