Net insanity: Youtube Nation

Youtube Nation: Josh Eastman Does It Wrong

By msarko on 8/27/10 5:59pm
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CAUTION: The above video is quite likely not safe for work, unless your boss is a vehement racist

All of the most compelling moral discussions I've had in the past few years have been about the Internet. It's such an interesting platform for ethical debates because we still refer to it as an alternative to "real life". That implies the Internet isn't real and thus not subject to the same rules as the world in which we walk. That's a pretty arbitrary assumption to make, but we've got to start somewhere and it seems to be the cultural consensus, at least for now. Everything from hate speech to sexual harassment to reckless endangerment get frequent passes for being involved with sites like Youtube. As always, the first thing that makes people think we ought to hold the Internet to the same moral standards as "real life" is the disturbing behavior of children.



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Youtube Nation: Craigslist TV

By msarko on 8/20/10 4:31pm
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Nothing you see on television is true. None of it. The reality programs are all either scripted or so manipulated by producers that they bear no resemblance to real life, the fictional programs don't reveal hidden truths about anything because they began in the imagination of at least one writer. Even the news is a filtered, often morally subjective take on actual events. Youtube, being the father-killing child deity of media's own Green tragedy, is also mostly incapable of depicting the truth, it's just a little better at it than TV is. The closest Youtube ever gets to reality is in the vlog posts and home videos of incompetent people. Their unwillingness to plan and their inability to convey their message in a succinct, entertaining way leaves them with no option but to stand conceptually naked in front of the camera. They're still not telling the whole truth because they know they're being watched, but they're close enough. It's this catch-22 of reality in media that makes Craigslist TV, the Youtube page for everyone's favorite depository of human depravity, such a disingenuous project. It purports to feature the true stories of real craigslist users but it does so in such a slick, dubious way that it just doesn't pass for reality.



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Youtube Nation: Shaytard Intervention

By msarko on 8/13/10 4:19pm
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The older I get, the more I appreciate the way I was raised. A lot of people say this and I suppose a lot of them mean it, but I am especially thankful that my parents were the way they were when I was a kid. More accurately, I'm glad for all the things they didn't do. Ultimately, I think that's just as important as the positive actions of parenting. For example, it's great when one's father shows up for the little league game but it's just as important that he doesn't get drunk, pick a fight with the referee and publicly urinate while attending said little league game. Even in cases that aren't so extreme, it's essential to have adults in one's life who don't act like children. Though it's a natural part of growing up to see your parents' flaws, I'm glad that my folks consistently acted like adults when I was little. I can now have sympathy, even pity, for those kids who aren't so lucky. Kids like Youtuber Shaycarl's kids.



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Youtube Nation: The TV of Infinite Channels

By msarko on 8/6/10 1:55pm
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Yesterday I realized that it's going to be my job one day to explain and even justify outdated technology like landline phones and dial-up Internet. It struck me just how absurd it all sounds in light of modern tech, how unbelievable it would sound to a kid who never knew a world without instant, wireless communication. "Well, for about a century people mostly talked on phones that were made immobile by being plugged into a specialized jack in the wall, which itself only had access to the outside world thanks to an almost impossibly complex series of wires both below and above ground, spanning most of the globe. Also, you had to ask who was calling every single time." The ridiculousness of landlines trumps my father's complaints about typewriters, hands down.



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Youtube Nation: Miss Hannah Minx Owns The Internet

By msarko on 7/30/10 12:46pm
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I might as well just quit now. I don't have much faith that I'll find something more Internet-y than this. What is this? It's Miss Hannah Minx, the nexus of all modern geekdom. Seriously, I can't believe this actually exists. It (and I'm referring to Miss Hannah Minx as an "it" because I believe it may have been devised in some sort of laboratory) is a busty, gothy Japanophile who wants nothing more than to spend time with you. While speaking Japanese. And being adorable. Her 100,000+ subscribers, millions of page views and almost uniformly positive comments threads confirm that Miss Hannah Minx is exactly what people who live on the Internet want.



