Website / YouTube

For a list of memes on YouTube, see Memes.YouTube. For recommendations, see YouTube Recommendations.

YouTube is a video sharing site that has achieved worldwide popularity since it launched in 2005. While the official purpose of the site is to host amateur videos and promotional clips, it is unofficially the place where you can watch copyrighted materials from all types of mediums, search for random / odd clips and/or check out the latest blog entries and videos from notable users. It was founded by programming students Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim; the idea came to Karim when he had trouble finding clips of two major events in early 2004: The South Asian tsunami and later Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction at that year's Super Bowl halftime show. Yes, Janet Jackson's exposed nipple helped lead to the creation of YouTube.

Prior to Google's purchase of the company in late 2006, YouTube was a much smaller place. It hosted communication between individuals, who used it visually in otherwise the same manner as they had previously used Usenet or IRC. YouTube was also once the host of a number of people who had alternative news and media shows, but the opinions of such people were often extreme, or otherwise politically incorrect, and most of them have now been banned.

Users can upload their videos on whatever subject they want (unless it violates the "Community Guidelines" or someone files a copyright claim). The quality often ranges from below Ed Wood-type works to studio quality materials, depending on what it is. Surprisingly, a lot of the personal videos of individuals often do have something to say that are actually worth watching and listening to. Some of the material is actually supplied by studios, including music videos which were uploaded by authorized agents of the record company (alongside dozens of nearly identical copies uploaded by delirious users.) It should be noted that YouTube is also a place to watch some of the movies and shows that have never officially been released, or are downright unavailable anywhere else. Same goes for rare music.

Speaking of said rare music, if while browsing YouTube, you come across something you like, it's generally a good idea to download a permanent copy of it. Deletion of videos for various reasons is a common occurrence mainly fueled by copyright holders. As described above, YouTube also now has probably the most rabid copyright enforcement on the Internet, which greatly exacerbates the fleeting nature of its content. Indeed, following a few links on this very site may easily result in seeing a warning that a certain video has been deleted (along with its poster's account) for warnings of copyright infringement. This has been further exacerbated by what are known as 'content-ID trolls': people who submit false copyright infringement reports in order to have a user's video(s) pulled and their accounts banned.

Several online sources (including the BBC World Service) claim that anywhere from 6 to 36 hours of video is uploaded to the site — every minute. Everyone probably has a favorite video(s) or their favorite videographer with his own channel.

There's been a serious and somewhat harsh crackdown on copyright infringement over the past couple of years; expect to click to see a video, such as an Abridged Series, only to find there's no audio, but the video is still intact (for the moment) along with a large amount of rage in the comments section, and maybe a Samaritan posting a link to some foreign site unaffected by American law (or it's another site forcing you to take a survey to watch a video that's impossible to see anywhere else). YouTube can't be blamed for this, though; they're facing multi-billion dollar lawsuits from entertainment companies, which leads to videos being taken down under the DMCA unless someone contests they're to be Fair Use (or not even infringing copyright), even if this includes in mistakingly removing videos from official music channels (on at least two occasions) in the process. This has led to the phrase "Watch it before it gets taken down" for any rarely seen copyright show or movie. The end result is that many people who rely on parodying or reviewing copyrighted works (which has been long-recognized as fair use) have largely jumped ship to more creator-friendly sites such as Revver or (before its shutdown) blip.tv. This has been mollified of late with entertainment companies embracing the internet model more and uploading their shows and music videos on an ad-supported on-demand basis, although there remain angry comments on these videos bemoaning the fact their authors can't willingly and knowingly infringe copyright anymore, it's YouTube after all.

