But a few people called me out on my opinion of new media in the digital age, specifically YouTube. To my surprise, what was meant simply as a heartfelt ode to Epic Rap Battles... apparently read, to some, like the jaded grousing of an arrogant puke.
My answer to this charge: yes, that's exactly what it was. At least the jaded grousing part...
In 2006, Time magazine named 'You' as its Person of the Year...that is, all of us. YouTube had been launched just the year before, and Time smartly recognized the tremendous impact it was going to have. The award correctly suggested a paradigm shift, the creation of a whole new wave of information providers and entertainers direct from grass roots level - new faces and voices we would otherwise not see or hear but would become eager to. It could literally be anyone in the world, and here was the rub: in order to watch and listen to them we would, for the first time ever, go to our computers rather than our televisions or radios.
That was huge. Factor in the rise of smart phones in the last seven years, providing uninterrupted, real time connectedness, and I don't think it's an overstatement that the whole thing should be considered nothing less than an evolutionary step for our species.
Now's a good time to state that I don't think everything about YouTube is bad; that was what I didn't make clear in my last post, and so ruffled a few feathers. No question there's been some standouts: ERB, of course, and I'm also a fan of VSauce, as well as the Slow Mo Guys, Postmodern Jukebox is pretty amazing, the Nostalgia Critic pretty damn funny...I guess I'm revealing myself to be a bit of a nerd at heart. The point is, there are plenty of people taking the creative blank check technology now provides and doing interesting, original things.
I just think it's fair to say that most aren't.
While YouTube has delivered on its predicted impact, it hasn't quite lived up to its potential. It hasn't eclipsed traditional television and cinema as our primary fonts of entertainment or information by unleashing a tidal storm of Stones, Scorceses and Spielbergs, or Moores, Spurlocks and Kenners.
What YouTube has produced the most of is the 'open source' crowd, and I'd say these are the only people I'm actually indignant about: the utterly talentless who, simply because technology allows them to do so, throw together their GIFs and movie mash-ups and slide shows set to music, co-opting copyrighted material in the process.
Yes, fine, I admit, here I am a little jaded, even a little pukey, on principle. I understand why Prince - for example - jealously guards his creative body of work from those who would help themselves to it. On the surface, it's easy to think he's just being a tool for threatening legal action over unauthorized use of his image and music, but when you really get down to it, he's not being a tool at all. It's his image and music. It means something now, just as it meant something in 1984, and copyright laws are in place for his - and all of our - protection. In our digital age, the implications of publishing on YouTube (and that's really what it is - publishing) need to be acknowledged, the definitions of 'fair use' and 'satire' sharpened down to a spear point, and all attendant copyright observed, with authorship recognized.
One step up from the open source people on YouTube are what I call the 'day traders', those who see fit to share whatever stuff they happen to catch on their phones, the same stuff they're sharing on Facebook and Reddit and Twitter and Snapchat and all the rest.
Sometimes someone is in the right place at the right time and captures something magnificent:
Other times it takes the form of the benign:
And sometimes it falls on the sinister side, the cruelty, violence and bad decision making that for better or worse inform our Zeitgeist. But in any case, it's no secret that YouTube day traders trade in precious commodities. The bread crumbs of our daily lives have become as much entertainment as anything. That people actually cash in some of their precious time to watch the most random stuff, stuff they probably have or see or experience at home, and give their approval through their likes and comments and ad hoc reviews (which is really why they do it: the opportunity to chime in) is perhaps another post all together.
And of course, there are the myriad Vloggers, people who have realized that for a minimal expenditure of time and money they can have what pretty much amounts to their own television channel, their own reality show, their own bully pulpit. These folks are at least lifting a finger to be entertaining, but here again, just because they can, it doesn't naturally follow that they should, or that they can. Yes, they're entertaining (verb), but are they entertaining (adjective)? I've tuned in to more than a few vlogs, and there are some funny ones, but most simply aren't. Most of them have flat-lined into not even being interesting. Most, that I've seen, are simply people carrying around cameras and filming themselves doing the most mundane crap, witless and tired and creatively barren. Yet somehow they STILL manage to garner likes and viewers and followers and subscribers!
