#when I seen it to me editing of videos means like using clips for vines and taking out clips for compilations and stuff

[rocohen20]

Fic Rec: Fan Edits/Vines as Players

I know that I haven’t posted a fic rec for a while (I work on a mega fic rec at the moment, but between school and exams I don’t have much time or energy). But I thought I would do something different right now. I don’t know if it would be the most entertaining or comfortable, however that’s the best I could manage with the limitation of this site.

In general I think that there are so many tallented people on this site, and I am a big fan of seeing what people come up with. When it comes to hockey edits I salute my hat every single time. You need to think about the perfect song, the footage to pick from, think of the nerative. So, in order to show my appriciation, and to tell you some of my too detaled thoughts about it, I present to you this fic rec.

I put a link to every one of the videos, but in order to put them all in this one long post I didn’t use reblog. I hope that you still enter the links and read what I had to say about them.

enjoy!

General

-When you touch me like this

What can I say, sometimes you just want to see players beating the shit out of each other while a romantic song is played in the background. Other than that, I love the disonance between the song and the vibe of it and the visual content. It crack me every time.

-Nhl as Vines

I just love how people have the time and energy to think about those sorts of compilations. There are a few good ones in here, but if I have to choose the highlight one it would be the TK/Nolan Patrick one.

-Mine

This is just plain cute and fluffy. It got a number of pairs with cute moments with the song “mine” in the background.

-Vine compilations part 2

Once again, there are some good ones in here, in the highlight I would put the Quinn Hughes one the the FCC line one.

-Vine compilations part 1 

This is also really good. 

-Hockey Players being in Love with Each Other

It’s basically what the headline says.

-Yet another NHL vines

This one as well has some good stuff in it.

-I like Big Boys

This was the first ever edit about the song that I have seen. And I’ve rewatched it a thounsand of times.

-Bad Blood

This is the way to advertize the league.

-Total eclipse of the heart

I always liked bloopers reels. (when I was young they used to show those clips in so many birthday parties. Plus I really likes to laugh). And the combination of the song with the visual espect it’s just precious.

-The leagus as vines

This one has some good ones as well.

-Vines

This one has some good ones as well. But I would like to refer you to the last clip. It got such a vibe of its own. I really want to read a fic about the double night hang out of the Switzerland boys and their afore-mentioned boyfriends. I really want to read about it.

Chicago Blackhawks

-Crack Video

The highlight here I think is the John Mulaney one and the Let it Be one.

-Mean Girls

This is a perfect edit. I think that the charachtarization is accurate.

-I like big boys

I liked all the edits of this song in all of its variety.

Patrick Kane

-I want watch the world burn

As a continuation of the mean girl verse, this is from the musical. I really liked the atmosphere.

Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews

-Sabotage

I just like the song and the pictures.

-Forever Young

I think that everyone loves nostalgia and in general we like to focus on the glamorous espects of our lives. We love the glory days and not the decline afterwards. So something about this song with those two just struck me inside so much. I lost the amount of times that I would just watch this video in loops. Plus, the fact that they are the last of a certain era of the team didn’t help.

-This clock never seemed so alive

Every pairing needs a sappy montage with a cute song. 

Dallas Stars

-Dallas Stars as FRIENDS

Amazing, what’s not to like about it. Friends opening sequence, but with the Dallas Stars.

-Dallas as Vines

This is seriously accurate to the core and just fun.

-Another Dallas as Vines 

This is also funny as hell, and I think that the ‘watch the light Kevin’ is the most funny one.

-Dallas Vines

When it comes to Dallas there were a lot of vines edits that spoke to my sole, and this one was no exception. I can literally quote the whole video now.

-Dallas as Vine

This one right here is one of the legendery edits of the Dallas Stars. The accuracy is just funny and hurt. I watched it so many times.

-Dallas Vines once again

I don’t know why, but I just love all the edits about the FCC line and the power play vs. penarlty kill that just do it for me.

Daryl Reaugh

-Calls

This is an out of context greatest calls of him. There are some great ones in here, but the ‘double bennetration’ is living rent free in my mind.

Michael Ruffl (& Matthew Tkackuk)

-Take a hit

I just love the song along with the grittiness of the two of them. I didn’t know the song before, so it also introduce me to a great song. This playoff series was a great fun, and I enjoyed watching this edit come out of it.

Tyler Seguin

-Tyler Seguin as Vine

The funniest part was that it wasn’t even intentional.

-Or Nah

Tyler Seguin needs a sexy edit.

-Sexy as fuck

Sometimes a person needs more than one sexy edit about them.

Tyler Seguin & Jamie Benn

-What do you mean?

A short vine about them.

Jason Dickinson

-I got it from my daddy

I always thought about how he looked too similar to Tyler. This video is not wrong.

New York Islanders & New York Rangers

-Game Recap

That’s some funny and accurate game recap.

Philadelphia Flyers

-You want a guy that’s sweet

I love it when people do this sort of edit to a group with the Bo Burnham song. And she literally nailed with the discription of every single one.

-Results of Group Chat Questions

This is exactly what the headlight says.

-Mean Girls 

I always love the mean girls edits with hockey players.

-Man, I feel like a woman

There should be no reason for this song to work this good with the promotional clip.

-Rickey Thompsons edit

They are funny, but the first one is just hilarious.

Claude Giroux

-Take it off my shoulders

The edit is good. But also I had to put it here, because if you read the rest of the post you will see how she posted a primer of Claude Giroux. And when I mean a primer I mean a detailed book, including pictures. about each and every stage of his career. This is unreal with how much this is good an an awsome reading. I will recommend it to everyone who is listening.

-Claude Giroux as Vine

It short but it’s literally what he did.

-You’re the last of the real ones

This song just capsulate perfectly how we as fans sees him and his departure from the team. Players are humans, but sometimes we as fans see them as so much more, and we see them as those unatainable. However, at the same time they help us with ours lives. And I just think that she did such a good job with this song, and how she poposefully picked the upbit parts with the happy footage of Claude. Because that’s what it’s was all about, and he loved this team, and gave it his all. 

She mentioned it in her post, but also the fact that he was the last remaining peace of the old Flyers team, made him the last one. So with him gone, it’s literally not the same Flyers team anymore. And as a relatively new fan of the sport, recently is the faze where I need to deal with this phenomenon for the fist time. 

-I think I’ve seen this film before

And if the last vidoe showed the upbeat part of Claude Giroux, with this one she just hit me in the feeling. Claude went through the Flyers trading their captain, he’s been through the Flyers not knowing if they’d make a mistake to name him captain after what happend with Richards. But Claude showed them and to anyone who doubted him, how it was the right choice. And to see how it all just forgotten and they traded him regardless how he wanted to stay in this team for the rest of his career.

The lyrics that stood the most to me were “Who am I defending now?” because it showed perfectly how on one hand he capsulated this team and its image so much that when you think about the Philadelphia Flyers, you think about Claude Giroux. But on the other hand, now he no longer is part of the team. And the fact that he didn’t even have a cup to show for all those years, kind of put you on this inbetween place where you don’t know how to think about this team, this city that yo gave your life to it. That yo literally built your adult life in, and now you just need to leave and move on. Whether you want to or not.

-Don’t take the money

this one is also on the more upbeat videos, but I really like the verse with the “While we fight”. Beacuse it really shows the relathionship between Claude and management. Plus the song brings up the constant scale (that we as fans like to forger sometimes) between “This is the team, and this is how fun they are” to “Hockey is a besnuess and we need to look at the numbers, regardless of the player”.

-Nothing New

And if all the other Claude Giroux videos gave me feelings, this one is the one that made me ugly cry more times than I could count on.

This video is just amazing. It shows how the cycle is always reapiting itself, sometimes it’s abrupt and sometime it takes some time, but in the end it always repeats itself; It also show how as players grow old their place in the legue, in their team, gets questioned time and time again. Despite the fact that they could still be producing, or can have an integral part of the team. And especially when it came to Claude Giroux, it’s really showed how despite him wanting to stay, it didn’t matter. and the fact that the team as a whole had a meltdown didn’t matter, it was easy to blame it on the captain.

