Bill Cammack

Troopin’ around in the city with David Karp, Caroline McCarthy & Lilly.

Dina & Bill, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Dina Kaplan & Bill Cammack
NYC Resistor party
March 29, 2008

MIT Represent!, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

MIT Rep-Re-SENT!
NYC Resistor party
March 29, 2008

Phil, Limor & Bill, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Phil Torrone, Limor Fried & Bill Cammack
NYC Resistor party
March 29, 2008

Tajee & Bill, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Tajee & Bill

http://ninjagirl.from.tv

If you have a boring personality, you can go out with any chick, and it’s cool. It’s not so easy for edgy guys that like to do fun & interesting stuff on the spur of the moment. It’s easy for your natural persona to clash with hers instead of combining with hers in a way that both of you have a fantastic time. There are obvious limitations to some chicks’ abilities to go with the flow. She might not be into taking pictures, for instance. If that’s a way that you express yourself and inform your friends and family of what you’re doing with your one life that we’re going to get, then that’s a clash. In order for that to be a win-win, you have to either NOT hang out with her or NOT take pictures of her when you’re hanging out.

Another example is PDA (Public Displays of Affection). You might be into it, and she isn’t. The only win-win is a compromise between each of your comfort levels, which normally means NO PDA whatsoever. Then again, if your point in spending time with her is to “Display Affection” ;), you just don’t take her out in public from the giddyap.

PDA… Personal Digital Assistant? :D

Anyway… Chicks tend to go out with boring guys. This is because boring guys are stable… Easily controlled… Less likely to cheat, either because they’re “not that type” or they’re too busted or weird to get another girl anyway. Chicks like stuff like that for some reason. They’d rather mess with a guy they know they’re not going to lose anytime soon than a guy they know they’re really physically attracted to but don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of controlling >:D

So they THINK their guys are edgy, but they’re really not… Not by a longshot. Unfortunately, they expect YOU to be just like the boring dudes. “Guilt by Association” rears its ugly head! :D You have to make sure you distinguish yourself as separate from that pack. Otherwise, when you’re chilling at a birthday party, drinking and flirting with her @ the karaoke bar and eventually, you pull up to her bumper, she’s like “WHAT THE #&*$ WAS THAT??? :O” as if something strange is happening.

A ‘quick and dirty’ way to distinguish yourself to chicks is to apply a form of shock therapy. Scare the living daylights out of them, as far as relationships go. Make sure they’re aware that you’re capable of ANY-THING at ANY-TIME. :D Make them wary of leaving their little sisters OR their mothers around you. This does THEM the favor of opening their minds to the potentials of life, interaction and fun, while doing YOU the favor of clearing the path so that when you DO do something edgy with her, she’s just relieved that it’s not any of the WORSE things that she already imagined you doing to her. :)

Strangely enough, I started thinking about this because of this tech video. Watch the first 1:30:

So I’m watching this, and I realized that the same thing he does to potential employees… I do that to chicks. :) Sure, you want to be friendly with them and all that… However, if they’re looking to get past friendship, you really want to scare the BEJESUS out of them, or else, similar to janky website design, your relationship’s going to be *BROKEN* practically immediately.

I had to watch it again. I use *EXACTLY* the same style. First of all, don’t try to hook me up unless you KNOW me. This is similar to the part where he says “I interview every single person that comes to work for me” and “It really leads to some problems in the company, like if I’m on a trip for 5 days and we need to bring somebody in and say, you know what? If they sit with me, and I can look them in the eye…” That’s the whole thing. You can tell when you look her in the eye whether she understands who she’s looking at or not. It’s a form of concentrated attention, the way she focuses on you and pays attention to what you’re saying… It’s like she’s fascinated by you, yet afraid to turn her back on you at the same time.

This is another reason you need to use shock therapy on chicks. When they’re talking about you to their girlfriends (and they ALWAYS talk about you to their girlfriends), you want them saying THE RIGHT THINGS that bring their girls to the table ready for battle. You don’t want all this “oh, he’s a nice guy” and “oh, he’s so educated and cute and smart” because then, their girls meet you with visions of kids, dogs and Volvos in their heads, so now you have to do DOUBLE the work, to deconstruct them mentally and then REconstruct them and THEN see if they’re compatible with you now that they know what the real deal is.

So in the case of hiring someone, you want your employees to know the drill when it comes to working for your company. In the case of hookups, you want your ground troops traveling with the right information so the chicks they bring back either love you or hate you. Still, hookups suck unless the chick involved really understands what you’re about, so it’s best to “interview every single person that comes to work for you” and “look them in the eye” and hit ‘em with the worst-case scenario. You can see her demeanor change, right on the spot. She’ll either think “I’d never go out with him” or “Oh, he thinks he’s a bad-ass… He doesn’t know who *I* AM!”, which will help you to decide to move forward with the interview or change the subject / bail out entirely.

