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Rachel Pulver

Professor Comeaux

ENG 102: First-Year Composition

22 March 2019

YouTube as a Curator

One billion people or one-third of the internet’s users visit YouTube, making it the third

most visited website. About 65,000 new videos are uploaded and posted to YouTube.com every

day including 100 million videos being consumed within that same day. The creation of the two-

syllable red play button was the brain child of Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawad Karim who

in 2005 reported that YouTube’s users were watching the equivalent of an entire Blockbuster

store each month (O’Neil). YouTube is a new-found technological phenomenon that has never

been explored before, thus, coming with unchartered territory for people moving forward into the

future since its start. During YouTube’s infancy, it was known for its cat videos and nasty

comments. It has evolved ever since then from “Charley Bit My Finger”, music parodies, Justin

Bieber, challenges such as cinnamon, ice bucket and tide pod, makeup tutorials, vloggers and

dirty conspiracies. YouTube’s branding is constantly being criticized and labeled as one

dimensional, but when you peel the superficial wrapping away from the video platform, that is

when it becomes a rich cultural sight. YouTube is a video hosting service that safeguards

intangible cultural heritage through archiving videos that are posted.

YouTube itself was never classified as an archive but inevitably it has been doing so from

its very beginning. According to the Society of American Archivist, archiving consists of,

“Materials created or received by a person, family, or organization, public or private, in the

conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information
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they contain or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator” (“What Are

Archives”). The material that YouTube archives are videos which are produced by an array of

parties that contain pressing values of the world’s culture that become stored and recorded

through the preservation of time. YouTube’s archive is a bank of data that stores and organizes

its content by search words and associated tags. This form of archiving is actually more

accessible than traditional brick and mortar methods of archiving, because it provides users the

capability to access YouTube’s databases at the touch of their fingers on any device at any time.

Users of this video sharing platform are able to access a collection of culture, history, politics,

values, lectures, education, protests, literature, language, urban culture, pop culture, etc. due to

the nature of how globally spread YouTube is. This aides YouTube in their safeguarding of

intangible cultural heritage by breathing life back into the phrase living expression, which

references intangible cultural heritage. When the memories of these cultures are remembered by

others through videos that YouTube has to offer that is when life is restored.

One may ask why archiving is so important and the Speaker Bureau, an archiving webpage,

states, “Archives are vital concentrators of knowledge because of their role in centralizing access

to records. Records are essential extensions of human memory that can be used to help bind

society together and serve as tools of social justice and reconciliation” (“University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee”). This form of archiving ties closely to intangible cultural heritage,

because when a people of a culture know their intangible cultural heritage that has been passed

on for generations, they then become one in their story of humanity. The United Nations

Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization also known as UNESCO, which is a branch of

the United Nations, one of their main missions is the safeguarding and preservation of intangible

cultural heritage for the people of the world. UNESCO’s mission statement declares:
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The purpose of the Organization is to contribute to peace and security by

promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science

and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of

law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are

affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex,

language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations (“UNESCO’s

Purpose”).

UNESCO’s purpose is to facilitate the good will between nations by sharing knowledge

of all countries’ education, science and culture. In return the protection of justice and freedom

will be withheld for the people of the world thus creating peace. Within their efforts of reaching

this goal is the action of safeguarding and spreading intangible cultural heritage. UNESCO

defines intangible cultural heritage as:

Traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed

on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social

practices, rituals, festivals, events, knowledge and practices concerning

nature and the universe or the traditional craft (“What is Intangible

Cultural Heritage?”).

Intangible cultural heritage is something that all cultures have that acts as a string of

thread stitching the past, present and future together; all are separate pieces of fabric, which

become bound in a cohesive article of clothing for whomever to wear by the thread of intangible

cultural heritage. The act of remembering your own intangible cultural heritage along with those
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of other cultures yields intercultural dialogue, which eliminates ethnocentric perspectives. This

aides UNESCO in the efforts toward peace for the people of the world. In UNESCO’s preamble

it states, “That ignorance of each other's ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout

the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through

which their differences have all too often broken into war” (“UNESCO’s Purpose”).When

people understand and accept others’ differences in a relativist manner then unnecessary blood

shed can be avoided. Having intangible cultural heritage marks the beginning of world peace

and the extinction of war.

