Viral Links

Vine: https://vine.co/u/1174115496170557440

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sunilastro5150

Facebook post links: https://www.facebook.com/KodyVanHalen/posts/944559165595604

https://www.facebook.com/pinkfloyd/posts/944558585595662

https://www.facebook.com/cantstandlosingyou/posts/944558135595707

https://www.facebook.com/sunil.mahajan.9/posts/944556468929207

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=944564925595028&set=a.733794300005426.1073741825.100001245875769&type=1

Vine

This is my strongest vine.  MTV itself is an old channel and those who want music back on the channel or even care about the channel's devolving state are those outside of the demographic that MTV goes for.  Because that demographic likes vine, sex appeal, and inappropriate humor, I combined all of them in this vine, where I show soft radio rock bands as ugly (which they were considered so at the time) and juxtaposed them with the sexual appeal that was 80's Bon Jovi, using a playful modern spin with the edgy twist of the British Keep Calm poster trend.

Twitter

I used 3 categories for memes to get attention of people that may view the hashtags I used.

Some of my tweets were just hash tags, and others had memes.  I think this is my best tweet because it primarily focuses on the rabid Guns n Roses fan base that has all types of teenage fans who soak anything of the band up because of their age.  The tweet is brief, has a cliffhanger, and exhibits clear click-bait appeal.  The bait works here because it involves the a well known entity (in this case, a rock band)  with fans that think they know everything about the band.  Saying "why" works, since thanking David Geffen and MTV is not enough; this is from the fact that thanking them fully requires an appreciation of MTV's power.

My memes would be strong but I feel like average hash tag followers and twitter users would not get my memes, especially the Billy Squier meme.




Facebook

This Facebook post stands out because it uses a simple caption and lets the viewer take in the infographic.  Hopefully the infographic brings attention to my video that I linked.  This strong even without any descriptive captions because it targets my friends, who, like anybody's friends, appreciate subtlety and low amounts of trying to push a product onto them.  A weakness I find in it is the unexplained YouTube link, but it strikes curiosity at the same time, which works.  People still check out your and take note of posts even without liking it, and it could be reflected with the 22 views of the video. 

Rhetoric Rationale

The video is meant to be a brief description of the immense impact that MTV had on the music landscape, especially through consumption and production.  There are obviously more nuanced books and videos on this matter, but a brief take on this complicated topic is my aim, and fits in the universe that this subject matter resides in (long form media that explains this).

My video resides primarily on narration with related video.  I consider this rhetoric because it stimulates two senses simultaneously (auditory and visual), and the viewer needs to independently relate the narration to the video playing (which also has its own audio playing at a reduced volume in the background).  More importantly, I chose this rhetoric because obviously both elements independently are less attention grabbing, but primarily it is for the viewer to take in video, making instant judgement on it, and let the narration mold the judgement into a sort of proto-schema so that the information given can fit into the greater message (which is the MTV impact).

At the beginning, I narrate an introduction while non-MTV videos play.  I talk about pre-MTV music videos, so I chose to play captivating pre-MTV videos, showing that exciting and iconic bands had content but had no consistent medium to show them.  Everyone knows who Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and Queen are, but to persuade the audience on how good videos were being ignored, I showed sections of The Song Remains The Same (1976),  Van Halen Live in Oakland (1981) video when they play Unchained, and Queen's famous Bohemian Rhapsody video (1975).  As you can see below, it's pretty captivating to watch Eddie Van Halen do a scissor kick while soloing.

During that first narration up until I mention MTV's birth, I play "Video Killed the Radio Star", the first song and music video played on MTV, and this just amps up the rhetoric during some narration that does not directly mention the videos played.  This means that there are 3 messages at once coming at the viewer: direct narration, secondary video that accompanies the general narration subject, and subtle music that's a nod to what the whole video is about.  The listener does not need or shouldn't feel the need to pay attention to the background music, but it's an accent that means something if viewers dig further into the matter afterward.  Or if they listen to the words briefly, they get the message.  

