Viral Tracking

After posting our video on Youtube, the first thing that came to our minds was to CONTACT our friends! The more people we can get to view it, the better. We hoped that we would be able to get are friends involved in order to spread the video online. To do this, we posted our video on Facebook, Friendster and Myspace in hopes for all our friends to view it. In the first few days, we only had 20 views, but suddenly on Wednesday, it sky rocketed to 67 views! Our video was being directed from facebook links, tags, and other blogs which made our video GO VIRAL! However, later in the week, the number of watches gradually decreased from about 10 views each day to about 3. In an effort to revitalize our video, we renewed our efforts to spread the video amongst our friends. This resulted in the doubling of daily viewers from Friday the 29th through Monday the 31st.

In the end our video achieved a total of 162 views

Comments: 2	Favorites: 0	Ratings: 1	Average Rating: 5.00

Origin of Viewers

Links followed to this Video	Views	% of total views
No link referrer (brown)	55	48.2
Youtube (other) (light blue)	27	23.7
Youtube search (dark blue)	17	14.9
External links (maroon)	14	12.3
Link from Youtube channel page (turqoise)	1	0.88

Views vs. Viralization

Date	Views	Attempt to Viralize
May 17th	18	Posted on youtube First embedded on - tcs2-group4-davisgoesviral.blogspot.com reposted on facebook First view on a channel page First referral from - tcs2-group4- 3
May 18th	28	Reposted on another facebook First referral from YouTube - /my_history\ First referral from YouTube search - high heels
May 19th	13	Posted on tumblr
May 20th	14
May 21st	6
May 22nd	5
May 23rd	4
May 24th\	3	TCS referral went up to 8 Facebook went from 11 to 18 views
May 25th	2
May 26th	4
May 27th	4
May 28th	0
May 29th	4
May 30th	13	Reposted by friends on tu mblr

FACEBOOK SKIT VIRALIZATION

We started off the viralization of the video through facebook posting and asking friends to viralize it as well. We then started using forums to post it. The tracking then showed us that we started off with few hits, and then it peaked during the weekend.

We tracked our video daily by checking the link once a day. We then collected the data after two weeks of the video posting. We graphed the results of the trends and where the high peak of hits was during the two weeks. As the graph shows, the weekend has the highest hits. However, we concluded that our video was not successful in viralizing in two weeks because we intentionally tried to viralize it.



To further prove this, Sameer, has made his own video for youtube, not INTENTIONALLY for viralization. However, he got more hits on it than our facebook skit video! This unintentional viral video was more successful than the facebook skit because of the quality and more effort put into the video. The viewers have to show some interest in a video before they want to share it with others, thus, that happened with the music video, but not the facebook skit. Another example is when the video was spammed on a forum, Sameer got banned from it. In conclusion, we believe that making a video to purposely get it viralized is harder than to have a video viralize itself spontaneously.

Blog 14: Who Owns The Media

Even before reading Reingold’s writing, I have noticed how cell phones have altered the social norms of my peers and myself. Once, now a very long time ago, when plans were made to meet for a movie, or go to lunch or anything in-between, we had to specifically state when and where we would meet. We were held to that, and anyone who did not show up was held responsible for themselves. Now-a-days, it is no longer a “Let’s meet at the old oak tree at 4pm,” but rather a “Call you when I’m nearly there.” In my own life this has lead to people becoming less punctual and less reliable. Something about having the ability to cancel (via phone) makes many people more likely to do so. In the past they would have shown up, because they gave their word and didn’t want to face the mockery if they ditched out. But now, a simple text relieves them of all that, and they are free to go as they please. Another issue phones have had in my life is the ever-present connection. I can always be reached. This puts stress on me because I hate disregarding someone’s phone call (even though some of my friends do it regularly). Even if I am busy, I try my best to answer when someone tries to reach me. This is both a good and bad thing. It has been awkward at times, forcing me to step outside to take a call. At other times, I do not get the peace and privacy I want, when I am always just 7 digits away.

Xtra Credit Blog 12 Viral Videos

Burgess emphasizes that the nature of viral videos is the opportunity for participation. The videos that become viral provide a set of rules under which other contributors may create their own videos; this active participation increases the value of the viral video within the public sphere. Drax works within a similar field of participation. Second Life is literally a second public sphere operating on the Internet; it is a virtual world in which people communicate via their Internet personas, or Avatars. Seinna Harris, an activist and Obama campaign supporter, used the site to set up a location within Second Life much like a campaign headquarters in real life (or I guess, First Life, haha), allowing other Obama supporters from all over the country to come together at one place, at this virtual campaign headquarters and discuss Obama's platform, and possibly other important political issues. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who used Second Life to hold a conference for discussing the international criminal court system, voiced his delight to Drax that geographical boundaries did not impose a limit on his conference; anyone with a Second Life avatar could attend the conference no matter where they were in the world. What Drax and Burgess share is this sense of international community, one that has existed for hundreds of years, but until recently, was limited by geographical space and transportation to geographical locations, much like how communication was once limited to transportation via ship, stagecoach or train before the invention of the telegraph. Internet sites like YouTube and Second Life provide a worldwide public space in which individuals and groups of individuals can debate, offer support for political and social movements, or participate in cultural and social phenomenon.

