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YouTube Nation - Video Game Tutorials

Getting Paid to Goof Off and Have Fun

As video games grow in popularity and the internet becomes a staple of day-to-day living, it is only natural that the two should meet somewhere in the middle. No, I’m not speaking of online gaming. Well, at least not in the literal sense. I’m speaking of those who play video games, record them and then plaster them across YouTube for others to watch. The most common of these is the tutorial, in which players unfamiliar with the games can watch more skilled people play them. This bit of information then allows the viewer to either get past obstacles in the game that are difficult or assess whether they even wish to play a game in the first place.

People generally do these in their spare time as a hobby, posting them for fun and to show off their superior gaming skills. Others, however, have managed to turn this phenomenon into a full-fledged job, often making a healthy paycheck from the advertising and merchandising that go along with being an internet video sensation.

The powerhouse of this gaming trend is Yogscast. They are a group of two players (and some accompanying support) who play games, make snarky comments and then post their exploits on YouTube. They originally started out doing World of Warcraft tutorials, but progressed to Minecraft and several other games. Nearly every one of their videos has millions of views and practically everyone involved in the gaming tutorial world knows their name.

With all their popularity, they’ve managed to make gaming a full-time job. What better way is there to live for a gamer than to make cash while goofing off? The desire to reach this state of being is so strong, in fact, that tens-of-thousands of people have tried to imitate the Yogscast success. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these people fail miserably.

Being a full-time gamer is not as easy as one might think and is far from a healthy investment in one’s future. Keeping viewers entertained and coming back for more requires a certain combination of wit, gaming skill and marketing that most people don’t have. Not to mention the giant steaming piles of luck one must possess to beat out the hundreds of competitors who will be doing the same thing with the same games and looking to put your videos as the bottom of the list.

Is this career path viable? Just do a YouTube search for Yogscast and see for yourself. People are really making money from playing games from the comfort of their own homes. God bless YouTube for delivering us from the evil that is a regular job.

Here is a sample of the Yogscast boys in action, playing through a portion of the game Minecraft.

(Warning! NSFW due to vulgar language)

The Craigslist Files #147 - L’Amore

(slighty edited for vulgar language)

Love is a complicated subject, and one that often leads people to stray away from the standard methods of dating and reach out via craigslist. Whether it be finding an old love who you think long gone, looking for someone to fulfill those deep, embarrassing fantasies or breaking it off with someone in the nicest possible way, Craigslist is there to help you get the job done. Sometimes these attempts at hooking up produce some interesting and humorous results and we, the casual browsing audience, get to enjoy the ludicrous inner workings of romance.

Here are a few intriguing “love-connections” coming from the ‘Best of Craigslist’ that caught my eye:

Did we hook up at the Megadeth/Motorhead concert? - w4m

Me: Blue hair, silver tube top, fishnets, Knee high black biker boots.
You: Red mohawk, black pentagram gauges, viper piercings.
I was grinding on you in the pit, then we went to the bathroom, and got f*cked up. You had a nice c*ck and I was wasted so I let raw dog it in the stall.
You were really good and you had to gag me so I would make too much noise.
Anyway I'm pregnant. It's yours. contact me if you want to be part of your child's life.

Ah, romance is truly not dead. It is a rare occasion when you can find your future baby-daddy at a Motorhead concert. Of course, given the nature of the ad, it seems as if said romantic lady can’t find her baby-daddy at all. My best wishes go out to this couple brought together by fate. Perhaps chance will bring them back together again and a long and glorious love may be born of a casual bathroom encounter.

super mario sex - w4m

i know this is super f*ckin weird, but what is craigslist for if not freaky ass sex fantasies.
i want to f*ck super mario. i want a guy to wear overalls, a red shirt and hat and f*ck me hard (while occasionally saying the catchphrases like 'letsa go!' and 'mamma mia'). i guess to look the part it would be wicked if you had dark hair.
you have to leave your costume on during the whole encounter. if you're really into it, i can wear a pink dress and pretend to be princess peach.
any takers for my weird fetish? ill be in ottawa this weekend
WA-HOO!

This ad takes gaming to a whole new level. There will be a day, sometime in the future, when computers and video game consoles will be able to help with these sorts of fantasies without the need for human interaction at all. For now, however, if you wish to find a Super Mario to have casual sex with you will have to post an advertisement on Craigslist. Now where did I put those overalls?

