If you’re going to make television shows, or at this point, shows for the web… SOMEBODY on your team needs to KNOW. HOW. TO. MAKE. TELEVISION. SHOWS!!! :/

If you cut this corner, your productions will look like trash, and deservedly so. Now you can’t say no one ever told you.

I was minding my business one day and got a call from some so-called television production company to come in and interview with them to create a pilot for this show they were trying to sell. They had received my name from someone I had worked with before, so I decided (against my better judgement, haha) to go see what they wanted.

This was back in the day, so I show up to this so-called television production company with tapes. Beta tapes & 3/4″, just in case they were so primitive as to still be using 3/4″. Of course, it turns out that they had NEITHER. No Beta Decks in-house and No 3/4″ decks. So, that was that for my demo materials. Of course, at this point in time, my demo reel is right here on my site ===> (see sidebar), and companies are encouraged to check it out before wasting my time.

So then, this guy, who, by the way had ZERO air about him of knowing ANYTHING about television production… I’m guessing he was actually a secretary or assistant producer or something and that the people that actually know what they’re talking about weren’t there… This guy asks me if I’ve ever edited a reality show before.

Suppressing the instinct to ask “HAVE *YOU*???”, I eventually said “No, but I’ve seen a bunch of them and I know the formula”. I then proceeded to recite the formula to him. During the process, I happened to mention “confessionals”, made popular by MTV’s “Real World” series. When I said that word… “confessionals”… the guy choked up. Like he looked like he stopped breathing, like someone had suddenly grabbed his throat. So I go “You DID shoot confessionals… right?”… Then the guy looks all embarrassed and admits that they didn’t.

This is where I got REALLY suspicious, because television production is “garbage in, garbage out”. You can’t make up for footage people never shot, especially when you only had access to the people in your “reality” show for a small amount of time and they’re GONE NOW.

So anyway, I chatted with the guy for a while longer, then he said something to the effect of “I’ll let you know”, but he wasn’t even good at playing THAT off. Suppressing the instinct to say “Dude. Why don’t you just stop lying. You don’t want me to work on your so-called show”, I acted like I was going to expect his call, smiled, shook his hand and left.

Obviously, what was going on there was that these people had NO IDEA what they were doing and were looking to hire an editor to save the day and make something out of their NOTHING footage. That’s all well and good, and I’m sure they found someone. The problem with that secretary-dude’s line of questioning was that it’s not MY JOB to create the show. It’s MY JOB to do what the PRODUCER tells me to do. It’s the producer’s job to do what the EXECUTIVE PRODUCER tells him or her to do.

In general, the EP is the person who signs off on the final product. The EP knows what the standards are and whether what you’ve created is good enough to go on the air. The producer knows how the company likes their shows done, so it’s up to THE PRODUCER to determine how the show flows by going through the raw footage, selecting sound bites and video and putting them in an order that a) makes sense and b) is interesting to the viewer.

While it’s possible for the EP and the producer to be the same person, SOMEONE has to be in charge of both stations. Someone has to be the last word when it comes to quality control and someone has to be the person to determine the flow of the show. If it’s not the same person, the producer needs to have a very good idea of how the EP likes things or every time your video goes up for review, there are going to be changes. This is a waste of your time as well as your money if you’re hiring a freelance editor. If you’re working with a salaried staffer, feel free to waste time.

If you don’t have these bases covered, you end up with the blind leading the blind. You have people who have NO IDEA what elements create a good television show signing off on work that people who have NO IDEA how to make a good show created. This becomes obvious when it’s time for the average joe to sit down in front of the television (or at this point, their computer) and watch your product. Here are some of the problems you will experience:

Nothing of interest happening in your show

It’s the EP’s job to tell you that nothing’s happening in your show, that it’s boring and it needs to be fixed in order for it to be successful on television. The producer needs to pick up on this information and make it part of their mental database so they stop making the same mistakes in the future. The EP can’t afford to let a boring show go out the door, because if people don’t care what happened this week, they won’t be back next week. When people don’t come back, your ratings drop. When your ratings drop, you get cancelled. When you get cancelled, people get fired.

