‘The YouTube Effect’ Review: Tracing a Platform’s Cultural Footprint

The numbing expertise of internet video browsing is recreated — deliberately, I believe — in “The YouTube Effect,” a discursive documentary that assembles a good quantity of details about the impression of YouTube on society, however struggles to search out one thing new to say with it. Directed by Alex Winter, the movie charts the rise of the video sharing platform after which makes an attempt to hint its Sasquatch-size footprint on the tradition.

YouTube, the world’s second hottest web site (after Google), is a stimulus machine. The movie emulates this high quality, discovering a proper rhythm by layering a hodgepodge of YouTube clips with voice-over evaluation from tech consultants. It additionally spotlights a number of common YouTube creators, together with the social commentator Natalie Wynn, who’s finest identified for her channel ContraPoints. A cogent speaker, Wynn says that she has declined affords to companion with streamers or cable as a result of she values the “creative control” YouTube affords.

Interrupting these success tales are tangents into various troubling chapters within the web site’s historical past. We hear from the online game developer Brianna Wu, a goal of demise threats throughout Gamergate, in addition to Caleb Cain, who describes his tumble right into a matrix of far-right movies. These occasions have already been closely reported on — “Rabbit Hole,” a New York Times podcast, relays Cain’s expertise — and the sections usually really feel like retreads.

The web strikes rapidly, maybe too rapidly for an summary this unfocused. Even Winter appears overwhelmed by the duty of curating this deluge of white-noise news and memes: His rundown of YouTube’s connection to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot lasts about so long as the viral video “Charlie Bit My Finger.”

The YouTube Effect
Not Rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.