The Viral Vaccine: 2009

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

while perhaps not its chief concern, deeply entwined within the roots of youtube and web video is a wonderfully idealistic and unabashed disregard for copyright in the name of reappropriation of meaning. What I mean is that ripping and remixing are very close to the heart and soul of our generation, and those concerned with web video should concern themselves with generating some user generated content themselves, given how absurdly easy it is to do so - which leads me to the web tool my 'readers' absolutely cannot live without - a youtube ripper.

I chose this tool without doing any research, relying on my faith in the internet that such a thing would exist when I finally googled it. Lo and behold, there were so many I still don't really know where to start. The difference between something like this and a nifty little widget is that this isn't one unique device created for a nifty little purpose (concrete examples fail me this close to graduation, lets say a visualizer- an especially unique and trippy visualizer) but is rather a concept, as elementary as cut and paste on the simplest word processor.

Before I get ahead of myself though, I should say that there are plenty of rippers that exist as these sort of self-inclusive widgets, mostly for PC. VDownloader and KeepV are examples of decent freeware desktop rippers for windows that can rip into several different formats, with the latter having the advent of a built-in format converter (something a reliable freeware version of can be suprisingly hard to come by). As is the fate of the software spectrum for Mac users, there is all of one reliable desktop application for OS that I have found - GetTube. Whatever. At any rate, I am going to ignore these partisan desktop apps in pursuit of a reliable, unbiased web app - not only because the assignment was to find a web tool, but because it reveals (for me anyway) the beautiful simplicities of digital information that underly all the crazy confusing tangled code that I'll never understand and the possibilities it provides for piracy and mischief.

These various web apps were the easiest to find, yet the hardest to sift through in terms of tangible differences between each one. The one aspect of their simplicity which struck me is that to use all of these rippers, you simply paste the url into a box on the website which then downloads the video to your desktop. videodownloadx.com is probably the simplest to use of them all, but along with KeepVid, the downloaded files have strange extension names that must be changed manually to flv (the extension for flash videos). To sidestep this and the whole flv thing if you want (most editing software doesn't support flv yet), I reccomend Zamzar, an online ripper/converter in one that supports many different video sharing sites and file extensions.

Anyway, now that we've picked one, I can continue making my point. Using something that is essentially metadata (the url) to rip an entire video fascinates me. It is merely a signpost that points to the spot where code is stored and can be copied quite easily. It had never really occurred to me until recently that when I watch a video on the internet, my computer is processing code that it has the capacity to remember, simple as that. This just flips the switch. more on this concept in the next post - lip service time. Zamzar is based out of the UK, and while you can pay for more options and larger file sizes, the best stuff is still free. Their name is inspired by a Kafka character, and on their about page they have a simple mission statement: "To provide high quality file conversion for as many file formats as possible." Perfect.

more thoughts on the tool

As I was saying, using online rippers illuminates certain aspects of the nature of ripping files that are somehow isolated and inoculated when using a desktop program, hidden behind the inherent shiny niftiness that most 'widgets' seem to inherit. Its entirely possible that its just me, but something about pasting the url- metadata, a key part of the framework of the object in question-conjures sensations of loopholes and savviness and beating the system. Many of the reviews of online rippers highighted their usefulness in not only breaking copyright law, but circumventing it altogether by serving as a means to capture controversial or otherwise videos before they are taken down by the powers that be. I find the idea of copyright control and censorship on the internet using traditional media as a model to be quite absurd - hell, the film and television industry tried using legislation to stop the first home video recording devices from being mass produced.

In my mind, if it is part of the media stream in the grand scheme it is fair game, whether that takes the form of graffiti on an especially nauseating billboard ad or a humorously re-cut trailer of a mainstream film. The now-incredibly-popular street artist Banksy has a fantastic quote about why he defaces advertisements (bear with me here): "You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs." Now ripping/remixing isn't vandalism because the original is left intact and not by any stretch are all youtube videos promoting or advertising something, but the idea that someone knowingly put it out there, maybe didn't shove in under your nose, but put it in a public place means I can do what I want with it artistically. Reminiscent of the artists plight: whatever meaning you placed in your work often has no bearing on how people interpret it. Once you put it out there, it is not yours to control anymore - it is the rest of the world's to experience and manipulate and derive meaning from. This is getting long-winded - the fact is with Zamzar and others, not only can you keep your own personal library of videos and have the abilitiy to dodge copyright law, it is absurdly easy and fun to generate remixed or reappropriated content and contribute to the leveling of the playing field. It is your right as a human introduce your own viewpoint to the conversation. Here is a means.

a word on the presentation links

Rather than lead my readers leaping and bounding through a Prezi or Ludovico-treat-them-to a powerpoint, I decided to assemble a few key videos from YouTube to form the cornerstones of my presentation.

eisensteinian collision
Here is a wonderfully graphic and explicit example of a user-generated remix. Using only basic communist film theory in conjunction with Zamzar and a twisted sense of humor, we see the saccharine innocence of kids' TV collide with the violently sexist message of Lil' Jon and as a result - we laugh like hell. Oh the possibilities...

damn copyright hawks
My own attempt at user-generated content feat. Zamzar and Final Cut Pro. The eerie silence you hear is the result of YouTube's copyright hawk - a program that scans your videos for copyrighted songs (it is immune to EQ'ing, pitch-bending, re-recording... essentially all pirate stand-bys) and cuts out the video's tongue. While it is frustrating that I cut the entire video (using clips from Berkeley in the 60's and The Last Picture Show) to the song, it is a perfect example of an obstacle a user-generator may face and also brings up Zamzar's usefulness as a means of capturing soon-to-be-censored videos.

the mother of all funk chords
After my frustrating brush with copyright law I wondered how I could sidestep my way into an original soundtrack and stumbled upon someone who had already perfected this. How about a song constructed entirely of how-to videos for musical instruments. The funk exists in the ether- assemble it as you see fit.

Monday, May 4, 2009

its not where I am - its who I'm with

An old friend with a perpetual twang in his musical tastes showed me this video the other day. While he's usually more country-and-folk-inclined than myself, Dave may be on to something here. Watch the first bit then keep reading and let the song play.

I am enamored with the simplicity of this video - three minutes of one shot of three guys jammin in a gondola in Wyoming. The gondola is key. Close quarters begat claustrophobic camera angles that create an awkward sense of intimacy with the musicians while the background slides peacefully out behind them. The gentle and smooth motion of the gondola is perfectly in step with the rhythym of the song and carries the linear progression of the video so that after three minutes thirty seconds we've hardly noticed any time pass.

The simplicity of the video's concept allows us to focus on little things - like 1.15 where the drummer nodding his head makes it seem like he's walking the gondola up the hill Fred Flintstone style or 1.46 where the guitarist adjusts his capo and the song pauses for a thoughtful second- Rough spots that we catch our interest on as we pass.

The way I see it, everything about this video is organic - the way the harmonies sound in the gondola, the natural scenery passing behind, the minor flaws in the performance and the one thing that I can't quite put my finger on that keeps making me watch it again.

a word on the presentation links

Thursday, April 30, 2009

PORTFOLIORAMA

HELLO POST

Hello. The internet knows me as Thurl Chessor and I am a twenty-two year old cinema major in the final lap of an education that began sixteen years ago.

