Bill Cammack

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What I affectionately refer to as “Revisionist History” may actually be more accurately called Historical Revisionism. There are actually two types, one which has a positive connotation and implies that intelligent people took another look at the data that’s currently available to them and came up with a valid interpretation of that data that differs from what’s been widely accepted about that event up until now. The second type is when people decide they don’t like how the past looks and decide to reinterptet it for their own benefit. The latter is what I want to talk about right now.

Time goes forward… Not BACKWARD. Things happen and then they move from the present into the past. Once they’re in the past, there’s no way for you to affect them, being that nobody’s created a time machine yet. If you tell a story ONE WAY at the time, and then turn around and tell a DIFFERENT STORY later on.. Assuming you had your wits about you when you told the story the first time, you are attempting to revise history. Here’s an example:

Back in the day….. (right, Frank?) I used to hang out with this chick that had a boyfriend and she would lie to him all the time about what she had done or where she had been for the last several hours while she wasn’t answering her phone. I didn’t think anything of this becuase that’s what people do when they’re in a relationship and they don’t want to suffer the consequences of their SO knowing who they really are.. They lie. Fine. I get that. Read the rest of this entry »

Asians In Manhattan

Please don’t ask me what’s going on in this picture. Thank you very much. Moving right along….. :D

There are A LOT of Asians in Manhattan, NYC. However, if your “understanding” of Manhattan comes from watching television or films, you’d probably assume that there weren’t any at all.

I don’t know anything about the casting industry, but it pretty much seems that unless someone writes elements specifically attributed to Asians (and we all know what THOSE are) into a show, you’re not going to see any Asian brothaz headlining American films unless they blow up large, like Chow Yun-Fat.

I was actually expecting to see another one of my favorites, Tony Leung show up on the scene, but that’s not really the point I wanted to make. Read the rest of this entry »

Requests For Action

I’m not sure what I think about Requests For Action (RFA)… What I mean by that is that for instance, I’m about to take part for the second year in a row in a videoblogging series that a few of my friends and I do called “New in November” (newinnov.tumblr.com).

Personally, what I would do regarding the site/series is INFORM people that it’s going on or that it’s available. What I would NOT do is request for them to do something about it, such as follow it, reblog it, RT it and DEFINITELY NOT “Please rate my video 5 stars!” :/ Read the rest of this entry »

OK, you males who make up 45% of my viewership, here’s your chance to get busy! :D

Debbie from CityLightsMedia.com sent me this email about a casting call for a new televison series they’re working on:

Casting outgoing men ages 25 to 40 for a cable television series

Seeking attractive, fit, charismatic, men, all ethnicities, 25-40.

Men will practice their pick up skills on our featured dynamic woman.
Dazzle and charm her with wit and personality.  Win her over.
Rate:  $100/half day shoot.
Filming begins end of April.
Interviews;  by appointment only, begin week of March 31st.

Please send a current headshot and resume to citycasting@gmail.com

So, if you think you have the look for the show, and the skillz to take this chick down, get in touch with Debbie and throw your hat in the ring! :D

~Bill

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Social Media Responsibility and Ethics

So the other day, I took some pictures (so what’s new?), except one of the chicks we were hanging out with wasn’t feeling confident about her looks.

There were some general shots that she happened to be in, but then when she was asked to specifically be in a pic (not with me, haha so let’s not start with the “Maybe it was YOU?” :D ), she declined, saying that she wasn’t photogenic.

* This actually happened to be incorrect, but that’s an image and self-esteem topic, having nothing to do with ethics…. *

Sharing

So I had told the group I was going to share the pictures with them. When I reviewed the set the next day, I realized that there were a couple of pictures that the non-photogenic chick (I guess I’ll call her NPC) hadn’t “signed off” on. Read the rest of this entry »

I was fortunate enough to attend a New Media Dinner last night which was hosted by Mr. Strauss Zelnick and featured a discussion moderated by Mr. David Remnick.

One section of the discussion focused on the print media and their online properties vs random bloggers….. (Like MEEEEE!!! *waves* :D). David asked the group [paraphrasing] “What do you see as the future for major media companies?”. I elected not to say anything, because as y’all know who read my material, I don’t like to throw in two cents and leave it at that. I wouldn’t have been content with throwing my idea out there and having the conversation just move on, so I saved it for this morning.