No story arc

The story arc is the reason people stay tuned (other than character development). There has to be a reason.. Something people are looking forward to seeing, or something that they are hoping the characters are going to avoid. Without a story arc, there’s no tension. Without tension, you can’t hold a viewer’s interest. It just doesn’t matter whether they see the rest of your show or the next episode because they’re not emotionally invested in the outcome of your show.

No good cliffhangers leading to the commercial breaks

The only thing that’s going to keep people from changing the channel during commercials is that you’ve set up something that they don’t want to miss. This is basically the same as story arc, but much more short-term. There might be 4 or 5 segments to a show. You don’t want to end your segments on a flat note, because that’s how many opportunities people will have to YAWN, change the channel and get involved with some other show that captures their attention.

No interesting character development

If you have someone that’s interesting, make them one of the main focal points of the show. If you have people that are NOT interesting, play them off to the side or preferably to the BACK, if not out of the show ENTIRELY! If you have interesting people doing uninteresting things, cut those parts out of your show.

If you don’t develop your characters, nobody will be emotionally invested in what happens to them, which means they won’t care about your cliffhangers, story arc or anything else. This is something that’s normally dealt with in the pilot stage, and lack of interesting characters plus potential for their development via interesting scenarios usually results in a “Pass”, meaning “Thanks, but No Thanks” and you get sent back the drawing board to dust yourself off and try again.

No passionate viewers / fanbase developed

If your show is wack, no community is going to develop around it. This means that you won’t have people DYING for next week to come around so they can see the next episode of Miami Vice (not the garbage movie… the really good television series). It’s your passionate viewers that will stop whatever they’re doing to go home and watch your show or make sure the bar turns it on. It’s your passionate viewers that make sure to DVR your show so they don’t miss out on the water-cooler talk the next day at work. It’s your passionate viewers that keep your ratings high so your advertisers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth…

No viral dissemination of information about your show

If your show is boring, there won’t be any buzz. There won’t be any Facebook groups made about it. It won’t be a trending topic on Twitter. Your website won’t have any comments on the posts. Nobody’s going to be telling anyone else about you, because everyone’s looking for something interesting. Nobody’s going to be blogging about your show on their sites. At this point in time, even a locally-based internet show can have fans all over the world. When your show is already garbage, it’s too late to convince people that it’s not. Make sure you hire someone that can tell you that this show isn’t good enough and can tell you how to make it acceptable if not EXCELLENT.

No advertiser, investor or sponsor interest

Without passionate viewers, community, viral dissemination or the appearance that you have any clue whatsoever about how to make a good televison/web show, you will either have ZERO advertiser/investor/sponsor interest from the giddyap, or if you had it when you started, you’ll lose it when it comes time for those people to renew their deals with you. This could be avoided, or at the very least, the chances of this minimized by hiring an EP with a reputation for quality programming. The EP is the General. People think that just because they have the money and paid to create the company that they should automatically have final say on what goes out the door. That’s called “hubris”. Get over yourself and do yourself the favor of hiring people that actually know what they’re doing when it comes to television. If you want to be successful, everyone needs to play their position. Your position might be getting money. Let someone else have the final say on whether your program’s “ready for prime time” or not.

These issues are normally dealt with at the pilot stage. If your pilot doesn’t convince people that you know how to make an interesting and well-received show, you normally don’t get a deal and get sent back to the drawing board. It’s similar to being a rapper. If you don’t have a good demo tape, nobody’s going to take the chance on you and pay for you to record “for real” in a studio.

This is why you want to hire an EP to let you know whether what you’ve produced is worth shopping or not. Believe me, it’s worth it to spend the money up front and save yourself the anguish and embarrassment of producing a show that everybody says sucks while you spend a small fortune producing something that never should have received a greenlight in the first place and simultaneously trash your so-called television production company’s reputation for quality and excellence in programming.

~ Bill Cammack
twitter.com/BillCammack
facebook.com/BillCammack

Related Posts

• I’m Gonna Be Like Walt!
• Clients/Projects
• Save Your Pennies, Then Hire Professionals
• Blog Subscribers, Commenters, Lurkers & Passers-By
• Haiti Earthquake + Social Media = HaitiXchange.com

I’ve always loved the song “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel. For me, the song has an incredible mix of depression and hope. There’s power and powerlessness in the face of “the game” at the same time. I never get a feeling that one person is going to “win out” over the next person. I never get the feeling that the situation will ever stabilize. To me, it’s a representation of ‘the game’ and how each person comes to the table with their own set of abilities and shortcomings and the chips fall where they may…….