You slept naked in my bed. Unfortunately, you were in the wrong apt. - m4w

Hey there, Emily?
We met last Friday morning. Well, maybe "met" isn't the right word. I believe the first thing you said to me was, "Who the F*CK are you?" That's a funny thing to say to a guy after wandering into his apartment, passing out in his bed, and accosting him wearing nothing but a bed sheet (your own, might I add) the next morning.
Before I get too far, know that I'm not mad. Actually, I think you were pretty funny…
…Laying down in my bed meant risking waking you up. Which would have ended in one of two ways, 1) the worst horror movie ever or 2) possibly the greatest porno ever. I didn't like my odds.
Truth is, I already have a situation. A good situation… It's so good, in fact, "my situation" laughed her ass off this morning when I told her… about a random naked girl waking up in my bed.
That said, it won't work with us…

Well, there’s something to be said about random drunk women appear magically in your bed. Too bad the poor fellow already had a lady, or this might have been a match made in heaven - a drunken, oblivious version of heaven. It’s nice that he posted her name so she wouldn’t get confused about which drunken lady ended up in someone else’s bed. After all, in some parts of the world, this is almost as common as a handshake, right?

Youtube Nation: Watching Geek Culture Unfold

One of the best things about the Internet being spread across the world is the fact that no matter what happens, pretty much anywhere, you can be aware of it within hours (and sometimes minutes) of it occurring. As long as you know what you’re looking for and are willing to jump around the various media sites, there is information to be had. Frequently, this information points to more sources, creating a loop of data that, while often contradictory, still manages to keep you up-to-date.

I live in the Pacific Northwest myself, about a stone’s throw from the great city of Seattle. But even though I live so close, I would still hardly know what’s happening up there if it weren’t for the Internet. Read the newspaper? Are you crazy? What is this strange-and-exotic “print media” you speak of?

The latest thing that caught my eye is the rising trend of real-life super-heroes that seem to be popping up everywhere. One individual who goes by the name of Phoenix Jones has been attracting particular interest from the media. He leads a group of ‘crime-fighters’ known as the Rain City Superhero Movement and even managed to get himself involved in the May Day fiasco a couple of days ago.

Check out his mobile camera recording:

Now, good old Phoenix Jones isn’t the only super-hero prowling the streets, but his self-proclaimed arch-nemesis, Rex Velvet, is the only super-villain to step up as of yet. While Mr. Velvet’s intentions are as of yet vague, he seems to have it in for Jones and sent out a video calling card to challenge Jones to… well, he hasn’t really said yet.

Check out Rex Velvet’s rather skillfully produced introduction:

It makes me happy inside to know that such strange cultural phenomenon are just a click of the mouse away. I’m interested to see how this one unfolds, and it looks like something new pops up every couple of days or so as Rex Velvet attempts to do whatever the hell it is that he’s doing.

Welcome to the Internet, people. Yes, we’re all a little bit crazy here.

The Craigslist Files #146 - Lost Stuff, Free Stuff and Unexpected Stuff

The “Best of Craigslist” is a great way to kill some time, especially on those gloomy days when you need a bit of a pick-me-up. It doesn’t take long before the sad turns into happy and you find your eyes wet with tears from laughing so hard. This week, I took a browse through what was considerd “The Best” and came up with some real gems. Whether these are done seriously or just as a joke, they are definitely entertaining.

Lost Shark

Lost my shark today. Actually he escaped when I inadvertently gave him an opportunity. Had the back door open to cool the place off while he was hanging around. Made the mistake of opening the front door briefly and he shot out the back door. Tried to catch him while he swirled in a vortex above the deck, but the strong winds took through the trees and north. Last seen gaining altitude in a 20 knot breeze heading north of Ballard. Neighbors looked perplexed as he flew over their house. If you find him warm him up so he doesn't sink. It was quite the sad sight to see him get smaller and smaller as he blew away to the north.

Apparently, this is an inflatible shark that managed to float away. As far as I know, there is no breed of actual flying shark (at least not on planet Earth). I can just imagine the look on someone’s face when the shark runs out of steam and floats down into their pool, leaving them a nice present to look forward to when they step into their backyard to have a swim.

Free Trampoline

Ok, here's the deal-
This is a FREE trampoline. It had the enclosure netting and worked fine, although the padding and plastic around all of the springs had weathered and got shredded pretty well. Over the course of the winter… the trampoline was literally lifted out of our back yard over our 5' fence… and blew it into our neighborhood pond.
What you may do is use a very long rope or something to get it out of the pond from the road as I cannot permit you to drive in someone else's yard as it was carried into the pond 2 lots over. Once it is out of the pond, you may disassemble it and carry it out.

Sweet! A free trampoline! Well, if you feel like trying to fish it out of a pond, that is. Or rather, fish it out of a pond with a rope from the road. This ad sounds more like someone just doesn’t want to hassle with cleaning up their own mess and is hoping that someone else will want a beat-up, rusted, pond-smelling trampoline bad enough to do it for them.

