By providing a live programming stream of curated YouTube videos, Nameless.tv has positioned itself as television for the Internet.

As choices for on-demand digital content proliferate, the task of choosing what to consume begins to become a task that dips into consuming the content itself. As a result, web apps like What Is On Netflix and newsfeed algorithms are becoming more advanced to help users navigate the ever-expanding universe of content on the web. While this phenomenon of choice paralysis is nothing new (see Barry Schwartz influential The Paradox of Choice), this recently released web app, still in beta, focuses on navigating videos in the Youtube domain.


At its most basic core, Nameless, previously NYCTV, provides a live programming stream of videos curated by the platform’s founders: Alexandra Serio (formerly at SFX), Kareem Ahmed (formerly at New York Times), and Max Nelson (formerly at Vox Media), all of whom met as colleagues at Vice in 2012. The videos are organized into different channels by genre, representing all of the different oddities of the internet, from ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) and Droned (videos shot by flying drones) to Videodrome (read as: Tumblr weird) and Based TV (a reference to the Internet’s legendary Based God, Lil’ B).

While the platform originally launched with a Kickstarter campaign in June 2015 as NYCTV, focusing on supporting video content created by New Yorkers, the founders recently switched to Nameless in order to further develop the technology for their live programming stream of curated Youtube videos. Each video stream, or channel, also features a chatroom in which viewers can communicate with others for real-time reactions and conversations. Unlike Netflix, which is modeled as an on-demand streaming service and offers viewers a wide range of flexibility in terms of what to watch and when to watch, Nameless is like television for the Internet. Users can still go to Nameless's archives to find the Youtube videos they missed and still want to see, but the live programming aspect harkens back to the days when people would watch content together when it was available. As media continues to move online, platforms like Nameless are repurposing traits from familiar formats such as television to fit in the web context.

Nameless TV