So they finally released the movie “Twilight” on cable, so I was able to check it out and see what all the hubbub was about.

Vampire shows have been all the rage recently. HBO has a series called True Blood that’s really popular and pretty much anything dealing with vampires is going to get run these days.

I’ve been wondering for quite a while why chicks have been falling all over themselves over “Twilight”. I figured a vampire movie is a vampire movie is a vampire movie. *yawn*

Having watched it now, I get it completely. The screenplay was very well written to fit the brainwashing of American females if not females all over the world.

I’m not saying the movie was interesting or good or unpredictable, haha.. I’m just saying that I understand why it’s a phenomenon because it hits the points that girls are trained to look for when they fantasize about being involved in a romantic relationship with a guy.

*** SPOILER ALERT *** If you still haven’t seen this movie, which was released over a year ago or you happen to be Keith Bevans, do not read the rest of this post! :D

Bella

Bella is the main character. The movie’s seen through her eyes. This is automatically going to be of interest to females, because most films are seen through guys’ eyes.

She doesn’t live in a big city. She transfers to a new school, which means she starts off with ZERO props. She has no friends. She’s a loner.

She’s cute enough for the sticks, but she’d be nothing to write home about in New York City. This is also endearing to females, because most of them fit into this category.

You don’t want your protagonist to be “too attractive” or else the audience will disconnect. Of course Brad Pitt dumped Jennifer Anniston for Angelina Jolie. That’s what’s supposed to happen, because Angelina > Jennifer. You want the audience to feel like they’re immersed in a story that could actually happen to THEM in THEIR lives.

So Bella’s set up as a character that’s worthy of love but just doesn’t have any. Her parents are separated. Her father lives alone. Her mother has a new man and enjoys traveling with him. Basically, Bella has nothing at all in her life, emotionally.

Edward

Edward is seen as a “catch” in the town Bella moves to. He’s one of the elite, although the movie doesn’t establish WHY he’s considered elite. I can only assume it’s because they imply that he’s physically attractive and mentally a renegade.

I grew up with “elite” people in my elementary school. I understand the draw, even though “Twilight” skipped over the character development explaining these people.

When I was 13 years old, I knew other 13-year-olds that got $150 a week in “allowance” (The money your parents give you to live and have fun on for no particular reason). At the time, my allowance was $20/week and a lot of my friends (who had JOBS by the time they were 13 or just stayed broke) considered me rich because of that.

I knew 13-year-old “elites” that would throw wild parties and raid their parents’ liquor cabinets and be the talk of the school, come Monday. I also knew 16-year-old elite females that dropped out of school to have kids, most likely due to some of those same parties.

So I understand the concept of “the table of cool kids” and how fascinating they are, just because they’re living lives that the rest of us aren’t living. One thing the movie never addresses is that Edward doesn’t age past 17, even though he became a vampire in ~1918, and nobody seems to notice.

So Edward seems to be rich, cool, has his own car, his parents pull him out of school whenever it’s a really nice day and the faculty never complains (= his family has juice), so it would appear that he could choose whatever female(s) he wants and they’d be glad to get down with the program.

Perfect Dynamic

This sets up the perfect dynamic between Edward & Bella that she’s not supposed to be able to pull a guy as good as him and he’s not supposed to settle for a girl as mediocre as she is.

This is the format for the American female dream. Self-Validation through being selected by an elite male for her unique qualities. Without the male being elite, it’s not worth anything because “who cares?”. If the female had been stunning and all guys were chasing her, it wouldn’t have been worth anything because the average American female wouldn’t feel like the film was about *her*. This is a modern reenactment of John Hughes movies about the mechanic chick getting the guy that’s chasing beauty queens, except instead of it happening within the last five seconds of the movie before the credits, it happens towards the beginning of the film.

The basis, as usual, is the concept of “Love”. The way Love is sold to women is that it’s some supernatural occurrence that has no realistic explanation. The more of an explanation there is for it, the less valid it is. This is why you don’t get any credit for telling a gal she has a nice ass. She attributes your statement to LUST, which is low-rated when compared to LOVE, which is something you’re supposed to feel….. um… because you feel it and you can’t explain it. Lusting after her doesn’t make her feel unique, because you like a lot of chicks’ asses. If you’re “In love with her”, that means that she’s the only one that inspires you to feel a certain way and then it’s Game On!