Immediately, we switch to the first major MTV promo advertisement from 1982, and it features the famous "I Want My MTV" phrase.  The ad reels you in with colorful fast moving images that apply to the narration, but not directly.  The video is about MTV, and having the ad's phrases audible while I talk about how MTV used old videos and free promo videos to survive initially can be confusing.  My aim there is to listen to me but show how earnest MTV was, as well as show the stars whose videos were played for free (Pat Benatar, Mick Jagger, and Pete Townshend).  I realize that I'm combining an ad that explains what MTV is with narration on MTV's video selection, but the time constraint led me to combine those.  The combined rhetoric still makes the viewer realize the early MTV appearance, whether with narration or with video. 

It immediately goes into the first seconds of MTV's broadcast.  I used this independent video as rhetoric because the rhetoric MTV used in 1981 at their broadcast launch is what I'm replicating.  It's a launch of a service unlike any other before it, and the same goes for my video: I described the pre-MTV days, and very briefly the start of MTV, but for the audience to feel the scope of this, I used the broadcast recording because it honestly works.  It's a nice break, it is captivating, and relays MTV's early mission statement.

I

I use videos from Billy Idol, Neneh Cherry, and Duran Duran to show that these bands drove the image that I was describing in the narration.  I was talking about how bands with no radio play commanded cultural appeal and impact in different senses, and I flipped through videos that described this.  I chose the videos I did because it fits what I am trying to persuade the viewers into believing: I first say that these videos were not on the radio, and then play three different videos with clear differences in aesthetic, just as I describe the different types of aesthetics MTV influenced (edgy, pop, and sexy).  This way the narration gives information and the video is proof.  I had the choice of more sexy rhetoric from the Duran Duran video, but I did not want to shock too many people.

When I introduce Michael Jackson, I narrate of how his famous album was stalling in sales.  I  used the clip of Billie Jean where Jackson's dancing is dramatized by 3 simultaneous freeze frames, slow motion (mirroring his slowdown in sales), and the framing of his eyes while he dances, closely matching the tone of the issue he was facing in my narration.  I then introduce the Thriller video as I mention the video and it's ensuing success, and it is (hopefully) a familiar video for the audience, assuring them that the success I describe is real, but was preceded by drama that almost killed the album.  The rhetoric of Jackson's dramatic moment in the Billie Jean video being replicated by the combination of my narration and the clip AND the familiar Thriller video should convince the audience my point.

 I transition into a description of how an errant video by Billy Squier killed his career.  This may seem sudden or not along the lines of the success stories I have been describing, but I hope that with this opposing story that the power of MTV becomes apparent to the audience.

 I then transition into a narration about how  MTV had a lot of indirect and direct power over band's decisions about videos.  While I describe MTV's place and practices, I interrupt the comforting traditional video with subdued audio with a kind of disrupting audio with quick broken visuals that differ from the fluid narration.  The narration rhetoric is clear (expressing the dominance of MTV) but the video sequence is more complicated. 

The video sequence is made of the MTV Lost Weekend promo and the Dial MTV promo.  The Lost Weekend promo shows the extravagance of MTV with a jet taking off, and the Dial MTV promo shows the MTV logo crushing a caller, followed by a brief "MTV controlled everything" title card.  At first it is distracting, especially with the takeoff noise, dial tone, and silence audio sequence grating on the audience.  But, because it repeats, the viewer can listen to the narration without missing any new visuals while getting the subtext of my narration.   The point of all of this disruptive video sequence is to show that 1) MTV was not perfect even early on and 2) the images of extravagance, getting crushed, and the title card should illustrate the MTV practices in their more extremes, possibly at the expense of viewers.

The following clips (an excerpt from a David Geffen documentary and from The Evolution of Metal docu-series) are used to show the power of MTV.  The rhetoric here is the trusted source giving information.  Clearly professional video clips with anecdotes give stories more effectively than I could with narration, and it gives the audience a break from the narration and hyper video sequence.  I spoke generally, but these specific anecdotal clips really show what I meant, and that storytelling is good pathos and ethos for my video that is dependent on logos.

