Video Sites: Virals to Complete Viruses

The internet has played a huge role in quickly connecting with people around the globe. However, It does carry some very horrible side effects as a result. Again that's for another post.

This post however does involve a certain aspect of the world wide web. When ever we feel like watching just a video and not in the mood for a movie or a show on T.V in particular, we go on the internet to watch "viral videos". One problem with viral videos is that most of them are a complete waste of time as well as brain rotting... Seriously... There is a completely different result between curling up with a book, and being somewhat entertained by how many weird faces and sounds a guy can do in just under a minute with a viral video.

But slowly there has been a shift in people who want to watch real movies and shows on the internet. My best guess for this would be the amount of crap being shoved into broadcasting as well as the absence of classical shows we all come to love.

Which is one of the reasons for the following websites:

Good: Hulu



I know. I know. Hulu does have some problems, which is why I added the Pros and Cons to give people a heads up before they check the website out.

Pros; Most of the movies and shows on their menus are the ones some of us have come to know and love. Thanks to their menu system, we can explore in finding new movies and shows that we may come to love also. Almost all of their medias are free and as a form of courtesy, they thoroughly give you an explanation and a basic info for each show (and or) movie incase if you are not so sure you will enjoy it.

Cons; The first con to this site does have some movies and shows that would suck. But nothing's really perfect to be honest.

The second con is that most of the time, while the video plays, it freezes and gets stuck which you might have to reload the page again. Plus they have a commercial once after several minutes.

The Third problem is even if you are old enough to drink and go to a strip bar, in order to watch movies or shows with stronger content, you have to sign up for an account (with a password) and pay for each "naughty" movie or show.... What kind of kid would be smart enough to have access to his/her parent's laptop and click in to a particularly strong content movie? Companies cannot do everything for the parents. They have a responsibility as well. Plus, laptops are usually carried by adults who are already tax paying citizens.

If you are really concerned about a child's access to something disapproval on Hulu, heres my proposal. Have a password to go to Hulu in order to comment, rate, and be more involved and have a separate account and another password just for the viewing of strong content. Problem solved.

Awful: Youtube



I'm not a psychic, but I can give a pretty good guess on what some of you might be thinking.
"What position do you have to say that Joseph?"
"Don't you use Youtube as well?"
"Youtube has been used by lots of people! What can you say that can possibly convince us otherwise?...."
Well, the first and second question share the same answer. I have used Youtube and have an account on it. But through the issues I have experienced on Youtube is the reason why I have at least the right to speak my mind of what I have to put up with. As for the third question, You would be surprised how many people (particularly users) are starting to get pissed. Plus, how many videos/channels on youtube are actually enjoyable or at least not a complete waist of time. True. There are some useful and terrific videos. But those videos are either flagged, deleted, or made by people with pricey video equipment (which most of us don't have). Since I have a lot to explain, I'm going to dissect my argument with each particular issue. Counting down from the bad to the worst aspects of Youtube.

#4. Bad Server System.
To start off as Youtube's first circle of hell is it's serving system. When ever you need help with something on Youtube (whether it's trouble loading, or trouble with some sort of glitch), you usually have to use outside info most of the time. The "Help" corner and the Q&A section are huge labyrinths of cluttered misleading informations. Well, at least that's what it was last time I went to that section on the site. Youtube has also been known to have some outages which sometimes lasted from one to two hours.

The worst part is the loading. It's like playing a dangerous gamble. You don't know if your video is going to pull through or not after three or thirteen hours. I have heard that for some people, it lasts for thirty-six hours. My recent videos end up not pulling through after three hours because my format might be too large. So I ended shortening both the video and the format only to be greatly disappointed that the published video ended up so pixilated, that you have a hard time seeing the details of the faces (let alone the lettering).

#3. Crappy Videos Are The Majority.
Salman Rushdie once said
"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts."
This truly is an extremely accurate quote that could not ring more true for this generation. Storytelling has been the most essential as well as the most entertaining way of exchanging ideas and thoughts. Granted, some videos don't really need story telling when they are just clips of your recent vacation or clips of something funny that happened when snowball fighting. But even that can show a story for posterity reasons. Examples:
"What was it like being on that vacation?"
"What other things did you guys do besides snowball fighting?"
It's a pity that the majority on Youtube hardly put effort for any decent video. There was one video that had nothing but flickering pictures of skateboarders and spiders with nothing more than static noises that were painful to the ear. But that's just one example of many other vids that have nothing to do with anything.

