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The Colin and Samir Show - Episode Summary
Episode Title
We interviewed a YouTube employee about why videos go viral Guest: Kevin Allocca, Head of Trends at YouTube
Overview In this episode, Colin and Samir interview Kevin Allocca, the Global Director of Culture and Trends at YouTube. They discuss the current state of video trends, the impact of generative AI on content creation, and the evolving landscape of YouTube and the creator economy.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Introduction of Copilot Podcasts
- Colin mentions using Microsoft Copilot for podcast research and content creation.
- They discuss how AI can simplify the podcasting process by generating content quickly and efficiently.
- YouTube's Culture and Trends
- Kevin Allocca oversees the compilation of the annual YouTube Culture and Trends Report.
- The report summarizes significant trends impacting creators and viewers on the platform.
- The Nature of Popularity on YouTube
- Creator vs. Consumer Behavior:
- Unlike traditional media, YouTube's popularity is defined by audience engagement and creator behavior.
- Kevin emphasizes that YouTube does not dictate what becomes popular; rather, it reflects the interests of its users.
- Case Study: Elevator Channel
- Kevin shares a story about a YouTube channel dedicated to elevators and its unexpected popularity.
- The phenomenon showcases the diverse interests of viewers and how niche content can foster community.
- The Impact of Generative AI
- Current trends with AI:
- AI tools are enhancing video editing and content creation, allowing creators to produce higher-quality videos more efficiently.
- Examples include AI-generated dubbing for multi-language audio, providing broader access to audiences.
- Future Predictions:
- The rise of scripted content on YouTube may emerge as creators leverage AI tools for production, potentially changing the landscape from unscripted to more narrative-driven content.
- The Evolution of Video Consumer Behavior
- Personalized Viewing Experiences:
- Viewers are increasingly interested in consuming content through their chosen creators rather than the original events themselves.
- Many prefer watching creators break down major events instead of watching the events directly.
- The Role of Fandom in Content Creation:
- The discussion highlights how fans can become creators, driving new forms of content and trends.
- Examples of fandoms, including K-pop and VTubers, emphasize the new dynamics of content engagement.
- Challenges of Monoculture and Fragmentation
- The loss of a singular cultural experience (monoculture) is prevalent as personalization drives content consumption.
- Individuals may have completely different experiences of the same event or trend, leading to a fragmented media landscape.
- Global Connectivity and Language Barriers
- The introduction of multi-language audio capabilities on YouTube is a game-changer, enabling creators to reach wider audiences across linguistic barriers.
- This trend may foster empathy and understanding among diverse cultures.
Conclusion and Takeaways
- Optimism for the Future:
- As AI and new technology shape the creator landscape, there's potential for increased creativity, unique perspectives, and new storytelling opportunities.
- The rise of personalization allows creators to build tight-knit communities, emphasizing quality and connection over mere viewership metrics.
- Access to Reports:
- Listeners interested in the trends discussed can find more information and access the YouTube Trends Report at [youtube.com/trends](https://youtube.com/trends).
Final Thoughts Kevin Allocca's insights provide a valuable perspective on the evolving nature of YouTube and the creator economy, emphasizing the importance of community, creativity, and adapting to new technologies. Colin and Samir's engaging discussion highlights the exciting possibilities that lie ahead for creators navigating this dynamic landscape.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.
0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.
1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. YouTube is changing. Like watch this intro from Mr. Beast. This is a$1 billion super yacht. Here it is in Vietnamese. And in Hindi. Multi-language audio on YouTube is just one of the trends that we dive into in this video. And that's because today we're interviewing the most interesting employee at YouTube. His name is Kevin Alaka, and he's the global head of culture and trends. And every year, Kevin and his team put together the YouTube culture and trends report, which really boils down the top trends from the past year on YouTube.
1:58Now, as big YouTube nerds, Colin and I have been... Speak for yourself! Okay, Colin, we're pretty big nerds. Have any of you seen the Culture and Trends YouTube channel? Okay, so it's one of the lesser-known YouTube channels by YouTube, but Samir and I actually love it. So as YouTube nerds, Colin and I have been big fans of this report for the past three years. And this year, we asked YouTube if we could help distribute the report to all of you, because we find it incredibly valuable. YouTube sponsored this episode, thank you YouTube, and they gave us the report early so that we could make this video.
2:25So in this interview, we dive into the Trends report, and we watch some of the videos from it. Videos that range from bizarre to incredibly insightful. We also make some predictions on where we think the future of YouTube is headed. All right, let's get into it. This is our interview with the global head of culture and trends at YouTube, Kevin Alaka.
2:47Kevin, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you. It's very exciting to have you here. We've had this conversation many times off camera and off mic, but now we get to have it here. That's right. which is very exciting. I will say, every time that Samir and I have heard you speak, afterwards we've looked at each other and said, man, I wish we could have just recorded that and put it on our channel. Not to put too much pressure on you. But we've always loved what you've brought to the table and the perspective that you bring. I feel like you are YouTube's in-house reference librarian meets social anthropologist.
3:19That's very nice of you to say. What is your official title at YouTube? I'm the Global Director of Culture and Trends. which I made up to be totally transparent with you. There's a whole Culture and Trends team whose titles we all made up as well. But what happened I've been at YouTube for almost 13 years and what happened was very early on we realized that when you're a content platform there's this unique need to try to understand what's actually happening on your like if you're a TV network you don't need someone to explain what's happening on your TV network. But when you're a content platform there is this sort of requirement or need where you have to have a deep understanding of the dynamics of what's actually at play on your platform.
4:01What's what is driving the popular culture of your platform? Because you don't necessarily control it in the way that you would a traditional media platform or something. And so these are all things, the thread between all this stuff, you know, if I'm in a bar, it's like I work on projects that help people find and understand what's popular on YouTube. Lots of different business applications for that, but that's the crux of it. It's really interesting what you said about the difference between traditional media and a platform like YouTube, I hadn't really thought of it like that, that you don't, YouTube doesn't really decide what's popular.