I realize the title of my blog might suggest that it provides of some form of cure. This is unfortunate, as I don't claim to know anything about medicine and for that matter am not even sure that youtube or viral videos are things to be 'inoculated' against. I have, however, decided to live with my last-minute titling decision in the true spirit of "whatever-you-put-on-the-

internet-is-out-there-forever," and treat it as irrevocable. Lets break it down - While a vaccine is a preventative measure, it can, in some circumstances, have the unintended effect of transmitting the disease. I have decided that the title is ironic and that this blog will be a perverse exploration of that possibility. Let me explain-

The difference between youtube and traditional broadcast media is that youtube is just the shit, whereas traditional broadcast media ultimately fails to present any sort of accurate portrait of the human condition it reports on/is inspired by. Humans are strange creatures - if you don't believe me, ride a greyhound. Higher purposes aside, my fascination with youtube stems from its quality as a swamp for this general eccentricity - the runoff of ideas of an entire species. Youtube is an unaltered, unaffected view into the minds of millions - what they find to be meaningful, traumatic, funny, normal (which is often turns out to be very funny) or whatever adjective merits using video as a means to explore it (which is all of them).

I suppose now is as good a time as any to drop all pretense and really set the mood. I was going to continue to pontificate on the humanistic qualities of youtube, but I have a whole blog ahead of me for that. I should let you know I fully intend through this blog to spread my unhealthy addiction to the strangest, most affecting videos youtube and the internet at large have to offer. Through strategic use of my misleading title I will lure unsuspecting, refuge-seeking webgoers to my blog where I will bombard them with strange and hilarious videos. With intent to distribute, I will amass lethal amounts of weird videos - videos weird enough to embarrass even the most isolated viewer. Weird that won't leave. Weird that haunts. I mean weird like when you were a kid and you invented back-stories for all of your bath toys, even the non-anthropomorphic ones. Oh you didn't? Me neither, my point is that anything is fair game in a 'rogues gallery' - something I hope this will become.

Readers may also be subjected to analysis and ponderings on the nature of said weirdness, as informed by 94% of a bachelors in film criticism.

PROFILE POST

While anyone writing about viral video must pull their subject matter from the same wonderful cesspool as all the others, as far as ethos goes, this particular blog and mine share very little. So then- to perhaps gain a little perspective on the phenomenon of viral video and to anchor some of the more enthusiastic claims made in my hello-manifesto, lets take a look at the Viral Video Research Blog. The blog itself is a satellite to the website of Visible Measures, a silicon-valley company that specializes in providing "new capabilities and metrics that allow Internet video publishers and advertisers to understand audience behaviors and more accurately predict and analyze the success of Internet video programs" - in their own words. In other words, they are part of a fairly recent wave of firms that essentially hawk more hits on youtube.
But maybe thats a little harsh. Aside from offering placement options on various high-ranking sites, youtube among them, they also provide very detailed viewership statistics from a database of over 100 million videos on the top ten video sharing sites on the web. While I suppose this is a perfectly respectable example of modern capitalism, I can't seem to shake this feeling that I should somehow morally oppose what appears to be, at its most basic form, the commodifying of a new arena for creative expression. I'm sure there are complexities to the business model I don't understand and any number of salesmen that could smooth over any ideological concerns I might have, but ultimately I'm not here to bleed my heart out or buy anything. My interest in this blog lies in the statistics and research - rigid portraits of phenomena as they happen.

I have a feeling that it may come in handy to have a cold, hard, mathematical point of view to fall back on when attempting analysis of a video's most affecting qualities. One post I found to be particularly interesting features one of the first youtube mega-sensations - Judson Laipply's The Evolution of Dance. Contributor Matt Cuttler, writing shortly after the release of The Evolution of Dance 2, illuminates the possibilites of the sequel as a concept in the viral video world, versus the established model of the sequel in traditional media. Posing a question only answerable with time, Cuttler asks - "Is this evidence of an emerging trend, or a flash-in-the-pan that's destined to be a footnote in the history of our industry?" While he does not (and I assume dares not to) answer the question outright, the statistics provided raise interesting points about online viewing habits. Cuttler points to an incease in daily views of the original after the release of the sequel as evidence of what they call "viral activation," where interest in a new clip "drives a corresponding increase in viewership to related, but older clips."

While terms like "viral activation" certainly point to the commodifying aspect of corporate research I expressed fear of earlier, as with any buzzword, its meaning is often less frilly and ornamental than the word itself. Just think - how many times have you watched Jizz in my Pants, remembered Dick in a Box and then wound up watching the classic Lazy Sunday at least four times? Maybe never, but my point is that we all, as internet viewers, are more familiar than we might think with emerging viewership patterns detailed by firms like this. We invent them as we click about, leaving firms like Visible Measures to speculate about what that could possibly mean. We will be keeping an eye on this one and the trends it claims to capture and categorize, if only for the purpose of juxtaposition against the more cult-like, rabid-fan aspect of youtube I hope to delve into.

VOICE POST

Lets continue to tread the water of other people's blogs and examine the voice and writing style of Alexandra Juhasz in Media Praxis. While this blog is not geared specifically towards youtube and viral video, Juhasz maintains a lightly humorous, intelligent, acacdemic voice in her discussion of media theory and practice at large. Her post Even Obama: Irony in the Time of Youtube outlines a thesis (the theme of which is highly visible in the second half of the title of the post), and presents an interesting display of academic online barb-trading - much more the gentleman's game than the customary torrent of hatred and stupidity that seems to emanate from most youtube comments. Juhasz begins the address of her thesis with a quote:

“The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Joan Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an “irony-free zone,” a vast Kool-Aid tank where “naïvete, translated into ‘hope,’ was now in” and where “innocence, even when it looked like ignorance was now prized.” Andy Newman, Sunday Styles Section, New York Times, November 23, 2008.

Quite the scholarly method of commencing to prove a point, Juhasz immediately takes a contradictory stance to such established academic names as Joan Didion and a bit later, The Web Is Us/ing Us creator Michael Wesch. Juhasz does this in what at first appears to be a pejorative maner, casually referring to Didion by her first name - "Joan, seriously (umm…ironically?), have you spent much time on YouTube?" - then quickly and gracefully begins to lay the theoretical groundwork under her taunt - "You of all people must be aware that Barack Obama, heralded by The Washington Post, no less, as our first “YouTube President,” also announced after his election the commencement of weekly broadcasts of his presidency’s “fire-side chats” on-line and on YouTube. While the tone, form, and message of these networked national addresses are decidedly serious, presidential even, Joan, you’re savvy enough to get the joke, to intuit the wink, the implied aside to a history of worn out presidents, tired fires, and cornball communications."

The subsequent explication of her thesis proves to be just as eloquent and cutting, but I'm not trying to re-post the whole thing to rack up my word count. To put it one way - recent worries I harbored concerning my possibly excessive use of commas, adjectives and generally (what I feel like may be) lengthy sentences dissipated instantly upon reading this post in its entirety. Juhasz's masterful use of commas creates an ease of reading reminiscent of completely informal blogs, but without the advent of irritating 'lol's and excessive use of parentheses (although parentheses can be done tastefully. wink). The overall tone created by this provides a legitimate academic backdrop for conversational humor - indeed, the effect of her writing is akin to what I imagine being in a starbucks full of P.h.Ds is like. At any rate, highly evident in this first jab is the effective, balanced combination of casual and scholastic tone (something I'm beginning to sense is neccessary for all blogs and indicative of the balance that life requires in general) that informs her overall writing style.

