A World Not Unlike Our Own
by Richard Gleaves
In 1970 a graffiti culture emerged in New York. Less than a decade later the cultural practice had become an urban fixture, public scourge, and (not least) a full-blown art movement which in its stylistic innovation rivaled anything in modern art history.
The rapid evolution of graffiti art followed from a specific set of circumstances:
- Ready access to the necessary technology
- A medium uniquely suited to reaching a large and diverse community
- A team of dedicated practitioners driven by social ambition
- A core set of aesthetic values shared by the practitioners
Such movements are easy to recognize in hindsight — but spotting them as they unfold can be a tricky proposition, for two reasons:
- The practice often remains hidden from or inaccessible to potential viewers.
- The esthetics employed are insufficiently mainstream to be acknowledged as art.
Fast-forward to 2009: graffiti is now a standard tool in the arsenal of corporate marketers. But what rough art lurks out there, waiting to be born?
The answer, it turns out, is on YouTube.
YouTube Poop
YouTube Poop (or YTP) is an underground community existing in the nether regions of YouTube space. The community is dedicated to — and based on the evidence, fanatical about — the production and consumption of Poops, YouTube-sized mashups of video clips obtained from a core set of abject pop material:
- CD-i versions of the video game The Legend of Zelda, which at the time of their release in the mid-1990's were widely acclaimed in the gaming community as some of the worst video games ever made.
- Hotel Mario, another CD-i video game from the 90's and similarly acclaimed by gaming conoisseurs as mediocre or worse.
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, an American animated television series derived from the similarly-named video game, and first broadcast in 1993.
In addition to these core elements, Poops encompass a wide range of secondary material, primarily SpongeBob, Batman, and anime, but extending to virtually anything on YouTube (notably including Bill Clinton, bagels, Toy Story, nuclear explosions, and Volvic bottled water).
Community
The YTP community appears to consist largely of adolescent males, based on the tenor of the comments left in the video comments section, and the prevailing esthetic in the vast majority of Poop (which like all other art forms is subject to Sturgeon's Law).
However, the work by the best Poop artists embodies not only serious artistry (by any standard), but also a degree of worldliness far beyond that of a typical adolescent male. This is perhaps best exemplified by SwishFilms, the Lubitsch of Poop, whose work reveals a sexual sensibility that ironically appeals to the YTP audience of young straight males obsessed with gay sex.
Talent-wise, the Poop creators can be categorized as follows:
- A small army of toys: unskilled amateurs who — enabled by the low barriers of entry to the production and distribution of Poops — have created the vast majority of the 80,000+ Poops currently on YouTube.
- A deep pool of mid-level talent which has authored Poops garnering thousands of views.
- A handful of superstars (WalrusGuy, Deepercutt, SwishFilms, KroboProductions, Boogidyboo).
It's impossible to accurately determine the size of the YTP community. However, the most highly-watched Poop to date (Toys Gone Wild) has 1.5 million views, and several others have surpassed 500,000. The two most famous Poop stars (WalrusGuy and Deepercutt) each have more than 20,000 subscribers.
Esthetic
Trangression in every possible dimension: sexual, racial, linguistic, and formal, as befits an audience of adolescent males.
The degree of transgression is tempered by YouTube's usage restrictions, which strengthen the art by forcing Poop creators to deploy formal devices — some traditional, some new — to allusively depict transgression.
Historically transgression has had limited success as an esthetic generator, with one crucial exception: formal transgression, which has been the driver for a century of innovation in the fine arts.
As in graffiti, so in YTP: the best way to approach Poops is to ignore the adolescent surface detail and focus instead on the formal innovations:
- Radical extensions of cartoon-world physics, far beyond anything seen in a golden-age Warner Brothers cartoon.
- Extreme use of cinema, best exemplified by the signature move of alternating high-speed blurs with extended freeze frames.
The best Poops include extensive references to dialog and images in the core YTP material — a full appreciation of such work requires a high degree of familiarity with the material. Serious Poopsters know their material forwards and backwards (in some cases literally).