Unfortunately for my ‘discovery’ of this film, I was aware ahead of time that Edward was a vampire and Bella was Human. As an editor, I’m going to be aware of this fact the entire time, because I would have been in charge of being aware of character development & continuity if I had edited this film myself. For this reason, when Bella walks into the class and passes in front of the fan and Edward covers his nose, I immediately considered that he was avoiding her because he considered her a tasty morsel, not because he was repulsed by her, as Bella assumed.

Natually, this gimmick was revisited during the baseball game scene when Edward tells Bella to put her hair down and then the breeze blows through it, sending her Human scent to James, the hunter vampire. This was another plot flaw, BTW, because the vampire female on Edward’s team had said she could smell Bella from across the field, yet James was standing right in front of her and didn’t detect her as Human until the wind blew past her in his direction.

American Dream

I realized how well this screenplay was written and why the phenomenon has become so huge during the car scene after Edward rescues Bella from a pending gangbang and is driving her away from the scene. Bella and Edward reach for the radio at the same time, and Bella goes “Your hand is so cold! :O”. This was my “AHA!” moment because this scene occurred maybe halfway through the entire movie. Edward had already saved her life from getting crushed by a van, hung out with her lots of times and now arrived out of nowhere to save her from four guys that were planning to tag up, and she had NEVER. TOUCHED. HIS. SKIN. BEFORE!!! O_o

This, my friends, is the American female dream… Something For Nothing. This guy was hanging out with her, courting her and protecting her and he had never even held her hand before. Never kissed her before. Never ****** her before. Nothing. There’s no explanation why he’s compelled to do things for her, which validates her as an unique female… a CUAO. From then on, I watched the physical interaction (or lack thereof) between Edward & Bella and realized how masterfully the sexual tension was built into this book which was adapted into a screenplay.

Kool-Aid

For some reason, Edward’s crew of vampires has sworn off eating people, although it’s natural to them. When Edward first smells Bella, he’s like “LUNCHTIME!!! :D” but he fights off his natural urges and disappears from school for a few days until he calms down. Meanwhile, Bella’s been experiencing some kind of inexplicable attraction to Edward which is of course attributed to “love”. Edward, then, for no apparent reason, saves Bella’s life, making her even more enthralled by the concept of being with him. When she finds out he’s a vampire, she declares that she doesn’t care and that she’s not afraid of him. Logically, she’s willing to risk her life to be with him being that she would have been dead already if he hadn’t saved her from being crushed, however, of course, this is utilized as another demonstration of how deep her LOVE is for Edward.

The real hook to this movie is the fact that Edward can’t physically interact with Bella for fear of losing control and killing her. He decides to make out with her one time and has to retreat from that situation. This is like Female Final Fantasy.. that a guy wants them so badly that it hurts, but at the same time, he’s not willing to pull the trigger. Brilliant! :D BRAVO!!! :D Excellent Writing! :D I wish I would have thought up “Vampires that restrain themselves from eating Humans” myself.

Edward fights for and protects Bella, declaring her his entire life, and he hasn’t even hit it yet. What girl isn’t gonna drop her drawers for *THAT*? :D He goes against his family, goes against the entire town, goes against regular vampires, faces off against wolves, *AND* even goes against his own natural urges to KILL BELLA because he’s in love with her.

On top of all that, he can read EVERYONE’S mind, except for hers. The new-girl outcast loner is SO unique and important! Of course chicks are gonna drink the Kool-Aid straight with no chaser, wipe their lips and ask you to pass them some more! :D

Be Edward

The obvious moral of this story for the fellaz is to BE EDWARD!!! :D

Some gals you can pull by telling them what you WILL do for them. Others, you can pull by telling them what you WON’T do. ;) Be the Alpha. Make her feel unique. Tell her what you want from her…….. and then tell her why you can’t or won’t pull the trigger. Sweetness! hehe Leave her wondering how it WOULD HAVE BEEN if she had hooked up with you.