Blog 12- Video Vortex 2

Jean Burgess’s article in Video Vortex outlines the production, venue, spread, and viewing of viral videos. There are key components to the more popular viral videos that set them apart from the billions of others online. Attention grabbing tactics are typically used to reel in viewers and active viewer participation keeps them there. What makes web 2.0 so upgraded from the initial internet is that we are now more engaged in the material that we are watching. We not only watch it but we can create it, judge it, pass it on, or even mock it.

Bernhard Drax, a reporter on Second Life, creates non viral material on a viral website. His material does not strike me as something a random person would connect with. The videos does not reach out to everyone, or play on the tactics that enable for optimal viralization. Second Life as a whole on the other hand allows for people to contribute their ideas and creations to everyone in the community. Afterward, they are able to receive feedback and the participation cycle continues. The site itself is viral because it allows people to spread anything they feel people would like to see or be able to relate to. However, Drax’s videos are spreadable but not was further than his target demographic.

Viral Videos

Burgess talks about how viral videos create community. People interact through these videos, whether it be with a video response or with a comment. Burgess talks about the reproducibility of viral videos, and how each is sort of a sample or appropriation, just like music. Both of the videos that were mentioned were music. They were reproduced and there were spoofs of them, and this is what created a dialogue and a community with these videos, according to Burgess. Drax seemed to take a similar approach to the use of the internet. He also believed that it created a community. He thought it was a way for the community to become informed in a more accessible way. Both Drax and Burgess think that it is a way for people to become involved and to interact. The videos that Burgess wrote about and Drax's videos did elicit a different response from me. I thought Chocolate Rain was interesting and I would likely tell other people to watch it. But I wouldn't tell people to watch the Drax videos. The second life made me uncomfortable and it made me afraid that that is where we are all headed, only communicating through the internet, not just using it to laugh at funny videos.

blog 12: Viral Vids

In the Video Votex Burgess discusses how videos are distributed throughout the world by Youtube, Twitter, google and different applications in order to obtain attention. This creates interests which later creates an active form of community within society as they participate by commenting or engaging in discussions about that viral video.
Burnhard Drax, on Secondary Life does relate to this article. As he explains that Second Life is another way for the community to become alert, interact and get involve with real life issues around the world. Just as Burgess had explained that viral videos "attract active,participatory and creative engagement from other participants", Second Life can as well with a virtual, 3D like environment that has replicas of the world around us (Burgess 103). What Drax has said in his Virtual Gitmo, that it "covers activism in these virtual worlds how international communities interact with social issues" which does connect again with Burgess's argument.

Blog 12 - Viral Videos

Burgess described viral videos as being catchy and appealing to wide audiences, user generated, and spread through user participation.

Draxtor’s work can or cannot be interpreted as viral. It can be seen as viral because they are innovative and new. I can tell you that when watching “Obama in SL” report I was quite confused by the whole environment of Second Life. It was something that I was never exposed to and was unsure of what I had just watched. I didn’t believe SL was an actual service until I ended up Google’ing it. It is funny, because just as after realizing it was a real service, I quickly announced to my roommate’s “Guys do you know what Second Life was.” I think began to show them the footage of the Obama in SL and telling them how crazy it was that a virtual world really exists. So by looking at Draxtor’s work from this perspective, yes it would be considered viral.

However, it can also be looked at from another perspective. After watching one or two of his videos I am not interesting in watching anymore. The fan-base that would be watching Draxtor’s videos would be those who are actually playing Second Life on a daily basis. This is a very niche and small market. When looking at it from this perspective, his videos are uninteresting and have a low replay value for those who are not involved in Second Life. Therefore his videos are not viral.

To conclude, I believe that the GUI Second Life contains all the properties as Burgess described as viral. Draxtor’s work contains only some viral elements.

Blog 12 - Viral Videos

Jean Burgess' view viral videos and meme as being more of a cultural participation in social networks rather than marketing schemes with "messages" and or "products". I think Burgess' example of the "Guitar" is the perfect depiction of how a video not only goes viral, but that a culture is being formed in expressing self, rather than selling a message. Thus, the "value" in youtube social networks are being spread through participation in every form from imitation, competition, suggestions, etc. Ultimately, this value forms the basis of a culture on WEB 2.0. Burgess also argues that the success and retention of a viral video happens because of how the video allows for ongoing participation through transformation of the "original" video's main key signifiers.

Draxtor's work in virtual news reporting and active participation from players in second life (SL) can be seen as an example of Jean Burgess' definition of the purpose of viral videos. One of the reasons Draxtor's videos are viral is because of innovative perspective on reporting news in a virtual world. People that join the group to participate not only by viewing the news, but these viewers are allowing themselves to experience the news as if they were there! That is a significant and important signifier that makes Draxtor's work original and spreadable. It can be captured through the virtual participation through talks and visual experience that traditional news reporting doesn't allow. Traditional news is PASSIVE PASSIVE PASSIVE!

The cultural participation forming in this social network also further support the fact that the viral videos are not selling products or simply feeding viewers messages. Yes, the SL provide information, but it does so in a way that allows for opinions and participation in the news given. It is ACTIVE ACTIVE ACTIVE! Without that participation, Draxtor's work would be short-lived as well as just another "fad" that has come and gone without leaving a mark that transforms a culture, in this case, the culture of recieving news.

