YouTube might reasonably be understood in terms of the relative merit of individual videos that feature political attacks, or laughing babies, or guitar virtuosos, especially as individual videos generate millions of views and potential rewards for their stars. However, YouTube's role cannot be reduced to the influence of a single video, or even several videos. The power of YouTube is not reducible to the videos it hosts -- which is to say, the influence of individual videos cannot account for the authorizing effects of YouTube. Rather, the impact of individual videos must be considered in light of the accumulative effect of collecting millions of user-generated videos together -- YouTube's archive.