Break a Leg

Last night my wife and I were watching American Idol (shut up). Our DVR had a weapons malfunction and stopped recording halfway through the 90-minute broadcast. We turned, of course, to YouTube to see the last 5 performances. I was struck momentarily while watching one of the videos at how bizarre and amazing and... and bizarre it was that I was watching a video play on a website, almost like the people had been captured and smushed into the laptop screen and forced to perform their little song and dance number. I could understand then how people in Milwaukee or wherever believe cameras capture your soul.

The internet also has its moments of evil. I'm not talking about spam, or zombie botnets, or corporate OWAs that imply you should be connected to the workplace 24/7. I'm talking about Puzzle Quest. The internet has allowed for unprecedented rapid distribution of not just videos and dogs failing at being dogs, but also of evil life-destroying games like Puzzle Quest. I knew within the first 30 minutes of playing the game that I would become addicted to playing, would not really enjoy playing it, but would never be able to truly stop playing it.

Hold on a moment.

There, I just deleted it.

The internet hasn't only made distribution of old media possible (I'm even including video games as old media here, since they were around long before the internet), but has made possible entirely new forms of entertainment. I suppose it's conceivable that something like Fail Dogs could have existed decades ago. I mean the camera's been around for like, what, 30 years right? And dogs have been failing at least a decade longer than that even. But how would these "fail dogs" have been enjoyed? Posted on a bulletin board somewhere? Not a BBS mind you, a real bulletin board. Like the kind at the post office. People could gather around and laugh at Bob Boobie's terrier sleeping in the litter box. They wouldn't say "FAIL" though, since such eloquent internet short-hand jargon can't form without millions of peoples' constant input (and most of this comes out of typos anyway, right?). So I can imagine the town quorum at the post office looking at Bob's terrier saying something like "Boy, Mitsy sure is not very good at being a dog, is she?"

And that's Fail Dogs 30 years ago.

You crazy kids (and my crazy kid) have mostly grown up with this internet mumbo-jumbo, so it may seem strange to you on an abstract level, but probably doesn't seem as strange as, say, television did to me when I was growing up. For my son I know he thinks he flicks through pictures on any screen by touching with his finger and literally flicking through the pictures, because that's how you do it on Daddy's IPhone.

For all of that though, the world hasn't really changed all that much. Politicians are still corrupt, dogs don't fail any less though their failure is now public and international, and Break A Leg seems to have about as much a chance of getting picked up as if we had shot it on film and never developed it.

The one difference though is that regardless of whether or not it's picked up, it's being seen. Break A Leg is watched by dozens, nay hundreds of die-hard fans around the world, though the audience could potentially someday number in the billions. The internet is the great equalizer, but I think quality niche content like Break A Leg will never really succeed while truly brilliant sites like Fail Dogs continue to rule the web.

I don't know... maybe Fail Baranovskys?

--

Note from Yuri: Since Drew gave me a good opening (and partly to defend my honor against his cruel, cruel jabs) I'd like to say that Break a Leg has broken 2 MILLION cumulative hits across YouTube and Blip.tv.

Can we get a, "hip hip, huzzah?"