On the other hand, Draxtor's work can be argued as forming of a social group that conceive a "message" because of the specific subjects covered. Thus, providing the marketing's perspective viral videos. For example,Draxtor's news covering the Gauntanamo Prison and the viewers experiencing themselves as a prisoner has a strong one-sided story that Draxtor CHOOSE, thus, it also limits to what "messages" he wants to get across even if there are users participating in it. Because Draxtor is the ultimate creator and controller of second life, it doesn't mean participation is fully accesible in viewers/users hands! This is where it differs from Burgess' main points of viral videos, there is some unforeseen or subtle passiveness to Draxtor's work!

Blog 12: Viral Videos

Drax does nothing that is talked about by Burgess. He is neither reproducible, nor has textual hooks or anything else interesting enough to be viral. His video channel has a little more than 22,000 views. That is hardly viral and by the way Drax reports, he will probably never achieve much more than that. The problem with Drax is that he is a reporter for a niche market. Many people are excluded from his videos by only reporting on second life. Moreover, he’s boring. His videos are like watching the news, and not even an exciting news channel. They are about current events and so, lose meaning as time progresses. Burgess said that many of the viral videos need to have something appealing to a wide audience, such as being funny. There are no LOLcats, no catchy songs, or anything else that is in many of the viral videos. Burgess mostly talked about the reproducibility of a video lending it strength. That if more and more copies were made, it would grow in popularity. Every new addition would feed the fire that the video lived off of, and Drax does not seem to want this. I can’t blame him. If more Second Life news reporters were around, he might lose audience members. He stands to gain nothing from being reproducible.

Blog 12: Viral Videos

Burgess's article from "Video Vortex" argues that social networking sites are breeding grounds for ideas, epitomized by videos on youtube. These are carriers for the ideas that are then able to be acted upon on the sites, prompting iteration and expansion. More importantly, these ideas are passed merely virtual, and have real world implications. The work of Drax, from Second Life, also applies to this. He reaps the benefits of the infinitely large network, spreading his thoughts and reports to an audience that they might not have been able to reach before; all the while keeping his stories culturally relevant. This medium of viral spreading ties into the idea of the internet as a public sphere.

Going Viral- Albert/Roy/Teresa

Viral Video Log:

Monday 17th -0 views. Posted URL to Myspace and Facebook.
Tuesday 18th -262 views- Hosted on the site StumbleUpon
Wednesday 19th- 273views reposted on facebook
Thursday 20th- 287views hosted on Digg
Saturday Morning 22nd- 292 reposted on facebook
Sunday 23rd- 295 views- Spread on Omegle
Monday 24th- 301 views- posted on myspace
Tuesday 25th- 301 views- Reposted on facebook
Wednesday 26th 301 views

Over the course of this week and a half, my team’s viral video reached just over 300 people. This is far from ‘viral’ but never the less a sizeable sum. I actually did not expect to get more than 100 views on the video. It takes something very special, often unplanned and not creatable to make an internet hit. Unfortunatly, this video was not the special that was required for virality. The internet is hard to please, as one commenter (who was voted up 4 times) noted, “This looks like a small child got their hands on a copy of premier, or even windows movie maker, and then applied as many filters as they could to a video shot by someone with epilepsy. “
Regardless of video content (it was said that content is not necessarily important) we attempted to spread the video in as many ways as we could; telling people in class, friends and even family members to look at it and share it. However, it seems that it barely got any more views after the first set of viewers. From Monday to Tuesday of the first week, our view count jumped from 0 to 262, but in the following week, barely an extra 40 views were to be had.

Go Viral! With Tammy and Jeremy

PRESENTATION LINK

I know we are presenting June 3rd, but I was not sure if we would be allowed to submit our blogs after the date on smartsite. So I'm posting just in case!!

May 17, 2010
posted to YouTube
33 views
posted to my Facebook.

May 18, 2010
posted to Tumbler
Sent to 1 friend on Facebook
Sent to 3 friends on AIM
158 Views
1 reblog on tumblr
1 like on tumblr
5 likes on Youtube
2 comments on YouTube
4 likes on Facebook
2 comments on Facebook.

May 19, 2010
Repost on Facebook
1 like
2 comments

May 22, 2010
327 Views
6 likes on YouTube
3 comments on YouTube

May 26, 2010
419 Views; 7 likes on YouTube; 4 comments on YouTube; 3 Favorites
1 reblog on Tumblr; 1 like on Tumblr
6 likes on Facebook; 4 comments on Facebook





Summary
Jeremy and I posted our video at around 3:30 AM last week; we expected to get our first views by later in the morning or afternoon. We were wrong. Somehow someone on the internet found it and watched it within the first few minutes of its posting. From then we inundated our facebook profiles, tumblrs, and twitters with pleas and proclamations that our video was the funniest thing on YouTube ever. We pled and people answered. We have over 400 views and although some of them are friends of ours some are not. On tumblr, someone that I do not know from Germany liked the video. I thought that that was interesting because I did not expect it to get past Jeremy and my social circles.
The project was a little more complicated than I had expected because we wanted our video to really spread in the virtual world so we have to think about things that people would watch on YouTube. We interviewed some people asking them what they looked for in a good YouTube video. People typically wanted something they could

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What we decided after doing some light research was that viral videos are not intended to be viral, they just happen. It would be impossible to create an original work and hope for it to spread like fire. Instead, we examined another type of viral video that had evident prevalence across the tubes. The is compilation-based videos such as remix, remesh, mashups of already spread user-generated content. We selected many of our favorite viral videos and compiled them into one. To help tie it in, we created a familiar intro to them and had a conclusion that is similarly popular. The iPhone commercial introduction sequence could be classified as a hook, which many of our friends have noted that it is the best part. This was interesting because we had no idea that our content would end up being the interesting and most viewed part of our video (according to YouTube statistics). Thanks to url tracking services such as bit.ly, it was easy to stalk the exact moment and demographics of the clicks our video received. Below is a breakdown of the predominant age groups that viewed our video. It is clear that the predominant population is in our own age-group which is a logical extrapolation of the social circles that we ourselves shared the video with.

