Browse Exhibits (1 total)

YouTube is the world’s most popular social media site. Its user numbers even exceed those of web giants like Facebook or Wikipedia, according to web traffic analysis conducted by Amazon. Over the past few years, YouTube has become a diverse platform where users can find and watch videos in a wide variety of genres, from cute cats to informative how-to videos.

One of the main components that qualifies YouTube as a social media platform is the notorious comment section, infamous for its trolls, and oftentimes blatantly hateful remarks made by anonymous internet profiles.

While negative comments run rampant, there are pockets of happiness and decency online, usually to be found, of all places, beneath music videos. Scroll down from the right video, and you’ll find beautiful recollections and meditations on life, glimpsed through a sepia prism. Sometimes these comments can become an ecstatic kind of poetry when regaling the images that the song brings to mind. Exchanges between commenters become empathic interactions that showcase our shared human experiences.

Each artifact was found under one of three songs; Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, I Fall In Love Too Easily which is an older jazz-style song by Chet Baker, or the incredibly upbeat song, Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra. To better navigate through this exhibit, I suggest listening to the songs as you go through. 

I chose to examine the comments listed under these specific music videos because they were songs that I found deeply resonated with me, namely due to the fact that they are older songs more in line with my parents generation, and it was in fact my father that put me on to these songs. 

The kinds of comments garnered from a song vary, and perhaps the recurrent theme of nostalgia present in these artifacts is not as prevalent in newer songs, but still the innate human desire to react to a song, recall memories, and interact with others is an inherent reaction to music videos published on a social media platform wherein you are encouraged to contribute to the narrative under the guise of anonymity.