And on a more personal note. I didn’t heard this song before. And it wrecked me to hear it, especially the part about “How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22?” I mentioned it on a different fic rec, but I enlisted to the army of my country when I was 18. And in highschool I was very optimistic about this and thought that I knew I it would go. But after I enlisted I found out it was nothing like I imagined it to be. So last year, as I literally was 22 and had to figure out my life after the worst 3 years of my llife, this song just hit me in the feelings. I know that you didn’t really sign up for this rambling, but I had to talk about it, because that’s why this edit have a special place in my heart. Because it’s not just the nerative and the emotional song that hit me.

Travis Konecny

-Don’t you want to?

I just really love the family dinamic in this edit. I could and have seen this video on loops on end.

-I like big boys

I really liked the twist in this edit.

Pittsburgh Penguins

-Penguins as Vines

This is the first part of the Penguins ones. All of her edits are so good.

-Pittsburgh as Vines

This is just plain funny and so put together. But the careless whisper one (and the first clip) just wrecked me.

Sidney Crosby

-Compilation of Crosby’s high pitch voice

Sometimes you just need to hear a compilation of someone high pitched voice and laugh.

-Look what you made me do

This is absolutely amazing. And out of all the players I think that Sidney Crosby is the perfect example for this song. Especially for how his attitude with the media and in general changed through the years. Can’t count the amount of times I watched it.

Toronto Maple Leafs

-Learn the Alphabet

It’s just hilarious. I love out-of-context footage.

-First Time

Sometimes when the pain is strong enough, you just need to laugh about it.

Mitch Marner/Auston Matthews

-Thunder (credit to @sunshinemitch)

This video is so good. It’s the perfect song. It got the right hype to it, but also when you think about it it shows how lighning and thunder are always together and you can’t have the one without the other. And I think she showed it really well at the video, especially with the line “I was lightning before the thunder”. I also love how she showed the fact that one of them came before the other, but in general how they came at the same time.

Washington Capitals

-Caps+ John Mulaney quotes

It’s just funny, and if I had to pick the highlight I would choose the Tom Wilson part.

Nicklas Backstrom

-Fan Cam

Everybody need some appreciation with a mood song.

Nicklas Backstorm/Alexander Ovenchkin

-You’re 36

That’s just funny and short.

Those are all the post I had saved. I’m about to do another one (it will be shorter) about the vidoes I have saved on youtube).

[diamondsandlemons]

I like this image because it’s not about, like, “cancelling” these dudes, or whatever. it’s just about no one being able to live up to the monumental expectations fandom spaces can create for them.

the post I saw it on just now was about how these guys were ‘put up on a pedestal’ and then eventually let people down in some way, and as a result became less universally acclaimed (and how the stage is being set up for the same to happen to Jerma)

but like none of these dudes are really bad at all, they just had the internet’s spotlight move on from them to someone else (I think all of them are still making content). They made some kind of misstep, very publicly, which alienated some fans, who then voiced valid complaints, which prompted people who were never fans to hop on the bandwagon of complaining, and that’s why they sort of left a sour aftertaste around for a while... I think I finally get it.

and I mean yeah, they’re all white men, so trusting them implicitly was never a good idea. but it can be really hard to unlearn all the harmful shit you grow up with. and as far as I can tell, these guys are trying their hardest, so I think they’re safe.

that this Effect is named after John Green is a little confusing to me; I think whoever made the edit must be a bit older than me, or at least got Online (and specifically on tumblr) somewhat before I did. Because as long as I’ve been here John Green has been somewhat of a laughingstock on this site. Which I never understood, having been a fan of the Green brothers beforehand. but yeah I think I get it now, it isn’t pure hatred, it’s just the hipster effect.

I don’t know much about Thomas Sanders other than having seen a few of his Vines(?) back in the day. Always seemed harmless. I never got why people treated him like some kind of “cringe” interest. bc he talked about Steven Universe, I guess? Whatever, man.

The McElroys... this one hits hardest for me (insofar as any of these circumstances are “hits,” which they really aren’t, that’s the point. but anyway). I think I’ve befitted from not really participating in fandom conversation. I had no idea there even was any drama until Travis’s Among Us meltdown made national news. That definitely left a bad impression on ppl who didn’t already know who he was, which I assume was the purpose of the whole twitch streaming thing. After having finally seen the clip, everyone’s right, it’s awful. But Travis’s whole deal is being the annoying middle brother; making an ass of himself one time does not cancelling material make. I didn’t even know until watching Sarah Z’s video that TAZ: Graduation was unpopular! I (a noted not-so-great media analyst) had a lot of fun with Graduation! Until like, the very end of the last episode. But after hearing the criticisms, I don’t blame anyone for quitting.

Anyway MBMBaM is still funny, their new theme song slaps, and TAZ: Balance is one of the greatest stories ever told (especially in its original audio podcast format). Moving on.

I don’t know Jerma much outside of being the new meme guy, but he seems nice and he seems to know his audience. It does sort of seem inevitable that it will grow too large and he’ll disappoint them. but, like the rest, that doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t still be a fun dude at the end of the day.

I guess if there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s to really consider WHY unpopularity strikes when it does. If you’re vibing with the crowd, go ahead and leave them behind. But if you’d prefer to stay, that’s okay too (as long as no one’s getting hurt). As much as it is possible to kill cringe culture, do so, and just like what you like*

*(again, as long as it isn’t actively harmful... which some things are, which is why you need to consider why.. etc etc etc).

That’s this white girl’s late night thoughts thank you good night.

[do-what-the-knight-tells-you]

I wonder too if part of it is the way that audio functions on TikTok? Because I think the audio clips that many people set their videos to are the things that are actually more or less going viral and getting popular.

I do think there are particular TikToks that make a splash the way that old vine videos did... But way more a particular audio clip and or perhaps a style of video that goes along with it are the things that catch on and stick.

So sometimes this means particular piece of a song ("Don't want to live as an untold story" over epic shots, or The smash mouth "some.... BODY once told me ..." Edit where there's a long pause in the middle, usually for someone too make a mistake, and then the "BODY" doesn't hint till the person crashes or falls over or something breaks or whatever the beat drop is, or the way that the wellerman song or Old Town Road took off...), or sometimes it's original audio... "Look here comes a consequence, consequence, consequence, consequences of my actions chasing me right now..." Is one that comes to mind. And I remember the original video, but I also many times have seen other things using that audio clip.

And I could sit here and list audio clip after audio clip that I now know just like I know vine videos? ("EMOTIONAL damage, eMOTIONAL damage", the reading rainbow visual that's making the rounds right now, the "I fucked Cthulhu good" uke song, "No darling it's not a pomegranate, what do you think it is, give it another go.", That really rad how to train your dragon theme song remix, "whatever this fuckin thing is" "I'mma be a bumpin blueberry. Ba ah puh bap pub ha", "Here comes the boy" and the like five variants of that, "HOW DID THIS. BECOME THIS.", "Did I really just forget that melody?" "Duh duh duh, da-duh.." "🎶when I popped off then...", That one piece of like Celtic fiddle music- probably like a drop kick Murphy's song- where everyone flips their shoe at the beat drop and then is dressed Usually in a really cool way, "oh no, oh no, oh no no no no no")

There's something sort of I don't know. Inherently transformative maybe in the platform? Because it has tools like using other videos' audio or dueting or stitching other videos built in, it's sort of invites remixing things. I think in a way that like vine never did.