To neatly package this first thrust of her thesis in a flurry of excellent word choice, Juhasz refers to Obama's fireside youtube videos as "...a new kind of president-talk produced through documentary’s oldest, most eloquent sobriety, fireside-hot, only to be elegantly plopped into his society’s silliest platform. Incongruity-free? Naïve? I’d say not." Ending memorably seems to be a blogging rule of thumb, so in the spirit of this post and the one before it, I will appropriate the memorableness of that last passage and re-post it here, only one sentence later, in italics for emphasis.

His move, like most on YouTube, is irony-full: a regal black American taking up the hot-spot, filling the usually-segregated head-shot, a new kind of president-talk produced through documentary’s oldest, most eloquent sobriety, fireside-hot, only to be elegantly plopped into his society’s silliest platform. Incongruity-free? Naïve? I’d say not.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

presentation links

eisensteinian collision
damn copyright hawks
the mother of all funk chords

more thoughts on the tool

As I was saying, using online rippers illuminates certain aspects of the nature of ripping files that are somehow isolated and inoculated when using a desktop program, hidden behind the inherent shiny niftiness that most 'widgets' seem to inherit. Its entirely possible that its just me, but something about pasting the url- metadata, a key part of the framework of the object in question-conjures sensations of loopholes and savviness and beating the system. Many of the reviews of online rippers highighted their usefulness in not only breaking copyright law, but circumventing it altogether by serving as a means to capture controversial or otherwise videos before they are taken down by the powers that be. I find the idea of copyright control and censorship on the internet using traditional media as a model to be quite absurd - hell, the film and television industry tried using legislation to stop the first home video recording devices from being mass produced. In my mind, if it is part of the media stream in the grand scheme it is fair game, whether that takes the form of graffiti on an especially nauseating billboard ad or a humorously re-cut trailer of a mainstream film. The now-incredibly-popular street artist Banksy has a fantastic quote about why he defaces advertisements (bear with me here): "You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs." Now ripping/remixing isn't vandalism because the original is left intact and not by any stretch are all youtube videos promoting or advertising something, but the idea that someone knowingly put it out there, maybe didn't shove in under your nose, but put it in a public place means I can do what I want with it artistically. Reminiscent of the artists plight: whatever meaning you placed in your work often has no bearing on how people interpret it. Once you put it out there, it is not yours to control anymore - it is the rest of the world's to experience and manipulate and derive meaning from. This is getting long-winded - the fact is with Zamzar and others, not only can you keep your own personal library of videos and have the abilitiy to dodge copyright law, it is absurdly easy and fun to generate remixed or reappropriated content and contribute to the leveling of the playing field. It is your right as a human introduce your own viewpoint to the conversation. Here is a means.

the tool

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

the discussion up until now

As stated in my previous post, much of the scholarship surrounding viral video phenomena tends to focus on things from an advertising perspective, so lets review where they're coming from.

On a reccomendation from none other than media scholar and popular YouTuber Michael Wesch, I looked into scholarship by Henry Jenkins sourrounding the 'myth' of viral video. His paper "If It Doesn't Spread It's Dead" is compiled on his blog in eight separate posts, the first of which focuses on the use of 'virus' and 'meme' as terms to describe media functions. In his words -

Use of the terms "viral" and "memes" by those in the marketing, advertising and media industries may be creating more confusion than clarity. Both these terms rely on a biological metaphor to explain the way media content moves through cultures, a metaphor that confuses the actual power relations between producers, properties, brands, and consumers.

Jenkins illuminates several points about the discussion of viral video up until now: it has not been entirely consistent and is something inherently tied to the producer/consumer relationship that dominates traditional media.

Dick Stroud further emphasizes the relationship to advertising in another paper, "Guerilla Video: why and how Web Video will change the fabric of the Web," discussing why embedded video will be one of the most significant developments in online marketing. The paper explains the developments that have "...enabled the explosion in web video to occur and the opportunities it creates for marketers."

Jose Castillo attempts to demystify some of the discourse in "Attack of the Giant Web 2.0 Lies," among them the idea that small business cannot make money from web video, something left to corporate sized budgets with the capacity to hire third-party firms. With several concrete examples that speak to the humanistic quality of YouTube and 'authentic' viral campaigns that benefited small businesses (something that is at least not wholly corporate), it is still derived from the thread of web video as a capitalistic enterprise.

Discussion in the blogosphere also seems to speak to a growing cynicism toward 'viral video,' evinced in a post by guest blogger to TechCrunch Dan Ackerman Greenberg entitled "The Secret Strategies Behind Many 'Viral' Videos." As an employee of an anonymous YouTube view-hawking company, Greenberg makes several bold claims about artistic merit and its relative unimportance when it comes to graduating into the neighborhood of 100,000 views.

Hope exists, however, in the revolutionary rumblings of the more art-inclined blogs, VideoArtNetwork in particular suggesting the creation of an artist's YouTube, free of the content restrictions (copyright among them) and also aesthetic restrictions caused by limited file uploading capability.

implications and consequences

I fully realize the implications and/or consequences of my argument for my last paper may seem inconsequential given the sequence in which they were produced. That said, here they are.

I began my research for this paper from the standpoint of an artist examining the possibilities YouTube and other video sharing sites present for the proliferation of creative content, with emphasis on the 'myth' of 'viral' video. Much of the scholarship surrounding viral video phenomena tends to focus on things from an advertising perspective, seeing the viral phenomena as a potential gold mine with which to purvey their product. Ultimately, the conclusion of my paper is that 'viral video,' aside from being almost impossible to nail down a definition of, is something an artist shouldn't be overly concerned with, as there exists many ways in which an individual can interact on a very meaningful level with an online audience of less than a hundred.

In turn, the implications of this conclusion lie somehwere along the lines of careful self promotion within spheres of people the artist may already know as a means of getting your foot in the door. This method stands in stark contrast to that suggested by much of the advertising-related writings - finely engineering the form of your video at the expense of content and hoping it is streamlined enough to gain views fast.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Been a while. With a little room to move this time I am going to subject the internet to my... analysis (only time will tell if that's too strong a word) of a not-so-obscure favorite that is by no means new but rather has settled into its place among the first few hints of a collective nostalgia for YouTube's first few years. Man that sounds like a thesis - Watch the video while I scholarly tone it down a notch.

Ahh, yes. Weezer. A large part of me feels like other devotees have gone through the same rite of passage in their fandom - become disillusioned every few albums or so, lately after Make Believe, yet eventually sense undercurrents of the early years, the stupid and obvious energy that drew you to their music in the first place in this song, despite all efforts to resist its catchiness. But maybe thats a little self-centered - off topic at the very least. The sentence might have been an attempt at an anecdotal paragraph introduction in spirit (it was a little long), but mostly an excuse for me to bring up Weezer's wondrously self-aware salute to dull care and lame emotion that, in one way or another, manages to come crashing through in nearly all their music and is brought to a finely tuned crescendo in this video. There I go again. Commence bullet points to induce brevity.

