This blog has really just become a back-up for my main blog. Not much happens here - all the action is at http://angryaussie.wordpress.com - - Mr Angry:
Finding something to be angry about every day of the year.
A little bit of the country has come to Melbourne in the last week. Unfortunately, it's come in the form of a blanket of smoke produced the huge amount of bushfires burning at the moment. Today has a surreal perpetual twilight feel despite the fact it's technically a clear, sunny day. It's just that the sun has very little chance of penetrating the smoke. I'm not complaining mind you, simply observing.
I wouldn't complain about anything as trivial as smoke when people have been battling these blazes non-stop for more than a week. The worst fires are a couple of hundred kilometres north-east of Melbourne, coincidentally right where I took my weekend drive just before the fires started (I had nothing to do with starting them, honest). They have burned through over 400 hectares of land and it's reached the stage where 20 or so smaller fires have joined up into one super-fire. The fire front now covers more than 150km.
Here's a satellite image from a couple of days ago showing how widespread the smoke is. I couldn't find a more up to date image but trust me, it's a hell of a lot worse now.
And the volunteer bushfire fighters are working as hard as hell to manage what looks like an impossible situation. Yes, that's right, in a country that's ravaged by bushfires every year it's left to volunteers to fight the fires. The Country Fire Authority (CFA) is made up of people who essentially give up every summer because you can't exactly say "Oh I'd love to help you with that fire but we're having a bit of a pool party and I don't feel like leaving." Call me harsh but I think it's a fucked up way to deal with such a critical issue.
Obviously paying the entire CFA would get very expensive but I can't help feeling that relying on volunteers will be more expensive in the long run in terms of human and property costs. My cynical side also suspects that the various governments are essentially exploiting the dedication of the volunteers. I believe it's actually quite hard to get into the CFA because of the number of people who volunteer but it seems that every year, somewhere in Australia, fires get out of control to the extent that the CFA can't even slow their spread and we desperately import firefighters. First from interstate and then from other countries (some noble New Zealand firefighters are joining the fight here at the moment.)
We actually have a bushfire "season" that runs from December to March - this being the highest risk period for serious fires. The worst fires usually come in February or March after a long dry summer. The fact that such major fires are already happening in December is freaking people out. It's looking like a long, hot, dry, smoky summer is on the way.
YouTube has been finding new and interesting ways to fuck up this week. From the responses I've been getting from the YT support people, they're working really hard so I don't want to pick on them specifically. But there's no getting around it, certain aspects of YT are structurally fucked. Once you've been using it for a while you realise comparatively little effort has been focused on the commenting and messaging system.
Of course, the powers that be at YT would likely argue that the site is all about video, not about text messages. To an extent they'd be right and it's certainly how they got themselves established but it isn't what's going to help them maintain their position. As a fairly deeply involved YT "community" member, I see on a daily basis that the majority of the hordes of people on YT really want to interact. YT allows this on a very rudimentary level but falls significantly short on delivering the experience most people are looking for. This is YT's biggest vulnerability - if a competitor like Revver offered a compelling community building experience I believe that would have a bigger impact on YT's user base than any offer to pay video creators.
I documented my standard gripes in my recent post titled "Reasons YouTube Sucks" (I'm on the first page of Google results for "youtube sucks" by the way). But as I said at the start of this post, they've found a few new ways to suck in the last week. The first revolves around spam. A certain someone has been creating masses of user accounts for the sole purpose of sending porn spam to other users. To the best of my knowledge, it isn't possible for a spammer to automate this process so somebody is dedicating a lot of time to being an annoying fucking prick.
The YT help desk approach so far has been to block each account as it's reported but this is an endless game of whack-a-mole. Each time an account is blocked another is simply set up. I've worked in this sort of crisis environment (and I suspect YT are treating this as a crisis) and they must be tearing their hair out. I suspect they are doing a lot of work behind the scenes but I also suspect YT's architecture is working against them.
The first clue that YT is structurally fucked with regards to this problem is that you have no spam filter for your personal messages. There's no function to mark a message as spam. There's no spam folder. It seriously seems as though they've set up a messaging system for millions of users with almost no thought of how to deal with spam.
Another possibly related issue that has appeared only in the last week is your message inbox indicating there are approximately 40 million unread messages waiting for you. Whether the spammers have broken the system or one of the attempted fixes has broken the system, I suspect that the spam and the counter bug are related.
Another weird bug that I've only noticed this week is the counter for video views only working intermittently. This might have slipped by me if the cute kitties with captions video I put up wasn't so popular. It's getting about ten times the usual number of views for me which I didn't really expect. But the counter is getting stuck and not moving for a number of hours and the next time it changes it's gone up by about 500 views.
All of which brings me back to the heading for this post, my idea that I should be working at YouTube. Not so much because I'm a genius (although I clearly am) but more because solving these sorts of problems is essentially what I do in my day job. Watching each change and "enhancement" made to the YT site makes it clear that YT is a technology driven site. This may sound like an obvious statement but what I mean is that from the outside, each change seems to be about making the site slicker (woo! new buttons!) as opposed to addressing any actual user issue.
