![]() and who can forget Logan Paul's "Japanese Suicide Forest" debacle? These eruptions in the YouTube community are still being discussed by creators on the channel. Winter provides brief flashes of other famous (and sometimes controversial) YouTube figures/events: Shane Dawson, Tana Mongeau, James Charles. But YouTube is too vast an eco-system to be summed up by its most high-profile and politically-charged controversies. ![]() Winter picks out some of the major YouTube moments: The Arab Spring, the 2020 protests, the New Zealand mosque shooting (live-streamed), Elliot Rodger, and the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It's only 15 years of time, but so much has happened. (YouTube's humble beginnings echo all the other startup legends, college dropouts with an idea, setting up in their parents' garage.) Originally designed as a video version of the website "Hot or Not?" (what is it with social media behemoths starting with sleazy little concepts?) YouTube quickly took off into the stratosphere, so much so that even a couple of years later, it was hard to imagine the world without it. Winter interviews people from tech, writers who cover tech, as well as the original co-founder Steve Chen. To quote Bo Burnham's song again: "It was always the plan / To put the world in your hand." The 21st-century version of bread and circuses. Maybe that's the point: if you don't give people time to think, they won't cause problems for you as you lug your money to the bank. We are in the whirlwind right now, and it's hard sometimes to get perspective on what the hell is actually going on. Recent history moves so fast that the now-ancient (i.e., the 1990s) term "24-hour news cycle" takes on an entirely new meaning. If you follow YouTube, big tech, or any controversies surrounding social media, you will be familiar with everything here. "The YouTube Effect" is a chronicle of extremely recent history and doesn't cover much new ground. He was made by YouTube (Smosh launched on YouTube in the prehistoric year 2005). He also speaks against his own interests. He's a powerful interview subject because he speaks from the inside. ![]() Padilla is one of the interview subjects in "The YouTube Effect," and he explains how the algorithm works and why it's a huge problem. ![]() "The algorithm is a beast that really can't be tamed once it's been unleashed and it's already been unleashed." In Alex Winter's new documentary "The YouTube Effect," these words-probably not a surprise to anyone at this point-are said by Anthony Padilla, founder of the YouTube channel Smosh, a very successful early adapter of the platform. ![]()
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