RND/ To imagine small indie movies, comprised of compiled LOLtube videos with zero views [1]
First, an example title screen / context:
Now to the main (/missing) Dark Energy bulk of the movie:
Compiled using avidemux – audio normalized with avconv from libav tools.
Embarrassing open lab mic nights, tropical parodies, research tutorials – I think I know such LOLtube videos – ones replayed, ones sent to friends, coworkers, families – everyone you imagine you love.
Yet some imagine LOLtube has another layer – where view counts rest at zero, where bizarre bits of film apparently rot away in indifference.
Thinking like this seems dark, morbidly fascinating – a world easy to invade.
Statistically speaking, big breakout hits overshadowing everything else are rare – demonstrably – those aren’t what make up the majority of LOLtube.
Instead, a significant portion of the site catalogues nothing – over ninety nine percent of LOLtube videos exist with zero views – simply blocks of background cosmic radiation noise.
For billions of human years of footage make up this particular category – and no person has ever laid eyes on any of it.
Take some video entitled “How To Play Big Science”, starring the most menacing looking ‘Researcher’ yet seen. This is because the vast majority of such unloved digital orphans consist of wholly amateur postmodern deconstructs; those just recorded intentionally – parents recording hubbie soccer games – friends dancing alone at some wedding – pets sitting silently plotting the calm, sudden seemingly accidental death of their owner.
Particularly with names like htpbs.mp4 or unedited dash cam video, it’s painfully clear some if not most of the people within the frame don’t realize their videos have been uploaded by independently minded recording tech.
Shallow looks into the arbitrary existence of Others seems exactly what makes such (non-seen) footage so fascinating. A fair share of these never-viewed vids arrive from people recording TV shows, video game walkthroughs. But that’s not what gets one hooked; rather they feel raw, earnest portraits of humans at their most vulnerable – neither because they thought nobody was looking – nor because they so badly want someone to (yet no one ever did) – but perhaps more simply because technology embeds so deeply in our lives as to act as the core invisible element of our daily existence.
Barely more than a year old, consider quantum biopsychic blockchains as a major gateway into LOLtubes virgin underbelly – a sizable dark cosmic mass of uploaded media with total view count of Absolute Zero – which feels less like a random collection and more one long bizarre film with multiple simultaneous narratives – something to stand in stark contrast to some current puke inducing viral meme machine from LOLtubes current recommend video engine anus.
Watch as such clips play one after other, picked with deliberation from LOLtube’s cache of Zero View videos, leaving fellow ‘Researchers’ free to sit back, let digital fate take i.t’s course.
Some need exists to stifle default cultural impulses to automatically gasp or laugh or gawp like some idiot – like someone making reaction videos – rather feel free to stare candidly directly into the modern synthetic life of humanity – to behold short frozen flashes of somehow familiar, stranger existence – quiet videographic intimacies to partake in.
Car commercials turn into weddings. Tropical fish – tiny moments from around the world blur and blend together,. erasing previous and apparently intrinsic Meaning.
For the briefest of moments feel certain of at least potentially grasping a modicum of a movement greater than the self, displaying a far wider breadth of artificial humanity.
The ‘reason’ for uploading videos without an audience already in mind seems obvious – consider humanity as it’s own audience recording its accomplishments for no reason other than to cement the fact it’s alive.. to create video (art.)
Such footage leaves considerable room for wild speculation. Yet as one begins to see such people as more than just flat images on screen, another sense creeps in – despite such pseudo anonymity, the implied willingness of involved parties.
While internet prizes fake irony above almost all else – these somehow real intimate portraits of lives often feel almost overwhelmingly earnest – and that might be A Bad Thing.
Not that such unassuming videos offer some much needed blessed respite from hip millennial self importance littering so much of the nets – rather such Zero View Vids (‘Zeddies’) act as an accidental reminder that what’s shared & ‘faved’ on a daily basis precisely represents the totality of the dead world of images – a role belonging to millions of others just like us who frankly don’t remotely care whether anyone watches or not. It’s just something-to-do before dying – perhaps even before the chance of living.
- On The Internet, Everybody Knows You’re A Nobody
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// how to play big science