Making a change for the fundamental reason that the technology allows you to rather than thinking first about what would improve things for users and THEN looking for a technical solution is a common flaw in IT-related companies. The issue is particularly pronounced in the web space where getting mentioned on TechCrunch seems to matter way more than making several million users happy. But like I said, this is from the outside looking in and I could be totally wrong. But it feels like I'll never know because the powers that be at YouTube almost never fucking communicate to the user base.
If only they had at their disposal some medium that allowed them to communicate easily with their entire user base. Hmmmm, but who could develop the incredible technology required to do this? Hey, here's an idea guys: why don't you do a video blog?
One of the more difficult decisions to make in an IT development project is how much analysis of requirements is required before any actual coding is done. Actually, I'll make a minor adjustment to that statement: in a perfect world, knowing how much analysis and discussion of requirements is required is not a completely straightforward decision. I am deeply suspicious of anyone who resides at either end of the spectrum of this dilemma - all the more so when they prove to be intractable in their views.
Whether there's an Agile/XP evangelist saying let's just jump in and start coding without actually analysing what we're trying to achieve or some hidebound bureaucrat who isn't happy until everyone is bleeding from the eyes (and probably still wants to keep going even then) - sticking to some orthodoxy no matter what is likely to end badly. So what does this BA think is the ideal amount of analysis?
You should do as much analysis as is required but no more than that.
That statement isn't half as glib as it might seem. The real issue is that "how much analysis is required?" is the wrong question. The right question is "What are we trying to achieve?" And just to head off the Agile zealots, I'm not talking about definitively answering "what will the end product be" before starting any coding. The important thing for the business to know before they start wasting developers' times is what are the desired outcomes? Not how it's going to be done but what the business needs to achieve for the project to be a success.
As a BA, it's a constant struggle to stop people on the business side from leaping straight to "We should use this software and have this sort of widget and all the buttons should be cornflower blue." At the early stages when the scope of a project is being set, the analysis should ideally be limited to "what do we want to achieve and why is it important?" In almost all cases these conversations can and should be completely technology-neutral so there's no need to drag developers into endless brain-storming sessions.
When it comes down to it, the non-IT side of a business should almost never consider technology when analysing requirements for IT projects. That's the role of the technical team. Scope-level discussion should almost always steer clear of technical issues (apart from any mandatory compatibility issues) but even documentation of detailed Business Requirements and Functional Specifications can be done without focusing on technical details. These documents should be telling you exactly what their names suggest: outcomes the business requires and what functions the system will have to perform to deliver on those requirements. Both of these can be analysed in depth without dictating the technology to be used.
So at the end of the day, the "right" amount of analysis is going to differ from situation to situation. If you're following an Agile-type approach with rapid iterations then analysis probably only needs to progress to the scope level. Define what outcomes you want at the level of "this is in - this is out" and go for it. But be very wary of anyone telling you any up-front analysis or design is too much. How can you possibly know when you have succeeded if you have nothing to measure your output against?
While I lean towards much more analysis that the average Agile devotee would advocate, I'd run a mile from anyone who wants to saddle me with crippling never-ending design and analysis processes. Nothing will crush the life out of a worker like a death march with no end in sight.
If you can't define what it is you actually want to achieve then you need more analysis. If you are in the 10th hour of meetings to discuss what particular shade of green will most inspire customers without having developed a functional prototype to see if the solution is even viable then you are wasting valuable time and brain power with analysis paralysis.
Anyone who's been on the internet for any length of time would have seen how "in-jokes" tend to circulate in waves. They may be videos (like the Numa Numa Kid or the Star Wars Kid) or something so bizarre it seems almost Dada-ist like "All your base are belong to us" or one of the latest - pictures of animals (mostly cats) featuring a bizarre or humourous phrase (often some variation of "I'm in your X doing Y".
Often these things don't appeal to me but I found a site that had a whole series of these captioned animals pictures and several of them made me laugh out loud. Then I had a brainwave - what pisses me off most about YouTube? Stupid fucking videos of stupid fucking bunnies and kitties getting featured by the fucking idiots who choose the fucking feature videos!
So I decided to make my own cute animal video... except the animals may possibly be Satan's house pets.
Occasionally, I do things that I think are really stupid and end up being surprised by how much people like it. A case in point is my most recent video character who has become known as "The Blogging Bot." Here's me gratuitously messing with a new mask and some video effect and it turns out to be popular. So here is the return of The Blogging Bot:
In this "Angry News", The Blogging Bot makes a cameo appearance to apologise for my behaviour. From his vantage point in the future he knows when I offend people:
I've vented before about the horror that is PowerPoint so I was initially troubled when I read reports of plans to use this tool of Satan for presentations during "question time" in Australia's parliament. At first glance, this is a disaster waiting to happen: pairing the evil of politics with the evil of a really bad slide presentation. But then I realised this isn't about politicians inflicting Death By PowerPoint on the public, this is about politicians giving slide presentations to other politicians.
All of a sudden, I'm in favour of this proposal. Is there any more justified punishment than politicians having to sit through a speech from other politicians while they run through an endless series of pointless slides droning on in that characterless way politicians are so fond of? This feels like payback, people!
