Spectator Competition: Tubular belles

Competition 3400 invited you to write poems to mark YouTube’s 20th birthday. This challenge drew a large, accomplished entry which was both amusing and informative. Alex Steelsmith’s double dactylic submission was a strong contender for a place in the winning line-up, as were Bill Greenwell, Mike Morrison, Frank McDonald, David Silverman, Elizabeth Kay and Janine Beacham. But the John Lewis vouchers are awarded to those poems printed below.

I am the very model of a modern-day YouTuberist,

The cornucopia of its gifts creates for me a catalyst,

Since first I saw ‘Me at the Zoo’ my mood’s been irrepressible

And now in all my waking hours I beam up what’s accessible:

The medieval manuscripts and cheerful facts historical,

Like who beheaded what’s-his-name, for YouTube is my oracle.

And Baby Shark Dance floats my boat, though hardly educational,

While Fenton! Fenton chasing deer will always be sensational.

The music choice is limitless, I fix myself a rendez-vous

With Handel oratorios and then Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’.

If anything is on the blink and proving unreliable

A video will show me how to make the damn thing viable.

For twenty years it’s been my guide, I’ve ‘liked’ and ‘shared’ religiously

And through my online searching I have watched it grow prodigiously.

I say without a doubt, and my opinion is unprejudiced,

YouTube’s the very model for a modern-day YouTuberist.

Sylvia Fairley

Between the keyboard and the screen abides

An intricate force field that seeks and hides.

Transcendence is a single click away.

A magic world supplants the everyday.

You want a cat? A million cats await.

The networks teem with Agape and hate,

The pious and profane, nasty and nice,

Clickbait galore. Each item has a price.

This Babel of phenomena bespeaks

The double-decade dream of three young geeks

Evolved into a cyber-multiverse.

So versatile – a blessing and a curse,

A potent Janus of the social media

Inducing both arousal and acedia,

Gravid with narratives that cast a spell

For hours, but truth or fiction – who can tell?.