Community: Online Forums & Youtube Dancers

It's official. There is such a thing as a "Youtube dancer." Definition: someone who was introduced to a dance style first through exposure via videos on Youtube instead of through a first-person experience or through film, television and other traditional media. A Youtube dancer is also someone who primarily learns dance moves through watching videos and copying these movements. It seems nowadays, that this term has a negative connotation more than a positive one. At the same time, a community is forming through online forums like bboy.org and Youtube channels. It's a blessing for those who don't have immediate access to other dancers. If you can't find them in your local scene, you go online.

So, there's good and bad with this burgeoning online dance community. It's not a tightly kept secret. But what's amazing about this new dance community is that it has introduced many new voices into the mix. It's democratized the hip hop dance community in the context of online conversation and media sharing. Anyone can be post an opinion. Anyone can upload of video of themselves. Conversations are started. Miscommunication occurs. Rebukes and correction happen and over time, awareness grows. No dancer is truly alone online. There are millions of eyes watching you. Or at least a video of you.

In the online world, there's also no clear authority. OGs may have respect in their local scenes in person, but on the computer, very little of that respect translates into pixels on screen. Entering into an online conversation on a forum or a comments page of a Youtube video is like being bombarded with endless voices. It creates a din that makes it hard to be heard or to hear. Most folks tend to take what they see as evidence, so a dancer can feel pressured to put their material in front of the camera in order to be seen as legit in the online world.

We're only about five years into the Youtube world of online dance. But forums have been around for years. Could this mean that our conversations about dance will change with each sea change in technology? What happens when real-time social networks pop up among a cloud of users in a localized area vs. the more global networks of already established venues like Facebook and Twitter? We may be more prone to being influenced by technology than we'd like to think.