YouTube: a fantastic source of distraction for bored people at home
And a shiver of fear ran through me. Walking up the street on Friday - sky full of sun, me full of life - I passed a newsagent and glanced at the headline. "Google told to hand over all YouTube details."
Do what? And to whom? Reading with the kind of speed one normally reserves for letters about the outcome of a job application, I learn that in the US YouTube's parent company, Google, is embroiled in a billion dollar lawsuit with the broadcasting behemoth Viacom, which for reasons of copyright wants to know what we've been watching. At least this is progress of sorts, I suppose. Big Brother is not only watching us, he's now watching what we're watching.
And this is what troubles me, not only the principle of thing (this is the Guardian, it kind of goes without saying) but also the practice. It used to be that you could tell a lot about a person by the titles on their bookshelves or the albums stacked by the stereo. That was easy; stick a well-thumbed copy of Midnight's Children on display and look like a genius. But watching YouTube isn't the same as buying a book, it's more like going to confession. It's private. You don't expect the priest to come barreling out of the booth shouting, "You'll never guess what this bloke just told me?"
But forgive me Father, for I have dimmed. Not everything I've viewed on the website has been crap - Elvis Costello singing All You Need is Love at Live Aid is as poignant now as it was in 1985 - but not much of it is particularly substantial either. Twenty-five hits on the clip from Only Fools and Horses where they break the chandelier (I bet you look for it after you've read this) and four hours' worth of ice hockey goals from North America do not a well-rounded individual make. Admittedly there's nothing too fruity on there, but only because I'm too lazy to sign up for the section reserved for over-18s.
If YouTube speaks about the kind of person I am then what it says is that I am an idiot. This I can live with, but only if it doesn't tell everyone who cares to look. Google's defence in all of this is that providing data on every video viewed is an overwhelmingly impossible task. The real defence, though, is much simpler: What I watch on YouTube is none of your damn business.
