The Emoboys. The Lonelygirls. The Proudparents. The Oldsters. Yes, they are the YouTubers, captured poignantly (and appropriately) in a video posted by Pete Blackshaw over at cgm. As he says, it’s great stuff for cultural anthropologists. And aren’t we all playing that role, to one extent or another, these days, as new media consumption patterns and cultural behaviors erupt right and left? Worth watching.
The River, in History
By chance, I hit the Internet Archive Wayback Machine today and noticed that Breaking Video News With a Mobile Phone
Wow. Just saw a story that says Fox News Channel actually aired video footage captured with a Treo, during the NYC plane crash aftermath this week.
From the piece:
“We’ve been waiting for the opportunity to get live pictures on the air from inside a cellular network, and we wanted to take it to the next level, make it easy for people and make it portable,” said Ben Ramos, director of field operations for Fox News.
RIP Ann Richards
Rest in peace Ann Richards, a leader that made me feel proud, and more at home, in my Republican-dominated native Texas.
Problem loading page (The LonelyGirl15 Phenom)
I can’t believe I care enough about this LonelyGirl15 unmasking that I keep hitting refresh despite a Problem loading page error (generated by site overload?). I’m too much of a Webhead to be any indication of popular sentiment, but the spawning of these YouTube “celebrities” really does seem to be happening with some regularity nowadays.
One thing we’ve learned from LonelyGirl15… production values and scripting and everything that goes along with a Hollywood production do matter. Even if some of the artifice in this case went to making it all seem like a home production job… the quirky narrative, the fast-motion photography, the editing and the music all added up to what we viewed as entertainment. Then again, home-grown editing and media creation tools are almost at the level to where this seemed plausible to a lot of people. But not quite.
UPDATE: The LA Times story on the unmasking. Turns out it was a $150 Webcam.
Five Years Ago Today
Checking out the blogosphere this morning, I see a lot of people are posting their memories of that day, five years ago, when the unbelievable became reality. I’ve been dreading this anniversary in some ways, partly because coverage still makes me cry — the way I shed tears in Union Square (NYC) reading “Missing” flyers in the days after the tragedy.
I lived and worked in New York City on September 11, 2001. My office was on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. It was far away from the downtown events, but, because of the towers’ height and the geographical lay-out of the city, we could, and did, step outside our doors to look down Fifth Avenue and see the fatally damaged towers, while they stood, and the sickening black smoke after they fell.
Some other memories:
- Despite just being a couple miles away, I found out about the WTC attack via instant messenger. We had an editor working from home that day, and he’d seen footage on CNN. He IMed those of us in the office and kept us updated regularly. We didn’t have a TV in the office, and the Internet (being totally clogged with traffic) was next-to-useless.
- After doing what we could at the office, I walked home, straight down Fifth Avenue. Along the way, people were actually snatching up postcards of the WTC from tourist-oriented shops.
- Restaurants started running out of food in the days after the attacks, as Manhattan is an island, after all, and shipments of fresh food and produce weren’t exempt from security restrictions that kept everyone out.
- My brother reached me by phone after the first plane hit, but before the second one did, so he was able to relay news to my family that I was nowhere near the buildings. My then-boyfriend, now husband, still living in the UK, didn’t find out I was OK until he got to a place where he could IM me.
May add more as I get more time today.