--- I have a good friend from back home who goes to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. As it is a school just this side of 2,000 students, he knows everyone, including Austin Hall, user generator of the thirty million views oh my god Daft Hands. Perfectly tangible, second-hand example of king content creating as close as we may ever come to an 'organic' viral phenomenon, ( "the beauty of the plan, dude, is its simplicity...") and much more importantly a pretty cool example of my buddy's friend in a Weezer video.

--- Clunky and tired film theory engine very prone at this point in our degree to groaning loudly at the sight of any sort of pop-culture pastiche-milkshake montage, (a la the 'Scary' Movies) and the hollow, fleeting excitement that comes with every 'hey I've seen that too!' and ' but that just came out a month ago!' (disclaimer: just like parentheses in the blogoshpere, when used tastefully, any cinematic device can have a profound effect. For further reading and a perfect example, see South Park, whom as many people know often finish their show mere hours before air time to ensure that a stupid degree of the last minute is visible in every episode. They also happen to have a very funny one centered around nearly the same cast of YouTube stars.) Anyway, a video like this, with youtube celebs and their viral offspring as ammunition manages to side-step the guilt I usually feel when the "i've seen that!" fades quickly into the realization that I saw it courtesy of big brother on a billboard. Let me be clearer: when I recognize a reference to a YouTube video, the package comes with a certain fondness for the spirit in which it was discovered - usually from a friend under the honest pretext of 'you gotta see this,' as opposed to the exasperation that comes from reappropriated hollywood jokes and the not-so-fond recollection of the trailer which gave all the good stuff away just so people would be quoting it when they sat down to watch it in the dark, which is the way you remember all movies seen in a theater. In layman's theory, the fact that these are YouTube phenomena from the last few years that we all remember makes the pastiche okay. I find this particular aspect of the video somehow akin to my affection for the Beatles and the funny way one can still be protective of something loved by millions, as long as it means something to the individual.

My bullet point strategy fell apart there, but this post is getting too wordy anyhow. This video is the perfect companion to a nerd anthem for the ages - a crafted montage of human beings who didn't 'give a hoot about what you think' and in the vernacular of the internet - epic win.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

in the spirit of spring break - take off your top...oi

Let's take a look at what the topoi can do for my poor, exhausted, writer's soul.

CONTRAST: there exists an obvious paradox in the research I have found, in that youtube is viewed as a 'level playing field' by many, while others remain convinced (or are certain and are undertaking efforts to convince the world) that youtube is merely a plaything of the business world and a new means to purvey a product. While many 'viral' phenomena have indeed been aided and abetted by various youtubing firms (for lack of a better word), a business model of youtube still falls short of explaining the absurd level of success obtained by certain individuals, such as Tay Zonday and his now-infamous "Chocolate Rain."

CAUSE/EFFECT: What are the implications of viewing youtube as a cold, soulless selling device? Implied I suppose would be the 1984-ish idea that as users, we are unwittingly consuming and accepting propagandistic content that has been mislabeled as 'user-generated.' Possible consequences of such a revelation? Possibly the invention and first ever implementation of an online riot, as duped users rebel against their corporate oppressors. Youtube comments may become even nastier, more racist, and contain worse spelling (although I feel we may have already reached the pinnacle for many of these)

CHANGE: Was youtube truly conceived as a 'level playing field' for all to publish upon or has it been a corporate tool from its inception, or at the very least since its buyout by google. If there truly exists a method for garnering more hits with return of investment in mind, is this a recent development, the potential of which has only begun to be explored? Should this be viewed as the moral decay of what was once a humanistic medium, the inevitable plodding evolution of an artistic platform (reminiscent of the commercialization of other art forms throughout history), or a hostile revolutionary takeover by greedy financial-minded corporations?

Apparently, the topoi take me down the worn path of the individual vs. corporation, of art and expression vs. greed and finance

funk soul brother check it out now

How silly of me to forget an entire post, especially one devoted to someone who is in one way or another my 'soulmate.' It is spring after all- the season when a young man's something or another turns to cliches to overcome initial writer's block.

Somewhat ironically, it was a sunny afternoon that found me in the park, blogging outside for once when I happened upon Chris Punke, my social bookmarking soulmate whether he knows/likes it or not. From Des Moines, Iowa, with his industry listed as 'internet,' his bookmarks present an interest not only in the humanistic possibilities of youtube, but of the economic ramifications as well. I came upon his lonely Diigo profile (indeed, he only has one friend, but who am I to talk with a grand total of zero) quite simply by rifling through the endless list of people who have 'youtube' listed as one of their most prominent tags. While many 'suitors' had the youtube tag embedded in a maelstrom of 'web2.0googleinternetbloggingwordpresstwitter' and the like, the word shone bold and clear and larger than all the others in Chris' tag cloud. It was then I felt the chemistry between us.

Further examination of the tag cloud revealed that his interest in youtube and user-generated content at large lies largely in the emerging trend of viral marketing. His tags are fairly well organized around this issue of marketing, although any comments or annotations on any of the bookmarks underneath the tags are not to be found. Of 131 total shared bookmarks (he is apparently a generous guy too, as he has no private ones), 67 are tagged for youtube and 55 are tagged for 'marketing.' Examples of sites in the overlap include a page titled "Youtube Tries a Little Harder to Protect Copyright Holders" and the techcrunch post "The Secret Strategies Behind Many 'Viral' Videos."

The latter provides a uniquely cynical perspective on the phenomeon of 'viral' videos, with the author boldly claiming "There are tens of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube each day (I’ve heard estimates between 10-65,000 videos per day). I don’t care how “viral” you think your video is; no one is going to find it and no one is going to watch it." Videos with a puzzling number of hits are explained - "Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine." Judging by this particular bookmark and the overwhelming number of similar ones, it would appear that Chris has some form of vested interest in youtube as a marketing tool, yet sites like "Wisconsin based sub sandwich shop chain creates the first human flipbook video to promote it's restaurants" and "Google Earth Blog: New Youtube Layer in Google Earth" speak to a basic fascination with youtube.

Chris Punke provides a wide array of bookmarks on both the business and artistic ends of youtube, although he does appear admittedly more invested in the business side. As a resource for myself and my 'readers,' he provides a kind of balancing pole to maintain sanity in the face of an overwhelming wave of user-generated content, while retaining a love of the platform itself.

PAGEFLAKE TOUR

Now that it is up for all the world to see, why not spend another five hundred words telling the world just what exactly they're looking at. Easier than making museum placards and sticking them to the screen, I suppose.

Starting in the top left, we have the universal blog search and universal news search loaded with the slightly obvious keywords "youtube" and "viral video." Honestly, the scope of diction I have found in blogs surrounding this topic is so vast and this particular flake is so temperamental that any additional keywords (attempts include 'phenomenon,' 'popular,' and 'media') make for irrelevant information (believe it or not several pornography blogs made it in when 'phenomenon' was included - how that happened, I have less of an idea than I may have had about anything in my life). At any rate, youtube is a fairly new and expanding medium/phenomenon and the discourse surrounding reflects this in its apparently erratic, schizophrenic nature. In other words, if my keywords seem a little broad, it is because my subject matter is a little broad and is broadening by the second.

