YouTube is the worst thing in the world, even when it's related to getting the task at hand done. Rather than actually reading and commenting on the pieces at hand, I was reminded of a news article I had just read on Gizmodo about an Internet trailblazing competition (Start at one address, end up at somewhere completely different by browsing hyperlinks only. This article covers the competition more indepthly.) That article had a cool video. That video had a cool song, which in turn led me to learn more about Trololo. It is now a quarter to midnight o'clock and I haven't even touched the assignment technically.

Honestly, this is a great example (I think) of streaming, a special flow. YouTube's actually one of the best examples of this, arguably better than Google. In fact, in addition to offering a flow of information and potential related topics (as in the sidebar), YouTube embodies the four core issues that Danah Boyd discussed in her piece. Let's examine:

1. Based on the video you're currently watching, or videos that you have watched in the past if you have a user account, YouTube offers potential options on where to go next via a sidebar. These are options that are not only tangentially related via keywords, but have also gotten a large amount of views from other users. Therefore, each view has a purpose.

2. Videos, with their use of sound and images tend to be one of the more visceral, or engaging, mediums. YouTube deals almost exclusively with, you guessed it, videos.

3. The comments section allows users to speak their mind, strike up conversations, and generally act like assholes. These are largely pointless and vapid, but perhaps the same could be said of all comment sections. The important bit is that this allows people to interact more directly than the video sidebar.

4. Finally, YouTube will never send you away from YouTube on its own power. Unless it's to Google, which owns YouTube. Basically, if you look at YouTube, you're probably stuck in YouTube's nefarious grasps.

And that, good friends, is why YouTube is indicitive of our age of Web 2.0. Also why it is evil.

Oh, and I continued the thread from the first paragraph and ended up listening to ABBA songs. And Axel F, but mostly ABBA. Really, it was chaotic.