The Ghost of Television Past
EDIT: I have since revoked this opinion and subscribed to PBSIdeaChannel. I like PBS and I'm okay with supporting them.
Several months ago, I subscribed to the VlogBrothers. They are awesome. Their channel has attracted nearly a million subscribers because they're interesting and smart; their videos use the light (but distinguishing) gimmick of a discussion between brothers, but the gimmick is authentic in origin; it's a clear, attractive image with appropriate backgrounds and editing that matches the style of video; they cover a variety of different realms of academic interest; they interact with their viewers. For those of you unfamiliar with them, this lead to the creation of a wide-reaching fandom called Nerdfightaria. It is large enough that I've incidentally met several nerdfighters in real life, including my own brother, and a bunch of effusive excitement always seems to follow the discovery that we have this identity in common.
Then I found PBSIdeaChannel. A friend of mine showed me a video or two of theirs. I was very excited, because, similarly to the VlogBrothers, they are funny and have a nice-quality image with thought provoking content. I started gobbling up their videos, intrigued by the engaging turn on strange or "stupid" ideas that actually hold more water than they're given credit. The thing is, it's not a person, it's.... PBS. Not that I mind PBS, PBS is great, I like their Independent Lens and some other shows I've seen on that channel. But I'm referring to this channel with a plural pronoun, even though you only ever see one person. And not just "a person," either... it's a young, white, nerdy, brown-haired, bearded man, which is the perfect recipe PBS would be looking for to attract tumblr-type chicks and nerds alike. I was just dismayed that big organizations and corporations and crap from the outside were coming into YouTube and posing as competition to VlogBrothers in a skin that is only so successful because insert standard feminist/racial critique. And on top of that, I was noticing with increasing frequency as I watched these awkward attempts to be "relevant" or "cool" by making scripted jokes or being "ironic" or vocalizing memes (he once says aloud "points emphatically at self" while actually doing so...?). With every video, I became increasingly hesitant to defend my day-old subscription, and with every minute of research I did to write this blog, the situation seemed more complex and intriguing.
It was very clear before the end of just a couple videos that the guy is there with a company, with a team, as a show, with producers with copious amounts of planning going into the videos - he even refers to the show as "us," not as "him," despite the fact that we, as viewers, never see the other "us"es. They have a clear premeditated target audience: 15- to 30-year-old young people. The content is presented in an intentional manner: fast-paced enough to demand your attention, but not enough to lose its appeal to people without background in the subject of interest. It seems engineered that way, crafted in just the right way to get the maximum number of views possible. Something about the fact that the show was the tip of an iceberg, a hidden factory with tons of people scuttling around behind the screen, put me off incredibly. What I've always loved about YouTube culture is that the people there that are successful (personalities like Jenna Marbles or VlogBrothers or Macbarbie07... or sure, Smosh, though I really really dislike them for reasons I won't go into right now) have such organic roots, as I mentioned about VlogBrothers earlier. They start with these super authentic ideas they never really thought would actually go anywhere, and then, because people wanted to watch their stuff, it became something. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with involving a little more intentionality, but the more complicated and contrived it becomes, the more charm it loses.
We live in an age of bloggers, memes, and hashtags. It's getting less and less frequent for things to be made popular by professionals trying super hard to make something people will love. I will watch the videos of people I find as obnoxious as Jenna Marbles or people whose interests I have pretty much no interest in like Macbarbie07 just because something about the honesty, the transparency, the community interaction is so awesome. Many YouTubers say that their subscribers are the best part about being on YouTube, and what has kept them there. Well, at least for me, it's often the people making the videos that keep me there. The real people. Sure, I more frequently watch the videos of people whose content I actually enjoy, like DaveyWavey and AVByte and lacigreen, but it's the honesty of the medium that makes YouTube so different from TV, so special.
And then there's this guy, Mike Rugnetta, who (by the look of his twitter and tumblr, which I stalked) is a very intelligent, accomplished, well-connected, renaissance-man-ish kind of guy that is a nerdfighter, likes minimalist/postmodern art, is a self-described "composer, programmer, and performer," and seems to only kind of lives in Brooklyn because he is such a citizen of the Internet (he used to freaking work for KnowYourMeme). He is certainly far from a flat personality. He's the kind of person whose vlog I would typically follow in a second.
Why the hell does he have to be doing a show with PBS?