Continuing in a downward manner (no, not my general outlook on life) on the left in the skinny column we find all ten RSS feeds included in my blogroll. Media Praxis is a blog whose voice I have detailed in its very-own post, and many others made it onto the blog in a slightly more abbreviated state, leaving only Youtube Reviewed, Virtualpolitik, The Tubefilter News and The Youtube Bibliography Project left undiscussed. Youtube Reviewed and The Tubefilter News share very similar mission statements with my blog, so their inclusion here is without mystery. Readers may balk, however, at Virtualpolitik or The Youtube Bibliography Project, as their purposes exist slightly tangentially to mine. While Virtualpolitik does contain discussion of youtube and online video, it is largely geared towards discussion of media practices at large, a topic whose exploration, I find, proves valuable when attempting to nail down the flightier trends of such an ever-changing medium. Readers may also ponder my inclusion of The Youtube Bibliography Project, as they will find a perfectly acceptable Citeline bibliography directly to the right of it. As a satellite to Dr. Strangelove's "Watching Youtube" (another blog with an analytical outlook similar to mine), the YBP is incredibly thorough in its organization of writings about youtube, from books to articles in scholarly journals right down to blog posts (a list probably far more valuable to my readers than that provided in the blog search window), and provides quick, if minimal instantaneous research into what is being written about this rapidly expanding trend.

Finally, back to the top right in the fat column we have my actual bibliography - an interesting amalgamation of once again tangential topics. For my book sources I have included two very different works - one details the effect of the internet on traditional television consumption in quite the scholarly tone, while the other reads as more of a DIY manual for aspiring youtubers. I also tried to maintain a sense of variety in my selection of articles: two concern themselves with viral video as a marketing device, one with the issue of copyright law and another the effect of youtube on politics. In this wide array of mostly-scholarly texts I have attempted to create a cloud of information that hovers above and around what I am getting tired of emphasizing as a malleable, expanding platform. Youtube is new and powerful, we know this, yet it does not have a single, spoon-fed, highly apparent function. I have tried (coming as close as I feel is possible in a paper that does not exist in writing) to present as accurate a portrait as can be drawn given the nature of the topic. Art critics hated "Nude Descending a Staircase" when it was painted anyway.

PAPER #2

Here 'tis.

Monday, March 9, 2009

sources and annotations - slightly out of order/context

Rather than do them the sensible way, two at a time when they are due, I decided to purposefully build suspense and unleash them all in an annotative torrent that will blow your mind, my dearest imaginary readers. Ta-da.

"Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet" - Sharon Marie Ross, Blackwell Publishing 2008

Author Sharon Marie Ross probes how the development of the internet has altered the production and consumption of television. The perspective offered focuses largely on the shift in audience experience, using as examples the online voting practices of "American Idol" and the youtube discourse following the lineup of Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" and the popular series "Lost." Illuminating the trend that Americans no longer merely watch tv, but rather participate in, lobby for, respond and relate through a number of online media, her thesis declares that what was once the domain of cult fanatics (using the fans of "Star Trek" and "Xena Warrior Princess" as examples) has entered the mainstream through various forms of online media, youtube among them. While her discussion of viral video is limited, the examination of online viewing practices at large provides valuable perspective on youtube as a phenomenon.

"Evaluating viral marketing: isolating the key criteria" - Danilo Cruz and Chris Fill, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol 26 Iss. 7

Authors Danilo Cruz and Chris Fill report on various forms of research undertaken to determine the key criteria that viral marketing practitioners believe should be used to measure the success of viral marketing campaigns, as there is little current evidence of efforts to measure their effectiveness. Using semi-structured interviews with some of the UK's premier web masters, Cruz and Fill identify two forms of viral marketing - "random" and "placed" virals, and within these present a fairly thorough viral marketing evaluation framework. Pertinence to the phenomenon of viral video is apparent in their examination of the "random" virals - videos that exist seemingly without any pretense of its status as an advertisement. Various cases of unsuccessful random virals and the resulting backlash from the youtube and general online communities provide a unique statistical backdrop for media experiences of the average youtube user.

"Word of mouth and viral marketing: taking the temperature of the hottest trends in marketing" - Rick Ferguson, The Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol 25 Iss 3

Author Rick Ferguson studies examples the emerging marketing trends of word-of-mouth and viral marketing in an attempt to determine their measurability in terms of 'return on investment.' The study examines campaigns from well known companies, raising the question of how much of an actionable response can be evoked and measured from these campaigns, ultimately concluding that even the best efforts at viral marketing are 'not always a sure bet,' although well-placed and calculated campaigns sometimes have an intangible ability to spark a firestorm of 'brand awareness.' Ferguson details how viral marketing should not anchor an overall marketing strategy, but rather be used as a form of 'ace up the sleeve' in an effective, calculated campaign. His conclusion that there is no definite model for a return on investment for a viral campaign speaks to the inexplicable, unfolding nature of youtube and viral video as a humanistic, collective medium.

"YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts" - Alan Lastufka and Michael Dean, O'Reilly Media, 2008

Authors Alan Lastufka and Michael Dean detail the steps neccessary to produce media for online consumption and the methods to increase potential audience, speaking from their perspective as veteran youtubers - Lastufka especially, who has upwards of 10,000 youtube subscribers and millions of views. Through informative interviews with such youtube stars as LisaNova, Hank Green (vlogbrothers), WhatTheBuckShow, nalts, and liamkylesullivan, Dean and Lastufka emphasize networking and interaction - key components for success in the youtube community. Careful to point out that there is no definitive manner in which to attain fame and notoriety, Dean and Lastufka also detail the finer points of video optimization, endcoding, uploading and promotion. While the scholarly attributes of the book are few, the portrait of hypothetical successful youtube channels and examples from their concrete successes allow for academic insight into the humanistic 'level playing field' that youtube and online video present.

"Fair Use, Film, and the Advantages of Internet Distribution" - Cinema Journal, Vol 46 Iss 2

Author Fred Von Lohmann details that by uploading a film to any of the hundreds of websites catering to user generated video (specifying youtube and yahoo video as ideal examples) a filmmaker can reach a global audience without having to satisfy the rights clearance requirements imposed by 'traditional gatekeepers' of the film world. Von Lohmann goes on to explain that filmmakers who desire an even greater level of control over their 'online destiny' can opt to make their films available directly from their own computers, purchasing bandwidth directly from an ISP. Similar to video hosting services like youtube and yahoo video, an ISP that provides internet connectivity to their subscribers are protected by a DMCA safe harbor from having to pay monetary damages in copyright lawsuits, a pressing issue for the platform of online video. Von Lohmann's analysis of traditional 'fair use' laws in a new era of web distribution illuminates the possibility that user generated video sites have irreparably altered traditional views of copyright - an issue highly pertinent to the inherent trends of self-marketing and viral distribution.

"YouTube: The Flattening of Politics" - Steve Grove, Nieman Reports, Vol 62 Iss 2

Author Steve Grove examines the media ecosystem of the 2008 election cycle, one in which candidates and voters spoke directly to one another in an unfiltered manner. Detailing news organizations' use of the internet to connect with and leverage their audience, Grove emphasizes the fact that in this latest election, activists, issue groups, voters and the campaigns themselves all advocate, discuss, and gain knowledge of issues on the same unprecedented 'level platform' offered by youtube and other online video sites. By offering new opportunities and challenges alike, Grove concludes that youtube has irrevocably reshaped political coverage. Grove's thorough examination of the many facets of political coverage on youtube present a compelling argument for the sheer social weight (a trait we are only beginning to comprehend) youtube carries as a collective, social medium.

