Defining the medium

Web series have gained ground as a medium over the past decade, moving from a cheap and experimental series to a financially viable and professionally driven medium. They come in all sizes, from narrative-driven parody to glorified podcast, but at their root, ever web series has the following a continuous narrative style or gimmick.

Web series are separated from internet videos of cats running into screen doors and monkeys flinging excrement because they aren’t random. Or, if they are, it’s purposefully random. There’s something that connects the video, be it a distinct style (e.g. Zero Punctuation reviews videogames every week while the narrator gives lightning-fast commentary accompanied by the shows trademark artstyle), a continuous narrative (e.g. Darth Chad’s adventures carry over from episode to episode) or some combination thereof (e.g Hey Ash, Whatcha Playing sometimes breaks narrative arc, but each episode begins with the question “Hey Ash, what’cha playing?”)

Each episode opens with this same bit of dialogue

Think of web series as miniaturized television; this is a metaphor I’ll come back to repeatedly. If it could be on TV, (albeit to fit in a 22-minute slot), it’s probably a web-series. The best counter-argument to this I’ve heard is America’s Funniest Videos, which is basically cute cats and monkey-flinging pre-YouTube. But AFHV still follows a distinct style; a host, a bevy of PG home videos in each episode, a distinct formula, etc.