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StacyAdelmanFirstPaper 8 - 05 Dec 2011 - Main.StacyAdelman
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EDITS READY FOR REVIEW | | | Commodifying Participation
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< | Regardless of whether an individual is using YouTube to teach herself differential equations or to watch the latest Jennifer Lopez video, a startling truth remains constant: YouTube is a system that exists merely to quantify the viewer's viability as a consumer. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote presciently in The Culture Industry and Mass Deception (a chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment) that, to the culture industry, people appear "as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique that is used for any type of propaganda." These research organization charts have only become more sophisticated. In selling viewers to advertisers as dehumanized demographic indices (e.g., "male audiences 18-34" to "viewers earning more than $100,000"), YouTube betrays the trust of viewers by monetizing their interiority and encouraging a herder-cattle style approach to the market for goods and services. Providing advertisers detailed statistical analysis of the effectiveness of their adds, including click through rates and conversion, facilitates the next stage in the evolution of commodification, where advertisements have fully ceased to be static broadcast and have become closer to cognizant beings. It seems unjust that individual interiority, the cost of such improved and progressive advertising, should be so readily paid to watch a free video. | >
> | Regardless of whether an individual is using YouTube to teach herself differential equations or to watch the latest Jennifer Lopez video, a startling truth remains constant: YouTube is a system that exists merely to quantify the viewer's viability as a consumer. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote presciently in The Culture Industry and Mass Deception (a chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment) that, to the culture industry, people appear "as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique that is used for any type of propaganda." These research organization charts have only become more sophisticated. In selling viewers to advertisers as dehumanized demographic indices (e.g., "male audiences 18-34" to "viewers earning more than $100,000"), YouTube betrays the trust of viewers by monetizing their interiority and encouraging a herder-cattle style approach to the market for goods and services. Providing advertisers detailed statistical analysis of the effectiveness of their ads, including click through rates and conversion, facilitates the next stage in the evolution of commodification, where advertisements have fully ceased to be static broadcast and have become closer to cognizant beings. It seems unjust that individual interiority, the cost of such improved and progressive advertising, should be so readily paid to watch a free video. | | | |
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