Basically, the point was that there have been major publications like the New York Times (NYT) and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and television networks like ABC, CBS & NBC that have had the media industry ON SMASH for, like, forever. That’s all going away now, because everybody has phones that either have still photo or video capability and everybody AT LEAST has a blog, and at most is hooked up to some sort of live-streaming site like Qik. All bets are OFF when Ustream releases their iPhone app. It’s going to be live video straight to people’s phones… crazy! :D

Anyway, the question was basically how people saw these Mainstream Media (MSM) groups evolving to keep up with and remain viable in these changing times. My prediction will be based on several things that guests brought up during that discusssion.

Fact vs. Opinion

In any situation, there are at least two elements. There are “The Facts”, and then there are people’s OPINIONS ABOUT “The Facts”. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a response to Chrissie Brodigan’s post, “Don’t Feed the Trolls: Dealing With Social Media Sins”.

Not that I give a damn about disclosure, but I’ll mention that Chrissie is a friend of mine (as is probably everyone else she’s talking about in her post):

Interesting.

I posted about this back in June: [http://billcammack.com/2008/07/12/freedom-of-consequences/].

Basically, in order to “live online” as we do, one needs to remain mindful of the lowest common denominator. Whatever you’re “saying”, make sure that if your employer or your grandmother or your “significant other” or you CHILDREN see it, that it’s an accurate representation of yourself that you’re willing to OWN… because odds are that eventually you WILL have to own it, and probably in a fashion that you didn’t consider at the time.

Even “That was then and this is now” is only a partial defense. Look at the Presidential campaign that just went on. John McCain acted like A JERK for the whole time, and then when it was all over and he lost, he gave, IMO, a heartfelt, genuine, really respectable and admirable speech. Things like that can alter people’s perception about a person, but the facts and memories remain about their prior behavior, even if the ‘pain’ of them is muted by the person’s present actions.

So, ultimately, the WIN is Prevention and not Cure. Does that call for sacrifice of some (or many) things one would want to do or say? Yes. The question, however, is what do you really want in the end? Do you want to have social media friends, who don’t know everything you think and feel?… or would you rather be known for what you think and feel and let the chips fall?…..

Social Media is characterized by asynchronous relationships… basically, stalking, in a one-way fashion or a mutual fashion. I might get two comments on a post I make, and then everyone I run into IRL is like “I read your post, blah blah blah”. You can’t suspect that the people you hear from are the ONLY ONES that dislike what happened. Those are merely the ones who are willing to risk THEIR OWN social media reputations by wearing THEIR hearts on Twitter in the same way you constantly wear yours. It basically branches out and people take sides behind the scenes, which is what causes “floods”, because a lot of people get fed up at the same time… a lot of people that the person in question probably wasn’t even AWARE that they knew of or had any opinions at all about the situation, which they thought, for some odd reason, was contained to a small group.

On top of that, our NYC set is different from other groups, because we’re in so much physical, IRL contact with each other. I’m very used to going to parties where I know 60 people on the Facebook “definite” list. I have over 200 mutual friends with several people on Facebook, and a lot of those people live here in NY or NJ. Obviously, all of these people are not going to get along with each other. The only way to navigate this group is to remain neutral. I can care or not care about the situation, empathize or not, but ultimately, it’s none of my business, and I’m not going to tell or suggest to people what they should do, and I’m not going to choose one side over the other, between people that have historically been decent towards me and have developed some sort of beef between each other.

So, to apply my own theory… When I go to that party that at least 60 people that I know are going to show up to, I have to be mentally prepared to OWN anything I’ve said about them since the last time I saw them. I also have to OWN the videos I make and the blog posts I make and the currently 710 pictures of myself on Facebook, where I can’t turn around and say “no… I don’t know that person” or “no… I wasn’t at that party”. I have to own what I say and do AT the party. I have to own the media I output about that party and the cycle continues. So, basically, every stitch of media that you output, you need to check yourself on whether you’re willing to own it, ad infinitum.

As this pertains to your suggested rules for offenders:

You always “Acknowledge Action”, because it’s in “Black & White”, and YOU put it there yourself. It’s not like paparazzi ran up and quoted you and put it in the tabloids. If you post from a position of ownership, acknowledgement is obvious.

You can’t “Become a Victim”, because you’ve already owned the media. You already know WHY you said what you said or did what you did and you already thought about how you would defend it before you pressed “send”. “Defense” is merely informing people about what you were thinking when you posted it. The only real question is whether you unintentionally slighted someone in a way you didn’t anticipate when you posted, in which case, if you feel like apologizing for it, that’s completely appropriate. If they take offense at something you fully MEANT to say and currently stand behind at the point of the ensuing conversation, the issue becomes whether or not you were out of bounds with what you said and whether “the shoe fits” as far as what you said about them, which THEY would need to recognize, and get out of your face.

