Two weeks ago, The Onion wrote an article called “Time Between Thing Being Amusing, Extremely Irritating Down To 4 Minutes”. The article quotes fake research data showing new memes come and go quicker than ever before, with most people realizing after just 90 seconds that the thing was never funny to begin with.
They predict that by the year 2023 the feelings of amusement and irritation will happen simultaneously, “the two emotions effectively canceling each other out and leaving one feeling nothing whatsoever.”
It would be fantastic if every living human being were as intelligent as an Onion editor.
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In high school I’d hit up the local record shop, Crow’s Nest, at least once a week. The vast majority of the money I made at my after school job, and recording bands in their garages, went right back into buying CDs.
Some days I would dig through the imports sections, other days the box sets and singles. A few times I’d even hit up the New Releases wall. I hadn’t heard of most of the garbage on there, but occasionally the album art alone would be enough to get me to spend my hard earned $15 on a band I didn’t know.
This was before YouTube, before Pandora and before iTunes.
I “discovered” a lot of shitty bands by buying on album art alone. But for every ten Nickelbacks, there was one Isle of Q, one diamond in the rough.
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I’ve watched half a dozen VEDA (Vlog Every Day in April) videos so far asking us, the viewers, for ideas on what they, the “content creators,” should talk about in their VEDA videos. And me being the capitalist/opportunist that I am, I realized there is now a market for VEDA scripts.
So, for the super low price of $50, I will write your next VEDA video for you. I’m calling the service VEDA, Inc (Vlogs Every Day by Alan).
And I’ll totally customize the video for your specific channel. Do you already have a fun-lovin’ name you use to refer to your audience? I’ll work that in. Coffee-Lovers, Walllnuts, Magmaheads, Mystical Beards, whatever.
Do you have a clever catch-phrase you use to make your audience feel like they’re in on the joke while at the same time excluding all the n00b viewers? I won’t forget to be including that.
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I woke up this morning and stumbled to my computer in the dark. I’m usually up before the sun. I read an article about towns so desperate for taxes and utilities money they are actually giving lots of land away for free, in exchange for the promise that you will build a house and live there for at least five years. Then I fell asleep on the couch.
I woke up for the second time this morning as Kristen was leaving to go to work. I stumbled back to the computer and had a new friend request on Facebook from Zeller, one of my best friends from middle school, who I haven’t seen since.
In middle school, Zeller and I worked together for four bucks an hour at his dad’s construction company. We would clean up nails the real workers would drop, we’d paint, whatever, we were cheap teenage labor. All cash, off the books, sorry IRS.
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I really dislike “random” as a genre. Of anything. Over the last decade, random has somehow become its own art form. And it depresses me.
Stringing together unrelated phrases and words is not art, it’s how a two year old learns to speak.
Yet without fail, these viral videos and songs and images that don’t say anything about anything get propped up with comments like “OMG, that was so random, I don’t know why but I love it”.
Ugh.
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