A lot of chicks won’t give it up simply because they know you want it. It’s this weirdo mentality where they like to make themselves feel special or perhaps powerful by denying or defying you. I know you know what I’m talking about.. Everything’s going in the right direction, and all of a sudden, they’re backing away from you or they start playing games. The counter to this dumb way of being is to tell them what you’re NOT going to do so they attempt to defy you by making you do it.

You see this throughout the movie. Edward tells Bella he’s a killer, her response is that she’s not afraid of him. Edward seems to be repulsed by her when he has to sit next to her in class, she wants to confront him about that. Edward tells her he’s not going to tell her about himself, she insists. Edward tells her he’s not going to turn her into a vampire, she tells him she wants to live with him forever.

So.. If nothing in your usual repertoire’s working, flip the script. Be That Guy. Make her the star of your movie. Break out your “Something for Nothing” game. Let her know that you’re her American Dream.. just don’t give it to her… Just let the tension build and see what happens ;)

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As you know if you’ve been following this column over the last 6 months, DatingGenius doesn’t “date”.

The term “dating” implies progression. It’s like something Richie Cunningham or Potsie Weber might do. You see a chick and you want her, but you’re not willing to let her know what time it is, so you beat around the bush taking her places in hopes that she’ll see you as the kind of guy she wants to give it up to. *yawn*

In fact, there *IS* no progression. A chick knows if she wants to mess with you off the bat. Depending on what you tell her after that, she either thinks more about giving you some or LESS about giving you some, hahaha :D … That’s all there is. You want to hook up with her, or else you wouldn’t be on a so-called “date” with her. Everybody knows it, so stop acting like you’re all sneaky and undercover and then try to surprise the chick with a “good-night kiss” when you drop her home, hoping that it works like in the movies, and all of a sudden, she’ll invite you in for…. a nightcap. :/

So, no. DatingGenius doesn’t “date”. He hangs out with chicks. Period. If they’re into DatingGenius like that, then CHA-CHINGGGG!!! :D If not, we have a good time anyway, then we go about our respective businesses.

Having said that, if you still insist on “dating”, like actually courting one person in a serial fashion with the intent of them eventually handing you a title that’s supposed to mean something, like “significant other”, then make sure you date someone BETTER. THAN. YOU! :D

Now, that might not seem to make sense, coming from the diabolical, empty-life-having (bookstore chick’s friend informed me of this a couple of weeks ago), sinister, evil, manipulating DatingGenius! :D You would think that he would advocate kicking it to the dumbest, low-brow character you can find in order to maximize your control over the situation. Dummies and lowlives are great if you’re just trying to get on ASAP and don’t intend to see them ever again in life. If you’re actually going to REPRESENT with this person, like as in let ANYONE ELSE know that you’re messing with them… That person needs to be a FANTASTIC individual. This is actually MORE IMPORTANT for the ladies than it is for the fellaz, so pay attention. :D

[Part 1: Dummies]

Let’s say the person you’re dating is a dummy. Like they’re just not intelligent. Maybe you’re on iChat with them and it takes them mad, crazy, stupid long to type a response to you, and then after all that waiting, it’s like a line and a half because they were only using their two pointer fingers to peck at the keyboard. Or maybe they can’t spell for JACK, and you’re wondering if they dropped out of school in the 5th grade to pack bags for change at the supermarket, then got hooked on drugs before making it back into the school system.

If you actually date this idiot, regardless of how good he or she looks or how good the sex is, don’t give yourself credit like you’ve pulled off some fantastic feat. In fact, anyone smarter than them will be able to manipulate them if they choose to, and you’ve “built your house on sand”… if not quicksand.

On top of that, you can’t TAKE this person ANYWHERE! :D Unless they happen to LOOK intelligent and you can convince them to not say ANYTHING around your peers, this person is an accident waiting to happen… Actually, an accident TRYING to happen, because it’s been my experience that the dumber someone is, the more they try to impress other people. Did you notice that? :D It’s like the smartest people, most of the time in a conversation, they’re listening and PROCESSING what people are saying. When they finally say something, it’s worth hearing and it’s the product of what they’ve absorbed from what’s been going on. Meanwhile, you see the dummies sitting there staring at the mouth of the person who’s talking… They seem to be trying to synchronize, like double dutch, getting ready to jump into the conversation when they perceive that the current speaker is about to finish his or her point.

