(via emzhdr)
The Human Side of Viral Videos
Jack Rebney is a former Winnebago industrial video salesman who, after having a bad day (week? month? year?), couldn’t take it any more and flipped out on the video crew. Although Jack’s sour attitude and excessive profanity grew tiresome to the crew, there was something amusing about the tapes that inspired them to copy the VHS and circulate it as an inside joke. Dubbed “The Angriest Man in the World”, these outtakes were circulated via VHS, edited and recut by “fans” to create reels of their favourite moments, and have provided endless amusement for those dedicated followers. Once Youtube found its way into existence the Winnebago Man was suddenly discoverable by millions of viewers. While most simply enjoyed these clips at face value, a documentary film maker named Ben Steinbauer began to wonder about the man himself. He went on a mission to find Jack and try to unearth HIS side of the story. While Jack did not know of his internet fame, and was at first quite appalled, what I find so interesting about this story is that eventually Jack opened up to his fans and found that through his vile outbursts (which he thought were long forgotten and in his past) he was able to connect with a new generation of disgruntled citizens.
My point is that while this viral video’s initial appeal may have been due to its shock value (Jack’s explosive behaviour and vile language)… what made it LAST was the fact that it brought people together and made them laugh. Many people have found comfort in Jack’s discomfort. I believe they are not so much enjoying the fact that he is suffering but, rather, they identify with this frustration and feel GOOD knowing that even on the site of an industrial Winnebago video (which, as a finished product, appears seamless and well-calculated) turmoil can ensue. After all, we’re only human.
So, I really enjoy the idea of alternative media. I think it’s really important to have everyone’s voices heard and to engage in political debate with the status quo. I like that there has been a rise in alternative sources of media production so that the public can access a variety of perspectives rather than having to rely on biased mainstream content. And I like the jist of what is being said in this clip (from www.pressfortruth.ca). Yet after I was finished watching it I felt unsatisfied. There was something that I did not like. I decided to investigate further by engaging in a little content analysis…
The reporter explains that he went to Occupy Toronto to cover the event from “every possible angle”, thus providing the general public with an alternative as a means of counteracting biased mainstream media coverage. Sounds good. I like it. But then it hit me… contrary to our textbook’s definition of alternative media as often being local and geared toward a specific audience, this reporter kind of convinced me that he had produced a news piece that was going to encorporate a wide variety of perspectives for me to engage with. However, my content analysis proved that this was not the case at all…
Where were women’s voices in this clip? The only woman whose voice made it into the clip was granted 4 words of talk time (“Don’t give up hope”)… a meagre snippet of a sound bite considering the clip is 9 minutes and 36 seconds long and manages to interview 12 men (sometimes returning to grant them extra coverage a second or even third time). Disproportionate much? Sure, I saw women in the crowds of the protests when the camera panned across the crowd… but they were cast as mere “extras” in this particular news documentary. I know there are women out there, so why is a Toronto-based alternative media source such as this one - which claims to cover these issues from “every” angle - leaving out the voices of such a large percentage of the population? Are their thoughts about this movement not equally as valuable? I heard more about the 1% than I did about the 50.4% (the percentage of females in the Canadian population, retrieved from Statistics Canada, 2010). Good try, but far from being unbiased. Makes me wonder if it is even POSSIBLE to provide a mutually inclusive presentation of an event. There isn’t enough time in the world to present all opinions at all times under all circumstances. Isn’t it perhaps inevitable that something will always get left out along the way?
Thanks #OccupyWallStreet, for successfully refocusing media attention.
This is addressed to everyone who says the movement will be useless and not yield any real change: we’ve already started. Just by defining the arguments on the people’s terms.
First of all, simply being able to isolate one’s body the way this guy does is pretty interesting/amazing in and of itself. However, once my awe subsided, what caught my eye was a comment posted by a YouTube user who posed the question “is this a robot or a man?”… this video could certainly be argued to by an instance of cyborgism if you ask me. The actions he is performing are “natural” in that he is using his own physical body HOWEVER there is a “robotic” nature to the moves that he is performing. Additionally, the music that serves as the soundtrack to this expression of movement is a dubstep mash-up of the popular song “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster The People. Overall, a good example of the boundary bending (or breaking, depending how you look at it) phenomena we have been discussing.
P.S. There is always the possibility that this guy isn’t even dancing in real-time… this video could have been sped up, slowed down, played backward… edited in some way in order to create a “perfect” video.