Monday, March 2, 2009

trip over

Tonight I will finally be writing an eloquent, original and poignant post about a youtube video of my choice. Just kidding. Lets get down on our knees and throw a few hundred words in the general direction of SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES. I could easily spend this time following the prompt and detailing how de.li.cious is probably the most practical of these sites and has the most to offer my 'readers,' but instead feel compelled to discuss the semi-schizophrenic stream of sometimes-helpful information that is stumbleupon, specifically the 'stumble' function of their service.

Indeed, the site is so effective at snaring and misdirecting attention that the space between this paragraph and the one preceding it represents half an hour of time spent not writing- and all I did was open the homepage to use as reference for this post. While this may not be the best tool for a focused, academic blogger with a pertinent task at hand... hm. I didn't really have a counter to that. Honestly, the service is fairly impractical when it comes to focused searching and categorizing, but something about its random nature is perfectly in line with how I spend time on youtube. Let me explain -

Upon registering for an account, you are prompted to check all boxes that apply in a long list of interests. This serves as the starting point for the stumble function, which is pretty much just what it sounds like. Based on what it thinks it knows about what you like, it will take you to one of many many sites already approved by like-minded visitors. Once there, you can (providing you have installed the toolbar) give it a thumbs up or down: aside from remembering whether you liked it or not and using that to more effectively direct your next stumble, it also saves all your upturned thumbs into a favorites section (the only downside to this being that it is organized only by date visited. Thus far, I haven't been able to figure out a way to get around that). Every so often, the stumble button will take you back to a more refined version of the original list, giving you the opportunity to revise your interests and presumably get the most out of the service.

While it is a little irritating that after several weeks of stumbling it still seems to know very little about what I really like, I cannot deny being thoroughly entertained every time it screws up. To avoid this not-entirely-efficient omnipotent HAL-like aspect, you can stumble a specific word or phrase from a search tool found on your dashboard, which yields more specific results. At any rate, the sparkly feeling I get when I discover something really great on youtube just by clicking from video to video seems to emanate from every stumble, relevant or no. For all of us postmodern schizophrenic MTV-edit-addicted attention span-less youtubing twenty-somethings (what I fantasize my demographic to be) - this is right up our alley.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

repost

see this comment it in its natural habitat...

I have to agree with you all here, this is an incredibly insulting bit of advertising and the ensuing debate/squabble with the press is an exhausted (if not pointless to begin with) topic. The standout difference I see between something like lonelygirl and a condescending ad such as this is that lonelygirl was conceived from the beginning as an experiment in the then-new realm of web series. It quickly became convoluted, transparent and was one of the first examples of blatant corporate sponsorship on youtube, yes, but there was an undercurrent of irony that made the whole debacle fascinating at the very least. A stupid endeavor like this australian ad is reminiscent of ads from companies that target demographics they think they understand, assuming they can adopt the appropriate slang and convince the populous of their street cred (think car commercials with skateboards). The main thing the advertisers have overlooked here is the fact that many, if not most of us have been youtubing as long as youtube has been around - we collectively invented this style and have watched it become what it is! Did they really think it was going to be easy to fool us? If this backlash has re-proven anything, lets hope it is that the advertising ego is no match for the collective intelligence of a social medium

still more blogs

High past time for another post. Today, hypothetical readers, lets take a look at more blogs that are in one way or another related to mine, although at this point you wouldn't know it considering all posts thus far have been devoted to similar purposes. I'll rephrase my original statement - blogs that are in one way or another related to what I think my blog might very well turn out to be when I theoretically write about something else other than other blogs. That was the only griping run-on sentence for this post - I promise.

Lets jump right in with Will Video For Food - a blog about several things - most importantly online video, viral marketing and 'blatant self promotion.' Run by web comedian Kevin Nalts, (described in a hilarious little bit of said self promotion -"Kevin Nalts is one of the most-viewed YouTube comedians with nearly 750 short online videos seen more than 60 million times. And almost 7 people read this blog daily.") the blog is devoted to showcasing and commenting on whats new and being watched on youtube (one example: the much-anticipated video counterpart to the audio of Christian Bale totally losing it) and his own videos, which are funny as well.

Next we have Viral Video Wannabe, Run by Alan Lastufska, the co-author of a book called Youtube: An Insiders Guide to Climbing the Charts. Offhand I wonder if he's sold any copies, but his blog is interesting in that it mainly follows the production aspects of youtubing as a serious hobby/demi-career. Examplary posts include a how-to on contacting youtube celebrities and remedies for a uniqe strain of frequent-poster's block.

Run by the anyonymous 'Dr. Strangelove' (coincidentally my favorite Kubrick film), Watching YouTube is a blog that focuses on the evolution of YouTube and its impact on traditional media and culture at large. See interesting post about the legal ramifications of chronicling legal drug use on youtube.

And finally, on this list because it was listed by nearly everyone else as a source for youtube research data, is Viral Video Chart. Straightforward listing of the current top ten videos online and an incredibly up-to-the-second chart of videos being blogged about that refreshes so fast it will make you sick.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

BLOG-O-RAMA

HELLO POST

I've always found that when I begin a sentence with 'hello' I feel a bit like a nametag. That said, in all my time spent getting around to getting this blog up and running I have yet to come up with anything less obvious so HELLO everyone and welcome to the viral vaccine, MY fake NAME IS: Thurl Chessor and I am a twenty-two year old cinema major in the final lap of an education that began sixteen years ago. In my thinking about starting this blog and the endless rumination over what angle to take on viral video culture, it became increasingly clear to me, as it has in incremental shades with each passing semester at USC, that I really wasn't getting anywhere and should probably just start writing. If you are reading this right now, I have gotten started, and will hopefully nail down a purpose for this blog in the next few hundred words.

I realize the title of my blog might suggest that it provides of some form of cure. This is unfortunate, as I don't claim to know anything about medicine and for that matter am not even sure that youtube or viral videos are things to be 'inoculated' against. I have, however, decided to live with my last-minute titling decision in the true spirit of "whatever-you-put-on-the-internet-is-out-there-forever," and treat it as irrevocable. Lets break it down - While a vaccine is a preventative measure, it can, in some circumstances, have the unintended effect of transmitting the disease. I have decided that the title is ironic and that this blog will be a perverse exploration of that possibility. Let me explain-

The difference between youtube and traditional broadcast media is that youtube is just the shit, whereas traditional broadcast media ultimately fails to present any sort of accurate portrait of the human condition it reports on/is inspired by. Humans are strange creatures - if you don't believe me, ride a greyhound. Higher purposes aside, my fascination with youtube stems from its quality as a swamp for this general eccentricity - the runoff of ideas of an entire species. Youtube is an unaltered, unaffected view into the minds of millions - what they find to be meaningful, traumatic, funny, normal (which is often turns out to be very funny) or whatever adjective merits using video as a means to explore it (which is all of them).

