Bear Update!! :D

And the bear vid has passed another milestone! 3155 views to date! Slowly but surely, our meme is still going strong. And to add, it is still getting some youtube honours as well>>

Honors for this video (2)

#60 - Most Viewed (This Month) - Comedy - Australia

#99 - Top Favorited (This Month) - Comedy - Australia

Cheers to everyone in the group and all those who helped make the project a fruitful one.

A few final words (or something similar to that)

Last post I mentioned that we posted a link to our bear video on 4chan.
It's been an interesting experience, posting on 4chan with the mindset that we have to get responses. Not only that, but our aim of the game's been to get responses to memes, to explore how they grow and evolve. Thing is, that we've made a bit of a discovery - that it really is a matter of luck whether or not a meme becomes popular and grow.
So.
The nature of this little experiment has kind of evolved in itself into something something different. And just a side note, I'm almost thinking I should have chosen something different to analyse to hell and back - I'm hoping it'll go back to normal, but I've found that lately my 4chan-ing experience has changed somewhat due to this project. I guess I can put it down to the way it seems that the more I want a response from something i post, the less likely it is to get one. Then when I think, "screw it" and just start posting for myself, I get replies. Of course, when I do that, what I post has nothing to do with this project, and is therefore unusable. My my, has this ever been frustrating.

I think we gave up on the over ambitious idea of "starting" our own memes (as in, image macros) fairly early on in the piece. And while our bear video has certainly had many more views than we were ever expecting (2702!!), I don't think there's much chance of it becoming a meme sensation along the lines of "Don't tase me, bro!". Like we said much earlier, it's always something completely absurdly funny, or through some unbelievable stroke of luck that one video from the millions on youtube that becomes a phenomenon.

A few nights ago I was on 4chan, lurking and laughing and being grossed out - the usual, really. I tried posted a few replies to random threads, and posted the link to our bear video as detailed in our last post. Like Selwyn had found earlier, most of the threads that become popular are about existing memes, porn, are made by trolls, or are completely absurd and for some reason just become popular for the hell of it. So on a whim, I decided to post this:



Reponse?
Huge.

Like, megahuge.

Not only about a million courage wolf image macros and variations, but also responses of users exclaiming about how much they love courage wolf. Great success.
THEN.
We got a few responses of a mutation of courage wolf...a rather more extreme version. This wolf yells, and yells things that are far more extreme than courage wolf.
Instead of things like, "when you reach the gates of heaven KICK THE GATES OPEN", you get "RAPE HER BOYFRIEND TO SHOW DOMINANCE!"

Oh my. But I guess that's just another example of 4chan bringing memes into existence, then changing them, mutating them, allowing them to evolve through the structure of the community - the very simple formula of anonymous posters submitting images (and text).

So I guess that proves that while it's near impossible to force a new meme onto the interwebbing public, and a chance in a million to leave it up to luck, it's easy beyond belief to thrash something that already exists and is already popular and is already funny into the ground.

One only has to look at how hilariously unfunny LOLcats have become to see how that happens. After a dedicated LOLcat websites appeared, once there were news stories on the phenomenon, once it had truly become part of popular culture, the jokes became terribly unfunny. There's even a "make your own" section for DIY LOLcats. Once it goes mainstream and into RL, there's really no hope for it...

What I've found interesting has been analysing 4chan and /b/ to hell and back. Despite the perverted stuff that often goes on there, it really is the source of a lot of lols late at night when I have nothing better to do. So going into the site WANTING to get a reaction, and for a uni assignment no less, has made me feel as if I'm almost betraying the /b/tards.

Of course, we're breaking rules 1 & 2 : Never talk about /b/ ... whoops.

Bear adventures in the world of the interwebs (away from youtube)

Our bear has gone on a few different adventures, through different websites.

Firstly, we submitted it to Reddit. To cut a long story short, Reddit users are (and this is a bit of a generalisation) aren't too welcoming of meme-related content and comments. In addition to that though, there's a bit of a feeling among users that the standard of the website has fallen a little bit ... and the comments given aren't constructive in the least. For instance, that long articles are downvoted and are unable to get to the front page.