An individual joke or piece of a video from Vine would be preserved a lot more in its entirety and as it was originally dropped, Definitely at least partially due to the brevity, but also because it wasn't immediately easily taken apart so that people could riff on other elements of it. whereas I think things feel like they hit the same to people on TikTok, but they rarely stay the same as they were when they dropped? If that makes sense. That one piece of video doesn't necessarily make the rounds forever, but most folks saw it or saw an early riff on it and the idea paired with the audio, that hits. And so they either duet that, or they make their own version of it if the original audio has been made available.

(another example, I don't think I ever saw the original video that did the audio sample "che la Luna, Louis prima" with the pinched hand shake, But I have seen about a million versions either playing it straight, and pairing the audio and that hand gesture with things that are good, or perhaps inverting it and pairing it with things that suck, etc)

like, i’m pretty sure tiktok has existed for longer than vine did at this point but i’m yet to actually see an “iconic” tiktok. like people always caption like “this tiktok is ICONIC” but i’ve never seen one stay in the public consciousness for any longer than the 2 minutes it appears on my timeline. i never see people quote tiktoks or like, act them out with their friends or anything, not a single tiktok i’ve seen has had any actual staying power

meanwhile i can just say like “ROAD work ahead?” and i would bet a good chunk of you have just read that in the guy’s voice. i still see people tag things like “i wish i was jared, 19″. one night at the bar where i work we started an impromptu dance party purely by saying “hi, i’m renata bliss, and i’ll be your freestyle dance teacher”

i guess brevity really is the soul of wit

[gukiee]

Also can I just say @ the anon or anons who ATTACKED PEOPLE over the whole headline thing to the point of making them feel so shitty they deleted gif sets they worked hard on: you can LITERALLY go f*ck urself tbh

[kai-borg]

Just a touch o' interesting bio-vids I found

Recently I've been gettin' a touch bored and just scrolling through the bio-motion vids on youtube to see if I can find anything fun, and I have to say I've actually found quite a bit! From just single videos, to entire series and channels I've literally never heard talked of despite how fantastic they are!So I decided I'd make a little list of the best ones, or just the ones I was personally impressed with/interested in I've found. Random order o' course, and some of these I've known of from years, from a number that actually inspired my love of bionicles years back, and just a few I've more recently discovered.1. 리스L https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD5XlPJl6OU Ok, now the fact I haven't seen much for this guy is understandable due to the majority of his channel being in a different language. Channels such as these while generally really awesome (for some reason...), and fairly popular aren't generally talked about too much in the English circle from what I can tell just because we can't understand anything, and it drives us nuts. (It sure does for me at least.) Either way, holy crap this guy is awesome! Not just because he's translated even some of the series which is my favourite so far out of his others, but because his scenes are well done, his special effects, while not used too often, when used are awesome (such as the bullet scene), and his fight scenes are smooth, and fun as 'eck to watch! 2. Gionganer grav https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRIJ2y7WL-k And another, non-english channel. This guy's mainly moc-vids and all that, not exactly my favorite type of vid, but his moc's are quite well done, and a fair amount of short stop-motions, which, as you can see above, are smooth,  and utilize (from what I can tell is)  some well-done green screening. He also has some kind of... trailer/short film things (don't really know 'cause I can't read the title) which make for a nice little watch each. He's even got a break down for at least one of the ones I've seen, and it's pretty interesting to watch, help gave me a few ideas m'self. 3. MrLegolover55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ySVBnjYCs So here's this guy, another bio-tube who I've never heard talked of, yet who has a number of fairly amazing series out! Now, while he may not use stopmotion (something fairly common now-a-days), quality wise his videos are good, the story was intriguing, his characters are understandable (if perhaps lacking a touch in the full range of the voice-acting spectrum that could've been used, but still a good range for the amount of characters), and in all I'd recommend giving him a look. 4. Masteryker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ3X-dLuemE And once again a channel my inability to understand any language beyond English drives me insane to watch, but I can't stop just because of how good it is! So, fully Hero-Factory to warn all you fuddy-duddies who hate that, but holy-crap I recommend you at least give him a look if just to see his character design! While a bit stereotypical in the 'everything is rusty/damaged/whatever-that-look-is-called' in the paint department I feel it works, his stop-motion itself is once again impressive, his video quality and effects are well-done, and the story (from what little I can gather) is enough to hook me... even despite how much I miss out on (a disheartening fate). 5. Robomaniac7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Vq2bnr7wE Ah, and this guy. While not one of the best at this time, he was at least amusing, and at the time of his videos, fairly impressive in his stop-motion (and age too from what I can tell). Just a guy I'd recommend giving a view if you want a laugh. 6. Jacob Daeath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLOD9z2ZB_s Really not a lot for this guy, in truth this was mainly it (counting the second of course) in his bio-vids that caught my eye (he did have a second I found humorous). From what I can tell I think he had some ties to Robomaniac7, but my memories terrible so don't trust anything I say. Its got some nice stop-motion for its age, a nice bit of humor, and just a generally fun to watch story. 7. Spinny SterTwelve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZJ52dhfLpY Now, far from the best he may be, but the fact he got me at all interested in something that combined transformers with bionicles (before the bio-former craze too I think), and made a lengthy series was more than enough to at least deserve the mention for those who might want find an interest in the idea. 8. Plastic Arm Productions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihnu0N6-3Gg Now this guy, this guy I'm surprised I haven't heard of. While he may have the stereotypical 'my-self-moc-is-better-than-all-others' self-moc, but I feel that the fact he's made a 1-on-1 fight video between all of the Toa, and in every combination (I think at least, I gotta check again...) , all of which have well done fight animations, camera quality, and a kinda neutral win-loss chance (poll based) should've at least gotten him a touch more known. Perhaps he is, perhaps all of them are and it's my terrible luck at find anything bio-fandom related is just hitting me over the head once again. 9. Dinosaurs united https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMmzn1kuQy8 Chaotic, well done, well designed, and humorous? Give a check to all of them and you get a pretty nice series out of it! From star-wars to knights kingdom, from hero factory to both generations of bionicles, it all connects and it is a bizzare yet worthwhile watch! 10. AJ Roo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNC-0ovJHLk Odd, lacking stopmotion, and overpowered characters inspired by ManiaMac1613? Yes to all of them. While another bio-tube who's more obscure status I can understand he does at least have an amusing range of voices for his characters for a single voice-actor cast. Give a watch for perhaps some enjoyment, but do be warned, some of his stuff is even too chaotic, odd, or otherwise strangely added even for me. I can say I do at least greatly enjoy his demon problems series, and his other short-vid series despite the overall 'memetry' of the clips. What can I say? Once you get an understanding of how his 'world' runs its hard not to find some amusement, especially when paired with his chosen voices. 11. Bukkey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4xv19onY7I Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho! Now Bukkey is a glorious fellow! He's anime all the way, even when using canon-sets he manages to get an anime-style feel to 'em, and his use of green screen effects (especially in his more recent tests) is brilliant! While not a lot of videos yet I cannot wait to see what he'll bring later, 'cause like, holy-crap, the effects! 12. TheNufinger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICPKWlHnBlM Ah, NuFinger. How is he not more popular?! Sure, sure, I can understand some of his... 'humor', and moc's are less than stellar, but just the relative originality (for a bio-series), absurdity of a number of his videos, and generally multiple minute long clips I feel should've gotten him a bit more love than he got. Can I agree his use of certain... 'humor', MMD, and kinda OPness of his self-moc dissapointed me? Yes. Of course the fact he took so much inspiration from anime made his self-moc seem a lot less OP in comparison with the rest of his characters did help counter that bit. The fact he used quite a number of clips from PurpleEyesWTF's abridged videos to make skit videos also helped my opinion 'cause it's so rare to find any sound-clip skits that don't come from a vine, family guy, or some other various related semi/fully-adult cartoon episode. Another point was that his channels all english, yet all of his videos are anime-inspired! His kinda au-ish, weird home-verse-esque, anime-world-thing he stuck his mocs in was also fun, for me, to see. (Of course what really got me into him, despite her small amount of appearances, and my favorite character of all, was Ember, the magical... whatever she is who can teleport entire pool tables with her mind.) 13. Garmagic2yFhenrakh9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MWbZ5jQLiM Another 'Arghhh!Why-must-you-inspire-me-to-try-and-learn-your-language-so-I-can-understand-your-story!' channel. Smooth motion, good fights, good camera angles, and bloody intriguing looking videos! Some problems with camera quality/saturation editing, but otherwise another fun watch if you want to see some nice animation. 14. Katsuhono https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QcRFM_l5A And now this guy, this guy I am happy to have found! Do his various MLP videos bother me a bit? Yes, but I can assure you his stopmotion videos, any of them really, more than make up for any... discomfort being subbed to a channel with MLP on it brings. I mean, just look at all this! Smooth motion, brilliant effects, even giving his mixel videos a watch is beyond worthwhile! 15. Andrew Eusebi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE2ajOjbYmM Once again another channel I feel could be better, but hey, his story's intriguing enough for me! Yeah, another none/less bio-based channel, but its got some kinda crazy multiverse story thing going that I have to say does make it work. 16. TheSlimToa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMBRMDov1Cg A small channel sure, but ey! His stopmotion makes for a nice, inspiring watch! 17. Cy4Lego Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_wrXNVwfac GIVE THIS GUY LOVE! Sure, not a lot of bio-stuff, but holy crap! Look at what he does do! This guy deserves some chatter, especially for this thing! XD 18. BIOforge Studios https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu5CzuIyiPU Also this guy! His voice acting, and some of his choices in... effects may be a bit grating, but he more than deserves to be better known for the effort he's putting into his channel to keep it running at an active (more-so than my owns) rate of production! ---------------------------- And now a pair that have somehow stuck with me for years, and managed to be some of the biggest inspirations towards my love of bionicles, if less so towards my character and story. 1. ToaScarak44 - Heroes of Ora Nui https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJaMn0kE-zI Ah, heroes of Ora-Nui, the first series I ever found, and the one that became my first, and numerous following footholds into the bio-fandom. I remember whiling away ages as a kid just watching his stuff, 'ell, I can remember actually waiting for episodes to come out before I ended up forgetting the series name. It was disappointing to discover that the series would never be finished, and that one of my favorite biotubers, my first one at that, had quit. Will I ever know why I loved this series so much despite its... 'problems'? Who knows, all I do is that once I found it again after forgetting the name for years I was overjoyed to see it again, and I'll probably remain just as happy to watch it over, and over again. 2. Zadohk - Sirac`s journey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C10pgt-_0zY And so I continue to have no idea why I love this series! This was the second bio-series I'd ever watched, and essentially what got me back into the bio-tube portion of the fandom after I'd dropped out a year or so past my loss of ToaScarak's series, which I suppose can give you a fairly good concept of how long I was out of the fandom beyond books and sets. No stopmotion, nowhere near the best voice acting, and a disappointingly short series before he died off. I do have to say I did greatly enjoy the environment of his videos. Otherwise, I have no clue as to why this series has somehow managed to carry the place in my heart it still does. No matter what though, Sirac's journey will always remain memorable to me for its standing as the series that got me back into the fandom. ---------------------------- And last, but not least, the honourable mentions! From just single videos, to small, lesser quality channels I feel you might at least find some enjoyment in. 1. GeneralChroma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZyCFZc3TLI Fairly sized, not of the English persuasion, and far from the best, but hey, he's got a nice number of lil' skits to watch for fun. 2. WittyFox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RRb2XSWX-8 Another small channel, but at least they're not dead, and so far they got some nice bio-motion for a small channel. 3. Toynimation Studios https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpiduZwz9Yo Small, short, but well done, and with some nice use of motion and special effects. 4. Dia Mon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dBXiTfmKCM Now, while this video is the one that truly stood out to me (I must say I do find it amusing) that doesn't mean I don't recommend you see the other ones, in fact I recommend you do! They make for another bundle of fun little time-spenders. 5. Lamchops https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP6YI06ZMTU Lamchops, short, smooth, and really very few bionicle animation videos. Another chaoticly-oriented channel, but at least his stop-motions are a good, albeit short watch! 6. Biomoron https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1OAgsnqimo Ey, what can I say? I'm good at finding the disappointingly dead channels. Oh well, still a worthwhile couple of videos to see if you ask me. 7. Thriller Metru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramKDTirbAg You can understand why I put this one up. 8. George Carlin Robot Animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhGSvorkjY Ok, now this is bloody brilliant! I mean, tell me you're still not unsure whether it's CGI or stopmotion after viewing it at least twice. 9. After hours - real life of working robot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isaU2Z0yLKo Eh, it's well done, and amuses me. A double win! 10. Jornova Productions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxzas9fJrx0 Alls I gotta say for this is that man am I ever glad he kept this channel mainly separate from what else its connected to. Also, voice acting, still needs work. 11. Uniters of Team Nova Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZLAuhyeVZs All's I gotta say for this is, at least the majority of this video is bionicle/lego/edited backgrounds compared to the only other video that used bionicles in the series this episode is included in. Pretty nice stop-motion and effects. Makes up for some... lacking quality in the voice-acting department. 12. New Age of Heroes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtUFf4P3FAo Really, I'm only putting this up because the way they managed to edit in the special effects, and bionicles/lego-piece-things into an IRL setting actually impressed me a good bit despite the overall... disappointing quality of the video. Of course seeing how the trailer is more impressive than the actual video kinda manages to make the video even less worth giving the time to watch.