I suppose now is as good a time as any to drop all pretense and really set the mood. I was going to continue to pontificate on the humanistic qualities of youtube, but I have a whole blog ahead of me for that. I should let you know I fully intend through this blog to spread my unhealthy addiction to the strangest, most affecting videos youtube and the internet at large have to offer. Through strategic use of my misleading title I will lure unsuspecting, refuge-seeking webgoers to my blog where I will bombard them with strange and hilarious videos. With intent to distribute, I will amass lethal amounts of weird videos - videos weird enough to embarrass even the most isolated viewer. Weird that won't leave. Weird that haunts. I mean weird like when you were a kid and you invented back-stories for all of your bath toys, even the non-anthropomorphic ones. Oh you didn't? Me neither, my point is that anything is fair game.

Readers may also be subjected to analysis and ponderings on the nature of said weirdness, as informed by 94% of a bachelors in film criticism.

PROFILE POST

For this post I will be profiling a blog that is not entirely dissimilar to mine, if only in that we work with roughly the same raw material. While anyone writing about viral video must pull their subject matter from the same wonderful cesspool as all the others, as far as ethos goes, this particular blog and mine share very little. So then- to perhaps gain a little perspective on the phenomenon of viral video and to anchor some of the more enthusiastic claims made in my hello-manifesto, lets take a look at the Viral Video Research Blog. The blog itself is a satellite to the website of Visible Measures, a silicon-valley company that specializes in providing "new capabilities and metrics that allow Internet video publishers and advertisers to understand audience behaviors and more accurately predict and analyze the success of Internet video programs" - in their own words. In other words, they are part of a fairly recent wave of firms that essentially hawk more hits on youtube.

But maybe thats a little harsh. Aside from offering placement options on various high-ranking sites, youtube among them, they also provide very detailed viewership statistics from a database of over 100 million videos on the top ten video sharing sites on the web. While I suppose this is a perfectly respectable example of modern capitalism, I can't seem to shake this feeling that I should somehow morally oppose what appears to be, at its most basic form, the commodifying of a new arena for creative expression. I'm sure there are complexities to the business model I don't understand and any number of salesmen that could smooth over any ideological concerns I might have, but ultimately I'm not here to bleed my heart out or buy anything. My interest in this blog lies in the statistics and research - rigid portraits of phenomena as they happen. I also feel that the limited commentary on the videos behind the numbers may help to illuminate a point I one day hope to make, but more on that later.

I have a feeling that it may come in handy to have a cold, hard, mathematical point of view to fall back on when attempting analysis of a video's most affecting qualities. One post I found to be particularly interesting features one of the first youtube mega-sensations - Judson Laipply's The Evolution of Dance. Contributor Matt Cuttler, writing shortly after the release of The Evolution of Dance 2, illuminates the possibilites of the sequel as a concept in the viral video world, versus the established model of the sequel in traditional media. Posing a question only answerable with time, Cuttler asks - "Is this evidence of an emerging trend, or a flash-in-the-pan that's destined to be a footnote in the history of our industry?" While he does not (and I assume dares not to) answer the question outright, the statistics provided raise interesting points about online viewing habits. Cuttler points to an incease in daily views of the original after the release of the sequel as evidence of what they call "viral activation," where interest in a new clip "drives a corresponding increase in viewership to related, but older clips."

While terms like "viral activation" certainly point to the commodifying aspect of corporate research I expressed fear of earlier, they are also fairly transparent in their meanings. Just think - how many times have you watched Jizz in my Pants, remembered Dick in a Box and then wound up watching the classic Lazy Sunday at least four times? Maybe never, but my point is that we all, as internet viewers, are more familiar than we might think with emerging viewership patterns detailed by firms like this. We invent them as we click about, leaving firms like Visible Measures to speculate about what that could possibly mean. We will be keeping an eye on this one and the trends it claims to capture and categorize, if only for the purpose of juxtaposition against the more cult-like, rabid-fan aspect of youtube I hope to delve into.

VOICE POST

Lets continue to tread the water of other people's blogs and examine the voice and writing style of Alexandra Juhasz in Media Praxis. While this blog is not geared specifically towards youtube and viral video, Juhasz maintains a lightly humorous, intelligent, acacdemic voice in her discussion of media theory and practice at large. Her post Even Obama: Irony in the Time of Youtube outlines a thesis (the theme of which is highly visible in the second half of the title of the post) for an upcoming talk, and is an interesting display of academic online barb-trading - much more the gentleman's game than the customary torrent of hatred and stupidity that seems to emanate from traditional youtube comment wars. Juhasz begins the address of her thesis with a quote:

“The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Joan Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an “irony-free zone,” a vast Kool-Aid tank where “naïvete, translated into ‘hope,’ was now in” and where “innocence, even when it looked like ignorance was now prized.” Andy Newman, Sunday Styles Section, New York Times, November 23, 2008.

Quite the scholarly method of commencing to prove a point, Juhasz immediately takes a contradictory stance to such established academic names as Joan Didion and a bit later, The Web Is Us/ing Us creator Michael Wesch. Juhasz does this in what at first appears to be a pejorative maner, casually referring to Didion by her first name - "Joan, seriously (umm…ironically?), have you spent much time on YouTube?" - then quickly and gracefully begins to lay the theoretical groundwork under her taunt - "You of all people must be aware that Barack Obama, heralded by The Washington Post, no less, as our first “YouTube President,” also announced after his election the commencement of weekly broadcasts of his presidency’s “fire-side chats” on-line and on YouTube. While the tone, form, and message of these networked national addresses are decidedly serious, presidential even, Joan, you’re savvy enough to get the joke, to intuit the wink, the implied aside to a history of worn out presidents, tired fires, and cornball communications."

The subsequent explication of her thesis proves to be just as eloquent and cutting, but I'm not trying to re-post the whole thing to rack up my word count. To put it one way - recent worries I harbored concerning my possibly excessive use of commas, adjectives and generally (what I feel like may be) lengthy sentences dissipated instantly upon reading this post in its entirety. Juhasz's masterful use of commas creates an ease of reading reminiscent of completely informal blogs, but without the advent of irritating 'lol's and excessive use of parentheses (although parentheses can be done tastefully. wink). The overall tone created by this provides a legitimate academic backdrop for conversational humor - indeed, the effect of her writing is akin to what I imagine being in a starbucks full of P.h.Ds is like. At any rate, highly evident in this first jab is the effective, balanced combination of casual and scholastic tone (something I'm beginning to sense is neccessary for all blogs and indicative of the balance that life requires in general) that informs her overall writing style.

To neatly package this first thrust of her thesis in a flurry of excellent word choice, Juhasz refers to Obama's fireside youtube videos as "...a new kind of president-talk produced through documentary’s oldest, most eloquent sobriety, fireside-hot, only to be elegantly plopped into his society’s silliest platform. Incongruity-free? Naïve? I’d say not." Ending memorably seems to be a blogging rule of thumb, so in the spirit of this post and the one before it, I will appropriate the memorableness of that last passage and re-post it here, only one sentence later, in italics for emphasis.

