Tapping the Meme -or- "I Personally Believe" -or- Re-Producing to Add Value
At the risk of being repetitious, I have to write more regarding yesterday's post. Something unforeseen has happened: "Miss Teen USA South Carolina 2007 with Subtitles" is a YouTube hit! It went from 178,025 views to 253,356 while I was writing this entry!
Here are some screen grabs of the numbers. I kid you not, as I type this last edit at 1:18 am EST, the numbers have climbed to 328,681 making this first picture obsolete.
but ALL 14 honors it received are still holding strong:
At first glance, it may appear that all I did was rip someone else's video off and add sub-titles. But as I see it, I saw a lack in the "original" and took the initiative to fix its shortcomings and in the process created a more valuable video. At least now, you can understand what she says. I guess instead of being a producer on this one, I was a re-producer. I'm sure there's a real discussion on art history's evolution in there somewhere. Could we say the mash-up is the new Dada? They do seem to be founded on the same principles. Rejecting the prevailing standards, enhancing the mundane and effectively creating "anti-art".
That might be stretching it a bit and as we all know, I'm no Marcel Duchamp, but I was happy to see the political undertones of my video didn't go unnoticed.
Beyond that, who really is the originator of the online video? NBC wouldn't dare release their videos into the world wide ethers. How would they ever make money? Don't get me started on the proprietary nature of old media. I digress.
And for an added traffic-generating twist, I put the URL for this blog in the YouTube's video's description box. My blog has never been clicked so many times! But it'll all be over tomorrow... or will it? Like all good memes, they have to fade away to make room for the next one coming along.
NEW FEATURE:
I've added a VodPod widget in the right column. I'll keep adding videos as I find/produce/re-produce them. It's a random selection so if you don't like what you see, refresh the page and another batch will come up. Enjoy!