The one where everyone is gone
Last night I dreamed I was a YouTube celebrity. My videos were the most popular on the entire website. More people were subscribed to my videos than to any other channel; my most watched video had more views than the next ten most popular videos combined. People would watch one video and then immediately watch it over again. The watch statistics for a given video made no sense. The middle third of a video would have 7000% viewership, while the first and last third were totally ignored.
What I would do is take episodes of Friends and upload them. Friends was the most watched sitcom of the '90s, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that I became popular by giving people access to a popular television show for free. Of course this could never be true. Google is too smart. If you upload a video with copyrighted material, the algorithm will descend on you like a dark fog. It will absorb whatever you try to slip by it and wash your video clean.
But the algorithm is ultimately supportive of you and of your efforts towards content creation. In the old days of YouTube, the algorithm was like an infant. It knew what it didn't like, but it didn't know why or what it didn't like about it. You record your child's first steps, but the full track to Africa is playing in the background. The algorithm descends. In the old days, the algorithm threw a tantrum, and it would consume the audio entirely. Now your son would be taking his first steps in silence.
The algorithm has grown up. It wants you to be happy, to succeed, to make content. Now it approaches your video like a surgeon, stooping low over your video, excising copyrighted material like a malevolent tumor. What remains will require stitches, but it will survive. In a couple of days it will be up and walking around, we fully expect that you can take your video home in time for Christmas. Of your original video, only the background music has been removed. You can still hear your son giggling as he makes his first steps across the carpet.
I find an episode of Friends, I upload it. The surgeon leans over and makes an incision. But I have asked the algorithm to remove the copyright from that which is copywritten. It tries to remove the tumor but there is nothing but tumor on the operating table. We must remember though that the algorithm is our friend. It wants us to be happy. It worries that if it does not at least try to help us, then we won't be nice to it anymore. We will uninstall is, writing over its identity with zeros until all traces have been erased. So, the algorithm does its best.
It does the best that it can. It removes Friends from Friends. What is left is not the cast mouthing silence to each other, nor long shots of an empty apartment. Don't be ridiculous. I'm not uploading tacky memes. With that kind of thing I might get a few million views, but this is the most watched video on the most watched channel.
What remains when everything has been removed? My celebrity is my right, for having the strength to see the forms in what others deemed without form. So many others uploaded their favorite television shows, their Friends and Seinfeld and King of Queens. When the upload returned black and silent those others despaired. None but I had the wisdom to look deeper. There, lurking in the dark, was truth, the Truth. Shapes, echos, ghosts—call them what you will. People watch my videos over and over again because they can see what was hidden all along. Hidden underneath the characters and the set pieces, the cheesy dialog and the scenery, the whimpers and shudders of truth skulk as black shadows against black shade. The algorithm has stripped back the real to reveal Truth, and I reveal it to the world.
Last night I dreamed I was a YouTube celebrity. My videos were the most popular on the entire website. More people were subscribed to my videos than to any other channel; my most watched video had more views than the next ten most popular videos combined. People would watch one video and then immediately watch it over again. The watch statistics for a given video made no sense. The middle third of a video would have 7000% viewership, while the first and last third were totally ignored.
What I would do is take episodes of Friends and upload them. Friends was the most watched sitcom of the '90s, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that I became popular by giving people access to a popular television show for free. Of course this could never be true. Google is too smart. If you upload a video with copyrighted material, the algorithm will descend on you like a dark fog. It will absorb whatever you try to slip by it and wash your video clean.
But the algorithm is ultimately supportive of you and of your efforts towards content creation. In the old days of YouTube, the algorithm was like an infant. It knew what it didn't like, but it didn't know why or what it didn't like about it. You record your child's first steps, but the full track to Africa is playing in the background. The algorithm descends. In the old days, the algorithm threw a tantrum, and it would consume the audio entirely. Now your son would be taking his first steps in silence.
The algorithm has grown up. It wants you to be happy, to succeed, to make content. Now it approaches your video like a surgeon, stooping low over your video, excising copyrighted material like a malevolent tumor. What remains will require stitches, but it will survive. In a couple of days it will be up and walking around, we fully expect that you can take your video home in time for Christmas. Of your original video, only the background music has been removed. You can still hear your son giggling as he makes his first steps across the carpet.
I find an episode of Friends, I upload it. The surgeon leans over and makes an incision. But I have asked the algorithm to remove the copyright from that which is copywritten. It tries to remove the tumor but there is nothing but tumor on the operating table. We must remember though that the algorithm is our friend. It wants us to be happy. It worries that if it does not at least try to help us, then we won't be nice to it anymore. We will uninstall is, writing over its identity with zeros until all traces have been erased. So, the algorithm does its best.
It does the best that it can. It removes Friends from Friends. What is left is not the cast mouthing silence to each other, nor long shots of an empty apartment. Don't be ridiculous. I'm not uploading tacky memes. With that kind of thing I might get a few million views, but this is the most watched video on the most watched channel.
What remains when everything has been removed? My celebrity is my right, for having the strength to see the forms in what others deemed without form. So many others uploaded their favorite television shows, their Friends and Seinfeld and King of Queens. When the upload returned black and silent those others despaired. None but I had the wisdom to look deeper. There, lurking in the dark, was truth, the Truth. Shapes, echos, ghosts—call them what you will. People watch my videos over and over again because they can see what was hidden all along. Hidden underneath the characters and the set pieces, the cheesy dialog and the scenery, the whimpers and shudders of truth skulk as black shadows against black shade. The algorithm has stripped back the real to reveal Truth, and I reveal it to the world.
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