T w e n t y S i d e d

You might remember that earlier in the week we talked about SF Debris and the way Chuck Sonnenberg was driven off of YouTube because his videos were being flagged as copyright violations. Some people pointed out that you can dispute the YouTube claims. While I can’t speak for Sonnenberg or how things went down for him, I will say that this might be more of a pain in the ass than it’s worth.

When something gets flagged on YouTube, you get a notice and the content is removed. (It’s not actually deleted.) You can then fill out a form. Two weeks later, your content might be restored. But even when that happens, there’s nothing stopping it from being re-flagged and getting taken down again. Here is the story of one person who experimented with the process for educational purposes. Perhaps it was simply too much work to try and rescue all of his three-year SF Debris archive. Maybe it was infuriating to upload a video, have it live for four days, then down for two weeks, then back up again. I imagine that’s a real discussion-killer, not to mention a great way to lose viewers to confusion and frustration.

Here is one of my favorites from the SF Debris archives:

Man, if someone was doing long-form reviews of my forty year old material, my first response would not be to silence them, but to encourage them to do as much as possible. Watch the above episode and tell me it doesn’t make you want to check out Star Trek: Original Flavor. This is more effective than any advertising CBS could buy, and all they need to do is stand aside and allow it to happen. (And no, you’re not obligated to chase down copyright ‘violations’ or risk losing them. That’s trademarks.)

In any case, I don’t blame Sonnenberg for leaving YouTube. It’s an awful situation.

As was explained to me in an earlier post:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Problem with YouTube”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

If the internet has shown us anything, it’s that discussing entertainment is just as important as consuming it. We take in a game, movie, book, or television show, and then we Alt-TAB to another window and see what other people think. They discuss the thing, exchange impressions, and then they go off and make new stuff as a way of sharing the experience. Maybe they make some motivational posters, sing a song, make a mashup, produce some fanfiction, perpetuate a flamewar, record a Let’s Play, or sew some costumes for cosplay. Once in a while someone really desperate and crazy will make an entire comic about something. These works, in turn, lead to a new round of consumption and discussion, which can lead to more works. It’s like the Circle of Life, but for nerdy entertainment.

Content producers aim for big box office returns, high ratings, or brisk sales, but for me the real test of the success of a thing is how much it continues to live on in the public consciousness. How much does it resonate with the public and engender imitation or comment? Avatar was a box office smash, but it doesn’t seem to be permeating our culture and spawning memes. I never hear people quoting the movie. It came, it went. Golf clap. On the other hand, I was able to make this comic twenty years after The Princess Bride was in theaters, and most people got the joke. Actually, they didn’t just “get it”, they joined in, extending the joke in ways that hadn’t occurred to me at the time. The Transformers movie might have been a smash hit that dwarfed the ratings of the 80’s cartoon, but in twenty years I guarantee that everyone will still know who Optimus Prime is, and nobody will remember Sam Witwicky’s name.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “SF Debris”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.