The Final Frontier is blocking people. That doesn’t keep them from finding out about YOU, but it keeps YOU from hearing what THEY have to say about you. If people aren’t going to be rational and have intelligent discussions with you (assuming YOU’RE acting rationally, to begin with), then the solution is to agree to disagree and hope to avoid those people as much as possible.

So, Yes… It’s EXTREMELY COMPLICATED to live in public, even the limited “public” of our echo chamber, but that’s exactly what it is… an Echo Chamber, which means that everything you say and everything everyone else says is going to keep coming back to you. Your best bet, as I’ve outlined, is OWNERSHIP from the giddyap, so you’re fully prepared to deal with the ricochets.

~Bill

I like lesbians. I mean, who cares? They’re still attractive chicks. That’s what matters! :D There’s no difference between hanging out with a lesbian that doesn’t want to give you some and hanging out with a non-lesbian that doesn’t want to give you some.

So I stumbled upon this Jezebel post, “The Double-Glazed Ceiling:” Is It Harder For Women To Come Out At Work?, and one of the commenters said that they felt that lesbianism is often fetishized.

I didn’t think much of that statement, but then, for some odd reason, I started thinking about WHY I didn’t think much of that statement. What I very quickly understood is that it’s part of my personal brainwashing that lesbians are a fetish.

Before you illiterates start protesting, :D I’m not saying lesbianISM is a fetish for the women involved in it. I’m saying that lesbiANS are a fetish to guys in general.

You can pretty much thank the porno industry for this brainwashing, but, IRL, the more hot chicks involved in something, the merrier. This is why you see SEVERAL booth-babes at car shows instead of just one. As a matter of fact, if you see ONE female at a car show booth, she’s usually in a suit, actually KNOWS about the cars and is an actual EMPLOYEE and REPRESENTATIVE of the company. When you hire booth-babes, OTOH, you have to get more than one, because guys like multiple chicks, regardless of what they tell their wives.

There’s also a biological reason for guys liking multiple chicks. If you have multiple kids with the same woman, they all have the same genetic makeup and carry the same benefits and flaws into the next generation. You’re gambling that your genes and hers create viable children that will thrive and succeed. If you have kids with multiple women, you mix it up, so there’s actually a better chance that one of your combinations will be better, smarter, stronger or faster than the others.

So anyway… Since we live in a society of Pair Bonders, guys can’t normally get their hands on multiple women. This is where the porno industry helps out… oh, and strip clubs.

I don’t really count strip clubs as of equal importance with porno as far as creating & maintaining the lesbian fetish. You can argue that in both instances, women are given money to do sexual acts. In the strip club, though, it’s clear that the women will do “whatever” for money… and, believe you me… I mean WHATEVER, hahaha, you’d actually be surprised what you can….. The point is that face to face (or face to, whatever) in the strip club, you’re completely aware that the ONLY reason this chick’s doing what she’s doing is because somebody handed her money. Before they handed her the money, she wasn’t doing JACK. Now that she’s been paid, she’s all over you. *YAWN*

Porno’s different, because at least they TRY to act. Porno attempts to be the fly on the wall, and you just happen to be there when several gals are hanging out together and decide to try out all these sex toys they just happen to have laying around. (Tip for the fellaz… If your woman says she’s going to a Tupperware party, I don’t even think they SELL Tupperware anymore, haha Get It? ;) )

So anyway, pornography bridges the gap between what guys were thinking already, and them actually seeing it with their eyes instead of making it up in their heads about the two chicks that are standing over by the water cooler in their skirt-suits. hahaha They don’t make these porno scenarios up out of nowhere. There’s not some “porno writers’ guild” that oversees production. Guys think up scenarios about chicks all day and all night, so the plotlines are obvious and plentiful. All you need is two attractive chicks… well, all you need is ONE attractive chick for guys to think about having sex with her, but for the purpose of this post, you need TWO to kick off the guy’s mental lesbian fantasy production.

I think this is partially why lesbianism is fetishized also, actually. Guys don’t care whether chicks are lesbians or not. They just want the gals to DO STUFF to each other. Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever asked a chick if she was a lesbian. :) Like I said at the beginning… who cares? It doesn’t make any difference. But I guess my point is that women are going to be perceived sexually and fantasized about REGARDLESS of what they claim to be into, so for a woman to state that she’s a lesbian, it’s like “oh. pass me a brew”.