Viewership:

MALE	18-24	36.95%
FEMALE	18-24	34.10%
MALE	35-44	12.05%
MALE	25-34	9.32%
MALE	65-	2.94%
FEMALE	13-17	2.52%
FEMALE	25-34	2.08%

Viral Video DON'T DELETE!

Because someone deleted my post, I'm reposting.

Group Members:

Tammy Nguyen

Jeremy Shieh

YouTube Account Holder:

abjc89

Video URL:

http://bit.ly/bCIjP6

Embedded Video:

Blog 11 - The Yes Men

The “Yes Men” critique of media is clever and different in ways rhetorical ways towards audience to really think deeper than what meets the eye. The main point portrayed in the film is simply that, the companies, like the prank of being a spokesman for Dow Chemical that they posed as in the film, don’t do what they COULD and have the power to do what is ethical, and not of greed (What about the victims of the Bhopal spill!?!? )and self-interest when they have such power of the economics of life’s stability and the like. This similar interest is worth noting the same argument that Noam Chomsky describes in the “Propaganda Model” that shows the very same economical power control over the masses!!

Another claim made in the film that is emphasized through the various pranks is the power of manipulation without notice. Marx’s “false consciousness” is very well demonstrated in this film as the viewers get a better sense of what really is going behind the scenes of the different companies. Again, like many other media, one needs to rethink and or be critical of claims made by even the most respected and powerful icons out there. In fact, those icons should be especially analyzed or researched before being manipulated.

Blog 10 - Video Vortex

The Art of Watching Databases: The article by Geert Lovink argues that Youtube is really "the art of watching databases" where receiving information on Youtube is not intended to be "informative" further than what is displayed on 2 minute videos and mastering the skills to watch databases require nothing more than the interest in looking for "brief peaks" of information.

Constructive Instability: Another author named Thomas Elsaesser approaches Youtube and Web 2.0 by describing the close merging of "art" and "life" that they bring to human and it is difficult to draw a fine line between nature/culture without really modifying how we define "life" of human as things become more life-like.

The similarities between the two arguments are understood through the processes of Youtube searching. Youtube-ing goes through the process of searching something up by a name (tag) leads to hours of endless database that always leads you astray the focus of your search! By this, I mean the endless hours spent "searching" for something (Rube Goldberg), but you find yourself somehow on the other end of the "tag" spectrum watching a video of a cat playing with a piece of yarn instead! However, the most fascinating part of this process is that most of us can't remember why we started watching the cat with the yarn in the first place without realizing the goal of looking for Rube Goldberg!!! (Alas, the power of tagging.) Thus, this leads to a second similarity between the two approaches of Web 2.0 (Youtube). Not only are we being drained with the massive overload of data, but we have an extensive enjoyment of the randomness and short lived information given to keep us happy! As Geert Lovink puts it, "we relive our childhoods, aware that unknown companies are watching over our shoulders." similarly, Thomas Elsaesser's experiment also lead to seeing benefits to human enjoyment as well, as he puts it, "Thanks to all of them[Youtube videos], I have found on YouTube ways of knowing and ways of being that are ludic and reflexive, educational and participatory, empowering and humbling."

So what else is there to say about Youtube? Geert exerts that Youtube-ing has brought out ADHD in all of us as we get very comfortable with simply "getting what we want" by playing with the on and off switch in our heads with a click of a button because we simply don't have the memory to be attentive to videos lasting more than 2 minutes! On top of our ADHD, we feed this behavior with more undivided total attention by multitasking, as did the home television has taught us.

For Thomas Elsaesser, he views Youtube and Web 2.0 as another piece that still divides "art" and "life" even though it may seem the two may be blending together because of the life-like processes embedded in today's culture and technology. Furthermore, he argues that in order for art to survive, it "may need to become more like life than life itself(as opposed to life-like)" because our form of life becomes more engineered and programmed and "made". Thus, I think is it a rather ironic solution for the defined lines between "art" and "life" to continue to exist by essentially being the other, that is, "art" being more like life, while "life" pushes toward art form because of technology and biology.

