Somehow i was taken to thinking about two kinds of viewership... that of photography, according to Sontag, and Cézanne's, as described by Merleau-Ponty.

Is the banal stuff we're talking about here, the slanderousness and trash, about trophies? "I shoot this video, I have a slice of reality"? Tourism in life, making a parallel world of images?
Maybe youtubeworld gets that way because of the underlying attitude - pride in trophies.

The opposite would be not about trophies, but more humble, about asking; perhaps something like what was called Realism earlier in this thread. The artist describing what the visible tells him/her, rather than deciding for himself/herself.
Maybe this way of looking isn't the youtube way because it isn't fast enough?

All this said, I'm certainly no critical theory buff, and I DO enjoy fart humour.