The next sequence involves 4 hair metal videos playing simultaneously fading into 1 grunge, 1 alternative, 1 rap, and 1 rap show video playing together.  The narration talks about MTV transitioning their programming because of the homogenous programming in the 80s.  I have 4 hair metal videos playing at the same time to show that all the videos did look the same and looked a bit ridiculous.  By replicating the scene with 4 different videos playing at once, it is a visual representation of what I was trying to express.  I had 3 different genre videos and a critical voice of a genre (rap/hip hip via MTV Yo Raps, using the Tupac clip) to show how MTV retained importance but became varied in the mainstream  (rather than the different shows they had, which I did not describe because of the time limit).

This rhetoric choice (of 4 simultaneous videos) is done to show the contrast of late 80s MTV and early 90s MTV.

I left the rap video going in the corner before the Madonna clip to 1) keep the audience entertained while I shift subjects, 2) keep establishing the changing genre movement from rock to rap, and 3) show that this was occurring at the same time as the subject matter I was introducing.

I use the Madonna clip of her essentially humping the stage at the 1984 Video Music Awards to show that the bravado that Lady Gaga or Kanye West present is similar if not dwarfed by the tone set by Madonna.  The rhetoric here is pretty apparent:  the shock value of her behavior still holds up, and isolated clip gives the audience the shock they need to believe that the VMA's modern shock value (already instilled in their head) has an early root, and I use that shock to convince them.

Now I transition into reality show theme songs and introductions, which are different from a music video but at this point, the video is ending, and we return to the standard video/audio with my narration like the video's beginning.  Here, the timeline of MTV's progress I regulated during the video starts to slip into a more amorphous period of transition from the 90s to today.  The rhetoric is now just reliant on the shift from music videos to actors and theme music and spoken word in the background.  The subject familiarity and change should be enough for the audience to connect with the objective (that MTV made reality TV because money became an issue).  This was emphasized by the title card stating "This is why MTV does not play much music" while I talk about making money off music.

The final part uses modern artists using the video medium creatively to end the video with a positive note, using modern videos and stars to show that the music video itself is still an important art form, and that the lessons learned from the early MTV years are clearly apparent.  By using current artists that have the things I listed before (visual appeal in all of its forms), I hope to convince the audience with the visual rhetoric that what the video tried to prove still rings true.

Basically, this whole video uses the basic audio/video with narration as the rhetorical tool to convince the audience of all of MTV's practices and how they (and others) changed what being a popular music artists meant.  I changed it up a bit, with background music, documentary clips, rapid clip sequence,  and two 2x2 video displays fading into one another to emphasize certain points, to contrast different parts of the video, and deliver a subtext in a creative or concise matter.

 

 

 

Here is a link of the evolution of metal episode, BBC American Rock episode,  and the David Geffen documentary that helped inspire this.  The David Geffen episode is silent from copyright issues, but the clip in my video captures the source nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IItvRpYnQs (1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IoPzcybmGg (2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvA4o7pTtXY (3)

Some MTV information was derived from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6jz65YRCy8

MOST IMPORTANTLY, the description of MTV, the tone of the video, and the organization was heavily inspired from this book:

I Want My MTV - The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution

http://www.amazon.com/Want-My-MTV-Uncensored-Revolution/dp/B0085RZHXA

  

Live Tweets

Here's my twitter account link:
https://twitter.com/sunilastro5150


Live tweeting a punk concert is a unique experience.   I was in the back half of the crowd, but I could still see the crowd and the band.  This allowed me less shame in tweeting during the concert, but looking down at your phone in a small venue still looks bad, especially when the band could see you.  It's rude to a lot of people because the ethos that comes with going to a rock/punk show.

The show was fun which  meant tweeting about it was easy.  I was running out of battery, so I was switching in and out of extreme power saver mode on my phone, which limited my tweets.  But, really, tweeting about live music when the venue is not big and I do not know all the bands very well means I need to reduce the amount of tweets to avoid sounding boring.

I used #againstme to link my tweets to the community of fans of the headliner band.  In this way,  I appealed to the band's fans, and I got a couple favorites from other fans.  I used more specific rhetoric to engage with the event.

