I'm going to revlog this and title it "high profile idiots, and why infomercials need a stupid characters"
So, this from the guy at tech crunch!? All I have to say is I can't believe anyone from techcrunch or even being interviewed by tech crunch is such a huge damn idiot. If I took the time to refute every idiot who came along I'd have no time for anything else. It's be about as stupid as reading every blog on the web or watching every videoblog by people I don't know and aren't about anything that interests me. Which come to think of it exactly what this tech crunch guy souds like he's doing. That said... he's a high profile idiot... so I'll take a breather to point out two common themes that I see here also held by other all to common idiots. 1) If vlogs don't entertain me then what's the point? Retort: This asshat thinks videoblogging is all about entertainment. He has NO understanding that 99.99% of all videoblogs are not meant to be entertaining. Just like audio podcasts and blogging 99.99% of all blogs are simple interpersonal communications that so happen to be public. To judge them on how well they measure up to Lost or even Ze Frank is something only an idiot would do. The key word there is this is about COMMUNICATIONS. This guy sounds like idiot journalists in 1999 that claimed that blogging was a failure because 99% of blogs failed to live up to his standards of "journalistic integrity"... or a novelist saying blogging was a failure because 99% of blogs failed to entertain him. Or better yet... like saying this whole world wide web thing is a fad because the majority of it was absolutely useless information... at least useless to me... therefore it must be crap right!? Why would anyone want to use the world wide web after all if 99.99% of web pages have no value whatsoever to them? "I tried this world wide web thing, and I can say that it is unequivably a load of horse crap and a fad that isn't going anywhere, because all I saw was page after page of mindless useless drivel... oh... and don't even get me started on the spelling! I think we can conclude that the world wide web has no future potential." The irony is this guy should know better because he WRITES a FUCKING BLOG and these same ridiculous attacks were thrown at bloggers for years. Need I mention the Ghandi quote? "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." I guess here in the U.S. at large we're somewhere in the fighting stage. Established media are paying attention, they've stopped laughing at the likes of youtube ad started suing... just like the RIAA and MPAA and filesharing.... but what I cannot believe is this supposed silicon valley insider who should be well a head of the game could be so clueless and such an outsider... how he cannot get it is beyond me. Entertainment like news is just a TINY, TINY facet's of an entire communications spectrum that exist withing vlogging... just like blogging, and just like podcasting. It is NOT TV... just as a blog is not a newspaper, ad podcasting is not radio. I like to think it's the pretty moving pictures that causes people like this guy to get so stumped. People have been writing diaries, and taking photos for decades and centuries. Photography in particular people get... Josh Leo can post a picture of his cat to Flickr and this same guys won't bat an eye, but make an excellent and superb cat vlog and this same guy will flip out about what a pointless useless waste of bandwidth it is. Which brings me to my second point. 2) I don't like the majority of vlogs, therefore the entire medium is useless. Referring back to point number one vlogs (just like audio podcasts and blogs) cover a whole spectrum of public COMMUNICATIONS. As I like to put it they're interpersonal communications that just so happen to be public. So... when I hear some ass hat say "who want's to watch a bunch of idiots sit around talking to their computer screen"... I have to say... if you don't know the person, and aren't interested in what they have to say then what kind of IDIOT are you to waste your freaking time sitting around and watching it. OBviously the conversation is NOT for you! Maybe you should spend more time looking for something that DOES interest you. There is at this point enough vlogs that there's atleast one vlog that's bound to interest you. The problem is FINDING what interest you... tis isn't fucking tv... you don't just turn on the web with a remote and press play and expect the satelite of love to provide you with flickring yumiliocous images while your mind goes numb... again... do people's brains just instintually shut off when they see moving pictures? Nearly 100 years of being couch potatoes is not going to change overnight. So does this guy sit around and read every blog on the web and expect every blog to be mildly interesting and pertaining to him. If so he should go fucking watch LOST and come back when his friends, relatives, family, co-workers or someone he actually KNOWS starts vlogging. Perhaps it's just over his head to find something of a subject matter actually pertaining to and interesting him. Admitedly there is as of yet no google of video search... google's video search blows, and noone, but noone even though there are 100's of players seem to have built the "tv guide" for the next 100 years... a tv guide that will let you find what you want to watch in a hew scant seconds from the 10's of thousands of video and audio feeds.... but still, it IS possible to find something interesting onine... and my personal affiliations aside I think sites like mefeedia and our favorite