4:31The audience decides like it's about consumer behavior and also creator behavior. It's whatever we are uploading as creators and how that intersects with what consumers are watching is what defines what YouTube is. Yeah. And in fact, I would say in many cases, it's the opposite of what everybody wished it was in certain times, right? Like you can imagine being a burgeoning content platform and you're trying to, you know, make, you're trying to compete with television for advertisers and things. And the most popular creators on the platform are playing video games. You know, that's like exactly what you wouldn't want if you were trying to sell something in that at that time.
5:04But of course that doesn't matter because you're following the audience, you're following the creators define the platform, which is a very unique thing in the history of media. Um, and now you see this type of function and in different platforms and stuff. YouTube's not the only place where this type of thinking happens in the same way, but we were one of the early ones because we were so big and got into it on the earlier side. So given that you have such a unique perspective on YouTube and this bird's eye view, and you have for so many years, could you give us an example of an interesting trend that you saw on the platform?
5:36There had been this thing that I saw, this is very early when I started at YouTube, I remember there was a video of a guy riding an elevator up and down. He would film himself going into the elevator, narrating the experience, going to the elevator, hit a button, go up 10 flights, come down 10 flights, turn around, get the other view up and down, and then leave. And it had tens of thousands of views, right? And I could not figure out why this, like one of my favorite things about YouTube is trying to like this little mystery of like, why does someone like this? Like that's the driving function of a lot of the work I do.
6:10Why does someone like this? Like that's the thing that fascinates me, gets me up in the morning, trying to unpack why we like the things we like. And I just couldn't figure it out. I just thought it was like, oh, people like weird stuff on the internet, you know? So I kind of moved on from it. And then I was like, you know what? I got to go back and figure out what that elevator thing was about. So I found this channel, massive audience, all videos like this. And I was like, hey, can we chat? I just need to understand what's going on. And he lived in Virginia and he was a train conductor. and he basically had always for his entire life been obsessed with elevators.
6:47And he just one day started filming them, put it on the internet and he found all these other people that were also obsessed with elevators. And I mean, there are elevator channels all over the world. Finland, you know, I found them in Brazil. There's tons of people. And I was like, but why, what's the appeal here? And he's like, well, he's like, most, a large percentage of my audience are actually people with autism. And there's something about the experience of sight, sound, motion, and how people's brains work that makes that a really appealing thing. And so his channel was actually not about the elevators.
7:21It was actually about the sort of community of people with autism who all were interested in this thing together. And they only knew, like, most people who are into that only knew that anyone else was into it because they saw it on YouTube. Like, they thought they were the only person in the world that was so interested in that as a topic. And he discovered through this experience that there were other people like him. And that is a particularly poignant story, I think, of this. But you see it happen constantly on the platform. Things that fly in the face of our expectations of popularity, of interest, of entertainment.
7:58But that, you know, and our perspective as a team has always been we don't make value judgments about what people watch. There's obviously certain things that are inappropriate and problematic and stuff. and that's its own tier of thing. But, you know, I think we're so quick and we have been so quick in the sort of history of media to dismiss things that we don't understand as like being outlier content or someone's weird choice or whatever. But if you stop that, if you just say, why would someone like this? And you try to unpack it, it unlocks a whole world of stuff and explains a lot of what happens on YouTube.
8:28Totally. I mean, ASMR is another one. Yeah. For years, people at YouTube didn't even like me talking about ASMR because they're like, this is some weird thing. And I was like, no, no, no. this is people using video in a way that you just would never think of, but it's meaningful to them. I've gotten into lawnmower YouTube. Oh yeah. Lawnmower YouTube is fantastic. Have you seen any of this? I have. I posted it in our discord yesterday. There's this guy, Tim Tim, who will go around and mow people's lawns. And it's like an act of kindness, which is nice. He'll do it for them. But it's so engaging.
8:59It's so satisfying to watch a lawn game. They're also like lawnmower simulator games where you put yourself in the world of you're driving the lawnmower. Yeah. And I think it has to do with like this soothing experience that maybe you could I mean you obviously could get that in real life. But there's something soothing about it. It's adjacent to the power washing content which is also in that same sphere. I'm into drain unclogging. I don't know if you've seen Post 10. I haven't matured into that yet. He goes out and unclogs like stuck drains on the street. I mean that sounds really great. So fascinating about it.
9:35I think 2022, if you look at it, was this incredible year of growth, I think, for creators and for the creator economy and for YouTube. I look at 2023 as one that's being defined by change. For creators, for audiences, it feels like there is so much change. So much of it also being wrapped up by AI, specifically generative AI and the tools that we have as creators. Obviously, this is a part of the Culture and Trends Report. Can you give us some insight into what you found when it comes to generative AI on YouTube? I wanted to start with what is interesting here? Like, what's happening? What do we know is happening right now that we should be excited about maybe?
10:20You know, what could this be from that perspective? Because I think we all have a healthy skepticism about what it could be that we're not excited about. Sure. And I think there are new things constantly. We're like, oh, I didn't realize I needed to be worried about that, but I do today. And that's going to keep happening with this stuff. But there's people doing interesting stuff with it. I want to find out what is that and what's going on here. And so there's some end of this that we don't even think about as AI. And I think this is interesting how, I think most average viewers wouldn't even consider the stuff that they're seeing as AI content because it's not directly, and I don't mean that in that it's deceptive.
11:05I mean that in simply, it's just a part of the workflow. It's a part of the enhancement of the content. And so you started to see a lot of people just saying like, how can I play with this as part of my workflow? And that's, I think we're still in in that phase a little bit of people using it to create prompts for their bodybuilding videos or, you know, like giving them, you know, little challenges for their beauty videos, you know, and that's like step one. I mean, the title of this video and this episode will have been enhanced in some way by AI. Right. And the audience won't know that or it won't matter.
11:41Until now. And the angles for this, if you're watching, we can probably show, but like this will be cut by AI. Yeah. You know, like there is an AI tool that will know when you're talking and when I'm talking and it will cut it accordingly. Yeah. That's an advancement that we've seen as YouTube creators that I did not anticipate this year at all, but that has changed the dynamics of how YouTube video is made. Yeah. That's behind the scenes. At least what I've noticed is, you know, what we're seeing as consumers is AI for the first six months of the year has been what I would call like the collaborator of the year.