Blog 11_Wk_8_The_Yes_Men by alex ellito

The yes men's pranks work to show what companies could be doing but aren't. They reveal the Marxist false consciousness and demonstrate how it is being manipulated. The cooperate think tanks work to reveal this in the video as there are directly lying to us; my favorite being “that global warming will result in less cold related death” lol.... it gets me every time. What the yes men are essentially doing is fighting fire with fire, they try to manipulate the false consciousness, be it on a smaller scale mostly qualified to the business community, to their favor and the favor of the common public. Their video reminded me mostly of manufacturing consent, mainly because the yes men seem to share Noam Chomsky's view that the media and cooperate interest under report media events; one example is that people were surprised to learn that there was still toxic wast in dow/ union carbine's old energy plant in India. Where the Yes men go a step further is that they take steps to reveal the false consciousness and even go so fare as to halt or reverse the process of manufacturing consent; mind you they have been unsuccessful, but their trying at least. What they do accomplish is that they show that two people can make a difference and get notoriety and that is very inspiring.

the yes men

The yes men are political comedians. They expose the evil doings of big corporations through culture jamming and through pranks. Through their pranks they feel that they can reveal things otherwise hidden to the general public. Similarly to Jon Stewart, they are using irony and comedy to be political and use political commentary. Actually I've noticed a change in this recent movie and things that I've read from them in the past in TCS classes I've taken a few years ago. They seem to have become more "famous" and in doing so they seem less sincere, but putting this aside, they do seem similar to a concept we have learned in class. Marx's theory about false consciousness seems pretty inline with what the yes men are trying to reveal. They are trying to reveal that our consciousness is being manipulated, as was Marx. They are trying to reveal the truth and the constructs of how society works, and how it keeps most people in the dark and behind a hypothetical curtain.

Blog 11: The Yes Men

The "Yes Men" documentary, or mockumentary details events that they set up to fool and satirize public knowledge. They use mass media such as public news and private functions such as investor meetings to get their points across. They prey on the fact that people listen to the news and take the knowledge it conveys as true to the letter. Also, it shows that news is full of bias as the events that led to their impersonation of Dow/Union Carbide brought back news that viewers were not aware of. People did not know that the problems are not solved over at Bhopal. It would appear that corporate America does a fantastic job of containing news and controlling mass media, despite the fact that certain truths are filtered by medial bias. What I enjoyed the most was the comedic but impactful use of the New York Times to distribute artificial (optimistic) news through one of the most trusted sources. Many times I feel like the New York Times chooses what does into history, they make the news. If it wasn't for the internet and the ability for individuals to write their own information down, the NYT would be the only historical repository for information. The way the Yes Men depict corporate control is similar to commodity fetishism as the opinion the public has about a company can be broken down into monetary form.

video vortex

Geert Lovnik takes the stance that youtube and such things have forced viewers to be constantly stimulated and to be entertained. Lev Manovich on the other hand says that youtube has allowed for amateurs to do something professional. I can tell that Lovnik is taking the assumed, stereotypical, approach to addressing new media. He says it is ruining our minds and making us all forced to rely and more and more stimulation to be entertained. He seems be saying the same, negative, thing that alot of media critiques have said, with no resolution. Manovich instead argues that there can be positive outcomes of youtube. He approaches this new media as a positive, as a opportunity for people, instead of a negative. He argues that we can expand ourselves and our consciousness with youtube and with the internet and its ability to help us communicate.

Blog 11- The Yes Men

When I was watching “The Yes Men Fix the World” I could not help but think of Noam Chomsky and how he fought for the injustices that occurred in East Timor. The Yes Men were fighting for the people of Bohpal, and how their tragedy of the gas leak was not resolved or sufficiently compensated. The Yes Men portrayed executives from DOW chemical company, going as far as making a faux website and waited for invitations to go to conferences or interviews. After getting an invitation to a mass media outlet the Yes Men are able to seemingly right the wrong of DOW and Union Carbide. Although they were eventually discovered the Yes Men were able to bring attention to and shed light on a tragedy that Union Carbide has tried to sweep under the rug. The Yes Men’s other work is similar, take advantage of mass media and use it to assist them in spreading the message that is not commonly heard or known.
The method that they seem to be using is a false consciousness which is accompanied by commodity fetishism. Where the “institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariate and to other classes.” The mass media does this, and the Yes Men use it to their advantage and do it also to show society that they too They also show the disconnect between reality and what the mass media puts up appearances. The mass media “obscures realities of exploitation and domination.” The Yes Men try to clarify the obscurities with their pranks.

Blog 11 The Yes Men

The Yes Men provide the public with “what if” scenarios, in which “big businesses” actually demonstrate concern for the well being of the masses. They play the characters of “yes men”, company spokesmen commonly associated with political and social spin, only instead of speaking in the interest of big businesses they claim to represent, the Yes Men speak in the interest of the public. There is no denying that big businesses show more concern for profit than they do for the consumers who buy their products or the workers who make their products. In the case of Dow Chemical, the business neglected to take responsibility for paying damages to the chemical spill victims in Bhopal, a chemical spill caused by their newly acquired asset, the Union Carbide chemical company. The Yes Men's prank of impersonating a Dow Chemical representative and informing the public that Dow was finally taking the initiative to pay these damages, demonstrated what could have been a possible action taken by Dow; the Yes Men wanted to show the world that Dow Chemical could have paid damages to the chemical spill victims by liquidating Union Carbide, but were, in fact, paying nothing. The Yes Men exposed Dow Chemical 's selfishness and greed on world television, as well as the greed of the company's investors who sold their stock following the false claim, causing Dow Chemical's stock to plummet $2 billion.

