NOW HUMP THE OTTOMAN
For those of you still not sold on this whole internet thing, I’ve got two gorgeous examples of what the old-school internet and this new “internet 2.0″ they’re talking about have to offer.
First, we’ve got what started out as an innocent article on the “old as the web itself” movie fan site Ain’t It Cool News, bitching about how terrible Die Hard 4 looks. In the comments from the AICN retards, suddenly Walter B shows up and starts defending the movie, claiming he “worked on” all four films.
Eventually, the AICN geeks goaded Walter into admitting he was, in fact, Bruce Willis, who got in touch with webmaster Harry Knowles by phone and set up special posting privileges to prove it was him. Here he is showing some dork his tattoo.
So he spent quite a bit of time in that thread getting into a flame war with the geeks and then the site set up this dedicated “talk to Bruce” thread, this multi-millionaire superstar being forced to plead his case to the basement-dwellers whose buzz can kill his film.
So, if that’s what the old-school internet can gives us, what does Web 2.0, the YouTube generation, have to offer? THIS.
You’ll be tempted to turn that off about a minute in. Don’t. Wait until the 2:00 mark, then that guy humps his way onto the screen. Then wait for the credits - yes, there are credits - and realize that somebody was in charge of choreography.
Seriously. Go watch it. There are spoilers ahead, and you don’t want to be spoiled.
Done? Okay. Now… if that video had been one guy, alone, humping an ottoman, I’d be willing to let that go unnoticed. There’s always one guy willing to do anything for a viral video. But… this is like five guys. Guys who, at some point, had a conversation. A suggestion was floated. A suggestion for a video, in which they, for completely non-comedy reasons, all get together and, over music, hump an ottoman.
The other four heard that suggestion, considered it, agreed to it, arranged a time, arrived in costume, choreographed it, presumably practiced it, brought it up on their monitor to edit and add the graphics, approved of it, and uploaded it for a billion internet users to see.
It’s those last two steps that get me. Seeing the video playing out, on the screen, stepping outside yourself and seeing it as the world will see it… there was ample opportunity there to throw on the brakes. “Wait, guys… is that what we were doin’? Ya know, ’cause it kinda had a different feel to it at the time. Now, don’t take this the wrong way, we all respect each other’s work… but I’m not sure this comes off on screen the way we all envisioned it.”
