VidAngel and Its Necessity

I wrote previously about the online video streaming service VidAngel, which allows you to filter out potentially offensive content from movies. Well, they got sued by four Hollywood studios. I wrote a ten page research paper on why I think VidAngel is necessary and legal. For the sake of space, I’ve attached it as a PDF below.

abby-simmons-vidangel-and-its-necessity

 

If you haven’t already and you want to protect your rights to watch movies you own however you desire in your own home, sign the petition here http://savefiltering.nationbuilder.com/?recruiter_id=29305

Do Not Enter

Growing up, my parents were pretty strict with media usage. I had to ask to get a Facebook account for my twelfth birthday and then they said I could only have the account on the premise that I gave them all of the login information and added them as friends as soon as the account was opened, which they walked me through the process of doing. My brothers and I couldn’t go online unless we got permission, and going on YouTube was out of the question.

As a kid, my opinion of YouTube was that it was a place where people uploaded videos, mostly bad, with the occasional funny upload, once you weeded through the filth. This opinion was based on my parent’s attitude toward the site. It makes sense that they were skeptical of it. The website launched in 2005, when I was 8, so it was only four years old when I was in middle school, when I became interested in the site.

My interest stemmed from a certain band I had heard on the radio. “Firefly” by Owl City was my favorite song shortly after I heard it. I have always been curious so I naturally wanted to hear more of this band’s music. I discovered that by doing a Google search for “Owl City”, I could find more of their music that I could play for free by clicking on the videos that came up. These videos didn’t redirect to YouTube’s website so I didn’t realize where they came from for a while. Upon realizing their origin, whenever I listened to music this way, I had to hide it’s source from my parents because even though what I was looking at wasn’t bad, it was taboo.

As I got older and became more immersed in pop culture, my interest eventually changed from looking up Owl City lyric videos to looking up other music I liked but didn’t own and eventually to vlogs and comedic videos (e.g. Charlie the Unicorn, Strawburry17, Rhett and Link, Julian Smith, etc.). By the time I was a junior in high school, I had become very interested in video production. My senior year, I decided to take a video production class to see if it was really something I was interested in doing and possibly pursuing as a career. I am now in my sophomore year of college and my second year as a Communications major with an emphasis in Video Production and I love it.

Looking back though, it’s sort of amusing that my career path is based around something that was essentially forbidden to me eight years ago. I can think of a YouTube video for most scenarios and continuously surprise people with my repertoire of funny videos, which is a big shift from the girl who hadn’t heard of Smosh’s Pokemon Theme Music Video and who was late in discovering hit videos like “Charlie Bit My Finger”. I now create content that is uploaded to YouTube and my career path is leading me to do more of that in the future. I now share these videos with friends and family members and am not afraid to go on YouTube, as I do it almost daily for one reason or another.

I think there is a dark and light side to just about everything. It is just important to not let a stigma guide your decisions. Not taking what people say as fact and testing things out for yourself can open new doors of possibilities. Proceed with plenty of caution in these areas and know how to identify darkness and where to draw the line. No one wants to find that they have gone down a wrong path because they tested the limits too much.

We often find the things we treasure most, the people we value most, and the experiences we hold most dear in unexpected ways. Behind a closed door with a “do not enter” sign, I found my career.

#24- VidAngel

I am very selective about the types of movies I watch. I never have and never would watch an R-rated movie. In fact, I don’t really watch PG-13 movies. When I do, they are usually filtered or edited. It is one of the great ironies of my life that I am studying video production but I am so picky about the movies I watch.

I’m the oldest child in my family so when I decided that this was how I was going to treat my movie watching, my parents sort of adapted this idea for my younger siblings (to their dismay). They also started to realize that maybe some movies still made sense without the PG-13 content and it could be cut without affecting the plot or overall understanding of the movie.

As a result, my family purchased a DVD player that would allow us to pick what content we wanted left out of the movies we watched. There were multiple categories that could be refined (violence, sex, language, blasphemy, etc.) and we could chose to what degree we wanted to cut the content. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked pretty well.