*In researching, I find that there were some offensive/controversial lyrics that were changed to make the song radio-friendly.*

Mercs

I woke up this morning thinking about this song, because for me, it exemplifies the mercenary nature of dating in New York City.

We’re all ‘Mercs’. We have to be, because people throw pretty heavy ‘game’ at us, and if you’re not a shark yourself, you’ll get eaten by the sharks. It’s just plainly not as simple as people lay it out in these fairy tale relationship stories where some guy in the sticks marries his high school sweetheart or the girl he met when he went to the General Store to buy cereal and gasoline at the same location.

The ‘problem’ is that we all want something, and we’re willing to play hardball to get it. It’s honestly like a war-time scenario. I’m not proud of that or happy about it, but that’s how it is. You just have to know that when you step to a chick and introduce yourself, you’re about to get whatever she wants to give you that will further her own agenda. It’s not “the truth”. It’s not “who she really is”. It’s what she’s willing to present to you in order to get you to do what she wants you to do.

Women have to be that way, because men are that way towards them. Obviously, guys are going to say or do whatever they need to in order to get laid, which is the bottom line. All this jockeying for position is a constant quest for CONTROL of the other person, usually for two different reasons…

Control

Control is a fallacy… a fantasy… it doesn’t exist. The only person you control is yourself…… maybe.

Nevertheless, many people in relationships are fighting their “significant other” for control. Not physically fighting them, like Chris Brown & Rihanna, but mentally & emotionally waging war against each other with the hopes of breaking the other person’s will and subjugating them (Putting them in “Deep Check”).

In general, the goals of control are pretty common and redundant. The male wants to lock down sexual access to the female. The female wants to lock down “fidelity” or faithfulness from the male. This would seem to be the same thing, but it isn’t. The guy wants to make sure he can get on whenever he feels like it, therefore, he needs to block other guys from physical access to “his girl”. Women (again, in general) are more concerned with where the guy’s emotions are focused… Does he “love” her? Is she the most important woman in his life? (or, hopefully, the ONLY woman in his life) What are his future plans for the relationship? blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…..

Tactics

Now that you know what you want, it’s time to utilize tactics to get it. The woman’s goal is to make the guy feel she can live without him and force him to step up his game. The man’s goal is to make the gal believe he’s all about her, regardless of what he’s actually doing. What you end up with is lies. Regular lies and lies of omission. These are necessary, because otherwise, you arrive on the battlefield without your armor and lose immediately.

Unfortunately, what you DON’T have in this oft-repeated scenario is genuine and authentic interaction between people that are SUPPOSED to be in a friendly relationship. After a while, you get used to this and no longer expect people to be authentic with you. It’s no longer a requirement. You assume people are lying off the bat and learn to read between the lies.

This is fine for guys, because for the most part, we don’t care what women are saying anyway. Yak Yak Yak, it’s all the same as long as you’re looking good and we feel turned on by your presence.

Women have a much greater problem here, which is that they actually base their relationship status on what guys say to them. For guys, it’s basically “Who cares what she said, so long as at the end of the day, she gives it up?”. Meanwhile, all a guy has to say to a gal is “it’s over”, and she’ll honestly believe that her relationship to him is finished, just because he said so.

Effects

The effect is that we accept people on the surface, but never get deeply inside them. There’s no reason to expect people to be authentic with you upon first meeting you, so you listen to what they have to say, but don’t necessarily accept it as truth. Since we figure we’re all lying to each other, it’s an unspoken agreement that everyone’s going to check their weapons at the door. We can chat each other up and be friendly for the time being, but we all know that if we fall out of favor with each other, it’s “Get your gats and shoot it out at twenty paces”. If the chick is found to be messing with another dude… war. If the guy is found even TRYING to kick it with another chick… war.