[shirlleycoyle]

Why This Teen Walked Away From Millions of TikTok Followers

This is part of a special series, The Future of Fame Is the Fan, which dissects how celebrity became so slippery. It’s also in the latest VICE magazine. Subscribe here. 

Sixteen-year-old Ava Rose Beaune was hanging out at a friend’s house on an otherwise unremarkable mid-July afternoon when her cell service briefly shut off. She tried to text her dad, but it wouldn’t send—definitely odd, she thought, but not alarming.

Then people started messaging her: Did you see what’s on your Twitter? Your Instagram? What’s going on? She logged on to her social media accounts and saw that her new Facebook status alluded to suicide—but she hadn’t posted it.

“My whole family thought I was going to kill myself,” Ava said.

Suddenly, a man she’d never met was calling her parents, demanding to speak to her. He had control of all her contacts, texts, emails, and social media accounts. The next day, he texted her: I just want to talk to you. (Spoken and written quotes from Ava’s alleged stalker are italicized to indicate they are not necessarily direct quotes but are as she remembers them.) He called her, and she answered, begging him to do whatever he wanted to her Instagram account, if that’s what he was after. “Delete it. Delete it and leave me alone if that’s what you want,” she told him. You don’t want that, he said. “I do,” she replied. I just want to meet up with you and have sex with you, he said.

“That’s when I hung up the phone, and I was like, this is getting weird,” Ava told me. This stranger had managed to hack her accounts using a method called SIM swapping, in which he contacted her wireless service carrier and convinced them that he owned the account and needed them to transfer access to the SIM card to the phone in his hand—effectively taking over her digital life.

In screenshots viewed by VICE, the hacker can be seen posting a Story to her Instagram about being Ava’s new boyfriend, issuing rape threats, and writing things like “I can’t wait til I impregnate you and marry you. you only live 5 MIN away from me.” She got her social media accounts back in her own possession and resolved the problem with her carrier. “OK, this is, you know, the end, whatever,” she recalled thinking.

With more than 2 million followers on TikTok, Ava was a minor celebrity in her own circles. So, she said, she was used to men being creepy, or even hostile. This was extreme, she thought, but it was over.

But it wasn’t. This was only the beginning of weeks of daily harassment so severe it would uproot her life entirely.