12:15Yeah. Like every YouTube, big YouTube creator is collaborating with AI. Yeah. And I think that the thread between a lot of this stuff is that it is enhancing how people can express themselves at a higher speed and audiovisual fidelity. You know, you can create more complex content faster and sort of higher resolution, essentially. And that is something that I think people invite and are interested in and stuff. and there's certainly all different types of applications to it. But what we're seeing now and has been the case with a lot of new technologies is that as creators adopt them, they sort of become normalized.
12:56You see them, you see people do things with them, you get inspired by that and you're like, oh, I can do something with that and you build on it. And so the next phase of where that starts to take us is into this world where things are much more iterative. Like we already live in a, one of the things that defines internet video is that it is a, it sort of exists in a conversation in a way, right? Like content exists in reaction to other content. Like that doesn't happen with movies and TV and other types of media. It's a lot more interactive in that way. But when you can make things so quickly, like you can edit the video so much faster, like take that to its conclusion and all the things that you can do faster than you can imagine this world in which conversation, content exists as conversation, right?
13:40And you have every possible remix of the thing or whatever can be done in a very quick amount of time and everything is building on itself in a way and it just changes the shape of culture in a way it really just lowers the barrier to create right i feel like short form content we would always say okay it lowers the barrier to entry the videos are shorter they're easier to produce you can make them on your phone but now we have things that are being made you know just with mid-journey or 11laps, which is like a voice generation tool. And you can create without even a camera. And to take it a step further, if you look at what Corridor Crew did by using video to then create animation, to create anime, they're now competing with Hollywood.
14:25It closes the gap between what's possible to be made. Yeah. We should take a look at the Corridor Crew video. Wouldn't it be cool if you could film yourself and easily turn into anything you want, like a cartoon character. This video, particularly for me, felt like the moment that when Colin and I talked about this, and we saw this in the trends report, we said, does this potentially suggest a rise of scripted content on YouTube? You know, what we've seen is YouTube being the home for unscripted content. Vlogs, you know, conversations, just unscripted content. Sure, there's some scripted content on YouTube, but largely it's unscripted.
15:02the potential to turn yourself into a, you know, anime character or just be able to create animation this fast. Does it suggest like a potential rise in scripted content on YouTube? Well, as you know, I hate making predictions. Yes, I know. I'm going to, I'm going to. Because it's so hard. It's so hard to like. I will make the predictions. I want to hear what you think. You can say your reaction and I'll make the prediction. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think it's a reasonable, a reasonable point of view because, um, fiction content is, is very labor intensive and, and things, but the, the core question I have with it is there's still, the quarter guys are actually great storytellers.
15:46It's not like they're just a bunch of random people who like typed a thing in and got a thing. Like they, they know how to tell stories. They're great at what they do. And that is hard. That you can't replicate very easily. And so there are many great storytellers in the world. And so the ability for them to tell those stories is enhanced. It should be unlocked. But, you know, will the alchemy come together to have a compelling, you know, narrative experience? Will people want that? It's hard to say. I feel like they will. Yeah. I think especially with watch time going up on TVs, on connected TVs for YouTube.
16:22Now, what Corridor Crew did by essentially using video to then create animation, it was not easy. If you watch their video, they had to troubleshoot a lot and they're uniquely qualified to make what they made. But I think it shows us what's coming. There was whether a tweet or, I don't know what it was, but someone said, whatever you're looking at right now with AI is the worst version of it you will ever see. And when I see things like what happened with Corridor Crew, I think, okay, that will be the reality. Shooting video on a green screen to then turn it into any style of content that you want.
16:55Like that is the reality. I also think about the concept that as YouTube creators, that's the biggest video library of yourself, right? If you want to build a model of yourself, like you as a YouTube creator, if you do talking head videos or for us doing a long form podcast, like there's a lot of input that potentially you have access to that you can animate or bring to life in different ways with AI, right? The question you start to ask is what differentiates, right? If everybody can do everything, what breaks through? And it's funny because some people have asked me, we're going to be flooded with all this content.
17:39What are we going to do? There's going to be so much stuff. Is it just going to be a low-quality dump of stuff from all over the world? I would argue we already have a giant low-quality dump of stuff from our people. That's like the premise of the company I work for is actually sifting through that to find the things that are going to be most interesting to you. So I have to believe, you know, and perhaps my salary depends on it, but I have to believe that we'll solve that problem. And so then the question becomes, so then what stands out? And it becomes the thing that is the thing that you can't replicate, which is unique perspectives, creative ideas.
18:18The thing that's so interesting to me about this is its potential to make that the defining thing between the pieces of content that we can consume. Right now, there are so many perspectives, so many people's voices that we don't have access to because they don't have the funds or they don't. I mean, it's gotten so much cheaper to distribute content, but it hasn't gotten that much cheaper to make, you know, to realize a science fiction adventure. Like that is still a very expensive proposition, but maybe it won't be in the future. So does that mean that all of those incredible storytellers who write, you know, alt science fiction novellas that aren't going to get their scripts produced, like now can actually bring that into the audiovisual realm?
19:03Maybe, you know, and so that's the thing that I think will become interesting through all of this is how does the individual perspective, the core creative idea, the thing that we actually care about get distilled through the course of all this work? I also think AI is unlocking fan communities and in a very unique way. The Wes Anderson trend is probably one of the most interesting. I'm a huge fan of Wes Anderson. And this trend has emerged of what if Wes Anderson made Star Wars? What if Wes Anderson made Lord of the Rings? You know, like that's such a fascinating trend to emerge that has reached millions and millions of people that we didn't even know we wanted or wanted to connect with.
19:46And to Colin's point, that stuff is made using mid-journey, 11 labs, and maybe a little bit of editing. There's no cameras involved in making those viral YouTube videos. In the quaintest corner of Middle Earth, embark on an epic journey unlike any you've experienced before. And it's interesting that it coincides with this other Wes Anderson trend that uses a much more lightweight type of creative tools around filters where it's like, I'm going to Wes Anderson in my life. These two things like happen at the same time and they're obviously interconnected and he's got a movie coming down and all this together.
20:19And of course, of all people, it's the most handcrafted of directors that is getting like technologically consumed in this whole thing. but yes, there's a argument that fan fiction and, and, and, um, fan conversation is going to be much more mainstream than it ever has been because of these, these tools. I was going to say, I do want to bring up though, that, you know, this video particularly stuck out to me, uh, in, in the conversation of the rise of AI on YouTube, this is called us presidents play Minecraft 21. I'm going to play it right now. Hey guys, you know how Manchel doesn't play with us that much anymore bro i can invite her back if you want me to no god please no okay so get to your point then i found a way we can have manchelle play with us without having to actually play with us how would that even work this is a video that was uploaded a few weeks ago can you describe this video what is this i didn't even know this was a uh a genre on youtube yeah so there's this president's play thing we've seen tons of views around them all you know in the last couple of months where people are using this voice generated software to sort of basically imagine what it'd be like if the current and former presidents played roblox or minecraft together at the same time and it's interesting because we've had impersonations and presidential impersonations on youtube for years you know barack's dubs you know this could be a barack's dubs when you see it the first time you're like it's not obvious that they've used any voice gen it could just be someone doing an impression it could be you know that we've had that type of stuff on the platform for a while, but now anybody can, can do that in, um, a sort of quick way.
21:55And together you have a phenomenon where everybody has the same like prompt essentially, which is what if the president's played video games? And then you have tons of people who have their own creative fun take on that, what that would look like. And then they just play it out for you. And the best ones, you know, are the ones that get the most views and that people share or are among them at least. And again, it's part of a phenomenon where there's no singular, this is the president's play video. There's some that are better than others, but there's like, there's no singular video. It is just a phenomenon spread out across lots of pieces of content of which we may never see the same ones.
22:34Right. So obviously this video is a parody. Yeah. And I think this is where a lot of people get concerned. You always hear, what if someone puts out a video on behalf of a president or a head of state and people perceive it as real. And that's where Samir and I talk. And we, we believe that YouTube at some point will have to be kind of that arbiter of truth for if something has been altered by AI. And I'm sure every platform has to deal with this. I know other platforms are, but I would think that's actually that side that is the concerning one. And the tough challenge will be for YouTube. How do you discern between what is AI, what's not?
23:13When do you step in. And this is, this is a YouTube problem, but it's also a societal problem. Yeah. This is like, we're not the only content platform on the internet. Like there are, there are lots of platforms. I think there are a lot of concerns across public figures, across copyright. You know, there's, there's all of these things that, um, are bigger than any one platform, one piece of, uh, one trend that we're going to be grappling with over the next, um, over the next few years. And I think there is apprehension about this stuff and it's justified. Yeah. One of the trends that stuck out to me the most as it pertains to generative AI and like synthetic media and technology is the rise of VTubers and virtual humans on YouTube.
23:58So, you know, VTubers have been around for a long time. Colin and I made a video about Lil Mikaela a long time ago, a couple of years ago, just with this rise of, you know, essentially a virtual character that had human-like qualities and a human-like narrative that people were latching onto, but she wasn't a real person. Yeah. This has, we've seen like a pretty dramatic increase in VTubers and virtual humans on YouTube. Yeah. I want to play one that maybe you can help everyone understand what is happening here. Hello. Hello. Hello. The third concept.
24:40What are we watching right now? So you're watching a Korean creator, who is, she sings, she does a lot of covers and stuff like that. But the thing that's interesting is that she is a real person, but her face is actually AI generated. Okay. That, like, why do you think people are so intrigued? Like, I understand the novelty of, hey, I'm going to show Colin, hey, look at this. This is a virtual human. This is a VTuber. Isn't that interesting? But then beyond that, like getting caught into the narrative of it or being like, that's a creator that I enjoy coming back to. Why do you think that is?
25:11I think it's the same reason you enjoy coming back to watch anything. Animated characters, fictional characters. I think back to just a couple of years ago, who's one of the biggest breakthrough creators on YouTube the last couple of years? Dream. He didn't know what his face looked like for most of that time. And did it matter? No, because he's just incredible at what he does and is a great entertainer and great at the game and everything. So like he just chose not to be present on screen. And, you know, for me, I'm a little bit less, oh, what is this science fiction world we're going into? Because I think what I see from it is the potential for a lot of people who don't want to be on camera or who want to express themselves in a way that is different than how they may appear physically or, you know, present physically that we're not going to get access to, you know?
Read the full transcript
25:59I also think many years down the line, you may see the beginning of intergenerational creators. If you go really far down the line, Mickey Mouse has been around for generations because it's an animated character. You can just recreate it in many forms. And now there may be a scenario where a creator is a VTuber, gets to a point in their career where they've built something really interesting, they have a business, they're excited about it, but they're done. They want to retire. Someone who maybe works for them steps in. And that transfer is relatively seamless. And the more, the better AI and generative AI get, the voice can be, you know, AI.
26:35Altered as well. Yeah, the voice can be AI. So you then have a scalable human that can scale, like Colin said, hundreds of years as a brand. And I think that's an interesting business case for it that's fascinating that maybe we'll see more companies get involved with virtual humans and virtual creators. Yeah. Because they have the potential to write the scripts, have the voice generated, and have this human host and connect. If people are willing to connect with virtual humans, then that feels like an obvious future. Yeah. And I think about this all the time because immediately my mind's like, what's this going to do for beauty standards?
27:13And like, you know, there's all kinds of things that come up where you immediately go there. But I don't know. I do sometimes feel like I'm the old man in this conversation and that, you know, one of the defining dividing lines between generations will be our comfort with AI generated anything content. Yeah. That will be, that will probably be a dividing line. Who knows, you know? And even it may just enter so seamlessly and, and kind of slower than we expect. Like we said earlier, we're already using, a lot of creators are already using AI and a lot of audiences don't really know. Yeah. Right.
