Mom! I’m on the internet! … And I’m pissing off some Foreign Minister!

YouTube has always been a popular destination for a lot of web-users since its creation, and has been a place where one could express their hobbies, interests, or other interesting aspects of daily life. YouTube has also been a conduit to fame for some: the Star Wars kid, the angry German boy, the lip syncing Chinese guys… all used YouTube or similar methods on their road to fame.

In many ways, the development of YouTube (and other video sites, such as GoogleVideo) had been similar to the blogging community: One would create a clip or article, post it on the internet for the world to view, and hope that it will rise in popularity. While most of these clips, like their blog counterparts, will ‘only be viewed by the author and their mothers,’ some will receive a substantial amount of viewers (sometimes up to millions) and receive recognition. Up until now, YouTube has been a place where people uploaded their roommate’s snoring video (Guilty!); and the ‘famous’ videos have always been funny clips, such as those listed earlier. But recently YouTube has evolved from roommate-snoring-clips to a place where videos actually have political impact. It was amazing enough to see the Republican debates broadcasted on YouTube, but having a Foreign Minister comment and take offence to a YouTube clip takes it to a whole different level.

It’s interesting to see this evolution of YouTube. While I’m not going to go into the details of the video in question, the video is basically a slideshow that lists a number of facts about Australia’s dying wildlife and claims that the Australians are being racist against the Japanese about their whaling policy, and are no better themselves. While this seems to be yet another homemade opinion piece, it might have gotten more attention because of some graphic images and some references to the Cronulla riots, which was a number of ethnically motivated mob confrontations. Still, I found it somewhat unusual for the Australian Foreign Minister to come forth and exhibit his displeasure. This comes to show how much influence a high-traffic website has on the general public, and how much our culture is changing, or rather, adapting, to this new ‘internet generation’. This evolution reflects my comments in my initial blog, where I mentioned that these developing communities on the Internet (such as blogs and YouTube) are really changing our culture at a rapid pace.