I want to get a job working in parliament where I get to create presentations for the pollies. I would get endless job satisfaction by creating mind-numbing presentations that ran into hundreds of slides knowing those bastard politicians were going to have to sit through the whole thing.
In all seriousness, this idea that PowerPoint actually improves communication must be stopped. There is a truly horrifying story that the Bush Administration actually used PowerPoint to develop and "communicate" their disastrous plans for the colossal clusterfuck that is Iraq. That would explain a lot. I don't like to make light of how badly this can go wrong because this is literally Death by PowerPoint for thousands of unfortunates.
A good communicator doesn't need Powerpoint but could, if they were so disposed, make effective use of it as a supporting tool. A bad communicator is made worse when they use PowerPoint to try and cover the fact that they have fuck-all of intelligence to say. The idea of political policy being communicated by PowerPoint is awful, pure and simple.
One of the things I frequently do in my job is what's known in the IT industry as "process re-engineering." What this flash-sounding description means is I look at how something's done now and see if I can work out a way to do it better, usually by using some sort of software. I was recently involved in a review of workplace emergency procedures which went a little... wrong. And there's no getting around it - the whole debacle was completely my fault.
We were looking at the "serious incident" reporting form and, well... how do I describe what happened? My brain let me down. More specifically, the little voice in my head that's supposed to control my more bizarre impulses took a fucking holiday. Most people have a little voice that advises them against committing career suicide - "tell the boss his tie looks great, don't tell the truth and say it looks like someone ate an entire ice cream cake then threw up on it."
I suspect my little voice has some chronic substance abuse issues. Most of the time he's either comatose and unable to help me or he's actively contributing to a negative outcome by screaming something along the lines of "Go ahead and tell him he's an idiot! You'd be doing him a favour by pointing out how fucked up his idea is - who cares if he's a divisional manager?"
My little voice hadn't gotten me into trouble for a while so I guess I was overdue for a blowout. Everything in the emergency process review was going well until I saw that the reporting form included a space for drawing a picture of the "incident". I blurted out (in a rather enthusiastic tone):
"Do you get to use different colours when you draw the picture?"
This met with a confused silence until someone asked the obvious question: why would that matter?
"Because," I responded, "that would be really cool. You could do a before and after picture and use colours to really illustrate what happened." At this point, the warning voice should have been screaming at me to shut up but all was quiet. So I walked up to the whiteboard to illustrate. "You see, here's Ralph before the accident and everything's fine:"
"And now we show Ralph after..."
It's easy to see why I thought this was a good idea, right? This is an accident report that really lets you know how serious the accident was. I like to think my special skills were really shining through here.
One thing that will be experienced by anyone who spends more than five minutes online is an argument with some fuckwad who asserts their superiority over you by asserting some "fact" about their "life". The utter pointlessness of this as a line of argument does little to diminish its popularity among knuckleheads who seem to really enjoy picking fights with people they're confident they'll never have to face in real life.
The first area where this argument usually falls down is that it rarely has any material relevance to the issue being discussed. It's usually self-aggrandisement for the sake of self-aggrandisement. The second (and to my mind more important) area where this falls down is that the facts are totally unverifiable. What the fuck is the point of saying "I have millions of dollars," "I have ten post-graduate degrees," "I had sex with five hotties last week"? You can't prove it (unless you're a well-known public persona - and if that's the case, why are you wasting your time arguing online?)
One of my favourite completely un-PC jokes I've ever seen on a website is "Arguing on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics - even if you win you're still retarded." I'm sure I'll get heaps of hate mail for using that one. Let's simplify things by saying if you hate me for using that line, you're right.
Having said all that, it's often very difficult to resist responding in kind. The most common attack launched on me is "You don't have a life, you loser! Get a job! You're obviously unemployed and don't have a girlfriend, that's why you have so much time to do all this stuff." This is usually nothing more than a generic insult with no meaning but some haters think they are justified in saying this because it seems logical to them. All of my output suggests to them that this is all I do.
I feel compelled to say that I'm an IT professional who makes quite a bit of money and has a rather lovely girlfriend but really, what's the fucking point? Anyone who launches an attack like that is obviously a fucking moron and should be utterly disregarded. Plus, I'm pretty much doing the same thing as them; making an unverifiable statement in an online environment and pretending that actually means anything.
Anybody who's had the fortitude to struggle through the mountain of abusive comments I've received on YouTube for having the temerity to post anti racists videos will see that my responses go in cycles (I've linked to these before). Sometimes I laugh at them, sometimes I taunt them, sometimes I respond with incredibly angry and abusive comments of my own.
My current mood swing has me saying to them "You know I don't give a shit about anything you say, right? You are totally meaningless." At the moment this feels like the easiest way to respond to them and it's certainly better for my mental health to not bother engaging with these idiots. I'll probably change my mind about this in another week or so.
One thing I'll never change my mind about: anyone who disagrees with anything I say is an ignorant loser who doesn't make as much money as me and doesn't get as much hot sex. It must be true because I said it on the internet.
