Following previous post about youtube poops I’ve done a lot more research on the matter and discovered a number of things.

It seems that someone who uses the internet handle of SuperYoshi was the first to post what he thought was just a meshed up cartoon mash up that would annoy some of viewers on youtube. It was based on a Mario brothers cartoon and was called I’d Say He’s Hot on Our Tail.

Prior to that there had been a fad (or meme) called over 9000 which (I believe) had used Dragon Ball Z cartoon footage and mashed that up too, often repeating footage and sequences for comic effect. So it made sense that SuperYoshi would want avoid meme status for his work - or worse still derivative mini-meme status.

So he just called his stuff cartoon mash-ups. If this were the 80s then no doubt he call them scratch vids

But others were quick to notice certain hallmarks that made these films stand out. Let’s not forget that youtube uses a system of video reponses, something I think has had a massive impact. Rather than allowing these films to live in isolation a user (I’m always careful when using the world artist) riffs upon a previous film - or even samples it, building upon a joke like variations on a theme. Much like he way bloggers with put their own spin on the same news stories so too have these users spun out the same footage in incredible new ways. A poster called Yamino offhanded referred to these new films as poops. And it somehow that name caught on.

The thing about youtube poops is there are actually quite hard to define. As soon as you identify a hallmark you’ll watch a new one that doesn’t have it yet is without doubt still a poop. The use of Mario Hotel or Zelda Cd-i footage for example, born out of nessessity is so common now that it’s quite brave to not use it at all.

That article I mentioned last time also had some very interesting comments. Things like “Poops also foreground the narcissism of new media connoisseurship and its associated literacy.” and from none oter than Tim Drage “A more apt musical analogy for poops really is Noisecore (actual noisecore, not any of the 100s of genres of music that get randomly labelled so by lazy journalists) in that the aim, when it comes down to it, is to make something absurdly terrible, with no conventional talent, bad sound, zero production values, and to do it again and again and again.”

And there’s the explosions and fast cutting and a hell of lot of repetition too. And the whole thing is definitely very lo-fi. They are in fact - technically - quite shit - and maybe that’s why they are so very funny. I would imagine a ‘pooper’ would advise not worrying about “What makes it a real poop” and instead recommend making intuitive choices regardless of what has been - but then I might miss who it was who coined the phrase “Where There’s Smoke They Pinch Back” which has became something of a mantra.

So I made one myself - and here it is:

I think it’s a true to the form whilst still being true to me - it’s got Mario and violent repetition but also contains the faces and clips that resonate with me personally. It has also got a resonably clear message yet is funny and annoying. It’s the things I’ve seen on youtube - absorbed and shat out again.

But whilst I’m just a beginner I’m also a fan so - like any other switched on new media person - I registered the domain name youtubepoops.com and I’m in the process of building a database and forum.

The trouble with youtube of course being that things can be really hard to find - what with general search and also tags plus lots of other media that just get in the way it’s been hard to even find poops I’ve not seen already or know when they were posted or by whom. So after looking round I installed a CMS called Drupal - which is like wordpress on steroids and I’m going though the slow process of tweaking it all and adding in the data.

It’s not something that I’d even consider monetising but rather takes more seriously the work of an increasing number of film makers (or whatever they want to call themselves) and hopefully will get more people to see these incredible films. I hope to that it will encourage more people to make them as I think poops are a very good way to cut ones teeth one when starting out with video editing. I think though that really depends on whether the genre can evolve beyond Mario or Zelda.

I’ll let know you when the site goes up properly but email if you want in early!