27:47And I wonder if VTubers is a spectrum as well where little elements of it will be ushered in. And over time, people don't even really fully realize how much they're taking in. Yeah, and I think this is why the creators of today who are messing with this technology and exploring it, they are defining what will happen with it. Because that's how it gets normalized, is people do inventive things with it and then more people want to do that and see what happens. that's the nature of internet content. Yeah, exactly. And so what's happening now is step one. And the things that I'm seeing from creators on YouTube, they're setting the tone for this.
28:30So one of the trends from the trends report that I really want to talk about, multi-language audio. What's really interesting there is that there are creators on the platform who are uploading videos that can be watched in multiple languages. and that is now connecting humans in a way that we've never been connected before. The fact that language is and was a barrier for humans, that we're the same species, but we actually can't communicate, may be over. And it can be something that can be done easily and quickly and perhaps cheaply by creators is pretty wild. Let's watch an example so that the audience has a frame of reference of what this looks like.
29:13It's titled How Gas Bottles Are Made, and it's actually originally in Portuguese.
29:21I don't know about you, but I've always been very curious about the gas cylinder. There's an opportunity to just click the gear and switch the language between Portuguese and English. And the English here kind of sounds obviously dubbed, right? It sounds obviously, maybe it's AI generated. Is that right? It is. It is. but there's other versions of this that are using actors, right? Mr. Beast uses actors in 13 different languages. So you can click on one of his videos and click the gear and go into many, you know, from Japanese to Thai to Hindi, just incredible voice acting. And it's pretty similar experience, I would imagine, in every language.
30:08This to me is one of the biggest changes to YouTube. and changes to media that we've seen. I guess the question is, how have you seen this already impact the platform? Well, it's early days right now on this because it's a pretty new feature. But we've already been seeing, before this was even launched, we were starting to see MrBeast and other creators who were launching separate channels in other languages and seeing those channels become very popular. But you're seeing things like that creator from Brazil who's a popular educational content creator who can now reach a much larger audience. He's using a platform called Allowed, which is a Google Area 120 project that they're trying to figure out how to create on the fly dubs across different videos and things.
30:54There's a whole tool that you can use. So it's a Google tool. Yes. And you can imagine a future where, like similar to clicking captions on or captions not on, I can say, yeah, I want this in Japanese. Yes, and totally. And there are lots of other third-party softwares that are starting to do this stuff now, I think. The YouTube tool itself just allows you to upload whatever, you know, track. And there's like some guardrails around that and everything. But - Feels to me like that's the future though, that we upload a video and we check the box of which language we want it dubbed in. The thought of having our interviews available in many different languages is a very exciting thought.
31:34And I think for every creator, I think the way you get to hundreds of millions of views really is by global accessibility. Exciting, but also could lead to more competition. The video we just watched, very similar to Tom Scott. And I wonder, is the competition on the platform now level? Is it global? Many years from now. Is it global? And that is good, and that is perhaps bad at times. The thing, I think one thing to know here, and again, I think we come at this from a sort of US perspective because dubbing and things are very popular in other countries as it is with movies and TV. And so it's a little bit less of a foreign concept.
32:14And I will say in the US, 37 % of people in the survey agree that they follow a creator who creates content in a language other than their own, which is a surprising step. That's way higher than it would have. Yeah, it is. But it's, so you see this happening now, right? We're starting to have this sort of more transference of things. But there are differences in culture. And I think I don't want to sort of diminish the importance of cultural differences. There are trends. The way that dance trends work in Africa is different than the way they work here because of the culture of the place. And I think it's not like everything exists the same way everywhere.
32:53And so the things that will matter to people, the conversations that matter and things will vary. And so the appeal of those perspectives will vary as well. But you're no longer limited by the ability to speak a language, potentially. And that has huge potential to change, as a viewer, as a consumer, the perspectives that we have access to, the creativity we have access to. My hope is that it promotes empathy, that there are videos that eventually come across my feed from countries that I know little about and that I probably would not have learned about had I not learned about them through this creator.
33:27Yeah. It's funny because early viral video YouTube, if you actually just went and looked at the most popular things, it was a lot of cats and a lot of babies and the pets and babies. And the reason for that was those things were language agnostic. You could watch like one of the most popular cat videos all time was this like cat hugging video. It was in Russian, but there was no language in the video. So now we're all of a sudden in this place where we've removed the language barrier. And so now everything can have that potential to resonate with people in the way that something that's so universal that was language agnostic in the past.
34:05You know, for me, I agree on that. Like, I think the importation of other cultures to the U.S. has already really started. Largely, like Korean culture has really impacted U.S. entertainment, right? like Parasite, Squid Game. There's a new Netflix show, I think Physical 100. It's a Korean show. Like the Korean style of entertainment clearly connects with the US audience. And that was not really a thing before. And you imagine that today, you know, could there be a Korean Casey Neistat that emerges that, you know, someone in South Korea who is vlogging every day and we get access to what does life in Korea look like and get to watch it in English.
34:48Yeah. Or someone in India can watch it in Hindi. And that to me is interesting. Like, is there a possibility for global creators? And I assume a lot of the American creators are relatively global, you know? And I guess Mr. Beast is the obvious example here that when he launched his other language channels, he was reaching millions and millions of people. You put that all into one channel now and it's like, that's probably the first like really mega global creator. Yeah. That is understood in 13 languages. Yeah. No, it's true. I mean, captions are also big. And so a lot of people do watch stuff with captions.
35:2550 % of people in the US agree that they prefer to watch content with subtitles and closed captions on. So, which is kind of a crazy stat. And when you look at, if you look at the Gen Z slice, so 18 to 24 slice of that in terms of how many of them do actually say they watch captions regularly, there's a big jump there. Gen Z, what an interesting population It's true, but I think captions we are already primed for expanding and there's lots of reasons why people use captions some of them are situational because there's background noise or whatever I do think we're already primed to have an experience that is text-based or audio-based in these ways that unlocks a lot of that I wonder if it ends up leading to the ability to have a monoculture again.