Actually, there’s a third potential reaction, this kind of simpleton stare like she doesn’t understand what you just said. Depending on what you like in chicks you mess with, that’s either FANTASTIC or horrible. :D

So when you’re hitting her with the worst-case scenarios, it’s not actually important what she says. What’s important is HOW SHE LOOKS as soon as her brain comprehends what you just told her hahahaha :D The stages go like this after you finish speaking:

1) She hasn’t received all of the data yet
2) She has all the words, but she’s composing it into what it actually means
3) She realizes what you said and subconsciously reacts to it
4) She starts thinking about how she feels about what you said
5) She formulates her response
6) She delivers her response

The main thing you’re looking for is her subconscious reaction. IME, it’s usually “He’s kidding”, “Maybe I didn’t hear him correctly”, “That’s crazy”, “Life doesn’t work like that”, “There’s no way that works”, “Who’d fall for THAT?”, “Do guys really think that way?”, “That’s funny”, “I’d love to see him do that in real life”, etc etc etc. This is way more important than her eventual statement. She can say all she wants that what you said was messed up, but you already saw that gleam in her eye that she thought it was funny when she initially GOT what you were saying. She can say all she wants that she doesn’t care or what you said didn’t affect her, but you saw her get that “oh my God!” realization in her eyes of who she’s looking at. It’s like you mentally see her get up and walk away, but she physically sits there anyway to keep up appearances. But you can clearly feel her “leave you”.

So, yeah… If you’re an edgy guy, make sure you interview chicks like a business. Gauge their ability to hang with you by their reactions to your throwing the kitchen sink at them. If they pass, you know you can fight with them and still love them and vice versa. If they FAIL![EPIC], they might still be useful as friends, except *only* when you’re layin’ back in the cut NOT “doin’ you”. Same rules apply. Some people, you do business with. Some people, you have drinks with. Some people, you can do both with. Put her through the shock and watch her eyes, body language and breathing patterns. Turn up the heat level after level and when you’re convinced of her character and fortitude, turn it off. Let her be. She’s earned your respect and progressed to the next level.

Props are awarded. It’s “Miller Time”… Cheers! :D

When she’s ready… She’ll look like this:

Mentally Tested, Battle-Ready Female: 2008 Edition

Playboy @ Passion [#3], originally uploaded by pauldateh.

Paul Dateh and some of his adoring fans!

Bill Cammack & EWH Outstanding Teen Programming Emmy Award, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack & Elizabeth Hummer
1999-2000 Season
Emmy Award Winners
Outstanding Teen Programming
“My Take”

Phil & Limor, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Limor Fried & Phil Torrone

Carol & Steve, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Carol & Steve Garfield

In the internet video game, there are lots of ways to call attention to yourself, your product or your website. Kfir Pravda writes:

“And we didn’t talk about audio and video productions. Yes, you can sit in-front of your webcam and talk. But unless you are extremely attractive, or funny, or interesting, no one will watch your stuff besides your mom and friends. Not necessarily a bad thing, but let’s set the expectations. And hey, being interesting, attractive, funny, interesting – doesn’t it sounds just like creating content in every other medium? Yes it is! The fact that your content is online doesn’t mean it can be crappy. People will notice if it is crappy. Really. Most people don’t care if they get their content from their laptop or TV – they just want good content. So all this Web 2.0 myth that everyone can just put his or hers content online and immediately people would watch it is far from being true.”

This is absolutely true. Even having good content doesn’t make you exempt from creating a pleasant, immersive environment for your viewers. Unfortunately, a lot of internet video isn’t made with the viewer in mind at all. It’s made with MONEY in mind, specifically, being CHEAP with money and not actually caring about the QUALITY of the video they produce AT.ALL.

Here’s the problem with internet video…. When someone puts a video on youtube, for instance, you can trace the IP, but you have no information about the person AT THAT IP that clicked on the video. This means you can’t prove demographics. If you can’t prove demographics, you can’t sell advertisements to companies, because there’s no guarantee that men between the ages of X and Y that own lawns and might buy lawn mowers are watching this particular video or show. This means the only way you can sell ads is by impressions, basically using a shotgun tactic and saying “This show gets 300,000 downloads a day… SOMEBODY in there has to be of value to you”. Of course, there are banner ads and sponsorships, but I’m talking about specifically advertising on individual videos. You can do pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll… Either way, you can’t get the big money from potential advertisers because you can’t prove WHO’S watching your show.

This means that video shows have to rely on revenue sharing or generalized, group advertisement plans that you can opt in or out of. There are lots of studies that show that neither of these generate much $$$ unless you do something that goes viral and gets millions of hits. The odds of doing that consistently are slim and none… and slim left town.

