Since the start of the year the my efforts have been largely marshalled against an online comedy project which is a guerilla attempt by me and writing partner Mark to sidestep development hell by writing, producing, directing, performing, and editing our own project without permission or interference from anyone else.
I've been deliberately vague about the the project on this blog because initially we were keen, as far as possible, to make our spoof reality show look real and having stuff showing up on Google talking about it as a comedy was not particularly helpful. But we're slightly more relaxed about it now and I figure if I don't mention it by name it probably won't show up anyway...
In one recent episode we did low-budget spoofs of the five films up for the Best Picture Oscar. Hoping the ride the wave of interest in all things Oscar, and as a viral marketing experiment, I posted all five videos on separately on YouTube, with a link at the end of each to the main series, should people watch all the way through to the end (which is by no means guaranteed in YouTubeland).
The Slumdog Millionaire clip has been by far the most popular, partly I think because of the elevated interest in the film after its massive success at the awards, but also because I posted our video as a response to a more serious one (which was getting several hundred thousand views) about controversy surrounding the film and accusations of “poverty porn”.
By posting these videos up cold and attaching one of them to a non-comedy clip we've opened ourselves up to a much wider church of opinion on YouTube than we've currently reached with the other videos. We've had a mix of positive and negative comments but the most interesting comments are those that I have no idea if they are positive or negative.
A couple of days ago someone commented “hhg” against a clip. The only thing I can find on the internet that this might mean is “Holy Hand Grenade” a reference to the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
If this is the right reference, I'm still none the wiser as to whether it's positive or negative. Maybe I'm reading too much into it and someone just dozed off while watching the clip and they typed “hhg” with their forehead.
My favourite one, however, arrived this morning and was posted on an earlier clip by someone called getsomedonuts:
This guy is fu*king clownshoes.
Now I can assure you that in the clip there is no-one copulating with a circus performer's footwear, so I could only assume that “clownshoes” was being used adjectivally, but was it a favourable comment or not?
Well, I had to fall back on the Urban Dictionary, which delivered the following definition:
clownshoes1) A hopeless loser. An awkward, unattractive, and otherwise inept individual. Also known as a powertool.
...
So the commenter thinks our main character is a complete loser. Not entirely sure how I feel about that but at least I understand what the comment means.
Not sure I'll be using “clownshoes” in everyday conversation, but powertool, I can definitely see myself making use of that in the coming weeks...
Add Comment