A BOGUS JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF YOUTUBE
ALEX WINTER RETURNS WITH NEW TECH-DOC THE YOUTUBE EFFECT, AS SCARY AS ANYTHING YOU’LL SEE THIS YEAR
IT’S APT THAT The Youtube Effect is produced by The Terminator veteran Gale Anne Hurd. Because it’s a full-strength tech nightmare, which will have you checking under your bed for malignant algorithms. “Ed Solomon (co-writer of the Bill & Ted films) came to the Tribeca screening and didn’t really know what he was in for,” chuckles Alex Winter, formerly Bill S. Preston, Esq., and now a maker of terrific documentaries. “I saw him afterwards, like, ‘You want to grab dinner?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m gonna grab a drink. That was a horror movie!’”
The film rewinds to 2005, when Youtube was launched, offering up jolly viral videos (remember Charlie Bit My Finger?). Then it zips through the intervening years, showing how it’s swollen like some unstoppable beast, helping disseminate conspiracy theories, offering safe harbour to radicals, and arguably boosting the storming of the US Capitol. It’s now a virtually lawless platform, with even kids’ programming targeted by hackers, who in 2020 spliced disturbing images into Peppa Pig.
“I’ve made a bunch of tech docs; I’m pretty tech-agnostic,” says Winter. “But we followed the thread of the narrative and that’s where it took us. I knew there were really negative implications of the platform. But I didn’t really know the full extent of its influence.” He’s keen to stress the positives: “They’re bringing information to people, knocking walls down and democratising a lot of our culture.” But with very little in the way of content-moderation, it’s less clear than ever where this brave new world is going to take us.
One thing’s for certain: Youtube is here to stay. The documentary features a boy named Ryan who has been astronomically famous on the platform since he was four; his yearly income is nearly $17 million. Youtube’s homegrown stars are emblematic of how it’s taking on traditional media, even Hollywood. “I have three boys that have only been watching Youtube for years,” Winter says. “I don’t think people understand the scale — there are more people watching media on this platform than any other form of media that exists anywhere in the world. Youtube and Google have enough money to buy all of the studios and streamers without batting an eye, and not even lose much of their profit base. The question is, do they want to?” Start biting your finger now.