Here's a cool thread from last week sometime - it's interesting to read the different viewpoints of users. Whether or not it was inevitable once the site became mainstream, whether or not it's a bad thing at all, and whether Reddit user were a little elitist in the first place.

Anyway.
The point is, we submitted it. But there wasn't much of a response. I think this can boiled down to the fact that weird, pointless (and let's face it, not very intelligent) content isn't really welcomed. Unfortunate, but expected.

THEN.
We went to submit it onto Digg. Unfortunately (for some incomprehensible reason), we found that someone had already submitted it. Yeah, I know. While this is exciting in that someone apart from us bothered to submit our bear video, it was quite unexciting and annoying in that there were no comments received. The profile was quite new and lame - no friends, not much submitted. So the chances of getting any sort of attention from that was going to be quite slim. The profile is pretty much the opposite of a power user, so exactly NOT who we'd want to be submitting our stuff.

So that was two fails.
Things were looking a little grim.



So it was time for some 4chan.

Here are the results...
and again, they were exactly what we'd expected.





Apologies for the slightly naughty photos of girls at the bottom of the second image. That's 4chan for you.

Like I said, pretty much what we expected.

There's more to be said about 4chan however. But, you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that, I'm very, very sleepy.

Update!

Major update!!
Our bear video is now at over 2480 views! That's right! That's OVER 9000!!!

We've also been getting some interesting comments. The range of comments is pretty much limited to two: firstly, there's the "ZOMG THIS IS SO FAKE. NOT FUNNY. LAME" kind of comment. Then there's the "LOL you suck it's supposed to be fake! Haha bears" type of comment. These was to be expected - you'd be surprised how many people on the interwebs have trouble distinguishing between what's supposed to be a joke and what's serious.

What's been really encouraging though, is the fact that I know that our play count hasn't been a result of myself and my group members sitting in front of the computer screen pressing "replay" over and over again. No, it appears that it has actually genuinely been people watching it and recommending it to people that they know. Woo! Very exciting. Because personally, I know that my friends are pretty lazy. I can't actually imagine them watching it more than a few times. Definitely not over a hundred each!!

The keyboard cat has been doing quite well, especially considering we haven't been plugging it as hard as the original. We've sent it in to Play him off Keyboard Cat, but no sign of our video yet. I'm sure there's a massive backlog of submissions, so that's no surprise. At any rate, it's got about 450 views.

Other stats...
- 230 facebook group members
- 20 ratings, giving is 4 stars
- 20 comments

We're in the midst of editing our videos for our tumblr site, All Your Meme Are Belong to Us, and I think it's come to the crunch time in which we have to stop monitoring our memes and just shut up and gather the information and our findings together. No more posting on 4chan, no more waiting for the view number to climb up.

Stay tuned.

Cats on 4chan

If you don't already know, it is pretty hard getting flooded by alot of comments with a post which is "mediocre". Mediocre meaning it doesn't contain sex, violence, cp(child porn) and other original funny stuff. so i did a little experiment with cat pictures.

this is the first picture i posted which only got about 4 comments.



The next picture i posted is also a cat but a dead and bloody one (peace, i didn't harm any cats, i got these pictures from flickr and reserve-free.) But I think it shows that it is true in a way that gore does help a bit, like 5 replies moar.

Give me back

Click image

Do not look at me!

Click image

Another Bear Update!

Okay folks, it's official, we have hit the 1000 view mark for our bear video on youtube! Me and my group mates feel glad and proud that our memes have come this far. How much further our memes will take us, we don't know yet but we sure hope it won't stop here! Oh yeah, just to recap, our video was uploaded into the interwebs on 13th May today is the 18th! That's barely even a week!

And in other news, our facebook group has hit 183 members!

LOLcat fail...

Know what's failing?
LOLcats.
In more ways than one, it appears.

Firstly, the standard of LOLcats on I can has Cheezburger has fallen something stupid.