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Youtube Nation: White Coats Come For Kerligirl13

By msarko on 7/22/10 11:54pm
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This blog is called "Net Insanity" but I rarely deal with the products of actual mental illness. Most of the stuff featured and mocked on this site results from some combination of stupidity, eccentricity and the mostly consequence-free environment the Internet provides. The truth is that real, clinical insanity isn't very funny or otherwise entertaining. It's scary, sad, disturbing and very clearly a debilitating condition that needs to be managed or cured. At the risk of not being entertaining, I decided that I couldn't just ignore the unsettling saga of Kerligirl13, an 11-year-old Youtuber with all kinds of problems both in her head and lurking in the background just behind it.



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Youtube Nation: Guggenheim Chimp Rape

By msarko on 7/16/10 3:57pm
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When I first heard that the Guggenheim Museum wanted to start showing Youtube videos at their various branches around the world, my initial reaction was similar to whenever CNN does a feature on an Internet trend. I sounded to me like another aspect of the old mainstream jumping on board the Internet bandwagon a bit too late. But then I got to thinking about the way the fine art community usually approaches new media and I was won over. It took half a century before film was taken seriously as art by all but a few scrappy Europeans and maybe one Japanese guy, so the fact that the Old Guard of modern art wants to include Youtube a mere five years after its invention is pretty encouraging.



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Youtube Nation: Vuvu-hell-a

By msarko on 7/9/10 4:04pm
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I'm sorry, Discovery Channel's hopelessly lame attempt to have an Internet presence, that didn't even begin to explain the cultural monstrosity that is the vuvuzela. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the vuvuzela and its awful contribution to society, it is a long, now typically plastic horn that is capable of making only one note and that note is a sour one. South African soccer... er, football... um... hold on a second. On the one hand, I recognize that a lot of my readers are American like me, so calling the sport "football", however accurate, is still a bit confusing. I also recognize that the Internet is an international place, so it may be appropriate to call the sport "football" in deference to the rest of the world. But since I absolutely hate this silly argument and I've never seen the lasting appeal of that sport, I've decided to henceforth refer to it as Kickie-Snore. Right, now where were we? The vuvuzela has found its way into the global vocabulary by way of South African Kickie-Snore fans who brought them along for the World Cup. Originally the instrument was crafted out of the horn of a wild beast called a kudu and was a method for calling far-away tribesman back to the village. So, it's pretty much a South African shofar only not as good.



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Youtube Nation: Your Best Friend Zack

By msarko on 7/2/10 1:59am
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Of all the totally not true, quasi-intellectual bits of wankery to which I subscribe in increasing numbers as the years go by and I become less hip, my favorite is the idea that one can cobble together a virtual family entirely from Youtube videos. Clara from the "Depression Cooking" series can be your immortal Internet grandmother, capable of whipping up a pot of pasta and peas for you even if the real-life Clara passes as all grandmothers are destined to do. You don't need to interact with your actual father when you can just catch up with Kevjumba's dad every now and then. And everyone knows your annoying brother, Phil. That guy can just go on and on about a bunch of stupid pop culture stuff and he's really opinionated, but hey, he's your brother. Whattaya gonna do? Heck, there's not even a good reason to try to maintain a real relationship with a woman when you have a standing date with a busty Russian philologist who's just brimming with interesting facts. Well, for those of you out there who have been carefully constructing your surrogate Youtube family, I'd like to introduce you to your kooky best friend, Zack Scott.



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Youtube Nation: Conan at Google

By msarko on 6/25/10 5:26pm
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This is how television dies; not with a bang, but with a freakishly tall ginger giving a silly interview at one of the world's most successful corporations. This isn't exactly news, seeing as how it happened nearly two months ago, but I've spent a long while now fascinated with Conan O'Brien's 48-minute talk at Google in May. Of course, because they own the site, Google uploaded the entire thing to Youtube in a length-defying webcast after an initial run on Gizmodo. Aside from being as funny as most of the stuff Conan does on camera, the interview is a commentary on the inevitable death or transformation of television as a relevant medium, a commentary that was at least partially intentional.



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