I was mildly curious about it last week so I checked it out and became instantly hooked.
The gist of the site is that it is a massive collection of people willing to do all sorts of things for $5. (Get your mind out of the gutter). I know hiring someone to do THAT for $5 seems like a bargain but the kind of THAT you’d get for $5 a) isn’t worth it and b) is going to leave you itchy and that’s the best case scenario. Also, the site doesn’t allow for THAT.
There are all sorts of services you can buy for your blog and it’s all very cheap. For the most part, “gigs” as they are called, start at five bucks. Usually, you can get something decent for a “fiver” but there are all sorts of add-ons to enhance your service. Adding these can get costly so it’s up to you and what you can afford.
All I know is I got four videos for a pretty cheap price. They’re cool, they help me advertise, they provide me with a little more legitimacy etc.
Unfortunately, I’ve spent all the fivers I can afford for awhile, but I’ll dip my toe back into the Fiverr water when I can afford to. Ultimately, using this site hasn’t led me to getting more than 3.5 readers, but it has been good for the soul. I’ve always wanted to work in TV. Yes, I realize this is nowhere near working in TV, but it’s a lot of fun to write a script, write some directions, and then like a day later you’ve got a fun video based on your ideas.
In conclusion, here’s the cue card girl reminding you to check out my fine website:
Bookshelf Q. Battler here. As you know, I am a civic minded humanitarian. In fact, after writing two chapters of my upcoming novel, Toilet Gator, I became so concerned about the serious medical conditions that could result from being bitten on the butt by a toilet gator that I secured the services of an esteemed doctor to warn the public in this very important public service announcement:
Hmm. Come to think of it, I didn’t check her medical credentials or anything, but this seems hella legit.
And thank you to this wonderful doctor for caring enough to warn the public about the dangerous effects of toilet gator butt bites. If you want to hire Dr. Lisa Marie to make a video for you, check her out on Fiverr.
Curse you, Fiverr. You’ve become my new addiction.
So, my spokesperson delivered her message flawlessly and that message is way too important to remain buried under the blog roll. Plus, I paid five bucks for it.
In case you missed it, here’s my spokesperson again, telling you all the reasons why my blog is so awesome:
You know, this March will mark the third year anniversary of this fine blog, and though I love you all, I must admit that in all of this time I have been sitting back and wondering when one of you readers would get off your shiftless, lazy hides and record a video testimonial of my greatness.
Seeing no such incoming video testimonials, I turned to Fiverr and found this delightful spokesperson, who was happy to educate the masses of my astounding brilliance.
In conclusion, this was the best five dollars I have ever spent and had I known it was possible to get women to say nice things about me by paying them I would have started doing it a long time ago.
Thank you, spokesperson. That was an awesome testimonial. In all humility, I truly deserved all of those wonderful compliments.
Meanwhile, this was my first time using Fiverr and I recommend it. There are all sorts of talented folks waiting there to help you do awesome things with your website, blog, business, etc. so check out Fiverr.com
This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. You might think it is just her hatching the toy, but as she explains, she couldn’t find one, so she made her own by putting her cat in a paper bag.
Funny stuff. The cat is very well behaved. Any other cat would have gone nuts.
So this Youtuber, Mr. Gear, took a knife, blasted it with three blowtorches until it became red hot, then used it to cut through stuff.
He cuts through a bar of soap, a block of cheese, a ping pong ball, a bottle of Coke and more.
I’m a little surprised the Post-It Notes seemed to give him the most trouble. They burned easily but they didn’t cut easily.
As for the Coke, I’m surprised the bottle didn’t explode and cover him with red hot sugary Coca-Cola napalm.
Anyway, please, please, please don’t try this at home. I’m serious. Don’t try this at home. I guarantee you will injure yourself or others. Do not try any of this at home.
So, I’m about four years late in hearing about this which, I know, shocker, I’m such a pop culture guru.
But this one flew under my radar until I saw it recently.
In 2012, a fight broke out between a man and a woman on a subway train. As you can see in this CNN video, they go after each other pretty good. You can hear bystanders yell things like, “Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa!” to no avail.
But then a man just nonchalantly walks between them and starts eating potato chips.
