Video Project
This video explores how people use YouTube in order to become famous. It is true however, as Dr. Strangelove said, that this is not the main use of YouTube. Even so there are people who have achieved local fame within the YouTube network. They are well known by other users and have hundreds of thousands hits on every video they post. They also have comments from the same viewers every time meaning that there are people who follow their videos and watch the newest one when it is posted.
We also look at celebrity culture and what drives people to want to become famous. We first state the obvious that money brings fame, fortune, respect and admiration, but we then look at the psychology behind the desire.
It is true that everyone wants to be famous and it is normal. Celebrities are idolized in our society and we obsess about them and want to know every detail of their lives. Everyone wants attention and to be appreciated by the people around them.
Here is a list of sources that we used for our video. From the books we found the reasons that people want to be famous and also how the media makes fame seem more accessible to them. From the website we found the story of Brandon Hardesty who started his career by imitating Hollywood movies on YouTube. He played all of the characters and even filmed from different angles. A Hollywood producer saw his videos and recommended him for some movies. Brandon Hardesty has had small role, but is now receiving big budget scripts.
For the soundtrack at the beginning and for the credits we used “When I Grow Up” by the Pussycat Dolls because it matched the theme of our video. It talks about how when they grow up all they want is attention and to be famous, which is the main focus of our video.
Here is a list of our work cited:
Giles, David. Illusions of Immortality : A Psychology of Fame and Celebrity. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2000.
“Imitation on YouTube proves to be his fastest form of audition – USATODAY.com.” News,
Travel, Weather, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World – USATODAY.com. 01 Feb. 2009 <http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2008-03-31-hardesty-youtube_N.htm>.
Rojek, Chris. Celebrity. New York: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2004.
Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. Minneapolis: SAGE Publications, Incorporated, 2004.
I really was nervous about making this video, but in the end I really enjoyed it!
News Bloopers
Right now I am very interested in looking at compellation videos on YouTube and their quality. The video I am posting today is one that made me laugh a lot and I have watched it several times and shared it with my friends. It is a compellation of funny news bloopers that can be found on YouTube and a user has taken them and made them into one video.
I really like this compellation. I think the YouTube user did a very good job of putting the clips together as the video flows very well and is not choppy in the change between videos. The sound between the videos is also very well done as the volume does change drastically from clip to clip and whenever there is change it is very moderate. For example when they enter into the first video clip that is in another language the volume gets lower and the picture quality decreases, but then it changes back to better quality and volume for the rest of the compellation.
I did not really enjoy how they chose to include videos that were not in English because it took away from the video as I couldn’t understand what they were saying, this took away from the humor of the video. Maybe if they had have put those two clips at the end of the video it would have been better, but having them right in the middle made the video lag and slow down. The two clips were funny however I did not feel as though they fit with the rest of the video. Also the picture quality of those two clips was by far the worst of all of them and that also took away from the video as a whole.
Overall I really enjoy this video and it is one of my favorite on YouTube because it makes me laugh. It put together some of my favorite videos into one so that I can watch them all at once!
The Corporation
In an organizational communications class I took last semester, we watched several segments of the documentary entitled The Corporation. This film opened up my eyes to what really goes on in the production of goods and what corporations really can and do get away with. They are greedy and will do anything to make a profit from exploitation to performing illegal actions. It really is disgusting how corporations can be instruments of domination wherever they chose to locate themselves and their production plants.
In chapter two of The Empire of Mind, Dr. Strangelove mentions that corporations are very good at evading the law. However there is much more to corporations and when I heard about what they and get away with I couldn’t believe that we as consumers allow them to do it.
For example Wal Mart treats it suppliers very poorly and harshly. Suppliers all want their products in Wal Mart because of their customer base and Wal Mart fully takes advantage of this in a despicable manner that has a very serious effect on the industry. In order for Wal Mart to offer their customers lower prices and still make a profit they need to buy it at a lower price and therefore it needs to be produced for cheaper. They drove their suppliers to move their production plants overseas where the labor is cheaper resulting in closed plants and lots jobs in both Canada and the United States.
It is very difficult to blame the corporations for these developments as they are based on the ideology of capitalism. It is easy however to blame consumers for allowing this type of domination. We flock to Wal Mart for their low prices even after all of the horrible things they have done have been exposed. They can only give us these low prices because they bully their suppliers who then exploit the labor force of a poor country. I for one have shopped at Wal Mart in the past, but after watching The Corporation and looking in to them on the Internet, I don’t think I will every shop there again.
