I think the entertainment value of this video for me doesn’t rely on it being genuine. It’s creative, well engineered, and hilariously executed even if the responses are staged. I’m surprised, but it doesn’t ruin it for me.
Kind of like Top Gear or WWE. It's full of fake but we kind of implicitly get that. I think a bit of the issue here is that a lot of people (myself included) assumed there was no staging.
Kinda makes you wonder about other extraordinary claims.. I mean, what did he really do to prove that it wasn't staged? Other than saying he works for NASA...
I watched the video and I was quite shocked at how many of the 'thieves' spoke to themselves when seemingly alone. I was wondering if people are that stupid in this 'thieving' class of suburban America.
We all speak to ourselves from time to time, it is as if we have a clutch going on between our brain and our mouths, in childhood we learn to use this clutch to think before we speak. But there will be occasions when we let this go, I could have an accident, e.g. stubbing my toe, in which case I might speak to myself with expletives without an audience for my words needing to be present.
If I had been tricked by this glitter package I might not disengage the 'clutch' due to being surprised and shocked. But I don't think I would have spoke to myself as the people in the video did.
So I was wondering if people were that stupid, but now I am thinking the entire video was fake.
The other aspect that concerned me in the video was the manner that he went off chasing the parcel in his car to the car park and what not. I would be quite apprehensive of confronting people regarding theft and yet I have had plenty of opportunities from working in retail to be able to do that. NASA engineer types generally don't have that street skill and I expected him to show the fear that is natural when confronting people for theft.
I don't think that we have heard the end of how well this video was stage managed and faked, I do not believe a single thief was legit. Why fake some of it and not all of it? Although YouTube this had a sponsor and was a full on TV production, and, in TV you don't have a soap opera where 'some of it is real', everything is scripted and staged or else it isn't. There was no evidence of multiple packages being made, so to create the monetizing ten minutes why risk it going wrong after one genuine thief takes the device and destroys it?
The get a friend of a friend to do it approach means the friends of friends know they have been pranked and aren't going to have law enforcement coming down on them. In America a real thief could pull a gun on our NASA engineer chap out of a fear of being sent back to jail for some parole violation. The reaction and blase way our NASA engineer chap went down hunting the perps didn't fit with how it all works.
I now wonder how he must feel about future Amazon orders, if I was him I would wonder how many of those will get routinely stolen from now on due to the unscientific rules of 'karma'.
> was the manner that he went off chasing the parcel in his car to the car park and what not.
I mean, he had a 180-360 degree view of the package not being near a car; and the ability to drive past it first in an area where it would be perfectly inconspicuous to drive past to see if it were abandoned.
At no point does he show a feed. He seems to play down the whole server side aspect.
Imho its all fake, and it does kinda matter.
i like youtube because its real. Peoples info isnt perfect and the quality could be better but it is real! Cody really refines things, applied science really built an elecron microscope.
Traditional media has much set up and fakery, people dont really know whats real and their expectations are waaaay out of whack. We see these bull shit stories -whether about real people or not- that are not true, one person didnt do that, it wasnt that successful, it didnt happen overnight, the world is not that black and white etc.
Youtube etc. Are refreshing as the dramatisations are missing or done at the hamfisted skill level of your friend after a drink.. they are easy to spot and taken for what they are intended to be - lubrication/snacks for your attention and patience. But also these filler peices etc. Will struggle to outshine the actual content - you are here to see what they managed in their eveneing etc. Or whatever, did it work, was it fun.. not how well they can use aftereffects.
As production budgets and stakes increase we see a shift to the polish, drama and entertainment quality aspects. Much of this is appreciated, its great when a youtuber figures out microphones, or close shots, and all their videos are better for it. But all our built in defaults for filler and how to ham it up are based lying and not respecting your audience due to the history of media and who created it.
These "dramatisations" are a natural part of personal communications but are inappropriate for mass media. They are at the core of celebrity culture, fake news, sound bite reporting politics.
But it takes a moral stand against succumbing to base urges and distractions to rise above it and give the clarity to call it out when it happens. And its definately not short term financial rewarding (tho may add stability)
I dont have the answers but to me the rise of people like this and cody etc. Is great, but its a learning experince, we dont know where its going. But i understand a strong desire to have less mark rober polished showoffery and more grab these thing do this stuff and get these results.
I am in agreement with the reality aspect of YouTube, I have a guilty pleasure for watching a YouTuber who does stupid things for likes, I won't give him the oxygen of publicity here though.
However, in this desperation for likes everything is totally real, it is almost as if the guy would not be able to imagine faking it and would not be able to conceive of it. There may be click bait titles, the begging for likes and the desire for fame and fortune but it is entirely real, nothing staged. You mention doing things in post production, the idea of faking it in post is also an unimaginable idea to the YouTubers we get strangely fascinated by.
At the same time though, Instagram is fake, every face on it is fake, every scene is a setup, the people on it project a lifestyle they don't live up to. Clearly people wear make-up on YouTube too, but there is something real about that.
We laugh at millennials tuning out the TV in the corner to be obsessed with 'social media' but old media is no longer getting the attention that it once had. It survives on the momentum built up over decades with an audience that is getting older.
There was a time when I would eagerly watch soap operas, as written by vast teams of skilled writers and featuring a cast of very well paid actors. But nowadays I am not watching any of that stuff, the lone guy talking about what he is tinkering with in the garage demands my attention instead. Often this lone guy really is doing it all, the camera work, the editing, the whole shebang, to create compelling content that would have required a huge team in previous times. At other times there is a small group of friends with one of them able to do super slick editing and create content that is definitely 'broadcast quality'.
The ability to like, comment, share and subscribe is also part of it. Why watch something with 'comments disabled'? With regular TV you can shout at the TV but it won't hear you. With Youtube you might get one of those heart things and a comment back from the YouTuber/presenter which is sweet. With broadcast media there is none of this interaction.
I don't see any YouTubers wanting to get a 'proper TV series', it is always the other way, with TV types wanting to do their next project on YouTube and turning their back on the legacy media.
Some things are lost though, not having that vast team with experience is not a bad thing though as long as that reality aspect is there. It is the honesty the viewer likes.
I also don't think this really ruins his credibility as a YouTuber (or an engineer) at all. It's quite normal to act out and stage events for videos, especially in this case where the success of the video depended on recovering the device (for recording multiple takes, and because it just cost a lot of effort) and staying safe (since retaliation is a serious risk for people who fool porch pirates).
I'm not sure if he intended this to be the case, but I'll still be a subscriber.
I think people are a little confused about how much media out there is totally faked. Almost all of the "reality" programming is scripted, staged, and fake. A great deal of viral videos are staged or completely faked as well.
I couldn't care any less whether its genuine or not. I've always been baffled at the internet's obsession with outing "fake" content. It's like people think attention is sacrosanct and must ensure that any attention someone gets is "just" according to their personal criteria. It points to our pathological obsession with fame and status.
Why is debunking people faking stuff indicative of a pathological obsession with fame and status? Seems more like the fakers in the first place would be guilty of obsessing over fame and status.
The effort to debunk rates poorly on effort vs reward, outside of an unhealthy value placed on attention/status. But making fake content for attention can have a reasonable expected payoff.
It's okay to value your time by expected returns, as long as you consider any additional harm you cause to others. If you make $100 and others you interact with also make $5 from your efforts, that's okay. If you make $100 and others you interact with lose $200, then that's probably bad.