The self-perception in the YTP community is that the sole esthetic goal is "humor"; however, the social pressure on Poop creators to innovate has pushed the artistic production far beyond this goal and into the realms of the surreal sublime. (In fact it is this formal push that created a rift in the community between the traditional humorists and the YTP avant-garde.)
YTP esthetic does have historical antecedents in the art world, but it's unclear to what degree such roots are mere comedies of similarity. The cinematic assemblage esthetic was pioneered by Bruce Conner in his film A Movie. A far more striking YTP antecedent is the artist known as Jess and his Tricky Cad series of altered Dick Tracy comic strips: to view a classic Poop is to see Tricky Cad come to life.
Process
For the most part the tools used to create Poops are near-punk in their minimalism:
- Windows MovieMaker (included free with Windows)
- YouTube video downloaders
Windows Movie Maker is the application of choice, and is indeed paid tribute to in various Poop metanarratives. MovieMaker supports basic editing and manipulation of sound, speed, and color; most Poops are thus wholly expressed in this limited vocabulary (which — along with the limited set of core material — contributes to YTP's coherency as a body of work).
But it is equally clear that the pressure for formal innovation has pushed the top Poop creators into using additional tools for more advanced special effects.
YouTube video downloaders are available both as stand-alone applications and as a free service on certain websites. The downloaders serve a crucial function in the YTP community by providing easy access not only to the universe of cultural material available on YouTube, but also to the Poops of other artists: many toys create their first Poops by downloading a favorite Poop and then modifying it. This ability to rapidly generate variants of a given Poop is the engine that powers YTP fads.
Group dynamics
The YTP community resembles a test-tube version of the art world:
- Inquiries and debate on community history
- Quests for fame (quantified by view counts)
- Profiles of the stars
- Public feuds between famous figures
- Social exclusions over perceived stylistic violations
- Stylistic trends (known as "fads")
- References to the classics
- Homages and tributes
- Legal entanglements
- Blatant ripoffs
That such goings-on are so similar to those in the art world is extraordinary, given that the vast majority of YTP participants has no discernible background in the fine arts. But even more extraordinary is the accelerated pace of YTP events, which is due entirely to the Internet's scope and speed. For this reason the YTP community may well serve as a model for future simulation-based education and research in the visual arts.
Anti-narratives
Robotnik Runs Out of Toilet Paper
Bread maker rapes a young girl with no teeth
THIS VIDEO CONTAINS AUDIOSWAPPING (Note: turn off video annotations to remove the e-graffiti defacing the image)
Renarratives
Zelda: The King's Unreasonable Demands
Tomorrow I'll (Robotnik's Penis Song)
Mario and Luigi Travel Through Time
VEGETA FARTS IN FRONT OF CELL...
Nah-Roo-Toe paints on the faces of evil
Link Gets a Job at Gwonam's Restaurant...
Metanarratives
Who Made The First YouTube Poop?
YouTube Poop Gives You Seizures
Bigger WTF moment in Mario History
WalrusGuy Answers Your Questions!
NarutoForums had WalrusGuy Banned
Mr. Volcano's Toaster Causes an Avalanche
Conceptual
Hotel Mario with a layer added every second
HOTEL MARIO (NOUNS LEFT BEHIND)
My Boy for 10 MINUTES, NO EDITS
Existing overviews
The low quality of the following articles underscores how far underground YTP currently is.
Comments
Wow, Richard, thanks for the impressive instant education. It seems like remix video to me. Just like remix music. And a topical article with all the controversy about Shepard Fairey.
Posted by: Patricia, San Diego | février 11, 2009 10:04 PM
This is a pretty good article and a good sort of definition of what Youtube Poop is all about. Of course, there's a lot more to it than this- especially with the more deconstructive poopers, which I am one of- but you hit a lot of the basics and I don't really dissagree with anything you said.
