Intellectual Elitism’s Dark Side

Well it’s time to rail against Slate again for their coverage of technology. The latest piece to catch my ire is ‘YouTube’s dark side.’ by Nick Douglas. In it Douglas suggests that because YouTube is the mass-market video site on the web it’s, well, filled with derivative, boring crap that do nothing to push the boundaries of what we think of as online video.

I’ll leave aside the rather asinine observation that a mass-market media outlet appeals to the mass-market with familiar, formulaic products (I can only presume Douglas has never listened to popular music, watched a box-office blockbuster or sat through an hour of network television) but there’s a bigger issue here that I think deserves to be called out and put under scrutiny.

I consider myself an intellectual elite and so I’m sympathetic to other intellectual elites out there. But it’s getting to the stage where intellectual elitism has become a dirty word. Why is that? Because intellectual elites used to want to help educate people, if they knew something other people didn’t (which presumably they did being elite) they wanted to share it, not keep it to themselves. Unfortunately, Nick Douglas appears to be a keep-out type of intellectual elite. The entire article is a barely-veiled attack on the masses and ‘their entertainment’.

Now let’s be clear: I have no problem with you watching only HBO and Showtime or for that matter only putting your television shows on HBO or Showtime if you’re a creator. But if you do, and you never attempt to sell it to a network, don’t go around bashing the networks for not putting on innovative stuff.

Douglas makes a big point out of the fact that he and a few other elite video bloggers refuse to use YouTube. Erm, why? As a sign of protest? To whom? For the very reason that is the centrepiece of his article this is a complete waste of time. If the majority of people are getting their online video through YouTube your decision not to use only damages you and you alone. Joe Q Public staring at his screen and clicking on the piano-playing cat for the umpteenth time isn’t going to think to himself, ‘I wonder where Nick Douglas is? I bet he’s not here because YouTube enforces a 10-minute time limit on videos.’

The better thing to do would be to put your videos on YouTube and before they get cut off chop in a short announcement explaining the rest of this video is not available because of YouTube’s time limit. You could then direct them to your web site for the full video. Or ask them to get in touch with YouTube to tell them how you feel.

This would do more to help open the minds of YouTube’s audience to the limitations of YouTube than a smart aleck article on Slate. But I guess when you’re deriding the masses maybe the point isn’t to help enlighten; it’s to snort at people who enjoy watching dogs on skateboards. In which case I suggest you’re not an intellectual elite, you’re a person that enjoys thinking they’re better than other people. The two are not the same and it’s time we stopped thinking they were.