There's something about his videos being the tip of a big iceberg, an iceberg of contrived well-educated crowd-controlling minions looking to rope us in, that feels inauthentic. I don't know how much of what he does is tethered to the production crew at KornhaberBrown, how much is determined by PBS, or exactly how these things all got interconnected. But I do know that I'm vaguely uncomfortable with TV media culture and YouTube media culture becoming such close friends. There's no transparency, there's no warmth, there's so much less of an endearing community than there'd be if he weren't trying to be successful by ripping off of Hank Green (which he totally is, in case you didn't hear him say "link in the doobliedoo"). Producer Andrew Kornhaber says about the show that "crafting each episode definitely takes a good amount of thinking.” These aren't videoblogs or some awesome side project... This is the 21st-century TV show.
Now I'm just confused. Because as I'm poking around, I find quotes from this guy EVERYWHERE defending my position. He says in one of the videos I linked above that the "system we're moving away from" is the one with all the "middle men, and the middle, middle, middle, middle men." He says in the context of a review of a book titled "To Sell is Human" that "the Internet has done a lot to change the way people behave both as salespersons and consumers. The connection between consumer and producer is now direct, and it makes those people a lot more powerful." I found out that he and a couple other guys are writing an entire BOOK about internet culture, the kind I've been looking for for ages, and I got excited about the projects he's engaged in. (Unsurprisingly, they're selling it on Kickstarter, because "traditional publishing houses don't really hold any water for [them]".) He seems to have a profound understanding of the Internet and the way it works and what makes it successful and blah blah blah.
Then why, in PBSIdeaChannel, does Rugnetta come off so unnecessarily pretentious? Why does the show have this twinge of insincerity and removedness from its potential fanbase? Why did he feel the need to team up with a TV channel to be successful on YouTube? Why does he think they're so much "the coolest?" He's obviously got down the whole convince-the-common-Internet-person-to-support-me thing down on Kickstarter. Did PBS approach him, because they're trying to adapt to the new age? I figure that might be the case.
Whatever the case, I would really like Mike Rugnetta to do more videos like this and less videos like this, because "present and exciting and in your face and intense and adjectives!" just seems so scripted, like a contrived attempt to make nerdy teenagers laugh because he's being "ironic" or something. I don't know why he gets that way. I guess it's a bit presumptuous to say that it's certainly because of his connection to a TV network. But things change in his tone when I'm reading his stuff on social networks in the same way that his more down-to-earth, "B-Side" Thanksgiving video does; the way he presents his ideas there makes it seem like he's talking to people instead of a market. At least until you read the description, which refers to him in the third person. Introduce us to the PBS people, man. Or make your own channel. Until then, I will be ...uninterested? unsubscribing conflicted about your show. This isn't about PBS or even Rugnetta's channel, per se - it's about the uncomfortable blurring of the lines between TV specials and human interaction. Honestly, I'd rather keep YouTube the way we know and like it.
Several months ago, I subscribed to the VlogBrothers. They are awesome. Their channel has attracted nearly a million subscribers because they're interesting and smart; their videos use the light (but distinguishing) gimmick of a discussion between brothers, but the gimmick is authentic in origin; it's a clear, attractive image with appropriate backgrounds and editing that matches the style of video; they cover a variety of different realms of academic interest; they interact with their viewers. For those of you unfamiliar with them, this lead to the creation of a wide-reaching fandom called Nerdfightaria. It is large enough that I've incidentally met several nerdfighters in real life, including my own brother, and a bunch of effusive excitement always seems to follow the discovery that we have this identity in common.
Then I found PBSIdeaChannel. A friend of mine showed me a video or two of theirs. I was very excited, because, similarly to the VlogBrothers, they are funny and have a nice-quality image with thought provoking content. I started gobbling up their videos, intrigued by the engaging turn on strange or "stupid" ideas that actually hold more water than they're given credit. The thing is, it's not a person, it's.... PBS. Not that I mind PBS, PBS is great, I like their Independent Lens and some other shows I've seen on that channel. But I'm referring to this channel with a plural pronoun, even though you only ever see one person. And not just "a person," either... it's a young, white, nerdy, brown-haired, bearded man, which is the perfect recipe PBS would be looking for to attract tumblr-type chicks and nerds alike. I was just dismayed that big organizations and corporations and crap from the outside were coming into YouTube and posing as competition to VlogBrothers in a skin that is only so successful because insert standard feminist/racial critique. And on top of that, I was noticing with increasing frequency as I watched these awkward attempts to be "relevant" or "cool" by making scripted jokes or being "ironic" or vocalizing memes (he once says aloud "points emphatically at self" while actually doing so...?). With every video, I became increasingly hesitant to defend my day-old subscription, and with every minute of research I did to write this blog, the situation seemed more complex and intriguing.
