The University of YouTube: the medium, the user, photography and the search for really useful knowledge. [Internet Publication]

This contribution to the Unthinking Photography blog is the result of my attempt to understand photographic theory by YouTube, which took the shape of an online errand of forking paths, full of interesting digressions, leading of course everywhere and nowhere. After several evenings of semi distracted browsing and a solid half a day of clicking and watching I had to put a stop to it. Just how many hours of work or leisure should one dedicate to the world’s third most visited website with over one billion users and five billion videos watched everyday single day and 300 hours of video uploaded every minute . By what methods is it all to be navigated and made sense of, or perhaps making sense is itself an older linear and possibly generational logic overturned by the flat ontology of digital archives and the simple interface mode of screen replacement. As a strategy to avoid literal exhaustion my quest to find photography via YouTube took a reflexive turn towards the question of what is YouTube and does it deliver really useful knowledge in our period of accelerated and precarious cultural consumption.