I remember when I first started seeing them around, they were actually really funny. I mean it too. Stupid, yes. A little annoying, yes. But some of them were just so absurd, and so quirky, they actually resulted in a Laugh Out Loud. Unfortunately, since they've reached the mainstream, and entered popular culture, and since ANYONE can make one using the existing templates and available pictures on the website, the funniness seems to have completely disappeared.

Here's an un-funny example. No trace of a joke, no mandatory cat misspelling.

Here's another.

In my opinion they lack the charm of the earlier versions...
And you know what? I looked to the last few pages of Cheezburger to look for some quality LOLcats, and I couldn't find any. This was the best I could do, before the cbfs hit in. I guess they were only compiled AFTER the meme had taken off. So, at a point when they were already hitting the mainstream, and probably leaving 4chan.

Why did we even choose LOLcats in the first place? Because they're one of the BIG memes that have really entered the mainstream. No longer just something for those in the know, it's been featured on countless news programs, newspapers, and image sharing websites. It was one of the first to have it's own dedicated website...a website which, by the way, was sold for millions of dollars.

Aside from that, it is a perfect example of a meme being completely beaten to death, mostly as a result of the joke getting old, and the mainstream jumping on board after that transition has been made (as in, the joke going from awesome and funny, to definitely old). If you would, notice how there's pretty much no LOLcats on 4chan anymore. While cats are still well-loved, that particular meme is well and truly dead.

Second reason I was referring to at the beginning of this post: where can we take it? How can we make a LOLcat of our own evolve? Think about it - there's not much we can do. There's no use in submitting it to a website in order to see if anyone comments or reposts onto another site in a similar situation to our Neglected photo. The LOLcats have done the rounds of the internet, it's not really funny anymore to anyone who inhabits those sorts of sites. So all that really leaves us is the option of getting one onto the Cheezburger site, and that's going to be fairly difficult considering how much traffic I assume the site gets nowadays.

On the plus side, with all things considered I don't think we'll need a big journey to describe in the videos we'll be putting in our final submitted webspace - we don't want TOO many examples clogging up the video and making it ten minutes long. It's all about bite-sized chunks that are simple for the viewer to digest.

Frankly, I think this blog post is enough to describe to you, the interwebbing public how LOLcats have been beaten to the ground into something that is a rotting corpse of a meme...not even funny anymore.

Bear Update!

As the screenshot above shows, our video got some honours in the YouTube world! That's pretty awesome considering it's only been about 5 days since the video was uploaded onto the tube. And the view count now stands at 929 views! Whoopee...:)

Play him off, keyboard cat!

Right, so literally THE DAY of our main bear shoot I was alerted to the growing existence of the "newest youtube sensation". No, not Susan Boyle...but keyboard cat.

Here's the original clip. It seems that the guy that filmed it, Charlie Schmidt describes himself as a "graphic artist, performance artist, painter, producer, actor and international talent with the dancing nose". And you can order keyboard cat tshirts through the website. It's not always the case that whoever uploads the "original" version of a meme profits from its existence. Good on Charlie Schmidt. I think.

And here's the first "remix", the one that started it all.

There are a ridiculous number of versions. Ridiculous. And like every meme, some are funny...and others are just plain bad. Point is, there's so many that there is now a spin-off website similar to Omnomnomnom.com and I Can Has Cheezburger. It's here for your viewing pleasure.

Anyway, we thought that we may as well make a remix of our bear video...and considering the "fail" element of our bear video (speaking of which, I sent the original to FailBlog), keyboard cat seemed to fit the bill pretty well.

So here it is...Play him off, keyboard cat! He was uploaded on the 13th, using a different account than the one used for the original.

It's currently on 128 views...which I think is pretty impressive, considering we haven't been "plugging" it as much as the original video. No comments yet. A rating of 3.5. Still, we've still got a little while before it's really crunch time for the videos.

I don't think I'll post this one on Digg/Reddit. It's videos like this one that have been "ruining" those sites. Digg especially seems to be a little overrun by stupid pictures and other memes...and as much as I do still find them all highly amusing, I don't think I'll contribute to that sort of corruption. Haha.

