The dude at 1:35 wins the bad reactions.
1:08 is pretty funny, too.
I assume everybody's already seen "Batman Maybe"?
Aw man, (many) people are adorable. Didn't I just see some internet headline about how playfulness is the most appealing emotion? Most people can play along, and some people aren't ready yet.
Yeah, there's something sheep-and-goats about this video. At first I wondered if 80% of people on ChatRoulette are really that attractive, and then I realized that it's seeing people suddenly disarmed and grinning is incredibly appealing.
I thought so too! Who knows how selectively it was edited, but the vast majority are so willing to get into it, which is just awesome.
They mostly breakdown along an inhibited/uninhibited axis, with the occasional sourpuss (just what are you doing on chat roulette, anyway?), and some who are very stoned.
I had the same reaction as 4,5,6 -- that was encouraging and happy-making.
Also I thought Chatroulette was mostly nude 47 year old guys? But I'm not sure where that stereotype is from.
I wondered whether people were breaking down on a gay/not-gay (though, of course, not exclusively) axis. And I really enjoyed this because of watching all of the positive reactions. I agree -- very appealing. I also agree with Heebie that 2:22 is the bad reaction winner. Holy exaggerated disgust expression, Batman!
1:24 and 2:32 were my favorites because they're both really unsure of how to respond until they can't help but smile. Cute!
That's like the greatest video ever. It's the few disgusted reactions mixed in that really make it. If everyone smiled, it would be like a commercial where everyone likes the product. The few negative reactions mean that you don't have to like, just that most people do. It makes the whole thing seem more sincere, somehow.
(Clearly some commercial is going to rip this off now.)
Like halford, I thought chatroulette was all dudes. Specifically, I thought that all anyone ever did there was try to get other people to look at their penis--basically gay men who think grinder isn't kinky enough.
Several of those guys looked like they logged on to see some penis. But the presence of good looking young women is sort of a surprise.
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Perhaps this is the correct thread for this video of a couple members of the Russian Olympic Mens Basketball team dancing (badly) in a nightclub.
I find it more charming than silly.
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I wonder if this guy's lawyer will call John Yoo as a defense witness.
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It's really the positive reactions that should be problematized, if you ask me. Like, you're confronted with the image of a fairly swarthy, hirsute man in a cliched drag costume, and you think it is funny. Well, great, congratulations, you have successfully been socialized by SNL and Bosom Buddies, etc. etc.
What it this was a transgendered woman who was presenting as reasonably feminine, enough to pass for a good chunk of the song, and then there was some kind of reveal (not involving actual genital exposure) that made it clear that it was not a cis-gendered woman? Would you get so much amusement/interest/willingness to play along?
I was about to comment that if I had just seen the video I would have rolled my eyes, but then Natilo ruined it for me by being 80 times more earnest than I could ever be.
Meh, I don't buy 16's disenchantment. Most of these people aren't pointing and laughing like you do at an SNL sketch, they're laughing and singing/dancing along.
Maybe this particular cross-dressing act is not as difficult for people to accept as another, hypothetical, difference from prevailing gender norms would be. If people were unwilling or unable to accept the other one, that would be unfortunate. But the fact that this isn't it doesn't make this one unworthy. The dude in the bikini is clearly looking to inspire joy in people, and people feel the joy (after some uncertainty, for many of them) and join in. It's nice.
16: I wouldn't feel happy at an attempt to fool me. This video was amusing, being the non-consensual subject of an (amateur?) psych/sociologists' experiment wouldn't be.
Oh, you want earnest? Let me tell you, I am earnestly getting weirded out by all of the pro-Pussy Riot stuff on Facebook these last couple of weeks. First off, yes, I'm probably generally in agreement with this band's politics, although it all seems a little Zappa-esque somehow. And of course, I do support freedom of speech at home and abroad. But seriously, this is the one freedom of speech issue that has gripped the attention of hip white liberals? When we've got the FBI knocking down doors looking for anarchists, and the recording industry criminalizing the web, and most of the states passing anti-union and voter-suppression laws, and about 7 million other pro-democracy activists around the world getting stomped on by their respective governments? Pussy Riot? For real?