One of my concerns as I got ready to leave for college far from home was how I was going to watch movies when I was at school. I couldn’t take the DVD player with me so my options would be very limited and I would have a social barrier as I would have to explain to people that I hadn’t seen the movies they were talking about and wasn’t going to watch them because I had made a personal decision not to. Thankfully, about a month before coming to school for my first semester, I found VidAngel.

I discovered VidAngel when I saw an add for it on Facebook. Thank you internet cookies. Essentially, it does the same thing my DVD player does at home but it is completely online. You rent a movie for $20, set your filter preferences, watch the movie, then sell it back within 24 hours to receive a $19 credit back. It’s amazing! And it solved my problem!

With the dramatic increase in swearing and sexual content that is allowed to leak into movies, it’s no wonder that some people are trying to block it out. The movie rating system (a story for another day) evolves to meet the standards or morality of our current culture. This means that as our standards change as a society, the movie ratings will reflect that (See my past article “You Are What You Eat, Pt. 2). The promotional video for their website explains it better than I can, outlining specifically the history of swearing in Hollywood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7t85SESTXI.

In a world of shifting morals, I am glad to see things like this. For me, it means that I can still maintain my standards without missing a huge chunk of pop culture.

#23- Pokemon Go

Speaking of nostalgia…

Last Thursday I was doing a project on campus and at about 10 pm someone came into the building saying “it’s crazy out there. People are running around playing Pokemon!” Last time I checked, Pokemon was a card game so I imagined that someone had started a group or club somewhere and adapted it to a live action role-play (LARP) kind of game. I was expecting to go outside to see people dressed up in costumes and running around trying to “catch ’em all” but when I went outside no one was there. Over the next few days, I kept hearing about it from people at school and it was quickly all over the media.

According to the extensive Wikipedia article that has grown since the app first came out on July 6th of this year, Pokemon Go “is a free-to-play location-based augmented reality mobile game”. Essentially, people run around trying to find Pokemon in their surroundings using their phones as a guide. The app uses the phone camera and the Pokemon appear on the screen as being right in front of you, as shown in this picture.

 

I was never really into Pokemon so for this post I took to Facebook to find out more about the strange phenomenon that is Pokemon Go. The question I posed was “For those of you who play Pokemon Go, I’m writing an article about it and I want to know why you play it and what you like about it. Comment with any thoughts.” Within a few hours some of the responses I got were “I play it cuz it summer and I have no life” (my brother) and “for me It brings back good memories (nostalgia)”. With the last comment, I wonder if my friend read my mind, because that was the answer I was looking for. For a lot of people, it’s all about remembering something they did as kids… but now in a cooler, more technologically advanced way.

Of course, there were the naysayers too. “I personally think it’s stupid,” one person said. “Waste of time. There, I’ve said it and I’m glad.” “Waco-a-doodle. Waste of time,” was another response. “At the end of the day, nothing has really been accomplished in the real world.” Interestingly enough, though, neither of them are millennials so neither of them would have watched Pokemon as kids (do I hear the classic “you wouldn’t understand” response?).

Even though I don’t play the game, I can understand why it has become so big in our culture so fast. Not only is it a revival of a childhood interest for many, but it’s a type of virtual/ augmented reality that is starting to gain popularity in many facets of the media.

After all is said and done, the only comment I can really stand by was one that talked about all of the funny things on the internet that have resulted from the eruption of this game. The comment was ” I don’t personally have it, but the memes are 💯“, citing this example.

Who knows, maybe this is what kicks off virtual reality. But more likely, it will just cause more traffic accidents.

#22- Millennials: The Most Nostalgic Generation, Pt. 2

These conversations came up not only my first semester of college but also my senior year of high school and my second semester of college. It’s a conversation that comes up fairly frequently as my peers and I have reached adulthood and don’t quite want to let go of the things we enjoyed as kids.

We like to go on social media and post “throwback Thursday” and “flashback Friday” photos as well, reminiscing about the past. I see this trend mostly from people in my generation (with a few exceptions). Social networks have caught on and feed into it. Facebook now gives us notifications reminding us about thing that happened in the past, such as “here’s a memory from 4 years ago” or “you’ve been friends with so-and-so for 2 years”.