YouTube has basically held to the standard that they're not liable for user-supplied content, and because they do promptly remove clips when a copyright infringement notice is received, the courts have agreed with them. Viacom's lawsuit for over a billion dollars against YouTube was tossed out because of the DMCA safe-harbor provisions that exempt a website from being liable for infringement caused by content supplied by users as long as it promptly removes it when a copyright holder complains. YouTube, however, has made some changes including obtaining a compulsory license ^note Yes, we do mean "compulsory license." There are three ways to get a license from ASCAP. (1) If you fit one of the general license classes and you're a small licensee, you pay the general set fee; (2) You don't fit the general classes or you're big enough you think you can negotiate a better license on a special-case basis directly with them, you contact ASCAP and negotiate with them; (3) You can't get a negotiated license or don't like the terms, then you use the Antitrust Settlement terms the U.S. Justice Department got from ASCAP back in the 1940s, you file a petition with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, and a master from the court will make a determination. The third one is the compulsory license that YouTube obtained. from ASCAP which covers all ASCAP-licensed music that appear in any clip posted on YouTube.

On any given day, you will find:

• Epic Fail videos, which mainly consist of someone trying and failing to pull off a stunt.
• Snarky blogs by online users.
• The latest trailer for a major movie release, usually copied off a website.
• Cat videos.
• Durability tests wherein an electronic device is either smashed with a sledgehammer, lit on fire, or shot with a gun.
• Several videos from a recently-held sporting event (bonus points if it involves a ridiculously improbable shot or goal).
• Political commentary videos.
• Videos promoting conspiracy theories, usually something along the lines of a musician being a member of The Illuminati.
• Parts of the latest episode of America's Next Top Model.
• American Idol/Britain's Got Talent performances.
• A spam filter for the comments section.
• A video that's been marked as age-restricted despite the content being similar to non-restricted videos.
• A video that had its audio removed due to one of its music tracks not being authorized by a major record label.
• A video removed for terms of use violation (most times for obvious reasons, though other times, it's anyone's guess why).
• A video removed for copyright infringement (often times, the user would get a warning strike for that, And then they are forced to watch The Happy Tree Friends episode: Youtube Copyright School and take the trivia questions about Copyright).
• A video removed because the YouTube account associated with that video is deleted (for example: The account was banned due to Multiple or Severe Community Guideline Violation, or Multiple or Severe Copyright Viloation, or they just closed their account).
• A video removed by the user of his or her own accord for reasons unknown.
• A video set to private for inexplicable reasons even though it was public when you added it to your playlist.
• Videos of people doing everyday, ordinary things, or just playing around.
• Videos complaining about YouTube censorship.
• Screamers and Jump Scares in general^(protip) Reading comments before watching the video may help people to avoid nasty surprises (therefore, a video with disabled comments is a further reason to get suspicious); additionally, as of March 2012, an update allows to see thumbnails for any given moment in the video by moving the cursor, thus helping further with spotting a screamer in advance.
• The occasional Rick Roll.
• Youtube Poop.
• Video game Lets Plays and walkthroughs.
• A video of someone taking something out of a box.
• A prank that's not related to Screamers.
• Videos with millions of views about people talking about absolutely anything while playing video games.
• Videos that begin with a montage of parts of games put to a song as an intro.
• Videos that end by asking the viewer to subscribe to the channel.
• Pony videos.
• Animated Music Videos.
• Strange videos featuring a tall, faceless businessman.

For better or worse, the site attracts a large amount of discussion and cringe-worthy comments from users. A very popular trend is to insult everyone who clicked the "dislike" button for a video. The usual format is "(number of people who clicked the dislike) (insult)." (Note, though, that the positioning of the "Like" button just below the Play button makes it ridiculously easy to fill your "videos liked" bin with stuff you didn't necessarily want there, and "disliking" a video you just accidentally liked is easier than editing your preferences.) Another popular trend is blaming anyone who dislikes a video on fans of another popular artist or work or the more ridiculous claim that a single person, usually said artist, created multiple accounts to lay multiple dislikes on a single video. Also, if you look really hard, you'll find a few Only Sane Users who think that such trends and comments are stupid.

On websites where you can directly link to the video, you can also append a few functions to the end of the web address. For example, you can append "&t=[time]" to any Youtube link to move the video to that predefined position, e.g., "&t=1m20s" will take the video to the 1:20 position in the video automatically when the user clicks on it. Not entirely valuable, just a handy hint.