Yes, maybe I do have a stick up my ass, and I am not "hep" or "all reet" because I don't think that naming your band "Pussy Riot" is teh coolest thing EVAR!1!!eleven! But seriously. Would it be so fucking difficult to pay attention to political repression that does not involve twee band names designed to offend your grandparents?
This video was amusing, being the non-consensual subject of an (amateur?) psych/sociologists' experiment wouldn't be.
What if it were a prank pulled by a British soldier whom you've help kidnap?
Would you get so much amusement/interest/willingness to play along?
Probably not, but you could get an Oscar nomination in 1992.
Is "Pussy Riot" twee? I was recently called upon by the managing partner of my firm to explain the concept of "twee" and did a very poor job, so I could use some help.
Twee originally meant mushy and saccharine, and was derived from baby talk for the word "sweet." There was a brief period of time where twee pop songs were hip. As a result, people heard the words "twee" and "hipster" together a lot and decided that "twee" just meant "hip."
So, the word used to have a very specific meaning and connotation, and now it is exactly as meaningful as the term "hipster." Each day, the language dies a little.
23:
For their musical cues, they looked to the quaintest, least-cool roots of youth-culture music: girl-groups, 1960s guitar jangle, bubblegum chirp, rainy-day balladry. Their lyrics toed the lines between schoolboy earnestness and arch, bratty simplicity. Their guitar playing revolved around elementary chord strumming, and their production ranged from no-frills to downright primitive. Their performances were so amateurish that the word "shambling"-- as in "shambling along"-- became one name for the scene. Their fashion sense was deliberately plain, like children dressed by their mothers: stripy shirts, librarian skirts, and enough anoraks (parkas) to make that word a genre name. Their gender politics weren't just egalitarian: If anything, they celebrated the girly and the sweet, so much so that the word "twee"-- pronounced the way a baby might say "sweet," and meaning cloying, or overly precious-- became the biggest insult leveled at them.
http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/6176-twee-as-fuck/
I don't think amateurishness is a necessary part of the aesthetic, though. Ra Ra Riot: twee as fuck, but competent.
I never would have used twee to describe something hipsters like. Hipster seems the antithesis of twee to me.
16: Dudes in drag have been funny since pretty much forever. Yes obviously lots of interesting or maybe not-so-interesting gender baggage to unpack there, on the other hand there's little point in getting worked up about it; only the pratfall is a more durable comedic trope. (On the upside, notice how the humour here is mainly at the expense of people too quadrangular to get with it? An improvement, arguably, over an era where the joke would've been mostly at the expense of the dude in drag.)
I'm with you on Pussy Riot, however. By this time it's fairly lame and not even punk anymore to naming your band after your genitalia... but apparently it still works. Which is depressing.
"Pussy Riot" is twee for a punk band name. Especially nowadays. Maybe the connotations are much different in Russia. Most of the dirty words in the Dictionary of Russian Obscenities seem to be vulgar synonyms for the female pudendum.
On the video: the dude at 1:10 who is like, almost creepily into it is one of my favorite reactions.
Maybe the connotations are much different in Russia.
Yes, possibly.
I'm not sure if 26 reinforced my point or damages it. When I think twee, I still think of Dorothy Parker's review of House on Pooh Corner: "And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up"
In the 90s, hipsters gave us the "twee as fuck" and "punk means cuddle," and interesting combination of things that appeal to 18 year olds and things that appeal to 18 month olds.
But Pussy Riot isn't sweet or cuddly, they are just punk and fuck. So calling them twee marks a shift in the meaning of the word.
"Pussy Riot" is twee for a punk band name
Only if you think "twee" means "vulgar." I'll stop now.
I wasn't saying the band itself is twee, I was saying that the act of naming your band "Pussy Riot" is twee. I will back off from that a bit and stand firm that getting a big kick out of reposting news about a Russian punk band named "Pussy Riot" on Facebook is what is hella twee. Oh! Look at how naughty we are! Oh!