To the person who has my Ikea dresser...

I'm sorry to have to post this, but a horrible mistake was made. When you picked up the dresser I was not at home. My roommate was supposed to make sure that my ferrets were put away, but...
Bottom line, my two ferrets are in separate drawers of the dresser. They should be okay, but I wanted to warn you not to take them both out at the same time.
They were rescues... and I was never able to socialize them.
They not only fight, but actively plot each other's demise.
Otherwise - they're perfectly fine!
Please call or email when you read this.
*sorry for the inconvenience

Yes, very inconvenient when two rescued ferrets who have been sitting in a drawer and jostled around violently during a move leap out and onto your face. The explaination that the ferrets were in the drawers was probably unecessary, since the new owner of the dresser is likely to find out very quickly.

Popular Internet Memes: the Week of April 2

"Mr. Ridiculously Photogenic Guy!"

Sometimes, you don’t have enough time to catch up on all the ridiculous memes that have gone viral throughout the Internet. Usually, I would say, you haven’t missed much. Occasionally, however, these snippets of world events offer a little bit of perspective, a bit of humor, but most of all, your ability to cite your pop culture knowledge when that odd-smelling guy at the office mentions a cute cat/silly dog video that you otherwise would have missed on YouTube.

You’re busy, so let me help you out. Here is a quick roundup of some of the most popular memes on the Internet last week:

A Guy Comes Out but His Friends Are More Interested in His HTML Coding than His Sexuality. A guy came out on Facebook reportedly after eight years in the closet. He also posted a link to his blog post in case his friends felt slighted that he hadn’t told them earlier. They apparently didn’t. In fact, they seemed completely nonplussed that their (adorably geeky) friend was gay, but were quite upset that he didn’t want to improve the look of the blog page where his coming out story was posted. I like to see that geekery reigns every time.

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. The Ridiculously Photogenic Guy meme took off like a lightning bolt after March 31^st. New Yorker Zeddie Little was dubbed “Mr. Ridiculously Photogenic Guy” on Reddit, and soon after, the picture received more than 40,000 upvotes. And why wouldn’t he? He looked happy and enthusiastic even after running a marathon—inspirational guy. His face has exploded everywhere, and the normal, photogenic guy has been subject to articles all over the Interwebs since.

Do Girls with Glasses Really Look More Feminine/Attractive Without Them? Maybe somebody can help me interpret this strange meme, accomplished in a series of pictures. In the series, a girl (or occasionally a guy) starts out looking plain in a pair of glasses. Next, he or she removes the glasses to be transformed into a made-up girl. The last shot has the girl or guy commenting on the power of the glasses. As the meme progresses, a guy turns into a cardboard cutout and a girl turns into Austin Powers. Strange, I think, but there are a lot of copy cats, so it must be good.

What did you think were the most viral memes this week? Were there any good ones that I missed?

Celebrity Hacker Pleads Guilty

A 35-year old Florida man will plead guilty on Monday of going on a hacking spree that compromised the accounts of dozens of celebrities. In each case he stole emails, photos, scripts, contracts ad other private information from them. While he admits to sending some of the stolen info to various gossip websites, there is no evidence he profited from his crimes in any way.

Christopher Chaney is charged with nine criminal counts including wiretapping and unauthorized use of a computer. He faces up to 60 years in prison but will probably get less due to federal sentencing guidelines and his plea agreement. Chaney says he hacked into the accounts simply out of curiosity and said he’s sorry for his actions.

Frankly I think he’s just sorry he got caught. If he was just curious, why did he send some of the data he stole to gossip websites? That doesn’t sound like curiosity to me. Curiosity is no justification for violating someone’s privacy. I have a good friend who is a celebrity and I’ve seen first hand just how difficult it can be. For some reason, many people think celebrities don’t deserve privacy because they chose to put themselves in the public eye. They watch someone on TV every week or on the big screen in film after film and think they own a piece of them. The paparazzi are proof of this. A-list celebrities can’t even go to the dentist without being followed, photographed, and speculated on. It’s appalling. Celebrities are entitled to their privacy just like the rest of us.

Student Convicted of Cyberbullying Faces Prison Time

A former Rutgers student was found guilty of hate crimes and invasion of privacy in a cyberbullying case that led to his victim committing suicide. Dharun Ravi will face up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in May. Ravi used a webcam to spy on roommate Tyler Clementi while he was on a date with another man, not once, but twice, and invited others to watch as well. Clementi was so distraught that he jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge just two days later. He left a suicide note, but it was not made public.