Every now and then it feels like I might be facing a challenge in maintaining my anger. A few things go in my favour and I find myself feeling... happy. But fortunately there is one thing guaranteed to bring my boiling anger back.
People.
People are dicks. No, that's an insult to dicks. People are fucking morons. Whether it's some idiot who can't drive, some loudmouth in a public setting or some antisocial loser online, there's always someone around to ensure that Mr Angry stays angry.
My latest run-in with a moron was via email and the subject was the internet domain "angryaussie.com". I actually own a number of domains based around the name of this blog and I haven't done anything with any of them yet. A little while ago I received an email from someone wanting to know if I'd sell the domain. My answer was, of course, no. I was intrigued about what the person was planning, though, and asked them what they intended to see if we could work something out. I pointed out that I wanted the domain for this blog (eventually) but if our aims had sufficient common ground there might be an opportunity to do something together.
To which I got this stupid response saying that there's no way he could possibly reveal his amazing secret plus he was wondering why I wanted and "Australian" domain when I wasn't an aussie. So he manages to be a fuckwit on three counts.
First, he obsesses that he has some amazing secret that can't possibly be divulged to anyone because this would compromise its wonderful, unique, brilliant, sacred secretness. I've heard this criticism of Australian so-called entrepreneurs from VCs before. They're so obsessed that they have a secret that will be stolen away from them that they will never tell ANYONE what their concept is and so nobody will work with them or fund them. While there most certainly are many examples of bastard money lenders screwing over innovators, the end result of truly obsessive secretiveness is NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.
Second, he makes the stupid statement that I'm not Australian. He has absolutely nothing to base this on. Plus, I've pointed him to the evidence that I clearly am Australian, which he clearly hasn't checked out. So he's a dick who does no research and leaps to conclusions.
Third, he's completely ignored the fact that I've given him an opportunity. I don't know a thing about what he's planning but if there's something we can do together I'm willing to look into it. He clearly hasn't taken the time to actually read my response properly or maybe he's simply too stupid to get it. He seems like a 3 year old - "I want that! If I can't have what I want, when I want it with no negotiation then I'll chuck a tantrum!"
I suppose I should point out that the guy wasn't actually aggressive. He was just a dick. And I fucking hate people who act like dicks.
About a week ago I embarked on a little experiment that was somewhat of a melding of my professional life as a Business Analyst and my favourite recreation - doing stupid comedy videos for YouTube. I decided to enter a competition being run by the pay TV Comedy Channel in Australia. It was a simple enough competition; submit a video of you being funny. This seemed to play to my strengths so I decided to give it a go.
Now, I could have simply worked on a routine and submitted the video but that would be ignoring the strengths of the system - namely being able to get feedback from viewers and using that to improve the performance before submitting a video to the competition. And what methodology promotes itself as a way to achieve delivery via multiple rapid iterations? Agile, of course!
It seemed as though the geek and the performer in me would finally meet and get a chance to work together. A few disclaimers about me and Agile: first, I don't know a damn thing about Agile in any formal sense. Basically, I know what I've picked up from reading articles and blogs but I've had no training. Then again, when they're put on the spot about Agile's lack of suitability in particular settings, its evangelists usually say "use what works - ignore what doesn't." So I planned to take the "launch a prototype, get feedback, re-work the prototype, release another iteration" approach and ignore any of the finer points of the methodology.
I'm just geeky enough to be fascinated with how the process of developing a stand-up routine mirrored IT development so closely. The essence of this routine goes right back to the first video I ever put on YouTube in those dark and far-away times of June 2006:
So to treat this as an Agile project I looked at the three key requirements:
An original routine
Less than three minutes long
The video file had to be less than 5MB
In considering the first iteration I actually decided to ignore requirements 2 and 3. These had to be met for the release version but I decided first to simply do something and refine it as the iterations progressed. So this was the first version I released for review (regular readers may have seen some of these videos but I'm including the whole series here to illustrate the process):
The responses to this prototype were broadly positive and included "keep it simple" and "more anger". Obviously it also had to be shorter, so on to iteration two:
The key feedback that came out of this iteration was "lose the conversation with the cow-orker." The next version took this on board and worked harder on meeting two other requirements; make it shorter (mandatory) and make it angrier (optional but nice to have).
The "user" feedback to this iteration was overwhelmingly positive. At this point it's fair to say that the users' "wants" had been met (it was regarded as a funny routine) so the final iteration had to meet the mandatory requirements: it had to be less than 3 minutes long and the video file had to be less than 5MB. These requirements proved to be more difficult to meet than I had foreseen, especially the 5MB limit. I'll be exploring the "lessons learned" in detail in another post but suffice to say that leaving critical technical requirements until the last minute is not a good idea.
The important point is I got there in the end with this final iteration:
So, to answer the central question of this post: Can Agile Methodology be adapted (successfully) for stand-up comedy? Well, there are two measures of success in this case. One is whether or not I managed to deliver something according to the requirements and the other is whether or not I actually win the competition. To the first, I'd give a resounding "yes"! I was not exactly surprised but certainly very pleased with how well this approach worked. As for the competition, I should know the answer to that within about 48 hours. I have no idea how many people have entered the competition or what the standard of my competitors is, but I think I'm in with a chance.
