Some very interesting cultural through lines highlighted here.

> For Nussbaum, the clip shows COPS and America’s Funniest Home Videos (both premiered in 1989) were also “the first draft of internet culture.”

While this comparison is probably as old as YouTube itself, it’s fascinating to look at the evolutionary parallels from those first clip shows to the comparatively far more elaborate reality TV that begins a decade later.

Observe how the prototypical YouTube content, the “cat video,” has long since given way to something much closer in form to the evolution of reality TV described in the book review: vloggers, blending autobiography and contrivance with increasingly sophisticated production values, the rise of the influencer, and its proliferation across platforms including Instagram and TikTok.