Somehow, this act deescalated the situation. I’m no expert but my assumption is that when two people are angry at each other, emotion takes over and they focus on their anger and tune out the outside world. The people telling them to stop become background noise and I have to assume that had someone tried to pull one of them away, he may have gotten hurt.
But “Snack Man” just walked through the scene, acting kind of obtuse, like he didn’t really know what the two were doing (so they couldn’t necessarily be mad at him) but also became a reminder to the two people that there were other people on the train that were witnessing them so they should chill out.
Eh, I mean, me personally, I wouldn’t advise anyone to put themselves at risk and even though the tactic worked in this instance, another attempt at being “Snack Man” could very well lead to a valiant potato chip eater getting the chips slapped out of his face, but otherwise, the video is an interesting social science experiment caught on film:
Slather on some extra lipstick and hike up your pants, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with a review of Miranda Sings’ TV debut with Haters Back Off, streamable now on Netflix.
As a pop culture nerd, I’ve been aware of Miranda Sings’ YouTube channel for awhile. I can’t quite put my finger on when I first learned of her. Rather, it seems like the sun or water, she’s just always been there.
The character is so larger than life that you might be surprised there’s a real person under those pants.
Colleen Ballinger (honestly, I never knew the name of the person behind Miranda until she got her own Netflix show) has explained the genesis of her alter ego and I’ll try to do it justice (with some of my own assumptions that may or may not be accurate.)
Years ago, Colleen was an aspiring singer and as such, she was surrounded by all kinds of egotistical “look at me girls” who performed song covers in their bed rooms in front of video cameras, posted the videos on YouTube and then immediately thought doing so would launch a music career.
The odds of getting discovered like that aren’t great, so rather join them, she invented Miranda and made fun of them.
It was 2008, the early days of YouTube and Colleen aka Miranda became a comic genius. She not only lampooned the egotistical “I want to be a success overnight by posting dumb videos” phenomenon that so many millennials have become swept up in, but she also got the chance to make fun of a variety of music stars in the process.
Great plan if you ask me, because if you head on over to YouTube and do a search for your favorite modern pop hit, chances are, if you scroll down far enough, you’ll see Miranda with her poorly applied lipstick and Steve Urkel-esque pants singing a cover of the song terribly yet congratulating herself on a job well done in her nasal voice anyway.
To Colleen’s credit, she’s embraced Miranda to the hilt low these many years. She’s gone on tour and appeared on TV shows as Miranda and only as Miranda i.e. similar to the way Sascha Baron Cohen would go on a TV show as Borat and everyone would treat him as Borat.
Like Lady Gaga, Colleen has kept her poker face. Go to Miranda Sings’ Twitter and you’ll find a bevy of misspelled yet egotistical tweets as Miranda compliments herself on her latest activities whilst being clueless as to her skills, talent, or rather, lack thereof.
And Miranda has even developed all sorts of catch phrases. With “Haters Back Off” she has essentially immunized herself from YouTube criticism. YouTube commenters are notorious for savagely ripping into YouTubers, often being a little too harsh on people who are just trying to show the world their interest in song, dance, entertainment or what have you.
But since Miranda is already parodying the “Oh my God someone wrote a bad comment about me on the Internet and it has ruined my life” lifestyle, it is hard to bring her down with a negative comment. (Well, its hard to bring Colleen down. Miranda, for humorous purposes as we see in the first episode of her show, gets emotionally ruined by the slightest online criticism.)
Her other catchphrase is, “No porn.” Miranda fancies herself classy. If you dress in a skimpy outfit, she’ll likely accuse you of “doing porn.”
Social Media has truly exploded over the last decade and not always for the better. This election, with friends and neighbors squabbling over their preferred candidate, is proof of that.
But the best thing about social media is it has allowed people with talent to shine and be discovered in a way that is usually reserved for people with connections, contacts, agents, and/or just a tremendous amount of luck.
Therefore, I tip my hat to this YouTuber as she took an idea, produced it out of her bedroom, nurtured, grew it, kept it going and eight years later, has her own TV show.
Now with many pop culture sensations, a TV show or movie based on said sensation usually ends up being crap. Hollywood suits get together, attempt to ride a popular name for as long as they can, but then don’t give a lot of thought to the plot.