Embargoes, no sex, no calls, no text messages, delayed returning of calls, avoidance of spending physical time together, putting each other’s business in the streets, commiseration with homies, arguments, vindictive looks, creation of jealousy… This is what you have to look forward to if you fall out of favor with someone that you’re supposedly in a “loving” relationship with.

Reactions

There are a few typical reactions to the NYC game. Some people quit the scene entirely, since they don’t want to be involved with mind-games. Some people elect to remain naive and go out like a sucker over and over in their dating careers. Other people become jaded and get down with the program, adding to the pool of sharks. The best defense is a good offense, and they’re ready, willing and able to fight fire with fire.

Ultimately, if you’re in demand in NYC, there’s no escaping ‘the game’. If people perceive you has having something they want, they’re going to come after you… There’s a domino effect here of people passing experiences and personal baggage on to other people. Of course, the media adds fuel to the fire by seeking out the worst relationship scenarios possible and putting them on the news every night. “Reality” shows (which are EXTREMELY edited and produced, thus not actually ‘reality’) do the same thing as they strive to show us the most entertaining (read: assholish) aspects of human beings’ personalities. Add that to the sheer number of people on the scene in this town, and you end up with a cycle of people who don’t actually trust each other, but are perfectly willing to call each other boyfriend & girlfriend in order to advance their own agendas.

Solutions

Strangely enough, the solution is to “Do you”. Whatever’s natural to you, that’s what you should focus on. Receive the education from the NYC game and utilize it to get tough without becoming jaded. Don’t get upset about what happens, just internalize it and learn from it and make sure you don’t go out the same way next time.

You also have the option of hopping on the Metro North Railroad and traveling out to the sticks to meet people who are still living the simple life and aren’t caught up in mercenary dating behavior.

Maybe you could start a meetup group where people practice honestly telling other people how they feel about them.

It would seem like the obvious solution is to only become involved with trustworthy people. Unfortunately, most people’s ability to judge character is WAY less refined than the snake oil salesperson’s ability to pull the wool over your eyes. It’s your own arrogance in believing that you have a proper grasp on what the other person’s capable of that blinds you and makes you even MORE susceptible to their manipulations.

This is what’s simultaneously depressing and hopeful about both the song and the dating scene. There’s a collection of powerful people involved, and it’s a game, which is fun… but it’s also a competition. Everyone’s playing, but they’re not all on the same side. One change at one end of the playing field can cause a chain reaction that someone feels far away on the other end of the field. While there’s the likelihood that several people will win, and win big… that’s probably going to mean that several people have to lose big as a consequence. The NYC dating scene is not for the faint of heart. It’s a gamble… It’s a knockout…

if looks could kill, they probably will
in Games Without Frontiers
war without tears

~Bill

Twitter: BillCammack
Facebook Fan Page: Bill Cammack
DatingGenius Category: billcammack.com/category/datinggenius
Subscribe to DG!: feeds.feedburner.com/BillCammackDatingGenius
 

Related Posts

• Rachel on Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker”
• World In My Eyes (Happy New Year!!!)
• Bill & Cali – Lunchin’
• Your Girlfriend Is A Ho
• Rolling Disclosure

Reader Lisa writes:

Lisa: “I use the number as a guide to tell the odds if he is clean or not. I would love to know how many woman a man is messing with CURRENTLY but guys will lie about that.

Any tips on how to get a man to tell the truth about how many women he’s messing with currently? I wouldn’t care about the past if I he is being honest about the present.”

Lisa, :)

Here’s how to get a guy to tell the truth about how many women he’s messing with currently…..

ready?…..

wait for it…… (yes, Tyme, I bit your style. Too Bad So Sad)

Date an honest guy.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy your evening! :D

Random picture of Masako, Masami & Bill, having nothing to do with this article and linked to my video player page. :)

Women have lots of completely wrong beliefs about relationships that make them susceptible to the simplest deception.

For instance, “I love you” is one of the most devastating things you can say to a woman because she attaches meaning to it on her own. It doesn’t have to mean JACK to you when you SAY it, because she’s conditioned by movies, television and “old wives’ tales” to believe that there’s no way a guy could say that to her if it wasn’t the truth. Meanwhile, guys know this. We see you coming. It’s no tougher for us to say “I love you” than it is for us to say “pass the salt”.

So… Easy way to get laid? Tell a chick “I love you”.

