Who Is Watching This Stuff?

Back in the early days of the Internet, everyone trumpeted how the web would democratize entertainment. Any ordinary person could create content that would get as much exposure as something from a major media company.

Particularly since the explosion of YouTube, this promise has been fulfilled - for better or worse. Ordinary (although often bizarre) people are posting content that is being seen by millions. A recent study showed that the average YouTube viewer watched over 50 video clips per month.

But what are they watching? I decided to take a look at the most popular clips on YouTube for the last week - and see what people are looking at. It’s not pretty.

Fred Goes Swimming - The latest in an odd series of clips by a teenage boy with the audio sped up to Chipmunk quality is about him swimming in an inflatible kiddie pool. It’s odd. A little humorous. But over 1.5 million people have watched this in 3 days. And earlier clips in the series have been seen over 4 million times. That’s more than the audience for a top-rated cable show.

Where the Hell is Matt? - Videos of a guy dancing, sometimes alone and sometimes with a crowd, in 42 countries. I applaud the huge effort this took, but how did over 2 million people find this since June 20?

The list goes on. And then there are the repeating variations on a theme - thousands of videos of combining Mentos and DIet Coke or teenage morons throwing sodas in the faces of drive-thru window attendants.

And YouTube isn’t nearly the only place for odd behavior. There’s a guy on the web named Ze Frank who has created web weirdness that rises to the level of pure genius. Besides his own weird but often hiarious video blog, he challenges his web site’s users to perform eclectic but inspired tasks and they rise to the occasion. You want examples?

During his “Color Wars 2008″, one of the challenges was a Google Street View scavenger hunt, where users were given a list of items, ranging from a dog on a leash to a prime number greater than 100 to the loneliest person on earth. The results are hysterical and inspired.

The all time classic was when he challenged users to create (and document) an “Earth Sandwich” - two pieces of bread placed directly opposite each other on the globe, effectively making a sandwich with the Earth as the filling. It required collaboration across thousands of miles. And they did it. In droves!

This is great stuff - the web at its participatory best.

But I still don’t get the chipmunk-sounding guy in the kiddie pool…