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Where are their parents?!?

By Meg Bodem on April 11, 2009 6:47 PM | 6 Comments
A friend of mine is a huge Perez Hilton fan. We were surfing through his Website the other day when we noticed a video that he had posted featuring a young girl singing her favorite Taylor Swift song. And not very well, at that. 

Youtube has a ridiculous number of videos of kids singing and dancing. In fact, the search "kid singing" yields over 53,000 video results. It's just hard to imagine what possesses a 7-year-old to turn on their big sister's webcam and dance around their room. What's even harder to understand is why they would then post the video to YouTube so that 120,000 people can view it.

While I don't understand the thought process behind these videos, they are definitely entertaining. They evoke quite a range of emotions. Some of them are adorable. Some of them are funny. A lot of them are just plain creepy, like this gem below.

 

If this is your only foray in the world of Tina Chen, take a few minutes and check out her MySpace. The 17-year-old has covers several other classics like this one and even has some original songs.

Many of the kids on YouTube star in their own videos and upload them themselves (hopefully, without their parents' knowledge.) The other aspect of kid-YouTube-sensations are the videos that parents upload of their kids. These videos generally have less of the creepiness factor, but it's still odd that so many parents are willing to broadcast their kids on the web. What could the thought process be on this one? "Honey, little David is all drugged up from his dentist visit! Let's get this one on YouTube!"

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David after the dentist. Courtest of Snoo.ws.

The Huffington Post and Esquire featured a countdown of the "Most Messed Up Kids on YouTube" which shows the best videos parents have taken of their drugged children. I can't say this is a fad I'll miss when it passes.

It's not that I'd like the videos to stop coming, because I can spend hours upon hours just watching these kids make fools of themselves. However, their parents need to pay more attention to what their kids are up to when they're on the computer. Stuff like this follows people. David is forever going to be the "post-dental appointment drugged kid" just like that German guy will always be "the Numa Numa guy." Hopefully videos like these won't cause the kids problems later in life.

4. I named my tummy Mango.

By Meg Bodem on March 8, 2009 11:36 PM | 6 Comments
Social networking websites may have overstepped their boundaries this time.

"25 Things," a Facebook fad, allows users to share unknown information about themselves with other users. Each person is supposed to write 25 things about themselves that nobody else knows, then tag at least 25 people to the note, so that the tagged user can then perform the same daunting task. Through Facebook's "notes" application, a profile essentially becomes a homepage with a link to a user's blog.

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The Facebook "25 Things."

All of this is fine and well. Where the problem lies is when people begin misusing this "blog." While it might be entertaining to read a survey about a middle school friend's iTunes playlist, most Facebook users aren't really trained to write this stuff well. The amount of time wasted (a Time article suggests 800,000 hours) on writing and reading the "25 Things" posts and other social networking websites' fads is just frustrating (and yes, I say so because I also occasionally get swept up in looking through pages and pages of crappy writing.) 

There's a way to solve the problem, though. People need to figure out what is worth publishing. If it's intellectually enlightening, then yes, use the filespace. If it's funny, please, tag me in it. Even if it's just interesting, put it out into the world. But if it's a survey that asks you to use the "shuffle" function on iTunes to determine what song will be played while you're giving birth, you need to reevaluate. 

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What does grandma think of your "25 Things" list?

It's not hard. There's a few questions writers should ask themselves before publishing these poorly punctuated descriptions of their lives. How would you feel about your "25 Things" list if  your boss at work and your grandmother discussed it over coffee? Does that survey actually tell anyone anything they didn't already know besides what type of pop you're drinking right now? iS thE NoTe YoU jUsT pUbLiShEd TyPeD lIkE tHiS?!? There's a difference between having something to say and saying something of out pure boredom. People just need to learn to draw the line more appropriately.

Through thorough research of this topic, (Facebook creeping) I've managed to compile a list of the top 25 things my Facebook friends shouldn't have posted (even though a few of them are funny.) Here they are:

1. I love painting my nails. If I were a super butch lesbian I would still paint my nails.
2. I do not shave that often... anywhere...
3. I used to use my American Girl dolls as patients and tape straws and strings to them for breathing tubes and IVs
4. I named my tummy Mango.
5. I LOVE the smell of scotch tape.
6. My car is named Hazel.
7. I constantly wake up wondering where these bruises came from.
8. I have two freckles on my left thumb.
9. I hate talking on the phone... I am a texting whore!
10. If I was stuck on an island forever I'd take Elton John and a never ending supply of weed.
11. I laugh like a dolphin-- a loud dolphin.
12. I have to limit my Dr. Pepper intake to eight cans per day.
13. I ran
14. I ran so far away
15. Couldn't get away
16. I was born with six fingers on each hand.
17. Good God! This fruit cocktail is amazing!!!
18. I definitely keep an eye out for ninjas.
19. I am a fenominal speller.
20. I have really long toes. In high school my friends called me "Finger Toes."
21. I am OBSESSED with Alcatraz
22. I ripped out page 33 of Go Dog Go and framed it on my wall.
23. I have a tattoo. Ask and maybe I'll show you, but it's in a dirty place.
24. I have an underwear obsession... I even take them from people.
25. Forget it, I can't think of anything else.

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A Graphjam.com user-created graph about "25 Things."

They're Not Fake ... They're Real.

By Meg Bodem on February 16, 2009 11:05 AM | 4 Comments

A distinction needs to be made between the real news, news satire, and funny BS.

There seems to be a huge grouping of news into acceptable categories in print, TV and the Web. If it's not a hard news piece on products of the economic stimulus package from the Wall Street Journal or an investigative story on KCTV5 exposing a neighborhood sexual predator, it's not news. Not true.

Thumbnail image for Wall Street Journal logo.jpg 

Real news is what we find on BBC and in the Los Angeles Times. It's researched, edited, and published for timeliness. It's a New York Times article on Octo-Mom.

News satire is real news, plus more. It's a humorous take on something real. It may not be entirely true, but the basis for the story is from an actual news story. Good news satire lets the reader or viewer know where the news ends and the joke starts. It's a SNL Weekend Update check on Octo-Mom that brings Angelina Jolie into the picture.

AngieSNL.jpg 

Fake news is the third degree of news humor. It looks like news. It smells like news. It would be news if it were real. But it's not. Fake news is what we like to call "funny BS." It's The Onion's opinion poll about the octuplets with ridiculous comments from "passers-by."

So what's the best?

An AP report says it really doesn't matter. Shows like the Daily Show the Colbert Report only build on the information received in the hard news world. So when viewers watch news satire shows, they either miss out on jokes, or they've already been updated on real news. As far as fake news goes, there may be small amounts of reality, but they mostly just provide entertaining fiction.

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