When placing these definitions within YouTube, a video hosting server, it quickly turns

into a curator of intangible cultural heritage by safeguarding such fragile cultures. Reinforcing

such a bold claim comes from the quote found in the article 5 Ways YouTube Has Changed the

World Forever, “I think it’s absolutely amazing that with a quick YouTube search we can watch

a Zimbabwean music video, take an educational trip to Bhutan, the last Shangri La, or find out

everything there is to know about Iceland” (O’Neil). YouTube’s archives dissolve the barrier of

distance between individuals making the discovery of culture and the history of the world

simple. Being exposed to other countries’ cultures is one way YouTube is safeguarding

intangible cultural heritage. YouTube implements their archives toward the active preservation

for the remembrance of posterity. It gives people the opportunity to immerse themselves into the

new and open their minds up to the world.

YouTube is most notably known for the silly, crazy, miscellaneous pop culture of every

region of the world. This can be seen with vloggers filming their everyday, mundane life, music

videos from a variety of artists, compilations and those videos that at first do not seem to hold

such pressing values of one’s culture. In the contrary, these videos of pop culture do. The
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original and humdrum video content of YouTube along with its outlandish videos act as a time

capsule illustrating the grand narrative of humanity. The archiving system of YouTube is able to

preserve such videos for generations to look back upon and remember the lives of their

ancestors. The intangible cultural heritage holds root within the core of YouTube. Being able to

create a space for democratizing content activates a key ability for remembrance.

Similarly, YouTube is able to immortalize the entirety of intangible cultural heritage

through video, still pictures and film. Having the opportunity to watch a particular culture first

hand by a primary or secondary source changes the meaning of what books use to do before the

age of such advance technology. Reinforcing, YouTube has globalized intangible cultural

heritage with the spread of technology within the 21st century. There is no need for the history of

the world to be forgotten with YouTube’s archive just a click away. UNESCO’s Committee of

Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage is currently in the process of protecting France’s art of

perfume composition through the cultivation of perfume plants and the knowledge of processing

natural raw materials, Czechia’s creation of glass blown beads for the production of Christmas

tree decorations during the birth of Christ, Thailand’s incorporation of masked dances in their

dramas called Khons, Egypt’s traditional hand puppetry and Algeria’s mastered knowledge and

skills of water measurers of foggaras. That does not start to cover the entirety of what needs to be

protected when it comes to intangible cultural heritage. The list goes on and one with the world’s

intangible cultural heritage that needs to be preserved and held up.

Intangible cultural heritage comes from the past, present and future, and needs to be

protected to be able to hold the history of the world together within this ever so moving culture

of the 21st century. Thanks to YouTube the many facets of intangible cultural heritage can and

has been preserved and safeguarded through technology including YouTube. The stereotype of
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YouTube being one dimensional and fake is no more. Dances, oral language, festivals,

ceremonies, rituals, embodied knowledge and artisanship hold the strains of humanity’s DNA.

The dust will never claim these ancient behaviors. Instead they will raise from the ashes like a

phoenix in part of the the interconnected systems and paradigms of YouTube.

Works Cited

“Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage to Hold Annual Meeting in

Port Louis, Mauritius.” UNESCO, 9 Dec. 2018, unesco.org/news/committee-

safeguarding-intangible-cultural-heritage-hold-annual-meeting-port-louis-manritisu

“What Is Intangible Cultural Heritage?” UNESCO, ich.unesco.org/en/what-is-intangible-

heritage-00003.

O'Neill, Megan. “5 Ways YouTube Has Changed The World Forever.” – Adweek, Adweek, 8

Nov. 2010, www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-changed-the-world/.

“What Are Archives?” What Are Archives? | Society of American Archivists,

www2.archivists.org/about-archives.

“University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.” Speakers Bureau,

uwm.edu/speakersbureau/presentations/the-importance-of-records-and-archives-in-

society/.

“UNESCO's Purpose .” Ismail Serageldin, www.serageldin.com/unesco.htm.

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