As of this year, TikTok likely has more than 1 billion monthly active users, and the market research firm Statista estimates that adolescents between 10 and 19 years old make up 32.5 percent of those users. The spiritual successor to Vine, TikTok is a micro-video sharing platform that favors an off-the-cuff, do-it-yourself style: People of all ages lip-sync to movie clips and songs, mimic elaborate dances in their living rooms, and use filters to edit the 60-second videos into tiny works of art. It’s also something of a fame lottery.

All this manic, frenetic energy combined with massive audiences is addictive in the same way any social media platform is: with casino-style scrolling and a notification system and the looming chance at virality. Normal teens like Ava—who signed with a talent agency in January 2020—become voracious consumers as well as unstoppable creators, hoping to strike it big, get discovered, or at the very least, make it to the For You feed, where one video plucked by some mysterious algorithm from a user’s feed can get in front of millions of eyeballs instantly.

“I’d rather not give those people the satisfaction of being noticed.”

Despite all this, cyberbullying experts say that TikTok isn’t the worst social media app for harassment. “The way that TikTok is built reduces the likelihood of cyberbullying when compared to other apps,” said Sameer Hinduja, the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. Features like direct messaging that only allow mutual followers to contact each other, and the inability to add images or videos to comment sections, set it apart from other apps. “To be sure, cyberbullying can manifest itself in hurtful TikTok videos directed towards others, as well as in comments and in livestream chats—but these possibilities are no different than on any other social media app,” Hinduja told me.

According to TikTok’s transparency report from 2020, 2.5 percent of videos the platform removed were for bullying or harassment. But there are some features unique to TikTok that make it prone to a different, more personal kind of harassment. “Duet” allows other users to repost your video with a split-screen video of their own. Most of the time, it’s used innocently, for singalongs or miniature skits. But some users say it opens a portal for disturbing abuse. In 2018, BuzzFeed News reported that people—often young children—would duet their videos with a video of them acting out suicide, putting plastic bags over their heads or belts around their necks, to show their disgust at the original post. And a Duet from a more popular account can send a wave of attention from their followers to your page, not all of it positive.

Nick, who runs a TikTok account with his five-year-old daughter Sienna (the family goes by their first names publicly, to protect their privacy), told me that they experience Duet-based harassment on top of the usual comment section cruelty. “Some users would duet our videos and say mean, nasty things that were just not true,” he said. “In the beginning, it made us second-guess the path we were going down.”

It hasn’t stopped since they started the account, in October of 2018—and they’ve since gathered more than 14 million followers. But they have gotten better at managing it, Nick said. “Sienna is luckily very intelligent and knows that this is not OK. I made sure to sit down with her, emphasizing how special she is and that people may not see that right away.”

Nick believes TikTok does a good job of handling harassment, and giving creators the tools to handle it themselves. “If there is consistent harassment from a specific account, I block and delete their hateful comments,” he said. “For the negative comments in general, I tend to just ignore them. I’d rather not give those people the satisfaction of being noticed.”

TikTok does allow users to opt out of Duets. But these are the features that foster that slingshot fame; opting out of them means opting out of your chance at going viral or just growing your audience.

Fatima and Munera Fahiye, who are sisters and TikTok creators with around 3 million followers each, told me that they also find the platform to be responsive when they need support. “There were multiple accounts on TikTok impersonating me on the app, and TikTok helped me by verifying my account to let people know that my account is the real one,” Munera said.

Whatever harassment they do receive—which often means racist comments—they say is outweighed by the support of fans. “I have been on TikTok for a year now, and I have not experienced any harassment, but after gaining some followers I have seen some mean comments about my hijab every now and then, but I try to not give it any attention, because the love and support that I am getting from my fans is more than the little hate, so it does not matter,” Fatima said.

The harassment that happens on TikTok doesn’t stay there, however. On Reddit, whole communities are devoted to catching women and girls on social media in the middle of wardrobe slips, where you can see down their shirts, up their skirts, or anytime they shift and move and reveal a glimpse of more skin. Standalone websites are made for this purpose, too, and for doxxing and harassing women who might have a TikTok in addition to an OnlyFans or other separate adult platform.

In 2020, a server on the gaming chat platform Discord took requests for TikTok creators to be made into deepfakes—AI-generated fake porn. Although child pornography is against Discord’s terms of use, even in the form of deepfakes, one of the most requested targets was only 17. A request for another deepfake noted, “by the way she turns 18 in 4 days.”

Creators also find their content, clothed as in the originals or deepfaked, reposted to porn sites. In concert, the people on each of these platforms work together to create an overwhelming environment of virtual assault for many young women.

Until TikTok, Ava had never really been into social media, she told me on a Zoom call in her parents’ house. She was taking a break from high school distance learning; this was her senior year, spent over video chats because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I always told myself I’d never make a TikTok because my friends all had it and I was like, that’s so cringe,” she said. “Like, I’ll never start that. But they were like, ‘Come on make one,’ so I did.”

She said she made her first account when she was 15, and posted the usual stuff: trend dances, makeup videos. Within a few days, her audience went from the friends who talked her into joining to 150,000 followers—a leap in popularity that she still doesn’t entirely understand. The sudden attention startled her; she deactivated the account.

She accidentally reactivated the account later, and at this point, having gotten over the initial shock of attention, decided to give it another try.

A rock smashed through her mom’s car window with a threatening note tied to it: I want to take you and impregnate you.

Once Ava started posting new videos, the hateful comments started. “I thought that was like the worst it could get,” she said. “It was like, body shaming and hate—the body shaming especially never bothered me, and the normal hate comments were just like, whatever.” A few users created accounts to post rape threats about her, and this did disturb her, but she took it as par for the course as a young woman online.

That is, until one of her followers started stalking her and her best friend, Gabriel. That follower messaged Gabriel, mentioning her home address and demanding to know who she was dating. “So, we’re both kind of like laughing like this guy’s obviously just some weird fan,” she recalled.

I have something planned for Ava. You’ll see in the next three months. I’m planning something big, Ava says he told Gabriel. He hacked her phone three months later, on Gabriel’s 18th birthday. After that, the man texted Ava every day.

“It was stuff about how he wants to rape me, how he’s going to get me, how I can easily stop this—he was texting my dad saying, She’s not allowed to hang out with her friends, if she goes out I’ll know. Saying he’s watching over us and stuff like that.” Every time Ava thought the situation was as bad as it could get—that this man she’d never met was going as far as he could go—he went further.

Then a rock smashed through her mom’s car window with a threatening note tied to it: I want to take you and impregnate you.

Cyberbullying has proven long-lasting effects on teens and young adults. As Hinduja noted, studies show that it’s tied to low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, family problems, academic difficulties, delinquency, school violence, and suicidal thoughts and attempts.

“So at this point I was like, ‘OK, this is getting a little serious.’”

“Most important to me is how negative experiences online unnecessarily compromise the healthy flourishing of our youth at school,” he said. According to his and his co-director Justin Patchin’s research at the Cyberbullying Research Center, over 60 percent of students who experienced cyberbullying reported that it “deeply affected” their ability to learn and feel safe while at school, and 10 percent of students surveyed said they’ve skipped school at least once this past year because of it.

“That cannot be happening,” Hinduja said.

“In general, I hope people will remember that everyone is a human being just like them. We are all capable of feeling hurt and disappointment, and just because there are numbers and a platform attached to our lives doesn’t mean we are impervious to hurtful words or harassing comments,” Nick said. “TikTok is a space where everyone should feel safe to express their creativity, and in order to do that we need to be kind to others.”

Maxwell Mitcheson, Ava’s agent and the head of talent at TalentX Entertainment, told me that he’s seen harassment take a direct toll on young people. “A lot of creators are growing up in front of millions of people, and that involves making mistakes and learning and growing from them,” he said. “The hateful rhetoric definitely weighs on them; some don’t even look at their comments section anymore just to try and stay positive.”

“It’s the inability to make mistakes, being attacked for being authentically yourself, and the sudden lack of anonymity,” Mitcheson said.

