#online video

^ Ashley Clements and George Takei

It would be safe to say that the Streamy’s have a bit of a rocky history; they’ve only been around since 2009 but have managed to rack up more than their fair share of controversy and negative press since then.

In 2010 tubefilter CEO Brady Brim-Deforest was forced to apologize after numerous technical problems and a seemingly never ending stream of vulgar jokes, cursing and more than partial nudity ran through the course of the show.

IAWTV

And although the awards are billed as an annual event, there wasn’t actually a show last year, or the year before.

This was because IAWTV (The International Academy  of Web Television) split from tubefilter after the 2010 show and went on to form it’s own awards show (shockingly called the IAWTV awards) that celebrated its second show this January.

So this year the Streamy’s had everything to prove, and by teaming up with Dick Clark Productions (the company behind the Golden Globes) they obviously intended to get it right this time.

And did they?

Sort of, no-one ran across the stage naked, at least, and the show went off as planned.

Everyone who went seems to have had a good time and commentary has been generally positive; particularly singled out was stand up comedian Chris Hardwick’s presentation of the awards.

Faux Mainstream

^ Vanilla Ice, rapper and (I'm not even joking) home improvement extraordinaire

However, that doesn't mean there wasn’t some criticism too.

The main issue seems to be that the show was seen as trying to be something it wasn’t by inviting a host of Hollywood and pop culture types.

Particularly cited were performances by rappers Vanilla Ice and Soulja Boy, some felt that the performances alone were fine but wondered what they had to do with online video “as an awards show that’s about the online community it would be great to see some promotion of smaller artists”.

Hank Green, creator of the undisputed king of online video based events that is VidCon, stepped in to give his opinion of the night:

“To me it didn't feel like online video…it still felt like online video trying to imitate Hollywood…which we've done for too long already”

Whether this was down to the influence of Dick Clark Productions or perhaps an attempt to out-glitz the IAWTV awards is a matter of speculation but it’s definitely something they might want to work on if they want to hold on to their core audience.

You know, the people who actually watch online video.

The contest -which Pepper is currently winning- is sponsored by computer giant Dell and the prize consists of £10,000, professional coaching by David Mitchell and the opportunity to star in their own online comedy show (presumably featured on ChannelFlipitself).

The range of entrants includes individual comedians as well as small groups doing impressions, skits and routines.

It’s ostensibly aimed at up and coming underground comedians who want a leg up into the mainstream.

Forgot to Tell the Joke

Whether that category includes ex big brother contestant Pepper is debatable, especially considering his somewhat unclear prior affiliations with ChannelFlip.

However, it’s the nature of his entry itself that’s really got people riled up.

“Hi guys, just wanted to quickly enter this competition cause I’m a comedian and [I] just wanna tell you a joke”

Roughly twenty seconds of silence then passes before a caption pops up saying "sorry guys I forgot to tell the joke" Pepper then goes on to say

“so if you could just vote for me that would be really good thanks guys”

Bus Tour

This isn’t the first time Pepper has been criticised for the way he utilises his fan base.

In June of this year he started a campaign to buy a coach and tour the U.K at a hefty £50,000 price tag. Funded, of course, by donations from his subscribers who in return would be permitted to enter the bus and party with him and other YouTubers.

The project soon fell flat after only a small percentage of the target was met and the video promoting it was privated by Pepper.

Vote Based Competitions

It isn’t just Pepper who’s come up for criticism.

Traditionally competitions like these can expect the winner to be the person with the best entry.

They make the assumption that nearly everyone coming to the website arrives relatively unbiased and without having yet decided who they’re voting for or that they’ll at least take a look at the other entries.

This logic kind of goes out the window when dealing with people who already have a built in fanbase and who don’t need to carve one out through the competition itself.

The implication is that if competitions want to claim that they’re rewarding the best entry rather than the one with the largest fanbase behind it -regardless of objective merit- then impartial judges rather than a system of open voting is the way to go.

Regardless of who actually wins it seems clear that those who organise competitions like these will need to start factoring competitors who already have large audiences into their calculations.

Sometimes it takes a while for the law to catch up with advances in technology and the the changes in culture that accompany those advances.

Especially if those changes only apply to a small percentage of the population.

Like, you know, YouTubers.

Vlogging and driving is something that’s been briefly and occasionally talked about for a couple of years now on road trip videos and in comment sections.

Daily Vloggers

Most of the people who do vlog and drive -at least on a regular basis- are within the spectrum of daily vloggers or people who have a daily vlogger channel in addition to a main channel.

Viewers are often taken along for the ride instead of the vlogger sitting down at the end of the day and recounting their experience. It’s seen as a more interesting way to present the story, saves time and is an aide to those with poor memory for detail.

