--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "ractalfece" <john@...> wrote:
>
> It's a video response to some house wife asking two questions, "why
> are you on youtube?" and "why did you choose your user name?". The
> original video is gone now. I did many prank videos like this.
> Probably would have kept on doing it but things changed as soon as I
> got featured.
>
> Now I was no longer just a weirdo with a video camera. I was a
> youtube star. And my video responses would cause an avalanche of hate
> comments for the victim. It wasn't fun anymore. And kids were
> writing to me, telling me they wanted to be just like me.
>
> I never really thought about what would happen when I became
> successful. Even on a small scale.

Yeah, well, you know that speech from Pixelodeon that we gave, the one
you excerpted, right after that one clip you used, we said it doesn't
matter if you're doing it as a hobby or a business because people will
treat you and you million views like you're suddenly wealthy
overnight. And you're not.

I'm still not not even wealthy. I can pay my bills with my videoblog
-- a huge step that I never would have been able to do five years ago,
but I still live in the same crappy apartment and drive the same car.
That might change soon, but I'm not rich. Charlie Sheen makes
$800k/episode for doing 2 1/2 Men, that's rich. You want to rail on
something, rail on that.

> And at the same time it was becoming clear to me that the video
> revolution was just the hype of venture capitalists. It would be a
> brave new world where the content creators were hooked up directly to
> the advertisers. I feared this new model would make old school TV
> programming look like high art.

The tools were created with profit in mind, but once Bubble 2.0 bursts
they will still be around for the interesting people to use. We
started with ourmedia.org a site designed for artists and weirdos and
we'll return there if all the other flavor of the day sites disappear.

> Kent Nichols had called me a genius. Of course, I appreciated it but
> as I read more of his blog, it started to gross me out. I didn't want
> to go down with the content creators. Is this the school I'm from?
> Hell no, I'm not going to be associated with the web 2.0 bubble unless
> it's as someone who tried to pop it.

I know I'm an asshole for liking your stuff.

Well, you are associated with this time, this place, this movement.
For all of your talk of going underground, you've still kept your
YouTube and Blip Accounts out of either vanity, or a tiny semblance of
business sense or your personal brand.

A true undergrounder would have nuked those accounts (including your
websites and email), created the vid and just emailed it to people
totally anonymously. But you just half-assed it -- reminds me of
someone else I know -- me. We don't post to YouTube because it
doesn't make business sense right now, but we don't delete our account
either for the same reason.

But what you do exceedingly well is whip out your cock while chanting
Amanda Congdon and Zadi's name while masturbating.

Awesome.

In some circles that's called sexual harassment. In some circles
that's called a jerk.

The oddest thing of this whole situation is that you gained notoriety
for what you did -- you didn't need to alter your work to achieve a
large audience. We also just did what we were doing and instead of
freaking out and being emo about that exposure we did it again and
again. We had sorta hoped and planned for that exposure, but still we
were doing exactly the show we wanted to do.

I'm still not sure if I need to be concerned for the physical safety
of myself and Douglas after this video. You spoke of wanting to
attack Douglas and you come off as less than stable.

I keep imagining the courtroom after we've either been attacked or
murdered by you and them playing this video. And my mom's reaction
and her wondering why we didn't just go to the police when it came out.

I'm all for dialog and my opinions are not the end all and be all, but
I'm just trying to lay it out there so that other like minded people
can find a livings as filmmakers in this online space. But this video
was way, way, way over the top and full of ad hominem.

So congrats on creeping me out and making me question why we've tried
to be so open not only with our experiences, but with our open door
party policies.

-Kent, co-creator of AskANinja.com, part of the problem