The trouble with 4chan...

As strange as it sounds, I'm feeling like I'm betraying 4chan a little bit.

The place where all these stupid internet injokes start, the home of so much pron and depravity and VERY rude business...how could I feel that way? Yet, it is true. There is a sense of community, however immature and more than slightly perverse the inhabitants are.

So it makes me feel as if I'm somehow doing something sneaky and underhanded by posting things with the aim of getting a reaction, with the aim of making something evolve. I am forcing a meme. We're looking for a reaction. We're pretty much trolls. And you know what? The fact that we're doing this for a uni assignment just highlights that in my mind.

Oh, forgive us, /b/!

There we go. Why not break rules 1 & 2 while we're at it?

Anyway. It appears that we've been having a few problems with our endeavours to analyse the behaviour of 4chan. Call it stage fright, call it what you will, we just can't seem to get a thread going.
What's most likely to become an epic thread? Believe me, there's a reason newbies (newfags) are told to "LURK MOAR!"

A post that posts pron (as it is known), or asks for it, or a post that asks for something absurd, or posts something completely absurd. For instance, "you rage, you lose" threads. Post up something that is likely to make the /b/tards extremely angry. Watch the epicness ensue. In those cases, it's pretty much luck (and the awesomeness of what is posted) that results in the epicness of a thread...like we've been saying, it's your content, not your screen name or amount of friends that matters. At the same time, it's harder than it seems when that's what you WANT. It's easy as pie to post on an existing thread, but a bit more difficult to start something big, and to guess what people will be into on a particular night. You'd be surprised at the subtle differences on different nights. For instance, the night that 4chan started working after a week of being down, there was SO much porn, it was ridiculous. Actually ridiculous. As in, even more ridiculous than usual. And then, some nights there'll be more actual conversational threads (as opposed to JUST naughty bits).

If you hadn't gathered, we've pretty much given up on the idea of ever making a new meme grow. It's just impossible to force something like that...and besides, if we were to rely on luck, it'd be a small miracle for it to succeed. So, what instead?

The new(ish) game plan is to post an existing image macro, see if we get much in the way of a response, and especially some variations. Cause if you remember, the theme of this whole thing is "evolution", and seeing something evolve on 4chan would be an epic win of a most high degree.

It's just a matter of choosing something that's not only free of pr0n, but is also funny, and that hasn't been done to death. So many things to take into consideration...

Youtube Report.

Yes, the videos are up!!
A lot has happened in the past two days...!

Firstly, here's the link: Don't arrest me, I'm a bear!!

I uploaded it quite late on the night of May 13th, in a whirlwind of MSN conversations (yes, MSN...) and Facebook comments to get those initial views up. It's now 7pm on the 16th. We're on 820 views, and there are 133 members of our Facebook group. Check out the pics, they're a little outdated though.






Amazing, no?

Anyway, in that first day or so that it had been online, what struck me most was the fact that a surprisingly large number of people thought the video was completely legitimate. I'm not kidding. Or if they didn't think it was completely legit, they thought I had actually been arrested in a bear suit.









Keep in mind these are all my friends. Should I be a little ashamed? I know that my pals Dim and Fish spent a LONG time arguing about whether or not I was really arrested. I suppose I have to blame my propensity for doing outrageous things in public for that, and what we wrote in the "description" for the video itself (positioning it as a video bystander had shot as it unfolded before them) BUT at the same time, I thought no one could possibly think that it was real. I've been proved wrong, it seems.

And it seems that this very argument is what has been most discussed in the comments (all thirteen of them!) that the video's received so far!

Behold...




Also notice that the negative ones have been given thumbs down multiple times. Ha.

What next?
I've been waiting for the views to rise before posting on Digg and Reddit, so it's now time to put that aspect of the plan into effect. One problem: Reddit is currently down for maintenance. So that'll have to wait a couple of days, which is a little annoying.

Not to worry though, this gives us a chance to write up some eZedia stuff for the fine cut this coming week.

4chan update...