competitor dabble are starting to fill this gap. Whereas we can assume everything on television is meant to have a general public appeal and to be created for someone with a meager six grade education like this guy... everything on the web is NOT created for him... you would expect him to know this after being online for how many years!? I mean does he still expect every web page to be written in english, every blog to be about a subject that interests him? Maybe he should look up the term "long tail" on wikipedia... and then get out of the deep end of the perverbial conversation and go back to the shallow end where he can "read" the ESPN swimsuit issue and the NYTimes (actually I do love the NYtimes) and I believe their are episodes of LOST now online for him that he can stream if he has a high bandwidth connection and is running the latest widows operating system Windows Media player and doesn't mind jumping through or being herded like a good sheep to for his beloved "entertainment" .... that is if he's incapable of finding relevant non-generalist mainstream media on his own. In summary, the reason people watch vlogs is EXAACTLY the same reason they read blogs and it's NOT SIMPLY TO BE ENTERTAINED. You'd expect ANY web user who's been online more than two years to know that by now since blogging started shattering those myths in 1999 and it's now eight years later... let alone some guy who wites a blog for a living. I could just as well throw his bullshit back in his face to show how moronic it sounds. How's this blast from the past... "Blogging as a medium is a failure, who wants to read about some idiot blathering about 'web2.0' b.s. it's all self referential, self indulgent crap." That's almost 1999 in rhetoric. I think that best parodies his statment. You see how that works... I just insinuated that every single blog was about web 2.0 and therfore self indulgent bullshit. In reality 99.9999% of all blogs are NOT about web2.0 crap like techcruch, just like 99.9999% of all vlogs don't exist merely for entertainment. It makes about as much sense as saying every single one of the millions and millions of videoblogs (and I include everything in iTunes, Youtube and the hundreds of other video sharing sites when I use this term)... anyway, it's just like this techcrunch asshat insinuating that every videoblog is by some narcisist who thinks he or she is *entertaining*. But let me parody his logic further... He'll never win a pulitzer or a nobel prize for his literary skills... He's no einstien either... so given that his literary skills and intellectual prowess are not even in the top 10% of the worlds literary and academic minds I think he should just give up blogging and go back to being a fry cook where he belongs. And I think that just about wraps up my rant. Remember kiddies... 1) New media is not here merely for your entertainment. It is not entertainment, it's not journalism... it's an entire COMMUNICATION platform... it enterforms, it enlightens, it's gossip, it's poetry and it's everything inbetween. Most importantly the absolute BEST of it reserves the right to be a little punk, to revel in the cheap beauty of it, to mispell, to grmatically err... to "vulgarize and falsify until the sheer lies show through". This IS the height of modern culture and modern art. and furthermore ... 2) As a platform for interpersonal communications, which just so happens to be public you should no more expect the majority of vlogs to pertain to you then you should expect the majority of the planet to speak your language and have something interesting to say to you. The world doesn't give a shit about you, and you should be thankful it doesn't. You should revel in your obscurity... you should wake up each morning and thank the gods that you have such power to communicate with and reach out to not only your friends, family and peers, but that you have a voice that can as need be... as is relevant be heard around the world. Should you blog, or vlog, or podcast your whole life... sooner or later you're going to say something, do something, capture something... truely astounding... it could be video from your hotel balacony of a tsunami that washes away a half a coutry... or after millions of blog post you finally say something relevant to the human population at large... the absolutely beautiful thing about this new era in communications is that everyone CAN have a say... and wether you're a teenager posting clips on youtube or a guy videoblogging on the streets in Iran, or from the bush in Africa is what you have to say, or share is truely relevan it WILL eventually be heard around the world irregardless of all the mindless, endless drivel you've writen, filmed, or recorded and shared before it. There's some metaphor that elludes me here. Something about the only thing more foolish then a man who asks a question of the wind... is the man who doesn't ask a question and yet expects and answer. This tech crunch guy expects that somehow "the conversation" will pertain to him... answer his questions, entertain him... but he's never tried it.. he hasn't spent a year getting to know people on youtube, or posting videos clips of his life to his own vlog. He hasn't even sought out those friends, peers, relatives and others he may know that have tried it. He remains ever so close in his sheltered world of blogging, commenting, critiquing without taking that step, like the news paper journalist he expects each new thing to to recreate itself based on his standards. I would suggest this idiot start vlogging and/or audio podcasting if he expects some relevent answers to his questions. Oh, one last thing. 