The nerd in me can't resist following this experiment up with a more detailed "post-implementation review." It has been fascinating to me how closely this development cycle has followed my experiences in the IT world. I know I've often thought my job was a joke and it appears I may have been closer to the literal truth than I realised.
Those who pay attention will know I intend to post a new piece to this blog every day for a year. So I went away this weekend leaving my faithful computer at home. No problem, I had a plan: I'd post on Saturday morning before I left and on Sunday night when I got back . Brilliant. Except I straight up forgot! I left on Saturday without posting. So I was desperately hoping that I could find somewhere that provided internet access when I got to the destination.
Now, in these modern times, pretty much all motels provide internet access. Unfortunately, it seems what they all provide is wireless internet access that you can get onto if you have your own laptop with a wireless modem. If you don't have your own laptop, you're pretty much fucked. I don't have a laptop. I know, I know... join the 21st century Mr Angry, that isn't very web 2.0 of you.
The only place I found that provided internet access and a computer to access it from was the most expensive place in town - double the price of anywhere else. And it was available for guests only. It seemed as though I was going to miss a daily posting for the first time in 8 months! Then I had a brainwave. I asked if I could inspect their internet facilities. The receptionist pointed me to their business centre and I went in and had a look.
The room was unsupervised. That was in my favour. The computer wasn't locked. Another point in my favour. The internet access was live! I figured I had about sixty seconds before someone came in to check what I was doing. That's why yesterday's post was two lines long. I'd always wanted to wage guerrilla warfare against the forces of oppression. I struck, stealthy as a ninja and faded into the night.
I have to admit, I didn't think it would be so hard to get internet access in what's supposed to be a tourist destination. This place (Lakes Entrance) is quite a nice location but it's a fucking hole. I mean, if you're looking for entertainment keep driving. By 8.30 on a Saturday night everything is closed. 8 fucking 30 on a Saturday fucking night and it's fucking summer in a so-called resort destination. Fucking yokels.
Anyway, I had a good time and even shot a video while I was there. My wonderful girlfriend indulged me and played along with my stupid joke. Actually, I think the only reason I got away with doing this is she didn't realise that me saying "bow-chicka-bow-bow" was a joke about 70's porn soundtracks.
Straight after making this video I went to clean the pool and then delivered a pizza with extra salami.
No time for a long post. Weather is shit - which is to say raining. But I'm not allowed to complain about rain because of the drought. Fuck the weather!
In Australia, the term "industrial relations" is essentially a euphemism for shitfights between employees and employers, usually with the involvement of unions. The landscape here seems to be about halfway between the US (where it seems as if you can be "let go" with no warning for no reason) and France (where it seems you could set fire to your boss' office and they still couldn't sack you without causing rioting in the streets).
The current federal government has been moving the country further and further towards the US model over the last ten years. The motto seems to be "employers can do whatever they want, whenever they want." From a certain perspective this makes sense - if employers can't run companies the way they want, the companies may grind to a halt and collapse. Then everybody loses. There are many instances in the past of heavy-handed unions strangling industries so that the end result is higher costs for everyone and companies ultimately being killed off by faster moving competitors who weren't similarly encumbered.
This approach of "the boss knows best" tends to fall down when the boss is an evil, scheming, malicious and/or criminal bastard. There are plenty of examples of companies being destroyed and ordinary people bearing the cost due to straight out criminal behaviour by bosses (Enron and Tyco in the US, Bond Corp and Qintex in Australia). That's the problem with ideologies - fighting against the one you oppose tends to blind you to the failings of your own.
To me, it's quite amusing to see the government pushing their own ideology to an extreme because they seem utterly blind to how much they are fucking up. This government hates unions. The influence of and membership in unions has been declining steadily for at least 20 years. So what does the government do? It institutes such scary-ass industrial relations laws that people are beating down the office doors of unions in their rush to sign up. It's such a colossal blunder, it reminds me of the grand plan pushed by US Neocons - let's eradicate Muslim extremism by invading a Muslim country!
The environment being created essentially allows a boss to say to a worker "Your job no longer exists. However, we invite you to apply for this newly created position. It happens to be identical to your old position but the salary is 25% lower and there's no overtime pay. If you don't like it you're out the door. Today." For some crazy reason, this complete lack of security freaks some people out.
I have actually chosen to work under pretty much that exact setup for quite a few years. As a contractor I have to negotiate my rates and conditions on a regular basis and there is no guaranteed future. The difference between me and the majority of workers is that I'm in a highly specialised industry with high pay rates and I tend to have the upper hand in negotiations. Pretty much the complete opposite of the position low-skill workers find themselves in.
My advice to people who find themselves in this precarious situation is not to be scared: embrace the situation! Contracts work two ways and employment contracts are no different. Aggressively pursue what you want from an employer. If the current one isn't giving what you want, find one who is. There are no secure jobs any more. Thinking you have no choices means you will be sitting there with the sword of Damocles hanging over your head until the day when it inevitably drops. It requires a whole new way of thinking for most people.
