Productivity

I feel today was productive. The intro episode, however the quality, is uploaded, and I can’t WAIT for the spam to fly so I can write about it. In the end, it isn’t so much how successful the fandom is, it’s that something happens so I have something to write about in my thesis book.

I seem to be doing okay without the videos, even. Someone is following me who I don’t know! Unless it’s one of the England kids and I just don’t know it … or if it’s like tumblr’s equivilant of Tom. 

The videos are on a YouTube account called ProjectRachelNation (wtf RachelNation was taken! WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS). It’s under my gmail (I think) which means I had to delete all my favorites just to avoid another one of those situations like that time on DeviantArt when my friend decided to look through my favorites … um … let’s just call it a Noodle Incident and never mention it again. 

Anyhow, I basically have a blank youtube channel. Maybe one day I’ll upload my other two videos, A Transformation of Tompkins Square Park and Painted: A Study in Heavy Metal Poisoning. I wrote and filmed both but acted in neither of those for good reason: I cannot remember lines unless they are first delivered by someone else. 

Whatever. I just hope something happens.

Starting

I had the class today. It was a bit of a rush, since we were running rather late (what else is new) and everyone wanted to go home. But I managed to get some feedback and …

No one liked my ideas.

Bummer.

Luckily, they offered a suggestion: to make a YouTube channel/blog that explains how to get your own internet/real life following. And that, in turn, will be the attempt to get a following. Not sure if that last part was my idea or someone else’s, but I think I’ll take the credit since I will be taking little credit for everything else.

I have an idea so now it’s time to start.

But this basically means that I have to write  a script a week, as well as keep the blog posts, and film, edit, upload, and hope to God that someone responds or I will have nothing to write about. And then I have to design the book that tells the story, because people still aren’t going to look at it no matter how funny I am or not. Might as well write a book of obituaries for all the good my writing skills are going to do me here.

Hope it will go well. I’d better start  …um . . yesterday.

My Critera

I brainstormed with my roommate, mostly because the writing center at school isn’t opened yet (why have it closed when there’s so much writing that needs to be done??), along with my friend Kara and one or two classmates. There’s some criteria to what to do to gather this “following.”

A. It has to be something simple.
Sure, people  might want to read hilarious poems about zombie rabbis, or webcomics featuring personified internet trolls, but that would take too long, and is overly complicated. Why spend so much time on this when I could fall on my ass and get 10,000 Youtube views?

B. I have to be willing to do it.
Hell if I’m actually willing to fall on my ass for 10,000 YouTube views. Okay, maybe for 10,000, but in all likelihood I’d peak at 1000, and that’s just not worth it. This also means nothing involving nudity (mine or anyone else’s), no eating bizarre foods concocted by my sadistic friends, and no setting things I like on fire for symbolic meanings.

C.It has to be several episodes or posts
Just one is never enough. There’s no guarantee that one video or weird fanfiction will get lots of attention. Unless I’m Rebecca Black, but I’m not (I’m actually chorally trained.) The more I post, the more likely it will be that someone will see it, or them.

D. It has to be appealing.
This one is fairly obvious. I mean, why would I watch or read something stupid? Okay, I mean, why would I read or watch something boring? It CAN be stupid, I suppose, but I would prefer if there was some sort of intelligence or thought involved. Hence the no-falling-on-my-ass. I cannot emphasize that enough.

E. It can’t be too embarrassing
As if I don’t embarrass myself enough outside the internet!

After analyzing the criteria and bouncing ideas off people (and laughing as they winced) , we only came up with a few solutions:

#awkward moments: a twitter and tumblr account posting everyday awkward situations. We could probably update this several times a day.

not-caution: photoshopping caution labels to say the exact opposite thing. ie “Children and hot beverages should not be kept apart” and “immediately drive or operate heavy machinery after taking.”

book blogging: I had read several book blogs, where someone fairly funny or ridiculously critical reads a well-known book series and blogs on it as he/she goes along. I’m pretty funny myself, not to toot my own horn (toot toot), but I’ve already read most of the made-fun-of serieses (like Twilight). Second reactions are not quite as funny.

That’s it so far. Now I’ve just got to present this to my class. Hopefully 26 mildly intelligent but highly creative people will have better ideas than me.

Introduction

So it’s my last semester of college, and I plan for it to be my last semester of school. I’ve got less classes than usual (which would still be a great amount if I went to a normal school), but that includes the big project: my Thesis.

Now, since I’m not in grad school, I would think I wouldn’t have to write a thesis. But like with everything else, this school likes to be the exception rather than the rule. I’ve been preparing for this for a while, though. I had the written part of the thesis done last semester, and now comes the design area: to make a project jumping off from the paper.

Okay. I’ve got the winter break to think about it, and I’m sure I’ll figure out something. But, of course, the semester started last week, and I’ve got nothing. My paper was on Stephen Colbert and Group Mentality, there isn’t really anything visual about that. Well … I do have one idea, with the way my brain works. A brain that says if you can’t photoshop it, just take the picture yourself.

It’s a diary account to attempt to create my OWN internet following. With social media, youtube, twitter, and billions of bloggers, it shouldn’t be that hard, right? Even if nothing happens, I could write about that. Besides, this is supposed to be a graphic design project, so the text content doesn’t really matter. No one’s gonna stand there and read the whole thing.

Only one problem remains, the big one: what am I going to do to try and gather a following? Sing online? Post stupid pictures? Photoshop mustaches on celebrities?

I guess I have a few days to figure that out. Until then, this is my first diary post. I hope to have something more interesting in the future.