The Vid Polls: The Big Honking Summary, Discussion, and Endless Blithering About Weasels

Long ago, when the world was young (okay, about two years ago, but in fandom time that's like 37 generations), I developed the Urge to Rec Vids. (This was associated with, but not a direct result of, my attempts to learn how to watch vids. But that, my friends, is a meta of a different color, and that color would likely be beige enough to cause ennui-related brain damage.) But I was aware, from my hesitant proddings at the fringes of the vid world, that linking to or recommending vids was a different deal than recommending fan fiction.

(Note: This might have been true then. It's definitely not true now. Sorry; I just had to throw that in there. It's very hard to stay in a chronological first-person narrative without a lot of lapsing into "Ah, but had I known!" and "This is where I made my first mistake" and "In retrospect, that's when I should've started taking the malaria pills." God only knows how fictional narrators manage.)

So I looked around and found some discussion of this - as I recall, one post, with comments, about somebody linking to the poster's vid without permission, one essay, and one "Where Did My Vids Go and Why Aren't They Coming Back?" type statement on a website. The conclusions I drew from these sources:

1. Vidders did not necessarily relish having their vids linked to or recommended, and really did not relish this happening outside the vidding community. (Actually, I kind of concluded that vidders did not much like non-vidders, period. But I'm now very aware that this was wrong, and also it was kind of stupid of me to believe it in the first place, so we will pretend that I never did, okay?)
   
   
2. If anyone, but especially a non-vidder, wanted to link to a vid, it was absolutely mandatory to obtain permission first.

This was a problem for me. See, for me, there's fannish interaction - leaving comments, sending feedback, writing email, asking permission - and then there's fannish activity - writing, recommending, etc. I am fully functional when it comes to fannish activity. Interaction, though, not so much.

(Side note: You might think recommending would count as fannish interaction. But you would be wrong. As I've said to several people already, sending feedback is striking up a conversation with the smartest, wittiest, most attractive stranger in the room. Recommending is standing on the street corner shouting to myself about weasels. And I, as it happens, am much more comfortable in crazy-bag-lady mode. I mean, you all are invited, even encouraged, to stop, listen, and comment ("No, no. Everyone knows that ferrets are superior to weasels! And also, they are far sleeker!" Or, as it is known to those who, in a freaky timeline inversion thing, even now carry the scars: WeaselWank 2011.), and I'm delighted when you do (although I understand that 2011's going to be a tough year for comments), but I'm not expecting you to and I don't feel bad if you don't. Also, when I'm recommending, I don't feel like I have to be smart or impress anyone - random weasel-related blithering is perfectly fine. Whereas with feedback, I feel this horrible weight, this need to be as articulate and clever and all-around nifty as the person I am sending feedback to, which is obviously never going to happen. It makes me tense.)

So. Time progressed. I conquered a number of vid-related fears (accessophobia - fear of asking for vid site passwords, clickophobia - fear of sending feedback, oculomoronophobia - fear of looking like an idiot, divxphobia - fear of new codecs, etc.). I recommended some vids every now and again. And all was well.

Then, somewhere along the line, I discovered anime music videos, and oh my god the joy. Not only were they pretty and shiny and wondrous to behold, because live-action vids are that, too, but they were pretty much designed for people who didn't want to talk to other people. I didn't need to ask permission to rec. (And I actually couldn't send feedback to the creators, what with my intelligence not being up to the task of giving AMV opinions, which are in themselves quite the fine and demanding art.)

It was heaven. I recommended many anime vids and the occasional live-action vid, and there was happiness in the house of TFV.

And then one day quite recently I was talking with cupidsbow about the Issue of Recommending Vids. And she said (and I'm paraphrasing so severely that I might very well fuck up her point, so if you don't like it, that's probably my fault) that she'd never asked for permission when she recommended vids, and she didn't want to start, as she highly values the free flow of ideas and discussion and thinks permission requirements might inhibit that.

And I thought: Huh. (Yes, precisely like that. You see why I fear situations that require feats of linguistic virtuosity?) Because the thing is, I'd seen vidders link to other people's vids in a casual way. I'd seen recs swarm across my friends list even when I knew the vidder was unavailable to grant permission to rec. And I started wondering - is it different because I'm not a vidder? Is it different because I am a recommender? Or, hey, is it different? Do I actually need permission at all?

On LJ, my motto is: when in doubt, poll.

So I ran a poll asking vidders about vid permission and a poll asking vid watchers about vids in general. And what I learned was - well. Let's discuss.

First, as of this writing, 108 vidders have taken the vidder poll. Only 7% of them said it was necessary to ask permission before linking to a vid announcement. Even more significant, though, is that 51% of them - half! - had never even heard of this weird alien ritual of asking permission to link to a vid announcement. And 93 of the vidders - or just over 86% of them - gave blanket permission to rec or link to their vid announcements (provided people respected basic fannish manners - no hotlinking, no stealing, proper credit given, etc.).

So, no matter what was true two years ago (or what I thought was true two years ago, and such is the tragic nature of time and observers and all that physics whatnot that we will never know for sure which), what's true today is: a vid is a fanwork like any other fanwork, and you follow the same rules when recommending it as you would for recommending a story or a piece of art or whatever. With one major exception, that is: with stories, generally we link directly to the file. With vids, we link to the announcement page.

