For our practical test, we decided to respond to the ‘amateur’ characteristic. A lot of amateur content on YouTube and other platforms is made up of remixes, commentaries and parodies, so we thought doing something along those lines would give us some insight into the creation of amateur content, as well as being simple to create. We took the trailer for a terrible looking video game (Life of Black Tiger) and made a parody trailer for its ‘game of the year edition’, essentially just poking a bit of fun at it with some dramatic music and fake reviews.

While I’ve made some amateur content like this before, I thought more about the process as we created this video and tried to associate it with some of the things we discussed during the first couple of weeks. In particular, Miles’ (2007) reading on network literacy felt relevant. Responding to a video such as the ‘Life of Black Tiger’ trailer, or remixing a video or piece of music, is a way of participating as a peer in an online environment. You don’t need technical skill necessarily, but you need network literacy to go through the necessary steps to navigate your way through those environments.

This also made me think about the Bob Ross Twitch stream that I spoke about in my first blog post. The chat during the stream were all participating in the event, and had one thing in common – they were network literate. Perhaps amateur content is mainly a way for people to communicate online: to tell a joke, send a message or make a commentary. This would align with the disregard for quality and focus on the meaning instead.

I think amateur content is an extremely interesting and huge part of the internet, so it’s difficult to put it all in one basket, however I want to keep exploring it throughout the course. One thing I would love to continue to research is the nature of extremely popular amateur content and how some of it manages to circulate so much, as mentioned in my first blog post, as well as the humour of poorly made content. Until then, I feel as if I’ve scratched the surface of the topic and it has piqued my interest for future assignments.

References: 

Miles, Adrian. “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge.” Screen Education, Autumn.45 (2007): 24-30.

Response to the characteristic: Amateur

Little bit of context: Playstation uploaded a trailer for a game that looks like it belongs in the early 2000s. It wasn’t received too well. This is a parody of that trailer.

Throughout our first week, we’ve had a look at what defines online screen production and what some of its characteristics are. We listed some of these qualities off during class – these included optional anonymity, accessibility from around the globe and easy interactivity with an audience. They helped us think about what content on the internet is made up of and how it is different to that of traditional media. We’ve been asked to respond to one or two of these qualities in the form of a short piece of online media, so I thought I’d prepare for this by taking a look at an example of an online screen production that displays several characteristics that are unique to the online space.

The video I’ve chosen can be found here. This is a 35 second segment of a recorded live stream that took place between the 29th of October and the 6th of November. Twitch, a streaming platform used primarily for gaming. In an effort to promote their new category called ‘Creative’, Twitch ran Bob Ross’ show The Joy of Painting for 9 days straight. The run of the show had a live chat stream directly to the right of the show, allowing the thousands of viewers to discuss the show as it unfolded.

The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

The chat itself was really what drew in the many thousands of live viewers (approx. 61,000 during this clip). In itself, it was entertainment; the clip I linked above demonstrates this. Quite often when Bob would paint something that looked off initially, the chat would yell “RUINED”. After he had blended or fluffed the stroke, they would bombard the feed with “SAVED”. There were numerous little rituals that the community developed over the course of the 9 days, and the entire run of the show sticks out as an unusually funny instance of something that could only occur in an online space.

The chat during the live stream was the defining characteristic that made the event unique. The community turned something that wouldn’t necessarily be seen as particularly engaging or appropriate for the audience that uses Twitch (younger) into a phenomenon that captured so many due to its hilarity. It is such an obscure thing for so many people to be so involved in, that it could only happen on the internet. The magic of it was the spontaneity; the fact that it wasn’t created in a lab for a particular audience was what made it special. The audience made their own fun.

The importance of the viewers to the entertainment factor also may imply that the stream could, in a way, be considered amateur content, which makes up the majority of online content. This raises the question of why amateur content is frequently extremely popular and well received on the internet, where it is not in other forms of media. Are ‘lightning in a bottle’ events, like the Bob Ross Twitch stream the makeup of amateur online content? Do these only exist due to the over saturation of online videos and simply a case of the Infinite Monkey Theorem? Or are is more amateur content than we think carefully crafted and curated? Furthermore, is the reason some content is funny due to its poor quality? Throughout my second blog post and project work I’ll look into these questions, and hopefully explore the nature of online amateur content a bit more.