1-24-16
Engl 100
My Window to The World
My first notable encounter with technology was one that set a stage for the rest of my life. This event was the discovery of the artistic creating, sharing, viewing, and interacting website that is Youtube. The presence of Youtube in my life has affected how I view and understand my world, my immediate environment, and even myself. The Youtube that I have come to know is much larger and much deeper than just cat videos and people hurting themselves. Before I go into what exactly Youtube is and how it has impacted me so, however, I’d like to tell you the story of how I first encountered Youtube. If you’re not interested in this story then you can just skip to paragraph 4, otherwise thank you for taking the time to read the story of Youtube and I.
I was around the age of twelve and was your average dumb middle school student. I grew up in South Central Los Angeles so my parents were not too fond of the idea of me leaving the front gate. They didn’t want me to be the next innocent bystander, so I spent a lot of time with the people directly surrounding me, especially my older cousin who live in the neighboring duplex. . I was hanging out in my cousin's’ room; just lounging around, bored, hot, and listening to her staticky radio. I think Chris Brown was popular back then because I could swear I heard “Kiss Kiss” about three times in my trance like state. The lifeless silence was interrupted when my cousin jumped up from her sprawled position and strolled to her desktop.
“I got to show you this one video on youtube”. “What the hell is youtube?” I replied with the enthusiasm of a person waiting for jury duty. After some discordant back and forth, I reluctantly joined her at her computer screen. It was a pivot animation, an old freeware that you could use to animate stick figures and save them in a GIF format, that would later be posted to various websites. The one we watched was a popular series at the time, and had the figures move and play out scenes while being paired with sound clips from random media sources. These scenes were short, random, and crude for the most part. It was called “Stick Figures on Crack” by PivotMasterXD, or DX; I don’t know, it’s been a long time. The juvenile, brain rotting humor resonated with my young mind so much that I made myself an account.
Soon after creating my account, I became familiar with the big youtubers at the time. Over time, I branched out a bit and started checking out the recommended videos as well as the popular page. I would also see my favorite youtubers collaborate with other youtubers, who I would check out if they interested me. Now almost ten years later, my uses for have increased exponentially. I still use it for entertainment, though my taste have expanded upon. Apart from comedy, I now watch the short films like the ones made by “Wong Fu Production”, I listen to music from artists like Anthony Vincent and Nathan Sharp, and I also view the dancing styles from those like Mike Song and Marquese (NONSTOP) Scott who I actually taught myself how to dance from. Even on the comedy side, I have found different types of humor. I found Theatre of the Absurd and sketch comedy with goof balls like Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, I found standup comedy from Gabriel Iglesias and the Comedy Central, and Black Comedies like SUPEReeeGO.
On the flip side of youtube entertainment, there are ways to share, receive, and discuss information. There are, of course news networks who have channels like Fox News but I am very wary of these types of networks who often have very obvious agendas. I instead go to news/comedy hybrids like John Oliver and Trevor Noah, who often are more trustworthy than traditional news stations and especially politicians. It’s like a quote I’ve heard floating around on the internet recently. “We use to listen to politicians and laugh at comedians. Now we laugh at politicians and listen to comedians.” That, however, is an argument for another essay. - to be continued
No comments:
Post a Comment