Digital Piracy
It is crazy to think that we can get music, movies and games for free with just the click of a download icon on the Internet when in the past we would have to leave our homes to buy them. Now a new single is released on the radio and within a few hours we can find it online as well as newly released movies. This means less profit for the movie and music industries resulting in them needing to make changes in order to generate more profit.
It has come to the point where music and movie companies need to work with the Internet, not to prevent the leakage of their product, but to somehow benefit from it. However attempted mergers in the past, such as the one between AOL and Time Warner described by Dr. Strangelove, have not seemed to reap any benefits.
Wherever consumers can they are taking shortcuts to get what they once paid for, for free. The best place to do this is online because it is not monitored by the law or controlled by the needs of the marketplace. Organizations are trying to change this as they want to control the Internet, but it is very difficult to do. Organizations are constantly announcing new initiatives and developments in the prevention of digital piracy, however Dr. Strangelove believes that these are only attempts to keep investors interested and believing that a solution to digital piracy is coming. In reality the solution is far off as it is a very complicated issue.
Dr. Strangelove believes that “Internet content and online behaviour will remain as they are now” (58), which is out from under control of law, technology and the marketplace. I also believe that this is the case, as if it were to change I don’t think as many people would use the Internet and they would not make as much profit as they expect to. I personally hope that the Internet does remain out of their control because it is such a vital tool in everyone’s daily life that to privatize it would really have severe consequences for us all as it give us instant access to almost everything.
Baby Laughing
This is one of my favorite videos on YouTube right now. It just makes me laugh every time I watch it. The babies laugh and I can’t help but smile. Videos like these make me want to have a video camera around all the time and constantly rolling when I have children so that I can watch my favorite moments over and over again.
However I am not sure that I would want to share these moments with the rest of the world by putting them online like this. To me these are private intimate moments that are for family and friends. I can’t imagine why a parent would want everyone to be able to see their child on YouTube.
This video is two separate videos linked together by someone making a compellation video of babies laughing. This is becoming more common on YouTube, people picking their favorite videos and making them into a longer compellation video that is like a best of on YouTube. I really like this idea as it allows us to watch several videos at once without having to look for them and they are all related to what we searched.
It is important for people creating these videos to be careful of quality and sound. Some videos on YouTube are louder than others while some are of better quality than others. It is important that when putting these compellations together the volume and quality of the video are not constantly changing. In the example that I have posted the sound is very good as the volume between the two clips is the same and it doesn’t get louder or softer, however the quality of the first video is much better. The lighting is better and the picture is much clearer as the baby’s face is very clearly defined and we can really see the animation on his face. In the second one it is very dark and we cannot see the baby as clearly, which takes away from the video, which is why I prefer the first video to the second.
The Audience Aspect
There are many audience theories in the field of communications that attempt to demonstrate how an audience 
responds to the media. There are theories that claim the audience to be passive and others that claim the audience to be active. I personally would like to believe that the audience is active because if not then everything we see, hear and read would influence us in many ways. If in fact the audience is not active at all, then every time we see a commercial we would go out and purchase the product and this is not the case therefore I believe that we are an active audience.
The Hypodermic Needle Theory is an example of a theory where they assume that the audience is passive and therefore directly and powerfully influenced by the media. This means that the information passes to the audience unmediated and that the audience is easily manipulated. I do not believe this to be the case as now consumers do a lot of research before purchasing a product to make sure that they are getting the best quality for their money. It is true, however that advertisements place the idea that we need the product in our heads, but I don’t believe that they are the reason we buy the product in the end.
Paul Lazarsfeld and Herta Herzog performed research and experiments that disprove theories, such as the Hypodermic Needle Theory, where the audience is believed to be passive and susceptible to manipulation. Hadley Cantril used their research and demonstrated that every audience member’s reaction to media is different and it depends on the attitudes and situations of the person. The people who react to the media have a predisposition to or have had unique experiences in the past that would make them more susceptible to influence. This is the theory that makes the most sense to me and I feel that it is the most realistic view of the audience.
Audience behaviours are very difficult to predict, which is why many studies and such are performed before a product, ad, movie or television show is released. They bring in test audiences to get their reactions as well as monitor the sales of similar products in order to try and predict the success of their product. It is amazing the amount of effort that goes into the study of audiences in order to be able to manipulate them and encourage them to buy products all because capitalism requires it.
