New Media Success Stories

are an actor. Yes, I I don't know if you could speak to the veracity of that. Yeah, No, that's accurate. The things that people do in private to keep away from private eyes, we do in public on a stage for all to see. Okay, then that's paraphrasing. Yeah, but anyway, well, yeah, because what we're talking about today is people who are I hate to use this phrase because it's been overused Internet famous. They are celebrities. You really like that, don't

I love it? Because I am one. Okay from a very tiny, tiny way of If you you have to generously give me the benefit of the doubt to call me a celebrity, well, some some of us are less comfortable with that. But other people have used the Internet to go out and try to make a name for themselves and possibly become Internet famous or actually even real time you know, real world famous out on the on the big screen, in the little screen and on the

radio and all what all else. So we decided that would be kind of interesting to talk about that because you know, uh it, I know that none of our audience is surprised now this. We're in this generation of people that is very comfortable with the Internet. Um and I mean that for all age ranges. Now my my eight six year old dad as as comfortable with internet. So you know, but yeah, we're all we're all pretty

familiar with this. It's it's not hard to make a name for yourself on for good or ill for good or ill on venues like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flicker and all the other similar sites. Um and you know, so that the thing is, there are a lot of people out there, how do you go about doing it? And we we picked some people that we thought it would be kind of interesting to look into, um and talk about how they managed to make themselves into mindoring in

some in a lot of cases major celebrities. Yeah, because when you look at the traditional routes to getting success, especially in the arts anything as a musician, as an actor, as a writer. Uh, you know, going the old media route, there's a pretty high barrier to intrigue. Well, there are a lot, a whole lot of talented people out there.

It's it's obvious in just checking in with some of these sites, um that I mentioned a few minutes ago, that you there are a lot of talented people out there who may or may not be signed to a major recording or writing uh contract, and uh you know, the these uh, these tools give us an opportunity to check in with with some of them and see what they're about doing. Yeah, there there are tons of people. Well,

let's put it this way. If you were only able to consume content by listening to the radio, by watching television, by going to movies that kind of thing, you would see a certain range of artists and uh and of various disciplines. Yes, right, you would see a certain range of music video directors. You'd see a certain range of musicians and singers and bands that sort of thing, actors, writers,

that kind of thing. But there'd be a large number of people you would never see because they just didn't have whatever it was like, whether it was luck or the right opportunity, they didn't know the right person. They have the talent, but not the venue to reach an audience. Well, the web really helped take care of that problem. The web kind of created an equal ground for people to

reach an audience. You didn't have to sign a contract with a major label in order to get your your content on the web, So you didn't have to you didn't have to answer to anyone else, You didn't have to meet that person's expectations. Because what happens if you know, I'm a movie studio executive and you, Chris, we're going to do a hypothetical here, hypothetic you're such a good actor. Confused, I don't want to green light it. There you go,

that's my movie studio executive. Um. And but let's say I'm a movie studio executive and Chris comes and he pitches an idea to me for a movie or a television show. And uh, in which, look at this, here's your problem. You're pitching a TV show to a movie executive. Um. But no, let's say you're pitching your idea to me and I'm either having a bad day, or I just don't get the concept. I don't see how it can be successful. And it's not that the concept is bad,

it's just that I'm a human being. I have my own set of biases and preferences, and so I say no to that. And then Chris walks off a broken and humiliated man. So typical Thursday. And anyway, we uh, we didn't get to a point where, you know, Chris, Chris has been demoralized. He has less impetus to go out and try and push for it again. And if you get a series of rejections, which, by the way, if you're an actor or artist, life is a series of rejections, um, you know it can it can really

take the wind out of your sales. But then let's say that Chris decides, Hey, you know what, this thing I have would work as a web video series. So what I'm going to do is for less money than it would take to do a television show or a movie, I'm going to get together the best possible people I can of the budget I have, which granted, is still not going to be insignificant for many of these projects. In a lot of cases, it's a big risk and

you are pouring a lot of money into it. It's just it's a lot of money on a different scale, right. There might be a few thousand dollars, which is still a lot of money for most of us, as opposed to several million dollars for television or hundred million dollars for a movie or you know, and albums also, I