Netflix is another place where nostalgia can thrive. They have recently been uploading old shows that were on TV when I was a kid such as “The Powerpuff Girls”, “Courage the Cowardly Dog” and “Pokemon”. Not only that but Netflix revived “Full House”, calling it “Fuller House” as a Netflix original.

As a child, I watched “Monster’s Inc.”, “Finding Nemo”, and “The Incredibles”. “Monster’s University” came out in 2013 (12 years after the original), which is the year I started filling out college applications. “Finding Dory” came out this year (13 years after the original) with a majority of the people excited for it being millennials. It was announced that “The Incredibles 2” will be in theaters in 2019, (15 years after the original).

It’s crazy to think how much we hold on to the past and how much the media allows us, and even encourages us, to do so. Maybe by the time I have kids we will have a “Finding Marlin” or a “Monster’s Parenthood”.

#21- Millennials: The Most Nostalgic Generation, Pt. 1

In my last post, I talked about how we are very nostalgic in our media use and how the movie industry tries to make their movies grow up with their audiences. It’s been said that millennials are the most nostalgic generation. This makes a lot of sense to me for many reasons.

Last semester, my roommates and I had a few discussions about TV shows that we watched as kids. It was, strangely, a bonding experience. We talked about shows on PBS that we all watched growing up and ended up going to YouTube to find the theme songs of those shows and sing them at the tops of our lungs. We also talked about Disney channel shows (which I never watched) shows on One Saturday Morning (which my roommates hadn’t heard of) and how those shows reflected our childhood and how we grew up.

From my experiences, those who watched Disney Channel shows were the cool kids. Those were the shows everybody watched and talked about at school and the shows people still reminisce about (which just goes to show how much Disney has been able to influence people since a young age and how memorable they made their content).

I didn’t have cable growing up. My family never found the need to get cable TV so we just never had it. That created a huge culture gap for me. When everyone was talking about “Hannah Montana”, “Zoey 101”, and “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” I had no idea what was going on. Instead, I was watching Disney’s One Saturday Morning with shows that were less cool to my peers like “Recess” and “Pepper Ann” with shorts in between shows like “Manny the Uncanny” and “Centerville”. The shows I watched were really strange and unique and I grew up to be a strange and unique person. My peers who grew up watching Disney channel were part of the mainstream media and continue to consume mainstream media now. (Although this is a blanket statement and is obviously not true of everyone, it does seem to be mostly accurate from my observations.)

#20- Batman: From Comic to Chaos

Batman started out as a comic for kids to read. People of all ages could appreciate it and there was no shame in it. Sure, there was still fighting but it was between someone who was clearly a hero, despite his dark past, and someone who was clearly a villain. Batman protected people and if the citizens of Gotham were in trouble, they could count on the heroic Batman to come to the rescue. The cartoons that first came out were super corny but they were aimed at the young kids who read the comics.

From there, Batman has evolved quite dramatically. The newest Batman movies use Bruce Wayne’s dark past as a foundation to the story. He is portrayed as a tortured soul battling other mentally unstable characters such as the Joker and Bane. I wouldn’t want that sort of person being in charge of protecting me and my city.

Not only has Batman changed but the villains have as well. In the early Batman stories Joker is insane but in more of a hysterical way. He is constantly laughing and playing jokes on the other characters for his own amusement and in order to accomplish his crimes. In the new movies, he is frightening and does a lot more than play practical jokes.

The content in these new movies is definitely geared more towards adults than it is to youth. I think that a trend in movies recently has been to take things that a lot of us grew up with and try to make them more “mature”. The same thing that was done with Batman has been done with Tarzan. The original Tarzan, produced in 1999 by Disney, was rated G. Now in 2016, we have the PG-13 “Legend of Tarzan” produced by Warner Brothers Studios. Movie studios have tried to make their movies grow up with their audiences but as nostalgic as we may be, it does sort of ruin the originals we grew up with.

#19- Gun Control (Or Lack Thereof)

Gun control has been a huge issue, especially in the past few years when it has gained a lot of attention. It is all over the news and therefore all over social media. The problem is that a lot of that information isn’t complete and then causes more controversy than needed.

One of the biggest issues is that we only hear about guns when they are part of violent crimes, namely mass shootings. The media portrays them in a very one-sided way. Even if a gun saved a life in a situation, they would never admit that. They want you to be afraid.

