Kids and Cats Go Viral

It is not as recent as it may seem. Cat playing with the piano-roll on iPad: 1,300,000 views in 2 weeks. 3-year-old kid spreading her breakfast over the kitchen table: over 100,000 views in less than a few days. Another young girl (tagged as a 3-year-old, but come on… she is much older than that, is it such a must to exaggerate?) cries that Justin Bieber doesn't love her – then laughs out loud, because her lament was simply a joke. But even this latter video earned over 1.5 million views altogether. This tendency has been present since years.

Even CNN covered the issue in its spotlight column. Although parents tend to be careful about their anonymity, these videos going viral will surely make some embarrassing moments for their children later on in their lives. Even further than that, parents will have to face the consequences of such publicity in the form of hostile comments that blame them for showing off with their children. But that’s not even the point.

The point is the enormous attention these videos get in such a short time. And among the thousands of comments (most of them which are published at the exact same second below the video, such is the buzz on the forums), there are quite a few complaining about how the recent decades of immense technological development resulted only in people constatnly turning on their Blackberries to watch one of the new “featured” YouTube videos. Yes, people want short, immediate entertainment. Do these videos offer short and immediate entertainment? Yes, they do. Nothing wrong with that. Still, if these videos appear the “Most Favorited” and “Most Commented” anyway, why feature them separately, as YouTube does? For most people who signed up to a YT-account, the previews of these videos will cover their entire start-page.

YouTube has become such a vast collection of videos; and featuring a clever search engine or the option of creating specific tags for videos is not enough to provide a guide in exploring this endless material. Especially if YouTube organizes its videos in such a way that, as a consequence, “the video of the day” draws another half a million (otherwise totally indifferent) viewers to witness how a cat scratches the screen of its owner’s brand new iPad...

Freelance

The age of magnificent news firms and the realm of heavy, solemn presses is seemingly over. The symptom that is most frequently referred to when considering the decay of journalism is the unselected avalanche of free news that is available to everyone. Newspaper companies cannot anymore monopolize the sources of news or determine what the audience should be interested in. During the history of journalism (up until now), the daily newspaper served its purpose: deliver a certain amount of selected news and reports from around the world to everyone willing to pay for it. Today, the channels of streaming news are free and open due to blogs, free online broadcasts, homepages of freelance journalists and so on.

Still, news articles covering certain topics are much easier to compile in newspapers. Similarly, some other types of news will appear to be more efficient in published by bloggers. According to my experience, there is still a wide gap between blogs and the articles of professional journalists. The most outstanding difference would be the stamp of personality in the articles of web logs and the common third-person style formality of professional journalists. A piece of news the reader can relate to personally will convey its message more effectively than a formal article in any traditional newspaper. Blogs gain audience by featuring a personal style and delivering certain types of news within a narrowed topic: such is the case of travel blogs, par example.

Considering the relationship between blogs/freelance news forums and traditional news firms, blogs will not necessarily replace the traditional news format in its entirety. Instead, blogs simply satisfy the needs of an audience that seek a more “natural” means of acquiring news. A blog revokes the scene of somebody kindly and enthusiastically telling somebody about what happened lately. Such form of telling news may even resemble gossiping, but a blogger also has to maintain her creditability. But who said gossiping was an anomaly of communication? Gossips are stories, no matter how private; they are the stories we talk about and the stories we can’t live without.

Blaming bloggers for their personal style manipulating or even distorting news is somewhat one-sided, especially considering the subtle ways a traditional article is able to do the same with a short, 1-column-long, boring little article by “carefully trimming” even the tiniest bits off in order to fit the blank space on the paper. A blogger at least allows free and direct channels for feedback. Moreover, considering reader’s response, for many readers, an uncensored and constantly refreshed comment page is more reassuring than a carefully selected compilation of letters to the editor that appears in a meticulously separated section of a newspaper.

Sziget Festival for Hungarians?

As the summer period approaches, the hype around popular summer festivals also erupts. Sure enough, a week-long gathering for music and party enthusiasts yields a number fun stuff ranging from listening to the favorite bands live to getting involved in developing relationships with even international friends. However, attempting to take part in such an event becomes less fun if it takes over a month of summer-work for teenagers or college students to earn the outrageous entry fee. The reason why nobody will ever care about the odd situation in Hungary, namely, that Eastern Europe’s largest festival in the middle of Budapest is invaded mostly by Western European foreigners who will eventually and necessarily raise the price threshold, is because economically there is no need to alter a policy which relies purely on financial considerations. On the other hand, the intention to create a new festival in Eastern Europe with its certain vibe and authenticity has faded away during the years of Sziget’s evolution.

Throughout Europe, attending musical festivals has been a popular and successful trend since the eighties, or, taking the UK as an exception, since even earlier. Even though it was the legendary Woodstock festival in the US that created such a chain reaction, the large capitals relatively close to one another on the map shifted the hotbed of musical festivals from the States to Europe. Many of the music festivals are built around a certain genre in music, resulting in a great variety of themes and styles. Drink or clothing brands promoting such events even form their entire marketing profile and strategy in order to accommodate the specific style of a certain subculture, or the taste of people who will presumably attend the festival; and Sziget has always been following the reliable patterns to attract promoters and visitors. True, the popularity of Sziget today is mainly based on this careful, step-by-step policy in gradually raising the bar in order to reach the Western European level. However, as Sziget finally managed to converge with the standards, its repertoire of both Hungarian and other European (but compared to the overwhelming Anglo-Saxon pop music trends, not canonized and, therefore, less popular) music was reduced to such a small proportion that these shows today generally appear on the smallest stages, which are carefully tucked in the far corners of the Óbudai Island.

Sziget has gained its global recognition only in the last decade, but even in such a short timeframe, it managed to outgrow the hosting Óbudai Island, where it takes place annually. Due to the sheer lack of space and the ever-growing number of visitors, Sziget must also gradually raise the entry fee to control the vast crowds forcing their way onto the island. And since the popularity of the festival manifests itself year after year in the increasing amount of attention it gets, why not monetize the inevitable opportunity?

For foreigners arriving from the West, Sziget is a cheap and atmospheric little place to spend much fewer money on drink and show-tickets than it would otherwise cost in German or English musical festivals, while still listening to the same music they hear at home. While it is obvious that globally recognized bands and artists will necessarily attract visitors with fat wallets, as a consequence: the vast majority of unduly underrated underground bands from this part of Europe slip off the stage. If Sziget had intended to create a balance between importing popular music into its repertoire and providing some reasonable amount of platform for either Hungarian or (so far) less popular artists, this intention turned out to be shamefully unsuccessful.