July 11, 2023
FILM: THE YOUTUBE EFFECT
DIRECTED BY: ALEX WINTER
STARRING: CALEB CAIN, STEVE CHEN, ANTHONY PADILLA
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
This is a monster movie. No, really. The monster is YouTube and the wrath it has caused upon the world. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, and Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, YouTube is the fearsome creature which has been stalking us throughout the 21st Century. Did I get your attention?
The new film The YouTube Effect from writer/director Alex Winter takes us on a journey of the birth and development of the massive social instigator that is YouTube. It holds nothing back as it illustrates the effect the social media site has had on our culture and how it isn’t done invading our world yet. Winter begins with the site’s early incarnation as co-founded by Steve Chen. Born in Taiwan, Chen and his cohorts created a site that was to advance a basic idea they had: asking people who was hot and who wasn’t. That’s it. That’s the germ of the idea. By 2005 they developed YouTube as we know it to essentially allow people to share videos. Soon it became an international hit and was bought by Google. While I like Winter’s look at the site’s history, this section of the film could have used a bit more detail as the initial steps, probably of interest to website developers, is glossed over.
However, these early years are not what interest Winter. Rather he interviews content creators, academics, and CEOs to explore how YouTube became such as major social tool. He does a great job of tracking the site’s draw toward people on the fringe who would become internet celebrities and social movers. As seemingly innocent as much of this content appeared at the time (cat videos, music videos, etc.) it eventually gained a power to transform our culture through, as Winter and his interviewees describe, hate speech, fake news, and misinformation. They discuss disturbing live streams and videos geared towards kids, such as those encouraging children to kill themselves. Of course, we all know that YouTube (and Facebook and Twitter…) has also been a site for extremism and conspiracy theories. Winter includes clips from Trump’s rise to power as well as the January 6th uprising. It’s all pretty disturbing and depressing.
So, what is the value of this documentary? Is seeing the extreme ugliness of a social media platform offering us anything we don’t already know? Well, I think like watching films about the hubris that built the Titanic, the Holocaust, and the horrors associated with all wars, The YouTube Effect serves as a warning as to how something so seemingly innocuous in its original intent can actually grow to become something which changes the world in some of the worst ways possible. Winter suggests there needs to be litigation surrounding the internet and even suggests this should go to the Supreme Court (really, now??!!)
Overall, this is a very sobering and searing look at one of our most used (the site gets billions of views each day) tools. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience of watching the film but it did provide a much wider perspective on YouTube that most people probably don’t have and yet should be aware of during this challenging cultural time.
The YouTube Effect opens July 12th at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. Alex Winter will be in-person for a Q&A after the 7PM screening that day.
FILM: THE YOUTUBE EFFECT
DIRECTED BY: ALEX WINTER
STARRING: CALEB CAIN, STEVE CHEN, ANTHONY PADILLA
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
This is a monster movie. No, really. The monster is YouTube and the wrath it has caused upon the world. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, and Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, YouTube is the fearsome creature which has been stalking us throughout the 21st Century. Did I get your attention?
The new film The YouTube Effect from writer/director Alex Winter takes us on a journey of the birth and development of the massive social instigator that is YouTube. It holds nothing back as it illustrates the effect the social media site has had on our culture and how it isn’t done invading our world yet. Winter begins with the site’s early incarnation as co-founded by Steve Chen. Born in Taiwan, Chen and his cohorts created a site that was to advance a basic idea they had: asking people who was hot and who wasn’t. That’s it. That’s the germ of the idea. By 2005 they developed YouTube as we know it to essentially allow people to share videos. Soon it became an international hit and was bought by Google. While I like Winter’s look at the site’s history, this section of the film could have used a bit more detail as the initial steps, probably of interest to website developers, is glossed over.
However, these early years are not what interest Winter. Rather he interviews content creators, academics, and CEOs to explore how YouTube became such as major social tool. He does a great job of tracking the site’s draw toward people on the fringe who would become internet celebrities and social movers. As seemingly innocent as much of this content appeared at the time (cat videos, music videos, etc.) it eventually gained a power to transform our culture through, as Winter and his interviewees describe, hate speech, fake news, and misinformation. They discuss disturbing live streams and videos geared towards kids, such as those encouraging children to kill themselves. Of course, we all know that YouTube (and Facebook and Twitter…) has also been a site for extremism and conspiracy theories. Winter includes clips from Trump’s rise to power as well as the January 6th uprising. It’s all pretty disturbing and depressing.
So, what is the value of this documentary? Is seeing the extreme ugliness of a social media platform offering us anything we don’t already know? Well, I think like watching films about the hubris that built the Titanic, the Holocaust, and the horrors associated with all wars, The YouTube Effect serves as a warning as to how something so seemingly innocuous in its original intent can actually grow to become something which changes the world in some of the worst ways possible. Winter suggests there needs to be litigation surrounding the internet and even suggests this should go to the Supreme Court (really, now??!!)
Overall, this is a very sobering and searing look at one of our most used (the site gets billions of views each day) tools. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience of watching the film but it did provide a much wider perspective on YouTube that most people probably don’t have and yet should be aware of during this challenging cultural time.
The YouTube Effect opens July 12th at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. Alex Winter will be in-person for a Q&A after the 7PM screening that day.