His move, like most on YouTube, is irony-full: a regal black American taking up the hot-spot, filling the usually-segregated head-shot, a new kind of president-talk produced through documentary’s oldest, most eloquent sobriety, fireside-hot, only to be elegantly plopped into his society’s silliest platform. Incongruity-free? Naïve? I’d say not.

voice post

Lets continue to tread the water of other people's blogs and examine the voice and writing style of Alexandra Juhasz in Media Praxis. While this blog is not geared specifically towards youtube and viral video, Juhasz maintains a lightly humorous, intelligent, acacdemic voice in her discussion of media theory and practice at large. Her post Even Obama: Irony in the Time of Youtube outlines a thesis (the theme of which is highly visible in the second half of the title of the post) for an upcoming talk, and is an interesting display of academic online barb-trading - much more the gentleman's game than the customary torrent of hatred and stupidity that seems to emanate from traditional youtube comment wars. Juhasz begins the address of her thesis with a quote:

“The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Joan Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an “irony-free zone,” a vast Kool-Aid tank where “naïvete, translated into ‘hope,’ was now in” and where “innocence, even when it looked like ignorance was now prized.” Andy Newman, Sunday Styles Section, New York Times, November 23, 2008.

Quite the scholarly method of commencing to prove a point, Juhasz immediately takes a contradictory stance to such established academic names as Joan Didion and a bit later, The Web Is Us/ing Us creator Michael Wesch. Juhasz does this in what at first appears to be a pejorative maner, casually referring to Didion by her first name - "Joan, seriously (umm…ironically?), have you spent much time on YouTube?" - then quickly and gracefully begins to lay the theoretical groundwork under her taunt - "You of all people must be aware that Barack Obama, heralded by The Washington Post, no less, as our first “YouTube President,” also announced after his election the commencement of weekly broadcasts of his presidency’s “fire-side chats” on-line and on YouTube. While the tone, form, and message of these networked national addresses are decidedly serious, presidential even, Joan, you’re savvy enough to get the joke, to intuit the wink, the implied aside to a history of worn out presidents, tired fires, and cornball communications."

The subsequent explication of her thesis proves to be just as eloquent and cutting, but I'm not trying to re-post the whole thing to rack up my word count. To put it one way - recent worries I harbored concerning my possibly excessive use of commas, adjectives and generally (what I feel like may be) lengthy sentences dissipated instantly upon reading this post in its entirety. Juhasz's masterful use of commas creates an ease of reading reminiscent of completely informal blogs, but without the advent of irritating 'lol's and excessive use of parentheses (although parentheses can be done tastefully. wink). The overall tone created by this provides a legitimate academic backdrop for conversational humor - indeed, the effect of her writing is akin to what I imagine being in a starbucks full of P.h.Ds is like. At any rate, highly evident in this first jab is the effective, balanced combination of casual and scholastic tone (something I'm beginning to sense is neccessary for all blogs and indicative of the balance that life requires in general) that informs her overall writing style.

To neatly package this first thrust of her thesis in a flurry of excellent word choice, Juhasz refers to Obama's fireside youtube videos as "...a new kind of president-talk produced through documentary’s oldest, most eloquent sobriety, fireside-hot, only to be elegantly plopped into his society’s silliest platform. Incongruity-free? Naïve? I’d say not." Ending memorably seems to be a blogging rule of thumb, so in the spirit of this post and the one before it, I will appropriate the memorableness of that last passage and re-post it here, only one sentence later, in italics for emphasis.

His move, like most on YouTube, is irony-full: a regal black American taking up the hot-spot, filling the usually-segregated head-shot, a new kind of president-talk produced through documentary’s oldest, most eloquent sobriety, fireside-hot, only to be elegantly plopped into his society’s silliest platform. Incongruity-free? Naïve? I’d say not.

PROFILE - The Viral Video Research Blog

But maybe that's a little harsh. Aside from offering placement options on various high-ranking sites, youtube among them, they also provide very detailed viewership statistics from a database of over 100 million videos on the top ten video sharing sites on the web. While I suppose this is a perfectly respectable example of modern capitalism, I can't seem to shake this feeling that I should somehow morally oppose what appears to be, at its most basic form, the commodifying of a new arena for creative expression. I'm sure there are complexities to the business model I don't understand and any number of salesmen that could smooth over any ideological concerns I might have, but ultimately I'm not here to bleed my heart out or buy anything. My interest in this blog lies in the statistics and research - rigid portraits of phenomena as they happen. I also feel that the limited commentary on the videos behind the numbers may help to illuminate a point I one day hope to make, but more on that later.

I have a feeling that it may come in handy to have a cold, hard, mathematical point of view to fall back on when attempting analysis of a video's most affecting qualities. One post I found to be particularly interesting features one of the first youtube mega-sensations - Judson Laipply's The Evolution of Dance. Contributor Matt Cuttler, writing shortly after the release of The Evolution of Dance 2, illuminates the possibilites of the sequel as a concept in the viral video world, versus the established model of the sequel in traditional media. Posing a question only answerable with time, Cuttler asks - "Is this evidence of an emerging trend, or a flash-in-the-pan that's destined to be a footnote in the history of our industry?" While he does not (and I assume dares not to) answer the question outright, the statistics provided raise interesting points about online viewing habits. Cuttler points to an incease in daily views of the original after the release of the sequel as evidence of what they call "viral activation," where interest in a new clip "drives a corresponding increase in viewership to related, but older clips."

While terms like "viral activation" certainly point to the commodifying aspect of corporate research I expressed fear of earlier, they are also fairly transparent in their meanings. Just think - how many times have you watched Jizz in my Pants, remembered Dick in a Box and then wound up watching the classic Lazy Sunday at least four times? Maybe never, but my point is that we all, as internet viewers, are more familiar than we might think with emerging viewership patterns detailed by firms like this. We invent them as we click about, leaving firms like Visible Measures to speculate about what that could possibly mean. We will be keeping an eye on this one and the trends it claims to capture and categorize, if only for the purpose of juxtaposition against the more cult-like, rabid-fan aspect of youtube I hope to delve into.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Hello

I've always found that when I begin a sentence with 'hello' I feel a bit like a nametag. That said, in all my time spent getting around to getting this blog up and running I have yet to come up with anything less obvious so HELLO everyone and welcome to the viral vaccine, MY fake NAME IS: Thurl Chessor (sorry coach - decided I didn't like 'youman') and I am a twenty-two year old cinema major in the final lap of an education that began sixteen years ago. In my thinking about starting this blog and the endless rumination over what angle to take on viral video culture, it became increasingly clear to me, as it has in incremental shades with each passing semester at USC, that I really wasn't getting anywhere and should probably just start writing. If you are reading this right now, I have gotten started, and will hopefully nail down a purpose for this blog in the next few hundred words.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to drop all pretense and really set the mood. I was going to continue to pontificate on the humanistic qualities of youtube, but I have a whole blog ahead of me for that. I should let you know I fully intend through this blog to spread my unhealthy addiction to the strangest, most affecting videos youtube and the internet at large have to offer. Through strategic use of my misleading title I will lure unsuspecting, refuge-seeking webgoers to my blog where I will bombard them with strange and hilarious videos that will make their roommate watching over their shoulder say "are they serious?" With intent to distribute, I will amass lethal amounts of weird videos - videos weird enough to embarrass even the most isolated viewer. Weird that won't leave. Weird that haunts. I mean weird like when you were a kid and you invented back-stories for all of your bath toys, even the non-anthropomorphic ones. Oh you didn't? Me neither, my point is that anything is fair game.