Comments? Speculations?…. Bueller?
A convergence of confusion
It seems to me that while we may be experiencing “technological convergence” in terms of a Blackberry or iPhone being able to carry out multiple tasks through a single interface, there is an argument to be made for the idea that this convergence is coupled with a grand expansion that may prove more complicated than the “old media” way of going about a task. The many, many, many different technologies that have been created to carry out various tasks are often redundant and may lead to a lot of unnecessary puzzle-solving in order to choose the “correct” method of communication.
Here’s my example…
There is a form that I have to fill out in order to get a copy of my transcripts from another university. They have a “convenient” online form that allows you to request a transcript… However, the “convenience” stops there. Rather than simply allowing the form to be submitted online at the touch of a button, this particular form requires one to still submit the electronic file by mail or fax. Seeing as I don’t have a fax machine - but realizing it would probably be a quicker process if “snail mail” could be avoided - I considered emailing the file to my father so HE could fax it for me. Unfortunately, I realized that the electronic form is incapable of being saved on your computer and thus MUST be printed out… After printing the document I would then have to digitize it again (via my scanner) and email the file to my father who would then be able to print a copy of his own to then feed through the fax machine.
Exhausted yet?
Seems like an awful lot of work for nothing… So, I gave in and abandoned these new media information technologies in favour of good ole Canada Post. Sometimes “new” is not really “better”.
Words as Communal
There’s something unsettling about Bakhtin’s notion that “the word in language is half someone else’s” (p. 94, Intersections). Although he admits that one can control the production of meaning for a period of time he also acknowledges that there will always be those who oppose the dominant conception of meaning and wish to conceive of their own. I appreciate the idea of users being able to interact, edit, and revise as a method of creative expression but it is somewhat disheartening to hear that there is never any sort of guarantee that the words I use to articulate my thoughts and feelings will be finite… an infinite number of perspectives exist “out there” in the world and they are capable of moulding my words into a different shape with a different meaning… simply by entering into a dialogue with them. As much as we would like to believe the words we speak are our “own” the truth is we would not even have them if they did not belong to a communal source. After all, language is a method of communication within a group. So, rather than allowing this lack of control over the meaning of my words discourage me I would much rather simply accept this notion as just that… a notion. Not a truth. And certainly not an absolute. All that I can do, as an individual who exists alongside billions of others, is try my best to articulate my thoughts and feelings in a manner that invites consideration, provokes thought, and inspires interest.
New Media… Reliablility or Liability?
It’s hard not to wonder - in light of the enormous shifts in communication technologies over the past hundred years or so - whether new media is bringing us closer together or pushing us farther apart. In light of the global connectivity issues RIM experienced recently, I found myself thinking about our class discussion on “new media”. As a Blackberry user, naturally I was annoyed when I awoke to find that my BBM was not functioning as usual. Why? Because one of the core features of a Blackberry is the Blackberry Messenger function… An application that allows users to interact with one another using unlimited, real-time messaging. It’s pretty much the only thing RIM has left over the iPhone, so as a faithful Blackberry user I couldn’t help feeling let down. Mike Lazaridis (the founder of RIM) has publically apologized for this outage and stated that he knows users expected better from them. Of COURSE we expected better from them… Mike Lazaridis himself states that his goal is to “provide reliable, real-time communications around the world”. This company has said to its clients: THIS is the service we will provide you with and therefore the agreement is that you will pay us to be provided with THIS service. In a sense, RIM reneged on their side of the contract… But how could ANY corporation (or individual, for that matter) EVER assure reliability under all circumstances? Especially in the liquid world we have started to be accustomed to… We live in a world in which new media information technology has become the norm and yet it is impossible for us to rely on it entirely… If we do, we may lose touch with how to communicate effectively without these technologies and that would certainly be a major liability. If there is an expectation throughout the world that anyone should be able to connect with anyone else anywhere in the world and this expectation is not fulfilled there are going to be a lot of disgruntled users out there… and an unfathomable number of bbm messages lacking that comforting “D” or “R” symbol that lets us know we’re connected *ooooo, aaaaaah*. While we may have gravitated away from print and face-to-face communication in favour of digital communications I don’t think it will ever be possible for us to transition entirely to existence in a digital world. There’s always that chance of a glitch in the matrix…
Mike Lazaridis’ apology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqp7s5LRYuY