3) RSS is not merely some fancy new way of downloading videos to your iPod. If he narrowly defines this as videoblogging... then of course he's dissilusioned. The power in RSS is not as a delivery mechanism... it's as a SYNDICATION mechanism for METADATA about the video. It's not simply a fancy way of dowloading files... The power in RSS syndicated video IS NOT in automatically copying files to your computer.... without the meta info contained in the RSS feed we'd have an unuseable, unsearchable unmediateable web. Millions and millions of useless video files. What's important is that I can find a video or a feed... to subscribe to a video feed, to track it, to watch it anytime and anywhere I want... this may be on my ipod, but more often then not that's not the case. More often then not that's by viewing the video right on my desktop computer, right off the web. RSS exists primarily as a tool to give us the power to view media when, where and how we want. "Podcasting" is not videoblogging... it's merely on tiny piece of the picture. RSS and mediaRSS are the driving force behind the exploding video search space. None of it would exist, not even youtube without either the direct benifits or the indirect benifits of RSS. The problem I see... and indeed I to felt disillusioned at times... is that we to narrowly definine the scope of the experience... "video podcasting" is in the big picture turning out to be only a tiny piece of the picture. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of videoblogs are viewed this way. But it IS important... it's just we need MORE devices... more ubiquitous wifi, and even wimax, more mobile computing platforms. The video ipod and so called "podcasting" are a glimpse into future that's still atleast five and possibly still as many as ten years away before it's mainstream. What's mainstream now is web based video blogs and videos sharing social networks... what's mainstream tomorrow will be guides and search and tracking... and only after that will this new media be free to truely move beyond the desktop in a mainstream fashion. The video iPod is fun... but don't mistake a dodad or a gadget for the revolution itself... in the end the revolution isn't about videoblogging, or podcasting, or blogging, or open source or wikis... they're all important pieces of the puzzle but the revolution itself is in the radical new way the internet reshapes the way we assemble, collaborate, learn, govern, communicate and how that changes our identities and how we see ourselves belonging in the world... some have called it "global citizenship". Personally I like the term, but I'm leary of such feel good conotations as the "global village" that come with that term because this is not some happy family... it can be in fact as dangerous as it is brilliant. Ramble, ramble, ramble. Peace, -Mike, the rambler mmeiser.com/blog mefeedia.com Disclaimer: Yeah like I proof read this stuff, let alone spell check. Where's the fun in that. Don't like it, don't read it. :) On 3/19/07, Michael Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > FYI > > In the comments on a short TechCrunch review (http://tinyurl.com/2bcqx5) > about VLIP i > read the following provocative statements: > > 'Erick' writes: > > "Unless a person is at least the slightest bit entertaining, Vlogging > stinks. I dont want to > look at some weirdo sitting at home/work talking into a webcam about their > lame day or > skill or opinion. If you arent as entertaining as Ze Frank, then you stink > and nobody wants > to hear/see you..." > > and David Scott Lexis writes: > > "Video blogs have been a failure, as I noted in a couple of AlwaysOn Network > columns. > Videos are one thing; automatically downloading video blogs (or video > podcasts; I prefer > "video podcasts") is too bandwidth intensive, too slow, takes up too much > hard disk space. > > You want to leave your computer on all night to download video podcasts? > Well, good for > you … but you're in the minority. How many video podcasts have been > successful? Do any > have over 10,000 subscribers to their feed? > > Compare and contrast with "standard" blogs — such as this one. Matter of > fact, are there > any video podcasts that have even 1% of the subscribers that TechCrunch has? > None that > I'm aware of, and in my public blogroll I subscribe to a lot > (http://www.bloglines.com/ > public/DSL). > > Mind you, this might be a decent idea, but until bandwidth, hard disk space > and all sorts > of other limitations are overcome (like the need for better and easier > production > techniques), it will remain a novelty for the SXSW crowd (and they're not > early adopters, > they're "way-too-early adopters"; in the 70's they would have been touting > the wonders of > AI). > > BTW, I still subscribe to several video podcasts for my iPod. But I suspect > that I'm in the > minority; I know very few people outside of the Bay area who subscribe to > more than a few > (if any) — and I don't know anyone in China (where I currently live) who > subscribes to any > … not even one. YouTube, thumbs up; video blogs & video podcasts, thumbs > down (too > early). > > Remember, so-called and self-anointed pioneers usually wind up with arrows > in their > back. Besides, how many people really have good "TV"/video presence? Not a > lot. Good > podcasters are a subset of good bloggers, but good vloggers are a subset of > good > podcasters: That's a tiny set..." > > > > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
