The Rise and Fall of a YouTube Sensation (and the Cyber-fromage)

Written after the death of David Bowie and YouTube.

Cyber Spacedust’s brush with YouTube stardom was over almost before it had begun. When he had first joined it had been easy to pick up new subscribers and make it onto the monthly list of top videos for the region. After Google bought the platform, however, it immediately took the You out of YouTube by dismantling those tools which allowed the channels of ordinary people to grow, turning it into a corporate monster, something for the major labels only, which suspended war on kids streaming and filesharing and became part of an unholy alliance to dominate consumers' watch time through the Vevo YouTube channel.

Cyber and other home recording artists couldn’t command the attention of a sizeable audience any longer. You Tube users’ associated video sidebar was turned into a recommended playlist which, after a few algorithmic tweaks had been surreptitiously introduced, pointed exclusively toward one or another global entity, the same way, as the saying went in the old days, that all roads lead to Rome.

Cyber then decided he would have to be satisfied with creating his art purely for the pleasure of remaining creative and also, he secretly hoped, for some kind of posterity.

In spite of the recriminations made by big-time golden age pop stars, who would bitterly or nostalgically rant about how the retail model, if not the method, of selling products from the good old days of heavy unit shifting should be preserved 'for the sake of the fans', the handsomely profitable period of the album artist has well and truly come to an end and the period of streaming has come of age. Kids don’t even bother to download free mp3s any longer, preferring to save space on their phones for other, more inscrutable reasons.

After an initial good run on his channel was reversed, Cyber realised, first by dimly sensing trouble once the momentary bafflement had passed, then by becoming fully cognisant of what changes to the playing field had actually been made, that any opportunities he had been given to gain some sort of success were incredibly fleeting and, in fact, his time to take advantage of the opportunities had long since run out, vanished with the period to which they had briefly belonged, a few years of relative equality in which the little guy had had a shot at the big time too, but these days it was looking more and more like only a technical glitch in Capitalism's history.

The chance to make a name for oneself online as an independent recording artist, without the backing of a label, major or minor, at least from the point of view of the grass roots YouTube user, disappeared once Google, upon purchasing the social media site, began refashioning it into a more profitable business model, at which point video comments and a front page free of stifling corporate control vanished completely, along with democratically associated videos, replaced by officially sanctioned recommendations and a bunch of sneaky trap doors that exited viewers from homepages and playlists back out onto the information superhighway dominated by the New Blue Meanies.

Add to this Google trying to ram Google+ down users’ throats and it isn’t any wonder that we have finished up with a mass exodus of genuine grass roots talent, an entire generation of hopes and dreams having been crushed for probably the second time in life.

Those who have remained in the public eye are primarily the ones who made a name for themselves during the early years of YouTube when collecting views, likes, comments and subscriptions was easy. And, of course, those performers who have the backing of an effective music label, no longer a hindrance to its artists receiving proper promotion on the site.

No one’s getting any higher and the people at the top don’t want anyone under them to come up any higher either, to take their celebrity starship first class tickets off them. So much for the dawning of a new age of democratic inclusiveness.

The only rational thing left to do, Cyber concluded, was to stop.