Then again, I live in NYC, so we have tons of lesbians here. I would imagine that a woman declaring herself a lesbian to someone who lives in the sticks might actually raise an eyebrow, similar to people that are used to seeing brown-skinned people only on television finally seeing one with their own eyes.

On top of that… “IRL Girl on Girl action” became a fad at some point. I don’t know if there’s an official term for this charade, but if anybody knows, post it in the comments.

As we all know, women love attention. At some point, they figured out that if they kissed other girls at the bar, all of a sudden the attention they were getting skyrocketed… as did the drinks they were being bought and the offers they were receiving to hang out with the guys that were loving the show. Perhaps this was the natural evolution of the Coyote Ugly style of random girls from the crowd getting up and dancing on the bar. I did find it interesting how girls that were being basically ignored BEFORE dancing on the bar became hot property afterwards and received tons of compliments and accolades. I can see that being an addiction and gals wanting to know how they could create the same experience for themselves at bars that didn’t have that type of DiY entertainment.

Next thing you know, you’re hanging out and two chicks that were just standing around drinking beers or whatever start grinding on each other and then if they get a crowd, they start making out. It’s actually kind of funny. It’s like a free strip club. If the chicks were smart, they’d be getting paid to put on their shows. :) But their payment is attention from guys, compliments and free drinks, so that’s better than what they were getting before they started “akkin a fool”!

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, THIS may be even more of a detriment to the situation than porno or actual strip clubs where you know what you can get chicks to do for money. You have so many chicks CRYING WOLF about being lesbians that they’re diluting the actual lesbian population. Those same chicks that grind on each other and make out in the bar hook up with guys on a regular basis. They’re not ACTUAL lesbians.

Similarly, lots of gals CLAIM that they’re lesbians as a defensive statement against guys trying to have sex with them (as if we cared or asked them if they were lesbians in the first place). And save the “maybe it’s *YOU* that they’re telling they’re lesbians to get rid of you!” hahaha I hear that all the time. :D Regardless, you see the problem here. Women are claiming that they don’t have sex with guys and then they turn around and have sex with guys, so these fakers and impostors add to the fetish because guys think they “converted” a lesbian when all they really did was have sex with a liar.

Yeah, this DEFINITELY makes matters worse, because the squeaky wheel gets the oil. All these chicks are parading around claiming lesbianism to get attention, so they’re really visible. Meanwhile, ACTUAL lesbians are invisible. Go ahead and ask someone how a lesbian acts. :) It’s like [blink... blink...]. There aren’t any characteristics. Unless you’re just a nosey person, you’re not going to know a chick’s a lesbian until you invite her to have sex with you.

What does a lesbian couple look like at the bar? That’s right. Two chicks standing around. So what?… Oh, look, she hugged her. So what? Women hug women all the time. Oh, look, she kissed her. So what? Women kiss women all the time. Women like to hold each other’s hands or arms walking down the street as well without being lesbians, so the women misrepresenting lesbianism (IRL fakers, porno girls and strip club chicks) add to the fetish and nothing subtracts from it. I won’t even go for the cheap stats I could rack up by naming celebrities that run that attention game while they think it’ll be good for their careers. You know who they are. Meanwhile, AFAIK, there are fewer lesbian characters in American television shows than there are Asians…….. Asians, PERIOD. Not Asian lesbians.

Like I said, I can’t imagine someone actually ASKING a chick if she’s a lesbian, so for the most part, I receive my information via a third party. My personal reaction is “Good! That means she knows more chicks! :D ” A lot of guys feel negatively about her declaration, because they feel like it’s an affront to their attractiveness or ability to get on… as if she would have given them some in the first place, had she been into guys. A lot of women, lesbian and non, hide their significant others on social media sites in order to avoid said negativity or so that their “taken” status doesn’t decrease their number of twitter followers or whatever. Of course, again, this skews the perception of existence of and interaction with lesbians in the favor of the squeaky wheels, who enjoy broadcasting their exploits on the internet (or anywhere else they possibly can).

So.. Yes… I definitely believe that lesbianism has been fetishized in American society (and probably everywhere else). Time will tell if that ever changes. I suppose I should bring this topic up next time I run into my lesbian friends…. um…. except I’ll probably be too busy trying to meet their girlfriends! :D

~Bill

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Boo Hoo Hoo! :D

Around February, 2008… approximately five (5) months ago, I decided to ask a member of the video message board, Seesmic if he REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted to represent himself as he did in a video that he made.

