| | April EditionI guess I haven't updated in so long that we might as well have declared this blog dead. As of 2007, I'm sure the death rate of online journals has reached in the millions (spamblogs included). Has this overdone art become extinct in the face of new media?
First off, I have to say I'm tired of fake news on April Fool's Day. Yeah, I get enough of my daily dose through Comedy Central and the Onion, so I don't think goofy blog entries about a Wii-Helm or Wee-fi. Frankly, the fact that we fit oodles of jokes into one unusual day in April seems to suggest that bloggers don't have much of a sense of humor any other time of the year. Then again, maybe I should just lighten up?
Getting back to new media, you got to wondering what is the new trend. Yes, I feel rather ambivalent about this new form of self expression: YouTube. If you thought blurry videos of Jackass copycats or lip-syncing dorks were the extent of video-sharing websites, then get ready for a rather unpleasant surprise.
Our slip into video posting is somewhat disturbing to me, because it is even easier than writing a blog entry. At one point, I felt encouraged by the fact that students and young people would be more involved in reading and writing through online journals (even if it's not so focused on grammar). In contrast, posting a video of yourself talking or performing miscellaneous stunts doesn't require as much on writing as it does showmanship. Maybe this encourages certain folks to be more expressive, but I don't necessarily think it does anything to aid in the learning process that folks ought to be engaging in at school. Granted, creativity is still the most important element...you need to captivate your audience if you want people to pay attention to your video posts, which might as well be the double-edged sword for why you might want to post something in the first place.
In the end, I feel that the goal of blogging was both to elicit responses from your readers and to put forth ideas, feelings, and opinions. The structure of your blog is designed to let people provide you feedback. With a video, it seems rather devoid of this active feedback process. Instead, it seems a bit ingratiating for individuals to post a video and then simply expect quips of "Great video" or "Awesome clip".
Food for thought:
1.) Did you remember on Felicity how she would mail her friend those recorded cassettes with entries on what happened in an episode? Maybe someone can correlate that to the popularity of blogs.
2.) Yes, I know there's a bit of hypocrisy to discussing the death of blogs and inaneness of video-sharing websites through a blog. If you hate me that much, just leave a comment. Fool.
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| | Posted 4/2/2007 11:33 AM - 32 views - 2 comments
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