The problem with this is that if you’re synchronizing, you’re not LISTENING, which becomes apparent when the dummy jumps in with something relevant to 10 minutes ago when they finally had ONE good idea, and they’ve been waiting until now to get a word in edgewise. That’s when the entire conversation stops and everyone tries to be polite. There’s this silent exchange that goes on between everyone. They’re not so much being polite to the dummy as they’re being polite TO *YOU* because it’s YOUR FAULT that this person’s in here $&%*ing up the program! :D Basically, people are embarrassed *for* you, and everyone’s trying not to mention that the emperor has no clothes on.

This is easily avoided, if you insist on dating dummies and bringing them out in public, by not giving them a title when you introduce them. We all have those friends… Every so often, they come around with a new…. person… and they introduce this person by name, but no title. Like, it’s clear that they’re out on a date, but by not declaring this person, you get to play it off down the line. Oh… That was a business partner from the Kentucky branch, my job asked me to show him around. Oh… That was my CEO’s daughter, visiting from San Diego. Who? When?… OH!… I was interviewing her for that intern position (at 11:30 pm). This only works, however, if you know you’re going to get rid of them eventually. If you end up eventually declaring them, you look like a chump for trying to play it off.

You also can’t leave people like this alone with your friends. Do NOT go to the bathroom. Do NOT go to the bar to order drinks. Do NOT pass “go” and Do NOT collect $200. Stick to this person LIKE GLUE. If you leave, and your friends ask your date “What do you think about Obama” and they reply “I think he’s still hiding in those mountains”, you’re *dead*. Laughing stock. You will NEVER live it down.

DatingGenius

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Are *you* a Tech Elitist? If so, how’s that workin’ for ya?

As it’s now Christmas, and we think of The Grinch sitting high on the hill, looking down on all the little people of the village with contempt… Let’s consider our own positions in our respective fields and how we’ve chosen social media sites & groups as well as whom we’ve chosen to affiliate ourselves with.

There was much change during 2007. More ways to communicate. More social sites to join. More video hosts with their own little gimmicks that made them slightly different from the rest. New video editing software. New storage solutions. New live streaming options….

As new opportunities arose, there was a lot of bandwagon-jumping. Sometimes it stuck, sometimes it didn’t. When Twitter was initially unreliable, OFTEN, eventually, Jaiku came along, and there was a mass exodus. The backup plan for when Twitter would go down was for people to immediately start posting on Jaiku until the problem was resolved. Eventually, Twitter became stable, and I didn’t hear a peep about Jaiku for months until they got bought by Google. All of a sudden, here come the Jaiku friend requests.

Even within Twitter, there was bandwagon-jumping. Apps were created so you didn’t have to use the twitter web page with your browser. Some people stuck with them. Some people bailed back to the web site when they realized how many twitter posts the apps weren’t picking up. Eventually, people found found satisfaction in how they received twitter posts. At some point during ’07, Pownce became a player as well.

There was much debate about which status update application was better between the three of them. I ended up sticking with Twitter, and once every so often, I copy/paste redundant posts to Pownce & Jaiku for people that primarily (if not exclusively) use those sites. I’m also biased towards Twitter because I have 341 contacts there vs. 117 on Pownce and 50 on Jaiku, many of which are redundant for the reason I stated earlier. So, for the sake of this post, I’ll say I made the ‘elitist’ decision that Twitter was better for my purposes and essentially neglect the other two services.

On the social site front, I used to have a regular MySpace presence. I had somewhere around 500 “friends” that were rather randomly acquired. What I mean by that is that I had probably 100 contacts that I knew from some other site or forum or that I actually knew IRL and then another 400 or so people/companies that sent me a friends request and then essentially never talked to me “again”. :D … “Again” has to be in quotes, because they never TALKED to me the first time. All they did was click a button that sent me a friends request, and I accepted it. I enjoyed interacting with my actual friends on MySpace, but the vast majority of it I found to be utterly worthless. MySpace is fantastic if you’re a musician or an artist, but I didn’t make many new relationships on MySpace that were worth anything.

