July 29: Instant Gratification: Now Even More Instant-Er

It's official. The future is now. Books and articles have been written about the impact the Internet has had on Generation Now. Every day more and more people were getting their news via the Internet and morning papers were going by the wayside. How could getting the news on the Internet get any faster? It couldn't, right? Wrong.

I don't "tweet," but I am on Twitter. For those of you that aren't members, it may seem pointless, but trust me, it's pretty cool. The way it works is a user has 140 characters to write a message. These messages can be anything from an update of events planned to a link to an interesting website. Other Twitter subscribers can then "follow" these updates (or tweets) and have each tweet sent to their Twitter account. Confused yet?

Let me try to clear things up. Let's say I have five friends that have Twitter accounts. These friends find me on the website and click the follow button by my name. Now every time I send a tweet, it is forwarded to each friend. If I decide to tweet, "I'm going wakeboarding tomorrow" that message will be sent to my five followers and they now know that I'm going wakeboarding tomorrow. I don't follow any friends or send any tweets myself, but I do follow the Padres, Major League Baseball Trade Rumors (MLBTR), Funny or Die, and a few others. And here is where today's topic comes into play.

The MLB trade deadline is on Saturday and teams that are chasing a division title are scrambling to beef up their rosters. The fun thing about Twitter is that anytime MLBTR or the Padres representative catches wind of a rumor, they can tweet via text message and that message will be instantly forwarded to me. I could speed things up even more by having all new tweets sent to my phone, but I choose not to. I was, however, at my computer when the rumors of Miguel Tejada being traded to the Padres started surfacing.

At first it was a forwarded message from a Padres' writer stating the Baltimore Sun was reporting he had been scratched from tonight's game. Could this mean he had been traded? Then it was a similar message from MLBTR followed by another Padres' tweet about a Minor Leaguer in Baltimore's system being scratched. Could this mean he was being promoted to replace Tejada? Within five minutes and three tweets of speculation later, MLBTR broke the story that the deal was, in fact completed.

In between tweets I kept visiting MLB.com to get an official word, but received nothing. It wasn't until about a half an hour later that MLB had updated its website and mentioned the trade. One could argue that without the Internet, there would not be Twitter, but the fact remains: A medium that is replacing newspapers with instant gratification has now become even more instant.

January 28

I had been staring at my computer screen for a half an hour trying to decide what to write about today. I had two tabs open in my Internet browser. One of them was Blogger with an empty text window and a blinking cursor in the upper left-hand side waiting to create an insightful piece of thought. The other tab was my escape to procrastination where I was cycling through my daily websites hoping to find something new and interesting to look at that might give me an idea of what to write about.

One of these websites that I visit on a daily basis is Twitter. I don't tweet because I think blogging is narcissistic enough and I don't need to express my thoughts in 140 characters or fewer. I visit Twitter everyday because I follow other people. MLB Trade Rumors is one that I follow. Other tweets I follow are Jeff Probst of Survivor and Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly. I also follow Funny or Die. Occasionally there will be a funny quip or a link to a new video. The latter is what got my attention today.

It was a link to the Funny or Die website with a new video that was posted by Jeff Garlin. You might know Garlin from Curb Your Enthusiasm or Daddy Daycare. The post on Twitter suggested that I see this video which was also written and directed by Garlin. I'm a big Curb fan and I like his character a lot on the show so I thought, why not?

I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I think Funny or Die operates similar to that of YouTube. Anyone can upload a video to the site, but unlike YouTube, viewers then have the ability to vote whether or not the video was funny and should stay posted or if the video should die and be taken down. When I clicked the link, a new page opened up and as the video started to load, I noticed that it was a "Chosen One" on the site which means a viewer has no say in whether or not the video can stay. I think you can still vote, but the voting doesn't actually mean anything like it would if you were voting on a video that wasn't a "chosen one." These particular videos are usually funnier than a normal submitted video. They usually have some kind of celebrity stamp on them as well which makes the quality much better.

The video was titled, "Breakup in a Noisy Diner." The two minute clip was one scene that takes place at a booth in a noisy diner. Clinking glasses and people visiting can be heard very clearly as the actors are going through the scene. Aubrey Plaza (actress from Funny People and Parks and Recreation) played the main character. She looked distraught as she sat to the left of the table and went through the cliches of breaking up with some guy sitting across from her. The co-star looked familiar, but I didn't know who he was or where I had seen him. As the breakup came to a conclusion, another guy sat down next to the first guy and she went through the entire speech again almost word for word. When she finished, the second guy and her just looked at each other and the first guy turned to his left and looked directly into the camera and said, "I'm a ghost" and gave an ear-to-ear grin that he held for the remainder of the video which lasted another thirty seconds.

I get it! The first time that Plaza went through her routine, she was talking to herself and preparing to breakup with the second guy. That's hilarious! Not! This was a "Chosen One?!" The second comment that was left about this clip was, "This is 'Chosen???' Missing the funny here..." so I'm obviously not the only one that couldn't find the humor in this exclusive video. And right there is my complaint for the day!

Just because you are a celebrity and you upload videos to a popular website, does not mean that the video should be excluded from any kind of voting or ridicule. If you make a piece of shit clip, people should have the right to say so and vote it off of the site. The site is called Funny or Die and not Funny and/or Celebrity Endorsed or Die. If it isn't funny, it should die. The video should not stay up if it is not funny.

I like Jeff Garlin's character on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think he offers a good balance to Larry David's character which, in turn makes the show more enjoyable. I don't think he should be using his celebrity on that show or any other show, for that matter, as a pass to make videos like this. They aren't clever. They aren't funny. They should die.