mean record companies, the same sort of thing. But go about the web and then you know, you as long as you register a space or you use something like YouTube to uh to upload your content too, you've got the platform there. You don't have to jump through any hoops with the television companies or the movie studios. Um, It's it's still a challenging road, but it has a much lower level of entry than the traditional media. So let's let's actually use some examples and talk about some

people who use the Internet to kind of launch their careers. Okay, Now, I wanted to point out too that in some ways this is scary to the major entertainment properties because well, it's it's sort of a good and a bad thing though, because on the bad side, Um, since I started off with that, you know, you go great, you know, how am I supposed to a lot of a lot of the executives I've seen quoted say, well, you know, our company is a way of weeding out the people who

are you know, the most talented and putting them in the spotlight, and and that those who are of lesser talent we reject, and that that means than anything that we do has you know, we've already vetted this for the consumer. And then then there's some there is some truth in that, I would say, because I've you know, everybody knows somebody who has is you know that thing like oh, look I I wrote a book, or you know, check out my band and you go, yeah, that's great, man,

check out my public excess television show exactly exactly. But then you every once in a while you run into somebody you go, wow, you're really God, how the heck did you not get famous already? And that is why the big media properties have tuned in and are starting to find people. And that's what brings us to our podcast. It is some of these some of the people were going to talk about are people who went, you know, the major executives have gone, uh uh, Mr Johnson, we

need to sign this kid up. So so let's talk about some of them. Okay, let's talk I wanted to talk a bit about let's talk about a guy who really as is kind of the definitive Internet celebrity as far as geek music goes. Okay, so we're talking about a certain Jonathan Colton. I yes, now, the code monkey, the code Now. I have to uh, I have to admit that I my first interaction where I didn't I

haven't had an interaction. My first uh knowledge of Mr Colton came from a certain person that we met one day, a friend of the stuff you should know, uh Mr Hodgeman. Yes, John Hodgman and and and Jonathan Colton are friends. And the first time I encountered him was when uh Mr Colton was playing back up on the Hoboes song. Right would you call it a song? Uh? There's music to it. There's music to it. And he managed to play it all the way through. It's like fifteen minutes long without

making a mistake. And I don't know that I've ever played that long without a mistake. Uh, certainly not guitar. I don't think I've seen Jonathan Coulton play fifteen minutes without a mistake. Since then. But but you go back and I said, who who is this Jonathan Colton guy? And then I checked out his catalog and wow, yeah. So what Jonathan Colton did was he was working as a coder a programmer at one point and then decided, Um,

he made a he made a big decision. He decided he was going to really make a go of it to be a professional musician. And it was a scary thing. I mean, he was He's a family man. He's not just it's not just some single guy. He's a family man. Um. But it was a scary notion too, to leave what you know behind, to leave a steady job behind, and to try and make it as a musician. Yes, it is. Yeah, Chris is nodding at me knowingly. As a fellow musician,

he can he can attest to this personally. As an actor, I can tell you that I never had the guts to try and make it as an actor as that as my primary occupation. In Atlanta, it's particularly difficult. But no matter what what market you're in, Uh, it's tough. It gets a little easier once you have a following, but you have to have a pretty big following be score it gets to be the comfort level gets to

be okay, well, I mean even even Scott Adams of Dilbert. Yeah, um, not that he's a he doesn't fall into this category. But he was drawing Dilbert and got syndicated before he ever left his day job, um if I remember correctly. So that's you know, and I think of him as a miss a famous cartoonist now, but at the time he created some security for himself before he jumped ship.

And that's not what Jonathan Coulton. So what Coulton decided to do was he created a blog and he began to he he did this pub um, this project called Thing a Week. Yes, the idea I think a week was. I mean, it was a very ambitious project. The the idea of the project was that he would write, produce and record a song each week for a year. So for a full year he would produce a song and then he would put it up on the blog and

allow people to listen to it for free. Yes uh, and this produced He produced several songs that have since become uh some of the standards that he plays at his concerts. Colton has been playing for quite some time now and He's released a lot of his music on the internet, a lot of it under a license that allows you to download the music for free. And you can even use it as long as you're not using it in a way to to make money yourself promoting

your own product. Yeah, you can use it like, you can remix it, you can set it to videos, that sort of thing for a lot of his music. Um but he also was offering music for sale on his site, and he even gave people the option. He said, if you want to steal my music, go ahead and steal my music. I'm giving you the opportunity to download it for free if you want to. If you think my music is worth paying for, then please purchase my music. And people began to buy his music. They wanted him

to keep making music. And that was the thing that they knew that if they did not pay him, that they did not buy his music, then he would have no recourse but to not do this anymore. Right right, Well, he you know, at least not in the way that he's doing it now, because basically it's it sort of reminds me of the old style um my als, where you where artists had a patron the old composers centuries ago who would have a king who would commission works

from them on a regular basis. Painters as well, Michaelangelow, Leonardo da Vinci. These are guys who had patrons who would give them room and board and pay them a salary to create art. Yeah, and and now, um, artists like Jonathan Colton can say, hey, you know, if it's worth five bucks to you, send me a five and I will. You know, I won't take a day job again, and I will continue to write music more frequently so and I can share this with more people, so you know,

it pays the web bill. Right. And Colton still does the music thing. He still does tours, he'll he'll he plays uh tours quite a bit. And I've seen him play probably five or six times. Um and uh, and you are his patron. I am. I am his patron. I sat front row center for the last show that I saw him in, and I got to exchange in witty stage benter, which also known as heckling. But I wasn't really heckling. It was more of a goofy little conversation. I think next time I'll be quiet, because I'm not

nearly as funny as I think I am. Anyway, Uh, Johnathan Colton seen quite a bit of success and he's remained an independent artist. Um and still does release music on his blog and you can still purchase things. Now not all the songs are available for free anymore, but many of them still are. And uh, and you can still purchase his his music directly from him and um, yeah,

it's interesting in case you were wondering. He also is the guy who wrote the song at the end of the Portal game Still Alive, and he also wrote the song that will be at the end of Portal two. Yes, so uh. He actually he spilled the beans on that on Twitter and then realized that maybe he shouldn't have. But anyway, but now the word is out. Not that that's a bad thing. I just drove up excitement because everyone loved that song so much. So Jonathan Holton really

managed to leverage the web in a big way. And he also he values the interaction with his fan base. You know, he doesn't ignore them. He doesn't just set his stuff up on the web and then say here you go and then walks away. He maintains a nice, healthy relationship with his fan base. And so that's really helped cultivate very loyal fans who will go to as many shows as they possibly can and buy all his music.

So he really he really nailed it. When you when it comes to using the Internet as a platform to market yourself and to get your work out there for people to enjoy, it doesn't hurt that he's a bona fide geek who really does love science and technology and the sort of stuff that people who are really devoted to the Internet the same kind of things they're interested in. Right, So, who else do you want to talk about? I was

going to talk about Rooster Teeth productions. Yes we well we've actually sort of talked about them before, Yes we have. Rooster Teeth is the production company that produced the web series Red Versus Blue, which of course is the mashinima series.

It uses the Halo game engine as a digital puppets for the scripts that they wrote, which when when they first started off, Red Versus Blue was really just kind of a vehicle for jokes about how boring it is to be in the military and how sometimes decisions in the military seemed to defy all common sense. So it's kind of a surreal satire in a way. It was sort of on the level of Catch twenty two, but with more curse words and uh and anyway and more

surreal humor. But Rooster Teeth created this model where these guys who had worked in commercials and worked on another website that was called Drunk Gamers back in the day they used to do sketches and things like that. Um, they got together and they started doing this series. And the model that Rooster Teeth used was the two upload videos to their website and then they invited people to

become sponsors. So you could become a sponsor for I think it was twenty dollars when it started off, and for twenty dollars you would get access to special videos they would make that they would only make available to sponsors. You'd also get to see the videos early, so I think like two days before everyone else could see them. You could watch the episode, and at the end of the first season, all the sponsors got a DVD of all the episodes that were produced during that first season

of Red Versus Blue. Now, uh, that was how they are initially began to fund Red Versus Blue. Since then, they still Rooster Teeth gets gets revenue from a variety of sources. They produce commercials for video game companies. They they also sell advertising on the videos that they have, so you might watch a pre roll add before a Rooster Teeth video. They also have advertising on their website. Um, and you know, they sell merchandise and they sell d

v ds of the shows that they've done. Plus they still have the subscription based so you if you pay that that subscription price, you do still get exclusive content and you get to see stuff early. So that model really worked for them. They've been around for I think eight years now, maybe close to nine, and that's pretty

impressive that they've managed to make that work. So again, this is a company that you know, they had some fun, fun ideas, but they would probably never have made a break into either the independent film circuit or the television circuit based upon what they were doing. I mean, it would be really hard to to get a foot in on those doors. Instead, they went with using the web

as their delivery system. And since then now they have shown their stuff at independent film festivals, they've they've shown an entire season as a movie and uh and so that again is a good internet success story. And and also, like Jonathan Colton. They have a community of users. They have a message board where people can comment. They can comment on on the various videos, and they also have interaction with their fans, like they even will go on

Xbox Live and play games with their fans. In fact, they invented a um a type of gameplay for Halo called griff Ball, and it's named after one of the characters from Red Versus Blue. Yeah, yeah, whoever, whoever is the person with the griff Ball in the game turns the color that griff is in Red Versus Blue, which is kind of a yellowish orange supposed to be orange.

I maintained that it still looks yellow, but anyway, So Rooster Teeth Productions is has seen a lot of success that way, and it's really impressive to to kind of see where they came from and how a group of guys who had this kind of silly idea managed to turn it into a viable entertainment business. Now, um, we were talking about the some of these folks. I started thinking about people that I saw getting picked up up

after working on online now um. One of the first people that came to mind was a man to congan Uh formerly of Rocket Boom. She and her partner had started UM Rocket Boom, which was a little daily would you call it a newscast kind of thing that was shown on the web. It was newsy ish and UM.

They actually had a big, pretty well public falling out. UM. She and her business partner disagreed on on how things should be run, so she left UM, started a blog and then eventually got picked up by ABC News UM as an anchor and now has has left and is doing other projects. UM. But that's kind of interesting to to imagine that it's, you know, really you can start your own show and just get picked up. I mean, I think that's also what you could say about people

like The Lonely Island UM. And if you're not familiar, they are a uh comedy group UM who have been making videos since two thousand, according to their website, The Lonely Island dot Com. UH, you may if you watch American television, you may recognize at least one of them, uh Andy Sanmdberg a Cuba Shafer. And I really hope I'm not mispronouncing uh drama Taknis or Tacn's name. Someone running and tell me that I mispronounced it. I mispronounced

it at least once. Um. Uh they're very very funny people, um, and have been on Saturday Night Live as a result of getting picked up, and probably more importantly, Andy Samberg has been on Yo Gabba Gabba. Of course that's important, that is important. UM. But yeah, I mean people you know, you start creating things, uh you know, your comedy or your music or your writing. And I mean there have been many bloggers who have gotten book deals based on

their blogs, um, which I find impressive. But yeah, I mean if it helps to to have a a have to be able to cultivate a good audience, um, if

you're working to create a little buzz around it. Like I also thought of a Lonely Girl fifteen remember that, um, which there was a I hadn't actually watched the video, but I became acquainted with the show, which aired on YouTube, um from Wired magazine, and they did a show after the after it had been revealed that uh, this person that yeah, that basically the Jessica Rose as a young actress, um had been basically portraying herself as um, you know,

somebody who really just needed to get out there. She had a kind of um a family. They sort of encouraged her to keep to herself. If I'm not mistaken, it's kind of the thing, and she really wanted to, uh, to get out there and be a little bit more open to the public. And people were captivated by this story. I said, wow, really, I mean, she she seems so nice.

