YouTube and Radical Change

Control and power over audiences and content within global digital networks cannot be reduced to a replication of the twentieth-century social order and its broadcast media systems. The power to influence the beliefs and wants of individuals is limited by the enhanced agency and relative autonomy of networked individuals and YouTube audiences. Networked forms of amateur videography represent a radical change in who can say what, where. In the following I argue that, given our shared context of climate crisis and civilisational collapse, media systems such as YouTube contain within them unconstrained voices that represent the potential for radical change. Radical change is ill-defined among scholars. For our purposes here it is best thought of as the heretical. Under capitalism, ideas such as collective ownership are seen as heretical. Under the type of brutal authoritarianism we witness arising in the United States, kindness and empathy are seen as radical, heretical values. To understand the potential impact that YouTube embodies we first must correctly model the overall social context and the character of the Internet itself. In this essay I argue that the social context YouTube users find themselves in is one of impending civilisational collapse due to climate change. I also argue that within YouTube and across the Internet, we can readily witness the relatively unconstrained voices of ordinary people as they challenge the status quo. The context of unravelling social, political, and environmental conditions provides a motive to use a relatively unconstrained media system – Internet plus YouTube – to voice discontent and create alternatives to corporate and state-driven culture. Therein lies our hope: unconstrained networked voices resistant to authoritarian powers. In a time of great crisis, the possibility of radical change is found wherever we have a voice. Media platforms such as YouTube are shared locations where people get together and watch videos and express ideas that promote all manner of social change. YouTuber channels promoting awareness about social issues, such as the environmental scientist Simon Clark, attract over 657,000 subscribers. Likewise, YouTube connects videographers to audiences seeking all manner of political and personal change. In a world beset by multiple existential crises, any place that provides ordinary people with a voice is also a place of hope. The past century demonstrated capitalism’s ability to co-opt the autonomy, creativity, and productivity of individuals to its own ends. Consider, for example, how every instance of resistance, such as the 1960s’ ‘flower child’ moment, hippie culture, or punk rock, were reincorporated into capitalism as a new series of lifestyle products and services. Within the Internet, capitalism continues to co-opt human creativity. Yet the very tools and capabilities that it has promoted can also be used to resist, subvert, pirate, and hack control. One need only search for videos about the famous Barbie doll to witness how amateur and professional videographers use YouTube to modify, create, and circulate cultural objects that undermine the priorities of capitalism (see Williamson; Greenpeace UK; The More We Know). For example, Greenpeace UK and The More We Know posted videos on YouTube in which they used Barbie and Ken to publicly call out Mattel’s unethical manufacturing practices and devastating environmental impacts. The manufacture, distribution, and disposal of 60 million Barbie dolls each year contribute to pollution and an estimated 3.4 metric tons of CO₂ (Briscoe). Within YouTube we witness a growing form of ‘toy’ or ‘craft’ activism where individuals and artists use commercial toys like Barbie and Ken to challenge and address societal issues (see Singleton; Heljakka). But can anything fundamental change within local or global social orders because of networked ideography? If we are to gain insight into the impact of YouTube and the Internet we need a reasonably accurate picture of the general state and direction of global civilisation. Context greatly determines the motivations for use. What is the context of YouTube’s content creators? Apologists for capitalism such as Jeremy Rifkin, Don Tapscott, Kevin Kelly, and Chris Anderson envision a new and improved economic system emerging around us (Yeritsain 6). According to these apologists, capitalism will repair itself. Or, as Wolfgang Streeck argues, capitalism is “disintegrating before our eyes” and is no longer able to underwrite a stable society. There is overwhelming evidence that validates Streeck’s observation that the incumbent management of capitalism is “uniquely clueless” (35). What is our immediate future going to be like under conditions of climate change and the crises of capitalism? Pessimistic realism argues that we may be facing a long period of social, political, and economic instability and the deterioration and collapse of a wide variety of physical infrastructure. If this model of the world order and its immediate future is reasonably accurate, it raises the central question herein: can people use enhanced capabilities of communication, cultural production, global distribution, and collective action in a time of extraordinary crisis to bring about radical change? Beyond Capitalism 2.0 The political economist Streeck argues that we are entering a prolonged period of systemic disintegration wherein people lack collective political capabilities. Streeck’s theory of change argues that we are entering a global condition of disorderly social instability that is not subject to change because people cannot act politically in a collective manner (“The Post-Capitalist” 69). There is no shortage of reasons for seeing the current state of individuals as substantially de-politicised. Union membership, voting, and group participation in all forms have been declining for well over half a century. Both liberal and postmodern theoreticians speak of a hollowing-out of democracy as citizens lose the ability to influence local politicians, politicians lose the ability to influence party leaders, and nations lose political autonomy to international institutions and transnational regulatory regimes. Zygmunt Bauman aptly describes the planetary state of affairs as buffeted by unconstrained conflict among discordant powers, a loss of political control over the elite, and powerless political institutions (52). The convicted felon Donald Trump’s rise to political power is highly suggestive of such a failure of control by political institutions. Bauman stays true to the Marxist theory of change and bemoans the Internet’s erosion of collective political action. He claims that there is a widespread tendency to replace effective participation in institutionalised politics with woefully inadequate experimentation in “electronically mediated quasi-or-inchoate/incipient politics” (Bauman 52). The Internet, Bauman argues, enfeebled political action. Of interest here is the common line of thinking within Marxist theories of change. Both the otherwise insightful political economist Streeck and the inspiring philosopher of postmodernism Bauman defer to dystopic media theory to support their argument that radical change is stalled as a result of the politically debilitating effect of the Internet. But what if Streeck and Bauman have misread the individual’s political potential within networked environments? Certain strands of media, political economy, and postmodern theory argue that the Internet reduces the possibility of collective action because it fosters a politically disempowering individualisation (Dean 45). Under networked conditions, social life is said to be highly individualistic, anti-collectivist, and therefore politically impotent. Again and again we encounter the familiar claim that can be summed up in the formula: capitalism plus the Internet equals no change. Yet the Internet and services such as YouTube have enabled a form of enhanced agency that partially yet significantly escapes the domination of capital. Thinking about the Internet’s radical potential requires that we take Fredric Jameson’s words seriously; we must do the “impossible” and grasp with our minds “the demonstrably baleful features of capitalism along with its extraordinary and liberating dynamism” (47). Dystopic media theory empties networked cultural production and general Internet use from all positions except domination. It reduces online communication and storytelling to a mere reproduction of exploitative labour relations. Such negative appraisals of the Internet’s potential invariably leads to overstated claims that fail to offer a satisfactory account of the resistive and alternative voices heard within YouTube, voices that stand in contradiction to the interests of domination and capital. One need only look to the activist Greta Thunberg’s YouTube channel to see such resistance in action. For individuals to be politically effective they must be able to participate in the production and circulation of culture – shared meanings. In the twentieth century individuals were the recipients of images, words, and stories that were produced by the market and the state. This established the predominantly one-way media monologue that formed a highly constrained mass society. Yet under the present condition of climate crisis and rising rates of extinction we find an increase in the plurality of voices and an erosion of social order. In this time of civilisational collapse both the dominant media system and our motivations to communicate have radically changed. The switch from the broadcast media system of the 1900s to the networked media system of the 2000s gave ordinary people cost-effective tools for modifying state and corporate messages as well as creating their own words, images, videos, and meanings. Digital systems enhance personal agency. Thus, great crisis – the crisis of the digital age under the pressu