With that in mind, I'm going to submit a plan to the government for some vocational training for school students to get them ready for this brave new industrial world. Essentially, the training would involve dumping a class of kids into a pit and giving them each a cricket bat. Then I tell them that last one standing gets a thousand bucks. After most of them have been beaten unconscious and the victor rises for their reward I say this to them:
"I've changed the terms of the agreement. Here's a week's worth of two minute noodles. Come back and do the same thing next week if you want to eat again."
It's exactly the same as what they'll face in the workforce.
I'd always intended to do a companion piece to my recent "Reasons YouTube Sucks" post and I've been prompted to do it now because somebody has linked to it from a forum somewhere which has sent a bunch of new readers here. I think it's only fair that while the negative article is generating some interest I take the time to highlight the positives.
There is no getting around the fact that the number one benefit of YouTube is that it's free. I've said this before but it really is astonishing that this service is available for free. The second best feature of YouTube is that they've made it so damn easy to upload videos. Once your account is set up, you upload videos with a few clicks. No special software requirement. You're not made to jump through hoops. You just get your videos up with a minimum of fuss.
Then there's the audience. The number of views enjoyed by the highest performers make it clear the potential audience offered by YouTube is well into the hundreds of thousands if not millions. No other online platform offers this potential audience. Nobody. I'm open to being shown otherwise but I'm not aware of any podcasts that are being downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. I'm not aware of any personal websites or blogs being viewed hundreds of thousands of times a day.
Another one of YouTube's great advantages is that it's the world's biggest test lab - for amateurs and professionals alike. Some professional producers are starting to work this aspect of YouTube out. The opportunity to test what works and what doesn't has never existed on this scale before. This can work for TV, movies, music and advertising. Forget test screenings and focus groups - that's the past. This is the future.
For me as an amateur (with greater aspirations) it's an amazing platform for developing something that works. The constant feedback loop is the best way to improve. Stand-up comedians crave stage time because doing performances is the only way to get better. But it's fucking hard to get stage time! YouTube gives you all the screen time you want and the potential for an incredibly broad cross-section of people to provide feedback. Actually, the contradictions in the feedback provide me with quite a bit of amusement and I'm not talking about the "you suck/you're great" contradictions. I don't know if the commenters notice that other people are saying the opposite but I'm always seeing "Do longer bits/do shorter bits", "Do more like this/do less like this", "Take your mask off/leave your mask on."
And while I'd love to have the tens of thousands of subscribers that the top performers have, now that YouTube is the site on everybody's lips I don't have to reach everyone, I just have to reach the right people. Case in point is the guys from "The Fizz". Like everyone else in the media, they're trying to work out if this massive activity on YouTube can be turned into something they can sell. So they've built a show around online videos and they've paid me actual currency to be part of their show. So eat that shit sandwich all you haters! Achieving you goals is definitely an awesome way to get revenge against fucked-up losers who try to drag you down.
YouTube has also been incredibly good for simply providing an opportunity to interact with great people that I never would have come into contact with otherwise. I'm not saying this just because this is the positive post to balance the negative one - the positive interactions outnumber and overpower the negative ones by a massive margin. And not just for me, the number of marginalised people I have seen gain some positive interaction is fantastic. Older people, isolated people, people with disabilities and people who were simply shy are finding this window onto the big wide world. And that fucking rocks!
And let's not forget the catharsis! Lots of people comment to me that my anger is a great outlet for them - I get angry so they don't have to or I inspire them to release their own anger positively. How do you think it feels for me? It is SO MUCH FUN to simply let loose and scream occasionally. Admittedly, I don't go crazy most of the time (I think it would get old if I did) but the creative outlet helps me be way more balanced and happy in my day to day life.
That's just a few of the reasons I spend about 40 hours a week doing this stuff. Yes, that's right 40 hours on top of my 40 hour a week day job. When you combine the work I do on this blog with the videos it's easily 40 hours in an average week. This figure tends to space a lot of people out, they can't fathom why I would spend so much time doing it. My simple response is because I'm having so much fun. Are they suggesting I should use that time doing something I enjoy less?
The shortcomings of YouTube haven't stopped making me angry (the fucked-up commenting system drives me abso-fucking-lutely crazy!) but there's no two ways about it. Despite all its failings, YouTube rocks!
Nobody in Australia knows how to use the fucking internet! I know this because every time I try to find something I want online I can't fucking find it! Case in point: recently, I was doing exactly as the topic of this post says, shopping for stage makeup, costumes and masks here in Melbourne. I had this crazy idea that if I plugged those terms into Google, I'd find what I was looking for. No such fucking luck.
I had a bastard of a time finding what I was looking for. I did find one place that had bought the appropriate adsense keywords, so they at least knew how to pay to show up at the right time on Google. But the free listings (search results) were fucking useless. I'm desperately trying to give someone my money and they don't know how to take it!
I eventually found a few places that weren't too far away but it was a hard slog. I'm willing to bet that within a week I'll be one of the top search results for this sort of thing. And I won't have paid a cent to get there. I should get these stores to sponsor me. The good ones are REALLY good - they're like Aladdin's cave to me. So many possibilities with props, make-up and costumes. I'm thinking of taking a video just walking around one of these shops showing the various things and asking for suggestions on which ones I should use.
