I took a few Instagram videos on the way home from work.  My connection was kind of spotty, so they eventually all failed to upload.  It was kind of annoying, because, unlike photos, you can’t select videos from your library.  You have to go straight from camera to upload, and if the upload cheeses, you’re hosed.

This is the same way Vine works (or doesn’t work, rather).  Boooooo!

Oh, the other day ShesAllWrite did a nice comparison of Instagram and Vine.  I do like the look and feel of the Instagram video, and think 15 seconds is a much nicer time to work with than Vine’s 6 seconds. Since I have been able to make videos on Instagram, I haven’t gone back to Vine once.

Anyways, I uploaded all my failed-to-upload videos to YouTube. I think they’re nice.

Enjoy (or don’t!).

I follow 2 out of the 3 people on Vine that I discuss in this post.  The third person is fine, too!  I just don’t follow him.  Sorry!

I don’t claim to have insight into their personalities, beliefs, dispositions, emotions, or anything. But I think something odd has happened.  Very odd.

First, a little background.

Vine is a Twitter-owned app where people can post 6 second videos from their phones.

Instagram is a phone app which was bought by Facebook in April, 2012, and until yesterday, was strictly used for making/manipulating/sharing photos.  Now, Instagram hosts videos as well.  You can record up to 15 seconds of video, as well as apply one of a series of preset filters.

Vine has around 13 million users, while Instagram has around 130 million users.

There are lots of people who have made Vine videos (myself included), but some people have risen to the top and gotten a certain degree of popularity/celebrity from their posts.  Actors James Urbaniak (Henry Fool, Venture Bros.), Will Sasso (Mad TV), and Adam Goldberg (The Hebrew Hammer, Dazed & Confused) are three such people.

What I find interesting is how the announcement of Instagram’s foray into short videos might have an effect on them.  I’m not going to predict the future and say Instagram will supplant Vine, but I think it’s certainly going to draw some people away from the platform.  Two of my Twitter friends joined Instagram today, with one admitting that it was due to the introduction of Instagram video (Hi, Rob!).

James, Adam, and Will have accounts on Vine and Instagram.  However, their Vine accounts are screamingly more popular than their Instagram accounts.

JAMES URBANIAK

WILL SASSO

ADAM GOLDBERG

Okay, let’s break this down.

Urbaniak Vine (22,225) / Urbaniak Instagram (403) = 55.15, which means Urbaniak is 55 times more popular on Vine than he is on Instagram.

Sasso Vine (854,800) / Sasso Instagram (31,000) = 27.57

Goldberg Vine (123,100) / Goldberg Instagram (2,352) = 52.34

Again, I have no idea in hell what is going through their minds at this point. Did these guys have any clue that they would have found some degree of notoriety on Vine in the first place? Do they see a cool thing vaporizing with the possible dwindling popularity of Vine?  Do they feel threatened?  I HAVE NO IDEA.  But it’s an interesting, weird thing to think about.

All three of them *have* addressed the advent of video on Instagram.  Here’s their take on it.

On Vine, James Urbaniak flips the bird to Instagram.  As of this post’s writing he has yet to post a video to Instagram (his last post there was from last week, and he has only posted 15 photos in total).

NOTE: Vine videos are muted by default.  If you want to hear a video, hover over it, then click the speaker with the red X to unmute.

Will Sasso seems to find the extra time a little too liberating.  He takes a classic Sasso Vine trope (“Lemons!”) and stretches it out to the full Instagram running time.

He made a Vine of the first few seconds of the above video, too.

Yesterday on Vine, Adam Goldberg spoofed the  release of Instagram.

The next day, on Instagram, he denies he is in the pocket of “Big Vine”.

He plays around with the format in Instagram, and (jokingly) finds he has too much time on his hands.

I have seen lots and lots of humor  on the Internet that is at the expense of other people.  Some of it really bothers me.

Most of the sites I am commenting on are relatively popular (otherwise, I probably wouldn’t know about them).

Reasons My Son Is Crying

One thing I can’t stand is people used for fodder of jokes that are helpless and defenseless.  Your kid is not in control of his or her image, or how he or she is portrayed.  By uploading a crying picture and captioning it with something allegedly humorous, you’re basically laughing at your kid, and encouraging others to laugh at your kid.  I suppose one could do it in a non-exploitative way, but the pictures I see up on this Tumblr are getting yuks at the expense people that have no power.  It isn’t funny to me.

I suppose there is also a biological component in me that reacts to this website.  I don’t like to see kids cry.  I want them to be happy and not in pain.  And this is nothing but picture after picture of crying.  Hey, how about you put your fucking camera down and comfort your kid?

I mean, from what I can tell, this website started out as one parent documenting the meltdowns of their toddler.  Yeah, the kid cries a lot, it would appear.  So, this parent takes pictures routinely while their kid is crying.  Is that the go-to reaction a parent should have?

Also, what happens when this kid gets older?  At some point this kid is going to have and WANT to have control of how he is perceived to the people of the world. At the time this child becomes self-aware as a being, there are going to be potentially hundreds of pictures of him crying on the Internet.  Did he deserve that?  Does anyone?

Awkward Family Photos

This site has been around for a while.  I don’t like it either. My main problems of this website is it provides pictures of people as “the Other”.  Look, there’s Heavy Metal Family.  Look, these people are dressed in the same floral print. It’s basically a way of laughing at other people for being different.  How is that funny?

I know that some of the pics are self-submitted. But, for some reason, even that’s not good enough.  I would need a signed affidavit by all parties in the picture before I said, okay, no one is being exploited.

FAIL Blog

This website is ancient by Internet standards, but it’s the first site I saw that really bothered me.  The whole principle of the site bothers me — essentially a snapshot of something or someone is captioned with “FAIL”.  It’s something an obnoxious pre-teen would say.  Some of the pictures show people being hurt.  Yeah, that’s funny.  TOTAL FAIL, dude about to suffer grievous bodily harm.   This site appears to be have been bought by a corporation, and its original intent has been diluted, and it  has basically become a mishmash of tepid humor.  I suppose you could do an image search of “FAIL” and see the original images that upset me in the first place.

Every Tweet Ever (Twitter acct)

This is not a website, but rather a Twitter account.  It bummed me out seeing it.  Basically, the guy who runs it does a very competent job of distilling many things that people on Twitter do, and by parroting or paraphrasing them, mocks them.  Unlike the sites above, I actually contacted the guy who ran it and basically told him his humor bummed me out.

Why did I do it?  What right did I have?  I guess I didn’t have any.  He blocked me for doing that, but later on we talked and he unblocked me.  When I contacted him, I basically came across as attacking him.  And I guess I did.  I’m sorry I did that. I apologized to him.  There’s no way one can know a stranger on the Internet, but he seemed like a decent guy.

Why did his account bother me?

To me, it seemed to take a huge part of what humanity is represented on Twitter, and ridiculed it.  The thing is, Twitter is this odd thing, where many people drop effluvia from their head that normally they wouldn’t.  “I’m hungry.”  “I’m lonely.”  “I’m bored.”  Yeah, people feel that shit.  ALL THE TIME.  To mock this kind of shit is to mock humanity.  I AM PROBABLY THE ONLY PERSON WHO FEELS THIS WAY.

I don’t wish the guy who created this account ill will, nor do I wish the owners of any the above sites ill will, but I think about this quote a lot, by a very funny person.

“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”