This means that in general, people aren’t getting much ROI from posting video to the internet. This is why the focus changes from creation and “production value” to ‘The Bottom Line’. The Bottom Line is to spend less than you get back from revenue sharing and other opportunities to have your videos made. This is how we end up with situations of people creating video that’s total and absolute *GARBAGE* that somehow makes it to the internet attached to a company’s brand. The company is more interested in NOT PAYING for the video they get than outputting good videos and receiving respect and accolades for their accomplishments. THEN, when they get dragged through the mud by someone who chooses to point out the obvious fact that the Emperor has no clothes on, they wonder how this happened to them. :/

Actually, there’s another term that comes into play here. It’s called UGC, which stands for User-Generated Content. Essentially what this means is that people not associated with your company upload video that they’re hoping will become part of your show. Rob Czar & Corinne Leigh make fantastic use of UGC in their show “Thread Heads” (ThreadBanger.com). Their fans are inspired by watching Rob & Corinne’s episodes and send their own footage in to the show. Sometimes, this is just them showing what they made, and sometimes, they create their own how-to videos. This is the way UGC is supposed to work and is a demonstration of what happens when viewers join an interactive internet community and become not only fans but passionate subscribers.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know the difference between UGC and *GARBAGE*. The reason UGC looks the way it does is because THERE.IS.NO.BUDGET. None. Whomever did that did not get paid a dime to make the video and then uploaded it to youtube or wherever for free. Also, the UGC creators do NOT come with the stamp of approval of the company’s brand. The indication is clearly that “These are fans of ours that potentially know NOTHING about video at all that wanted to participate in our show. We appreciate what they’ve done and will post their videos in this episode”. This is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from stamping someone with your brand’s seal of approval and then letting them release garbage.

The first problem is that your brand appears to have ZERO taste in video creation. None. No guidelines were set. Nobody had to approve the videos before they went on your site. There’s no minimum quality requirement to post videos under your brand’s name. Clearly, this is a horrible opinion for people to have of you and your company. This also comes back to budget, because clearly, you didn’t pay anyone to EP (Executive Produce) your show. If you don’t have any EPs and you don’t have any producers that know what they’re doing when it comes to video and ESPECIALLY if you don’t have any EDITORS that might be able to salvage something out of the UGC-esque garbage you’ve selected people to produce, doing video might not have been a good idea. Stick to audio next time.

Second, your company looks CHEAP. It’s obvious that in your efforts to create video for the internet, you’re not willing to put one red cent into the production, because it looks exactly that same as all the other made-for-free video that’s on the net, whether it was shot by an elementary school student or a soccer mom watching her kids from the sidelines. The problem with this is that nobody else is going to want to put videos on your site alongside who KNOWS what other garbage productions are coming down the line? Also, this is known as half-stepping… Getting involved with something, but not wholeheartedly. Another poor look for your brand.

Third, you’re insulting your audience. Outputting garbage video is the equivalent of having a store with desirable merchandise in it and letting the letters fall off of your store front… or the letters don’t all don’t light up… It’s like “No… We’re not going to respect YOU, the viewer by offering you an entertaining or immersive experience….. But come in and buy, ANYWAY!”

The argument against production value in online video is that “Content is King”. They want you to focus on what’s being said… Not that the framing is off… Not that the sound is horrible… Not that the people drone on and on and on and on and on incessantly… Not that the graphics abruptly smash on and off the screen… Not that the company was too cheap to buy a tripod so the video shakes around like Saving Private Ryan. Again, that’s what AUDIO’s for. Make a nice .mp3 file, upload it and call it a day. Video is supposed to ADD to the experience, not SUBTRACT from it. Worst-case scenario, do it like when the news has a correspondent on the phone from another country. Put a decent-looking still frame on the screen of the subject of the video and let the audio run under that.

The reason companies continue to output garbage is because their hits are coming neither from content nor from production value….. Their hits are coming from *popularity*. There’s no reason to do ANYTHING decent when it comes to video because the people tuning in are already fans of the people making the videos. You can tell this by looking at the comments, which are invariably positive and don’t mention ANYTHING about the quality of the video itself. There are only two reasons this would happen. Either comments are being edited/removed or, as Kfir stated above, the only people showing up to the broadcast are your friends and family. That’s all well and good as long as you have THOUSANDS of friends. :/

So, that seems to be the key to internet video these days. Play to the bottom line by neglecting quality and treating video like it doesn’t need to be entertaining OR even *watchable*. Draw people to the show through popularity, and if your product’s garbage? Who cares? You already increased your page view and video play statistics to sell to the advertiser….

A job well done. :/

~Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
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