I guess that was a bonus tip hahaha :D I meant to talk about truth and ended up talking about deception.

The only way to “get a man to tell the truth” is… you can’t.

YOU have ZERO control over the situation. Here’s the proof… Let’s say your little sister visits you and stays over your crib. Let’s say you COUGHfoolishlyCOUGH leave your man alone with her. When you come back and ask your boyfriend if he tapped that while you were gone, assuming he answers the question AT ALL, there are only two things he can say. YES or NO. Now… There are only two things he can be… A liar or a truth-teller. Here’s the matrix:

He hit it and he’s a truth-teller: “Yes, I screwed your sister.”
He didn’t hit it and he’s a truth-teller: “Nope”
He didn’t hit it and he’s a liar: “Nope”
He dogged your sister ALL DAY LONG and he’s a liar: “Nope”

See how that works? Your finding out the truth has nothing to do with what actually happened. It has to do with who he was as a person before you met him. It has to do with whether he values the truth over doing what he wants to do in life… In this case, screwing your sister. :D

The ‘problem’ with the above scenario is that in the case of the guy being a truth-teller, he already KNOWS he’s a truth-teller. He already knows that if you ask him if he messed with your sister, he’s not going to lie to you. Therefore… he’s NOT.GOING.TO.DO.IT! :D The same thing that makes him tell the truth is the same thing that’s going to prevent him from screwing your sister, so the only situation where a guy is going to say “Yes, I screwed your sister” is a virtual impossibility. Approximately 0.00%

Relationships *SHOULD* be built on truth, but for the most part, they’re built on mutually parasitic behavior. A guy sees a girl he’s attracted to and wants to hook up with her. A girl sees a guy she wants to be in a relationship with and hooks up with him. They both have their goals in elevating the other person past “friend” status to “significant other”. Truth has nothing to do with relationships, and is rarely discussed at all. When was the last time you asked someone you were dating “are you a liar?”….. Think about it….. Let’s go back to our matrix:

He’s a truth-teller: “No, I am not a liar”
He’s a liar: “No, I am not a liar”

You see how that works? The liar is going to LIE about being a liar and represent himself as a truth-teller, hahahahaha :D

So, like I said, there’s no way to GET someone to tell the truth. All you can do is spend time with someone that’s naturally a truth-teller. You need someone that values truth ABOVE the current status of his relationship to you. If he went to that bachelor party and had girls all over him all night, he’s gonna come back home and tell you nothing happened and he was bored… Like playing poker or something… Electronic Monopoly! Why should he tell you the truth so you can get upset about it? Why would he decrease his physical access to you? What’s HIS benefit in telling you the truth? WHY should he?

This is why you want the guy to value the truth OVER his relationship to you. You want him to be willing to lose you if it means that he remains truthful to himself and congruent with his stated set of values. A friend of mine is like that. He has tons of chances to “cheat”, but he hasn’t and he WON’T, because he wouldn’t be able to look his girl in the face and lie to her. That’s cool. :D That’s admirable, IMO. I also consider it an anomaly.

The other thing that gets females into trouble is trusting “women’s intuition”. :D

Basically, y’all convince yourselves that you’re good judges of character. The effect of this is that once you believe a guy, he can sell you ANYTHING and you’ll eat it up. To disbelieve him is to disbelieve yourself because of cognitive dissonance. This is why y’all KNOW you’re in a TRASH relationship, but hang on to it anyway. To admit that your man is TRASH means that *YOU* are a POOR JUDGE OF CHARACTER, so you hang on as long as you can in the hopes that eventually, you will prove yourself right.

My only advice to women in the area of trust and truth is Checks & Balances. Don’t date guys that nobody knows! :D There needs to be a “chain of custody”, like they DIDN’T HAVE in the O.J. Simpson trial. SOMEBODY needs to be able to vouch for this dude. Somebody YOU trust.

There are lots of chicks that ended up on The Maury Povich Show because they THOUGHT they knew something about their man…. but they DIDN’T.

DatingGenius

Related Posts

• How To Avoid Pregnancy
• Serial Monogamy
• How To Tell He’s Cheating
• Why Women Have To Be Attractive And Men Don’t
• Dating for Misanthropes

A reader writes:

“I’m a guy. Why don’t women approach me?”