Another issue is that people often either side on taking away guns completely or keeping things the way they are now. Obama has cited Australia’s actions toward gun violence as a good model for the U.S. to follow. After a mass shooting there, they decided to reclaim all guns that were privately owned and melt them down. However great that may sound, there are numerous repercussions of this. It costs a lot to do something like this. Also, those who want guns will still find ways to get them. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean everyone will follow that law. On the other hand, things are obviously not working very well now so we can’t just sit back and wait this out.

People only think of gun violence on a national scale as well when there are really certain areas that are more worrisome than others. Some neighborhoods are more prone to violent crimes and those produce children who are less educated (higher drop out rates), subject to more abuse, and who continue in the cycle of growing up to be violent as well.

If we want to solve the problem, I believe that we need stricter background checks. If someone has a history of violence, is mentally unstable, or if we have strong reason to believe they could be a terrorist, they should not be allowed to buy a weapon. More importantly than that though, is making sure that youth, especially in high risk communities, have opportunities for a good education and to break out of that cycle of violence. If they are empowered to do good and to get help when they need it, they are less likely to resort to violence. This isn’t guaranteed to work immediately, but it’s a step in the right direction.

AT&T’s Vision Of The Future

About 1993, AT&T made some pretty visionary assumptions about the future. Here are some things that I noticed about their video as it comperes to the world we live in in 2016. (Here is the video for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFWCoeZjx8A).

Two things that were immediately apparent were the use of a Skype-like program that allows for people to video chat with each other and the ability to translate conversations into other languages digitally. The difference with the video chat is that in AT&T’s video, they predicted that the cell-phone would look the same as it did then and be necessary to speak through in order for the video chat to work. We now simply talk directly into the screen as the video camera and speaker are built into the computer or phone being used. They were also able to have an effective three-way conversation with each other, just as we can now. However, we are not able to do this on an airplane unless we pay a lot of money. The tablet that the man was holding now exists and is also capable of video chat. There are also programs available to virtually construct a new outside of a building but it isn’t as simple as just giving a voice command telling the program to give the building a new exterior, you have to construct it yourself. Playing video games in a virtual reality is also becoming a reality now. As far as I know though, you can’t play with multiple people in the same game as different characters that are part of the story yet. So far, no homework is available in virtual reality but that could change as it becomes more popular, but it doesn’t seem likely. The people in the video had to go to a phone booth in order to make a call while we now have phones as mobile devices. There was also an operator that had to connect the call whereas we now save contacts into our mobile phone and simply have to click on it. The systems they use to video chat are also able to tell people where their contacts are located if they are connected to a network, which we don’t have wide access to now. Their computerized intelligent agent is a lot like the Siri of Apple devices but is an image instead of just a voice. They didn’t have to leave an office to order food or shop, which we can do via online ordering and online shopping. However, there is an option to dress a mannequin of an individual’s body type virtually, without having to try the clothes on which we aren’t able to do yet. They had an electronic classroom, which we are sort of transitioning into now. It isn’t quite at a point where it could be individualized but maybe one day it will be. With all of the things developed virtually in this predicted world, the computers do a lot of things for them. We now have a lot of things that can be done for us with computers but we are not as dependent on that technology as people in this world are.

#18- You Are What You Eat, Pt. 2

I distinctly remember watching “Speed Racer” for the first time and hearing two swear words that were considered “lesser” or more widely accepted but also seeing the middle finger and hearing a “worse” swear word that was only partially bleeped out (so anyone who knew the word knew exactly what they were saying). Yet, the movie was rated PG. How does a movie with that sort of content merit the same rating as a movie like “The Incredibles”, “Tangled”, “Frozen” and “Brave”?

Kids who grow up watching movies that have this kind of content are going to be very used to it and think nothing of using this language themselves. Beyond this, many parents don’t care about rating and will allow their young children to watch PG-13 movies as well as R-rated movies without any concern at all. Kids not only pick up the language but the violence as well, which can cause them to act out more.

It is important to be careful about our own media choices but also what we choose to let our kids watch as they are very impressionable and will grow up with the ideas planted in their minds from the time they were young.