I think I said something like "kind of like cute .. Uh .. Belle and Sebastian?" "Patti LaBelle?" "No, totally different, Scottish band from the late 90s." "Huh, they must not have done that well. Whatever. We had a case involving Patti LaBelle's manager ...."
Do anarchists use Linux? I bet they all use Macs, the hypocritical motherfuckers.
I think of "Twee" as having a lot of overlap with "precious."
Hmm, I've never polled the anarchists I know. There's a Mac and a PC at the Wobbly office. The anarchists I know who are computer geeks generally have a Linux box. Not always though. Offhand, the ones I know who use Macs are mostly graphic designers, so of course they "need" them.
Perhaps it implies preciousness without formality (or at least without trying to draw authority from adherence to formal conventions.)
Not everyone on FB is radical enough to be closely following the efforts of Russian journalists jailed or assassinated by the Putin regime. If a little punk nostalgia gets international attention, how is that bad?
Also do the words "pussy" or "riot" appear in House on Pooh Corner. No they do not.
I will back off from that a bit and stand firm that getting a big kick out of reposting news about a Russian punk band named "Pussy Riot" on Facebook is what is hella twee. Oh! Look at how naughty we are! Oh!
Um, I'm not sure that's why people are talking about them on Facebook, so much as the fact that they're facing several years in prison in what is even by Russian standards a spectacularly politicised and unfair trial.
32: It does have a higher journalism:insular-musing ratio than most PF pieces.
42: Um, I'm not sure that's why people are talking about them on Facebook
Um, I'm sure it is. The folx who are following the Pussy Riot case are not people who tend to make a fuss about any other free speech issues. Maybe the Occupy-kids-getting-pepper-sprayed thing was big with them, but these aren't people with a nuanced, well-developed political critique who are particularly outraged by this case because of the harshness of the charges or the unfairness of the trial. They don't know Putin from poutine, or Medvedev from Metamucil. It's all about the cutesy-poo faux-dangerous band name.
Here's something people could actually do, that might have a snowball's chance in hell of working:
http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/restore-media-access-to-ca-prisoners-sign-the-petition-now/
But it's more fun to type "Pussy Riot" over and over and over again.
I just like seeing "Free Pussy Riot" because it sounds like the aftermath of an ill advised promotion at The Gem.
Yeah, I have the same reaction to the Pussy Riot bandwagon that I did during the Iranian protests when my friends list suddenly turned green, mostly by people who couldn't have told you one solitary bit of trivia about the Iranian government or the opposition or, for that matter, anything about Iran at all.
I swear to God, I should just go underground, right now, before I'm swept up in the next dragnet. 1984 is already here!
I can only speak for my own Facebook friends, obviously, but the ones who are posting about the situation are precisely the ones who always post about lefty politics.
I was saying that the act of naming your band "Pussy Riot" is twee
The act of naming your band "Anal Cunt" remains unambiguously non-twee.
50: Well, duh!
Also, I will always have a soft spot for MPLS's own Gay Witch Abortion.
Support Pussy Riot by all means, but support the Kazakh oil workers too. Happy now?
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Hey, bleg for parents out there:
One time we reserved a baby car seat from a car rental company. We showed up and they didn't have any baby car seats. "That's funny!" they said, "it's right there on your reservation!"
They ended up bumming one off one of the other car rental companies, but I hyperventilated with the thought of staying at the airport while Jammies tried to figure out where the nearest Walmart was, at midnight, or whatever.
Is that a fluke? Do you all confidently reserve child seats from car rental companies, when you fly with your kids? Because it's a real pain in the ass to travel with two extra car seats, but we've been doing it because of that first terrible experience.
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We rented a car seat with a car once and found it so relatively expensive and the seat so shitty that we have never done it again. Fucking car seats! We have a wheely thing we strap the car seat to for taking through the airport, and then we always check it. (We use one of those CARES strappy things for on the plane.)
That's a good point. This place is relatively cheap, but $10/day/carseat is still $60 for the weekend.
I'm totally using a video like that as an interview technique next time we're hiring someone.