So when you see me occasionally introduce a new character in a video, it's because I've been shopping and found a mask I like. Usually I find a mask and have no clear idea of how I'm going to use it - I just like it and so I get it. Then I spends some time (sometimes a long time) working out what sort of character suits the mask. I did this again on the weekend, I found a silver, almost featureless mask. It looked very android-y and I decided almost straight away I had to have it. It was so devoid of expression it was almost the anti-Mr Angry.
The initial idea I had was that this character would send back videos "from the future". Quite a few people do this on YouTube to varying degrees of jokiness and success. Why should I be any different? I shot a video on Sunday but didn't put it up until Tuesday night because I honestly thought it was kind of dorky. I have been surprised by the reception yet again - he seems insanely popular on YouTube. That surprise happens to me often - I'll post something here or on YouTube thinking "people really aren't going to like this" and everyone thinks it's great.
Without further ado, I present the Blogging Bot with an important message from the future:
I've just been talking to Gruntski on the phone and he's bringing along a few people to the open mic night I'll be performing at tonight. This will be a first for me - one of my blog regulars coming along to a live performance. On the off chance anyone else from Melbourne reads this it's at the All Nations Backpackers, 2 Spencer Street, Melbourne at about 8.30pm.
Performing to drunk backpacker should be... an experience. I'd actually prefer a large crowd of hostile drunks to a small, indifferent crowd. Like Gruntski said, it will be a good introduction to Australian "culture" for the backpackers. I'm thinking of opening the piece by saying "Welcome to Australia, motherfuckers! If you think vegemite's bitter, wait until you taste this."
I'm using this opportunity to refine the routine that I'm submitting to The Comedy Channel for their competition to get a spot on air. I have the rest of the week to work on it so every chance to try something out is worth it. Here are the first two iterations of my "Agile Comedy" experiment that have been posted to YouTube:
I continue to be a fuckwit magnet on YouTube. Lucky, lucky me. I'm glad I was already a cynical misanthrope because exposure to these cretins surely would have destroyed any sunny disposition I may have had. The majority of inbred freaks still flock around my anti-nazi videos but they crop up all over the place from time to time.
The only thing that keeps me sane is treating them all like the pathetic jokes they are. If I thought these freaks were really representative of humanity I'd have to take drastic action. As it is, insulting them and taunting them is enough fun for me. It's flattering their bleating to call it an argument but they do fall into some of the classic "bad argument" traps.
My favourite is when they tell you what you HAVE to think in response to them or what you HAVE to do because of how they perceive you. Most people (myself included) at least occasionally fall into the trap of saying to someone "You have to admit that..." Usually this is just lazy misuse of language (the intended meaning is more like "do you see my point?") but some of these freaks get really insistent. They really really think I HAVE TO CONFORM to what they say. They get well miffed when my response is to laugh at them.
The other frequent habit of the nazis that cracks me up is their apparent view that I should care what they think. They tell me they hate me in a way that suggests I should be upset by this. They really don't seem to understand that being respected by such contemptible low-life would actually be a bad thing. I'd know I was doing something wrong if I actually had nazis on my side.
Then there are the common or garden variety haters. I don't know what it is about the internet that makes people act like utter fucking morons but people's character flaws seem to magnify online. I actually think the root cause is the feeling that people won't have to answer for what they do. In many cases, people are absolutely wrong when they think this way about their online "exploits" but this illusion of invulnerability is doubtless a big part of what makes people act in such an anti-social way. Their behaviour is ten times more aggressive than anything they'd dare in real life because they think they'll never have to answer for what they do.
I'll indulge in a little armchair psychology here and put forward the theory that a lot of these people really aren't very happy in their lives. It seems as though they'll feel better about themselves if they drag someone else down so their attacks tend to be rather arbitrary and nonsensical. They don't want to actually reach anyone in any meaningful way, they simply want to hurt for the sake of hurting. God help you if you have anything that makes you different, any apparent disability or exhibit any sign of weakness or frailty. Because I've seen these evil fuckers really rip into some vulnerable people.
Which leads me to wonder why the fuck they waste this effort on me. They launch really pointless attacks on me ("you're not funny," "that mask is stupid," "all Australians are dumb,") and they seem to genuinely believe they're going to upset me. Sometimes I point out to them the obvious flaw in their approach. Look at my videos, listen to the way I talk, read what I write.
What is there in all of that that leads you to believe you could possibly get to me you pathetic fucking loser?
No, I'm not talking about my job. Now, if I was being paid to blog and vlog that would be the best job in the world for me and what I want to do. Actually, as a side note, I thing "vlog" is the wrong term for video blogs. Blog was coined as a contraction for weblog so for the truly obsessive it would be spelled 'blog to indicate some letters had been taken from the start of the word. Following this convention, the currently broadly accepted terminology for video blogs would be punctuated as v'log because the contraction is in the middle.
