Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

I like Bob Lonsberry. I have linked to him several times in the last few years.

Bob is often a contrarian - looking for new perspectives, not just to play “devil’s advocate” but rather because he thinks some sides of issues are being ignored.

Today he wrote about the Iroquois Confederacy, about how teachers in New York State don’t make much mention of the Seneca Nation’s military might because teachers are peaceniks and would rather talk about the alliance in New York rather than talk about how this freed up the Seneca to not worry about northern conflict as it exterted influence in the south.

Go check it out.

I’m oversimplifying (and perhaps, so is Bob), but it’s worth a read.

People can be real jerks sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong. I love pranks. I have prank calls on my iPod. I used to make prank calls when I was younger. I don’t participate in such activity anymore, but I will admit to being part of the audience for such pranks. When I watched Jackass, it was for the pranks rather than the stunts.

But this latest batch of pranks I’ve come across has got me upset. Here’s the premise: Kids that know the ending to the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book show up at the book premiere and divulge spoilers to the crowd of people waiting to buy their books. THE CROWD. Not a friend they want to prank. Dozens of complete strangers!

That’s wrong. It takes a certain kind of rudeness to try to ruin the book for hundreds of people, just so you can laugh at them. And then to have the audacity to post the videos to YouTube for everyone to see. That’s just rude.

I remember seeing one video from the release of a previous book. Many people have seen it - the “Snape kills Dumbledore” video. There was just one, if I remember. Now with the new book release, it takes hours just to watch all the copycat videos about it on YouTube. I’ve found 46 of them and listed them here.

Before we get to the spoiler videos, I gotta shoutout to redstateupdate.com for their self-deprecating humor without spoilers. Now that’s performance art.

(Warning: If you want to be surprised by the ending of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, do not visit the youtube links below.)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows spoiler prank videos: a canonical list

Perhaps the one that provided much of the source material is the video that contained the page citations of the spoilers. Tricking people into clicking on it was apparently not enough for some people. The song used in this video, “Never gonna give you up” sung by Rick Astley became the spoilers theme song referenced by some of these other videos.

These pottymouths made two short videos where they drive by a crowd and shout spoilers with a megaphone.

These losers spend most of their video driving around, and spend about two seconds on their megaphone they bought just for the occasion. Consumers.

These people who have some videomaking potential (but are still jerks) print out flyers spoiling the deaths of major characters, as well as the ending, and offer them to the line as coupons.

These Cro-mags who can’t figure out which way to hold their camera posted a short video in which a miscreant yells spoilers at an indoor line. At least their rebuke can be heard well. There are other cro-mags that actually are wearing a shirt that says cro-mags when they spoil it.

At least these guys made up a spoiler and corresponding page number rather than maliciously giving something away. That’s almost funny.

These guys made two videos, but only one of them is worth linking. They must not have editing software.

These clever folk called their video Harry Potter and the Deathly Spoilers. They played a text-to-speech sound file that read the spoilers and some profanity as they drove by. Why do they have to be such pottymouths on top of being jerks?

I don’t know enough about Sanjaya to know whether he is really in this video. Not as a prankster, but as someone being pranked.

These no-goodniks release spoilers face-to-face inside the store as well as over a megaphone from a car.

These psudo-documentarians phrase the spoilers as parts of their questions. Then they have the audacity to zing their victims by saying their source was a shock site. They have an original title, too. Add their second and third videos and it’s over 36 minutes of video they released.

Apparently, it’s not just Americans that can be jerks. Here are some French Canadians engaging in the same foolishness. There are jerks on the other side of the Atlantic, as well. Quite a few of them.

Some talentless hacks can’t even make a prank video fun to watch. It’s called editing.

I gotta give this guy some credit for dressing up in a costume. Even if he is being a jerk, he’s at least a premeditated jerk.

These guys act like jerks in order to represent a paintball website. I bet they are wipers.

Here are some guys that can’t figure out where to point the camera. If your video is useless, you really ought to look into mp3s.

