Ownership Anxiety in the YouTube Generation

“I found a bunch of videos on the Internet of bodies falling. They were on a Portuguese site, where there was all sorts of stuff they weren’t showing here, even though it happened here. Whenever I want to try to learn about how Dad died, I have to go to a translator program and find out how to say things in different languages, like ‘September’, which is ‘Wrzesien’ or ‘people jumping from burning buildings’, which is ‘Mensche, die aus brennenden Gebauden springen.’ Then I Google those words. It makes me incredibly angry that people all over the world can know things that I can’t, because it happened here, and happened to me, so shouldn’t it be mine?”—Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, (p. 256)- Jonathan Saefran Foer


The September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centers were events that sent a shockwave through the international community. No event in contemporary history has elicited such a strong response on a global scale. There has been a universal embrace and ownership of the event that, regardless of political affiliation or cultural identity, has assured that every person has an opinion. They may not agree, but they are not indifferent. What is it about the September 11th attacks that provokes such a universal desire to own the events? Why do people who did not know anyone who died in the attacks, even peripherally, feel compelled to place their own stamp of opinion and identification on it? I would argue that it is, in part, because communication technologies have evolved so much within the last decade that the paradigm for sharing and relating to information has shifted. Modern communication technology facilitates an instantaneous transfer of information, a flourishing of analysis and a surfeit of opinion. It is a very simple process to locate a clip online, put it under your own name and add any commentary you want, and then redistribute it to an almost limitless audience. These personalized digital derivatives are likely identical in quality to their initial form and are endlessly reusable. We may all be working with the same set of images, but our capacity to recontextualize and redistribute them to serve our purposes is unprecedented.

Information has become commodified now in a way it never was before. While it has always been a commodity, whether the case of someone paying for a newspaper to receive the news of the day (at a cost that factored in the labor involved in retrieving, collating and distributing information) or paying some industrial spy for insider tips that would affect a business transaction, it is now that there are so many different competing channels of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ information brokers that people can see how transparent the packaging of information has become. Where there is commodification, there is ownership, for a thing cannot be a commodity unless someone is there to make it a possession with value. Further, that commodification inherently implies that one person possesses it and another does not. So if we start to consider Veblen’s commentary on the notions of ownership evolving from an ownership of persons to an ownership of objects, it is fairly simple to move from an ownership of physical objects to an ownership of ephemeral objects and subsequently an ownership of ideas (e.g. evolution of patents), and then finally, now, an ownership of experience.

What does ownership even mean in this context? How does someone own an experience or their interpretation of an event experienced by millions? First we must examine more traditional demonstrations of ownership. In order to own something in a way that has any social meaning, you must demonstrate that you own it. A Ferrari in your garage that you never drive or discuss with others means nothing. The joy of ownership, for most people, is in demonstration of ownership.

In the case of modern communications and multimedia, the demonstration of ownership is two-fold: the physical possession of media and the redistribution of said media, with some form of assertion of ownership (commentary, etc.). This is a display of goods, even if the goods themselves are only somewhat physical. Well before the advent of modern technology, Veblen recognized this tendency, “The means of communication and the mobility of the population now expose the individual to the observation of many persons who have no other means of judging his reputability than the display of goods (and perhaps of breeding) which he is able to make while he is under their direct observation.” So while this may have once just meant display of conspicuous consumption of goods, the evolution of the same social tendency in the wake of modern technology extends to asserting ownership by means of opinion and sense of possession.

However, there is a dichotomic tension generated by this modern technology and our instincts to ownership. It has never been easier to possess physical ownership of a piece of information or media, in the form of, say a YouTube clip or a DVD, because effective mass distribution have driven costs down so far, but it is a veritable impossibility to retain a sense of sole ownership since that same mass distribution that makes it available to you makes it available to everybody. This tension is a source of deep-rooted anxiety in a society accustomed to demonstrations of ownership and has led to the evolution of the commentary culture to create a new stamp of ownership and authority. This media may be ours but this experience of it is mine, and you can’t take that from me.

Ownership gets demonstrated through commentary, reposting, presentation of opinion, context of reposting, repurposing of content and an imposition of experience on the part of the owner. Video is inherently problematic because it presents a myth of objectivity. The camera supposedly shows the viewer the truth of what is there and people are inclined to accept it with less critical considerations. However, film is one of the most easily manipulatible art forms, precisely because people expect a certain level of objectivity. While Benjamin acknowledged the power of film to increase our capacity for critical analysis, he did acknowledge the perils of its apparent objectivity. “As compared with painting, filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis because of its incomparably more precise statements of the situation.” (p. 236, ‘The Work of Analysis in Mechanical Reproduction). All film is inherently subjective, based on the context and the choice of the filmmaker in what to show and what not to show. While footage stripped of all commentary and editing may be the purest form of record, few people view film without a filter of context and commentary. However, people rarely acknowledge that filter consciously and this context gets added to their own experience of an event.