That’s always situational. It depends on what she likes and it depends on what you’re like. The first place you want to go is to read life isn’t fair. If you aren’t cute or well-built or have a great personality or sense of humor (or, of course, all of the above! :D) then you’re at a SERIOUS disadvantage to begin with.

The problem is that everybody wants to date the top chicks. A LOT OF WOMEN are being completely overlooked and underdated because they fall outside of a certain range of what guys consider HOT/HAWT. This means that unless you can envision and internalize your station in life, you’re going to delude yourself into thinking that you can get the same girls the next man can get, when, in reality, you’re like a little league player batting against a MLB pitcher.

So, the first thing you might want to recognize is that you’re not “fly”, so chicks aren’t SUPPOSED to be approaching you.

If that’s the case, then you need to make moves to accentuate the positive. One way to do that is to dress better. Chicks like colorful things, also things that sparkle. Distract them from your looks with stylish gear & maybe a nice watch if it fits your persona. Also, be a really, really, REALLY nice guy. This is to your advantage because often, when guys “have it like that” that chicks just like them off the bat, they get souped up. Due to the fact that they can pick up a new chick in, like, 5 MINUTES, women are romantically expendable to them and it shows in their demeanor. By being a nice guy and appreciating women, regardless of how wack you look, you have a chance.

Another good trick is to find out what her hobbies are and feign interest. Of course, this only works if you know something about her ahead of time. So next time you go the bar, bring a copy of the book you heard her talking to her friends about. Flip to a page around 3/4 of the way through the book so it looks like you’re deeply engrossed in it. Watch her make her way over and strike up a conversation ;)

… Oh yeah… Buy the cliff’s notes too, in case you ACTUALLY have to talk to her ABOUT the book. :D

So that covers it if you’re not a good-looking guy to begin with. She’s not approaching you because…. she doesn’t feel like it! So make sure you attract her with gimmicks, smoke & mirrors. However, what if you ARE attractive, and she’s STILL not approaching you?

Well, first of all, you might not be HER type, physically. Just because a lot of chicks give you compliments doesn’t mean that ALL of them want to hook up with you. Assuming that’s not the case, you just might be too much for her to handle, and she knows damned well that she’s not going to have *ANY* control over you, so she doesn’t dare step to you and let you know what she wants. Women like mentally strong guys, but they need to feel like they have some say in what goes on. They need to feel that they have some sort of effect on you, or perhaps leverage. Without that leverage, they feel like their relationship could end any day when you just say “Nah… Not interested. Don’t feel like seeing you this week. Later.” If a gal can’t see in her mind’s eye being with you and having there be SOMETHING about her that’s unique and compelling you to stay with her, she’s not likely to step, because she’s already seeing the end of her relationship with you before it even starts.

Finally, although there are probably another million reasons a chick might not step to a guy she likes, as much as we hate rejection as guys, women hate it MUCH, MUCH, MUCH MORE! :D You have to consider that they’re brought up to get stuff for free just from their looks. Get into parties for free. Have drinks bought for them for free. Get taken shopping for free. Get invited out on yachts for free. Get put up at a Jersey Shore beach house over a three-day weekend for free…… So they’re VERY used to people just giving them things. That includes raps.

The fact that you haven’t already approached her to throw your hat in the ring is a red flag to her. In her experience, a guy that’s interested in her offers her some kind of bribe to “listen to his demo”. If she knows that you’ve seen her, and you haven’t come over and introduced yourself, that means she might very well walk up to you, try to strike up a conversation and get rejected. :( Hate it when THAT happens! hahahaha :D So it’s the safer play to hang out with her girls or whatever group she came out with and keep checking you out, but never actually step to you.