As you can see, I appealed to fans by using past discography as a signal that I am not a casual fan.  It is hard to describe, but when someone references band information, it's a sign of "trust" and true allowance into the nebula of being a fan.  The hashtag is used as you can see, and I also used  the rhetoric of reliving an exciting moment to draw in attention.  Those uses of rhetoric is what I think made this live tweet session attractive to fans or just people paying attention.  I updated on bands starting and ending, material used by the band, a picture (another use of rhetoric), and relived a moment.

I had to use liquids as a term in the tweet because they were spraying beer and I did not want to reference alcohol.

To be honest, I did have some issue with what to tweet in general, because my stance on social media use is generally against light use of live tweeting (light meaning there's a difference between a small concert and the state of the union).  Material for the tweets that I used was to have people involved, but not bored.  I used band names and descriptors (genre names, their origin, musical traits) that were brief and gave viewers an idea, but not to the point of useless details that do not apply at all to the viewer.

Jenny Death When?: Surviving the Hell of Providing Content On Social Media

If you want to have social media reach the most people yet have the content interpreted within the bounds you had in mind, there you certain things you should do.

The first thing to know is that many social media users are savvy and they can smell low effort or purposeful product pushing.  The first major consideration is to have or gain authenticity.  If you truly want to create good content  (let's say you just like having funny content) then is it pretty easy to have authenticity.  If you are a company, then direct references to products either need ot be packeaged with other rhetoric that appeals to emotion (comedy, serious content etc.).  The product is not attractive and can make people tune out.

The second major thing is to have content that is unique, in enough quantity, and does not inundate the followers.  Flooding feeds make people get annoyed because you are one of many things they are paying attention to.  By interrupting the natural flow of feeds with attention starved content you make, things get annoying pretty quick because people find it simply annoying.

So so far, the two major lessons are 1) being authentic and 2) balancing quality and quantity.  

Now, these factors drive the social media train, but if you want compelling social media content, it has to fit the context of the chosen medium.  Instagram is photo-based, so an applicable picture/video with a small caption with some hash-tags (to reach people outside your fanbase/stay trendy) is preferable (the picture has to be the most important part and mostly explanatory. Whereas on Twitter, bursts of rhetoric or just plain entertainment is useful, with some links or picture sometimes.   As you can see, different mediums capture different focuses that users perform.  Amid fitting the mediums are the demographics of the medium.  Twitter has a mixed userbase that trends to some adults and some teenagers, Instagram towards teens and young adults, and Pintrest is female of all ages.

Using the brand you establish is important as well.  Sam Adams, a beer company, made a funny spoof of themselves advertising "HeliYUM beer" and altering voices in post-production to make most video participants sound funny.  Accurate or not, having a sense of humor and not pushing an actual product does wonders for authenticity.   Using the brand can also be used for contests, like Mashable's Easter egg hunt or Marc Jacobs model auditions via sent Instagram photos.  See, those types of social media content or ideas rely on a two way interaction, or at least appear to care how the user fits into what your content means.  If you're a car company, you can post action shots and add some details on what it was like to drive the car, making reader invested in what happened.  They can figure out the product themselves.

In that sense, one of the most important lessons is that the consumer is more savvy than traditional content providers and advertisers used to think.  If you lack in quality (let's say your twitter jokes aren't that funny), your followers will speak up or leave.  If your product pushing gets too direct or starts to lose its authenticity or social cache, engagement will drop and sometimes people speak up.

As you can see, the followers engage with you, sending messages to you.  Like aforementioned, two -way communication is key, and going from acknowledging trends (using hash-tags or memes) to responding to individual fans visibly to the world can further move your content and account from a separate and maybe not fully individual content provider (unlike other social media users, who are individuals) to being human.  Humans respond, and if McDonald's twitter account tweets back at followers, now McDonalds, who is a non-person entity, acts like a person.


There are a lot of things that people say to do for social media usage, especially when trying to make compelling content.  But these are the most important factors.  Sometimes, it's all you need.