When people engage in the act of reposting media or sharing it with others, they are placing a stamp of ownership on that content. Even if the content has been viewed by millions of other people, the act of sharing allows a person to offer commentary that will be manifested to others as a form of ownership. Is it a conscious action? Probably not. But it does assuage the vague sense of threat and inadequacy brought about by the inability to reconcile manifestations of physical ownership and unlimited distribution of content, as well as a way of placing a stamp of identity and demonstrate one’s goods to an unknown public.

Assertions of ownership over content and experience elicit powerful emotions from people. These emotions range the gamut of the more simple and understandable (jealousy, feelings of inadequacy) to the newly complex emotions brought about by the ownership of ideas. Anger is one of the most common responses, and is the one that Oskar demonstrates when he articulates his frustration in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It is extremely difficult to reconcile a personal sense of ownership with the idea that other people have the same power to own things you want to just be yours. Everyone has the same agency to own an experience and to assert that ownership through a layer of personal interpretation, and we cannot stop that without restricting access to the information, something that is a veritable impossibility with modern technology.

This creates an even more complex set of emotions when people take the same content and apply radically different values to it. Consider the use of the footage of the Towers falling in the September 11th attacks. An American news station might present that as a tragedy, an inconceivable assault on American values or a call to arms. Al-Qaeda has used that same footage as a source of triumph, an inspirational way of recruiting new members. People who may be generally opposed to Al-Qaeda’s actions have a much more visceral feeling of anger and violation when they realize that that footage is being used for that purpose. If you asked them why, they might not be able to explain exactly what it is that bothers them about that, but the answers, involving a lack of respect for the dead, a corruption of the ‘intent’ of the footage, all fundamentally come down to someone else asserting ownership over content in a way that is anathema to your own.

Another aspect of idea ownership is the concept of performative processing—something that has become much more common in the post-YouTube era. Performative processing, as defined here, is the act of processing one’s own feelings about an experience (whether or not you reach a conclusion) in a public forum. Our capacity to do this has grown exponentially due to the advent of modern communication technologies.

The making of ‘Project Rebirth’ itself is an example of performative processing, and placing ownership, on an extremely large scale. The ownership is asserted at a number of levels in the film’s process—the individual participants choose what to disclose of their experiences, Whitaker chooses what to include in his final version, and finally the audience asserts ownership through identification, opinion and a comparison of feelings. The desire to make the film itself is an exercise in performative processing and a recognition that modern communication technology has made a project like this both possible and familiar to a generation that is becoming comfortable with this level of personal exposure and this need to assert ownership.

So once again, we return to Veblen’s comments on displays of goods in a public setting and consider that in this era of commodified experience and mass distribution channels, we resolve the tension of unlimited access to physical media through performative processing and ownership of experience. Experience is easily reducible to commodity so long as it can be packaged and distributed. As an example of technologies that facilitate this ownership of experience and the act of performative processing, I point you to YouTube and to VITAL. Both encourage the redistribution of media with an added layer of personal meaning and metadata—an assertion of ownership and commentary. While commentary (with intent of asserting ownership or otherwise) is valuable and provides context and common ground for discussion and increased shared understanding, there is a peril of conflating commentary and content.

Now that we are quite accustomed to the relentless presence of multiple media sources, unlimited potential for distribution and almost instantaneous access to information, we have to consider how this access to information affects our own personal capacity to own and process events. What does it mean to be a child of the information age and be denied access to information, especially critical information? Does it create a sense of jealousy because someone owns something that you don’t? Is it a completely foreign concept now? Is this an anxiety that people haven’t really experienced in the past because we take access for granted now? This ownership of ideas and experience is not going to go away. It is only going to grow more sophisticated, and our agitations will run deeper without a satisfactory understanding of why we are so frustrated, because the need to own runs so deeply within us. As Veblen stated, “Ownership began and grew into a human institution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence minimum. The dominant incentive was from the outset the invidious distinction attaching to wealth, and save temporarily and by exception, no other motive has usurped the primacy at any later stage of the development.”

Here we come to fully explore the source of Oskar’s deep-rooted anger and frustration. Even though he had a direct connection to the September 11th attacks and had the resources available to him to grant him access to multiple sources of information, he was denied that access. To deny him that access while granting it to people who did not have a direct connection to the attacks, but still claimed ownership of it by the act of posting and commenting and providing access to others, means his ownership of the experience has been denied. That is tantamount to telling him he has no right to his feelings, but now that concern has become enmeshed with a peculiar form of consumption anxiety. Modern media has redefined ownership and consumption anxiety, as people are compelled to create and perform their own interpretations and experiences as commodities. In doing so, however, they reinforce their anxiety that these things, now commodities, can somehow be taken away from them, something that is surely a profoundly modern anxiety.