Montare cacca: intorno al fenomeno “YouTube Poop”

Abstract

The genre “YouTube Poop” (YTP) collects a rather extensive mass of videos that recycle and elaborate, through peculiar editing techniques, specific audiovisual content, generally derived from poor, discredited or “wretched” media texts. The YTP is a particularly interesting phenomenon within the mash-up or remix culture, capable as it is of combining media criticism, subcultural immersion and skills in digital manipulation. On the one hand, the ease of the game is disarming: poopers just download videos from YouTube, re-edit them (even with non-professional software) following what are more or less the rules (or styles) of the genre and ultimately upload them to YouTube. On the other hand, the YTP represents instead a rather complex case, a rare form of cultural production which is not fully integrable or assimilable within the post-cinematic digital spaces – a sort of challenge or revolt launched against YouTube and the surrounding mediasphere.