Having said that, don’t expect her to walk all the way over to you unless she’s just that confident about herself, which is a fantastic thing! ;) For the most part, chicks will put themselves within striking distance for *YOU* to rap to them. You still end up doing the work, but what she did to facilitate that was to make herself available. She deserves credit for not sitting on a couch against a wall all night, surrounded by friends she’s never going to hook up with anyway… looking like the king surrounded by the rook and a row of pawns. So acknowledge her gesture with a smile and “hello” and then it’s business as usual from there. ;)

DatingGenius

Related Posts

• Pretty Girls – Too Unapproachable?
• Does it matter what women think?
• Unattractive Women’s Relationship Advantages
• Don’t Play Yourself
• Women’s Guide to NYC Dating

I spent the day on Seesmic yesterday and had a 90-post conversation involving several of the members. I’ll say first of all that Seesmic has made TONS of improvements since Andrew Lipson gave me an invite 3 months ago. They’re always making improvements to their site, so this post may very well be outdated relatively soon. :)

If you don’t know what Seesmic is, it’s basically like having a conversation with people on a bunch of stickies. In a way, it’s like Twitter, except it’s video and audio instead of text. You get to record a video which goes into the “public” timeline, and other people can watch it just about as soon as you post it. People who see your video can record their own video and make it a reply to your video if they so choose.

They relatively recently implemented threading as a one-dimensional, reverse chronological timeline. This was way better than no threading AT ALL :D but having held a several-hour-long conversation on it that was about actual intellectual concepts, not “what to name a dog” or “who’s going on a date tonight”, I got to experience the downsides of asynchronous video threading in Seesmic’s current format.

The reason I make a point of it being asynchronous is that it’s not a real-time conversation. It’s more like twitter or an email group than it is like Yahoo Live where several people speak to each other simultaneously, or even chat rooms, where everyone’s there at the same time and can jump in with their opinions if they feel like it.

Liz Burr made some excellent points that I hadn’t paid attention to as I was absorbing so many other things during a full day’s use of the app. Someone had made the point that because you record your own video and decide when to stop it, you get to say what you want in its entirety without being interrupted. Liz mentioned that since it’s asynchronous, you can be turned OFF at ANY point, or not listened to at all, as your screen name and icon are attached to your video in the thread. This means you have more of a chance of not.being.heard.at.all. if someone decides that what you have to say isn’t worth listening to based on your behaviors and what you had to say in previous videos. I “knew” this, but I hadn’t processed it until she mentioned it to me. I was already employing that behavior, for example, after listening to a post from someone that I determined was garbage, I would skip anything with their face on it after that.

At this point, I should mention how Seesmic is set up for people to become aware of people’s posts. It’s important to understand this to understand why one-dimensional threading is NOT optimal for an application like this. There’s a “public” timeline that catches everyone’s videos. This is world-wide, but you can set it to only pick up posts in your language. That’s still A LOT of people, and it’s not even open to the public yet. Your next option is a “friends” timeline. You get to choose to “follow” people, and only their videos will show up in this timeline. This is another way you can elect to bypass people whom you’ve determined have nothing valid or intelligent to say… don’t “follow” them. They’ll still show up if you’re looking at a thread that they’ve contributed videos to, but then you resort to visual parsing and skip them as usual.

These abilities to select people to follow and people to “allow to speak” by clicking on their videos and watching them all the way to the end absolutely alters each person’s perception of a thread they arrive to. Seesmic member Otir read a perfect analogy of the situation, telling the story of a bunch of blind people whom were all offered different sections of an elephant to feel and then to give their opinion of what an elephant is like. Each of them had their own perception of “an elephant”, and that perception colored what they had to say about elephants.

First of all, if you’re following certain people, their posts come up in your “friends” timeline. If you click on the member’s icon, you go straight to their opinion. That’s a good thing. However, you’re jumping in in the middle of the thread. You can click “conversation” and see the entire list of posts in that thread. This is where your personal bias comes into play. If you don’t have any respect for the people earlier in the timeline, you might skip their videos entirely, bypassing much of the context of the situation. If there are a whole lot of videos before the person you’re following, you might not be inclined to watch an hour’s worth of posts before you enjoy what you really came here to see… thus, bypassing much of the context of the situation. If you’ve determined that the person you’re following is more credible than others in the thread, you may be inclined to reply along the lines of that personal bias. This is where we get the blind people approaching the elephant from different sides and angles.

Another “problem” with this layout is that what you’re looking at is NOT actually linear other than chronologically. The posts are laid out by the TIME that they were posted to the site, but they are not differentiated by the TANGENT of the thread that that particular post followed. This leads to a circular, “telephone game” situation, because people show up to a thread hours after it started, read something a “friend” of theirs posted, which was dealt with hours ago, and respond to that person’s post without watching all of the surrounding material.