Here are some people that spoof the spoilers videos by “pretending” to act like jerks. They decided to make something up. Too bad they were right. At least they’re still “pretend” jerks, right? No. They still have pottymouths.

Dropping flyers on unsuspecting readers below. How unclever. Next time go in with an accomplice upstairs and position the camera within the crowd. Oh? You even met a person at the beginning of the video who didn’t like the book? Maybe you could have recruited her as an accomplice. But you didn’t, because spoiling people’s fun was your primary concern, not making a funny video.

Why are so many of the people who make these videos also lovers of profanity?

These guys declare their Walmart “spoilers raid” to be mostly a failure. But they posted it anyway.

I don’t understand the people that make spoiler videos that don’t include the reactions of their victims. Instead of “hey, look at them crying, I ruined their surprise,” it’s “Hey, look at me, I’m a primo jerk, and I even posted it on YouTube!” Me too! Me three! Me also! And me. Me two.

This one’s actually kind of funny, because it’s not a real spoiler, they used good filmmaking and acting, and their prank was undoable, and they didn’t crash the release party.

I kind of like that these guys didn’t edit out their conversation with the security guard at the end. Maybe when they’re older they’ll be ashamed of what they said.

More boring, self-aggrandizing pranksterism.

In this video you can’t even tell who’s being pranked.

I have to admit I got a chuckle out of the concept of Optimus Prime and Megatron showing up at the Harry Potter release. It could have been a commentary on mass media consumerism. Instead they act like jerks.

Printing the spoilers on a T-shirt and showing up at the release does not make you cool.

I actually think this one was staged the day after the release. I also think this one was staged because of audio weirdness.

I have to admit that the recorded voice these guys use is somewhat soothing. But they are still losers who don’t have a sense for how to edit.

Not only are individuals jerks. Sometimes corporations think it’s smart to mock people.

Delivery, delivery, delivery. No prank show has a segment that lasts this long. But that’s the format these guys chose. At least they were “making up” the spoilers.

I have heard pranks are revered in Boston, but this was not well-received. Maybe because it is not undoable.

A lot of these videos are associated with ebaumsworld.com.

Someone ought to tell these people that using a megaphone on a car driving next to you could invite road rage.

Technorati Tags: Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, book 7, spoiler, prank, video, jerkery

The Washington Post has a story about how to diffuse a nasty situation when a gunman invades your back porch steak-and shrimp party.

Invite him to sit and have some wine. Then give him a hug.

Seriously. you have to go read it.

“Hey, I know. Let’s make a movie about Transformers where we introduce entirely new forms for some robots, and then we’ll spend about zero time developing their characters so we have no idea who is fighting during the action sequences. It’ll be awesome!”

OK, I am being a bit mean. I think the film was interesting enough to see with Erin (she thought she was going to be bored the whole time) and overall pretty good. I realize that with just one movie there’s not much of a chance to develop the characters. The original movie had the benefit of two seasons of cartoons leading up to the climactic battles, so it didn’t matter that some robots had only a line or two before they died.

BEST: The scene in which the robots were hiding from Sam’s parents. It was an interesting creative direction for the Transformers. All the dialogue from that scene (including his conversation with his parents) made it great.

WORST: They made Ironhide so trigger-happy that he wanted to harm humans. That’s not the Ironhide I knew. That, and they made Bumblebee disrespect a VW Bug, as if to rub it in that they were rewriting the story.

HUH?: I don’t like that they rewrote the origin stories. I also don’t understand why Devastator was a single robot rather than a combination of six robots. And why Jazz died when he was ripped in half, if Decepticons could survive that. And why the transformers could choose their own forms. And why Bumblebee only talked in robot mode…

Technorati Tags: Transformers, Bumblebee, Devastator

If you fall for one of those inbox scams, the terrorists win.

That’s right. There’s a story in today’s Washington Post about how someone was fooled into providing financial information that ended up in the hands of terrorists.

I don’t know that there is much we can do about this except for getting back to teaching common sense. Or, if you’re the kind of person who can’t say no, learn to say no on the Internet, at least.

Tell your kids not to fall for these sorts of scams, too. I have a feeling they will be around for a long time.