Texting

If there’s one thing that vlogging and driving is even remotely comparable to it’s driving while texting. Both text based communication and easily portable digital recording devices saw their advent at around the same time.

“I think it’s just as bad as texting, texting has caused many accidents and you see the commercials. I see people, you know they’re driving in their car, holding their camera in their hand over here and I mean they’re looking back at it driving and you’re not focused on the road. what’s going on?”

It’s been argued that if using a recording device while driving were as prevalent as sending a text while driving that it would also be banned.

Speculating about it doesn't really help anyone.

For now at least it’s legal, although anyone using their phone as a camera shouldn’t be too surprised if they get pulled over and the cop isn’t in the mood to learn about new media.

Some YouTuber’s who vlog and drive have adopted dashboard and windshield mounts which much like hands free kits allow the driver to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.

Again, though, a lot still depends on the individual. Someone who constantly glances at the camera is going to be paying less attention than someone who keeps their attention on the road and simply speaks as they drive.

Doing that kind of raises the question of why you’re bothering to do it in the first place. It would seem that producing a video like that would be pretty unentertaining.

Attention 

What’s really the issue here is the amount attention that it takes away from the road, something that’s generally unclear and depends on the person doing it.

The driver must both remain focused on the road while engaging their audience. Even if it’s just telling people what you had for breakfast that seems like a bit of a stretch; let alone doing something that requires a large amount of thought.

Anything that takes the drivers attention away from the road is surely a risk. Whether that’s informing your subscribers about a give away or changing the station on your car radio.

Regardless of that risk it seems that vlogging and driving is unlikely to become a legal concern unless it becomes far more widespread or a high profile accident sparks a public outcry.

In the absence of hard data that proves once and for all how dangerous it is, if at all, the debate will continue.

^ Photo credit meetinglife.com

On Friday the 27th of July musician and producer Nathan Wills committed suicide;among other things he provided instrumental and electronic backing music for YouTubers like Katers17andSMPfilms.

That day he recorded his last piece of video content and sent out a whole host of messages to his friends. Many of them just saying hello.

Regardless of his motivations for what he did what has really come out of this is a sense of communal mourning and loss.

Tributes

A wide variety of YouTubers have paid tribute to him in video form since his death was announced. From those who were close friends with him to those who simply enjoyed his music and videos.

“To everyone else that’s watching this, Nathan Wills was a very kind person and if you can just send some love. We made videos together and a lot of you have heard his music in my videos so you know him.” - Katers17

“Nathan Wills became like a brother to me over the years. He helped me through some of the hardest parts of my life and I was there for a lot of his hard times.”- Cory Williams

“Nathan Wills was the person that always would cheer everyone up, he was always the most delightful charming peron that you could ever meet. He was always so friendly and I met him at the first yotube gathering that i ever went to and he made me feel like I was welcome”-Aly 

King of the Web

One of those friends, Sarah Parker, has taken that one step further by asking for support in King of the Webs Battle Royal Competition on his birthday  in an effort to raise money for Wills’ family.

“However, August 5th would have been his 31st birthday and as a tribute—and to show my support to his family—I would like to gain as many votes as possible on that day. In case I would win the daily prize, I would donate the money to his family”

“The YouTube community was really important to Nathan and I would like to see it come together to bring a final salute to his family”

So far the youth of the format and the people who use it has -with a few notable exceptions- insulated it from the reality of death.

The death of online personalities will inevitably become far more common as YouTube and the community that exists within and around it ages.

What doesn’t have to change however is the way that death is dealt with, with respect, compassion and the celebration of their work.

Especially the ways that that work has affected the people who watched and supported it.

^The gold plated play button, reports of it going *ting* when looked upon are as of yet unconfirmed.

The new rewards system -which attendees of this years VidCon got a sneak peek at- was officially unveiled just over a week ago.

It consists of a gold plated play button for those who have reached at or above a total of 1,000,000 subscribers and the thing is framed in a way reminiscent of gold or platinum records.

There’s good stuff in here for the slightly less mammoth creators too. Those who have reached 100,000 subs get a 500 dollar gift card and a custom DSLR bag.

Awards

It’s actually not unusual for social media personalities and organizations to receive awards based within an online genre or even a single website. 

The Webby Awards are old as balls, rewarding internet peeps and businesses since 1995 and The Streamy Awards go one further.

They focus exclusively on web series; still a pretty small industry despite the large audience growth and acceptance into mainstream culture that it’s made in recent years.

What’s different about these rewards is that they’re given exclusively on the basis of numbers.

^ Look familiar?

Mixed Reception

The reception among big YouTubers has been largely positive and tends to break up into those who are still a bit too small to qualify for the gold and have a hungry look in their eyes.