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Very notable videos

• Several massively influential web series began on and were hosted by Youtube. These include:
  • =3, who reviews the latest Viral Videos in his show called =3. He also made music videos under Your Favorite Martian until the project was retired.
  • The Annoying Orange, whose first video al-Nye-heh-heh-heh-heh-one has more than 90 mil-Nye-heh-heh-heh-heh-lion views. Is now in a major television deal with Cartoon Network.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd started off on YouTube in 2006 before moving to ScrewAttack after his videos started becoming more popular.
  • The Nostalgia Critic, along with Doug Walker's Five Second Movies
    • Likewise, The Spoony Experiment got its start on Youtube as well before being affiliated with That Guy with the Glasses.
  • Maffew's Botchamania is a long-running (and quite amusing) look at professional wrestling's least professional moments. After Maffew got his first two YouTube accounts suspended, he eventually started up his own site (which features many classic Botchamanias alongside brand new ones), and is still uploading brand new videos to YouTube via his third account.
  • Hey! It's Fred!, created as a short series, and was eventually adapted into at least two Nickelodeon original movies and an official Nickelodeon TV show.
  • lonelygirl15, which gained massive media recognition for being one of the first scripted web series to reach a mass audience (the first ever web series with an ongoing plot and real, professional actors was The Spot, which debuted in 1995). It codified most of the tropes seen in later vlog-driven series. It initially being mistaken for an actual, non-fiction vlog also earned it publicity early on.
  • Tales of Mere Existence, a webseries that was popular enough to get noticed by the Showtime Channel, who commissioned a series of the shorts to play during interstitial breaks.
  • Zero Punctuation
• Anna Akana, a filmmaker and actress who makes short films and comedic life advice videos.
• Bill & Doug (aka RVDTito4Life), who were hired by TNA Wrestling to be the hosts of their online show, TNA Addicts.
• Bo Burnham.
• Brotherhood 2.0/Vlogbrothers/Nerdfighters: Hank Green and John Green started a vlogging project. Now they're bigger than Oprah (on the internet). Their fans are known as Nerdfighters, and they fight for all things nerdy and strive not to forget to be awesome. If you like Star Trek, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Harry Potter, John's young adult novels, or anyone with an odd sense of humor, you're probably a Nerdfighter. Hank also writes and performs original songs for the vlog. Go watch. Due to their phenomenal success, they now both own studios where they produce related shows in which they may or may not appear.
  • Crash Course: The brothers' take on Edutainment shows- Hank covers science topics, while John covers the humanities.
  • The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modern re-interpretation of Pride and Prejudice in vlog form. Has since reached its conclusion, but many other similar projects are likely to follow.
  • Hank's Channel: Hank's own personal channel where he posts anything that doesn't fit anywhere else.
  • Hank Games, a Let's Play / Machinima channel in which Hank (and occasionally John) plays video games and provides snarky commentary.
  • The Miracle of Swindon Town, in which John plays the Fifa series while talking about stuff and making up backstories for his players.
  • SciShow, an Edutainment show in which Hank and other people talk about various scientific topics.
  • The Brain Scoop, about animal science, ecology and taxidermy, hosted out of the University of Montana's Philip L. Wright Zoological museum and later the Chicago Field Museum, by Emily Graslie.
  • Sexplanations, a Laci Green-esque sex-positive education channel hosted by Dr. Lindsey Doe.
  • Mental Floss (yes, based on that Mental Floss - John wrote for them for his first job), in which the brothers talk about trivia.
  • Healthcare Triage, an educational medical variety show hosted by Dr. Aaron Carroll.
  • Animal Wonders, a show centered around the Missoula, Montana-based educational wildlife facility of the same name. The host, Jessi Knudsen-Castañeda, gained YouTube notoriety for her appearances with animal guests on SciShow.
  • The Warehouse, a show based out of the Missoula, Montana warehouse for DFTBA Records, the Green brothers' own merchandise platform, hosted by employee Matthew Gaydos.
• Charlie Is So Cool Like. Probably best known for dyeing his whole body purple and singing.
• Charlie The Unicorn (which actually originates from New Grounds). It has more than 40 million views.
• "Chocolate Rain", an original composition by Tay Zonday.