36:11Of course there will always be individualized experiences. But when you think about Squid Game, that kind of was a monocultural moment. And I think that's because it was released in, you know, a lot of languages. I don't know what the exact number was. It was like 80 to 100 languages or something on the exact day that it was released. And because of that, everyone all over the world was able to experience it simultaneously. Sort of. You had to pay for the subscription, right? There's a barrier, of course, of like, there's a barrier of paying for a subscription. Yeah, yeah. Obviously. The ring fencing of that stuff.
36:41But on YouTube, in the future, there's not as much barrier, especially with internet being available increasingly all over the world. That could be a reality that something gets uploaded. It could be, but I think everything else is also sending this opposite signal, which is that given the choice between this thing that everybody likes and this thing that I know you like, you'll probably want the thing that we know you like. And so it'll be interesting to see the interplay between this more personalized, individualized pop culture and the ability for people to, you know, no longer be obstructed by language barriers.
37:18Maybe if anything, it just connects subcultures all over the world. I think that to me is the more interesting application, right? Which is the elevator video channels can all communicate with each other, you know? And what will that be? It's like kind of a beautiful thing. That is really interesting. Like the weird subcultures can now connect globally. The ASMR video from Japan can connect with the ASMR video from Brazil. Even for us, like the creator economy, YouTube enthusiasts all over the world can connect. That's true. Yeah. One of the biggest themes of the report, and it was a line that really hit me, was this concept of the loss of monoculture and the rise of personalization.
37:58And as I thought about everything that's happening, all the big shifts that are happening in media with generative AI technology, with, you know, multi-language audio, with the amount that we can personalize our experience online, it's hard to have a singular stream of culture. You mentioned you were involved in Rewind. Yeah. And I thought about, you know, obviously Rewind famously kind of ended and was like, you know, disliked. I think the most disliked video on YouTube. but I thought about the concept of could rewind happen today and I don't think it could because I think everyone's YouTube experience is so vastly different now that I'm not positive there could be a single here's the biggest things that happened because the biggest thing in my opinion is different from the biggest things in your opinion and your experience I'm so glad you finally invited me here to clear the air about YouTube we should clear the air Yeah, well, look, the thing about the thing, someone, someone, I'm going to go back and I can't believe you were talking.
39:02I can't believe this whole thing turned into a rewind. It haunts me. It haunts me. But title changes to confronting YouTube. About rewind. About the fall of rewind. But rewind actually broke like four rewinds earlier than that. And I don't think anybody really noticed. But if you were for us, we could kind of see it. But everybody loved it so much that we didn't want to give up on the dream of it. But like I always had a dream of being in rewind. and I can't believe it ended before we could even be a part of it but whatever this is our version of being a YouTube Rewind the first couple it really is emblematic of where YouTube was at that time it was a very US centric platform at the time in terms of the top creators and everything and you could get them all in a room VidCon was like that all the top creators would be there because they all knew Hank and John that's how YouTube and internet culture was at that point but it's interesting if you go back and I'm not talking about the last one which is its own thing but if you look at some of the ones previous to that you started to see the dislikes kind of going up on those things and part of it is that you had people being like I don't know who any of these people are and we got to the I think the 2017 one and there was no person who worked at YouTube who could tell you who everyone in the video was like I was like my team helps figure out the video and no one could explain who all the people were and it's because, you know, you see, who is this person?
40:27It's like, well, you don't watch Brazilian YouTube. So like, of course you don't know this or you don't watch creators in India. So like, yes, I get why you don't know this and stuff, but it just became so, it was already a bit of a far-fetched idea that you could create that singular view of what was popular, but it just really broke down over time. It's true, I don't, it's not possible. It's not that it's, it's not that, could it be possible? It's literally not possible because I feel like I've thought about this a bunch. And it is because we are in this time, this era of a more fragmented popular culture where, you know, we may be familiar with the same topic or the same conversation, but we may experience it in a completely different way.
41:12And when we do have singular moments. But in many cases, the stuff that we watch, the things that we care about are unique. There's a staff from the Trends Report last year that I love. I cite it all the time, which is that more than half of Gen Z watch content that no one they know personally is interested in. Right. And it's like you, I was a student of mass media. Like I was fascinated by film. I'm sure you guys were too, like, you know, given what you do. But the idea that not only would are people watching content that no one they know is interested in, that 50 % of an entire demographic is watching content that no one they even know also likes is emblematic of this change.
41:52And it's really confounding for and confronting for a lot of people who make content and who make creative work and whose job it is to reach large audiences because it just flies in the face of how you think about distribution and these things. But it's the reality of how things work today. And it's interesting how much personality drives that interest, right? And topics. And we look at groups of channels that are all focused on a similar topic and how big some of those audiences can be. You're not sacrificing size necessarily for this, but you are introducing this feeling that you're not in step with how everyone else is.
42:40It's funny how often, and I'm curious how you guys feel about this. It's funny how often I will talk to creators and ask them if they have trouble feeling like they're keeping up with what everybody else is talking about. And to a man or woman, everyone says the same thing. Yes, they struggle with that. And it's just the reality of where we are now with different platforms, different formats, different personalization algorithms, all this stuff together. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected.
43:14But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40 % off. Terms apply. Yeah, I think it's it's the beauty of the internet and of youtube and what what drew us to it originally, right? Like we started by making videos about lacrosse in 2012 on youtube Everyone around me was like that is not a good idea Um, but we were able to carve out a pocket of people who were interested in that as well And that has been the theme of our entire career is Can we talk about something we're into and it feels like none of our friends are into it?
44:02but can we find people on the internet who are into it? And that proved to be true. And I think that like incredible rise of personalization has only accelerated now with multi-format and with like everyone becoming a creator. Like for us, we released an interview with Destroying a few weeks ago. Now that interview went live, a couple hundred thousand views, but then we saw a short that had 1.5 million views from the conversation that we didn't cut, that someone else got. And then we saw other shorts from that conversation that had hundreds of thousands of views. And I recognize that more people had watched those shorts than had watched the original source material.