The only complaint I really have about it is that you may be over-analyzing it a little bit- sometimes a sex joke is just a sex joke- but other than that I really have no complaints.
Good job, and long live Youtube Poop!
Posted by: strong414bad | avril 24, 2009 12:30 PM
i'll just copy and past what i said about this in our forums.
"just as bad as i hoped. not a mention of tennis, and a viewpoint way too biased for the types of poops you find by putting it into youtube's searchbar.
i can see why you like it wallrusguy, but for those of us a little more on the "art" side of things, it's fairly trash and dosent apply much to us, if at all.
for instance, i never use any of the sources listed, not even the "additional" sources (how the fuck was volvic demoted to additional, i though the masses were still using it hardcore)
if you ask me, that essay was like trying to describe a house a mile away with binoculars. sure you might get a fairly accurate picture of the surface, there are still three sides and an interior you CANNOT, and the disappointing thing is that the author of this essay made no effort to cover those areas."
Posted by: RAKninja | avril 24, 2009 05:25 PM
Hmph. only a true youtube pooper can write an ACCURATE article on us. I've never used any of the sources cited, and you don't mention how the youtube poop community dislike Deepercutt and WalrusGuy for ruining the image on true poops.
Posted by: a27wolf | avril 24, 2009 08:20 PM
This article is not as accurate as we would like, most of the poop sources you listed are outdated and no longer used as much, you also forgot to mention that those famous poopers do not represent the majority of poops made.
Posted by: daijimin | avril 24, 2009 11:24 PM
It was more like trying to write about 80,000+ videos when you've only recently discovered Youtube Poop — people should be writing PhD theses on YTP, not blog essaylets.
When I sent the essay to WalrusGuy I told him I expected most of it to be wrong. So based on the responses I've received so far (a 2-2 tie), at least I can say I did better than expected (lol).
I hope to learn more about your guys' quadrant of the YTP galaxy, and will write separately to ask.
Meantime, I'm still wondering why no "true youtube pooper" has to date written a sustained description of their world. There's no Wikipedia entry, which is remarkable in itself.
I admit to having serious reservations about writing on YTP, since any exposure is likely to drag it aboveground and change it in significant ways. And yet I also fear that if YTP doesn't get the attention it deserves and soon, it may get the rug pulled out from under it by the emerging HuluTube mentality of its corporate owners.
Posted by: chaopoiesis | avril 25, 2009 12:57 AM
it's interesting to see poop through an outsider's eyes. it might be worth pointing out that the majority of poopers dislike walrusguy's and deepercutt's material - the majority of their views come from either non-poopers or poopers who confine themselves to the material that is frequently used by their idols, such as those you listed in this article.
use of this media is generally frowned upon in the poop community, unless it's used in an original matter. for many poopers it could be considered a mission to find new and unused material to poop.
most new poopers or members of the largest poop community, YouChewPoop, if asked to produce an article about poop, would produce something similar to this article. you really have to understand the way in which the community works in order to fully understand the trends of pooping.
Posted by: hrbrtsptl | avril 26, 2009 09:29 AM
My main complaint is that you didn't put anything about YTP Tennis in there, or more about the "mid-level pooper's" community. A lot of stuff goes on in our community, and you didn't make big mention of the girl poopers, who do exist. Also, you failed to mention that WMM isn't as popular as it was in the early years.
Posted by: LightningSpike | avril 26, 2009 10:59 AM
Nice article.
Posted by: Robochao | avril 26, 2009 03:37 PM
Great article, you seem to have really done some research!
Posted by: DingoPhone | avril 29, 2009 03:39 PM
i think it is a good article to describe ytp in its most basic level.
and while it is true that the inside community of pooppers would just disagree as they try to do only original stuff with clips (art? yeah right... ¬¬), this articles does a good job in describing it for people outside of the community, which is in the end what matters, since the ytp inner cicle is minimal compared to the number of internet users who don't know what a ytp even is.
Posted by: ebm93 | juin 15, 2009 07:25 PM