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There is a certain inevitability to life.

zefrank.com

59 pointswinter_blue33 comments

Ze Frank is one of those few and fascinating people online who's able to combine a plethora of interests and create work that's both memorable and touching. He's got the same melancholy whimsy that _why the lucky stiff did.

Dunno why Ze Frank became vogue today on Hacker News, but I do not at all disapprove.

Really? I just find it cheesy and over-produced but in a low budget sort of way. The constant camera cuts for no reason are nearly seizure-inducing. The attempt to be sardonic fails lamely.

The camera cuts were a terrific idea production-wise. It let him produce his videos very quickly and maintain a degree of quality. The Show was quite an undertaking.

It's hit-and-miss, but it's hit-and-miss in a good way, where it's obvious even at his low points that he's working hard and constantly trying to innovate. When he hits, he hits hard. His episode on product placement's an all-time favorite Internet Thing.

I was lucky enough to see him speak a few years ago, and he said that each video took him about 8 hours. He would record a line, add it to the video (or rerecord as necessary), and then move on to the next line. So, if anything, it made the process take even longer.

Very impressive imo.

i think the camera cuts are key to the pace

and i think the pacing is ideal

As far as I can tell, the show rarely if ever attempted to be sardonic, but did in fact attempt to be nearly seizure-inducing.

Like or dislike, that trippy feeling you get while watching isn't by accident, it's by design.

sportsracers?

That's a term he uses right from the beginning, no explanation given. The mystery of what a sports racer was is one of the things he used to build together a community. The speed at which his site grew in that week is remarkable, and the code words he used was a big part of it. If anything, it's the opposite of sardonic. It's childish (but in a good way).

Other high points include when he asked people to decorate their vacuum cleaners, and when people started doing videos of Power Moves.

My time as part of The Show community is one of my fondest internet memories. It allowed me to do a kind of creative collaboration that I haven't been able to do since. And it was great to watch.

I guess I found it sardonic because the intended audience is most definitely not sportsracers. It's sort of like the high school star linebacker calling the 100lb nerd "big guy".

It's more whimsical than sardonic. It's too absurd to be taken seriously.

The camera cuts actually help in keeping me fully focused on the video. Just as my mind begins to wander, a cut brings my attention back to the video. I think it's clever of Ze Frank to have those cuts.

The constant camera cuts are to conceal any eye blinking that he might do. Don't quote me on this, though.

Ze Frank is great, but I hope we're not going to see the submission of each individual day of the Show as a story.

Though I don't think every show is relevant to HN, I don't see any problem with submitting individual videos. Compared to some of the blog posts we see, Ze Frank videos are full of content.

Thinking you created the wave is similar to confusing your own efforts with... luck. I've been reviewing the early days of my business, and tremendous luck was involved. Sure, I was there, and did the work, but a big part of it was the wave. I'm not sure that I could do it again, without finding another such wave... so I guess I have to become a surfer, and study the waves... problem is, I'm not much interested in that...

And then he pokes fun at web 2.0 (e.g. copying names like flickr, del.icio.us and 37signals). I'm sure you already got all that - I mainly wrote this for the people complaining about it.

I think ze frank would be great at startup school.

"I've been reviewing the early days of my business, and tremendous luck was involved. Sure, I was there, and did the work, but a big part of it was the wave."

Without the luck, the hard work would have had less effect, but without the hard work the luck would have had no effect. So, it was the hard work. Some of that work was recognizing the world that luck presented to you: studying the waves.

That's true, and it implies an interesting algebra of causation. Thanks for both!

I've never seen Ze Frank before today. When I first followed the link, I saw a site with almost nothing, and a video with no obvious reason to watch. So I didn't watch.

Then I noticed that this post was attracting a fair number of comments. After reading most of the comments I decided there was probably something in the video worth seeing, so I watched it.

It turned out to be well worth it, for entertainment and insight.

The comments also made me look up the word 'sardonic.' Even at this late date, there are mysterious gaps in my vocabulary.

I sat next to a girl on the airplane the other day who works with autistic children. She told me that the strange thing is that many of these children are good with computers and frighteningly addicted to YouTube. Apparently there is an entire community of autistic people making videos for other autistic people. The autistic viewers will watch the same minutes of autistic-produced video again and again thousands of times. They do things like read the contents of movie jackets on film, zooming in on each photo one by one. And out there in YouTube-land is an audience for it, obsessed.

I thought of this while I struggled to figure out why the Zefrank video was at the top on Hacker News this evening.

This should be flagged.

I'll delete it myself if you'll explain exactly what's so objectionable.

I've been on Hackernews now for over a year. Very early on I got cited for submissions that were 'not good content.' Please note... the video opens with Toboggan 'ass sliding'. Reallllly?

I watched this video for 30 seconds and it is not good content.

I would rather read an article about the sequential subset of Erlang oppose to this garbage.

Apparently, I am not alone.

God knows how it got to the top of HackerNews - slow Sunday night maybe?

Alright... I just sat thru the entire vid... I'll admit. Not bad - maybe he needs to do a little better job of relevance in the beginning... first 10 seconds scared me - not excite me.

I'm absolutely certain you are missing the context of the videos. The Show ran every weekday for a year. The series is a conversation with the viewer and can't easily be jumped into in the middle. There was no "ass sledding" -- the term was "ass-slappin' awesome" which was coined in a previous video.

In short: There's no need to "do a little better job of relevance in the beginning" because a.) the video is almost thee years old and b.) people liked it that way.

This should be flagged.

I think it is a good idea to invest some part of your attention budget into avoiding to become too narrow minded.

Incidentally I looked up the word for German "Fachidiot", and the dictionary said "nerd" :-/ ("Fachidiot" in German is someone who is very good in his chosen profession, but completely clueless about everything else - to the point of making idiotic decisions for lack of broader vision).

What are the autistic-community videos of?

He described it - an example is reading captions on the jackets of movie DVDs.

I struggled to figure out why the Zefrank video was at the top on Hacker News this evening.

It's mesmerising, and on topic for startup folk.

Fascinating. I'd love to see a collection of these videos.

Really. I, too, am intrigued.

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