I want to be your friend. Which was presented at first as a legitimate sincere kind of like like it was real like video video blog, and as it turns out, no was. It was a scripted event. She was an actress playing the part of uh, this young woman who was bearing her thoughts for the world to see. And we should maintain that that does not in any way make the video necessarily less enjoyable to watch. But the

story captivated so many people's attention. UM and you know, I think you it's sort of one of those things that you go, wow, I mean you can really just because you make a video yourself and upload it to UM one of the video sharing sites in the web, doesn't mean that people aren't watching it. And if you do a good job with it, you know, you you could capture a lot of people's interest and attention. Yeah, I mean, we've we've seen that go both ways. Right.

Of course, we've talked about the memes in the memes episodes. Some some videos turn into memes, they don't necessarily allow the the person in the video to leverage it in in a useful way. Yeah. I think it's good that you make that distinction because people people like the tron guy. Yeah, Um,

that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about people who are trying to make a creative endeavor, not necessarily just shoot something funny or in extemporaneous, but it's it's the idea of leveraging the web to get content that you normally would have seen in these more traditional uh media form factors. It's just that there's you know, like I said, you can't necessarily break into those easily. Yeah, and we're yeah, we're not talking about David after the

dentist right now. We're talking stuff purpose purposefully trying to do this in an artistic way to gather attention. Um, so we're talking We've talked a bit about music, we've talked about video and movies. Uh. We should also mentioned that, you know, print is another way, another thing that can be difficult to break into, particularly for things like let's

say that you're a comic strip artist. Web comics are a big thing, and there are lots of different artists who have tried using the web to produce or to publish material self published material in many cases, and uh, the list for this is really long. I mean there are tons of different artists who have done this, and some of them have done art in more traditional form

factors as well, like Phil Folio. Yes, Philfolio, who is a comic book artist, um and artist in general who has produced art for lots of different venues, including he did the illustrations for all the uh for some American editions of the myth Adventures books, and also did the comic book series for myth Adventures, which was written by Robert Aspirin. And um, yeah, they also a number of games. Yep, he and his and his wife have both collaborated on

on things like that. And the Girl Genius comic. Yes, Girl Genius is the one that was specifically thinking about because he's published it online. I actually used to buy it in print form. Um, but yeah, I've been reading it online and it's it's funny because when you said that,

it reminded me of Scott McCloud. You did. The Understanding Understanding Comics series has written some really awesome books about what you could do with it with comics as an art form, and he talks about the limitations of the standard strip and I think on the web you can do so well. He would argue, that's too. I'm pretty sure it has that. You can do so much more. If you can open up the space and show art in different ways, you can tell a different kind of story. Yeah,

and some artists have tried to embrace that. Some artists have been very resistant toward it, thinking that the that it's it's hard. It's another tool to tell a story, and I think some artists are more comfortable using that tool than others. UM. For example, what you've probably heard about the comic books that maybe you actually read them. You maybe you read comic books online or using an iPad feature. Now a lot of those comics have added features uh in them, so that there's there's a little

bit of action in there as well. It's not just static images. You you get a few little effects that you can add in that you wouldn't be able to do on the page obviously. UM. Same sort of thing with web comics. The idea is that you could add more elements into your storytelling, or even choose to tell a story in a totally different way that you wouldn't be able to tell if it were confined to a page. Like I said, some artists do not agree with that

particular approach. They think that the human that human customers are pretty much uh, kind of conditioned to reading comics in a very static way, and that it's very hard to get people to break out of that. So it's an interesting debate that still goes on in the web comic space. I wanted to mention a couple of other web comic artists. Scott Kurtz, who does pv P online. Yes, he so that that jumped off the screen and onto the page, released print versions of a lot of his

comics after they were on online. Right, Yeah, he managed to Um. He started off doing publishing his strip to the web, and uh, he was getting most of his money from ad revenue, and then he began to collect strips in books and sell them just like you would find other traditional comic strips. You know, like you go to the bookstore and you look in the humor section and you're going to find all the you know, the Garfield books and you know, I haven't read comic strips

since so long. I'm not even going to do this because I'll date myself. But at any rate, same sort of thing you could find, you know, p VP books online. I'm sure in some bookstores as well. You could purchase them.

