can we talk about this blog entry?

[seasons]

http://theangryotaku.blogspot.com/2011/ ... music.html

It's not like this hasn't been a hundred different threads about this same thing, but this one's from my favorite blogger and I think he has a better perspective on the topic than most people. I don't know if I agree with the tangent he goes off on at the end but it's still a better "state of AMVs in 20xx" than I've read anywhere else.

[Nya-chan Production]

Interestingly enough, I agree with the second comment under the post way more. The article itself just bashes AMVs because they're not to author's liking anymore.

Most of the problems he lists AMVs had even in 2006 - and that was "golden era" of AMVs.

[Ileia]

That didn't present any new thoughts or views on the "state of AMVs" at all. Everybody and their grandma has been bitching about AMVs going downhill because more people can make them....for some time.

[CodeZTM]

I honestly felt it was just another random person bitching. If they don't enjoy the hobby anymore, then they should just leave or try and enjoy what they can about it.

That's the problem with most people these days. They just can't enjoy it for what it is. Instead, they want to re-create some golden era of gaming/amvs/television/music, but that everyone has a different opinion about WHEN the exact golden era occurred.

[AceD]

What he's basically saying is, AMV's are too mainstream and uncool now...because youtube is flooded with them.

Youtube is a small place in the grand scheme of things, he's talking about the American community though...that's just one country out of how many? i go on many websites worldwide and what he's saying is crap.

[Qyot27]

I actually *somewhat* agree with how the points were discoursed, but the root problem that makes the article just one more pissed-off rant is that it was revolving around some concept of AMVs (or other pursuits, like the cosplay blurb at the end) as being some claim to your cred/"otaku points" or a kind of social ladder - read, celebrity - in the fandom.

Basically, the article wasn't really about AMVs declining - it was about, somewhat ironically considering point #4, having one's elitism or feeling of specialness ripped away because time and technology marched on. AMVs simply being a means to that end, but mixed in with the regular old 'nostalgia of a bygone era' sentiment you get over topics like this sometimes. In either case, yeah, Sturgeon's Law was as true of AMVs made in 2001 (or prior, since the convention contest scene as it existed 15 years ago kept getting brought up) as it is today.

The only reason the archive of historic videos looks as good as it does and has held up so well is because of one simple reason - no one saves or remembers the crappy ones. So it's simply that channels toward acquisition and distribution have changed, and made it ridiculously easy to see the glut of bad videos and makes it harder to find good ones ('see' being the key word here: bad videos were just as common then as they are now, they just weren't necessarily as easy to find due to saturation). The Org suffered from that problem too, before YouTube came along - and it still does, but there was a side-effect of the Tube sucking those with weaker or flimsier constitutions toward their work away from here.

And it simply highlights something about the way fandom itself works: whatever you do, it's not going to mean jack shit if the only reason you're doing it is for fame or recognition or the ability to lord yourself over others. Because if that's your only aim, then time and technology will destroy everything you loved about it, leaving you bitter or forced to constantly chase trends to keep up your celebrity. Sure, I'm not exactly thrilled over what some types of fandom have become over the past decade, but I don't hold anime fandom or the things I do in that realm up as something to draw any kind of special sense of worth from. It is what it is, and I only keep engaging because I personally enjoy it; my enjoyment isn't tied to some ivory tower of fandom.

Besides, I've always found it more comforting to draw your social status in a community by, I don't know, the number of years one has engaged with it, not because your pet fan activity is the current golden standard. Those with no passion for it will fall away when their buzzes fade, and the ones that have the dedication will remain. If you want to frame it like the job market, those who have stuck around have more seniority, simply because they've continued where others gave up or moved on. In AMVs or cosplay or whatever, this generally leads to - shock - a notable rise in quality. Or for fans of the medium in general, a normalization that borders on the jaded.

If I was to actually be with my generational cohorts in the fandom, I'd likely be the youngest in a group or 30 and a smattering of 40-somethings who were teenagers or college students (I started watching anime around 1995, when I was 10). And if we're talking in AMV terms, 9 years is an awfully long time to stick around in the hobby. Why in the world would I base my perceptions of what AMVs are and can be on the poor public image that the Tube has enabled? People got a bad taste of it due to something on some streaming site somewhere...so what? I know they're wrong, I know they didn't really take any time to do their research right, so as far as I'm concerned, screw 'em.

[irriadin]

If anything, I'd say the rampant accessibility and sea of mediocre AMVs found on YouTube has made AMV contests even more popular. Whereas on YouTube, searching blindly will yield you a probable 9:1 (some would argue 99:1) ratio of crap to good, any contest is much more likely to have at least several strong entries. I only really go to Otakon, but I can tell you that the AMV contest remains a very popular event, second only to the Masquerade in all likelihood.

As far as some nebulous debate on the worth of an AMV within the fandom... I guess I'm not familiar with the era the author is describing, being somewhat of a casual fan until the mid 00's. Honestly, The Angry Otaku's argument smacks somewhat of "why can't things be the way they used to be?!" which is a pointless waste of time. YouTube and the accessibility of editing programs has changed the game, and it's never going back. Sure, this means there will be a much lower signal to noise ratio in regards to quality efforts vs "lemme drag clips of this Naruto fight and set it to Three Days Grace!" But if the AMV contests I've seen are any indication, there is still a huge demand for AMVs within the general fandom, and I don't see that abating anytime soon.

[Castor Troy]

I don't think anyone's complained about Linkin Park since 2001.

[trythil]

This recommendation to cure the oh-so-horrible pestilence of democratized video editing is particularly funny:

A fountain of shameful, hateful, negative sentiment, washing away the unwarranted self-confidence that enables cos-tards with terrible costumes the ability to leave the house.

Read: the situation that many people on this site are trying to eliminate. Because it's toxic.

---

I cannot take that blog post seriously, and I do not recommend anyone else take it seriously. Unless, of course, you are like Mr. Angry Otaku, in which case I recommend finding a better perspective on life. I recommend running cat leaps over nine-foot gaps as a good way to start.

(In fact, I'd be a lot happier if we could turn this thread into a discussion of how physical activities and expanding your freedom of movement changes your outlook on life, because it's definitely done a hell of a lot of that for me. I can provide pictures and videos for your entertainment.)

But, for now:

The Angry Otaku's post, in my opinion, is a wearily misguided and simplistic rant against progress of technology, which he has somehow managed to drag out to five points and a tangentially related way to relate it all to "gamification". (Which is really about introducing game mechanics to applications that traditionally don't have them. Achievements in Microsoft Office, for example.)

He wants to blame falling costs of video acquisition and editing, rather than his and others' inability to filter out what they see as crap. I suspect it's because "falling costs" is a single entity (albeit abstract) and can be easily blamed, whereas the amount of effort required to implement critical thinking is not only quite large, but it is also a distributed task. (Oh, the horror.) Evidently democratization of technology is something he's fine with when it comes to people providing free-of-charge publishing platforms for the written word.

seasons: Feel free to ignore this, but why do you follow this guy's blog? I can't tell if he's trying to be entertainingly angry or sincerely angry, because I don't think he's very good at either.

[Pwolf]

I recommend running cat leaps over nine-foot gaps...

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