#cheezles

Last semester, I made a video for a subject called Media Project A.  It was a satirical news report on the very real subject of housing affordability in the suburb in which I live, Brunswick.  You can watch it here. 

I put a lot of effort and hours into making that video, and when I uploaded it, I sat back and braced myself for feedback from the harshest critics of them all, YouTube commenters.  Among a small amount of positive feedback (mainly from my mates), there were some particularly incisive and cutting remarks that rendered my brace position ineffective.  haarp2012 commented ‘Oh, I get it.  This is supposed to be funny.  Just one problem.  It isn’t’.  Ouch.  Over on reddit, FluteByNight pointed out that ‘your audio is mixed/recorded really badly’, a single-line remark that kept me up at night wondering why I spent my hard-earned cash on hiring audio equipment when I didn’t even really know how to use it properly.  It was a lesson for me, the uncensored criticism from strangers on the internet can be wounding.  To them, I was wasting their time.  Lange writes about this, stating that some “YouTubers may express moral outrage that a poorly crafted video wasted moments of their lives” (2009, p. 70).  I usually rejoice in some of the snarky comments left by ruthless amateur critics, but when you are the subject of their criticism, things change.  Anyway, this post is not about me seeking affirmation to continue my filmmaking exploits.  I digress. 

My critics obviously did not feel any affinity with me, and that’s fine.  Maybe if I made a video about me eating cheezles and drinking fanta and listening to Tool in my dark, dirty bedroom then they would feel a connection.  Feeling affinity with a video, and more broadly the social network that the video is a part of, is an emerging facet of online communication.  Videos of affinity “typically interest delineated groups of people who wish to participate and remain connected socially in some way to the video maker” (Lange 2009, p. 73).  They are in a state of constant flux, changing all the time, with in-jokes and references to past videos.  Often, friends use YouTube as a means to communicate through video, as it is far easier to share complex media in the online realm than posting a USB stick to one another (Lange 2009).  So we see the development of a community around videos of affinity, a group that shares interests and who feels a connection with all the other users.  This is why Snapchat is so popular, it provides almost instantaneous conversation through video.  It means that while my video was a piece of self-expression, put out into the world to be criticised openly, others are using YouTube and Snapchat in a different way.  They are using it to communicate to one another, no longer as self-expression, but rather as correspondence (Herrman 2014).  BRB guys, I’m going to Safeway to get some Fanta - look out for my next Snapchat story.

References

Herrman, J 2014, ‘Meet the Man Who Got Inside Snapchat’s Head’, BuzzFeed, 28 January, viewed 22 January 2017, <http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/meet-the-unlikely-academic-behind-snapchats-new-pitch#3dlvjg2>.