I think for the sake of consistency olog would be better. And it would be easier to say. I don't know about you, but I pronounce v'log as "vee-log". So we're not even getting the efficiency of a single syllable contraction. And don't go telling me you pronounce it as a single syllable "vlog" because that sounds too much like blog and nobody will ever know what you're talking about. I know my readers aren't that silly.
But "olog" sounds a bit crap. I think is sounds better if you claim the entire sound from the last syllable of video so it becomes "yolog". That's it! I hereby embark on the pointless (and probably ultimately fruitless) quest to have video blogs known as yologs. None of which has anything to do with what I was going to write today.
I have decided the best job in the world must be to write for one of those tabloid gossip magazines. If you can look past the fact you have to be a soul-less life-hating scumbag to work at one. Look at the upside: you are paid to make shit up. People give you money to vilify famous people who have lives much better than your own will ever be. Everyone hates people with privileged lives. Gossip mags are the ultimate revenge.
We've all seen them. On the newsagent shelf or next to the supermarket register. Colourful glossy mags screaming out "this person is too fat", "that person is too skinny", "so-and-so is on drugs", "guess who's gay?" Always with the exclusive gossip regarding the collapse of a celebrity's life "according to sources close to the star." I know I'd feel much happier if I could start each day by thinking "what celebrity do I want to fuck with today?"
Yeah, Tom Cruise... what has that fucker done for me lately? Here's a flash photo of Lindsay Lohan that makes her look a bit weird. She'd probably look like that if she was on drugs! Hey, check it out! This photo has a shadow on that star's face that could be a bruise if you use your imagination. Let's say they're in an abusive relationship!
My girlfriend reminds me sometimes that this is the sort of shit I'm inviting upon myself by wanting to be famous. That might be the definition of fame in the modern world - famous enough to be slandered by a gossip rag. The thing is, I know I'm completely screwed if I ever attain any sort of fame under my own name. I think you have to reach some sort of critical level of fame for the tabloids to start inventing lies of their own volition. My problem is a psychotic revenge-oriented ex-girlfriend who would go to town if she ever saw my name in any media.
She hasn't seen my name for a while because, in order to get away from her, after breaking up with her I changed jobs, moved address, changed phone number and changed email address. Yes, she's that fucking crazy. I've thought of pre-empting any of her attacks on me by doing a series of yologs detailing her insane behaviour. Then, if tabloids ever start quoting her, I can reply by saying "I've already documented what a psycho she is, if you want to hang your tissue-thin credibility on the ravings of an absolute lunatic, that's up to you."
I'm not all that worried. The future for these shitty gossip rags is very limited. One thing I would most definitely do if I got famous would be to maintain my blog. I haven't seen any celebrity taking effective advantage of blogging yet but it's only a matter of time. Why would anyone believe the bullshit gossip when they could communicate with the stars directly? The only reason these gossipy tabloids (both print and broadcast) exists is because of the gap between stars and fans. Take that away and you take away their power.
I've been touristy things today, taking the kids from rides on olde tyme steam trains. So besides having toxic levels of soot in my system, I'm pissed off from having to deal with dickheads in public. I don't know if you've had the experience but for me, whenever I'm at a tourist attraction there'll be some wanker who shoves their way past you to take the advantageous spot you've scored for yourself.
They don't do anything extremely physically violent, you know, nothing you can have them arrested for but they're really fucking obnoxious. Basically, they do something beyond the normal bounds of decency and your only choices are to let the fuckers get away with it or call them on it which inevitably leads to an ugly confrontation. These pricks don't have the decency to be openly and honestly aggressive with their fuckwittery - they do their passive-aggressive shit and act like they're doing nothing.
That's what pisses me off the most - the type who acts like a really obnoxious prick but does it in a way that they think gives them "plausible deniability". When you call them on it, they act like it's you who has a problem. They go through life playing on the fact that the vast majority of human don't want unnecessary trauma in their lives. When some obnoxious fucker gives you static you're more likely let them get away with it than invite even more shit upon yourself. These bastards are in desperate need of a smackdown.
The funny thing is when two of them clash and inflict their stupid shit on each other. This happened to me one time in the line at the supermarket. The two fuckwads in question seemed really different; one was early twenties and the other was late fifties or early sixties. But what they had in common was their identical fucked up personalities. Basically they both realised they were going for the same spot in the same line from different directions and so they actually ran. They raced each other for the spot in line.
They still ended up reaching the line at pretty much the same time. So with no clear winner they both made it clear they were utter losers. There was pushing and shoving (nothing aggressive enough to actually be called a fight) and some boisterous words. Then one of them actually started trying to drag others in the line into their stupid shit, saying: "He's an idiot isn't her?" At this point, I lost it and said in a rather direct and forceful tone (some wussies might have called it shouting):
"WHAT? You want us to take sides? You expect US to decide which of you is the bigger dickhead? Because if that's what you're after, I can't do it. I've been watching the two of you in action and I can't separate you. Congratulations, you're co-winners of the dickhead of the year award. Now take this shit the fuck away from decent people you cretinous sacks of shit."
Or at least that's what I was thinking as I paid for my 40 litres of high-caffeine cola.
