The Stanley Milgram and Derren Brown YouTube Experiments
So, which came first, the bootleg video or the legitimate American TV audience?
While looking for a place to buy a video of the Stanley Milgram obedience experiment, I stumbled upon a British mentalist named Derren Brown. I proceeded to watch over a dozen video clips from his various UK television shows - for free.
- Derren Brown’s recreation of the Stanley Milgram obedience experiment
- Card-counting in blackjack
- At the art gallery
- Assault course
- Ventriloquist doll
- The undertaker’s trick
- How to take someones wallet, just by asking
- Photographic memory
- Voodoo doll
- Trains of thought
- Explanation of trains of thought (Some guy explains how Brown does it; need to listen carefully, but interesting)
- A bunch of others, which seem to have been removed within only 12 hours of when I saw them
I’ve now just discovered that Derren Brown has a show in the works coming to the Sci Fi channel. I will watch it. Here’s a legit clip from the network.
When I do finally watch the commercial broadcast of Derren Brown’s show, I will record it on my DVR. Which means I will fast-forward through all the commercials and they will make zero money off of me.
Hmm. The media companies have a little thinking to do.
I will watch a TV show because I saw unauthorized videos of the show, and I will then bypass anything that allows the owner of said videos to make any money.
In other fucked-up business model news, Penn State offers the 45-minute Milgram DVD for $330, effectively pricing any non-institutional customer out of the market, and denying themselves of who knows how much revenue. Had it been $25, I might have bought it. Instead, I kept looking and settled for this one Milgram experiment video on YouTube. (And also found this interesting video of the Asch Conformity Experiment.)
My rule of thumb: if I’m not looking to make money off of a video, I’m probably not a threat to an industry.
Still, I’m open to argument.
7 comments
Wait wait wait. Either I misunderstand how advertisers get paid, or are you saying that merely by watching the commercials, you’re giving them money?
Isn’t there a second step in there?
1. Watch commercials during the show you actually want to see.
2. Zombie like, march down to nearest Mega-Mart and purchase all products advertised.
As long as you skip step 2, it doesn’t actually matter if you do step 1, right?
When I say the TV networks will “make zero money off me”, I was speaking loosely. (Which is what you can assume I’m doing anytime you think I’m wrong.) What I meant was: I’m depriving the TV network’s advertisers from the opportunity to sell to me. Barring, of course, some kind of genius commercial that is designed for both normal speed and DVR fast-forward speed.
The big question is: how does a TV network make money, in the long term? Whether someone watches a clip on the web or records it and skips through the commercials (which is what I do 90% of the time), either way, the advertisers, and in the long run, the networks, have no way of making money.
I can think of only a few ways for them to make money:
Can you think of any other ways?
Well, I get how the tv networks make money–ADS! They pay the networks to air their commericials during prime-time, during popular shows, and if they can get the right synergy going, even sneak the product into the show itself. Can you taste the integrity for sale?
What I don’t quite get is how the advertisers are making their money. Are there any studies that show that people watch a commercial for say, Coke, and then next time they’re at the supermarket they decide to buy it?
That is, does advertising actually ever work on people?
Coke’s commercials are for branding and awareness purposes, not to get people to go out and buy a can. The moment people think “I haven’t heard much about Coke lately”, the moment their interest in it starts fading. But does advertising ever work? Are you serious?
I just don’t see it happening that much, that people see an ad for a product, in print, or on tv. Then they go out later and purchase it.
Now I’ll give you that maybe I don’t see it happening, but it still is–or maybe it’s working it’s magic on me on such a subtle level, that I’m not ever aware of it.
But for the most part, it seems people buy the same shit they’ve been buying for years, and it’s whatever their parents bought when they were a kid. It’s not some newfangled product they saw a shiny fancy ad for.
I think ultimately it depends. There are a lot of categories of advertising, and some types work better than others and/or are easier to test for effectiveness. It’s easier to test an infomercial for a home cleaning product, for example, than a commercial for a perfume that’s been on the market for a year. (E.g., did perfume sales remain flat rather than decrease because of the advertising?) And car commercials can be judged for effectiveness based on whether the number of test drives went up.
The so-called “branding” advertising is the stuff I think is most often ineffective. And so much advertising is created to be entertaining rather than to sell the product or the company. For a lot of advertisers, it’s clear they have one of two goals: to apologize for the presumed boredom induced by their product, or simply to get off on being able to waste a marketing budget on being the center of attention.
On a similar topic, I like what Seth Godin says about companies who sponsor a sports or entertainment promotion:
Personally, I think this is probably the most effective commercial ever made:
Always use a condom
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