Ravi has shown little remorse and it’s not known if he has given any kind of apology to Clementi’s family. Is he responsible for Clementi’s death? I think there is a strong likelihood that if Ravi hadn’t have been so homophobic and pulled such a hateful stunt, Clementi would still be alive today, so yes, I believe he is.

As usually, some people are saying the punishment is too harsh and that Ravi was just immature and did something stupid. I don’t see how anyone can feel anything but disgust at him. Yes, he is clearly very immature but most bullies are. The reactions to Ravi’s conviction illustrate how much has to be done to raise awareness of how serious cyberbullying is and how damaging it can be. Several young people have committed suicide because they were being bullied and anti-cyberbullying laws have been passed in many states, yet there are still people who want to brush it off as kids being kids. This has to stop and stop now.

Retailers Rethink Spam as Online Sales Drop

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that online retailers are beginning to rethink their bulk email strategies and finding that less may indeed be more. The top 100 e-tailers in the United States sent customers an average of 177 spam emails a day. These messages were entirely promotional in nature and didn’t include receipts from online purchases. JC Penney sent it’s customers one spam message a day-that’s 365 per year, way above the national average.

Despite the fact that people generally opt into these emails, when they become a daily occurrence and the unsubscribe link doesn’t seem to work, they cross the link into spam territory. Let’s also not forget that many people simply don’t pay attention when registering on a site or making a purchase and ignore the area that asks them to check a box if they don’t want to receive marketing emails or have their info sold.

Once a company sells their mailing list to a third party, they don’t have much control over how it’s used, which could lead to upset customers when they find themselves being spammed.

"You get into this mind-set that the more emails you send, the more sales you generate," said Bud Konheim, chief executive of fashion retailer Nicole Miller Inc. "But that can really start to annoy people."

Companies are now cutting down on the volume of emails they send and making an effort to more closely tailor the ones they do send to the intended recipients. In doing so, studies have shown that unsubscribe demands have gone down and click through rates up. Customers seem to like getting some promotional emails as long as their inboxes aren’t flooded with them and the offers are relevant.

Social Networking Campaigns Leading the Anti-Limbaugh Backlash

Rush Limbaugh is known for his vitrol and it could be said his goal is to stir up controversy and outrage, but he seems to have finally gone too far. Following his several days of vile personal attacks on law student Sandra Fluke, which included calling her names such as “slut” and prostitute” and demanding she post videos of her sexual activities on the internet, no less than 10 companies have pulled their ads from his show, with more strongly considering doing the same.

Boycotting campaigns on Twitter and Facebook have helped pressure advertisers to distance themselves from the show, and their ultimate goal is to force Clear Channel to drop the show from syndication. Fellow shock pundit Glenn Beck faced a similar outcry after calling President Obama a racist and now can only be heard on the internet. His show was dropped after a massive boycott by advertisers.

Sears, Kmart, Geico, and John Deere are among the advertisers who are taking steps to remove their ads from Limbaugh’s show as well. Sears and Kmart, who are owned by the same parent company, faced an outcry of their own when their request to have their ads removed was ignored. The company said the ads will not appear on the show again.

Obviously the advertisers are leaving because they fear losing business by being associated with him, not necessarily because they are outraged over his remarks. Limbaugh did apologize, but few took it as being serious or sincere. It’s likely he’s more worried about his bank account than the people he upset.

Sick Facebook Hoax Exploits Children

Recently I was shocked to see a graphic image of a baby on my Facebook newsfeed. The baby was naked and very ill with some sort of horrific skin rash. The friend who posted it said the baby had cancer and that Facebook would donate 3 cents every time the photo was shared. I was appalled. The photos were highly inappropriate as they showed the baby’s private areas. I decided to do some research and what I found sickened me.

The baby in the picture is from Portugal and her name is Nizza Manuela Duarte. She didn’t have cancer, she had a severe skin disease and sadly died from it 4 years ago. The photos were stolen from her parents, who had taken them to help them in their desperate search for answers, since doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. Why someone would use them for a stupid hoax is beyond me, but she is not the only child to be exploited this way. There are at least 3 other such hoaxes circulating on Facebook. One involves a little girl with a severe heart defect and promises Facebook will donate money each time the photo is shared. Again false, and sadly the little girl died due to her heart problems. Her picture was also stolen. A third shows a photo of a baby boy with a large growth on the side of his face and claims he has facial cancer. Another lie. The growth was a harmless birth mark called a hemangioma and was removed. He’s now a happy and healthy 7 year old.

If you spot any of these terrible hoaxes in your newsfeed, DO NOT SHARE. Contact your friend and tell them it’s a hoax and they should delete it ASAP. If they refuse, report the photos to Facebook. This is not a harmless thing. It’s causing the parents of these children a lot of undeserved distress.

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