It was very clear before the end of just a couple videos that the guy is there with a company, with a team, as a show, with producers with copious amounts of planning going into the videos - he even refers to the show as "us," not as "him," despite the fact that we, as viewers, never see the other "us"es. They have a clear premeditated target audience: 15- to 30-year-old young people. The content is presented in an intentional manner: fast-paced enough to demand your attention, but not enough to lose its appeal to people without background in the subject of interest. It seems engineered that way, crafted in just the right way to get the maximum number of views possible. Something about the fact that the show was the tip of an iceberg, a hidden factory with tons of people scuttling around behind the screen, put me off incredibly. What I've always loved about YouTube culture is that the people there that are successful (personalities like Jenna Marbles or VlogBrothers or Macbarbie07... or sure, Smosh, though I really really dislike them for reasons I won't go into right now) have such organic roots, as I mentioned about VlogBrothers earlier. They start with these super authentic ideas they never really thought would actually go anywhere, and then, because people wanted to watch their stuff, it became something. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with involving a little more intentionality, but the more complicated and contrived it becomes, the more charm it loses.
We live in an age of bloggers, memes, and hashtags. It's getting less and less frequent for things to be made popular by professionals trying super hard to make something people will love. I will watch the videos of people I find as obnoxious as Jenna Marbles or people whose interests I have pretty much no interest in like Macbarbie07 just because something about the honesty, the transparency, the community interaction is so awesome. Many YouTubers say that their subscribers are the best part about being on YouTube, and what has kept them there. Well, at least for me, it's often the people making the videos that keep me there. The real people. Sure, I more frequently watch the videos of people whose content I actually enjoy, like DaveyWavey and AVByte and lacigreen, but it's the honesty of the medium that makes YouTube so different from TV, so special.
And then there's this guy, Mike Rugnetta, who (by the look of his twitter and tumblr, which I stalked) is a very intelligent, accomplished, well-connected, renaissance-man-ish kind of guy that is a nerdfighter, likes minimalist/postmodern art, is a self-described "composer, programmer, and performer," and seems to only kind of lives in Brooklyn because he is such a citizen of the Internet (he used to freaking work for KnowYourMeme). He is certainly far from a flat personality. He's the kind of person whose vlog I would typically follow in a second.
Why the hell does he have to be doing a show with PBS?
There's something about his videos being the tip of a big iceberg, an iceberg of contrived well-educated crowd-controlling minions looking to rope us in, that feels inauthentic. I don't know how much of what he does is tethered to the production crew at KornhaberBrown, how much is determined by PBS, or exactly how these things all got interconnected. But I do know that I'm vaguely uncomfortable with TV media culture and YouTube media culture becoming such close friends. There's no transparency, there's no warmth, there's so much less of an endearing community than there'd be if he weren't trying to be successful by ripping off of Hank Green (which he totally is, in case you didn't hear him say "link in the doobliedoo"). Producer Andrew Kornhaber says about the show that "crafting each episode definitely takes a good amount of thinking.” These aren't videoblogs or some awesome side project... This is the 21st-century TV show.
Now I'm just confused. Because as I'm poking around, I find quotes from this guy EVERYWHERE defending my position. He says in one of the videos I linked above that the "system we're moving away from" is the one with all the "middle men, and the middle, middle, middle, middle men." He says in the context of a review of a book titled "To Sell is Human" that "the Internet has done a lot to change the way people behave both as salespersons and consumers. The connection between consumer and producer is now direct, and it makes those people a lot more powerful." I found out that he and a couple other guys are writing an entire BOOK about internet culture, the kind I've been looking for for ages, and I got excited about the projects he's engaged in. (Unsurprisingly, they're selling it on Kickstarter, because "traditional publishing houses don't really hold any water for [them]".) He seems to have a profound understanding of the Internet and the way it works and what makes it successful and blah blah blah.
Then why, in PBSIdeaChannel, does Rugnetta come off so unnecessarily pretentious? Why does the show have this twinge of insincerity and removedness from its potential fanbase? Why did he feel the need to team up with a TV channel to be successful on YouTube? Why does he think they're so much "the coolest?" He's obviously got down the whole convince-the-common-Internet-person-to-support-me thing down on Kickstarter. Did PBS approach him, because they're trying to adapt to the new age? I figure that might be the case.