That’s not the case here.
In this show, we see Miranda’s life, and not just the parts from YouTube.
A homeschooled nerd devoid of style, manners, common sense, and/or talent yet overflowing with (you might say undeserved) self-confidence, the show begins with Miranda recording a poorly performed song and loading it to YouTube.
Miranda’s Uncle Jim is an assistant fish store manager and is as clueless and egotistical as Miranda is, convinced that he’s going to manage his niece’s entertainment career all the way to the top.
FYI Jim is played by Steve Little who you might remember as Kenny Powers’ clueless weirdo friend from HBO’s Eastbound and Down. Steve did such a good job with that role he is apparently going to be playing clueless weirdos forever now.
Eh, there are worse jobs, right?
Angela Kinsey (Angela the accountant from The Office who was always judging Pam when she wasn’t busy being Dwight’s creepy love interest) plays Miranda’s mother Bethany.
Bethany is convinced she has undiagnosed fibromyalgia (but more likely has hypochondria) and has a dress and a casual wrist brace, neither of which are necessary.
She nurtures Miranda to a fault and encourages Miranda’s unlikely music career and caters to her every egotistical whim (Miranda bosses her mother around similar to how Zach Galifinakis bosses his mother around in The Hangover.)
Rounding out the family is Emily (Francesca Reale) who is Miranda’s sister and the only normal, level-headed member of the family.
As I saw Emily reading a book entitled, Living with Crazy, I caught the point of the show.
Yes, a bunch of people got together and figured out a way to make a buck off the Miranda Sings character, but this show is much more than that.
This show puts “the other half” on full display, in all their glory.
So many shows are filled with beautiful people with beautiful people problems. “Oh no, which of my many suitors will I pick? Everyone loves me, whatever will I do?”
Or worse, there are so many sitcoms with perfect parents and perfect children.
In the real world, real families have real problems. Sometimes families aren’t even traditional, as in the case of a hypochondriac mother and a creepy uncle raising an egotistical daughter who is convinced she should be a superstar and another daughter who just yearns to live a normal life.
There’s something for everyone to relate to in this show. Maybe YOU are the one in your family with a crazy problem. Or maybe you are like Emily and you just want to be normal but you’re forced to deal with your family’s craziness.
And ultimately, the show is a lampooning of the quest for Internet fame.
Yes, people, you do live in an age where it is possible to bypass agents, auditions, and entertainment industry decision makers and gain notoriety on your own.
BUT – just because the technology is there doesn’t automatically mean you have the talent to make it happen.
Because you can do it doesn’t necessarily mean you should do it…and you just might make an ass out of yourself along the way.
Ahh, but here’s the rub. “Get some confidence” is the advice we’re always told when we pursue our dreams.
What happens if your confidence outweighs your talent?
Such is Miranda’s dilemma.
I hand it to Colleen/Miranda. Had she opted to be just another girl singing covers in her bedroom and posting the videos to YouTube, the odds are she wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but by creating a character to poke fun at these girls, she created an empire with little more than a pair of hitched up Urkel pants, some caked on lipstick, and a nasal nerd voice.
I hope this TV success doesn’t mean that Miranda is going to leave us anytime soon.
However, after seeing Colleen as herself on Jimmy Fallon, I can tell that it won’t be long before Hollywood starts knocking on her door with parts that are reserved for starlets and not nerds.
She deserves it but as her star rises, I just hope she doesn’t throw those hiked up pants away. She needs to keep them in the back of her closet to remember that so many of her fans are, in fact, more like Miranda than they are like a Hollywood star.
I’m in awe of people who got in on the ground floor of the social media craze.
My initial reaction then was, “Eh, this is interesting but why the shit do I want to be on a website where everyone talks about what they had for lunch and posts a photo of their lunch?”
But Colleen found her niche, made a bold decision to be funny and not take herself seriously by inventing a hilarious character and eight years later, people are taking her seriously now.
Like the characters in the SNL Haunted Elevator sketch who can’t understand why David S Pumpkins is scary, I can’t figure out why this sketch is so funny. It just is.
And I can’t stop watching it.
I’m retiring from writing, 3.5 readers.
I will now spend every second of my day watching David S. Pumpkins.
Bookshelf Battle 