A dive into YouTube's strange micro-worlds will mesmerize and charm you
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Version 0 of 1. A few weeks ago, a friend whose two-year-old son is into construction vehicles fed the term “digger” into YouTube. A nine-minute video came up, produced in Germany, in which a series of remote-control trucks were shown moving soil, shifting bricks and simulating the early stages of a construction project on a patch of earth made to look like a quarry. At first glance, the sequence appeared to be a one-off home video shot by a random enthusiast. On closer inspection, however, several things became apparent. First, that 200,000 people had watched it. Second, that the number of vehicles involved, and a certain polish to their movement, suggested this wasn’t one man’s passion for diggers, but a protocol – the coded language of a scene. Finally, a glance down the right-hand column of the page revealed that this particular video was one in a long series. And what a series! Welcome to the world of RC Construction, an online subculture with millions of followers. Now, construction may not be your thing. It isn’t mine. (Although crane operators fascinate me in the way the guys who clean skyscraper windows do.) But there is something transporting about these particular videos. It’s partly the tourism of stumbling across a sophisticated and hugely intricate world I had no idea existed. In spite of the internet’s almost unbounded space, online culture can seem very narrow, like a single, never-ending episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos. There is also something inexplicably moving about the obsessions of others. The “RC” stands for remote control, but these aren’t children’s toys. The videos aren’t made for children, either; this is very much an adult hobby, with $1,000 (£640) vehicles and sophisticated, multi-machine orchestration. Some of the sequences go on for hours. If it was physically possible, I’m sure these guys would build entire scale cities using their miniature construction tools. Part of the fascination of the videos is that the action in them unfolds so slowly. Here, for example, is the hit title “RC Day in the Big Nugget Mine,” in which tiny John Deere earth movers and diggers work diligently to transport earth from one side of a hole to another. Nearly 1.5m people have watched the video. There’s more. One of the biggest hits in the series is, “Horrible accident, RC tank truck on fire.” A tiny oil tanker has overturned, spilling oil that catches light. Fire trucks trundle slowly onto the scene to release tiny jets of water that put the fire out. Nearly 9m people have watched it. Occasionally, part of someone’s leg is allowed into shot, for scale. And there is an exciting behind-the-scenes video in which the German men who make all this happen can be seen dithering about in a field, manning the controls. After a while, RC construction art starts to act on you like some kind of zen antidote to the effect of spending all day online, flitting between 10 open windows on your desktop and failing to focus on any of them. Watch five minutes of a remote-control back loader shifting two thimblefuls of earth across a hole, and all that will change. I promise, you will be utterly mesmerized. |