Pop Culture: Youtube, art and Pop Culture

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Finally, we are going to talk about songs that have become iconic either because they became a meme or just because they've become incredibly famous. The most notable example of that, is the song Gangnam Style from the K-pop singer Psy, that has today 2.7billion views and was the first video in YouTube history to reach the symbolic 1billion view milestone. One other really notable example is the song “Baby” from Justin Bieber for its incredibly high amount of dislikes (5.7mln likes/7.2mln dislikes). Other songs have even become memes or part of YouTube history, for example the chubby guy, nickednamed as Numa Numa, making his very one interpretation of the inconic song “Dragostea din Tei” from the Moldovan band O-Zone. We can also think of the Nyan Cat, the “He-man heyeayea”, more lately Youtube was only about the song “Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen” or “We are number one”. All these songs are also part of Pop Culture and Art from the sole reason, that they are music and that they triggered emotions and feels inside the people watching it. And all these songs have been turned into a huge number of parodies and people showing their own way of using the original meme to make it a meme, thus a part of Popular culture. Therefore, people are making art, people are making youtube and people are making pop culture.

And outside of music and other more conventional types of art displayed on youtube made by the people for the people, we will see in which way we can consider other types of content on YouTube as art and at what extent people are making YouTube.

What can be considered as art on YouTube : The people's contribution.

As we said earlier, music in all its forms is one of the most watched type of content of YouTube, from casually listening to music to watch proficient musicians using their knowledge to make creative video : This is art. People are also sharing dancing videos, performances and so on.

But people on YouTube make and watch other kinds of videos, from fails, to « lolcats », to gaming channels, humor channels, prank channels, scientific content, guys breaking iPhones for fun, or even cutting things with a red hot 1000° knife, there is tons of ways to entertain yourself. Which of them are art, which are them aren't ? At what extent does it make people contribute to art ?

First, let's talk about the type of material closest to conventional art : Humour/Comedy. Humor and comedy content is one of the most trendy things on YouTube, either to watch or to make. More and more people, today, are trying to create YouTube channel to make either some podcasts about everyday life topics, or to make short movies depiciting funny situations. A few of them became successful, many others didn't. But first, what makes a comedy channel successful ? Being creative, being good at speaking in public, having some charisma and some good editing and equipment, and last but not least : A good concept. The first example I'm going to take here is the « React to » series from the Fine Brothers Entertainment, based on a group of kids, adults, elders or youtubers reacting to trendy things like music videos, video games, fun videos and so on. They have built a solid community, although their credibility had been shattered quite a bit after the hosts of the channel wanted to copyright the word « React » on YouTube. What makes this type of content successful is to be « triggered » by the reactions of these groups of people, like being offended, or by finding the reaction really funny. For instance, it's odd to see elders play video games : it's creative and it's successful. Another type of comedy content, short( 3-10 minute long) movies is the type of content on YouTube closest to art as we know it today, as it is an audiovisual work in which actors (mostly YouTubers that are amateur in this field) are playing, telling a funny story that is displayed to the public. Is it art because it is funny and stirs the feelings of the viewers ? Is it art because the audiovisual content itself is made professionaly ? The answer is very subjective and anyone can interpret it their way.

The next type of content we're going to talk about is gaming. Indeed, on YouTube, gaming videos are one of the most watched type of videos on the platform, from simple gameplay videos, to montages, to eSport livestreams and so on. A neverending growing number of people are watching this kind of videos. How can gaming/videogames can be considered a work of art or be associated to art ? Nowadays many videogames are made from companies using huge budgets, comparable to the money used in movie blockbusters. Games Grand Theft Auto V or the Call of Duty franchise are a good example of why so much money is spent on making a game : players are always more demanding to their favourite videogames franchise, the machines are always getting more powerful, and developers want to create a unique story with a unique setting and gameplay that is appealing enough to players to buy them. An open-world game, like The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim, provides a large map in a mediaval/viking-like setting and the player is a dragon-slayer. This can be a work of art, the beauty of the game and the soundtrack are emphasizing the artistic side of a video-game. Therefore we can say that posting gaming content on YouTube can be considered as posting Art on YouTube. But other games let you being the artist in game, and the best example of this genre is the sandbox game Minecraft, where you are in a cubic open-world and you can craft countless types of basic ressources to survive. The creative mode gives the player unlimited ressources to build any kind of thing they can imagine. And we can also consider these creations as Art and as Art on YouTube, as the Minecraft community is very large and it's really easy to find content of this game on the platform. It is art, because a someone made something and displayed it to over people to make them react.

To conclude...

On YouTube anything can be art in the eye of the beholder. We saw thoughout this essay, first, that YouTube and its YouTubers are helping pushing art forward by making conventional artisitic content creative and different, like musical challenges or funny music videos or clips, making art something that you can shape any way you want. By doing as such, some creative musical content can go down in Pop Culture. Other types of music videos you can find on YouTube and that can be treated as art for the impact they had on people are memes, like Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, or We are number one, or back then in 2012, Gangnam Style. This kind of musical content has very fastly went down in Pop Culture because they've