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My apologies for the confusion over Day 11 that has left it with a-
wonderful (!)- hole in the middle where Justin Bieber once danced and now dances no more…
It was beautiful, I cut it so that one minute he’s sitting on his sofa, strumming away...
and the next playing at the Grammys, then on stage dancing around!
But no. It was not to be.
Ironically, as the start of the video contained my warning not to use clips for anything other than educational purposes…
I was then made to take it down for breaching copyright...
Technically, YouTube didn’t make me take it down, they just made it unplayable.
Despite my video being educational.
So my beautiful editing was lost, lost to the world!
It was ‘Fair Use’ but I’m not going to contest something that trivial.
I am very impressed with the algorithm that searches through the videos and I admire Goggle for cracking down on copyright,
especially since they’ve had so much trouble for not doing so in the past.
Although, as almost every book I have so far read on the subject points out;
YouTube care about copyright because they want you to watch the licensed version as the companies pay them per view.
This is very similar to Google’s advertising revenue;
they’re paid every time we click on one of those highlighted adverts in the search results.
Perhaps the books are so harsh because they’re books?
They might be much more positive if they were blogs…?
Then again, the internet is quite a harsh place…
Just like ‘YouTube Fame’ yesterday, ‘YouTube Pain’ comes in two parts; content and contributors.
Content we cannot trust and contributors we cannot protect.
How can you tell a hoax from the real thing?
One of the things I’ve noticed about this… ‘journey’?
Oh, goodness that sounds exceptionally American!
Anyway… I am what most of my friends would describe as ‘exceptionally gullible’.
It’s not that I’m stupid or I’ve been kept in a little bubble by my parents…
I'm just honest to goodness- I trust people.
All people. Unquestionably. Anyone.
I trust you.
Often, I have to be reminded that people are only acting in films.
Or that when someone says they’ll do something they don’t always mean it…
and ‘how are you?’ requires a three second answer, not a three minute one.
When I started watching these videos I honestly believed every single one.
Every accident captured on camera was honest,
nothing was contrived unless they were mimicking an earlier video…
One video in particular has had quite an affect on me; ‘Jesus Will Survive’,
#Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive#
In which an actor, playing Jesus, mimes-
-I’m assuming (captions on YouTube aren’t for the hard of hearing)-
to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’, while walking down a road
and then...
Smack! He’*** by a bus!
I, of course, take it at face value-
there’s even an ‘in memory’ card at the end!
So… I watch the ‘behind the scenes’ clips, expecting to see a tragic tale
where those involved recount what went wrong over a few clips of the actor’s final days…
With some kind of sad, sad little song playing...
But of course it isn’t real!
Of course not!
Which, obviously, made me question the multiple other videos I’ve been watching recently.
How many of them are real? How many fake?
So; YouTube, well done,
you’ve managed to take a little piece of my innocence.
And all without a single pornographic clip.
[Keen] Well it's absurd! And I think what it reflects again is the very troubling reality of our society which is increasingly media illiterate.
We can't blame technology for it, we can't blame the internet- when we look at the internet we're looking at ourselves. We're looking at a mirror.
And when we look at today's internet and we see the success of a movie like 'Loose Change'-
-which is really just a series of lies- of absurd and very dangerous lies about one of the most tragic events in American history-
Which is really just a series of lies- of absurd and very dangerous lies about one of the most tragic events in American history...
which is really just a series of lies- of absurd and very dangerous lies about one of the most tragic events in American history...
which is really just a series of lies- of absurd and very dangerous lies about one of the most tragic events in American history...
We're seeing the consequences of that media illiteracy.
In 2005 three young men from Oneonta in upstate New York made one of the most famous YouTube hoax videos; Loose Change.
Possibly tying with ‘LonelyGirl15’ for great achievements in fooling people.
The film is eighty minutes long and was originally conceived as a fictional story yet portrays itself as a “documentary”...
telling the untold story of the 11th of September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre.
In the film, bombs were planted by the US government to destroy the buildings and the ‘terrorists’ were hired actors,
meant to incite racial hatred and so give George Bush support for the war he wanted to wage against the Gulf States.
The “claims” made in Loose Change were completely discredited in the final report of the 9/11 Commission,
a report that took two years to compile, cost $15 million, and was written by two governors, four congressmen, three former White House officials, and two special counsels.
As Andrew Keen writes in ‘Loose Change’; “So whom do you trust?
... Three twenty-something amateurs with no college education ...
...or a team of experts that included America’s brightest and most experienced officials and investigators?
... The Onenota revisionists used the self-authoring technology of Web 2.0 to trash history
about an event that cost thousands of American lives, provoked a global backlash against Islam, and instigated two wars.”
Within a year the film had risen to the number one spot on YouTube’s ‘most watched’,
having been viewed by more than 10 million people. A point Keen is especially vexed by;
(Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur); “Yes, you could argue, to some people it was obvious the movie was a hoax.
But how many other “hoaxes” are less obvious?
How much of what we read or see on the Internet is equally deceptive?
Is the person who posts an online ad or sends us a witty e-mail genuine,
or is he or she a con artist, *** predator, or hustler of one kind or another?”
A good example here provided by the programme RudeTube- a televisual summary of sorts, concerning YouTube videos that have made an impact;
[Presenter] The 'Swimming Pool Slingshot' is actually a viral advert, and it's done the trick for the company who commissioned it,
landing nearly 3 million hits since it first 'pinged' online.
As we’ve previously seen with Keith Allen’s anti-establishment conspiracy film ‘Unlawful Killing’
(which, I’m pleased to note, has been receiving not-so-rave reviews after opening in Cannes)
...often viewers and commenters can get ‘carried away’ and forget the implausibility of the content,
or- with user generated works- to whom they are addressing themselves.
#Rebecca Black, Friday#
First uploaded via YouTube in February 2011, ‘Friday’, staring 13-year-old Rebecca Black,
has officially become the most disliked video on YouTube
with over 2.8 million ‘dislikes’ as of 18th March, 2011.
It has over 142 million views and has been widely blogged about, even becoming a Twitter trending topic.
Interest in the video- calling it ‘The Worst Ever’- arose from it’s questionable lyrics...
#Friday, Friday, gettin' down on Friday...#
#Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend...#
#Partyin', Partyin'..."
...yet disparaging comments are mainly focused on Black herself.
Whilst those that take the time to make parody videos and remixes appear to keep in mind both the age of the young singer,
and that the song was created by adults, the anonymous members of the YouTube community did not hold back the insults
comments underneath the video were eventually disabled with the archive being deleted.
On March 18th, Black appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to discuss some of the more hateful comments her video has drawn;
[Andrea Canning] What's the meanest thing you've read? That maybe hurt you the most?
[Rebecca Black] 'I hope you cut yourself' and 'I hope you get an eating disorder so you'll look pretty', and 'I hope you go cut and die'.
[Canning] have you cried at all, throughout all of this or are you just strong?
[Black] When I first all these nasty comments... I did cry.
I felt like... this was my fault and I shouldn't have done this and this is all because of me.
We’ll continue tomorrow with invasions of privacy and the bullying that can happen on a very personal level on YouTube.
In the mean time, if any of you have any experiences of such things I would very much like to know how you’ve been affected.
I will, of course, mention no names.
See you tomorrow.