Click Play: Week in review

At the Daily Dot, we don’t just aim to report on YouTube. We’re going to be active participants on the site, using it to do everything from conducting interviews to gathering story ideas from the community of video producers and viewers.

Here’s one way that we’re starting down that path: As I view videos for a story I report, I’m going to pull some together into a playlist. Think of it as a YouTube reporter’s notebook.

Every Friday, I’ll present some of these playlists and comment on how I selected them. Not all of the videos in the playlist will be mentioned in the story, nor will every video mentioned in the story be on the corresponding playlist. While the selection starts from my reporting process, ultimately I’m going to curate them as their own form of storytelling.

This week (the first week with the beta site), I’ve created two playlists: one on my favorite beauty tutorials, and of the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots.

More beauty spots

In my article on YouTube’s beauty tutorials, I mentioned a British makeup artist discussing his favorite drugstore brands. Here is another one, by an American vlogger that goes by ginabinawina99.

cutegirlshairstyles, which won last months “On the Rise”, a YouTube program designed to highlight good videos in order to boost their subscriber base, is a family operation. Mindy the mom said the ‘do in cutegirlshairstyles latest video was easy, but I failed to recreate it. Perhaps someone more adept will have better luck.

Last but not least, YouTuber bubzbeauty creates all sorts of DIY face masks and cleansers, with her newest being an oatmeal mask.

The Vancouver riots in 20 videos

In my original article on YouTube’s reaction to the Stanley Cup Riots this week in Vancouver, the video responses I highlighted happened to be all from men. There were also a couple of noteworthy responses from women. One of the videos by a female YouTuber, acting as a response video to YouTuber Philip DeFranco’s take on the riots, is slightly outrageous—to the point where I can’t tell if she is serious.

A photograph taken by Rich Lam showed a kissing couple laying on the ground, feet away from a policeman in full riot gear. (They’ve since been identified.) Ana Kasparian, cohost of the liberal Internet talk show The Young Turks, calls the iconic photograph “art” in the latest TYT episode. Her cohost, Cenk Uygur, argues it wasn’t  as distinctive as the famed World War II V-E Day photo.

I have to disagree: For me, the photograph reads as a symbol of bored youth in a stable country engaging in scandalous behaviour for the sake of a photo op. The photo is inaproppriate, slightly dangerous, and needless—summing up the riots perfectly.

Meanwhile, the YouTube shaming of Brock Anton, a rioter identified from his Facebook posts, continues. Canadian resident and YouTuber creggerca uploaded a hilarious acoustic-guitar song titled “The Ballad of Brock Anton.” Incidentally, in a separate video, Brock Anton is seen knocking out another rioter while still talking on his cell phone.

What do you think of these playlists? Comment here or on YouTube.