I Fight Dragons

Remember all those old video games you used to play on your NES and your Gameboy? Do you remember any of the controllers? You might recognize a few:

This video really says it all.

Chicago-based NES-Rock band (the first and so-far only of its kind) I Fight Dragons plays video game controllers as instruments. The controllers are hooked up to computers, and the buttons correspond to certain sounds, which are controlled by the computers. Other items include the standalone Original Gameboy, which is equipped with a Little Sound DJ Cartrige, which lets you program entire songs and play them back.

This is yet another example of technology not being used how it was intended, but in a completely new and interesting way. I Fight Dragons is truly innovative, and truly "nerdy" to be able to come up with this idea. They are an incredibly fun band, frequently drawing references to their favorite old videogames and dreaming about a sci-fi future.

IFD takes advantage of the Free Economy idea, giving out all of their songs to members of their mailing list. This helps them raise a fan-base. Apparently this was a good idea, because Imogen Heap found out about them and collaborated on a song with them.

Feeling nostalgic about your old games? Don't worry. IFD has a fun little game at the top of their myspace page where you, too, can fight dragons. It's simple, just like the old games.

Truth or Fail

YouTube has a gameshow. It's called Truth or Fail.

The way Truth or Fail works:
Each week, a famous YouTuber posts a video to the truthorfail account, which is run by none other than John and Hank Green.
The video contains two "facts", one of which is the truth, one of which is not the truth. You click on the one that you think is true, and it links you to another YouTube video.
If you picked the Truth, you are congratulated and told more about the trivia you picked.
If you Fail, then you are booed and again told more about the trivia option you picked.
Then the show continues, and you must pick the fact you think is True again.
This goes on for five rounds.


Beard Trivia with the Wheezy Waiter.

Truth or Fail is an interesting way to make a game on the internet, and more specifically, YouTube. It uses the hyperlink capabilities that the YouTube has (through annotations) to link you through a sequence of videos specific to your choosing. It is much like the choose-your-path books of the 1990's in this way. But this makes you to think about a question being asked, rather than asking you to choose a path. Something like this could, of course, be made in book-form. But having it in an online version is just a later evolution of this choose-your-path idea.

Truth or Fail also has a website that has links to all the videos.

Is This Tom?

John Green has created a new type of storytelling. He takes a conventionally written story and masks it behind riddles, which can be found at the isthistom YouTube channel.


The first video. I've only gotten halfway through the riddle.

The channel is run by Alexander Basalyga, the same man who created the riddle site thisisnottom.com. On YouTube, he posts a video-riddle every week. The video, like Thisisnottom.com, leads you through a series of riddles, and it finally ends with a book chapter by John Green. The YouTube riddle is an even further way to develop the riddle, because it opens up the ability to play with moving images and sounds.

John writes about a girl called YFN, or Your Faithful Narrator, since she has no idea of her identity. She is quite a messed up girl, as it seems. And her story, if it were real – which it may or may not be – is a strange one. The book is non-text-searchable, so don’t bother even trying. But there are hints and spoilers on the book forum. John gives the story behind the story.

This Is Not Tom

..........Hello?

Hello...........

..........Uhh... is this Tom?

No, I'm afraid this is not Tom...........

..........Ok, thanks. Sorry to bother you. I'll keep looking.

*click*

All across the internet, this is dialogue occurs between the curious viewers of Thisisnottom.com and their Google search results pages. Thousands of people are trying to figure out the extremely difficult riddles that are posted there. This is what appears on the first page of Thisisnottom.com.

I, myself, have only gotten through this one. It took surprisingly long, and as with any riddle, it seemed completely easy once I figured it out.

Riddles, of course, have been around for ages. But they haven't been on the internet for even just two decades. Having riddles on the internet opens up so many new options. Answers to the riddles can be hidden in hyperlinks anywhere on the site. They can be typed into URL's. They can be entered as passwords. There are many ways of submitting an answer to a riddle, and there are even more ways of finding out the answers to riddles. In the past, the only way to figure out a riddle was to use logic or otherwise your own mind. Online riddles can do this, and they can also use the internet as a massive database of knowledge, allowing for riddles that involve a little bit of trivia. Online riddles open up an entire new aspect of riddling.