A flyer for the Melbourne chapter of Anonymous. Certainly brightened my night.

So I get home after a rather successful rough cut (well done guys!) and decided to check check on my 4chan posts. Not only was there the "Japanese Eye" post, but I also posted up the om nom nom nom vomit picture.

But what did I see after scrolling through fifteen pages of stupidity and crudeness? Nothing. Nothing at all. Neither were anywhere to to be seen. And believe me, I looked. More than usual, I'm a little grossed out. Honestly, I think since /b/'s gone back online, the /b/rothers have felt the need to make up for a week's worth of internet sex-talk. I'm not kidding.

Anyway.
Like Selwyn documented in the last post, most of the comments that we got for the Japanese eye were exclamations about the seemingly sexual nature of the photo. Which was entirely expected - it was pretty much the reason I chose it as the content for our first try at 4chan. I was a little worried at first, because after fifteen minutes the only responses we had received were "cool story bro" comments. Basically, chan-speak for "crap story. you suck", that they don't think the post was even worth submitting. BUT I guess it wasn't as much of a fail as I thought it would be, as is shown by the two screenshots Selwyn took.

Unfortunately there's nor real way of knowing what was posted after that because it seems to have disappeared - that was to be expected though, what with the board back up there was bound to be a ridiculous amount of posts to make up for the lost week.

What's even more frustrating though, is the fact that we'll never know what kind of response (if any) that the om nom nom nom picture received.

I guess that's a learning curve.

Next time, take more screenshots, just sit online waiting for responses.

Here's an update to Reb's post on /b/.

bump.

bumping for the bear.

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Here's our original post.

.

.

.

hello, /b/

The time has come.


Image courtesy of Kyla Brettle


Remember I wrote that the /b/ board on 4chan was down?
Well, it's back up.
Literally, just came back up. After a week being down. I'm no /b/tard, but even I was getting a little fidgety without it. It seems this project has well and truly invaded very being. Oh dear.

What I've found really interesting are the reactions of those who inhabit /b/ to their beloved image board being down. And of course, I'm writing this after a good hour being spent catching up on the flurry of activity since it's been back up. I can count at least three threads already along the lines of "what did you do while /b/ was down?" or, "I missed /b/ so much!". It's a little heartwarming actually - to see a community that can be so cruel and perverse actually being really quite happy to be talking to each other again...even if it is anonymously. There is a real sense of community in /b/, which is probably a result of the board's long life, and the fact that it's been through quite a lot during the six or so years that it's been in existence. I guess it took the board being down for the /b/rothers to acknowledge what a huge part of their lives /b/ is. Of course, that's a big generalisation, but I think it was worth noting upon reading the threads recently. Having said all that, there's still the usual...like this...

Dear /b/,

A 13 year old confessed to my 18 year old friend she had a sex dream about him. And wished it was true.

is this win? y/n?

Yours sincerely, Anon

Anyway. I thought it was a good a time as any for me to embark on my first /b/ post...nay, my first post of any kind on 4chan. I mean, there's going to be a LOT of people posting tonight, being the one of the first nights /b/'s been back up and working. So let's think of this as a bit of a practice run.

Sifting through the pictures at my disposal, I decided on the quite amazing billboard photo you saw at the beginning of this post. You see, it has a few ingredients that I think will result in a few comments and reactions:

• The sideways eye looks like something naughty. And we all know how much /b/ likes all things naughty.
• It was taken in Japan. And we all know how much /b/ likes all things Japanese.
• There's a rather large wtf factor.

Massive thank you to Kyla for providing us with the photo...

Anyway, I literally just posted it up...so now there's a bit of the waiting game to be played. I'm hoping that the fact that /b/ is almost completely anonymous will result in us getting some attention. Unlike Digg, 4chan really is all about the content (if you can call it that)

Stay tuned...

These cat images were found on Flickr with the Creative Commons search filter. I sort of had some connection with these two images , so that made it easier to write the captions for it. The first one, which has the croc sandal beside the cat was inspired by the idea of the internet public hatred for crocs sandals. There is actually a facebook group which has about 1.5 million members against crocs sandals. I used leet-speak in the caption which is a common style of captioning the images at the LOLcats website.

