A while ago I saw a strange and vaguely disquieting video. It is funny, vaguely exploitative, and borderline surreal. For a minute I didn't know if it was real or some viral satire. I know the video isn't new by even the laxest standards, but to be quite honest I still wonder if I will 'get over it', to borrow an approximate phrase. The first viewing was followed by a few more for verification and I am almost certain it is the Real McCoy. How foolish of me to doubt the reality of 2013 internet video.
Really, though, the above video is obviously too earnest to be hoax, which fact actually makes it slightly more worrisome than if it was a well-timed joke. Hello, yes, this is the sort of thing that is not considered insane or cruel in our reality. But, also, you have to admit it's quite a funny video – this thing could have wrecked America's Funniest Home Videos (and might've, I don't know). Finally, as a true event, and not even a particularly remarkable one, it probably speaks volumes about this era or dawning era of time.
Imagine that the American Bald Eagle in the video represents something important, like a country's economy, the possibility of freedom, the hope for world peace, or a large tract of unspoiled land. Maybe that crashing eagle represents hamburger joints, ecological protection, civil equality, animal rights, low gas prices, or legalized euthanasia to you. Maybe it even reminds you of America, The Beautiful (it is in fact supposed by many to be a national symbol of the United States). Fixed with a greater meaning or different perspective the clip can take on absurd or tragic overtones. Of course, the real tragedy is what happened, and it's a multifarious tragedy at that.
You may be thinking, 'Why not make a few casual video remixes of this eagle crashing and post that? You know, instead of writing a bunch of words like a dork? You know, a good edit or parody can get you into high places and big money.' For starters, I don't have the software for it, and I don't want to be hassled on the internet – but I've got at least three funny ideas already. I would love to see what sound bytes or song excerpts or hilariously slowed-down samples would do for that clip. It's OK to laugh and make fun because the eagle didn't die, though later it was made to pay with its life for damaging property.
In the wake of what is being called (somewhat laughably in my opinion) the Government Shutdown of America, the video gains so much poignancy that it could cut backwards in time, alerting everyone in 2005 of the recession. In the video, the eagle plays the part of whichever major political characters, parties, or concepts you wish to deride with regard to the Government Shutdown. Meanwhile, it is absurdly likely that the States will eventually Balkanize as a result of what is essentially political pageantry. Things are getting pretty surreal around the world, but in the United States one can still, after all these years, bear witness to many high-caliber amazing and surreal things.
Yet perhaps it was all too real, and the video (posted and likely videotaped in August 2013) actually was meant as a sort of warning. Of course if go into the past looking for warnings, you're liable to find them... maybe sometimes a Youtube video, no matter the consequences, is just a Youtube video. However chilling the context of a video, however wicked a reality it exposes, the world is of course what news and comics make of it: a big place that's not so dangerous as everyone says, but instead actually kind of funny. While we slide into chaos it's the small things that prove us to be small time idiots that are actually pretty good examples of things we could do, as a species (which includes American Humans whether you like it or not), to better ourselves before we slide entirely off into the deep end – if we're not already there.
Hell, I've gone and made the whole thing sordid. It started off with a funny video with numerous deeper meanings and then I was going to say how unfair it was to the eagle (not to mention frightening and disorienting) but I don't want to be taken as an animal rights nut (even though the eagle was being exploited and was specifically property in the situation in the video – which in metaphor could make the handler either China or Liberal Lefties depending on who you are – because then well meaning realists (and anti-animal jack-offs) would scoff at me. As a symbolic video it has some value, as a 'funny video' the view count speaks for itself, and as a warning – heed it and weep.
Showing posts with label metaphors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metaphors. Show all posts
12/11/10
2010 Retrospective, pt. 1: Seanbaby vs. The Internet
I've been thinking, now that it's December and I don't know if I'll even attempt to travel for the season, that I might as well think back on the year that has almost passed, and bring up some of my favorite moments, or outstanding creations, people, or anything you can stick a noun to that have actually impressed me, and not just the talking heads who make trends and kings.
Most of the time when I read things on the internet I think, "Shit, even I could do better than this." and it really makes me a bit sorrowful to know that someone got paid to write something so flat and unconvincing. Granted, a lot of the time I look back on things I've written and think similar things, except that I know nobody else will write about them. When I read good things on the internet I take note, because I'm A) trying desperately not to be ignorant, and B) not afraid of becoming an hack. Grammar before assonance, folks.