My thread was 90 posts long. Even if each person took only one minute to say what they had to say (and I’ve seen videos that were 5 minutes long, so if there’s a time limit on individual videos, it’s NOT shorter than that), that means that to absorb the entire thread, you’d have to sit there as long as a feature film. People aren’t going to wait that long to reply. As a matter of fact, people started showing up and making NEW threads asking for someone to summarize my thread because they didn’t want to go back and read it all. This is another way that posts get “lost in the sauce”. People show up and want to be involved, but don’t want to put in the work to go back and experience each post.

Another reason it becomes circular is let’s say you have three tangents in a thread. As the original thread participants scramble “left and right” (since it’s all appearing as a one-dimensional timeline) to deal with tangents, 20 posts down the line, someone reads something from a tangent that was already resolved, hits “reply” and now, your 21st post is actually a response to your 5th post. :/ Then, THEIR “friends” see what THEY posted and continue the previously resolved tangent, causing the original thread participants to scramble over there and put out THAT fire… AGAIN. :/ Meanwhile, the thread splinters more and more and is misinterpreted more and more but LOOKS like a single, chronologically-ordered discussion. The snowball rolls further downhill when someone shows up to post #60, which is really only three posts removed from post #5 and doesn’t want to read the rest of the material, so they assume that all 60 posts have been along the same tangent.

Like I said, this only comes into play if you’re trying to have an intelligent conversation. If you’re just socializing via video, you don’t need to worry about tangents and following thoughts and concepts. You just throw up a “me too” post and you’re good… you feel like you’re a part of the conversation, whether people are “following” you or not.

Jan McLaughlin mentioned an addition that I think would work very well in these situations… the ability for the originator to moderate their thread. I suppose the ability to assign mods would be useful as well. A couple of days ago, I left a 32-post thread of mine for a few hours and when I returned, it was around 60. Thinking that there was much interesting material to sift through, I clicked on it, only to realize that two people had started online dating in my thread. :/ Instead of taking their chances in the “public” timeline, the best way to try to get each other’s attention was to click “reply” so that it would show up in their “replies” folder (an alternative timeline to “public” or “friends”. The unfortunate side-effect of this was that as they kept “reply”ing to each other, their posts were being added to my thread.

It would be lovely to have a way to separate irrelevant posts from your thread. It would be lovely to be able to remove videos posted to your thread by people that just showed up to act dumb. Not *delete* them, just remove them from YOUR thread so that new people arriving after the fact wouldn’t bail on your 70-post thread because there are 30 posts worth of online dating inside it that’s completely indistinguishable from on-point conversation in a one-dimensional reverse chronological timeline.

Seesmic’s making tons of improvements, so I’m sure features are coming down the line that will facilitate intelligent conversation, such as GROUPS. The ability to have a discussion only amongst the people that *you* choose would be a major development. There’s no need to block others from reading it. Just stop them from diluting the content and making the originators waste time running around putting out fires. Like I said, they’ve progressed in leaps and bounds in the three months that I’ve been on the service.

Personally, I’m a fan of synchronous interaction, whether we’re talking live video or text chat. Even IRL, I enjoy holding arguments against 5 people at a time. :D The upside of asynchronous conversation is that you only have to make your point ONCE, and everyone hears it and we can all move forward and explore greater depths of the conversation. The downside is that you have to actually BE THERE at the time it’s happening to be a part of it. If you show up hours later, all you can do is watch the archive, if there is one.

The upside of asynchronous conversation is that you can join in on work breaks, when you get out of class, whenever it’s convenient for you, you can add something to an ongoing discussion. The downside is that depending on how much time has elapsed between the beginning of the conversation and your arrival, you might not be willing to put in the work to absorb the entirety of the conversation anyway.

Bill Cammack • Cammack Media Group, LLC

Related Posts

• Are You A Tech Elitist?
• Dude… Where’s My Twitter Link?
• Connections (Passing it On)
• The Lab – Episode 02: Response To Randolfe
• Only Date People Better Than YOU! :D