Ava’s experience was on the extreme side, he explained, but creators at his agency have had instances of hacking and stalking, or fans randomly showing up at creators’ homes. “We’ve had to involve security and PIs before, but Ava’s was a situation that could have ended in tragedy if it weren’t for the Toronto police intervening.”

After the window-breaking threat, Ava said the police told her that she couldn’t stay at home. She went to stay at a friend’s house, but he still reached her there, she said. “He just kept going saying like, look at what you’ve done, this is all your fault,” she said. He sent her a private message that would delete after it was opened, so she recorded it using a friend’s phone:

I need you to accept the fact that I’m extorting you right now, you need to accept that this isn’t going to end no one’s gonna catch me, the police haven’t ever caught me when I did this before, accept it, give me what I want, I want you to meet up at this park right behind your house I want to do this this this this to you

if you don’t I will kill your parents in front of you in your living room and take you.

“So at this point I was like, ‘OK, this is getting a little serious,’” she told me.

She said she sent the message to the police, who told her whole family to stay somewhere else, hours away. They did, for two weeks. He kept texting her: are you going to be there Saturday you’re making the wrong decision you better answer me.

Eventually, Ava recalled, he was caught. He left the VPN he was using to mask his location off for a half a second, according to her—just long enough, she remembers the police telling her, for the investigators to capture his location data and pinpoint where he was texting her from.

Ava said that the police told her that when he was caught, they found six separate phones and a bunch of SIM cards in his possession—full of pictures and videos of Ava that he’d taken from her accounts. According to the Toronto area detective Ava and her family worked with, the case is still in the courts.

Talking to me now, over Zoom, in between classes and facing midterms, Ava seems fine. She’s able to recount this story in delicate detail, without flinching. She understands the gravity of what happened to her, and how it upended her life. Her family decided to move away, “to the middle of nowhere, pretty much,” she said.

But she is different now. She stopped posting to her TikTok to focus on her friendships and family, though she still posts sporadically on Instagram. She would like to be more active on social media, but she’s not pushing herself. She has anxiety that she describes as “really bad.”

“It’s really affected me, like, you know, just like not being able to live in your own home, and like, even when you are at home, not being safe… It’s really hard, especially when I was only 16 when this happened,” she said. “It is hard, and knowing that my parents were always stressed out and not being able to go outside and walk without feeling kind of scared…”

Before she stopped posting new TikTok videos, she tried to open up on the platform in videos about her mental health and her experiences. But people weren’t receptive to it.

“Especially when they’re like, Oh, a TikTok girl that all the simps love, or What are you complaining about, all these boys love you, kind of thing,” she told me. “I’ve been trying to go to therapy and trying to get over it, but when that kind of thing happens you’re not really the same afterwards. You have a different outlook on social media. You’re kind of scared of if it’s going to happen again. You don’t think those people exist until it happens to you, and then you’re like, wow, this is crazy.”

Online harassment has a silencing effect on people of all ages and genders, but women have it especially bad—and young women are pushed offline, out of the center of conversations and control of their own narrative, at earlier and earlier ages. As adolescents, harassment online makes them do worse in school, seek riskier behaviors, and contemplate or even attempt and follow through on self-harm and suicide. As grown women, this looks like anxiety, a lack of self-confidence, not sleeping, and stepping out of the online conversation altogether to protect their own mental health, and, in severe cases, the safety of themselves and their loved ones. When harassment is allowed to carry on, and women are shamed for seeking help, the damage digs deeper—and we lose those voices.

I asked Ava what she wishes more people understood—about her, about what it’s like to have a big social media following, about how it feels to have millions of eyes on you at such a young age. “I just wish they knew that just because you have followers, doesn’t mean you have this perfect life,” she said. “Just because boys love you, that doesn’t complete your life. When these kinds of things happen, you should be able to be open about it.”

Follow Samantha Cole on Twitter.

Why This Teen Walked Away From Millions of TikTok Followers syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[cashmierathoughts]

Riding With Casey - Indy Stars Edition

“If you run yellow lights, you have raw sex!!”. Coming to the stage, please welcome CASEY THE ICON! Do I have your attention? Good, because I need it for about five minutes; assuming you read at a normal pace. Excuse the shade, I don’t mean any harm. 

I had the pleasure of meeting up with the oh so talented Casey Ross to discuss his show. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, ‘Riding With Casey’? This impromptu show features friends of Casey’s who hop in his ‘06 Sebring to discuss various topics led by the Icon himself. The show got its start when Casey and his friends were riding around, smoking, and they decided it would be funny to record themselves talking about everyday affairs. Prior to this bright idea, Casey had previously been a success on Vine, getting hundreds and thousands of re-vines and being recognized by people in the city for his videos as well as having a show called ‘The Funny Casey Show’ in college.

 My goal was to get to the heart of the show; I really wanted to dig deep at the core of ‘Riding With Casey’. How did it get it’s start? How does he choose who comes on the show? Are topics pre-planned? Is there anything he won’t touch as far as discussion goes? Do’s and don’ts in the whip. What’s up!?

“I was with my friends smoking one day and I was like ‘bro, lets make some videos and record ourselves’. This was a long time ago. My ex motivated me to do SOMETHING. She would say, ‘Just do it, you’re wasting time just sitting around.’ My ex is a big reason why I pushed my show. So I did it.”

Behind every man, is a strong woman.. but I digress.

I must admit, I was watching a clip of ‘Riding With Casey’ and your guest mentioned he would rape KeKe Palmer. Rape is a serious thing, that’s not up for debate. So I got to thinking, ‘What won’t this nigga talk about? Is there no topic that remains untouched?’ So tell me, is there anything that you just absolutely will not talk about?

“We will talk about everything. I want riding with casey to be the realest show you’ve ever seen. If people wanna say “fuck the bee-hive” they can say that. If they want to say they don’t want no faggot ass son, they can say that. I want people to feel like they can say whatever they want to say. This is what will bring the attention. Most questions I look up on the internet in compilation with things I thought of myself. As time went on, people brought topics to me. I have a game called views. I ask them questions about their views on current events. Politics, the grammy’s. I just like to get the full person. [This is] All improv. I tell them that this is an interview but I don’t want you to be tense as if this is an interview. It’s just niggas in a car talking. But some people, I do prep and do research” 

‘Riding With Casey’ is an inclusive, no holds barred show. Discussions range from: sports, sex, music, everyday life, celebrity drama, current events, etc. as well as a sub-show called Views. On this segment of the show, Casey throws out random topics to get a holistic feel of the person he’s interviewing. When I asked Casey what was his favorite topic discussed, I must admit, I was a little shocked by his answer. One of the most historically controversial topics in the black community, outside of the OJ verdict is the question of sexuality. Mainly that of the black man. Casey reported that his favorite topic on his show to date was the discussion on whether or not his interviewees would rather have a ‘hoe daughter’ or a ‘gay son’. When asked why, this is what he had to say,

“Having a gay sun or a hoe daughter really brings out people’s bias’. I’d rather have a hoe daughter though, with a gay son, I'd feel like I did something wrong.”

Via Casey, he’d rather have a ‘hoe daughter’ because if he were to have a gay son, he would feel the burden of his sons’ decision. As if his daughter being a hoe would have nothing to do with her upbringing..? Hmm. I do agree with Casey about one thing; this subject does bring out the bias’ we carry around with us when it comes to gender roles and what is and is not acceptable in our society. Sure, being a hoe is taboo to some, but being a gay black man is still deemed as debauched in the black culture. 

Many people want to know how they can get on the show - including myself. I mean, I literally went as far as interviewing the interviewer just to get a sneak peak of what being on ‘Riding With Casey’ is like. In case you’re still waiting on that invite, from my perspective, it is worth the wait! But the process is still a little unsystematic if you ask me. 

“A lot of people ask, ‘How can I get on the show’, ‘Why haven't I been on the show’. I don’t really have a list of people that are getting on the show. There are certain people that I know I have to get. It depends on how serious they are about getting on the show.” 