Eventually, Facebook stepped its game up, and I migrated to “the better site”. Similar to my Twitter bias for status updates, my MySpace dealings dwindled to ZERO. In fact, if someone didn’t have a facebook account, I wouldn’t even bother to look them up on MySpace. :) “Everybody who was anybody” was on Facebook, so there wasn’t any need to ‘waste’ time on other mass social sites. Recently, someone mentioned MySpace to me, and I inadvertently laughed and said something like “You *still* use your MySpace account?” She replied that she interacts with the people that she knows because of business on Facebook, but her IRL friends are all still on MySpace. I hadn’t thought about it before, but as I sit here on my Facebook hill with contempt… I’m now wondering how many of my ACTUAL friends are still down in the MySpace village, having never made the jump to “the better site”.

The reason Facebook is better for me is that I deal with social media every day of the week. Now that I’m thinking about it, for the average joe, MySpace is more than enough, and there’s no reason for them to look for better connectivity to more REAL people. So now I have to consider whether it’s more beneficial to me to move some of my Facebook-time back to MySpace instead of concentrating solely on the site that’s clearly superior for my purposes.

Next, you have video hosts. I use blip.tv because the options and functionalities serve my purposes as I maintain my own video blogs using WordPress, Show-In-A-Box and vPiP. Meanwhile, other people talk into their webcams and post videos to YouTube. I’ve posted a few videos to YouTube for test purposes, but I wasn’t impressed with the video compression quality at the time, I wasn’t impressed with the Terms of Service and I *CERTAINLY* wasn’t impressed with the dimwitted remarks people love to leave in the comments sections.

For those reasons and others, I’ve left YouTube just about completely alone… However, you can’t argue with the numbers of views that people get, assuming they get “featured”. YouTube has become the go-to for people looking for any kind of video under the sun, so just by having your video there, you have more of a chance of it going viral than if you oh-so-elitely plan, film, edit, compress, upload, post, tag and advertise your own videos like I do. :)

The question, again, is “How’s that workin’ for ya?”. Fortunately, another 2007 development is TubeMogul which enables you to upload a video once and have it distributed to multiple video sharing sites. TubeMogul also tracks statistics for you across several sites. So now, there’s less incentive to keep “all your eggs in one basket”.

I’m sure we can look forward to lots more fantastic developments in 2008. :) Personally, I’ll be paying more attention than I was this year as far as whether I’d like to consolidate or expand in the areas of status updates, social sites and video hosting sites. I didn’t even get to talk about live streaming options, like how I think Operator11 is infinitely better than BlogTV….. except Operator11 went completely offline for more than a week, so people like Jonny Goldstein had to retreat to other live streaming sites to keep their shows going. Of course, there’s no way to add a BlogTV archive to your Operator11 show archive, so c’est la vie. :/

Anyway… I think it’s in all of our best interests to pay attention not only to which new app or site has cool features or the elite people flocking to it, but also to whether we’re trading away communications with our core viewers, friends, contacts and followers. Just like The Grinch found out… it’s lonely at the top.

Bill Cammack • Cammack Media Group, LLC

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Facebook launched Facebook Pages today. This makes it easier for businesses, musicians, etc to represent themselves to the Facebook population, and makes it easier for the population to affiliate themselves with or review their favorites.

They have also launched Social Ads, which make use of your self-created affiliations to customize the ads you’re likely to see. This is a good idea, since the latest ads I’ve seen on facebook were for Microsoft Windows (which I don’t use), Harvard Business Online (which was down the street from my school, but I didn’t go there… except for parties! :D), and Elite Online Dating….. Are they trying to TELL me something? :D

I think this is a great move, since a lot of people now use Facebook as their main source for daily information. It’s better to allow people to make business pages inside Facebook than have people search for a link and then go off-site to get the same information.

It’s also a great way for companies to enhance their online presence without spamming people’s friends lists.

PS – In case you can’t find the link to Facebook Pages, go all the way to the bottom of the page and click on Businesses and then you’ll get the options, including Facebook Pages.

Or, just click here. :)

Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack