In this Discussion
- auntscale1 April 2007
- boydeer22 March 2007
- cloudrabbit7 April 2007
- DJRose March 2007
- dollarflame6 April 2007
- hyannah77 April 2007
- jedi_grrlie April 2007
- polo47clover April 2007
- roofing844 April 2007
- sherib April 2007
- suit6lion March 2007
- tenor2barber April 2007
- thephantommilk April 2007
- yak63geese April 2007
Comments
[quote]"Back in the day, say, six months ago, YouTube was still meant to be pure NoCal: no judgments, no hierarchies, big bandwidth and lots of freedom."
[/quote]Yea, that's why we could rate everything from one to five stars, and why Youtube always had "featured content".
[quote]And in a real insult to the speedy Web world, this 2006 event has happened well into spring 2007, honoring bygone achievements. That seems very Internal Revenue Service, not to mention very Oscars.[/quote]
YEA! They had their 2006 awards a few months after 2006! Just like the IRS does with their tax deadline!
/sarcasm
[quote] If these names sounds fresh to you, well, then, YouTube’s done its job, and maybe you’ll stop by, hang out and find something that actually answers to your tastes.
[/quote]Yea, because stuff that tons of you gave five stars to, obviously doesn't match your tastes.
(moron)
[quote] It’s just that YouTube’s not really supposed to have any aesthetic or ideological principles, is it?[/quote]
Yea, I kinda did resent when YouTube forced me to change my religion and forced me to give five stars to shit I didn't like. [/quote]
[quote] YouTube, Google and Wikipedia should be low-key clearinghouses of shared information. Not prosceniums. [/quote]Read: Attempt to use the word "proscenium" to fool anyone who doesn't already detect the fact that she doesn't know what she's talking about.
But yes, YouTube is a stage of sorts, and I have no idea why she tries to suggest otherwise. What else is it?
[quote]I like their pluck, but it’s too MTV for YouTube. ...
Terra Naomi is the only girl cool enough to make the cut in the YouTube awards.[/quote]
She says that as if her opinion is axiomatic. OK, listen up everybody. If you put any music videos on Youtube, make sure it's just you in your bedroom with your guitar. Don't actually make any attempt to go outside that box and have the kind of fun you actually want to have with it. The ignorant prat has spoken.
Kareh, you're awesome
And hey, anybody who labels the free hug campaign as "politics" has problem anyway.
oh! And look! She's an idiot who can't use proper grammar. A semicolon precedes and follows independent clauses, not sentence fragments! So Damian should laugh at the entire judgment. "Unlike the funny OK Go guys on their treadmills; I like their pluck, but it’s too MTV for YouTube." HA! YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE A SEMI-COLON! GO BACK TO EIGHTH GRADE!
She says that as if her opinion is axiomatic. OK, listen up everybody. If you put any music videos on Youtube, make sure it's just you in your bedroom with your guitar. Don't actually make any attempt to go outside that box and have the kind of fun you actually want to have with it. The ignorant prat has spoken.
Very good points, Karen. *
This is more about the Internet than OK Go. In her (lame) defense, she has the unenviable task of trying to define the Internet for the mainstream press, which is like trying to describe a waterfall by dipping a cup into the river and then talking about what you see inside the cup.
How she comes off in this article is like some kind of sidewalk supervisor -- you know, that person who walks over about midday to a crew of people who've been working on something since the early morning and starts shouting orders. The crew just ignores this person but everyone around looks to see what all the shouting is about and "might" be deceived into thinking the shouter is the one in charge.
Related to OK Go, there was the inevitability of a media backlash and I just hope the guys don't take it personally. Even when one knows the backlash is coming -- must come (because it is the nature of our media beast) -- it is hard to separate truth from the viciousness of it, when it is you in the middle of the storm.
The media beast's deceit is to persuade that the treadmills were OK Go's highpoint and it is all downhill from here. The TRUTH is they've been doing incredibly engaging stuff all along and it's all their own ideas (drawing from their own resources). Creativity feeds creativity. It is the opposite of entropy. The more you do, the better you get. (There's a physical proof of this, the more you use your brain, the more neural connections your brain creates).
I just hope they continue to have a good time and don't let this tripe get to them.
*I'm a Karen too
But yes, YouTube is a stage of sorts, and I have no idea why she tries to suggest otherwise. What else is it?
She's probably the sort of person who would throw around "u-tilise" just to sound better.
And I agree- what is YouTube other than, primarily, a stage? I mean, look at the site's motto: "Broadcast yourself." It's a stage, it's a screen, and just because they give awards doesn't mean that it's not still "NoCal" and doesn't offer a lot of freedom. These are not the Academy Awards, chick. You can't sit around, record yourself playing guitar, and release it as a major motion picture, let alone expect it to win an Oscar, try as you might. You can still do that on YouTube, however, and even if your video doesn't get nominated, that doesn't mean you can't still put it up there.
I understand your concern about YouTube becoming too much like prime-time TV, and I'm not dismissing that. But the next time you want me to take you seriously, try leaving your cynicism at home. Who are you to determine what's worth watching and what's not, anyway? What if I don't like vintage film or Ernest Hemingway? Ever think of that? No, you probably didn't.
Besides, those Smosh guys are pretty funny. I love that Pokemon vid. :-D
She wasn't *too* insulting to them, but she did B.S. about what Youtube actually isn't (I'm guessing just to fill column space), is blatantly wrong on it, and then go on to say Terra Naomi was the only one "cool enough" to be in the very awards she kept dissing. That op/ed was a MESS and unworthy of publication.
Must be a slow news slump for the NYT.
Let's keep things in perspective just a little, right? This type of article exists in every paper, and it has its place. You're right that it's column-filler, but quite a bit of any given daily paper has to be. It's fluff; it wasn't even an op-ed.
Oh yea, I don't think your point was missed. It wasn't addressed but it wasn't missed.
Well, I consider there to be major differences between "fluff" and "incoherent pontificating in a major national news medium", and I do not think such irresponsibility has its place. That's my perspective. It doesn't consume me with petty rage, so don't take my picking it apart the wrong way. (In social, political and religious matters, it can, once in a while).
Besides what was mentioned, going on to something else: I (and maybe the majority of us including you) take exception to her central point, which is that OK Go is "too MTV" for Youtube. OK Go had no unfair advantage over anyone else, that I can see. It seems she's unjustly penalizing them for something she dares not put her finger on. Is it because they're a professional-quality band--is their music too good? Is it because they have a record contract? Is it their spiffy outfits? It does not follow that these things are unfair advantages to them over others in the making of their viral videos, which are as homegrown as any other video on youtube. Such circumstances are not what prevented anyone else from coming up with the same idea and following through with it, and therefore, they are not unfair advantages that rendered everyone else unable to compete. The only thing anyone else missed out on, was the idea to do it first. Anyone with money or a good credit rating could get hold of eight treadmills for a couple of weeks, or dance to music in their backyard. Why penalize OK Go for purely irrelevant circumstances? The videos weren't a hit because OK Go has a contract with Capitol, or because they're career musicians, or because nobody else on Youtube is a professional musician, or because they're trendy. The video quality isn't even more stellar than what my $500 digital camera can do. It didn't even make it to MTV at first. But she implies that there's some sort of phantom advantage OK Go had in the success of these videos, as if Capitol invented, directed, and funded the whole thing. I just don't see that she has a point.
so instead she wants you to go find the really valuable, non-faddish videos (the "vintage film and earnest hemingway and this actress playing lady macbeth blah blah blah") in this warehouse flea-market environment, not just the ones that're on display just because everyone else likes it, and its a fad. and she thinks the youtube awards are condoning these fads and lessening the chances of the good stuff being seen for what it is.
that being said, the article itself really doesn't make sense, and I personally don't agree with her idea of what youtube is supposed to be about.
but that's okay.
p.s.I feel like I just wrote a literary analysis paper... when I'm supposed to be writing a history paper and a music paper. darn.
I'm speaking from experience here: it is really hard to get more than, say, 100 views if you're not doing something really physically amazing, like dancing on a treadmill or... drawing a perfect circle with a 2 ft diameter on a chalkboard (did anyone else see that one?!)
anyway, I think what she's saying is that YouTube was supposed to be for little quirky people who write songs on their guitar or make short films or whatever. but now the direction of it has changed, and not a whole lot of people care about the little guys anymore.
It wasn't OK Go's fault. It wasn't a marketing scheme or anything. They just made something really cool and wanted to share it with people, but because they were a band it blew up into this big MTV-level thing. That's all. Nobody should be pointing fingers. It all just... got too big.
I despise writing like that, and don't understand how on earth she became a writer for anything above a tabloid. She really ought to invest in a dictionary before using words she obviously doesn't truly understand, and stop being so hideously pretentious. Goodness. I'd rant about it further, but Kareh already pointed out everything I was going to rant about, so I won't.
Yea, that's why we could rate everything from one to five stars, and why Youtube always had "featured content".
YEA! They had their 2006 awards a few months after 2006! Just like the IRS does with their tax deadline!
/sarcasm
Yea, because stuff that tons of you gave five stars to, obviously doesn't match your tastes.
(moron)
Yea, I kinda did resent when YouTube forced me to change my religion and forced me to give five stars to shit I didn't like.
Read: Attempt to use the word "proscenium" to fool anyone who doesn't already detect the fact that she doesn't know what she's talking about.
But yes, YouTube is a stage of sorts, and I have no idea why she tries to suggest otherwise. What else is it?
She says that as if her opinion is axiomatic. OK, listen up everybody. If you put any music videos on Youtube, make sure it's just you in your bedroom with your guitar. Don't actually make any attempt to go outside that box and have the kind of fun you actually want to have with it. The ignorant prat has spoken.
I pretty much love you. Just so you know. If you were here, you'd get a ginormous high five!
And I agree- what is YouTube other than, primarily, a stage? I mean, look at the site's motto: "Broadcast yourself." It's a stage, it's a screen, and just because they give awards doesn't mean that it's not still "NoCal" and doesn't offer a lot of freedom. These are not the Academy Awards, chick. You can't sit around, record yourself playing guitar, and release it as a major motion picture, let alone expect it to win an Oscar, try as you might. You can still do that on YouTube, however, and even if your video doesn't get nominated, that doesn't mean you can't still put it up there.
I understand your concern about YouTube becoming too much like prime-time TV, and I'm not dismissing that. But the next time you want me to take you seriously, try leaving your cynicism at home. Who are you to determine what's worth watching and what's not, anyway? What if I don't like vintage film or Ernest Hemingway? Ever think of that? No, you probably didn't.
hear hear!
She called them "too MTV for YouTube" which, considering the current state of MTV, isn't even almost a good thing.
I disagree. Punctuation has a purpose. If a person doesn't know how to use periods, commas, exclamation marks or hyphens, then that person is grammatically ignorant. Incorrect usage is not style. Sorry, but you have to master the language before you can effectively break the rules. Look at Faulkner, for example: he can break the rules because he knows them so well that he can transcend them.
One of my majors is English lit- so yeah, I hate when ppl use bad grammar. And sorry, but when someone is trashing Ok Go, I'm gonna go ahead and point out grammar mistakes. There's a HUGE difference between conversational style and grammar mistakes.
Examples of conversational style being different from grammatical flaws:
Poor: In this website, you can read articles about how to do business online, the woman who daily eats 45 eggs and Tom Cruise.
Better: In this website, you can read articles about how to do business online, the woman who daily eats 45 eggs, and Tom Cruise.
Use a comma to separate two independent clauses joined by coordinating conjunctions.
Example
Wrong: I am not good in writing but I love writing.
Wrong: I am not good in writing, but, I love writing.
Right: I am not good in writing, but I love writing.
Note: If the clauses are long and already contain commas, separate them with a semicolon rather than a comma.
tons more at http://www.todays-woman.net/archive-print-1704.html
sorry to sound like a jerk, but if someone is trashing Ok Go, I'm gonna go right ahead and point out her grammar mistakes.
and you can call me Sally. Hehehe, I had no idea there was a real Tabatha on the board when I made the username and now I can't change it.
I also find that the more I read online, the more prone I am to typing quickly and forgetting commas. It's the first thing I go back and fix when I proofread. I'm either typing too quickly, or I'm being influenced by what I'm reading. Gahh.
Kidding.