Youtubian

As large as the current Google database is, even bigger shocks are coming. An avalanche of digital video measured in exabytes (10 to the 18th power, or 1,000 petabytes) is hurtling down from the mountainsides of panicked Big Media and bubbling up from the YouTubian depths.

First I'm going to do something prototypically YouTubian: I'm going to talk about myself.

In these YouTubian times, there's a certain peril in conducting a multi-city stand-up comedy tour: Punch lines precede their progenitor.

YouTubians, as many of us now refer to ourselves, have started to focus not only on the events of our own lives and the expression of our own views, but on the welcome response of others, from not only around the nation, but around the world.

Millions of us YouTubians laughed, out-loud some of us, as we watched a middle aged lady walk into the retaining wall of an ornamental fountain, fall head first into the water, thrash around as if being attacked by piranhas for a few seconds, clamber out and then continue to shop as if nothing had happened.

I took a video and posted it to YouTube, where my fellow YouTubians charitably pointed out I was crazy.