Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Limemonkey makes the (digital) pages of The American Communication Journal

Well this is interesting. I received a comment today on YOUTUBE from a college kid, somewhere, who was doing a paper for a communications class--this is what he/she had to say:

Hey, I don't know if you already know, but for school i'm doing an assignment about youtube and vlogging, and while researching this video came up in an article in the American Communication Journal.

the link is:
(triple-w)acjournal(dot)org/holdings/vol10/01_Spring/articles/molyneaux_etal.php

cool hey? :-)

Sure enough if you go here you can read an article entitled "Exploring the Gender Divide on YOUTUBE: An Analysis of the Creation and Reception of Vblogs." Not only is my very first video blog linked in the article, but this is what they had to say about it:

Similarly, in the second video, indoor male (IM), the vlogger presents his viewers with a brief update on his daily life. He states what he has been doing for the past week, mainly writing, as well as his plans for the next few days: going to the movie theatre, and taking his fiancĂ©’s dog to obedience class. Like the woman, he too is vlogging from his bedroom. He is lying down on his bed, addressing the camera. The furnishings in his room appear sparse in comparison to the woman’s room. There are a few pictures arranged on the back wall of his room. Nothing is hung on the beige, concrete side wall. His room appears to be a university dorm room.

Here's the video in question:




Wow. As if being married to an ex-Psych major wasn't bad enough, I got people I don't even know analyzing me!!! I thought this was mildly amusing, so I decided to share it.

By the way, it's only 11:15Am but I'm having a HORRIBLE day. I nearly walked out of the office and went home. My boss-in-law in driving me nuts.

8 comments:

Jason said...

Dear Science,

Try as hard as you want, but you'll never take the magic out of me.

~The Limemonkey

Jimu said...

ok you've been getting down on science a lot for "destroying" the magic in the world. As someone who majored in philosophy, minored in math, and is an observant jew, I can tell you it is my firm belief that science has discovered A LOT of stuff about how the world works, BUT no where near enough to "destroy" all the magic out there.

The thing is you just have to look harder...

Jason said...

Well on one hand science "took the magic" out of Polio...but that's okay, cos I don't want kind of magic.

But there are somethings I don't want to know about. Like the real reason people fall in love, or whether or not their is a life after death.

Anonymous said...

You know, if you blog long enough, it will only get worse. :)

Trust me.

Respects,
Murph

Jason said...

So I finally sat down and read the article, and I guess they chose 4 videos--2 featuring woman (one indoor, one outside) and two males (again, inside and outside). They compared the traffic (hits) each video had received, as well as the number of comments.

THEN, they got a panel of kids to watch these videos and rank them.

I of course, came in dead last in very way possible. One study participate said: "I find vlbogs boring."

Which pretty much sums up why I don't do them anymore.

Jimu said...

and as for learning the "real reason" people fall in love, and other magical unknowns, they said that the atom was the smallest part of matter in the universe. they were wrong. but, that thought helped lead to a lot of discoveries.

so while they may "Know" the reason people fall in love, I personally don't think that it is possible to know all of the reasons that 2 people fall in love. So while Science is good for explaining stuff, there is no way for it to explain things exactly. if you want to explain things exactly, you do math.

(math is usually idealized and perfected so that you can explain things exactly. show me a perfectly flat plane, or a straight line, or 15 apples that are all identical...)

everything else is an attempt by a cave man to try to understand why lightning caused the fire to light on fire. some times it's more complex, but most of the time its us trying to understand our world so we can make it better. not kill the fun.

Anonymous said...

Quicker to type it.

Murph
Somewhere in Missouri

Jason said...

exactly.