The YouTube Effect
GenreDocumentary
Watch afterAvatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) Barbie (2023) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), Inception (2010), The Whale (2022),
Early in Alex Winter’s finely made and firmly inessential documentary The YouTube Effect, the edit takes the form of a firehose montage of the greatest hits of the nearly two decade old title video platform. The most striking edit places the viral phenomenon (and eventual NFT) Charlie Bit My Finger next to scattered footage of The Arab Spring, the global social media-mobilized revolution(s) from the 2010s. Despite a nearly boundless distance between these two subjects, The YouTube Effect pinballs back and forth between these two arenas of cultural influence, blurring the lines with a linearity that feels unsuited to a timeline in constant flux. Continue Reading →