That Was Funny The First 100 Times
What was the turnaround time between everyone marveling at newfangled email technologies and then complaining about the whole thing? Not very long, I don't think. And the same definitely applies to viral videos. At first YouTube was this great, vast landscape of 3-minute-long time wasters that were good for a chuckle and a "look what I found!" self-satisfied email to friends. Now? The minute you hear that term, "viral video," it makes you think of something grainy and shaky-camera'd, made by some festering nerd who would probably harrass you endlessly if you double-crossed him. People are too savvy with the internet at this point to still be enchanted by its simple, chintzy magicks. YouTube is used more practically now, it's more functional—and those dancing, lightsaber-waving fat kids have been reduced to mostly-forgotten Coney Island freakshow diversions.

Let's Get Cynical, Cynical
As is the case with most phenomena, corporate interests were pretty quick to pick up the scent and glom on to viralness for their own nefarious gains. The idea of a viral ad campaign must have seemed pretty hip and edgy when the first smartass marketing kid pitched it at some meeting, but it quickly became irksome and frustrating and just too damn much. That Russian guy trashing his office? Fake. The cellphone popcorn thing? Fake. Heck, even "Will It Blend" is, actually, advertising a blender. It's gotten to the point that people don't trust videos to be anything but viral marketing for something, to paraphrase our cynical initial reaction to the Montauk Monster photo. The marketing companies overplayed their hands on this one, taking what could have been occasionally fun extra components to more mainstream ad campaigns and just overdoing it to death. Like so much else in this developing world. (Remember when people actually opened spam mail? OK, maybe that never actually happened).

Turn On the TV, I Mean the Computer
People watch a lot of TV on the computer. I mean, not a ton. Not enough to ruin broadcast television (yet). But, like, people watch Hulu and things on iTunes and various networks' websites, and that stuff is much better produced than, like, that YouTube video where that one dude falls down. Virals were a distraction from other stuff on the computer, and now virals have just become that stuff on the computer. So what distracts us from that? Television! On, um, the computer. This may be more crackpot theory than tested technoanthropology, but it stands to reason that the slicker (and freer) real filmed internet content gets, the less relevance and urgency the amateur stuff will have.

This is not to say that people aren't watching viral videos. I mean, YouTube is totally super popular and there are still funny WTF videos on the onlines. But lately I've noticed that it's like bizarro foreign commercials and things of that ilk. The garage-made YouTube sensation may be a thing of the distant, two-year-old past.

Can't say I'm sad to see it go.

This must be the one where Moses takes down the Pharaoh and his gang of thugs terrorizing the slums of Egypt. See, he waves his holy .457 magnum and the bullet parts the streetpunk's skin... — BEN POPKEN

Pssst! The Algorithm is Broken [Brief Essays With Pictures]
RELATED: The New IMDB Website Could Use Some Work

NBC is mulling broadcasting Friday night rehearsal sessions of "Saturday Night Live" on the Internet.

It's just one of the many scenarios the digital future could deliver, according to NBC Universal chief digital officer George Kliavkoff, who openly mused about the possibilities Wednesday at the Digital Entertainment Media & Marketing Excellence conference at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles.

"Sometimes it's a lot more interesting than the show," Kliavkoff joked, referring to the closed-circuit footage of "SNL's" Friday dry runs viewed at NBC headquarters. "It's something we watch on the cameras at 30 Rock."

We hope these are more than just the pie-in-the-sky musings of an NBC interactive executive: Beyond giving us valuable insights into emotional coping mechanisms employed by the show's young cast of performers to help them get through a dud sketch that will earn a smattering of mercy laughs, the "fly on the Studio 8H wall" effect of watching SNL rehearsals will also quickly weed out the able-bodied celebrity guest hosts—who can easily handle last minute dialogue changes for their hilarious, purse-shopping character Porsha—from the ones who panic and retreat into their shells, locking themselves into their dressing room to nervously yank out fistfulls of Barbie hair while chanting into a mirror, "You're still hot."

• "Saturday Night Live" rehearsals may be webcast [Reuters]

Who is behind YFly?

YFly was conceived by young entrepreneurs Drew Levin and Daniel Perkins while attending the University of Florida. Their vision to create the ultimate social network was accelerated when they met Nick Lachey through common friends and joined forces to bring YFly.com to life.

At the moment, Lachey's profile has only five friends, which is perhaps why his main photo has him casting down his head in shame. But with Levin and Perkins' visionary innovation of introducing systematic and authentic starfucking into the lawless wilderness of electronic social networking, we think it's only a matter of time before the virtual stalkers come knocking.

• [YFly]

*A reader points out the tags are imported from IMdB.

• Keyword: Ridiculous [Bottlecaps & Wingnuts]

[...] MTV is betting that its global reach through more than 100 channels will vault URGE over competitors. MTV plans to offer music videos, television shows and 2 million song tracks through individual sales or a monthly subscription service. Specifics such as pricing and which songs and videos would be offered weren't disclosed.

MTV Networks Music Group President Van Toffler said the company, a unit of Viacom International Inc., allied itself with Microsoft because it wanted to exploit the flexibility and ubiquity of Microsoft's Media Player software, which comes preinstalled in the Windows operating system.

"[Apple Chief Executive] Steve Jobs has a point of view," Toffler said. "ITunes is about a digital storefront for a la carte downloads. Our goal is to create a utopian music community that keeps subscribers coming back."

We can hardly believe our good fortune, knowing a musical Garden of Eden awaits us and all it took was the pairing of one monopoly, Microsoft's plundering computer kingdom, with one media conglomorate, Viacom's plexus of teen famewhore opiating TV networks. It will be nothing short of a virtual Shangri La, where in place of eternal youth and happiness, you can watch an episode of Laguna Beach crash your computer.

• MTV to Sell Online but Shuns the IPod [LA Times]

But with news that Google has now hired a former entertainment executive to its board of directors, albeit from the very computer-friendly PIXAR, media watchers are saying the struggle for multimedia control of our lovingly crafted product could get bloody:

Ann Mather, 45, a former executive at Walt Disney and Pixar, becomes the first Google board member to come from the entertainment world. Mather, who was Pixar's chief financial officer from 1999 to 2004, will chair Google's audit committee.

Mather's appointment is a "potential harbinger" of things to come, as the major entertainment and Internet companies warily begin to embrace each other, said UBS Internet analyst Benjamin Schachter.

"Mather's appointment gives Google's board a media perspective that it currently lacks," said Schachter. "This is the first person on the board without a purely technological or academic background."

While the payoff potential is great, one must also consider what of ourselves we may lose in the exchange it could be less than a decade before the fanciful illustration above becomes a daily eyesore reality. And yet, as documented in the LA Times Yahoo! piece, Silicon Valley's laid back culture will most probably prove no match for the "Hollywood Way." We imagine within a few months of the media marriage, the once efficient and accurate search engine will start lazily spitting out "reimagined" results to queries that were popular twenty years ago.

• LIGHTS! CAMERA! GOOGLE? [NY Post]
• Can Yahoo Sign On to Hollywood? [LA Times]