I believe that the concept of false consciousness is attacked throughout the film, which is of course aided by its partners, propaganda and commodity fetishism. Dow Chemical could have paid damages to the Bhopal spill victims, or at least paid for the area to be properly cleansed of dangerous chemicals, but instead chose to lull the public into a false state of consciousness. The plight of the spill victims was ignored, and Dow Chemical made a new commercial promoting the image of the company as “working to make the word a better place to live” (I cannot decide whether this is ironic, or hypocritical). The propagandistic commercial was essentially a cover up, a method by which Dow Chemical could acquire a new asset for itself, while quietly sweeping the asset's debts under the rug. This ties into commodity fetishism, because the company places more value on its inventory and its profits, than it does the health and safety of its workers and the people who live in the areas affected by the spill. The Yes Men showed that though Dow Chemical claimed to have human lives as its priority in its commercial, the only human beings the company was really concerned for were share holders and “loyal” consumers.

Blog 11: The Yes Men Fix The World

The Yes Men use somewhat illegal tactics to bring to light what they believe to be wrong with large corporations and how they treat people and profits. One instance of this is when they poked fun at Exxon for making ‘biofuel’ out of humans. Obviously Exxon does not do this, but by telling people that they do, The Yes Men try to ignite peoples’ sense of morality and get them to question big business. It invokes a sense of anger at the company for something that they did not do, which can be redirected to things that the company does do, such as unfair business practices, like price gouging or unfair labor or wages. Personally, although I think that big business is (on average) a horrible machine, The Yes Men go about it in all the wrong ways. The way they conduct their culture jamming is in and of itself immoral and untruthful. They should not be able to hurt a business just because, they as a group, think that it is the right thing to do. That is why we have a legal system and laws. The Yes Men are nothing more than vigilantes.

A TCS term that relates to what they did is commodity fetishism. They believe that big business turns people into objects, devalues life, and uses others for profit, which is what commodity fetishism is about. Commodity fetishism is a Marxist theory that states that social relationships are transformed into monetary ones within a capitalist society.

Blog 11: The Yes Men Fix the World!! Corporations, Big Business, Humanity, and Commodity.

Andy Nichlbaum and Mike Bonanno of Yes Man are critiques of media that believe that corporations and big businesses make decisions primarily for profit making and not for maximizing other aspects of life such as happiness, environment, and wellness of people.

They do several pranks to demonstrate this theory. One of their pranks was to act like a DOW executive who announced they would clean up their mess in Bhopal and compensate their victims. The stock market ended up dropping 2 billion dollars in 20 minutes, and the market began a contraction. By doing the “right thing,” lots of profits were lost by DOW. This is why companies do not do “the right thing.” It is to protect the money. If profits go down that means less money, and less money means more people will be unhappy. Where do we find a balance between, doing the “right thing” and making money?

Another prank they pulled was saying that some energy Exxon has created was made from a Human body. This kind of represents the same theme as expressed in the DOW prank, where humans life are traded money.

This relates to two concepts we learnt in class. False consciousness and commodity fetishism. False consciousness is represented by the fact that as citizens we know what is going on with Corporate interests but we chose to conceal these facts in our own obscure reality that allow these dominant acts to be executed. Commodity fetishism is represented by the creation of labor as a commodity that is separate than humanity, we can see that the interests of Corporations are for the benefits of labor rather than humanity.

Blog 11: The Yes Men

In the film, the Yes Men criticize the media through culture jamming playing pranks on the media and large corporations. Their goal is to raise awareness of the societal issues, specifically the exploitation of others by large companies. They do this by presenting extremes with the hope that this will shock people into realizing the issue at hand. They create fake websites, conduct interviews, and attend conferences pretending to be representative of big corporations that they don’t like. They are very critical of big business’ greed and lack of ethics. In response to the disaster at Bhopal, they created Gilda, the golden skeleton, for their presentation on the “acceptable risk calculator.” At this conference they discussed the price of human life stating that the loss of human life is acceptable if you can make money in the process.

Then at an Exxon Oil conference they presented a renewable biofuel made from the victims of climate change. They wanted to reveal the consequences of the actions of these profit-driven companies. They used these human flesh candles to bring businessmen face-to-face with the issues raised by their questionable business practices in a very shocking way.

During an interview at BBC news they announced that DOW was accepting responsibility for the Bhopal disaster and that they were going to liquidate Union Carbide and use that money to compensate the victims. They wanted to raise awareness for the situation by presenting as scenario that is the exact opposite of what DOW Chemical is doing. DOW is willing to spend money cleaning up their name through advertisements but won’t spend any to clean up the chemical mess in Bhopal. This use of culture jamming raises awareness for current issues grabbing the attention of their audience by shocking them with blatant images of an exaggerated reality.

Blog 10: Video Vortex

Geert Lovink argues in his article, “The Art of Watching Databases,” that with the advent of YouTube we now watch databases of endless short clips that accommodate our short attention span.

Lev Manovich, in “The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life” argues that there has been a gradual shift within the media allowing for more communication and an increased in nonprofessional producers.

Both articles look at the effect of the rapid growth of social media sites such as YouTube. Manovich discusses how users make ‘remixes' of different content from different sources. He talks about how industries now create designs that are intended to be customized by users. Companies, like Google, want users to contribute to their site. They make money by collecting data from users. For this reason they want as many users as possible to visit social media sites such as YouTube. They give users unlimited storage space allowing them to post as much as they want. This creates the massive amounts of clips found in the databases that Lovink discusses in his article. YouTube’s clip chain that continues forever provides users with an endless supply of videos. This endlessly branching database, Manovich argues is site of millions of conversations taking place at the same time. Users add comments or videos in response to other videos creating a conversation between users. This allows artists to be more easily influenced by each other as they respond to each others’ work as they produce their own art.

