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I crawl around on YouTube two or three times a month, generally watching music videos of songs I’m thinking about buying on iTunes.

Thanks to the “related videos” section on YouTube, I tend to wander off my intended path. Tonight, for example, I started at Jeff Buckley’s Sin-e performance and wound up, about two hours later, at Junior Senior.

As I checked out the video for “Move Your Feet,” I couldn’t help but notice this related video:

Which leads not to a discussion about teen-aged girls posting ill-advised YouTube videos without their parents’ knowledge — that ship has long since sailed, regardless of all the TV news stories during every sweeps week about “protecting your kids online” — but rather to a different question altogether:

What in the world would compel this girl, or anyone for that matter, to post a video of herself spazzing out to what has to be one of the gayest disco tunes ever recorded?

It is this phenomenon — the varying types of YouTube attention whore* — that I wish to examine.

Attention whoring on YouTube isn’t reserved to Happy Bunny fans, although they are the predominant practitioners. The first related video to the one above is this:

The benefit of this video is that it significantly expands the range of attention whore beyond the Hannah Montana set. Some important differences between the previous two videos:

• The girls in the second clip are German. That suggests that attention whoring is a global phenomenon, although admittedly, Germany is more often consulted as a barometer for aberrant behavior.
• They have clearly choreographed their performance. And practiced it, several times. This suggests attention whoring can be methodical and rote; the previous clip, again, bespeaks a momentary lapse in judgment that has not yet come back to bite her on the ass.
• The second clip has actual production values; it’s at least been overdubbed; the lighting is a very fortunate coincidence if it wasn’t planned and set up.  This suggests intelligence and technical prowess.

So it appears that attention whoring is not the work of total airheads — at least, it need not be. In fact, it can be technically proficient, well-scripted and rehearsed.

Further, attention whores need not be teen-agers, nor even female. Witness this video, related to the second:

This video required even more production than the previous entry. And it was created by someone who clearly should have known much better: A 39-year-old Web developer from the United Kingdom.

Says he of his work:

I wasn’t going to make a lip-synch video because one or two people have done those before but since I was asked to contribute to “Project Oatmeal” I thought that I may as well go the whole hog and make a complete video.
The image quality is poor due to cheap & nasty webcam coupled with slow computer but I think that overall it works.

Um … If your intent was to make me question your judgment, taste and grasp of reality, yes, it works overall.

We can tie together the scripting and practice of the second and third clips, and the questionable thinking that went into the first and third clips, plus the new dimension of two male attention whores, to approach the zenith of the art.

Witness this video, related to the third:

(Looks like Junior Senior’s target audience is being reached. Although I would have expected better grooming, better costumes and better dancing.)

It’s the “outtakes” section of this video that prompted me to begin thinking about the different types of YouTube attention whores.

This video is the type usually lost in the shuffle of unremarkable user-contributed crap, yet it raises so may intriguing questions, such as: How self-important do you have to be to include an outtakes reel on a YouTube video, especially a reel that’s nearly half as long as the actual production? Doesn’t that mean you are either really, really bad at making videos, or you really, really should have put more effort into content?

Or, maybe, both?

These questions necessarily are difficult to answer. But nothing is quite as baffling as this last video, related to the fourth:

Here we have costuming (really, really bad costuming, especially the tights and knee socks at the start); a clear storyboard (if not somehow obscure, transparent and hackneyed, at the same time, in employing a “dream sequence”); and clearly, the most focus on the self.

And herein I think is the genesis of the different kinds of attention whore; each video is clearly attempting to achieve something different.

Were I to guess at its purpose, the first video smacks of dare / having to keep up with the Joneses; as in, “all the other girls have YouTube videos and everyone talks about them; I need one, too.”

The second video is clearly the effort of girls who think a great deal about themselves, and who therefore are probably used to receiving compliments, especially for things such as this. And though there’s nothing wrong with it, one wonders at the self-absorption needed to publish it globally.

The third video is the product of a workman who blames his tools, plus a name-dropper.

(Clearly, “Project Oatmeal” is important to him, or he wouldn’t have made note of “being invited” to make something for it. “Being invited” implies that his efforts are valued; so, if “Project Oatmeal” is somehow prestigious, an invite imparts prestige upon him. Yet, as near as I can tell from googling “Project Oatmeal,” it’s just some contest created by some YouTube user.)

In the sense of telling about its creator, the third video speaks far louder than the previous two videos. It seems to me that it was far more important to the previous two creators to make a video that impressed others, while the creator of the third video seems to look upon it as though he created a coffee maker.

His “I’m proud of it even though it sucks” self-explanation seems a more honest reflection of his character than the previous two videos, which are clearly aimed at effect and, as such, are affected. Curious.

The fourth video is what I would call “an early work.” Believe me, I’ve turned out a lot of “early work” in my time, as recently as last week. Lord knows, I hate looking at it.

Everybody’s got to learn sometime. Let’s hope these guys learned something from making this video. Starting with humility.

The fifth video? It’s pretty much the standard bearer for attention whoring. It’s not that guy crying about leaving Britney Spears alone or that girl claiming to have been raped. They are the ridiculous and sublime extremes of the attention whore spectrum, respectively.

No, that video is square in the middle of the attention whore spectrum: Purposeful. Planned. Sincere. And ultimately counterproductive.

* If you find the term “attention whore” jarring or obscene, that’s the point. Your best response is to ignore them as distasteful and not worthy of your interest.