Hi Eric, At the risk of repeating myself, I agree that the strength of YouTube is to have a place where you can have an audience and be seen. I also agree that that has the potential for great power. And I'm not rejecting YouTube on principle, or because I'm particularly ideologically driven to have my own site, or so full of 'individuality and wanting something better'.
All the strengths you mention are great, but are all undercut for me by the competitiveness at the center of YouTube - the ratings and number of views, comments, honours, number of times honoured and favourited. It drags my videos into being watched in the context of how successful they've been, when all I want is to put some video up there to be watched by some random people in unexpected places around the world - to put the video at the center, not wrapped around by all these judgements that interfere with the viewer's perception and my enjoyment. On YouTube a few hundred views feels like a very, very different thing to on a blog. It's my gift to strangers, and I don't have to care if they don't like it. Even with a couple of hundred views, and without really trying, I'm reaching out further I ever did when i used to show my 'proper' shorts at short film festivals. What slightly depresses me is that there'll be lots of people out there like me who just feel inspired every so often to film and edit something and put it out there, who will find their engagement with an audience all screwed up by YouTube's tone, and then they'll think "Publishing on the internet is horrible" because all they've heard about is YouTube, and they'll stop and never do it again. When they could have had a very different non-competitive experience and made their world a tiny bit happier and better. It's turning Online Video into high school rules. Ugh. I don't really want to make money from it, mostly because I want to be free to put up whatever I want without worrying about alienating my regular large audience or drawing "BORING" and "YOU SUCK" comments, and so growing and sustaining large audience numbers are not important to me. Most people who post on YouTube would never make money from it (whatever its competitive/popularity focus might lead them to hope at first). Glad you're getting paid to vlog, though, and enjoying it. Always liked your vlogs whenever I've seen them. I'm subscribed to Everyday films with Eric Rice, but I guess it's wrong feed cos I'm not getting anything through it. Rupert http://www.fatgirlinohio.org http://feeds.feedburner.com/fatgirlinohio/ On 5 Mar 2007, at 08:35, Eric Rice wrote: Yeah, we can argue about individuality and wanting something better until the cows come home. Also, the expressive, personal, non- promotional crowd might not be one of the best to ask this to... Being part of a 'place' where you have an audience and can be seen? Ewww, stinky answer. I'd be curious if anyone who is a regular YouTuber even cares about people going to their own site? Or, maybe contextually, their myspace? And even then, everyone else is there. And ah, yes, the comments. Get popular enough or cover something that has a wide appeal, and the comments, that concentric circle 'conversation' (ask Amanda about that) gets vicious. YouTube represents the flipside-- it's the mass reality of everday people fitting snugly into that mode that the idealist inside of us despises. It slapped RSS in the face, by debunking our ideals of 'ohhh i wanna take it wiiiith meeeeee'. Apparently, that didn't seem to be the case for a little part of the population. So, we ignore it, we embrace it, or we lock and load and pull on some iron fists. It's more anarchy than democracy, but hey, both movements can have little flags and berets. Power! ER --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Peter Van Dijck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've always been interested in why young people prefer to post on > youtube & myspace versus on their own (video)blog (for the comments of > course!) - in this group we seem to think having your own vlog is much > superior. > > But today I realized: my photos are on flickr, instead of having my > own instance of some opensource script like Gallery - for the > community aspect (and the superior functionality), so isn't that the > same? > > Just a thought. > P > > -- > Find 10000s of videoblogs and podcasts at http://mefeedia.com > my blog: http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/ > my job: http://petervandijck.net > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
