youtube promises cake

At university, i used to say that the world reached its high point in the 13th century. I was reading through the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of the 1910s-30s, and at breakfast with an history graduate student, i remarked at the quality of the writing, and compared it to the rubbish that was written at the time. The next table sat a 'journalism' student, and while i was talking his face was getting angrier and more disturbed. I didn't know him, and didn't pay much attention. He exploded at me.

A few years ago i read an article about the acceptance and use of new technologies. There was clumsy jargon in it. I forget the term, perhaps "early adapters". I am not. They had graphs of curves. There is a line of 50% acceptance, i come well after that. For some things, i don't ever come around (astroturf, mobile telephones, facebook).

Recently, i have looked at youtube for music and films. Somewhere, i became acquainted with video web loggers, 'vloggers'. I have become enthusiastic by one, and even her community. There is a laudatory level of affection for Natalie Tran. She is the most popular vlogger in Australia, and since she is an anglophone, her audience is wider. She just passed her sixth year of filming, talking, creating.

The videos allow comments. Her latest one, in two days, had well over six thousand comments. One can start reading the latest group by page, and go backward, and fall backward. They come in that fast at the beginning. Say there is about seven on a page. You can only go back so far, and give up. You notice the comments repeat very soon. Some people should not bother to comment.

She has made nearly three hundred videos (mostly a minute and an half to five minutes). She has had gaps of several months where she did not make any. People have gone back to the beginning to view all of them, and these people leave good comments.

The tendency for most videos are to have many comments that are idiotic, or vulgarly disgusting, and individuals end up arguing about other issues completely divorced from the video. But, with 'communitychannel' (Natalie's user name) it is an appreciative audience. They cry for her to make more videos. Two and an half years into her oeuvre the pattern was set. She invented porno music/comment time, where cheesy/sleazy music is played over stills of people's comments, which she answers. Jokes, including rude comments, and gentle taunting on both sides are apparent, and a call and response patter is engaged. Some where she becomes "Our Nat".

Some videos she speaks on observational humour. In others she acts as two, or three, or four characters that interact with each other on screen. She is good enough, that it takes three or four videos to figure out, that it is just her. She continuously promises a new video in four (or so) days.

She says, "Hi" and waves, she says "sorry" a lot, yeah no, but anyway, chortle. And in January 2009 began the lamington controversy. Lamingtons are called coconut bars in Cleveland. Lamingtons are small cakes covered in chocolate (sometimes jam) and then with coconut flakes. It is approaching four years, and no lamingtons. Well actually she showed us some she made [that was the third of four consecutive videos she mentions the ambrosia], and said the camera was off.

She makes confessions occasionally, and one feels like they know the girl. To know Natalie is to love Natalie. She made two with statements demanding that Australians respect that she is an Aussie, and she is. She has encountered anti-Asian prejudice, and it irks her. One video is genius. It is better than professional satire.
Miley Cyrus/ Hannah Montana had a hit song in Australia, 'The hoedown throwdown'. Natalie sings, and dances, it better and she does it in a full body monkey costume. Saturday Night Live does not have the consistent quality Natalie does.
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postscriptum 22 October 2012: Our Natalie is darling and sharp. September 18 she released a video, a good one. It is hard to find a bad one. She leaves a note, "...new vid in 5 days...". The "new vid" came October 16 and was 24 seconds long, "Brad Pitt CHANEL Parody". October 21, Saturday Night Live does three parodies of the same subject. Natalie was better!