The other image was mainly inspired by my love for the American tv show, Prison Break. The image of the cat in a cage reminded me of prison and that is how Prison Break came into it.

The finding part was easy. Type in “cat” in search pane and click on “images” and there is hundreds of cat pics avail.. The choosing part is also almost as easy. Extract all the ones that catch your eye… Now the hard part was the text/speech bubble/heading to be. I could not think of anything funny enough to make me smile… The occasional smart comments or phrases I came up with were a repeition of what I had previously come accross .. yikes, copyright. In the end it was a mere comment I came up with but with luck I’m hoping it will create some response, even if it means remaking it to make it more humorous??

Meme is..

Memes:

My understanding is that a “meme” is a concept, a phrase, an icon or an image that reflects one’s thought or idea. It is spread and inherited by people like a gene passed on from a parent to a child, which may be altered in a slight way or remain the same.

The teacher referred to the theory of evolution, in particular, Darwin’s theory, development of life from non-life.

Here I can relate to many things, such as minor comments made from blog turned into a major media issue, a t shirt with a small icon which evolves into a fashion revolution..

It can be a source of promotion or a way to disperse political thoughts.

Memes update

So far, I am not entirely confident with what I have researched and ideas which I have developed. The internet culture itself and the formation of memes is something I can understand, but to actually come up with an image or viral video that could potentially develop into a successful meme is a different thing. Before I this semester and before I was taught about the study of internet memes, I had no idea such a concept existed and the process of formation was always overlooked.
Within our group, my role is to compose the ‘content’ of the project and I constantly aim to contribute to the group as much as I can. But although I have tried to gain a lot of information and conducted a fair bit of research, I keep stumbling across the same conclusion which I cannot seem to elaborate on, that memes need to propagate and needs a collective response.
I came across a funny image that a friend of mine sent via email, consisting of a very obese lady with a tiny puppy stuck in the middle of her huge bottom, facing a poster on a wall saying “lost puppy”. It was funny and cute, but would this fit in the criteria of an internet meme?

Memes update

I have been on Facebook, Cyworld, internet websites, in the hope of finding a potential image that could progress into an internet meme. I have found funny faces, poses, extremely cute puppies, but nothing that was unique. I need something to cause a reaction, to get attention, to propagate though the internet medium and something that is eye catching.My investigation of the target audience shows that people react on unique stupidity, on exposure of celebrities out of the norm, on cartoon images with a hidden joke, pretty much anything out of the norm and has some sort of exposure. It must also be in line with recent and current trends, or maybe a repetition of past trends, etc. May sound easy, but not the case.

But the search was not a total failure. In vain search I was able to locate an image out of a friends Cyworld account. Who would have thought that cats punch? They meow, they crawl, they scratch, but punch?

And I guess this proves that the extraterrestrial exists… very close to us



Randomness.Darwin’s theory shows that evolution of man came from apes.
My theory is different. “
Bizarre, and very random, something like this is what I would consider a hope of a cause of reactions

Little memes, updated.

We've been meme-ing our little hearts out.

Om nom nom nom.
Here's the original picture.



Problem: om nom nom nom only takes submissions via a forum, namely a reply on this thread. Then it's put on the main website. I submitted it early last week.

No direct replies however, it's really only a thread for people to post new om nom pictures. I tried scrolling through the main website BUT the pictures are randomly selected. So I would potentially be scrolling for hours on end. Literally.

Quite annoying. The main page says that they're "working on it"...but we don't have that kind of time.

SO. Next step: posting an Om Nom Nom Nom Demotivational Poster on Motifake.



It has to get approved before it gets onto the actual website, so for the moment we're playing the waiting game. Stay tuned though.

What's BEYOND annoying is the fact that /b/ hasn't been working. As a result, I haven't been able to post anything on the breeding ground for memes, the home of one of the most notorious internet communities. I'm hoping it'll be back up tonight...stay tuned, kids.