And that is really all there is to it. You, my friends, have the freedom to rec vids. In particular, you have the freedom to rec the vids of the 93 vidders who gave blanket permission. In general, you have the freedom to link any public vid announcement that doesn't say that you can't; in other words, permission to link is implied by the act of publicly announcing a vid, unless or until permission is specifically withdrawn, as long as you are linking within the general fannish community.

But some of you are probably wondering about the vidders who do think permission is necessary and didn't give blanket permission. You're in luck! I'm going to talk about them now. You folks who only wanted to know the general gist of the results should feel free to leave (and go rec something), but if you're curious about the Deeper Issues, stick around. There's poll analysis and thinkiness and potentially incorrect theories. Fun for the whole family except the sane members, is my point there.

( Further vid meta that is so long and so boring that it is under a cut tag for your protection. Click only if you have permission from your doctor to read 20-year-old computer manuals and earnest screeds on economics from the 1920s. )

Recommending Vids: The How, the What, the Why, and the Threats of Whining

Okay. Here's the deal. Y'all had plenty of vids to rec to me when I asked in the poll, and I was impressed and joyful. And now I want you to rec that same vid (or, hey, an entirely different one) to your friends list, who will likely also be joyful. It's important to me, and I plan to be difficult and obstreperous about it, but I'm also providing this handy guide. So there's a carrot and a stick, here. (Carrot: the handy guide and my eternal love. Stick: pouting.)

This is a basic recommendation: "I liked this. [link to vid announcement]"

That's all you do. You post to your LJ or other fandom-associated location. You say: "Hey! This vid is good!" And you provide a link.

But, okay, I understand only too well how hard it is to say nothing but that when you rec; I've never managed it with anything ever.

You can also say lots of other stuff - what you liked specifically, who it might appeal to, why you think it appealed to you. You can say what fandom it's in, what the song is, who the characters are, what the point of it is. The world is your oyster. You can type four words ("Jack hot. Panties wet.") or you can type until the post limit runs out ("And I think the crucial symbolism here is found within the overall color scheme, or, more specifically, the color scheme's progression from red to green, thus revealing the manner in which the relationship..."). Your choice. Whatever comes naturally to you, really. (If the latter comes naturally to you, I am so nicknaming you the Professor. Or maybe Doc.)

So. Are you convinced? Are you ready to rec? Then you can skip all the rest of this, though you may wish to check out the list of vidders who basically volunteered to be meat for recommending purposes (provided said meat was treated with basic fannish good manners).

If you have objections, though - in short, if you are not going to go right out and rec like a good little carrot-fixated bunny, thus averting what will be, I promise you, a terrible case of pouting on my part - read on. (And if you don't find your objection covered here, let me know. I am happy to add to this list pretty much eternally. I want everyone to rec at least one vid, people. I am very very committed to this concept. Also, I am stubborn. Best just to state your objections clearly so we can get them out of the way.)

"I don't know what to say."

I said this myself for quite a long time. Because vidders have special terminology, right? They have, like, all special words and secret chants and mystic prunes¹ and they will mock you ceaselessly and mercilessly if you use even one single intonation incorrectly, right?

Wrong, actually. There is indeed some technical jargon that vidders know. Much of it relates to specific programs. (Although, frankly, from what I've seen, that is often more obscene than mystical, all: "You evil fuckware, I do everything you want, everything, and now you won't fucking load? Give me vid or I kill with FIRE, you binary Satan that the damned call Premiere!") Some of it is from the film industry and can be learned from any film school. Or book. Or documentary.

But here's the thing: You don't need to know that stuff. (You'd better not need to, because I sure don’t.) Vidders will know what you're talking about no matter what term you use, and are actually more likely to get descriptive terms ("Camera goes swirly! Watcher goes YAY!") than technical ones, since mostly they didn't go film school, either.

More importantly, your readers, your actual recs users, will almost all be non-vidders. They don't need to know about the camera going swirly, no matter what you call it, and they probably don't know the right term for that anyway. For them, you focus on the watcher going YAY. That's what they need to know.

So don't bother with the detailed critique of vidding technique. (Unless you just want to, in which case it's a review, not a rec.) You wouldn't do it for fan fiction you recommended, either. Talk about how the vid made you feel or what it made you think. Mentioning the swirliness of the camera is totally optional.

"I don't watch a lot of vids."

Okay. But how about a vid? Have you seen a vid? Good. Did you like it? Excellent. (In all fairness, I have to warn you that the ratio of watched:liked will not continue at 1:1 forever. Appreciate it while you've got it.)

So where's the problem? You don't need to be an expert in all of vidding to rec vids; I am the living, breathing, recommending proof of that. I started recommending vids when I understood absolutely nothing about them, and I have progressed all the way to not knowing much, but knowing what I like. Do I let this stand in my way? I do not. Do I look like an idiot some of the time? Almost certainly. But you know what? I would anyway; it's my gift. And, you know, I've been called an idiot for recommending various stories, but no one has ever said anything nasty to me because I recommended a specific vid, or vids in general.

