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Netflix’s secret cult hit

Janko Roettgers — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:00:24 +0000

“This is television done right.” “Absolutely spellbinding!” “This wasn’t a show. It was a revelation.” These are only some of the raving customer reviews for Netflix’s first original TV show. And no, we are not talking about Lilyhammer, which was released exclusively on Netflix this spring. Years before the company’s first official original, it published a series of videos on the site that initially remained under the radar, but have since become a cult hit.

Which is surprising, given the content. Netflix’s Example Show was shot entirely on the company’s campus in Los Gatos, California. It features long and action-free segments of the building itself, a fountain and flowers. Then there’s a guy moonwalking, hopping around, juggling and dramatically reciting Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. There’s also minutes of AV test segments and a model train carrying two plastic penguins.

The TV show features four episodes total, spread out over two seasons. Each and every video is 11 minutes long, and completely identical. Credited as actors are “Actor” and “Actress,” and the creator is none other than “Creator.” Of course, Netflix cross-references all these data points to help users find more movies of their favorite actors, and following these links reveals that there are a few more short films with the exact same content, with poetic titles like Example Short 23.976 Burned In Timecode Remote Content.

And all of them have received numerous rave reviews from Netflix’s customers. Some are picking up on the strange titles, with one reviewer writing:

“Awesome! Might the greatest story ever told. The part (where) the frame rate stay [sic] a solid 23.976 is my favorite part by far. ”

Others sing high praise of the oddly named talent:

“I had previously seen Actor and Actress in Play at the Public Theater. Beckett be damned: nothing that I saw there prepared me for Example Short 23.967. The friction between the frame rate and the raw emotion, especially in Actor, still haunts me.”

As strange at the videos are themselves, these reviews are solid gold; hilarious user-generated internet entertainment in the tradition of the Amazon reviews for articles like Tuscan Whole Milk and the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt. But how did the videos end up on the service in the first place?

I asked Netflix about it, and was told that the clips were produced a few years ago for testing purposes. Also, the moon-walking Shakespeare aficionado starring in them doesn’t actually work at Netflix. He’s a freelancer, specifically hired for this project. A Netflix spokesperson went on to explain:

“These test videos are designed to help makers of consumer electronics devices that can stream from Netflix test their video players to handle various scenarios such as audio-visual syncing and complex motion at a wide variance of frame rates. Simply placing these titles into our production catalog, available through search only, eliminates the need for complex testing infrastructure.”

However, adding these titles to Netflix’s catalog also surfaced them through the site’s RSS feed – and that’s how most customers likely stumbled across them. To this day, Netflix is repackaging the material every couple of months for new tests, releasing it under equally descriptive titles. And every time, there’s a few more Netflix users stumbling across the clips, curious, amused, and eventually inspired to leave reviews like this one:

“Stunning and transfixing. This sensitive film draws the viewer into rethinking the entire human experience. Yin and yang, up and down, peanut butter and jelly. This will be studied by the next generation of film makers to inspire and challenge creativity.”

That’s likely more than Creator and Actor ever hoped for.

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Shocker: ROFLCon’s last stand

Barb Darrow — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:53:41 +0000

Tron Guy at ROFLCon 2012.

The big news out of ROFLCon is that this is the last ROFLCon. So if you want to catch your favorite “Famous on the Internet” stars – Tron Guy, Double Rainbow guy, Antoine Dodson, the Nyancats — you better get over to MIT Building 26 in the next three hours. They’re all here.

According to the ROFLCon III show guide’s surprise ending:

“This is the last ROFL.con. Sort of. It’s been an amazing run — more stupendously successful than we could ever have possibly imagined — but for now we’re putting this trilogy to bed and riding out into the sunset. Our lives are taking us to new and exciting places so ROFLCon is on hiatus until we figure out how to continue doing it great justice.”

Co-founded three years ago by Christina Xu and Tim Hwang, the event showcased the Internet memes and phenoms that took the world by storm, including Supercuts, fast, edited video montages that illustrate a theme.

The show drew about 850 people — at least one flew in from Hamburg, Germany — who came for sessions on Life After the Meme, Web comics, Supercuts, Fangirl culture and defending the Internet, the latter an example of how ROFLCon has developed some serious overtones. (Check out Katie Fehrenbacher’s coverage of the Lolitics: Memes and Politics session, for example.)

For ROFLCon, this might be goodbye for now, but given the enthusiasm I saw today — attendees included folks from Microsoft (who came from Redmond, not the local Cambridge office) and Google — and the adoration attendees showered on Double Rainbow guy and Antoine Dodson, something will arise in its place.

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The viral video is dead. Long live the viral video!

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:30:47 +0000

So take a look at the list of the top 10 independent videos on YouTube over the past year, and what do you see? Rebecca Black, Nyan Cat and … what? Yes, there are tons of people who watched those talking babies. And yes, that mom cat hugging its baby sure is cute. But they didn’t exactly invade the cultural zeitgeist in the way that memes of the past have.

Consider Pork and Beans. Back in 2008, Weezer released the following video, incorporating some of the site’s top viral sensations … and predictably going viral itself.

Back then, there was Tay Zonday, the Numa Numa kid, Afro Ninja, Chris Crocker, All Your Base, etc. Pork and Beans was a subtle wink and nod to the memes of the day, with Weezer knowing all the while that incorporating those brands would go a long way toward users engaging in conversation. It was all about cashing in on the social currency that came with knowing what was cool or interesting on the Internet.

But fast forward a few years and could you imagine such a video being made today? Who would be in it? Rebecca Black, most likely. If Weezer went back a year or so there would be the Old Spice Guy. And Antoine Dodson.

Of course, we’re not in new territory. My colleague Liz Miller called it a year ago when she predicted that 2011 would be the year that viral video died. Back then, the Double Rainbow guy and 12-year-old Greyson Chance were the only members of the top 10 not linked to existing brands. One could argue that things have gotten somewhat better, with Rebecca Black, Karmin and Maria Aragon emerging as surprise music sensations.

But even Karmin and Aragon are performing covers — really impressive covers, but covers nonetheless. As AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka noted Tuesday, what YouTube’s top videos list suggests is that people just really like “watching” music videos on the site.

What this all speaks to is not the diminishment of YouTube’s ability to take videos viral, but the fact that YouTube just isn’t about viral videos anymore. More and more, the site is about professionally produced content, repeatable success and creating consistently engaged audiences. Machinima, for instance, might not have a breakout hit in the 2011 most-watched list, but it’s created a sustainable business off the YouTube platform.

Of course, there will always be a place for stupid human tricks and cute pets on YouTube, for the same reason that America’s Funniest Home Videos somehow continues to exist. But as time goes on, the novelty of those videos — and their effect on the cultural zeitgeist — will continue to be diminished.

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Google Hangouts has already become a meme

Janko Roettgers — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 23:00:45 +0000

You know something is capturing people’s imagination when it becomes the source for Internet memes, which is exactly what happened with Google’s new group video chat service Hangouts last night. Users started posting fake Hangouts alerts on Google Plus, complete with cameos of Leonardo DiCaprio and other famous people. Check some of them out below:

A quick explanation: Google Hangouts are limited to 10 people at a time…

That last one also came from Ben Huh, who is of course the CEO of the Cheezburger blogging empire.

Did you see any other good Hangouts jokes? Link to them in the comments!

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