And then you also have Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade, who are very successful web comic creators and uh and again, just like the other examples we've said, both Scott kurts And and Tycho and Gabe in particular have been very good at cultivating that audience and creating a community for them, not just not just a website where you read a comic strip, but a place where people actually interact. And um.

They've also experimented with other forms of media, so they're not just drawing comics, but they might do a podcast. The podcast could be about different challenges that web comic artists face and their own perspectives on some of these debates that are within web comics themselves. And it's pretty interesting to hear from their perspectives because of course, these are the guys who are producing the art or video games or video games. Yes, Tycho and Gabe made there's

a Penning Arcade video game. I think you can get it off Xbox Live if I'm not mistaken. Um, but the I had And another example something that was interesting to me, Another example of a person who has a history in old media who created something in new media. Josh Weeden. So Josh Wheden as the creator of such shows as Buffy, the Van Pire, Slayer, Angel Firefly, also

did doll House. Um. He of course he's known for writing some you know, kind of quirky dialogue, creating very strong female characters, and having sort of a geek perspective on culture. All his characters tend to be really pop culture savvy, and they very much tend to be geeks. Um to summing to you know, there's a spectrum there, right, yes, so um. Anyway, he created a show called Dr Horrible, Yes,

which the three episode story. Yes, they created this on a very modest budget, too, right, and was this really impressive? I think the the impetus for this was the writer strike. It wasn't the writer strike. So the writers strike in Hollywood meant that no new content for television was going to be created during this time because the writer's Guild

had decided to strike. As it turns out, the networks are really good at funding a lot of these shows, so when the writers are doing it themselves, you know. But you know what, I watch it and I don't think at all that it looks like a low budget show. No. The the the budget for Dr Horrible was probably much higher than for your average web series, and the people who were making it know how to make inexpensive stuff

look really good. And it also helps when Josh Weeden has a big enough name that he's able to attract high level talent to be in his production. Really like who like? Uh like? Oh Neil Patrick Harris? Oh yeah, so yeah, your average web series doesn't have Doogie Howser as the lead. Uh. Neil Patrick Harris was of course the lead in Dr Horrible. He was the the title

character Dr Horrible. Felicia Day, who had been in episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a Sears commercial um and also had her own web series called The Guild. She was of course cast as the potential love interest for Dr Horrible, and so jos Wein used this story to tell the tale of a supervillain from the supervillain's perspective about why he does the things he does, how he's human just like everybody else, how he's affected by his own emotions, and what finally propels him to uh

celebrity status within the super villain community. And it's an entertaining and of course heartbreaking story because Josh Weeden can't make anyone have a happy ending. And uh that's another podcast, probably not for tech stuff, but anyway, it's he used the web to launch this series, and he has, of course we hadn't already had a very strong fan community, yes, from his television series and also his work in movies, and so he had a built an audience, right, yes,

he did. I also want to give a shout out to one of mine and my wife's favorite characters whom you didn't mention. So, Nathan Phillion, if you are listening, it was me who mentioned you, Captain Nathan Philly, and I love you too, but you know that because I've tweeted to you at anyway, he doesn't know me. If Nathan Phillion knows me, he's doing an awfully good job at keeping that information riv it anyways, just going to

use it against you later. He's famous first prank he could be you know, he said that he might be. He would be willing to be mal again if Fireflight were to be relaunched. Hey, that works in two different

ways relaunched anyway. So yeah, this was an example of someone who had worked in old media going toward new media and it was a huge success as far as web video series are concerned, right, yeah, I mean you you might look at that versus the numbers, you know, strictly from the numbers perspective, versus an average TV show on an average night, you might go whatever. But you know, for the web actually, with as much content as there is on the web and many choices you have to

choose from, the show did very well. Yes, and it in fact, it's available on DVD now, so you can actually purchase it. And I think it I just wanted to add that. I think it shows the viability of that as a way to a vehicle to do this, the same same kind of thing with the Battlestar Galactica mini videos that they did in en seasons. Um shows you that you can you can use that to either bolster your property or use it as a a different

