Jes Grew in YouTube
Jes Grew does not necessarily need to be music. In today’s world there are so many popular forms of entertainment that Jes Grew may be involved in many such forms of media. YouTube videos in particular are a form of individual creativity. In particular I am thinking of the early days of YouTube, where people were making weird skits in their bedroom and monetization was sparse.
There was a famous YouTuber called LeafyIsHere. If you have not heard of him, he would make voice overs of CSGO videos making fun of as many people as possible. He had a 30 dollar mic and said what he thought. It was raw and although incredibly problematic, people watched.
Mr. Beast even in his early days was similar to this “30 dollar mic” style. Making his start on YouTube by playing COD and estimating how much other YouTubers made off of their videos. Early YouTube was authentic and had very few rules (for better or worse.) Many people who made videos, did not do it for potential fame, or monetization, but to create something.
Now the most famous creators have overly polished editing. It seems that YouTube has been over commercialized. With more rules, higher monetization, and copyright laws, finding a good YouTuber is harder every day.
Mr. Beast does seem to work well as a talking android to the movement. As I mentioned he started authentic, smashing toilets and flooding his friends backyard with orbeez. At some point he seemed to be recruited by the Wallflower order. His videos started using CGI, millions to make one video and making YouTube his life consequently sucked the life out of the channel.
This thesis of course falls apart when you realize Mr. Beast is the most popular YouTuber on the platform, but he has certainly changed the platform. A key part of Jes Grew is the authenticity, with the commercialization of YouTube, Jes Grew left the most popular sides of YouTube. There still are sides of YouTube Jes Grew is active, it might just be harder to find than it once was.
Hi Tucker! I love your analogy of Mr. Beast "getting recruited by the Wallflower Order", as it mirrors how Hinckle impersonates Black culture to undermine it's and Jes Grew's reputation. I wonder who the "Wall Flower" order would be in this case. I would suggest that maybe it is the monetization of YouTube, as it pushes content that make the most money instead of being authentic to what you want to make. There have been many cases of corporations taking over originally passionate YouTube channels and changing the content to maximize profit instead of the originally unique content and I think that has some sort of relation to this.
ReplyDeleteHi Tucker! I like your comparison of Mr. Beast as the Talking android of Youtube. I do think it is interesting that Mr. Beast actually was a part of the authentic Youtube culture before he switched up, while Hinckle Von Vampton's talking android was actually an outsider (literally Gould and blackface). That slight contrast would make Mr. Beast a more successful talking android (which makes sense, given his popularity), because he understands his audience, while in Mumbo Jumbo, Gould literally spews racist commentary in an attempt to win over the Black audience.
ReplyDeleteEdward Docx in his "Postmodernism is Dead" article declares the internet "the most postmodern thing on the planet," and he was saying this in 2012--YouTube (and other more recent social media) is a great example of "organic culture" that is not shaped by the traditional "gatekeepers" (record labels, television networks, film studios). So theoretically it would be a perfect candidate to avoid the usual kinds of Atonist censorship and delegitimization. It's apt that the term "going viral" originated in the context of YouTube videos, and there is a whole media ecosystem that is largely independent of the traditional forms of media production.
ReplyDeleteNow whether any of this content represents the kind of subversive power of Jes Grew to undermine Atonism is a little less apparent--there's sure a lot of content on YouTube that we could label "Atonist" (or at least conservative/reactionary/anti-postmodern). But it's also a platform that represents a remarkable degree of ACCESS for an artist with a radical new vision to put their work out into the world. Reed writes a lot about the role of various gatekeepers in suppressing Jes Grew, and to the extent that YouTube and Tik-Tok and other such platforms are democratic, they should represent at least a fertile field in which elements of Jes Grew can emerge.
Hey Tucker, I find your example to be a great connection between the book and real life. I like how you walked us through the corruption of Youtube with specific examples. You point out how people watched the old, "Jes Grew" videos, even though they were poor quality, but I wonder if they still would have watched those same videos back then if they had access to the "Atonist" videos. I think even those old viewers would watch the Atonist videos, as they are generally much easier to digest and find. Overall, great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Tucker! I'm reminded of Docx' thesis that postmodernism declined because the value of culture is defined by how popular something is. Mr. Beast's content is certainly popular, but there are definitely more genuine and meaningful creators out there, which I believe is more meaningful. In a sense, I guess he is a TA, spreading "bad" content and sucking the life out of the internet.
ReplyDeleteHi Tucker! This is a very interesting modern example of the Jes Grew dynamic. I can definitely understand how as Youtube became more and more commercialized, a lot of the raw "organic culture" feeling might have been lost, because the biggest creators can have such an overedited, industry feel. However, I also think that in the case of Youtube that might not have been a bad thing. Youtube as a whole now carries even more organic culture than before, and is often a way for creators to be empowered in what they do, profiting from their authenticity instead of being exploited by a middleman.
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