Blog 10: Video Vortex

The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life

With companies finding business and other economic motivations in Web 2.0 we have seen expansion in this industry. Sites like youtube, facebook, myspace create a new “communication medium” that allow users to produce and create personal videos. One new form of communication that has come out of Youtube is responding to a video with a video.

Codecs and Capability

Youtube has surpassed other file formats such as .avi, .divx, and .xvid – as being universal for all computers that have access to the internet. It is much simpler to share a friend a Youtube video than a video on your hard drive. Sharing a youtube video is easy because you can simply share the link with your friend, rather than sharing the entire video with them. With the help of adobe, codecs are easily transferred and installed on to personal computers worldwide. Many browsers come flash enabled. Youtube offers a quick and reliable video sharing network, storing the videos on a virtual cloud (or web 2.0), and thus connecting users via broadband interfaces.

Despite the positives of Youtube there are negatives. The quality of the media is severly worse when compared to 1080p HDTV, or Blue Ray. The frames per second and audio kbs are severely reduced. These factors are directly affected by the bandwidth cap of our modern day telecommunication lines. However luckily we live in a time where the Technology industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. I foresee improvements in bandwidth in the future.

Comparison

Both Lev Manovich and Sean Cubitt brushed upon some similar concepts. First they discussed Youtube’s significance of being a medium of communication. Sean Cubitt goes more into the technological aspects that allow this to occur, whereas Lev Manovich focuses on the cultural aspects of these changes. Both would agree that Bandwidth is a major limitation of potential, but with our increasing Technology industry; time should solve this problem.

Blog 11: The Yes Men Fix the World!!

In the documentary, The Yes Men Fix the World are about two men named Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno who critique about the deception of company goals. They use media to expose these companies in order for the public to notice what is really going on through closed doors. When people think, "Oh this company is actually doing something for the common good" most companies mislead them and take the quicker route in establishing dangerous constructions at places that have 'bad' governments and is cheap to build the building. What the Yes Men do is to expose this greed and power for money to the public and try to reach their goal of protecting people's rights and safety. There were a few pranks lead to astonishing feedbacks from companies.
All of these pranks leads to idealism or ideology on how it is so common, people do not notice it. What the Yes Men do is to try to present the reality in most companies' projects to give them a sense of what they are doing is bad. However, it gave the opposite affect when companies gave them their company card.

By believing that their companies help or provide the common uses for "their" people/ consumers/ society, they do no realize the dangers that may be caused to others in the process of building and establishing that building. This is what society needs to be aware of in order stop these acts and to help other people.

Blog 11: The Yes Men

The critique of the media by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men is that it is primarily a means to benefit corporations monetarily. All of their pranks that were shown in the film "The Yes Men Fix the World" were done in an attempt to show this reality to the public. The assumption that the Yes Men made was that people accept that the corporations are making the best decision for the public when in actuality, they are doing a lot less than they could because is would make them less money. The pranks, such as when Andy pretended to be an executive of the DOW company attempted to show the public otherwise. This and all of the other political hoaxes were essentially the products of idealism, showing that companies could be making decisions to benefit the masses, but are not. In most of the cases, the Yes Men tried to give the other officials they were speaking to a glimpse at the reality, trying to perhaps make them feel some remorse for their purely capitalistic doings. However, none of these attempts ever seemed to get through to them. Fortunately, the regular people that were victims of the pranks seemed to take most of them very well and were in fact glad that someone was putting their situations in view of the rest of the nation and even the world. The most appropriate concept from class that applies to these pranks/situations is false consciousness. The Yes Men make the point that most people just assume the government and corporations are doing what is best for the public and try to bring reality to them, showing the real atrocities.

Blog 10_Wk_8_Video_Vortex: PP 9-44 Alex Elliot

The articles by Lev Manovich and Thomas Elsaesser point to a fascinating trend. Lev Manoavic states that the Internet is becoming a communications medium over a distribution medium while Thomas Elsaesser says that the Internet is leading to people becoming more in tune with technology “ post humans” as he calls them are people who have extensions of technology, the flesh being only the default extension to consciousness that you are born with and that using the Internet is essentially just adding on to body extension. Lev Manovic supports this, by sitting the growing numbers of people producing in the Internet broadcasting or web 2.0 phenomenon we see a clear connection to Elsaesser's claims. Consciousness is expanded though the Internet as people use you tube and social networking sites to share information and to experience things though social networking rather then real life, from personal experience I would site the popularity of Internet reviews as a supporting example to this. Thomas Elsaesser also talks about how the Internet is good for artist, siting large you tube traffic videos such as the honda cog, sitting that the video led him to a French mash up done by a well know avant grade artist; not only does this support Lev Manovich, that states basically says any thing to the inherent can find an audience but it also shows that big business can help independent you tube broadcasters and other social networks.

What I take away is that the Internet feeds of users and cooperations using both to build off of each other. It is a communications medium as much as a distribution medium feeding both our needs to consume as a capitalist culture and our needs to connect as human beings.... but thats just my opinion.