“This season I have to show more of myself too. I’m not just some nigga asking questions.” 

Switching gears, everyone is inspired by something or someone that preceded them. In Casey’s circumstance, it was comedian/actor Martin Lawrence. In high school, Casey watched every episode of Martin and now knows every word. According to Casey, 

“...Martin is my biggest inspiration because of his show. I love the spotlight. In high school, I started to watch Martin every day after school. I know every episode word for word. His relationship with Gina – he was fun with her. He was on TV, he had the girl and had his friends. [Even though we don’t care about relationships in 2017]” 

Most comedians find joy in making light of current events, whether they’re “hot topics”, controversial propositions, race issues, politics, etc. For them, it’s an avenue to educate their audience on what’s going on it the world. It prompts them to formulate an opinion about societal issues all while laughing their asses off. I can’t think of a better way to stay woke. Casey and I talked about what it is about comedy that he finds joy in and it really boils down to him wanting to make other people happy.

“People have literally walked up to me and told me that they watched my vines over and over just to laugh because they were having a bad day.. It’s shit like that. People see the talent and it inspires them”.

While on the topic of other comedians, I wanted to get Casey’s opinion on black comedians, specifically black males, who dress up as women as part of their “act”. A few years ago, comedian Dave Chappelle sat down with Oprah to talk about why he felt the industry was flawed and how they – the industry – always push the “cross dressing” agenda on black comedians. In short, Dave would argue that the conspiracy to emasculate the black man and reduce his/their [the black men] creative freedom within the industry is one of the reasons he left that 50 million dollars on the table and moved to Africa. When asked about his thoughts on dressing up as a woman for shits and giggles, Casey said that growing up watching ‘Martin’, he didn’t see it as a problem. He would mimic scenes featuring Sheneneh [Ref: Martin] and Wanda [Ref: Jamie Foxx] to make people laugh. But my question to him was, would you do it now? Plenty of comedians and actors have done it, and still do it. i.e Tyler Perry, Eddie Murphy, Martin, the Waynes’ brothers, etc. Do you find it necessary to dress up as a woman as part of your act for laughs? Casey looked me in the eye, leaned back in his water stained scrap metal Starbuck seat and said,

“Hell na. When it comes to being on camera, I don't think I could take it that far. Now, I just feel like there’s something behind it now because of what Dave said and the Hollywood world.”

Despite the inspiration Casey receives from legendary comedians that paved the way before him, Casey channels a lot of his influence from his estranged father. It’s funny how the people who we have less contact with shape us. I always like to remind myself that the broken are the more evolved. I also find this to be true for Casey. When I asked him who was the most influential person in his life, he responded, 

“As crazy as it sounds, my dad. I don’t have a good relationship – because I don’t want to be shit like him and it pushes me to be better. Sometimes I see myself in him and I know that I have to change that shit. Now, I turn that hurt into motivation and it makes me want to grind hard. When I get rich, I know he’s gonna want to come back around and I’m going to embrace him. Something gotta make them love me. Just like women.”

Casey admitted to me that he will know when he has truly made it because he will then be genuinely happy in life. Know yourself, then grow yourself. With the help, love, and support of family and friends, doors will open, windows will be left cracked, and ceilings will be no more.  

Casey has a promising future ahead of him. My third eye senses this. Not only is he a comedian and producer of his very own show, but he is also a fashion designer, cartoonist, and creative director of three different clothing lines. [Shout out: Trust God, So Sick, Cheatah, 7House, and Silent Hustle]. Be that as it may, I would advise that he stays positive and learns to neglect the bullshit on his way to the top. It’s easy to get sidetracked by the things going on around us, but we have to know our focus and maintain just that. I had a blast working with this young man and I advise you to check out his show! 

Final thoughts from the Icon:

“Believe in yourself and chase your dreams and do what you wanna do in life and it’s yours. Its not anybody elses, not your moms, your dads, or your friends ‘cause when they die, its up to you. And stop being nice to these bitches. The good guy always loses.”

If you would like to get in contact with Casey about his show, follow him on Twitter @CaseytheIcon or on Snapchat @itsfunnycasey or E-mail him at CaseyTheIcon@icloud.com 

[avricci]

I Heard It Through The Grapevine...

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History Lesson

When I was about 10, I was on my way to dance. My Godmother (only 10 years older) was driving me as we performed our usual jam session to 90s hits like Beastie Boys and The Offspring (which was probably not appropriate, but who cares because its still amazing music). We were a pretty epic team and that was probably due to our closeness in age. She became like a big sister and a piece of most of my childhood memories, including some zingers. Well, in all fairness, there were a lot of them. As we were driving through a not so great part of town, I noticed a “lady of the night” on a street corner. I’d like to say I was just too focused on my dance routine in my head because I proceeded to mix up my words and call her a Protestant (no, this is not a dig at any sort of religion). I proceeded, for what seemed like a good half hour, to quote my entire history lesson of the day about the Protestants and the Catholics, their battles, disagreements, etc. My Godmother (an elementary school teacher), just let me keep going on and on. Had she had a camera, it would have been recorded. Finally, it was too much for her to bear. With just a simple phrase she roasted me: “Alexis, that is all true, but Prostitutes have their own religion.”

Ok, so sometimes I mixed up my words. All the time I mixed up my words, but I was so fortunate back then that camera phones did not exist. That would certainly have been a moment in my family that would’ve haunted me until death. Probably after, in fact, I’m sure one day our headstones will read like social media profiles and that video would just be replayed like America’s Funniest Home Videos. It couldn’t have lasted more than 10 seconds, but it wasn’t the only instance. I’ve fallen asleep in my plate during dinner at a restaurant, pulled my skirt down during competition (no it was not a Grease-style mooning moment, my heel got caught), and of course proceeded to mispronounce words (I once thought Cherokee was Cher-eokee). These moments, these seconds of mortifying infamy are exactly the type of clips that you can find on Vine.

It’s on like Donkey Kong

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Although its inventor Twitter, finally closed down all Vine operations in 2016, its original creator has been teasing a comeback for the 6-second video clip site. And with my love for entertainment, I was hopeful for some fresh inspiration and comedy. At first glance, Vine appears similar to a basic video game: choose the colored square you’d like to delve into and enjoy the different options. With a set-up much like Instagram, Vine’s bold color patterns read with an art deco inspiration on an 80’s Gameboy classic. Each post is a looped clip of a video depicting various themes similar to YouTube without the automatic play feature that keeps you watching. I like video games, this should be fun…

As my normal media consumption still consists of television and Internet, I have begun to delve into the world of Instagram and YouTube. With my recent social scene adventures yielding success I was excited to see what Vine had to offer. Hours later, I am still trying to figure out what Vine had to offer. No wonder the site shut down. It’s not even a David vs. Goliath situation where it was worthy but didn’t have the opportunity. Maybe its naïve, or pompous even to expect social apps to offer their own unique perspective but Vine seemed a remnant of old ideas that didn’t work for the major sites. Was it a place to watch videos? Not really. What is a place to view pictures? No. What is it? Each Vine presented like a teaser trailer without the satisfaction of watching the movie. While the topics were plenty and certainly something for everyone including a “weird” category, each option presented limited results. Years were also available category options, just in case 2016 was funnier then 2015. Really Vine? That was the most inventive you could be?

“Do it for the Vine”

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So who really used Vine? As I investigated further, it turns out many musicians, sports organizations, comedians, and even various businesses all partook in the social experiment, but Vine’s mainstay was the everyday person. Clips of kids doing funny things, teenage boys lip-syncing in their car, and even pranks gone wrong create this tapestry of culture dispersed into various categories. I was instantly thankful that this didn’t exist when I was younger; because like most kids I’ve said some crazy things my mom thought was entertaining. There were so many moms just like mine who not only thought these childhood faux-pas were entertaining, but ended up creating a vine just for these little moments. That’s great right? Who wouldn’t want to share laughter, or perhaps even make their child famous? Well, for me, it’s simply the fact that these videos never disappear. When that child is an adult and tries to get a job, or gain respect, the videos will be their ever-giving humiliation. It’s like reliving that embarrassing dream when you forget to wear clothes to school (come on, you know you’ve had that dream). It almost becomes our parents way of always being, well… parents.

