Dorkulate With Steve

spytap:

The Past

So apparently I pissed of half of the known internet today. I looked it right in the eyes and told it yes, its ass did look fat in those jeans. In other words I gave my honest opinion without regard to feelings, sentiment, or repercussion.

In return, I got called a number of colorful names by people whose feelings I’d hurt. Some were semi-sarcastic, some were very spirited, and all were probably partially truthful. Many people agreed with me though.

Now the video in question was recorded back in May but was reposted to twitter this morning. A half hour later, it was the spark for a firestorm of discussion, commentary, argumentation, and the occasional brief moment of agreement.

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I’ve been MIA on this discussion, but I’m getting caught up now.  I just commented on David Nett’s Facebook response to this, but I figured I’d post something here along similar lines.  For those of you reading in both place, forgive the semi-duplication.

I agree with Barrett’s video in spirit, but I’m a bit more pragmatic. We need an *industry* before any of these arguments matter. An industry by definition generates revenue. An industry has its own identity. Web video has no identity, nothing for us to rally around, support, or argue about. Maybe it’ll always be that way, I’m not smart enough to know. 

But I do think that in order to build an audience and sustain itself, a show must offer something that the viewer cannot get anywhere else. In the case of The Guild, that show just wouldn’t be on TV. It’s a perfect case of a small step forward, not a giant leap out into the unknown. It’s a large targeted niche audience that is not big enough for TV to care about. So it works, assuming you can write, act, edit, and promote as well as that production has done.

But the future holds much more interesting things for storytellers. Writers must evolve. If this was 1950, I see web series people putting a camera in front of radio plays.* But who is making I Love Lucy? I look to YouTube for that, mainly because it involves their viewers in such an intimate, personal, authentic way.

It all depends on what you want from this whole thing. A career in tv? Great, I wish you luck, and go kick some ass. I’ll be rooting for you. I’m personally interested in building an industry, and I just don’t think that happens with people who have their eye on a different prize.

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* That little metaphorical nugget stolen from a conversation with the heretoforementioned Barrett Garese

broadcastassassin:

In a wall post on Facebook today, The Guild asked their fans to tell them how they found the show.

The results surprised me. With just under 250 respondents at the time I whipped out excel and started tallying, I felt there was a relatively significant sample size to work with. This is how it broke down (someone else can make a pretty graph):

Referrer: Number Respondents (% of total)

(Sample size: 249 respondents)

Referral from friend/relative: 72 (29%)

Do You Want to Date My Avatar video: 42 (17%)

Found on X-Box/X-Box Live: 26 (10%)

WoW referral (in game or WoW-related website): 25 (10%)

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog/Commentary: The Musical (DVD extra): 21 (8%)

Found on YouTube: 18

Found on Netflix: 14

Random internet surfing: 6

Searching for Felicia Day: 4

G4tv: 4

Joss Whedon Fan Site (inc. Whedonesque): 3

Wil Wheaton’s Blog/Twitter: 3

Non-World of Warcraft RPG/site: 3

Legend of Neil: 2

The Guild Comic Books: 1

The Jace Hall Show: 1

PC Gamer Magazine: 1

Other Article (not specified): 1

Other (best answer award!) “Destiny”: 1

Comments:

Notable absences include there being no mention of Felicia’s appearances on late night talk shows, nor any mentions of people finding the show through Comic Con or BlizzCon. Additionally, none of The Guild’s main stream press articles were mentioned as sources for discovering the show, nor did anyone say they found the show through MSN’s video site.

So how effective was Avatar? More people found The Guild through that video (42) than through X-Box and Netflix combined (40).

So, in summary: making a hit bonus video is very, very good. Having a popular guest star? Also a good idea. Targeting a socially active niche audience like online gamers? Great idea.

Some interesting insights here. And as more people comment, the sample size will grow even more (there are at this moment 1,557 responses). Even with just this sample, there are plenty of surprises… like that there’s someone who remembers watching The Jace Hall Show.

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

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(via spytap)