While other videos "really" do try to have something but never give off satisfying results since they don't have good video equipment. Those particular videos are painful to watch since some of them try to give a good performance, but later are given really unnecessary, cruel and nasty remarks on the comment boxes (which I'll soon talk about). For those who do have some good equipment to make actually entertaining Videos, like the "How It Should Have Ended" series, have to put a lot of effort and money into it. It is almost as if you have to make a job out of it rather than just making creative videos to share as a hobby. Even some well equip videos waist it all for the sake of something meaningless and annoying, like "What The Buck Show". Most people would rather just make videos with simple pictures and adding music by famous musicians. However, the number one problem with Youtube involves with that exact issue.

#2. Troll Infestation.
Now, what I mean by "troll", I don't mean a mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore. For those of you who are newbies to the crazy world wide web, a troll is a term for a person (or a comment/email message from that person) intended to cause emotional harm, anger, or sadness for the reader. In other words a "Cyber Bully". The nastiest trolls I ever encountered were ON Youtube.

The worst part about this, is that Youtube is not doing anything about it. Sure, there are some tools that can block a user from making more comments on your channel, but that does not mean that they are not still running around causing havoc to other people. They can also make videos to make Bullying remarks of other people (not to mention groups). Youtube does have rules against anti-semitic rants. But anything beyond that, Youtube will avert their eyes on this situation. Even if they did payed attention, I doubt they would try to do it rationally since one regulation in particular is the number one problem with this site.

#1. Strangles Free Speech.
First of all, Their is a huge difference between copyright and just showing excerpts to share, or point out something. But Youtube can care less about excerpts. Youtube has recently enforced very harsh authoritarian regulations in regards to "Copyright Infringement". Most of these regulations go as far as to a deletion of a recorded video of a Hawaii trip that used music from the artist Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. You can just forget about sharing a music video or videos with photoshoped pictures of spoofed movies and posters. Now there has been so many copyright crackdowns on so many people who have made Youtube so popular, that nobody would want to do anything on Youtub. However, you can still watch a man slamming his crotch with a plastic baseball bat because there's no signs of those pesky copyright clips involved.

The most horrible problem with this, is the protection of bullies and their free speech while diminishing those who have anything to say against them. For example. There have been crackdowns on people that raise issues on cults and their immoral tactics (such as Scientology, Mormonism or the Unification Church). These videos in (my experience) have been the one's that are broken down the fastest. During which (since religion is tax exempt) organizations like Scientology and Mormonism can post dozens of videos full of lies and deceit since they have the money to make and own original work. In fact, copyright notice is not viewed by Youtube directly. Youtube only views reports by other users who claim to see copyright material.

I did a few jokes on Mormonism with a few drawings I did on photoshop. Shortly afterwards, when I tried to access my account, I was redirected to a page saying that I am not able to access any of my videos because I had "complaints" about my videos having copyright infringement. It said that if I do not delete them soon, I would be kicked out of Youtube. In order to report the complaints as false claims, I had to do a very personal survey with my name, numbers, address, and my signature scanned in to the computer..... WTF? No way I was going to do that. So I had no other choice but to delete them. Then two weeks afterwards, I received a letter from some who said the following.

"You are obviously not funny since you are so quick to make idiotic, untrue, and bigoted statements about Mormons. Get a life, loser."

I was so infuriated, I tried to report this on Youtube by going through the Help?Q&A labyrinth only to find out from some article that there's nothing that I or Youtube can do about it......

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but could these new copyright regulations be the result of these false copyright claims and Youtube is just being too stupid and lazy to notice?

Just recently, I spotted a report on Youtube's blog.... Yes they have a blog believe it or not.... What I read completely repulsed me. What they are planing to do now is crossing the line on personal freedom. Here's a sample on what they are planing on doing.

*Quote*
"Because copyright law can be complicated, education is critical to ensure that our users understand the rules and continue to play by them. That’s why today we’re releasing a new tutorial on copyright and a redesigned copyright help center. We’re also making two changes to our copyright process to be sure that our users understand the rules, and that users who abide by those rules can remain active on the site.

