If it happened on YouTube, then must it be true?
That was the intriguing observation of one attendee, the writer on digital life Sarah Granger, at a recent FutureCast event dedicated to online filmmaking. Granger believes that YouTube has replaced Google as the “gold standard” of truth—especially for digital natives who’ve never known any other media except the Internet.
For some, the idea of YouTube representing the gold standard for truth is more than a bit worrying. Noted filmmaker Tiffany Shlain gasped at the comment. Shlain released her latest cloud movie “The Science of Character” at FutureCast.
Whether or not videos on YouTube make something true (or as Stephen Colbert might say: “truthier”) or not, online video is certainly revolutionizing how we see the world. Indeed, this was a theme upon which many FutureCast attendees focused. For some, like the film curator Jen Myronuk, online video might be rewiring our brains. For others it offers an opportunity to fight discrimination, especially of women.