We rented a car seat once and it was a disaster. Some cheap model, non-obvious install with no instructions (we think it was missing some strap) and the rental employees said they weren't allowed to help or tell us anything because of liability. We bought a sit and stroll for future trips (3 in one stroller car seat airplane seat.) Also for older kids (over 30lb) we have safe rider vests that let them just use normal seat belts.
I had an airline lose a checked car seat once. I sort of icily explained to them that there was no *legal* way for me to remove my baby from the airport without a car seat.* The flapped their hands and woefully suggested that car seats should only be gate checked. I asked them how I was getting home, since without a car seat, I was not allowed to leave the airport. They can do an awful lot to find lost luggage when the alternative means sending someone home in a limo.
*I was at EWR heading to my mother's house. In NYC this would not have been true, since the only vehicle in the country in which a baby is not required to be car-seated is an NYC yellow cab.
I always just check the car seat through and never had a problem. Adjusting one used by a kid of a different size is a pain.
Also for older kids (over 30lb) we have safe rider vests that let them just use normal seat belts
I've never heard of this, but that sounds awesome. Hawaii is over 30 lbs.
Heebs, we have done a couple of times I think without issue. We also had one (or maybe two) times where they didn't have the reserved item and had to borrow from another co. We've also prepositioned an acceptable Costco special with one set of grandparents. That worked like gangbusters.
58: New York cabs: Ultimate redoubt to defend liberty from the Nanny State.
Speaking of babies, what's up with the popularity of Gavin all of a sudden? Seems like these little fellers are all gonna see their first "Love Boat" rerun 5-10 years down the line and think: "They named me after Captain Stubing?!?" (And then, a few years later, they'll see "Mary Tyler Moore" and think "Slaughter? Murray Slaughter?")
POP QUIZ!
How many unfogged commenters are singing hymns (I think?) in this room right now?
If we wait long enough, teo's original guess will be right. That might be faster than guessing.
Who are three commenters who have never been in my kitchen?
Ra Ra Riot: twee as fuck, but competent.
I like "Winter '05" and "Dying is Fine", and the looks of their female members.
the act of naming your band "Pussy Riot" is twee old school, in the Riot Grrl ca. 1994 sense.
To Natilo above, doesn't this strike you as a classic case of the obvious difference between "laughing at" and "laughing with"? Sure, there is probably a lot of "heh a dude in a dress" going on, but most of those people seem charmed. The guy is funny, and playful, and cute. It's fun.
(Now I feel like I did in the Nabokov thread. Yeah, sure, that's true, but the thing is I like this thing.)
Yeah, I'm with 79. Just watched it twice with my 9 year old who loved it. "All the girls just sing along!" she pointed out. No one's laughing at him, they are being entertained or what-the-fuck-ing. If it were ostensibly a woman who turned out to be a man, people still wouldn't be laughing at, would they, they'd feel a bit annoyed that they'd been tricked.
Yeah, the guy dancing is emanating "play along with me! Let's be silly and get into it!" Responding to that vibe is great.
Having once conducted a successful but much more modest chatroulette experiment (that still gets an unreasonable number of hits) I can confirm that this guy must have edited out a metric fuckton of penises to get to this version.
a metric fuckton of penises
I just wanted to repeat that.
Wailing Welsh whales wailing Welsh whales whale whale wailing Welsh whales.
Weia, waga, woge du Welle...
86: where? I saw a sea turtle this morning. It looked just like the ones in Finding Nemo.
92: Fucking whales? How do they work?
Fucking whales
The Marine Mammal Protection Act says no.
95: By law you can only blubber, blubber, masturbate, blubber.
93: I shouldn't speak for smearcase, but I believe the only actual whales he saw were in skeleton form. But boy did he learn a lot about whales and the hunting thereof.
98: Smearcase is hunting undead skeleton whales?
100: His new pseud is Mister Scrimshander.
On the theme of videos that make me like the people in them: http://fiftypeopleonequestion.com/films/5-post-secret
One couple seems contrived, but the rest charmed me, much like the people in the chatroulette vid did.