Nerdfighters

 Over two years, John and Hank Green have accumulated a fairly massive following of people. These people, mostly teenagers, are made up of fans of their vlogs and fans of John's books (and the two have, of course, influenced each other).

To manage this fan base and to stay connected with them better, they created the Nerdfighter Ning. This is a social networking website that is made for all fans of John and Hank Green who wish to consider themselves Nerdfighters (the term nerdfighter is the title of a videogame that Hank found one day).


This is all good, and is to be expected of a tech-savvy author and his brother. But what is amazing is how loyal this fan base is, and how powerful and broad it is. There are Nerdfighters in places all over the world and all over the internet. Many of them are YouTubers, posting vlogs and/or songs. And as a general rule, Nerdfighters are excited about other Nerdfighters and Nerdfighteria (stuff that relates to Nerdfighting and/or is "Awesome").

Because they are such a massive group of people, Nerdfighters can accomplish much, in the same way that the massive group collaborated to make "I've Got Nothing" (in fact, they may have been a part of it. Their YouTube followers merge a bit). John and Hank Green's Nerdfighters work to bring Awesome to the world.

They are great because they are a silly, young-at-heart, adventurous group. They see the world differently, and they are ambitious and passionate. They are the kind of people who make other generations proud of this generation of teenagers. I believe the Nerdfighters will change the world into a better place.

Sufjan Stevens: The BQE

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about how Flickr user Ettubrute was using his still camera as a way of making interesting films. This post is about what Sufjan Stevens did in his film The BQE.

Using a very old film video camera, Sufjan made a partially documentary-style film about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, but he did it in a very interesting way. Instead of showing just one screen of footage, he showed three, back to back. Sometimes the images connected, sometimes they didn't. According to Sufjan, the intent of the film is to give an interesting point of view of a part of Brooklyn that he loves, and to develop his photographic eye.

He did exactly that. The film transitions from being mostly photograph-like into a raging geometric maze. He used his video camera to create time-lapsed scenes. But instead of showing them simply as what they were, he mirrored them in the three-across format to turn them into something else.

Unfortunately, the clip with the mirrored videos is no longer available. This is a clip from a different part of the film that uses the three-across format to play on a theme.

ⓒ Asthmatic Kitty Records and Sufjan Stevens. I do not own this.

This is a very interesting presentation, because it is technically and literally a film. But it is set up as photography. In a way, this is a backwards approach to what Ettubrute did. But both accomplish similar things: merging photography and film interestingly.

One thing that Sufjan has over Ettubrute is his incorporation of sound. Sufjan designed the score of the film himself, so it is intended to go with it perfectly. And it does. It goes up and down in intensity and changes at all the right points, making his film even more rhythmic than the patterns of traffic already were. It sounds curious in parts and strong in others.

I've Got Nothing

During the past three months, four YouTubers got together and did something awesome. Jimmy0010, JohnnyDurham19, nerimon, and charlieissocoollike produced a song called "I've Got Nothing" under the name Chartjackers. All of the money made from the singles goes to the UK charity Children In Need. The song was released on November 9, and is only available on iTunes. Their goal is to make it to number 1 in the UK iTunes charts in 10 weeks.

music video, with introduction by charlieissocoollike:


The song was produced by the four YouTubers already mentioned, but it was written and performed by other YouTubers. People submitted lyrical suggestions, then the best was picked. Then the Chartjackers asked for audition submissions, also by YouTube. The best were chosen, and finals were held to determine the two who would sing.

BBC Switch did five minute documentaries each week on Chartjackers' progress and a thirty minute special at the end, which can all be viewed here. The song is currently number 36 in the UK iTunes charts.

This is an incredible example of the power of the internet as a collaborative space. There is no way this song could have been made if it weren't for the very many YouTubers who contributed, and it is because of the amount of contributions that the song is so good, albeit cheesy. Further, it is because of the massive following of these four YouTubers that the song is actually accomplishing its goal. This really just speaks of the power in numbers, and how that power is being applied through the global community of the internet.