Fred: the puzzle of a YouTube hyper sensation

It has come to my attention that kids love Fred. 

Who is Fred?

If you're like me, you've never heard of Fred.  And if you're like me -- or hell, even if you're not like me -- you will not understand why Fred is getting 3 million to 4 million hits every time he posts a video on YouTube.

That is an absolutely stratospheric, TV-viewership-like repeat audience size.  His YouTube channel is the 5th most subscribed of all time, with 200,000 subscribers -- meaning every time he puts out a new episode, that many people are alerted to it. To advertisers, tween traction like this is worth more than two trips to Chuck E. Cheese. 

I'm going to embed one of his videos below.  I don't want to, but I feel I have to out of pure journalistic necessity. You see, usually one can find an inkling of a tincture of a shadow of reason for something's popularity. But in this case, I cannot.  So I would like to share this with a broader audience in the hopes that perhaps some Fred-positive readers might be able to enlighten the rest of us.

Is it that our over-medicated, under-exercised, camera-toting youth see a bit of themselves in this hyper-hyper-character?  If so, we're in for a very annoying future.

If you click through to this video's YouTube "watch" page, you'll see it has an astonishing 30,000 comments, making it the 30th most discussed comedy video in YouTube's history. Yes, 30,000 people took the time to comment on this -- a clear indicator that there is something to comment on.  The mystery continues ...

Photo: Sean Bradley / For YouTube

At the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Boulevard last night, YouTube introduced its new "Screening Room," an area of the site devoted exclusively to selected independent films. The Screening Room will feature four short films every two weeks, as well as the occasional full-length feature. The first several slates of films are chock-a-block with recognizable names and Academy Award-nominated filmmakers, but as the program continues, YouTube expects to include films submitted to a kind of cinema slush pile, to keep at least a modicum of the "You" in YouTube. 

The first four films showcased both the flexibility of the short form and the way it seems to lend itself to limited-attention, online viewing. "The Danish Poet," a precious animated love story by Torill Kove, won the 2007 Oscar for best animated short, and the mind-bending puppet opera "Love and War" won the same award at last year's Los Angeles Film Festival. Miranda July's "Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?," starring John C. Reilly, represented Wholphin, the quarterly DVD magazine from McSweeney's.  Rob Pearlstein's "Our Time Is Up," starring Kevin Pollak, was nominated for an Oscar in 2006.

In a panel session after the screening, the filmmakers talked about the potential upside of having their films on YouTube.

"It's difficult to get a mass audience for short films via the film festival route," said Pearlstein, speaking of YouTube's (theoretical) capability to focus millions of eyeballs on these shorts in a way that Sundance, say, never could. 

YouTube has plastered over its features page with ukulele videos for the latest entry in its Trend Spotting Tuesday feature.

Do you like ukulele videos? Let me suggest to you that, regardless of whether you've ever seen one, you probably do. Put on your headphones, tune out the ambient cubicle noise, close your eyes, and press play.  Before you know it, you'll feel the warm breeze of old Hawaii. ...

Who are these uke-loving string strummers? The singer is George Klingelhofer of Chicago's Windy City Islanders. Despite his decidedly un-Hawaiian name, Klingelhofer is a ukulele aficionado -- at the end of the video he talks about the Windy City Ukefest, which will include a bunch of people playing uke in early August at the Tiki Terrace. Who knew Chicago had its own hopping luau scene?

The other two players, and the makers of the video, are a couple of Aussies traveling the world and finding as many ukulele players as they can. Bosko is a caricature artist and Honey sells glassware, both in Queensland. They have amassed two dozen uke videos on their multi-continent trip. Talk about a cool vacation.

I started digging into the uke video universe and suffice it to say, it's way too vast to summarize here.  Here's another great video though:
 

With 'Screening Room,' YouTube dips its toe in the cinema world

Photo: Sean Bradley / For YouTube

At the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Boulevard last night, YouTube introduced its new "Screening Room," an area of the site devoted exclusively to selected independent films. The Screening Room will feature four short films every two weeks, as well as the occasional full-length feature. The first several slates of films are chock-a-block with recognizable names and Academy Award-nominated filmmakers, but as the program continues, YouTube expects to include films submitted to a kind of cinema slush pile, to keep at least a modicum of the "You" in YouTube. 

The first four films showcased both the flexibility of the short form and the way it seems to lend itself to limited-attention, online viewing. "The Danish Poet," a precious animated love story by Torill Kove, won the 2007 Oscar for best animated short, and the mind-bending puppet opera "Love and War" won the same award at last year's Los Angeles Film Festival. Miranda July's "Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?," starring John C. Reilly, represented Wholphin, the quarterly DVD magazine from McSweeney's.  Rob Pearlstein's "Our Time Is Up," starring Kevin Pollak, was nominated for an Oscar in 2006.

In a panel session after the screening, the filmmakers talked about the potential upside of having their films on YouTube.

"It's difficult to get a mass audience for short films via the film festival route," said Pearlstein, speaking of YouTube's (theoretical) capability to focus millions of eyeballs on these shorts in a way that Sundance, say, never could. 

YouTube has plastered over its features page with ukulele videos for the latest entry in its Trend Spotting Tuesday feature.

Do you like ukulele videos? Let me suggest to you that, regardless of whether you've ever seen one, you probably do. Put on your headphones, tune out the ambient cubicle noise, close your eyes, and press play.  Before you know it, you'll feel the warm breeze of old Hawaii. ...

Who are these uke-loving string strummers? The singer is George Klingelhofer of Chicago's Windy City Islanders. Despite his decidedly un-Hawaiian name, Klingelhofer is a ukulele aficionado -- at the end of the video he talks about the Windy City Ukefest, which will include a bunch of people playing uke in early August at the Tiki Terrace. Who knew Chicago had its own hopping luau scene?

The other two players, and the makers of the video, are a couple of Aussies traveling the world and finding as many ukulele players as they can. Bosko is a caricature artist and Honey sells glassware, both in Queensland. They have amassed two dozen uke videos on their multi-continent trip. Talk about a cool vacation.

I started digging into the uke video universe and suffice it to say, it's way too vast to summarize here.  Here's another great video though:
 

UkeTube: YouTube goes all ukulele

YouTube has plastered over its features page with ukulele videos for the latest entry in its Trend Spotting Tuesday feature.

Do you like ukulele videos? Let me suggest to you that, regardless of whether you've ever seen one, you probably do. Put on your headphones, tune out the ambient cubicle noise, close your eyes, and press play.  Before you know it, you'll feel the warm breeze of old Hawaii. ...

Who are these uke-loving string strummers? The singer is George Klingelhofer of Chicago's Windy City Islanders. Despite his decidedly un-Hawaiian name, Klingelhofer is a ukulele aficionado -- at the end of the video he talks about the Windy City Ukefest, which will include a bunch of people playing uke in early August at the Tiki Terrace. Who knew Chicago had its own hopping luau scene?

The other two players, and the makers of the video, are a couple of Aussies traveling the world and finding as many ukulele players as they can. Bosko is a caricature artist and Honey sells glassware, both in Queensland. They have amassed two dozen uke videos on their multi-continent trip. Talk about a cool vacation.

I started digging into the uke video universe and suffice it to say, it's way too vast to summarize here.  Here's another great video though: