In this video, Tom Guarriello reflects on the escalating dispute between two long‑standing YouTube personalities, Paul and Perry (Renato Perri‑Urbin). He first questions whether YouTube can truly be called a "community," citing both skeptics and supporters, and pointing to real‑world meet‑ups such as SouthTube in Atlanta and the 777 gathering in New York as evidence of social bonds forming around the platform. Tom then maps the conflict’s progression—starting with Perry’s critique of Paul’s videos, moving through personal history references, challenges to take down content, and a back‑and‑forth of accusations—drawing a parallel to classic school‑yard fights where by‑standers anticipate a showdown. He argues that every community, from monasteries to street gangs, must develop mechanisms for managing conflict, and urges Paul and Perry to resolve their disagreement in a way that aligns with the values they have publicly championed within the YouTube ecosystem. The video ends with a call for both parties to model the kind of conflict resolution that would define the community they claim to belong to.
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Well, hey guys, it's Tom. You know, this Renato Perri-Urbin situation has really got me thinking because of several things. First of all, you know, both Renato and Perri have been longtime members of what many of us have called over the last year or so the YouTube community. Now, there have been a lot of people who have taken issue with that word community to describe what this is, this YouTube whatever. Um, and they've said it's not a community, it's just a website. Others have argued strongly that it is a community. We just saw the SouthTube gathering in Atlanta last weekend. We saw back in July the 777 gathering in New York, and certainly groups of friends have been formed here as a result of YouTube interaction. But YouTube itself as a community is something that continues to get, um, to be met with skepticism by a lot of people. Excuse me. Now, both Paul and Perry have argued strenuously at different times that YouTube is a community. Now, I find it then to be very interesting that here we have two people, both of whom have established their citizenship within this community for a long time, having a conflict. And having a conflict about, ironically, about things that happened in the past having to do with community. Now, you know, I made a video about whether— and about memory and about how those— about how our memories are filtered through all kinds of emotional motivational screens, and of course that's an issue here. But the issue that I really wanted to talk about in this video briefly is whether or not— if YouTube is a community, whether or not we can change or whether or not we can set some guidance for the way in which this community is going to do something that every community eventually has to come to terms with, and that is managing conflict. You know, no matter what community you're in, you know, monasteries, everything from monasteries to street gangs, the idea of communities having to establish ways of resolving conflict becomes almost one of the key defining elements of what kind of community that is. So now here we have two prominent members of the community having a conflict And the issue is, how are you two guys gonna manage this conflict? Now, what we've seen so far are some relatively classic elements of conflict escalation. Maybe gentle escalation, but escalation nonetheless. Perry started this this thread by talking about Paul's videos about gay men and so on. And that quickly got him to reflect on Paul's history, his own personal history with Paul, and to, you know, articulate some things that have been pissing him off about Paul for a long time, as he put it in the title of his video. Paul then came back and said, you know, this bothers me because this is Perry. It bothers me, you know, I've had plenty of fights. I mean, he talks about, you know, the conflicts he's had in the past, all the way from the pleasant jousting that he describes with Greg Solomon to, you know, some of the less pleasant jousts that he's had and says, you know, I don't want to have to have a fight with Perry about this, but, you know, if we have to fight, then bring it on. Now, that's an escalation. Perry then comes back and says, hey, you know, your personal attacks aside, you still haven't addressed the issues. And, um, you know, address the issues. That's not exactly an escalation in a classic sense. In other words, it didn't— he didn't sort of try to, to, to seed Paul's challenge of, you know, if you want to get it on, let's get it on, with his own challenge of, okay, I'm ready to get it on. But, you know, there was something to that that said, you know, he didn't address Paul's suggestion that he take down his videos and so on, which was a pretty direct challenge on Paul's part. Now Perry kind of took it up and sort of said, hmm, you know, I don't know, I don't hear you addressing the issues here. So my question is now, and of course if you read the comments to these videos, you see the kinds of things that we used to see in high school. Remember in high school, or even grammar school in my case, I grew up in the Bronx and in grammar school, what you'd hear throughout, you know, something would happen in the morning, you know, some kid would bump some other kid in the hallway, or, you know, what we would call it back then is rank on somebody's mother, you know, your mother's, whatever. And then you'd hear throughout the day, hey man, there's gonna be a fight at 3 o'clock. These guys are gonna, they're fighting out by the wall, which was where the handball courts were. They're gonna fight out by the wall. And everybody would, you know, throughout the day, everybody would be getting all excited. Oh yeah, man, they're gonna get it on outside at the wall. This afternoon at 3 o'clock. So what you see in the comments is kind of the buzz of, oh yeah, we're gonna see something's gonna happen here. There's gonna be a fight. Now, that's the community sort of gathering around this event, which is clearly of some interest, right? I mean, there's a lot of interest being generated by this. I know people are gonna call this drama, and if this is drama, it's drama of a humankind. This is my way of looking at it. It's drama of a humankind and not drama of a trumped-up kind of fictitious kind. There's real conflict here, make no mistake about it. There's real conflict here. Now, my question to you guys, Paul and Perry, is how are you going to resolve this conflict in a way that is in keeping with the things that you've said you stood for all the time that you've been here in this community? And that is that you wanted to see something different. Paul, you made an impassioned statement at one point in your videos here that Perry reflected on and quizzically kind of said, you know, who's this? Isn't this the same person who said, how are we going to look? How are we going to bomb each other after we look one another in the eye? Well, that's the question that I have for you guys now. How are you going to resolve this conflict in a way that is in keeping with your own values, the values that you said were important to you in your history here in the YouTube, whatever the hell this neighborhood is called. So that's the thought that came to me this morning, and I wanted to be sure to get this video out there to try to continue the conversation about what kind of community are we, how are we going to resolve conflicts in ways that are in keeping with what kind of community we think we want to be, and you guys being prominent citizens, how are you going to do this? Take it easy. I'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.
