The open secrets of the ‘Lonely Web’

Whichever way you look, you are so surrounded these days by things that are referred to as “viral” that it is difficult to remember when this word last had a negative connotation. There are “viral” YouTube videos, viral Facebook posts, and whole websites dedicated to collecting the most popular content around and arranging it neatly for their readers. Note the inescapable word content: these are not texts, or art, or opinion pieces, or films. They are content – the uniform insides, the thing you insert in between the ads – and they have to be trendy, at least for a while, if they want to justify their existence. From the ice-bucket challenge to John Oliver videos and from the black-andblue/ white-and-gold dress to the (Israeli) Denis Denis song, it sometimes feels like we're all constantly on the lookout for the next huge hit, as if we're the ones who stand to gain money from it. But those uber-successful viral videos, for instance – whether meticulously created to make money or serendipitousturned- money-makers - are just a very, very thin layer at the top. YouTube, according to varying estimations, has over 1.3 billion users. Five billion videos are watched every day, and some 300 hours of video are uploaded to it every minute(!). In other words, the “Donald Trump says 'China'” videos of the world are but a fraction. Underneath viral videos are many popular videos that a lot of people have watched but never quite made stardom; even more videos with just a fair viewership; those shared with family, friends and creators' local or online communities; and finally, a heavy, loaded layer of videos that hardly anyone has ever seen at all: called “the Lonely Web.” THE LONELY WEB is the nickname given to these videos (and follower-less Twitter accounts, and signature-less Change.org petitions, and so on) by Joe Veix, a writer and editor at Newsweek. “It's lonely for various reasons,” he explained in a conversation with the Magazine. “The person has a tiny audience, the platforms filter their posts out, or it's posted in a way that makes it difficult to find through search engines.” Not only hard to find – it's near impossible to measure, too. “It's amorphous, and always expanding,” he said, citing a 2009 paper that estimates that more than half the videos uploaded to YouTube have fewer than 500 views. There are so many of them that it stands to reason that whatever idea you can come up with, someone, somewhere has already posted it on the Internet. Veix said that when he's surfing the Lonely Web, he does tend to have a vague idea about what he wants to find; he would often think up some odd phrase and see what the search engines come up with. This time it was raccoon funeral, and, as he put it, “it did not disappoint.” But then, certainly one of the best ways to reach these videos is to play with randomness. Simply open YouTube, and in the search box, enter “IMG XXXX” – XXXX being any four numbers. Try your year of birth, your anniversary, your PIN code, even just four random digits, and you'll be amazed at the wealth you'll find. Some of it is pretty inexplicable, like a whole series involving a man shown from the neck down in a very tight shot, turning around again and again, showing off his outfits (between a few and a few dozen views each). Other videos feel much more familiar, even if they take place thousands of kilometers away, like a family party where a preteen sings Spanish karaoke while siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles watch silently, eating snacks, and only the mother sings along, clapping (this one for example had only two previous views when I found it.) SOME OF the best Lonely Web videos are the confessionals. These are clean monologues, just the creator and the presumed audience, often filmed via smartphone, vertically. One such video shows a young woman, probably in her late teens or early 20s, alone in her lilac-walled bedroom, talking to her computer's camera. She's reading a prepared piece about her grandfather (three previous views). She says he is her hero, and tells about his bravery and selflessness as demonstrated by stories told to her at his funeral, eight years ago. It's a touching tribute. Another video features Kristen, a 30-something woman, probably also in her room but in a much tighter shot, where the only things visible are a basket on the shelf and a small, illegible poster (eight previous views). This one is in the second person, and it happens to be about parting ways, too. “I definitely pray that you discover that God has a plan and a purpose for your life,” she tells her addressee. “I'm glad that I've met you and this is not goodbye, because now I have a reason to come to Nashville.” The video ends shortly after, leaving the viewer wondering what's in Nashville – and what psychological or spiritual process these people went through together. IT'S HARD to say what it is exactly, but there's something incredibly engaging about these videos, no matter how well or how badly they are shot, no matter how strange or how mundane their subject matter. “There's a raw honesty to them that I find appealing,” confessed Veix. “Especially considering the relentlessly hollow, performative nature of the contemporary Web.” Besides the question of the appeal, there's another, equally hard question that comes to mind: How do we even account for this immense wealth of videos? Why do these people create them in the first place? “I can't say for sure,” said Veix, “There are likely many different motives. Maybe they want attention and fame, or they're desperately lonely. Maybe it's just a kind of an impulse that they don't really think about.” Perhaps YouTube is responsible, too, he added. “The platforms themselves also encourage users to post every small detail of their lives, convince them that their voices matter, even though they've also engineered a complex algorithm to filter out most of those voices to an audience of zero.” Of course, sometimes you don't have to guess. The Internet being what it is, if you search hard enough, you can just ask. Kristen turns out to be Kristen Cotton, 33 years old and from Ohio, who defines herself as a “servant of God.” She says she didn't even mean to post that video online; it must have happened by accident while she was checking out her video uploading settings. Her addressee is a single mother, recently divorced. Religion had played a meaningful role in their short friendship, and now the woman was moving away, hence Cotton's prayers. As for her being on YouTube, out there for everyone to watch, well, she's not really sure how she feels about that: “The idea of people virtually responding to something I post is intriguing; it's… it's welcoming!” Perhaps it is welcoming, rather than intrusive, to learn that someone out there sees you; and if so, maybe for some, the Lonely Web is not quite so lonely after all.

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