• Daily Grace: A five days a week comedy show hosted and edited by Grace Helbig. Grace Helbig also appears on MyMusic as Idol, and also shoots You Deserve a Drink for Mamrie Hart. Appears often in the background of My Drunk Kitchen. Her show is well loved throughout the YouTube community. Daily Grace had 2.4 million subscribers until Grace's contract with My Damn Channel (the company that owns Daily Grace and paid Grace a flat rate for 5 years) ended. Grace has now started over on It'sGrace and is quickly nearing 1 million subscribers.
  • Grace is also the star of the movie Camp Takota that costars Hannah and Mamrie Hart (no relation).
• The Dancing prisoners of Cebu.
• The Darth Vader Sessions, which oh so hilariously blends footage of Vader with transdubbed lines James Earl Jones had from other roles in other films.
• The propaganda and music of the great Doctor Steel, who's been namechecked by several media outlets and shows, including Jay Leno and MTV.
• Epic Rap Battles of History, a comedy series where historical and fictional characters face off against each other in Battle Rapping.
• Edward Current, an atheist vlogger and humorist who plays a rather extreme Christian character.
• Evan Erwin, aka "mrorangeguy", hosts The Magic Show, which is purported to be the most popular video on Magic: The Gathering culture and highlights from someone not employed by Wizards of the Coast. The channel proved so popular that Wizards now gives him plenty of scoops and designer interviews.
• Geriatric1927, a senior citizen living in the United Kingdom, blogs about his life, his experiences, and his random thoughts. He's one of the of the few YouTube users to gain national media coverage, having been covered by CNN, the BBC and many other national news organizations. Sadly, he passed away in 2014.
• ItsJustSomeRandomGuy, who makes a clever, funny and occasionally moving meta- series mostly involving action figures of popular Marvel Comics and DCU superheroes comparing notes on their respective movie franchises, and usually degenerating in to snarky bickering in the process. Although starting off as parodies of Apple's 'I'm a Mac / I'm a PC' adverts, more recent postings have followed an ongoing narrative focusing on heroes and villains chilling out, with even their downtime leading to chaos and attempts to destroy the universe. See also Green Goblin's blog. Showing impressive vocal range, ItsJustSomeRandomGuy does all the voices (except the female characters, which are provided by ItsJustSomeRandomGal).
• The Joker Blogs are an imaginative, post-Dark Knight series that chronicle the Joker's time in Arkham Asylum. Not only is it well-written, but the actors are amazing (especially the person who does the Joker) and the sheer amount of clever nods to the Batman continuity alone make it worth watching. You can see it here.
• Diamanda Hagan: best known for her Bonekickers reviews.
• Hannah Hart, host of My Drunk Kitchen, in which much is drunk and little is cooked, and the occasional comedy short.
• Jenna Marbles: Former pinup model with a master's degree does comedy and rants, frequently at the same time.
• SF Debris: science fiction reviews that focus on Star Trek.
• World According To Jon: Opinions on nearly everything.
• Justin Bieber, believe it or not, actually began his career when he and his mother posted homemade videos of himself on Youtube (check out his original page here, although you'll have to scroll down a bit in the video list to find those homemade videos).
• Karen Alloy: Smoking hot redhead does hyperactive stream-of-consciousness comedy.
• Katers17 and TheHill88, both stars from the "original" YouTube days and one of the first Youtubers noticed by the mainstream media.
• A nice young lady named Kicesie (username) does non-graphic sex education videos. One video where she talks about oral sex (and just talks - there's nothing in this video you couldn't show in a public library) has upwards of 80 million views.
• Know Your Meme, a website that essentially categorizes and organizes Memetic Mutations.
• Laci Green, host of the show Sex+ and a popular sex educator. She's become something like Dan Savage for teenagers, except with less viewer questions and more one-woman sketch comedy.
• Lutheran Satire: "Teaching the faith by making fun of stuff."
• The Miley And Mandy Show, a series of (usually) random and silly videos posted and starring Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus and her friend, then-current backup dancer Mandy Jiroux. The videos were posted some time between 2008-2009, and at the peak of popularity included a series of Extreme Dance-Offs between Miley, Mandy, and their dancer-friends and member of other dance troupes; one dance-off made its way into a Teen Choice Awards show. Also notable for a small controversy in which M+M playfully mocked a video from a similar Disney-related pair making videos on YouTube, Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez, which was misinterpreted as being a product of a real life Selena/Miley rivalry.