Blog 10: Video Vortex

Codecs

Youtube has definitely played a major role in the popularization in use of the codec/file extension .flv (flash video). The codec is widely used because it is a very compact one that is easily decompressed (not so much recoded easily), and also the container of the file is read easily by flash enabled browsers and does not require a download to play. Together these reasons have contributed to .flv prevalence across the internet media channels. In addition, the article goes into discussion regarding the need for the internet to have standardized protocols. He explains that many of the formats of media online are not great, but "good enough." Also the fact that the compression of .flv videos severely reducing viewing experience is debated as much of what is loss cannot be picked up by the standard human eye.

Conceptual Power of On-Line Video

This essay is formatted as five smaller ones, each detailing different points. We are obsessed with narratives and media show that narratives are becoming more complex and try to connect with larger audiences than ever before. With online media such a YouTube, there is no more "boundary" that separates who are allowed to contribute content to the public sphere, now anyones opinion can get anywhere (easier). Additionally, it is the falling cost of creating content that allows anyone's opinion to be made into a compact, transferable, and viewable media. Once enough media is generated, repositories such as YouTube serve as a great library of information that is accessed for a multitude of reasons. Web 2.0 allows mankind a new source of information; each other.

Contrast

Both articles do a great job of explaining evolved aspects of YouTube, be it the way that they share things or the sheer volume of what is shared. The earlier one did a better job of explaining why it is that YouTube is so successful on their part as the later explains that it is the users who generate the content who enrich YouTube and strengthen it.

Blog 10- Video Vortex

Lev Manovich’s The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life is about how sites sucks as Youtube, Facebook, or Myspace has given amateurs the power to create media and turn the internet into “a communication medium” from its original “publishing medium” form.

Geert Lovink’s ‘The Art of Watching Databases: Introduction to the Video Vortex Reader,” is about how society has turned their attention to internet databases, and the content that it has to offer satiates our hunger to be entertained quickly and easily.

Both authors agree that the social media sights have become more easily accessible to the general public, which explains the plethora of random media that can be found on sites like YouTube or Facebook. They both believe that the people uploading the material are using some sort of strategy or tactic to catch the attention of viewers everywhere. I think that Lovink put more thought into the strategic maneuvers behind viral media while Manovich only discusses the entertainment value of the media. It seems like Manovich believes that the “ADHD” like characteristic of viral media started a social evolution from a content society to one that needs instant gratification. While it seems like Lovink believes that people have changed the way we look at media and that now it is going to be difficult for real artists to differentiate art from random viral media.

Blog 10 Video Vortex

The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life
Lev Manovich
The phenomenon of Web 2.0 has inverted the producer “strategies” of producing social media and consumer “tactics” of making social media their own, in that producers now market the flexible option of customizing social platforms to consumers, and consumers now customize social platforms by adhering to and utilizing structured programs for customization.

The Art of Watching Databases
Geert Lovink
The phenomenon of teenagers and adults watching seemingly endless chain of online media clips is similar to the necessary entertainment of children: neither children, nor mature individuals desire to be engaged in activities they may consider boring or too complicated, so their attention must be regularly diverted to something visually and mentally gratifying in order to keep them content.

Agreements/Disagreements
Manovich and Lovink make arguments that describe YouTube as a means for individuals to express their individuality, though originality, a key concept in individuality, is rarely present. According to Lovink's research, only 1 percent of YouTube users create their own videos. Instead of creating new media, they use mainstream media platforms to alter original videos, to demonstrate how “original” they are as individuals. Likewise, Manovich explains how the carefully structured company strategies now “mimic people's tactics of... reassembly, and remixing”, which means that an individual's ability to reassemble and remix media as a method of self-expression, becomes limited by the constructs of the mainstream.

Their arguments differ in how they perceive “remixing” as an expression of individuality. It can be argued that Lovink believes that creating a remake of an original video is imitation, and therefore not an expression of individuality. Consider posters of the original art pieces sold as souvenirs at museums, or professional artist recreations of those same pieces for art enthusiasts; they are imitations of the originals, or to use a more harsh term, fakes. On the other hand, Manovich mentions how subcultures came into being, not “from scratch”, but by “cultural appropriation and/or [remixing] of earlier commercial culture by independent individuals and groups.” This could mean that a new artist can express artistic individuality if he/she uses the original piece as a jumping off point. A good example of original remixing, from YouTube, would be the video “Chad Vader Chocolate Rain.” In this video, Chad Vader, a YouTube persona created by Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, imitates Tay Zonday's original video “Chocolate Rain”, but the intent of the video was not to recreate Zonday's video; if it was, Yonda and Sloan would not have had a Darth Vader imitator singing the song. “Chad Vader Chocolate Rain” is original because it built upon a preexisting piece, and created something new.

Blog 10: Video Vortex

Constructive Instability by Thomas Elsaesser:

Argues that the advance of technology results in the decline of innovation art although youtube seems to find a middle ground between the epiphany of new entertainment entropy.

The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life by Lev Manovich:

Argues that youtube, and other similar sites like facebook and myspace, have contributed to the progression of culture to a more socially oriented one.

Both of these articles regard youtube as a culturally relevant site, however take different approaches to how it contributes to culture. Elsaesser takes a more negative stance on it, referencing how it causes the decline of art. He does also mention the way in which it allows one to trace through culture by just clicking links on pages, which he seems to regard in a positive light. Manovich however mostly relates youtube's cultural magnanimity to the progression of the public sphere and how the internet makes this easier.