BEAR VID.

Alrighty.

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So here's the video. Like I said, it's mighty mighty annoying that those two guys just walked in front of the camera like that - but I guess something like that was to be expected.
There's no chance of us filming again SO we're just going to have to work with this.

Plan of attack?
- post onto youtube. I'll use my brother's account, as well as Mitch's. That's two different accounts from two very different types of users...hopefully we'll get some views.
- Then we'll post the url onto Twitter, tumblr, and various other social networking sites.
- Then Digg & Reddit.
- Then Failblog.
- I'll then make a Facebook group. Woo.

I'm doing some pondering however...what to do about music? Should we add subtitles so the viewer knows that I'm yelling, "DON'T ARREST ME! I'M A BEAR!" ...? Hmm. I think I might. Maybe not the music though. Will consult the rest of the group.

4chan is down.

Or at least, /b/ is. This displeases me.


That's moot (founder of 4chan) on the left. Middle is Randall Monroe, otherwise known as the xkcd guy. Photo's from flickr, by Scott Beale at laughing squid.


So. This means that we're unable to go about a huge part of our project, which was in fact to post a bunch of things on 4chan to gauge the reactions of that kind of community. As in, an anonymous, cruel, and yet a highly amusing community.

Grr.

don't arrest me, I'm a bear!

Righto.
So last Friday we finally got around to filming our Bear Video...the biggest part of our memes project.

As I briefly wrote on my main uni blog, this shoot was undertaken with a large degree of preparation, as well as nerves. We really only had one go at getting it right...anymore than that would result in a loss of spontaneity, both from our "performances", and the reactions of those walking past.




We borrowed the bear suit from Ben and Mitch (meme poster boy, remember?), and had to get the filming out of the way as quickly as we could, because young Benfordshire had to take Mr Bear to Prahran for a rehearsal. So apart from the one-take stress, and the fact that Clay (our cop) was running late, and the planning that had taken place (honestly, we felt like we were in the middle of pulling an Oceans 11-esque heist), we had to think about that. I can only speak for myself, but I was definitely feeling the nerves...not to mention I had to think of my performance! I won't lie, I'm quite good at making a fool of myself in public, but never in a bear suit with a head that I couldn't see out of!

Anyway, with Karin for company and moral support along for the ride, and with Ben meeting us at GPO, we soon set off to our location. That is, after some hand cuff dramas, and a quick rehearsal with Clay (which, needless to say, gained us quite a bit of attention).








So what was this heist-like plan, complete with diagram full of arrows and scribbles?
We would turn up at GPO. I would go to the toilets and get changed into the bear suit. Kay would then meet me at the elevator with the bear head, and ring Nat, telling her to start filming. He would then wait behind a pillar with the costume bag until it was time for me to jump out of the costume. I'd then strut my stuff on Bourke St. After about 10 seconds of me strutting my stuff, Selwyn would then signal to Clay to come and arrest me. I'd try to evade him for a little while, but then let him tackle me to the ground and cuff me. Done and done.

But what happened?
First of all, we found there was no reception in the downstairs toilets. Then the zip broke. So we couldn't tell Nat that we were delayed. So in the end we decided to just go with a half-zipped bear. So I descend the stairs and begin dancing around, but Ben suddenly appeared and told me that my hair was coming out from under the head of the bear. Shit. So I raced back up, and tied my hair back, while Ben struggled with my zip. No luck. No matter, time for a second take!
BUT. Then the camera didn't record it. Technical difficulties be damned. One more try.
"I'm only doing one more!" - Clay.
Fuck.
So. I started dancing again, waving my arms at people, yelling "I'M A BEAR! WOO! I'M A BEAR!" ...and I'm not one to talk myself up or anything, but I got some pretty great reactions from people. Clay raced towards me, "HEY! YOU CAN'T DANCE HERE!"...and as much as I could with no view of where I was going, I tried to run away. Until Clay grabbed me and tripped me over, and I sprawled onto the ground with the head coming off. It was then that I regretting assuring Clay that I could "take a bump". The things we do for art! I suppose it paid of however, because again we got some great looks from people walking back. We even got some people stopping and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

And then it was over. All that preparation, and it was over so quickly.