• The Muppet Viral Videos, made by the actual Muppet Studios. Of particular note is their cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody", which got 13 million views in three months. Getting the Muppets back in the limelight this way may have very well helped them get back on the big screen.
• OMG! This girl is sooo hot!, a parody of any video posted to the site that fools users into thinking actual sexual content is contained in the video. Currently has more than 45 million views.
• Offer Void In Nebraska: Despite your having bought the track on original black vinyl, live concert versions, tape, DVD, and Greatest Hits album, when you try to watch the video on YouTube all you get is "This video contains content from SME, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."
• The Revelmode crew:
  • PewDiePie, the founder of Revelmode, and the biggest name on Youtube, let alone in gaming.
  • Markiplier
  • JackSepticEye
  • Emma Blackery
  • Press Heart To Continue
• The Philip De Franco Show, probably the most popular daily irreverent pseudo-"news" show on YouTube, posted with a thumbnail of an intentionally attention-grabbing and misleading hot girl and and equally misleading title.
• Polaris and most of its affiliates call YouTube home, including several notable gaming media producers:
  • Day Nine
  • Husky Starcraft
  • OMFGcata
  • The Cynical Brit
  • The Yogscast
    • Sips
    • In The Little Wood
    • Simon Lane
    • Lewis Brindley
    • Hannah Rutherford
    • Duncan Jones
    • Sjin
    • Strippin
    • Kim Richards
    • Hat Films
    • Turpster
    • The Yogscast Minecraft Series
  • Next Gen Tactics
  • The Runaway Guys
    • Chuggaaconroy
    • ProtonJon
    • NintendoCapriSun
  • Yuriofwind
• RedLetterMedia started out doing reviews/critiques of the later films in the Star Trek franchise (among other things) on Youtube, but it wasn't until they put up a brutal, all-encompassing seven-part review of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in December 2009 that they got noticed by the Internet at large. You can start watching the Phantom Menace review here.
• The Remarkable Journey of Higgins von Higgings — Very short, but very awesome video.
• Sam & Mickey, two women who create adult-targeted Barbie Stop Motion comedies.
• Shane Dawson, a youtuber who does sketch comedy, acting as all his characters.
• Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend. The less said about this video, the better.
• A Very Potter Musical, a musical parody based off the Harry Potter series written and performed by students from the University of Michigan.
  • In the same vein, Potter Puppet Pals, which coined an entirely new genre in "animutation".
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. The creator, LittleKuriboh, has a Youtube account where he uploads new episodes and other miscellaneous stuff related to the series. Was likely the first fandubbed series to have episodes pulled off the site for copyright infringement. You can find it here. It can also be found on its own website.
• Community Channel by Australian woman Natalie Tran, who actually got her own TV spot as a result of her internet popularity.
• The "Shit [insert racial/social/gender group here] says" videos. It all started with "Shit Girls Say", and now every subculture is giving it their own spin.
• Song mixes of the song Space Jam and some other popular (usually anime/game) song, often with a photoshopped image of a character from the game or anime where the character's face is replaced by that of Charles Barkley^note Why Barkley and not Michael Jordan, who starred in Space Jam? Because many of these are inspired by the theme song to Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.
• "Gangnam Style", a very strange and highly memetic South Korean music video with iconic dance moves (which are just as memetic as the song) that reached the spot of Youtube's most-watched video of all time after only four and a half months and is currently the most viewed by far.
• Epic Meal Time.
• Harlem Shake videos. In fact, The whole page can do it ^note It requires a modern up-to-date browser (such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox) to work. Other browsers work, but it just plays the music
• Freddie Wong, who's become notorious for creating amazingly high-quality special effect videos with just amateur equipment and budgeting.
• The Slender Man Mythos. 96% of the video-based stories are on here, including the Big Three:^note Technically, four, counting Dark Harvest.
  • Marble Hornets
  • Everyman HYBRID
  • Tribe Twelve

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