Thursday, September 28, 2006

Sowing the seeds of love to offset the anger


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The level of static flooding YouTube lately has really gotten to dangerous levels and there needs to be something to balance it like in that Tears for Fears song "Sowing the Seeds of Love"



It would be better to do something before something happens to someone on YouTube like what happened to Rebecca Schaeffer when she was shot by a stalker just because he was obsessed by seeing her on the TV show "My Sister Sam"



Some the people commenting on LucyInLA videos have been getting downright scary in invading her privacy and tracking down her resume, phone numbers and harrassing her. For some reason they think they can hide behind screen names and be safe to take pot shots at her while they expect her to expose every detail of her life to danger and don't even realize the hypocrisy of that.

She and Kerim did stand a stand and as they put it "Set the record straight Why hate when you can create." by making 2 videos that explained their intentions and expressed their frustration with the haters She was certainly right to call them freaks and psychos from all the nasty things they've been cowardly posting




The sad thing is that no matter where you go an online community, virtual reality or just down the street to a bar, wherever people gather they bring their emotional baggage with them. If they have issues or problems they are going to take them out on those they interact with. A lot of times they don't see those online as being people with feelings that deserve respect just as much as they do even if they aren't in different avatars like in Virtual Reality. But I doubt they would show people they see in person any respect either since they are probably to selfish to think of others as deserving equal treatment or manners.

They seem to have all these false expectations of Lucy that they wouldn't have of themselves and somehow they think it's alright to put her under a microscope just because she's trying to become an actress that they wouldn't survive under either. That "can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen" attitude disappears very fast when the same standard is applied equally to them. The trouble is that even the big stars in Hollywood don't deserve the abuse that the paparazzi give them but they have a lot more resources to pay PR people handle the tabloids, assistants to deal with their mail and lawyers to deal with threats than Lucy does before she gets her big break.




It might be that they are jealous of the quality they can produce and think that only big production companies can do that but that's just sour grapes and excuses for them not to try to improve. He was right that a lot of it was film 101 and stuff I've been doing myself, although I really should ask him about the resolution and compression probs I've been having with mine.

A very big deal has been made about conspiracy theories and all the cynics and critics want to grab some attention by "exposing the fraud" of the next person on YouTube like they were Woodward and Bernstein breaking the Watergate story. Maybe they think they'll get more acclaim if they do or it fits their paranoid fantasies and delusions of grandeur. They love to fit any circumstantial evidence to their pet theory when it can have a lot of other explanations and they never even heard of Occam's Razor much less use it.

I did think of a conspiracy theory that explains the motives of the haters that has just as much evidence as they have against Lucy. What if the MPAA was feeling threatened of too many indenpendent people producing video of quality and they were afraid their profits were in jeopardy from losing the stranglehold on distribution that they've had in the studio system? Just like the RIAA has fought agaisn't P2P sharing of MP3, the MPAA is going after the most popular on YouTube by planting LonelyGirl15 to turn the people against the independents and setting the haters to flood the place with anger and hate to turn them off of watching. If the cynics have to believe in a conspiracy that one is better than some of the ones I've heard especially that lame contest idea.

I thought they made some very good points especially about doing something constructive instead of just being negative and complaining. Kerim did inspire me with that challenge to do something better and creative and being passionate about a cause. That's why it struck me that it would be a good idea to make some T-shirt designs with that idea, but I shortened it to "Why Hate? Just Create" to make it easeir to fit.

That idea does apply to a lot more than just Lucy, it covers everyone that posts on YouTube since they can hate on everyone they don't like for example. I've also seen some very creative stuff from someone called Happy Slip and if the tide of anger and hate isn't stemmed they'll probably start in on her when she gets more popular.

But I do think that there is something that the creative people can do to balance out the hate and offset the anger by rallying together around a common theme. I've been getting some positive response from commenting on others profiles that show support for Lucy and telling them about the T-shirts with the "Why Hate? Just Create!" slogan to wear in their next video and that will show the cynics and the critics that actually doing something to contribute is a lot better than just sitting back complaining about how fake it is.

If enough people do it then, the slogan could become as popular as the "Fair is Fair" one did in that movie The Legend of Billie Jean It's certainly something people could get passionate about creating is a lot better than the alternative. I figure it would be a good project for a Public Service Annoucement and since I need one for next assigment in my video editing class at Butte College I could one about the whole "Why Hate? Just Create!" concept, how it applies and the solutions.


1 comment:

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