The culture is what truly stood out to me as differentiating Vine from other video sites like YouTube. Vine allowed an individual to quickly demonstrate something without having to commit to an entire video. These clips were raw; there is no chance for glitz and pizazz. It also allowed more of a guarantee that this video would be seen. When you go to watch a YouTube, it’s more of a commitment because you have to go through ads. Who wants to go through ads for a 6 second clip that may or may not be entertaining? These “characters” as I like to call them can pretend to be anyone, or be themselves. These short bursts of entertainment create a chance for a multitude of situations and gut-punching one-liners. These videos were mostly humorous and stuck to a not so serious vibe.

Dear Logan…

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Logan Paul is one of the most well known for his Vine’s and became famous from his clips on the site. His boundary pushing often indecent comedic choices range from topic to topic and sometimes include a group of friends as dedicated to the skit as he was. So what did his Vine page portray? A lot… probably too much, but it was about the amount a drunk college guy would share. Some were hilarious; others left me confused and all the while scratching my head trying to understand the need for sharing. Why do you need to post a video sharing breakfast with your parrot? Truly, I am not sure. However, his innovative story lines and “problem-solving” techniques are certainly one of a kind. At the end of the day his creativity really shined through.  That was what truly impressed me when I say this site was raw. People were imaginative, daring, emotional, uninhibited, and creative (sometimes even to a fault). You didn’t have a chance to have a personality, you were the personality. There was no careful crafting, limitless editing apps, or color stories, it was just you.

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After watching video after video or “the loop-t-loop” as I like to say, it became evident that the target demographic was on the younger side. A study from 2015 reported that 71% of Vine users are millennials. What surprised me was that only 28% of Vine’s adult users were between the ages of 18-24 (Smith). Towards the end of its dominance, “nearly 10,000 of the Vine users with the most followers – 15,000 followers or more- … found the majority of them haven’t posted since (the previous) year” (Lafrance). Companies were quick to take notice of Vine’s impending downfall and transferred to more popular networks. However, their Vine’s still exist flooded with topics long past. That probably is too dramatic for it only being 3 years ago, I know, but looking at these pages really read similar to an old high school yearbook. Sure the posts are similar to individuals, but the professionalism in production is certainly evident. Pepsi, for example was an avid Vine poster specifically during the 2014 Superbowl. They included video clips from interviews, commercials, and skits and had over 156,300 followers with only 49 posts in 3 years. Target, however, had a unique personality on Vine. Its often animated, toy-centric loops presented skits and one-liners. They also only posted 49 Vines and brought it just under 100,000 followers.  This platform was certainly used by companies, but the reach just wasn’t there. Although Targets Instagram has a vastly different feel, it has 2.7 million followers. Vine clearly had potential, but the media site’s viewership simply wasn’t worth the effort.

Photo, Photo

Players, take your prostitutes… I mean positions

Although Vine is still in existence, just waiting patiently for its comeback, the site simply couldn’t compete with up-and-coming trend Goliath Snapchat. So what comes next? What does the creator have in store for a reboot of the 6-second platform? He has yet to disclose his plans for V2, but it is safe to say its success rests on its ability to stand apart from the ever-popular video chat apps currently dominating the marketplace. Its video game make-up must take risks and try to capture hearts as its own brand. Kids like I was are still out there, creating embarrassing situations at all times. Creative knuckleheads like Logan Paul are still cultivating ways to make people laugh like the energizer bunny meets Alice and Wonderland. Although my epic 10-year-old history rant will only live on in the minds of my Godmother and I, there is so many more out there just waiting to be captured and shared. Vine, its time for a comeback. When the epic battle for digital dominance begins, what team will you play for?

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[bizmediaweb]

Mobile Video Tools That Make It Easier To Confront The Camera – 1 Minute Moment #82

Mobile Video Tools That Make It Easier To Confront The Camera

Does getting in front of the camera terrify you?

We make excuses to avoid doing it. Video content is complicated right? You need equipment, you need to be comfortable in front of the camera, you need to know what you’re doing.

But the reality is, we’re scared and we’re allowing that fear to hold us back.

Video isn’t hard. The mobile phone in our pocket is a powerful video camera and editor. People today are making quality video on their phone that would have taken days if not weeks to make on the equipment I used in college.

All you need is a smartphone and the confidence to start creating. And that’s what this post is all about. We’ll look at 3 tools that will slowly help you smother your fears.

So whip out your phone, free up a bit of space so you can download new apps and I’ll show you some tools you can use to help you feel more comfortable in front of camera.

3 Tools To Help You Confront Your Fear Of The Camera

1 Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook Stories

The easiest way to get comfortable with short video is to use the function within story tools. Each video you add to your story is a ‘shot’ in a longer story.

When I started doing Live video I was terrified, there was something about that live, un-editable me that was scary. I used Snapchat to get comfortable. I figured if I could shoot a 10-second video of myself, eventually I’d feel brave enough to hit the ‘Live’ button on Facebook. It worked.

So give it a go, tell Snapchat what you’ve got planned for the day or about something you watched on TV last night. Don’t worry about what you look like or sound like, it will be gone in 24 hours and if you can conquer Snapchat you’ll be able to conquer all online video.

Story tools like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook stories are also a place to practice visual storytelling. Think of it like a blog post. What is the one thing you want people to learn from you? Look for visual ways of teaching that thing.

Here are some stories I made when I was experimenting with Snapchat:

Use Snapchat and other Story tools to practice video structure

2. VineCamera iOS and Android

Do you remember Vine? I was mad for it, a cool little social network where you could share six-second, multi-shot video clips.

The cool thing about Vine was its interface. You just hold your finger on the screen for as long as you want to record and remove it when you are done. Similar to how Snapchat and Instagram stories work today.

Vine was bought by Twitter and then closed down in 2016. You can still view some of the fun videos that were shared on Vine for inspiration.

Although Vine the social network has gone the tool survives. You can use VineCamera to create short videos and easily share them to Twitter. This is a great way to practice putting shots together to tell a story, it also forces you to keep it concise. Videos can still only be a maximum of 6 seconds long.

3. Flipagram

If you’re not quite brave enough for video yet start with photographs. Flipagram is a tool that lets you create video from a selection of photographs.

Just because you are using photos it doesn’t mean you should forget storytelling. Try telling a day in the life or the chronology of an event you attend.

Here’s one I made at a Sage Business Expert meetup back in 2015:

Yesterday Sage brought Small Business Experts from Ireland and the UK to Newcastle. It was great to meet so many great business owners. It was even nicer to travel with @eamonnobrien @charliemoos & @frederiquemurphy who made excellent travel companions. #sagebizmeetup #smallbusiness #sme #smallbusinessowner #newcastle #sage

A post shared by Amanda & Lorna (@weteachsocial) on Nov 26, 2015 at 11:46am PST

4. Live

Are you feeling brave now? Then hit the Live button on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube and talk to your audience. After you’ve done it once you’ll want to do it again (probably).

The key to good video content

The key to good video content is the same as any content you create online. Forget about the tech and think about what value you can share with your audience? What can you give them that will help them learn or better themselves? If you know what you can teach them the video will make itself.

Your Turn

All of these tools are easy to use, so you’ve no excuse pick them up and shot yourself a video, it could be the beginning of something.

  Are you tired of people telling you that you should be doing video online? You've seen the stats, video works but how can you create it quickly and cheaply? Come to my Go Do Video Workshop in London: Learn how to boost your online visibility with video content

  Mobile Video Tools That Make It Easier To Confront The Camera

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