That seems perverse to me. I'm sorry, I'm trying desperately not to be a hater, but I don't think entertainment should be like a 5th grade soccer match, where everyone gets a trophy and there are no losers. I think when everyone is allowed to present themselves as a creative person - a film maker, a singer, a photographer, digital artist, writer or a composer - in the egalitarian arena of the Internet, everyone's going to. The waters can't help but get muddied and the curve by which we grade it all can't help but get lowered, thus lowering what we collectively expect, and in turn, lowering what anyone bothers to produce. And that's depressing. I don't think there's anything about that assertion that makes me an arrogant puke. I don't think there's a creative person in the world who would disagree. And frankly, whether I'm creative is not the point. I say these things strictly as a consumer, not a creator.
Epic Lloyd and Nice Peter are clearly talented guys, and were it 1994 rather than 2014, each would likely still find success in entertainment in some capacity, together or apart. Their 'story', I think, is that they do what they do, to the extent they do it, in a uniquely 21st century medium - i.e., the Internet, where anybody can conceivably do what they do, but most don't. Most settle for the easy route; they forsake a true creative process carried on the backs of pre and post production considerations, attention to detail, building upon each new success to create something bigger and better (all the stuff I raved about in my last post), and either plagiarize, or in the best of scenarios, simply hoist up a camera and film themselves smiling and saying pithy things, cooking eggs in their kitchen, or running around the grocery store mocking strangers and laughing at the zucchini.
The point is, none of that stuff, none of it, would see the light of day twenty years ago. Were its creators trying to travel through conventional channels to get it produced - the hero's journey through a wasteland of submissions and rejections that once defined the creative world and, though sometimes discouraging, filtered out the worthy from the not-so-worthy - most of it would be lucky to find its way into the 'out' basket on the desk of the secretary of even the most two-bit talent agent in Sacramento.
But now, the 'light of day' is immediately accessible to all of us all at once, a world-wide audience at our fingertips...and thus, nobody is vetted. Dues no longer have to be paid in order to be 'liked'.
What I'm asserting may sound extreme, but make no mistake, this phenomenon of complacency and laziness in entertainment is already at play in conventional channels, and has been for at least the last decade. We know it as 'reality' TV. It is literally why the Kardashians are what they are: 'famous for being famous', otherwise bringing nothing new, innovative or edifying to the party. Producers of these kinds of shows, probably dating back to the first season of The Real World the year I graduated high school (and possibly much earlier), realized it's easier, and cheaper, to just plop these awful people, any awful people (just so long as they're physically attractive and/or have 'big personalities'....), in front of a camera and let them do their stupid shit, say their stupid things, and still garner just as many viewers (in other words sell just as many cell phones, bags of Doritos and cases of beer, because it's all about advertising, baby...) as the shows that actually get conceived and thought through, written and produced.
And people watch. They watch! Do they laugh and mock? Probably (not always). But they still watch. The Kardashians, et al., are bonafide fucking celebrities! Just as (for instance) Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul (and Vince Gilligan) are celebrities....even more so.
Even more so! 8-/
And this can't help but beg the question: why are Epic Lloyd and Nice Peter (among others) busting their tails, straining their creative brains to create a legitimate, original product, when they could, for the price of a few bottles of Belvedere vodka and the expense of an apartment rental, get a few kids together, see who barfs first, and where, and what's said about it, and have a 'hit' on their hands?
My previous post was intended not only to express relief that they are doing what they're doing, but that people are responding so enthusiastically. God forbid everyone just throws up their hands and becomes content with the Kardashians, or Bad Girls, or the Real Anybody of Anywhere. That's how we wind up with chocolate chip cookies as the only dessert option.
Anything wrong with chocolate chip cookies? Hell no...but without the promise, the hope, of a well-textured torte once in a while, there isn't really any reason to get out of bed in the morning, is there?
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I was also asked by a couple people what Epic Rap Battle I'd like to see, and with a little thought came up with the following:
1) Stephen King versus Edgar Allen Poe
2) USA for Africa versus Band-Aid (this would be ambitious, but I think truly epic! Worthy of a season finale! ;-)
