We are a new generation that can sometimes be thought of as foreign to those that came before, seeing as the technology of a new generation can elude people from the one before. We have our own jargon and our own niche. While “back in the day” to my grandpa can mean back in the early 1940’s in a shtetl in Poland, when they had one telephone that the whole town had to share and take turns using, the same phrase means back when cell phones were giant blocks of plastic and the only games you could get on them were the original black and white version of “Snake”. The differentiations between generations are huge as the generations grow farther apart, but some closer generations or age groups seem foreign to me as well, which is something that wasn’t brought up.

There are always fads, and many of them are comparable to one another, but even kids that are 7 to 8 years younger than me are into things that I cannot for the life of me comprehend. For instance, what is WITH the new vampire craze? I will be the first to admit that I watched the first season of True Blood and enjoyed its seductive and fun qualities, but why is EVERYTHING that is coming out now related to vampires and werewolves. I think that this lack of understanding form my part can be decidedly attributed to age difference. I wouldn’t call it a generational gap, since people less than ten years younger than me can still be accepted as my generation, but I would instead label it an inter-generational gap.

Here are some things I just don’t understand:

• The appeal of Justin Bieber and why he already has a biopic
• The obsession with speaking like the kids in this music video:

• Why someone as annoying as Miley Cyrus is popular

I guess maybe these are just my opinions, but I think an inter-generational millennial generation dispersion should be taken into consideration. In my opinion, this could be because technology is changing so fast that the fads are changing with more rapidity along with them.

I found a really interesting video that I think pertains to our discussion on Quidditch. FunnyorDie.com just released a short of Daniel Radcliffe, the man who plays Harry Potter in the movies, being interviewed by Judd Apatow. Here it is:

We were talking in class about how the audience members that created Quidditch and the ones that now play it don’t actually believe that they are wizards or that they are Harry Potter, but that they are just playing for fun. It is a sport that has its roots and foundation in the fictional wizarding world created by J.K. Rowling, but that has its silliness and camp attributes in real life. This video of Daniel Radcliffe is jokingly saying that he believes he is the real Harry Potter, just like we could say that the Quidditch players really believe they are wizards flying on broomsticks.

First of all, I would like to post a link to my favorite vid ever:

It’s pure genius because it also uses the sound from the actual text to create a pretty catchy song.

According to urbandictionary.com, obviously an extremely reliable dictionary source, vidding is the “act of making fannish music videos.” I wondered if these vids could be negative portrayals of a text. If somebody doesn’t like a certain movie or television series, is it also popular to make a vid showing its weaknesses? I would guess that this is not as possible because chances are that, if you don’t like a text, you don’t know it as well as someone who does appreciate it, and thus would not be able to create as successful a vid because you are not as much of an expert on the movie or television series. Since fan culture is so dominated by females, it’s no wonder that these positive fan vids are also considered a predominantly female product.

Though the word is not officially defined in any legitimate dictionary sources I can find, it’s becoming a huge phenomenon, even being studied and a required assignment in courses. Some people do not define it purely as a music video production, but as the making of fan videos of a certain text. For instance, we had to create a vid for my Storytelling in Media class in order to play with the storytelling techniques that different images can portray. Josh and I made a vid of The Prestige which changed it’s story completely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IamAUw_KWq0

It’s hard to make a vid when you’re not a huge fan of the original text. Though I love the prestige, I have only seen it a couple of times, which means that I don’t know all of the dialogue and the scenes well enough to know exactly what part of the text I’m looking for. This further proves that it is easier to make a vid if you love the text and have seen it multiple times as a fan, paying attention to the scenes and being able to sit through it enough times to remember the images and the moments that can be rearranged to make a good text based off the old one.