So how did it turn out?
I don't know, to be honest. I'm a little disappointed. I mean, it looks pretty good, it certainly looks pretty legit. BUT, having been IN the bear suit, and having seen the reactions from people around us, I think that we could have done more to actually capture the looks on peoples faces. Similarly, my bear-dancing is mostly obscured by two guys walking past the camera. Perhaps I should have told Nat to move around more, to "Michael Mann it"...but I think she did a really good job all things considered - I may just be nit-picking.

I'm tempted to film it again, but I think that's over-ambitious. Rough cut's due this week, and we've really run out of time.

Having said that though, it was a really fun experience, and I think that the footage DOES look good, despite my misgivings. It was quite a rush, to be honest! As soon as I took the costume off, I wanted to do it again! I can't thank Clay enough for being the cop...I know that it must've been ridiculously embarrassing...at least I had a bear suit to hide behind!

Well done guys :)

Stay tuned to watch the actual video!

Digg, fail.

Righto, so I was going to submit our neglected children photo to Digg...or rather, ask Mitch to. As with Reddit, his account has had far more "action" than mine. Anyway, I soon got word that we'd been beaten to it! Here's the source (as in, apart from OURS) link that was posted. In fact, it was submitted TWICE.
As a good Digg-er, I am not about to submit something that's already been submitted twice, one of which died a fairly lonely death.

Still, there's quite a bit that can be gleaned from this experience.



Firstly, I'd like to remind you all that THE PHOTO THAT WAS SUBMITTED WAS IN FACT THE ONE TAKEN BY MITCH AND I IN THE FIRST PLACE.
In the words of Mitch, "I feel used and abused."
That's the alley in Melbourne, that's us that took the photo. I guess that's further proof that once you send something into the big bad world of the interwebs, it's really out of your control as to what people do with it. How were we to ever monitor who saved the photo onto their computer, and what they then did with it? It's all well and good to stick a Creative Commons license on it, but I have a feeling that wasn't ever going to make much of a difference. Oh, how our picture has grown up!

Secondly, I find it interesting that out of the two submissions, one has 90 diggs and four comments, and the other had no comments and significantly less diggs. 18, in fact. That was two weeks ago, and I think I can safely say that it's not going to be getting anymore comments anytime soon. With these sorts of websites, there's a space of a few days in which the submission has a chance to gain popularity...after that, it fizzles out pretty quickly (unless of course, it makes it onto the front page of Digg...). RIP, neglected children picture.







Thirdly...the fact that the reaction of users was so much LESS then what we received on Reddit. We got 74 comments, and 485 points (the equivalent of diggs). Why the difference? It can't possibly be a result of our lovely personalities. Mitch can hardly be described as a "power user" on Reddit...if that title can even be applied in the first place. You see, Digg and Reddit work on pretty much the same principle: that people submit interesting things found on the interwebs, people give it points if it's good (or if it's crap), then comment the hell out of it all. To grossly generalise, they're full of nerds, stoners, and XKCD fans (and therefore, everything that comes along with that). Mostly male. But like I said, that's a gross generalisation. However, of the two sites that do nigh on the same thing, the reputations of each are certainly different. Digg, once almightily cool, is now dominated by power users, whose stories automatically end up on the frong page...and everyone else's doesn't. Or more accurately, it's just MUCH more difficult. Reddit though, is the Cool One now. It's the up and coming site, for those in the know. Not dominated by power users, stories now more often than not appear on Reddit first, THEN Digg. So I guess our picture is no different!

I have a feeling we'll move onto a different story to follow after this...Neglected has done the rounds of the interwebs, I think this is pretty much all we can squeeze from it. I mean, we could try 4chan, but I have a sneaking suspicion we'd ONLY get responses of Pedo Bear comments.

No, time for something new.

I've submitted a couple things to Om Nom Nom Nom, and Motifake...let's wait and see what happens!