“I want one, my house mate Charlie. He’s got a million subscribers. He just sits at his desk just across the room from me with his gold…plate….thing. I do just want to put more effort into my videos and make them more worthwhile” - Alex Day

and those who are grateful for the recognition but have some concerns

“I love it because it feels like a thank you…a thank you to the people who have invariably worked extremely hard to achieve that level of success. And it’s important for YouTube to recognize that those people play a large part in the success of YouTube" 

"The fact is that most of the people doing really interesting things, who have the most potential to grow, to change things, to continue altering the landscape of media, and who I am fascinated by do not have 1,000,000 subscribers” - Hank Green

“I'm flattered, since i am in the 100,000 category - but saddened by all the incredibly talented and hardworking people going un-thanked, the ones who don’t quite have that many subscribers but still make huge contributions to this community daily” - Kristina Horner

They aren’t the only ones to focus on the smaller channels.

Smaller Channels

One thing brought up repeatedly in the comments on the official announcement, on twitter and other sites where the discussion has taken place is that the awards do nothing for smaller partners and creators.

The awards themselves arent the main issue here however. It’s a sense of continued and growing frustration with YouTube -spawning movements like the #SaveYouTube campaign- its policies and the general attitude of the site as a whole.

A lot of the ways in which bigger creators got a leg up in the past simply don’t exist any more or have been redirected towards already popular channels.

Stuff like getting featured on the main page or appearing in the recommended videos section and although the community has gone a long way in picking up the slack there’s always going to be people who slip through the sizeable cracks.

Stabilisation

When taken together with things like the new London Creator Space and programs like YouTube Next VloggerandNextUp a picture forms of a business trying to consolidate its gains and standardise skills and pathways to success in an industry where technical proficiency can vary from the profound to the mediocre.

It could well be a risky move, there’s a good chance it may simply limit creativity, create a stiff model for how creators should work and interact with their audience that could stunt them in the long term and make the industry even harder to break into.

Then again it might usher in a new generation of ultra-proficient creators while improving the already substantial profiles of the people who did it the old fashioned way.

Damned if I know, feel free to have your say though.

Five months ago YouTube musician Mike Lombardo became the subject of an FBI probe into allegations that he solicited nude video and photographs from underage fans and in turn sent them nude images of himself.

That probe has now come to a head with Lombardo being arrested on July 20th and charged with four counts relating to producing and receiving child pornography as well as coercing a person under the age of eighteen to engage in sexually explicit activity.

He was held for five days before being released under the conditions that he not use the internet, surrender his passport to the court, submit to a psychiatric evaluation, be electronically monitored, stick to a strict evening curfew and not have any contact with anyone under the age of eighteen.

December Raid

All of this began at the end of 2011 after 19 year old Deanna Archetto informed the FBI that a 15 year old fan had arranged with Lombardo to meet for a “sex liason” on new years eve.

Archetto was herself informed by a 17 year old girl referred to in the FBI affidavit as “Victim 2” who herself engaged in “sexually explicit discussions” with Lombardo.

An examination of the 15 year olds cell phone lead to the discovery of “multiple nude images of Lombardo” and “multiple explicit text messages”.

Using this to gain a search warrant the FBI conducted a raid on Lombardo’s apartment on December 30th and the subsequent search revealed video of a 14 year old girl masturbating “fully nude on a bed with her legs spread apart” on his laptop and video of a 16 year old masturbating on his cell phone.

Since then nothing has been seen or heard from Lombardo and he has not spoken out about what happened on any of his social networking accounts.

Jail Time

Should Lombardo be convicted the total amount of jail time he could face is hard to predict with the minimum sentence for each of the charges meaning anywhere from 5 to 15 years in prison (60 in total).

Ultimately a lot will depend on how he pleads and with many of the facts unknown any speculation is just that.

Community Reaction

An air of resignation and muted shock has pervaded the community reaction with many stating that this latest development had been expected for a long time and was “the natural conclusion” to the investigation.

In a tumblr post Vlogger thatzak said that

“What I can’t get over about all this is how much power someone with a mildly sizable audience can have and it’s really fucking frightening”

A lot of posts centered around the victims and it was stressed that people not forget them or allow them to be blamed for the actions of their alleged abuser. 

Leakynews editor and leakycon founder Melissa Anelli placed particular emphasis on that last bit

“There will be a lot said about this in the next few days. I want to say this. Blame these girls just once, even a little, and it’s probably best you (in this order) look up the definition of informed consent, unfollow me, and stop thinking about ever saying words to me”

Predictably,it happened anyway.

Regardless of how the trial plays out, with the extent of the evidence against him made public it would seem that his career in creating music for a young audience is dead and buried.