What happened? People started crying. BOO HOO HOO! YOU’RE BEING MEAN! YOU’RE TELLING HIM WHAT TO DO! BOO HOO HOO! :D

Fast forward 5 months to this week’s events… where a *different* person got penalized for video that HE posted to the internet. Did he post it ~ a year ago? Yes. Was he penalized for it this week? Yes.

So now, maybe people can stop CRYING and WAKE UP! :D It doesn’t matter if you’re having a so-called private conversation with a so-called friend of yours if it’s AVAILABLE FOR THE PUBLIC TO VIEW. People are going to look at the one video that you did and make their own decisions about your content and about YOU as a person. They’re going to decide whether they want to socialize with “a person like this”. They’re going to decide whether they want to HIRE “a person like this”. They’re going to decide whether they want to SPONSOR “a person like this”.

The point I was trying to get across, almost half a year ago, is that all of your content is standalone. You have to treat every video and every text post and every picture as if people are going to look at that ONE item and form judgements about you. You can’t rely on OTHER posts to pull you back into the frying pan out of the fire. You can’t rely on other people vouching for your character, ESPECIALLY when your video is viewed outside the realm in which your friends have juice. If nobody’s ever heard of your friends or they just don’t care what your friends opinions are, you’re short.

The reason people were CRYING is because they want the internet to be about freedom of speech. Unfortunately for them, they’re missing the other side of the coin…

Freedom of Consequences

Yes, you are free and clear to use whatever low-class terms you like when you make video, audio or text posts to the internet. What happens next is… PEOPLE SEE YOU AS LOW-CLASS. Good for you. You’ve achieved your goal. You expressed yourself, and people have a new image of you that you’ve created. Similarly, if you create a video that people see as offensive… PEOPLE SEE YOU AS AN OFFENSIVE PERSON. That’s the way it works. You express yourself, and then, as Otir pointed out, you have ZERO CONTROL over what other people receive and internalize based on what you posted. This is what’s simultaneously fantastic and unfortunate about communication, especially on the internet.

Does it matter that whatever video you’re getting penalized for is a year old? No. People that saw it for the first time TODAY… feel upset about it TODAY…. NOT last year. Unfortunately, the fact that posts, especially video and audio are STANDALONE items means that whatever the focal point is of people being upset can now be embedded ad infinitum all over the web. Guess what? Your context is GONE! The text you wrote on your original page with the video? GONE! The links you had on that page to supporting material? GONE! Your entire library of work up until and surpassing that time? GONE! Comments from posters and/or supporters? GONE! The only thing that’s left is the content that you uploaded and the thoughts of the person who’s newly embedded your video on their page so they can show THEIR FRIENDS that you’re “a person like this”.

I was having a conversation IRL just last night, in which I thought I was anonymous, and then the chick… um… woman says “I’ve read your blog“, hahaha and it was time to change gears. Not because I was being inauthentic beforehand, but because now, I was aware that I wasn’t working with a clean slate. :D We still had a great and interesting convo, but it had already been tinted by her impression of who I am or what I’m about from reading my blog.

That’s the way it works. You express. Other people receive and take away what they want from what you expressed, regardless of your intentions when you posted the text, audio or video. I touched on this in a joking way in “Do NOT Let This Happen To You! :/”. I was saying “some stuff” and then Annie broke out her xacti and it was time for The Kid to say “other stuff”! :D

Permalink: http://pixelcurrents.tv/post/33454768Again… Not because I was being inauthentic when the camera was off, but because what I was saying wasn’t for general consumption. It was a conversation I was having with my friends and totally wouldn’t have made sense outside of the context that they all had from being friends of mine and actually knowing me. I mean… It would have made sense, :) but I can’t express to randoms the same thing I can express to people that have background knowledge of who I am, what I do and why I do it with anywhere near the same effect.
 
Similarly… If you do a video that you put out on public channels that for some odd reason, you consider private… be prepared for people that you didn’t intend to watch that video to view it and make up their minds about “who you are” as a person. If you do a video that you think is funny to your friends and people that know you, and put it on public channels… be prepared for people that you didn’t intend to watch that video to view it and make up their minds about “who you are” as a person. Is there freedom of speech? Of course there is. There’s also OWNERSHIP. OF. CONSEQUENCES.

That was my whole point back on Seesmic.

I couldn’t care ANY LESS how people express themselves on the net.

I wanted people to realize is that they eventually might have to OWN the consequences of their actions/words/videos, and that’s what we all got a front row seat to this very week.

Welcome to the real world, Neo.

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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