It would seem that everyone has seen a few youtube videos, and there are a few that everyone has seen, but only a small percentage of these could actually be called life changing. I don't mean in a way that is spiritually or philosophically revolutionary. That fare is pretty slim on youtube, unless you're of the sort that can identify with Hal Lindsey. I mean life changing in the sense that you see something that you incorporate into your lifestyle or take with you once you've logged off or shut down. For my group of friends in high school, the video that became a part of our everyday routine was Bro Rape.
"Bros" were what we aspired to be, and the bro rape video provided a concrete example of what bros were all about- "An eighteen to twenty-four year old male who wears birkenstock sandals, watches family guy, plays ultimate frisbee, and wears an upside-down visor or a baseball cap with a pre-frayed brim." Below is a picture of your typical bro.
They play game cube, drink natty ice, and listen to Jack Johnson, Incubus, and especially Dave Mathews. They seemed like the epitome of college students who were having the time of their lives while hanging out with their bros, and as we were all going to college in less than a year, so attempts to emulate these bros were numerous.
Before long, however, we saw the faults of bro-ing out all the time and we realized a need to just be ourselves. We abandoned our imitations of these wearers of abercrombie water polo shirts and entered college with a more individual sense of identity than we possessed when we were trying to just be bros.
2 comments:
The rise of youtube is more of an evolution...and its what i think will help in the shifts of generations and their ideals. your blog is very well written and very down to earth. i love your choice of subtopic....bro rape.....the caliber that the producers of the video had to even think about what defines a bro is so creative. but most importantly, i think the main idea of your video was the influence that youtube has on our generation, how you and your friends tried to become a bro...but then later realized how this video was not a generalizing but a satire on some average college students.
i can't wait to read what your next topic is...the effects of facebook or even the ipod. your choice of theme is very appropriate and the fact that you chose bro rape as the youtube video to "pick" on lets us readers know your sense of humor!
Your discussion of Youtube reminds me of some articles I've read that talk about how the current generation of young people are much more group-oriented than generations in the past, how they are much more willing to be part of a greater whole and identify with a larger group.
Although a lot of pretentious thinkers and writers have complained about how Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, and the internet in general is destroying western society and culture, I don't think that these things are all that bad, and your blog was interesting because it talked about how a Youtube video had an effect on your life, which probably was greater than a lot of other so-called "famous" literary or artistic works will have.
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