44:41So they were experiencing that conversation or that moment completely differently than we had intended them to experience it. And also they experienced it in their own way through the shorts feed, through a small bite size, maybe through someone sending them that clip. and maybe they'll never watch the long form piece, but the person who watched the long form piece and the short form piece actually consumed the same 60 seconds, but just completely differently and different intents. And you zoom out and think about that as everyone is becoming creators, as people are clipping things and remixing things and saying, here's the source material, but I'm gonna, it applies to my community like this, right?
45:26Because there's like financial YouTube channels that take some of our clips and take what we're talking about in the context of finances or business and curate our show for their community. And they might never come and watch our show, but they're experiencing our source material in a way that's relevant and personal to them. Yeah. And yeah, that feels the biggest difference. There's a stat in the report about how people would rather watch a creator talk about an event than watch the event itself. Yeah, 45 % of people in the US would prefer to watch creators breaking down a major event than the event itself.
45:57That's pretty interesting. And I think when I think about that, I assume, oh, the event must be the Grammys or the Super Bowl. But it's actually further down the chain, like it's a Colin and Samir episode with destroying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there are some people who may actually just rather watch a clip or someone else's interpretation of it. Yeah, I think, you know, I fall into this category. If something big happens, I'm interested in hearing about it from Ludwig on Mogul Mail or from Phil DeFranco. Like I want them to contextualize it for me because they're part of my community. So I'd rather watch it there than on the news or somewhere else.
46:36And there's people who, you know, would prefer moist critical or so. So everyone has their own news anchor in some ways. Any tech keynote, I'm just going to watch the Marquez video. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'd much rather. Totally. I didn't watch the Apple keynote. I watched Marquez's videos. Yeah. It's so interesting that, and then that is completely different from how all of my friends experience that one event, that feels like a very substantial difference in the direction of YouTube and the direction of media that I think all creators should be thinking about. And sometimes it makes, we've thought about it after we read the report of like, how does this impact us?
47:16And sometimes what we think about is we're too late to talk about a subject matter. Sometimes we're like, so many people have already made the video. We don't need to talk about that. but then recognizing that actually there's a lot of people who would want to hear us talk about it. Even if that event happened weeks ago, our community hasn't heard it in their personal way from us. Totally. That's something that at least for us, when we read the report, we were like, that's a tangible thing that we can now take into our creative process to say, hey, you know what? We are building our own subculture, right?
47:50The Colin and Samir world is a subculture. It's a community in itself. That's a part of a broader community. And then within our community, there's even more communities. There's a funny meme that someone made in our Discord that's an iceberg that goes underwater and it shows the different layers of fandom of our community. And it's fascinating to look at because I had never put vocabulary around it, but they did. And they showed like, okay, if you're at the tip of the iceberg, you watch the main channel interviews, right? But then you go all the way to the bottom And it's like a very niche reference to something that we talk about.
48:25Yeah. And it shows the different layers. And I think what's added to this is the fact that our audience, like that fans are creators and creators are fans, right? Like we are fans of a bunch of creators that we watch. We're creators ourselves. So we can take inspiration from them and create something. And then our community who watches us can create not only for the broader YouTube community, but like people can emerge within our community as creators. Yeah. For the community, which is a pretty wild just. Yeah, there's like an economy to fandom. Yeah. You know, there's also the element that a lot of the people who work for us or with us started out as fans of ours early on and now work here with us or work on the Discord.
49:12there was something I remember hearing about like K-pop fans who are like full-time fans covering what's happening with like their favorite K-pop band. Can you describe the different levels of fandom and the hierarchies? Yeah, I mean, I wish I had an iceberg. But I think the way that I think about it and the way that my team thinks about it is you kind of have this surface level, you know, engaging with the content as a consumption, a light level of interest in something related to it. Then you kind of go to this next level where you become a more active participant in that, whether that is commenting or some sort of lighter weight thing or whether it's making short form clipping.
49:54We're seeing millions of clips now, people using the clipping features on YouTube, clipping and stuff happening to another tier where you've got sort of, I don't know, these are the presidents of your fan club type of thing where you have some sense of influence within that fan community, right? And that's where a lot of the K-pop stuff comes in. The K-pop economy and groups have really mastered how to enable an entire entertainment experience that exists within the fandom of something. And obviously we have this in other things. You'll get big IPs like Star Wars and stuff. They've always done this.
50:30Or like the Dream SMP. There are so many levels of fandom within the Dream SMP where there are creators creating their own offshoots. Totally, totally. So this exists. but like then you get to the, and even another tier where you almost, you're at a professional, you're actually earning your living as a fan of stuff. And sometimes that's quite broad. You look at, I like to joke, and actually this is still this from my wife, but like a lot of the biggest YouTube creators you could describe as professional fans. Yeah, I was going to say, like I would say we are kind of professional fans, right? Fans of YouTube and of these creators and of the space.
51:06Marquez is a fan of technology, right? like Anthony Fantano needle drop like you know there's a long list there's like so many of of those those folks and some of them branch out and do other things but um it often there is this commonality I think because fan what is what is being a fan it's being passionate about something and the the single most important thread between what makes stuff successful and that exists on YouTube is the number of people who are passionate about something. That's really, it's a passion driven platform in a lot of ways. So it makes sense that these two things go together.
51:44I think fandom is what's driving the culture ultimately. Like, of course you have to have creators put out source material, but it's the fans that then take it and iterate. I'll never forget when you talked to us about Amelia de Moldeberg's chicken shop date with Louis Theroux and how that one moment got turned into a viral trend. I don't think we can play the clip, so maybe we should sing it just so people are familiar. Oh, I can't sing it, but. Louis Theroux says, he remembers a rap that he is talking about. Yep. I like it when you jiggle, jiggle. Yes. My money don't jiggle, jiggle. It falls.