angle from which to look at it. Now. Of course, not every web series that comes out is going to have the production value of Dr Horrible, because I mean, like we said, it's it was much less money than it would take to make a typical television show, but much more money than the typical web video person has at his or her disposal, So you know, but it does show that the web is a is a viable platform to get your material to an audience. And and

it's like I said, there's DVD sales now. There was a big contest for people to create videos to um to become the next member of the Evil League of Evil. By the way, that trivia Jonathan Strickland has a video of him as a character called the philosophize Er. Uh. If you want to do a search on YouTube for Room Hilda, that's Room with a v Room Hill and the Philosophizer, you will see the audition video for the Evil League of Evil. We were mentioned in the credits.

We did not make one of the final five. I don't know why. We were really really evil. They were really good. I enjoyed it. The performance was really oh thank you so anyway, uh yeah, they that was another example of fan interaction and it really helped with the DVD sales as well. And we've seen, you know, other material inspired by Dr Horrible. There are single long performances of Dr Horrible that will happen, kind of like the

old Rocky Horror Picture show stuff. And there's that great video that was produced as if Dr Horrible were an eight bit in S game, like an old inn S RPG game. Uh. And we mentioned the Guild briefly. That's Felicia Day's series, which is about a group of gamers who are playing a game very similar to World Warcraft and kind of the um the complications that arise in their lives. Yeah, and it had the very first part of it they actually meet each other in the flesh

instead of in the pixel. Yeah. First, very awkward. That was painful for me. Well, yeah, because you realize a very good job, which is why exactly you realize it's showing off gamers as being socially awkward. Socially awkward, so I have a t exactly. So they're very good at interacting online, but once you get them in person, they

have problems and what I think is amusing. This is kind of a spoiler alert, But in later seasons of the guild, you get a delicious villain played by a Mr. Will Wheaton, which just shows that, you know, if your web series gets enough traction, you might actually find people who have had work in old media get interested and get involved, and um, you know, these are just some examples. There are thousands of examples on the web. Now, granted, for the thousands of examples on the web of success,

there are millions of examples of things that never went anywhere. Yes, so there's still an element of luck. There's still definitely an element of quality if you're if you're if what you are using is not a very good quality, if you do get famous, it's going to be for the wrong reason, right, Um, so you still have to create

good quality stuff. But the web gives you that that that access that you might not otherwise have, especially if you're like, let's say that you're somewhere where you're far away from Hollywood or New York or even have the other centers where we think of the entertainment industry being located. You can produce this theoretically anywhere. So the web has really helped out with that. Now, Uh, if you guys have a great idea for a web series, like a

comic or a video or a song. Then definitely pursue that. Think about using the web as a platform, look into people who have done it before and seeing how how they've achieved success, and learn as much as you can before you just you know, try and strike out there and throw something up on the internet. And you know, always work at it because chances are your first attempt may not go over well. But who knows, you could end up being the next Justin b or yeah you

could gosh, the babe who got discovered from YouTube. By the way, uh, I just want to point this unbelievable. I heard it from Fitty Cent himself. Never make fun of Justin Bieber fans because they will not accept your apology. But no, and jokes aside, and whether or not you like his music. He got picked up from YouTube. Somebody saw him on YouTube and now he's a very big star. So that's about as big as you can get. It can be done, yes, So so guys, you know, I

encourage it creativity. I love seeing good creative work out there. If nothing else, it's fun, go do it. Yeah, just you know, like I said, keep in mind that that failure could still be part of the equation. But it's better to go ahead and try something and fail than to not even put forth the effort. You can always look at it before you post it. Yes, yes, and like I said, and again, do your research, find what works and what doesn't work. Don't just go into it blind.

And guys, that will wrap up this story. If you have a particular web series or comic or or web artist who uses the web to to publish his or her work, let us know. Let's know on Facebook or Twitter, are handled, there is tech stuff hs W or shoot us an email. That address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast

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