Is Communication within the Youtube Apparatus Meaningless?

Over the past day there has been discussion of a provocative essay by Kevin Munger, in the belly of the MrBeast, which builds on his recent book The YouTube Apparatus. I want to applaud the author for publishing this under CC-BY-NC 4.0, since otherwise I wouldn’t be able to read it.

Central to both essay and book is the thesis that there is something meaningless about YouTube. As the book puts it, “This is what I mean by nihilism: Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” As summarized in the essay:

As I argued in the conclusion of The YouTube Apparatus, “Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as is the case with political ideology), the creator seeks simply intensification, to draw more and more of the world into his whirlpool of content.

However, this thesis is conceptually confused. If something has no meaning, then it cannot be recognized as communication. The two go hand in hand. To think otherwise is what philosophers like Jim Conant call an “irresolute” conception of nonsense: On which supposedly meaningless utterances are simultaneously meaningless, but also communicative, purposeful, and responsive. However, this just does not make sense on reflection: Although understanding admits of degrees, if something has no meaning, this is an absolute.

Moreover, I could not find a clear argument for this claim in The YouTube Apparatus. In Chapter 11, Munger states:

When the YouTuber uploads their video, whatever originality, creativity or meaning they intended to communicate is reduced to the public audience measures that the platform appends to the video.

However, this premise does not entail that such communication has no meaning. To say that the meaning they intended to communicate is reduced to something else (rather than eliminated) is to say that there is still a meaning, it’s just transformed by an audience and medium. In my opinion, this is one of the most wonderful things about meaning: It’s a social phenomenon, controlled by no single dictatorial authority.

I think that what Munger really means to assert is a two part thesis: (a) meaning within YouTube is context-sensitive, and (b) the YouTube context is suspect under some sort of evaluative framework. But this is not the same as saying it has no meaning at all.

Unfortunately, these kinds of confusion seem to pervade the essay. Consider Munger’s analysis of a recent MrBeast onboarding guide:

Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible.

This is MrBeast’s thesis. The medium is the message. The content only makes sense within the context of the platform. Aesthetic evaluations of the content are simply a category error. Beauty, here, is harmony between the content, the platform architecture, and viewer preferences.

It does not follow from the quote that “Aesthetic evaluations of the content are simply a category error”. The original quote only states that evaluations of the content must be context-sensitive. It’s just that aesthetic evaluations of the content, funniness, and quality must be relative to a specific context.

Munger has done essential work to articulate the form of the YouTube context, or apparatus as he calls it. But I believe the next step is to determine the dimensions under which we can evaluate this context, rather than taking it to be a land entirely devoid of meaning or aesthetic value.