Wednesday, January 27, 2010

the power of Youtube

Years ago, before youtube came along, I had a lot of trouble trying organize videos that I have created and burn them onto a dvd so I can send it to a friend overseas. I didn't have a laptop and the home computer had very little space for me to do anything on it, so I had to do things the old-fashioned way anyway. I'd connect my video camera into the TV, record it with a video tape, transfer that into a dvd THEN wrap it up and send it away hoping she'll get it within a week or so. That was a heck a lot of trouble I had to go through just for ONE person to see a video. Now, thank goodness, there's youtube! I am able to save loads of time by just simply uploading any number of videos I want, whenever I want, and anyone, anywhere can watch it at any time!
Thank you technology!

Culture Convergence Chapter 1

I've never watched Survivor but I definitely know how it's like to have my excitement on shows spoiled. I used to always visit forums related to a show I was currently interested in whenever I was puzzled on something, like who the father of the main character is and such. After a while, i stopped going to those sites, either because I got all my questions answered or I read more than I wanted to know.

The author of the article I found that's related to this topic talks about how he (James Poniewozik) has a hard time writing about the season (re-)premier of Battlestar Galactica due to the fact that he might ruin it for people who are waiting for the show to air or for the people who aren't caught up yet. His job is to write reviews for TV shows and he wonders why he has to care about who might read his opinions since it's not his fault those fans just felt like looking up review sites for a show they don't spoiled to begin with.

Lately though, many forums have a new rule in which threads that contain spoilers must include the word "spoilers" in the title so people who want to figure things out themselves can avoid being disappointed. Fan fiction sites also have users include a warning sign that reading their story may spoil the original for whoever has not yet been caught up with recent episodes or chapters of the show, book, movie, etc. Now, there shouldn't be as many complaints from those fans.