For years now there has been one internet comedy writer who has not changed his approach, his perspective, his looks, or his medium – and we should all give him a television series so that he breaks down and turns into an unfunny hack. This man is responsible for more than 33 percent of the internet's funny quotient. YouTube is afraid of him, toys inexplicably melt and explode when he approaches, and whenever he posts on cracked.com hundreds of people tell him that he is right, his lines are infinitely quotable, and "Good Work!". He will be the first president of America to disarm opponents with snappy one liners and irrefutable logic instead of multilateral embargoes and cooperation.
As far as internet comedy writer metaphors go, most writers are a bunch of kindergarteners, and Seanbaby gets held back in K every year, because the administration doesn't know what do with him, and he keeps making better jokes to kill the time, because nobody around him even understands how to be consistently funny or what consistent even means. If you compare how long he has been funny (since the days of Old Man Murray, which is something knowable only to actual nerds) to how long he has been writing on the internet, you realize that he is the veteran of internet comedy writing, and either his approach was always good or he buried all of his failed attempts in the 90's as if they were Atari cartridges in the 80's.
For a long time ('04-'10) I didn't even know that Cracked.com existed, but a friend recently told me that Seanbaby was writing there, and I took a few hours off to read everything they had. I laughed, on average, twice an article. And I don't mean half-assed laughing: no chuckling, but the stuff you feel in your abdomen. Since then I've been reading Cracked.com mostly for Seanbaby's articles, and you can do the comparison yourself. I mean no disrespect but almost everyone who is trying to be outright funny on the internet looks like a shoddy '80's joke told by a teenager compared to Seanbaby.
Description fails me, but I encourage you to look up one of the only funny people on the internet. I try to be amusing, but I understand that I am as dry as sawdust, and dumb, and don't use interesting photos or graphical elements. I don't do those things out of respect to Seanbaby, because I'd have to follow his lead and risk his displeasure.
Most of the time when I read things on the internet I think, "Shit, even I could do better than this." and it really makes me a bit sorrowful to know that someone got paid to write something so flat and unconvincing. Granted, a lot of the time I look back on things I've written and think similar things, except that I know nobody else will write about them. When I read good things on the internet I take note, because I'm A) trying desperately not to be ignorant, and B) not afraid of becoming an hack. Grammar before assonance, folks.
For years now there has been one internet comedy writer who has not changed his approach, his perspective, his looks, or his medium – and we should all give him a television series so that he breaks down and turns into an unfunny hack. This man is responsible for more than 33 percent of the internet's funny quotient. YouTube is afraid of him, toys inexplicably melt and explode when he approaches, and whenever he posts on cracked.com hundreds of people tell him that he is right, his lines are infinitely quotable, and "Good Work!". He will be the first president of America to disarm opponents with snappy one liners and irrefutable logic instead of multilateral embargoes and cooperation.
As far as internet comedy writer metaphors go, most writers are a bunch of kindergarteners, and Seanbaby gets held back in K every year, because the administration doesn't know what do with him, and he keeps making better jokes to kill the time, because nobody around him even understands how to be consistently funny or what consistent even means. If you compare how long he has been funny (since the days of Old Man Murray, which is something knowable only to actual nerds) to how long he has been writing on the internet, you realize that he is the veteran of internet comedy writing, and either his approach was always good or he buried all of his failed attempts in the 90's as if they were Atari cartridges in the 80's.
For a long time ('04-'10) I didn't even know that Cracked.com existed, but a friend recently told me that Seanbaby was writing there, and I took a few hours off to read everything they had. I laughed, on average, twice an article. And I don't mean half-assed laughing: no chuckling, but the stuff you feel in your abdomen. Since then I've been reading Cracked.com mostly for Seanbaby's articles, and you can do the comparison yourself. I mean no disrespect but almost everyone who is trying to be outright funny on the internet looks like a shoddy '80's joke told by a teenager compared to Seanbaby.
Description fails me, but I encourage you to look up one of the only funny people on the internet. I try to be amusing, but I understand that I am as dry as sawdust, and dumb, and don't use interesting photos or graphical elements. I don't do those things out of respect to Seanbaby, because I'd have to follow his lead and risk his displeasure.
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