If we receive a copyright notification for one of your videos, you’ll now be required to attend “YouTube Copyright School,” which involves watching a copyright tutorial and passing a quiz to show that you’ve paid attention and understood the content before uploading more content to YouTube."
*End Quote*

Yes! They are now requiring individual users to attend a “Copyright School” just for their new, tyrannical copyright policies.
While all of this set in motion while we have trolls, crappy videos and tax exempt organizations that can advertise their lies and the only way to please both your fans and Youtube is to buy lots of good video equipment.......



Well, it is now official. Youtube is the diseased sphincter of all video sites. Now, when I decide to make videos on the web, I'm staying the hell away from Youtube. If somehow the Youtube building were to be destroyed by earthquakes, tsunamis, meteorites or terrorists in airplanes, I would say "good riddance".

Music Channels! What Rocks and What Smells Like Wet Socks.

When you hear the term "music channel", what comes into your mind? Since music is mostly about the artistic composition of sounds, What would Television (a visual medium) show? Well, for one thing, music has never been just sounds. It has always been a voice of the soul that provokes emotion and imagination. Even before music videos, the theater has always been accompanied by music for representing the emotional states of the story on stage. Even silent films were assisted by some piano player to express the chipper spirit of Charlie Chaplin. So, it's not a stretch of the imagination that television would one day have channels dedicated for the wonders of music.

Unfortunately, like termites eating a wooden house, music has slowly been losing it's meaning and purpose by talentless wannabes, money grabbing posers, and hacks with no real creativity. But I digress. I'll talk about that later on another post.

Here, we're going to compare two music channels. One was a great underdog that slowly vanished off television, the other (which is still on television) is now a greasy, slimy bowl of elephant piss.


Good: The Box


This was the channel that introduced me to R&B and some smooth artists like Brian Mcnight, Musiq Soulchild, Usher and The Black Eyed Peas (before they added furgie). Yes. I was very young when I learned about R&B. While I was a kid living with a lot of siblings, there wasn't enough money to pay enough channels. Which was why the channel for the Box was fuzzy. But never the less, I ignored the fuzzyness and just enjoyed how it managed itself from the music, to how they displayed the artistic looking menus of the songs that people chosen to play next. The best thing about this were three reasons.

First, was the era it was brought up in. Early 90's baby!
Second, It kept not just the popular songs, but many songs including other genres sometimes.
Third, was that it let all of the people get a chance to choose their music videos.

Unfortunately, As I grew up when T.V screens became better and better (to eliminate fuzzy channels), This channel completely vanished. I guess that is the risk you get for being a real underdog. Thankfully, as long as you have Comcast, you can have multiple music channels that have either one or two genres.

Awful: MTV


Most of the time (during the early days), It has shown few music videos and that's all I knew about MTV. Now it has just about anything but music. The shows now broadcast by this troublesome channel values trashy reality shows that includes giving 16 (or so) crazy, idiotic, sex crazed people a huge luxurious place of their own and alcohol in exchange to watch them act like neanderthals on T.V. From Real World, Jersey Shore, Jack Ass, to lots of other shows that I've read in a magazine called "who gives a crap". The most inconsistent part of the company that runs this dump can show alcohol use and sex galore. But it forbids any use of Marijuana.... Where as in the REAL world, plenty of friends I know have connections to get some herb.

That's all I have to report about channels for now.

Introduction

Hi There.
My Name Is Joseph. To be more specific on what this blog is all about,
let me give you a little background of the creation for this blog.

Every where I look, there's always something to remind me that not only is humanity so stupid, but it is going to hell in a Barbie dream car if we keep this up! What's worse is that no matter how much opinions are out there, lot's of others are not being heard.
To me (as the writer of this blog), I decided that the least I can do is to write down what's important to me (and others like me).

For every addition to the Good List and the Awful List, It would be at least fair for the viewers of this blog to hear my reasons, my points and my arguments for what I choose to put into either the Good or the Awful list. So that I won't hear so much complaints.
But never the less, people do need to hear a different opinion.

For those potential fans, I hope you will enjoy what I write and hopefully it's entertaining in a way.

Thank you.