Whatever the case, I would really like Mike Rugnetta to do more videos like this and less videos like this, because "present and exciting and in your face and intense and adjectives!" just seems so scripted, like a contrived attempt to make nerdy teenagers laugh because he's being "ironic" or something. I don't know why he gets that way. I guess it's a bit presumptuous to say that it's certainly because of his connection to a TV network. But things change in his tone when I'm reading his stuff on social networks in the same way that his more down-to-earth, "B-Side" Thanksgiving video does; the way he presents his ideas there makes it seem like he's talking to people instead of a market. At least until you read the description, which refers to him in the third person. Introduce us to the PBS people, man. Or make your own channel. Until then, I will be ...
I found Idea Channel a few months ago, and I didn't really care that they were sponsored by PBS. They presented a variety of relevant ideas in a way that made you think a bit. It's not exactly like I think about the legal status of Happy Birthday or Franz Liszt everyday, so at least I learned something.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that though, sure, the channel is more corporatized than others channels might be. Vlogbrothers had a video a while back lamenting how Youtube had become more like TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxXc_fXxMoE There’s more desire for a community than for an audience, and this is a pretty prevalent thing on the internet as a whole, and while this is somewhat obvious, it bears repeating that there is a great deal more equality online than off. And I think it’s the coolest feature of the internet that this prevailing force of the collective human mind can promote something awesome without the need for money. It’s what makes Wikipedia or Kickstarter possible. It’s that enormous entanglement of grassroots that gives the internet the power to give to the commoner again. It’s a very romantic notion.
But I think it’s interesting to note that instead of the guy in his basement trying to reenact Star Wars, it’s the bigger companies who need to imitate the basement guy. And while this may seem as being a simple popular appeal, I don’t think that’s the only dimension to it. Things like Idea Channel may seem framed to promote “awesome”, but I think there’s a genuine aspect to that as well. It’s unrealistic to expect companies just to ignore internet forever, except their business model now needs to adapt to a freer environment. Even if it’s an adaption, it’s still a cool one. It’s sort of what Mike what talking about in his hipster video--they are absorbing something of ours and acting like it’s theirs. Again, I find it difficult to say they are ipso facto bad because they are adopting the internet’s style. And one a side note, I don’t see how Idea Channel makes a lot of money anyway
Yes, there is the issue of intentions and deciding if Idea Channel is selfish or not. I think it’s safe to say companies don’t typically care to do things which will hurt them in the long run, so giving money to charities is more of a PR move than actual selflessness (generally speaking). But goals for companies (education for PBS or the “Don’t be evil” and make the world’s information successful mission of Google) can be more noble than pure money. As for the issue of the populist appeal, every video is going to have a audience. I remember you saying yourself Crash Course material was directed towards the 13-18 demographic, and that’s not because they’re trying to get money. So whether Mike answers comments at the end of each video for good PR or because he (or PBS) is just simply cool, is still up for grabs, but don’t discount the videos as money-making schemes solely because they are sponsored.
Jaco - You're drawn to IdeaChannel for exactly the right reasons, and I heard him say in an interview, while describing his subscribers, that they're very intelligent, well-read, college-age types that are interested in broadening their horizons. There's a big difference between this and Crash Course, and that's that Crash Course is up-front about its purpose: school-age education. Those are the topics they do, and that's the purpose they serve... They're not *really* meant for people that aren't taking those courses or aren't at the age where they would be. PBSIdeaChannel has ideas that can be easily accessible by people well into their 30s, 40s and 50s, even though I don't think the show should make 40-50-year-olds their audience, by any means. But if it's presented in such a way that occasionally feels immature even to a college-age kid...dunno, that seems like a bigger problem than the simplicity of tutoring videos or something.
ReplyDeleteLike you say, this is an improvement on PBS's part - this is what big TV companies would do if they knew what was good for them. I meet it with a great deal of reluctance, though, because I'm afraid the "power of the commoner" is at risk in the very long term. YouTube is such a grassroots thing that the thought of corporations coming to take it over makes me groan. PBS wouldn't likely be on YouTube if it weren't using the show as a probe into the next era... as a way to broaden its relevance... but if they were going to expand onto YouTube, I would prefer them to stick to documentaries or take a less personal approach that doesn't seem like they're trying to be A YOUTUBER. Evokes feeling of buffybot, if you know what I mean.
For me to feel completely comfortable supporting IdeaChannel with a subscription and views (not that I probably won't watch the videos anyways, 'cause they're cool), I would have to be filled in on what the vlog's relationship to PBS is, who exactly is behind the making of the videos, why this person that seems an unlikely candidate for this kind of project is working with them, and what PBS's motives are for creating the channel. If they're going to try to do the personal-relatable-transparent gig, I'd prefer go all the way.