Commodification – How Far Can We Go
Commodification is a major theme throughout The Empire of Mind and in the world that surrounds us. It is a process that is continuously occurring and affecting the world around us.
According to Karl Marx, commodification, also known as commoditization, is the transformation of goods and services into a commodity, which is any good or service that is produced through the use of human labour and made accessible for public sale on the market.
Douglas Rushkoff states that “commodification refers to the expansion of market trade to previously non-market areas, and to the treatment of things as if they were a tradable commodity”. This involves the transformation, packaging and marketing of something that never before had an economic value meaning that there is now a profit being made where there never was before. This process has become very common for items that one would have never thought could be sold and bought, such as water by selling it in bottles and education as the cost of university is outrageous.
A major question is why do we allow this process to occur and why do we support it through the purchase of these unnecessary commodities? For example is it not cheaper to drink the regular tap water than to buy bottled water? Of course it is, but the value attached to the bottled water is what makes us buy it. It is handy to have the bottle to carry around making the water transportable and it tells others that we are healthier because bottled water is perceived as so. They attach meaning and value to the commodity, and this is why we buy it.
Commodification is linked in many ways to globalization as products are becoming available on a global market meaning that we can buy a Japanese product in Canada and vice versa, but can place our own meaning and value on it. However, both commodification and globalization are related to capitalism, as under capitalism everything becomes a commodity that can be sold around the world through globalization. Commodification, globalization and capitalism have one final goal – making a profit at all costs.
Capitalism and The Wedding
Capitalism is a very tricky thing. It has many positive aspects as well as many negative ones and in my mind it is not clear which ones outweigh the other. It is true that capitalism does push people to work harder and to create more, however it also teaches and enforces the concept that consumption is a way of life and as a society we buy into that.
Dr. Strangelove states that capitalism is associated with the production of goods, but that it also produces the desire within people to consume. This is a very difficult concept to wrap your mind around as it is saying that people consume because capitalism requires and encourages them to without them even knowing that this manipulation is taking place. People believe they have freewill and are not affected by advertisements or media, but their drive to consume is created by the market itself.
Everyone has the desire for more. No one is ever satisfied with what they have and could always have more clothes, more space or more vacations. Desire is a natural human trait that capitalism recognized and has become highly skilled at using it to manage the patterns of consumer behaviour. Capitalism does so by attaching meaning and value to every product developed for consumption and this is achieved through advertisements. For example the ads for a men’s product that feature beautiful women are trying to portray that this is a manly product and if men buy it women like the one in the ad will desire this man. Consumers desire and buy things because of the meanings associated to the product.
It is crazy to think that the sacred act of marriage and the purchase of a wedding ring has been transformed into an economically shaped bahaviour. The fact that a diamond ring has become a necessity in the act of marriage to demonstrate the grooms love and that he makes money and participates in the marketplace is ridiculous as marriage is about love. Having said that, I cannot imagine my own wedding without a diamond ring, therefore I know that I personally have been influenced by the ideologies of capitalism!
YouTube Mania
Tonight we had our second New Media class and discussed how society’s main use of media is for social purposes. In fact the internet almost collapsed in 2001 because people thought its main use was going to be commercial, but it turned out that people used the internet in order to communicate with others. With the creation of YouTube and other web sites where people can post and comment on videos, the phenomena of people putting themselves in the public eye has taken off. I personally have no videos on the Internet and I would like to keep it that way as I do not think I would like the idea of millions of people being able to watch me. Also I used to think that people just put these videos up for attention and with the desire to become famous in the amateur video field.
However, Professor Strangelove says that the main goal of YouTube users is not to become famous even though there are many videos posted that would lead other users to believe this to be the case, such as the Chris Crocker videos. Instead he says and demonstrates that the main use of YouTube is to be social and that people post videos for their friends, families and small groups and not the mass audience.
People make videos and post them on YouTube for many reasons, such as to demonstrate their skill, for their own esteem and desire to share their thoughts with an audience that is interested. However, being social is the main reason for posting these videos. YouTube users can create and upload videos as well as view and comment on others and create videos in response to the ones they have viewed. In this sense YouTube can be viewed as a social communication network where people create videos in order to generate responses and create dialogue with other users. Therefore even though YouTube is not face to face conversations, it is still communication.
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
