Tom Guarriello argues democracy isn't the problem, attention economics is. His serious 11-minute video gets 7,500 views while sensational stunts get millions. He tells creators to choose: serious content with fewer views, or viral entertainment.
¡Hey, guys! It's Tom Guarriello coming to you today from a rather dreary New York City. I just watched Renato's latest video, and I wonder if you have. In it, he asked the question about whether democracy dumbs us down. And the video itself is one in which Paul talks about the differences in the kinds of view numbers that he gets, uh, depending on the kind of video that he makes. If he makes a video like the one that he just made, which was almost 11 minutes long and was a vlog giving his thoughts about popularity and what, which, what he calls democracy, and whether— what impact that has on the view numbers. That when he makes a video like that, his view numbers are in the 7,000. That video had about 7,500 views. And when he makes videos where he throws his video camera up in the air, or when he asks questions about Chinese farts and so on, he gets a lot more views. And so the point he was making was, you know, geez, you know, we're really rewarding, as he put it, we're rewarding the wrong thing. And then, you know, I think it's a provocative question because it says something about— I don't think it says something about democracy necessarily, but I think it says a lot about popularity. Um, if you look at the most popular anything in the world, and certainly in America, you're going to find that those things are things that are not particularly, um, deep, meaningful. They're distractions. They are entertainment. And, uh, we, we all know that because we all look for distraction and entertainment. I look for it in sports and in distracting, entertaining movies of all kinds and other things. And others look for it in other kinds of distractions and entertainment. It's what we— it's, it's what we look for in entertainment. But we, we also look for something else besides entertainment in our lives. We look for meaning, we look for lessons and morals, we look for stories that are compelling for us. And in a— I can't call YouTube a medium, but in a, in a place like YouTube you're going to find people who are looking for all sorts of things. And, uh, so if you are striving to get lots and lots of views, to be popular, then there's no question about the fact that the things that you make that are going to be most popular are the things that are distractions, diversions, entertainment. And that the things that are probably going to be less popular are going to be the things that are more maybe challenging, uh, not interesting for people who are looking for distractions and for entertainment. Um, but I wouldn't blame that on democracy. Um, uh, democracy is something else. Democracy is people being asked to make decisions about things that are of more significance in their lives. Figuring out which video is the most popular video on YouTube doesn't strike me as being something that is a reflection of democracy. It is a reflection of popularity. Popularity and democracy, they might be related, but there are some differences. So, you know, I think Paul raises a good point. The interesting thing, one of the interesting things for me, is that in the video he sounds kind of confused himself about what he wants to do. What kind of videos he wants to make. And in some respects, I think he wants to do what a lot of us want to do, which is to have it both ways. I'm reminded of Don Imus and his situation where Imus wanted to have it both ways. Imus wanted to be both a serious commenter, somebody who engaged people who were trying to make changes, politicians, others who were trying to make changes, in the world and at the same time wanted to be, uh, kind of adolescent, irreverent, edgy. And I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't have it both ways. And eventually it caught up with him. And I think Paul's talking about having it both ways as well. On, on the one hand, he wants to make serious video blogs and talk about his life and things that are important to him. And on the other hand, he wants to do, you know, Diet Coke and Mentos and to blow stuff up, as he put it. And I think you ought to do both and not lament the fact that the videos that are not as popular, that are more serious, are not going to be as popular. And the videos where he's, you know, doing something that's more entertaining and more diversion are going to be more popular. I think that's one of the great things about YouTube is that you really can do a lot of different kind of things and not really be constrained too much. So you get a few less views and— excuse me— and maybe, you know, a few more negative comments. Well, so be it. But I think it's an interesting point, and thanks a lot, Paul, for raising it. Because, you know, the fact of the matter is, if all you ever watch on YouTube are the most viewed, you're gonna get a pretty skewed version of what YouTube is all about. And we know it's about more than just cats on fans and blowing stuff up. So take it easy, have a great weekend. See you soon, bye.