And, let me remind you - most of you had at least one vid to rec to me in the poll. (And may I just say, you people have excellent taste.) Why not rec it in your LJ, too?

"But if I haven't seen a lot of vids, how do I know I'll always like it?"

Maybe you won't always like the vid you like right now. So what? If you like it, odds are good that most of your friends list will, too - after all, they generally share some of your interests or tastes or they wouldn't be your friends list. So tell them about it. Later, if you decide it sucks, you can look back all ironically and marvel at your naiveté. You can even wear a beret. It'll be bags of fun.

"But why bother?"

Well, because it's a nice thing to do for your friends. It's hard to find recs of vids that match a specific interest; vid recommending is much more in its infancy than fan fiction recommending. So if you find a good vid, letting everyone else know it's good - that's nice.

And, hey, it's content. Are you telling me you don't occasionally veer into the toenails, GIPs, and pictures of cats type of LJing? Well, here's something to reward your readers for giving you advice about that toenail fungus. (Note: To the best of my knowledge, no one on my friends list actually has a toenail fungus. My friends list is 92% fungus-free. That's just a general remark, because even if someone did have a fungus, I would likely suppress that knowledge.)

And it's a nice thing to do for vidders, to let the world know they did something cool. (That goes double if you encourage your friends list to leave feedback for the vidder.)

And it's important. Because, okay, perhaps you have the fastest internet connection in the world and a million billion trillion gigabytes of hard drive space, but not everyone does; they can only download so many. How do people know which vids are worth downloading and which aren't? Recommendations. If you took the trouble to download it, you might as well let that effort pay off for your friends. And how do people who are new to watching vids know where to start? Yup, that's right: Recommendations.

"But I don't recommend stuff."

You don't have to be a formal recommender, with a recs journal and an obsessive organization scheme and a backlog of stuff to rec, in order to provide the occasional link to an excellent story or vid or piece of art. It's part of what we all do in fandom - we link our friends to stuff we liked.

(Yes, some of us do it more than others. We have a disease. It's very tragic and sad. But I don't think you can catch our Recommending Obsessively Disorder through casual recommending. You can't even catch it by being around those who have it, for which thank god, or we'd be forced to ring bells to warn people we were coming. It's just, you know, something that some of us were born with. We try not to let it get us down.)

"But vidders are scary."

I totally acknowledge this. It's the mystic prunes, I think. It makes them special and different and weird and smelly.

Also, I hear they sacrifice kittens.

No. Look. They are fans, just like everyone else in these parts. Some of them are probably jerks, although not any of the ones I've talked to. Many of them are very nice. Most of them are forgetful and overcommitted and totally convinced that certain people are So Doing It. They squee and flail and headdesk regularly. See? Just like the rest of us.

Some of them will even share their mystic prunes if you ask nicely.

"I don't know who did the vid I love, so I can't figure out where the vid announcement is."

Allow me to direct you to the brand-spanking-new community vidfinders, which is for "Have you seen this vid?" type posts. makesmewannadie recently asked for vid recs, and loads of people rec'd vids without credits, so they knew only the source and the song. Every one of those was rapidly identified by someone else reading the comments. Lost and unattributed vids can be found.

"But my friends list is very small and they've already seen everything I have. I mean, I've only seen the really well-known stuff, anyway."

They have not. Truly. I know it seems that way, but, honestly. There is a fangirl somewhere out there who has not seen Boom Boom Ba (by charmax) or Failed Experiments in Video Editing (by E.K.) or Heart of Funkness (by absolut3destiny) or Hello (by merryish) or Holding out for a Hero (by marycrawford) or Jolene (by z_rayne) or Loaded Gun (by gwyn_r) or Moving Right Along (by sdwolfpup) or Pretty When You Cry (by lierdumoa) or Take Me Out (by barkley and destina) or Whatever (by the extremely holy duo of sockkpuppett and sisabet). Odds are good that you can reach that poor fangirl simply by posting a link. Won't you help her out? (Picture a waif, here. With big ol' sad eyes. Staring pathetically at an empty computer screen. Or maybe a puppy staring pathetically at an empty food dish. Whatever gets the guilt flowing.)

Also, recs have a cumulative effect. Somebody might say, upon first seeing a rec, "Oh god no I am not watching an Apocalypse Now vid set to disco. I still have some sanity left to me, and by god, I treasure it." After two or three recs, that person might very well break down and see the Apocalypse Now vid set to disco (Heart of Funkness, linked above, and "Apocalypse Now set to disco" works as both warning and summary for it), and fandom will have brought the crazy (the good crazy) to one more soul.

It makes you feel all warm and happy inside, doesn't it? And you can be part of this glorious fannish cycle.

"But it's work!"

This was my objection until very recently. But now that we know we have Freedom to Rec, vid recommending is as simple as making a link and typing some words. Are you seriously telling me you weren't going to do that anyway at some point this month? Or this year, even? So make one of them a rec. One. Pretty please?

Otherwise, there could well be whining. Or pining, even. From me.

You won't like me when I'm pining, people.

( The List )