52:15I like it when you wiggle, wiggle. For sure. Yeah, there it is. Okay, so you're familiar with it, I hope. Yeah. Not you, but them. But everybody told you about it. You don't want to tell us about it. But, you know, you explained how like that one moment resulted in this whole stream of creation that eventually really drove culture, drove a moment in time. Yeah, totally. And there's probably only a few people who've watched the original interview from Amelia. Yeah, right. Totally. And Amelia, her whole thing is that she's a fan of the, I mean, usually it's rappers. Like she's usually got UK rappers on that show and she's just a fan of UK hip hop.
52:55Yeah. And that's how, that's what the whole premise of that show is. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that example is one that, you know, you were talking about the fragmentation. It's almost like a light that's going through a prism where it's like, here's the original source. It goes through a prism and just goes in all these different directions. Right. It turns into a dance. Yeah. Like that song turned into a trending dance. It turned into a song. It turned into a Jason Derulo song. A Jason Derulo song. Yeah. It like. And Emilio was in the music video. Yeah. It went like so many different directions and everyone experienced that moment differently.
53:26Yeah. And also to me, it feels like everyone experienced that, but it's also possible that a ton of people did not experience it. And that is like the thing that has been blowing my mind so much of this concept that everything that feels like the end all be all, the biggest moment of the week in the internet, the amount of people who don't experience it and have their own version of the biggest moment. Yeah. You know, I've been giving talks for YouTube for a very long time. and there's always, it's always a three-point talk. One of those points is always participation. And it's been that way for years.
53:59But now you're really seeing what that looks like at scale because you've got a whole generation of people who grew up using these technologies, right? Who are very fluent in using video to express themselves and engaging around video content. And so it's all just accelerating. But because of the way that the personalization works, the media that is created becomes part of the phenomena, you know? And that may be the lens or the path in that you experience, which wasn't always the case in the past. There was something that was referenced in the report of a Brazilian creator who got the rights to stream the World Cup and was able to actually have people watch the World Cup with him.
54:43I think that's emblematic of this concept that people want to watch these events with creators. Yeah. You know, dude perfect is doing Thursday night football, right? Where you can watch a stream with them. You talk about, um, the Mannings, right? Watching football with the Mannings. Like you now have this one source and it's, how do I want to consume it? Yeah. Do I want to consume it? You know, with this creator, that creator in that style, with this community, um, you have your own personalized version of it. So what does this, um, what does this all mean? You know, we have all these trends. We, we kind of have our own takeaways.
55:17is like this has really informed a lot of how we think about the future. Probably the burning question for everyone listening is like, so are we going to get replaced by robots? Is AI going to kill us all? What is happening here? What can we take from this report? The AI killing us all part is I think not in my lifetime, so I'm not worried about it presently, but future generations. No. The, the, I am actually, as, as much as I feel a sense of, um, anxiety about some of the things that we're, we're seeing, I find myself a bit optimistic about this from a creative perspective because what I think it enables is it, it unlocks the, the, the, you guys talked about, you were, you had, um, uh, Miles, Miles Fisher on.
56:07And one of the things that you talked about early in the interview was how talent and the actual skill of being a performer was still so central to the work that he does. Right. He does this deep fake Tom Cruise. And if, for me, if he wasn't such a good performer, it's not convincing. Yeah. Yeah. And so I believe that you can extrapolate that across a lot of the things that we're seeing, which is the human creativity, the human insight is the differentiator, right? If everybody can make everything and make it, then it becomes the insight, the perspective, the unique point of view that matters.
56:40So the thing that makes me optimistic about this is that I do think we are in this sort of transitional moment, perhaps, or not, who knows, in this moment, that seems to bring with it a lot of change in the tools that we use, the technology that we have available to us as consumers and as creators. But it should, theoretically, as one output, but create a world in which we have access to more perspectives. We have access to more unique points of view and new types of creativity than we have today. VTubers, do I think, and virtual humans. I don't think that that replaces the creators that we love today.
57:22I think that opens up a whole new set of creators that would maybe have not made content in the past that I might now be able to hear from. So that's my optimist's view on this whole thing. and I think there's a lot of opportunity right now to figure out what this means for you and the unique perspective that you have on the creative process and the things you're passionate about in your business and whatnot, but I am optimistic. I also am optimistic and for me, I think the biggest takeaway is the availability of tools and the new tools that have emerged, whether it's multi-language audio, generative AI, that are lowering the barrier to entry for some people, but also enhancing creativity for others, right?
58:07You look at Corridor Crew, again, the input, the amount of time they put towards making that animation, it was not easy. It still took time and intelligence that no one else really had, right, for them to create that, but they were able to make something totally new and novel and interesting with these new tools that we have. I would say for me, the biggest takeaway I have is like in this concept of the rise of personalization. I think a lot of creators feel a level of anxiety around needing to achieve extremely high viewership levels to make a career. Millions of views, and that's how you make a career on YouTube.
58:43I actually think because we're moving in this direction of more and more personalization, we're moving to a place where you can build a very tight-knit core community, and that carries a lot of value. And I think a huge part of how you do that That is opening up participation and allowing people to participate in the conversation that you're starting. And that creates a very sticky audience that is their world, just like we talked about. That's their culture. And if you can create culture for a group of people, then you have the opportunity to have a career. And you're only competing with yourself.
59:14Yeah. You're not competing with everyone else making similar types of content because you have your own world, your own community, and your own subculture. Yeah. The thing that it's, it goes back to your point earlier of, could I, are we too late to get into this conversation? Right. If you, if the most important thing in that conversation is your perspective on that topic, then you can never be too late. Right. Right. Where can people find this report? And if they, if people are as big of YouTube nerds as all of us, how do they learn more about all of this? Because I spend time with your resources, so I'd love to give them.
59:54Yeah, youtube.com slash trends has a lot of the big reports that we put out. We have a YouTube channel and we sometimes put things on, but youtube.com slash trends is the best place to sort of see the more report type stuff that we put out like this. We can also put the link in the description. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, thanks. There it is. We'll put the link in the description. we'll put that in there. Kevin, thanks so much for joining. This was awesome, man. This has been so fun. Thank you for having me. This was really fun.
1:00:21for yourself, just click the link in our description.
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Today on the Colin and Samir show, we interview YouTube's Head of Trends, Kevin Allocca.
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