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Smooth McGroove: How a bearded gamer became YouTube's next big star

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Move over, Bieber. There's a new YouTube singing phenomenon in town—and he makes his own chainmail.

With a massive, bushy beard and hair flowing past his shoulders—plus the aforementioned light armor—Smooth McGroove hardly looks like a typical pop star. But wait until you hear him sing.

He’s been described by fans as having the appearance of a viking and the voice of an angel, and his a cappella arrangements of popular video game music have set gamers swooning since his debut mere months ago.

"I [subscribed] in the first five seconds... that's never happened to me before," one fan admitted after being blown away by McGroove's version of a track from Final Fantasy VII.

He’s not alone. With nearly 150,000 subscribers and millions of YouTube views piling up for McGroove’s videos, it’s clear that Smooth-mania is rising.

Though he’s a relative newcomer to YouTube, McGroove is no stranger to music. He has been a drummer for 17 years—nearly as long as Justin Bieber has been alive—but it was only recently that he decided to start singing. At first, he was actually hesitant to kick off a YouTube career.

"I'm a fairly introverted guy, so it took quite a bit for me to put up my first YouTube video," he told the Daily Dot. "When I decided to start releasing my songs on the Internet, I didn't want to use my real name. I wanted to use something funny and original, and after a few days of laughing back and forth with some friends, 'Smooth McGroove' was born."

In a revelation that may come as a surprise to his growing fanbase, McGroove didn't set out to do video game music covers.

"I started off writing original songs about games that I love, and eventually I decided to cover one—'Zelda's Lullaby' from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time—using only my voice," he said. "I enjoyed it so much that I kept doing it!"

 

McGroove wasn't the only one who enjoyed the track. "Zelda's Lullaby" received over 70,000 views in less than three months. His most popular video, "Guile's Theme" from Street Fighter II, was released on April 8 and already has nearly 1.5 million views.

Since attaining notoriety on YouTube, McGroove has parlayed his fame into other corners of the Internet. Both iTunes and Louder.fm carry his album and his Facebook fan page has racked up 7,000 likes.

McGroove's repertoire includes everything from Mega Man X to Castlevania. In addition to his own favorites, he also takes fan requests and can complete a complex video project in roughly a week.

He’s adopted the multitrack style made popular by YouTubers like MysteryGuitarMan and Matt Mulholland, with as many as 12 separate McGrooves on screen at once, all stringing together a series of whistles, pops, hums, and other sounds into pitch-perfect melodies. If he has room, he’ll even throw in the game footage that corresponds with his vocal stylings. And almost every Smooth McGroove video features a cameo from his beloved black cat, Charl.

While he is proud of all of his work, McGroove admitted that he has a soft spot for role playing games in particular.

"I enjoy 'JENOVA' from Final Fantasy VII the most," he said.

As for his signature hairy appearance?

"My hair's been this long for about ten years," he said. "The beard's been around for about two years."

But unlike his facial hair, Mc Groove’s fame is still young. His plan for the time being is simple: to continue doing what his fans love.

"I'd like to keep covering video game songs a cappella as long as people enjoy watching/listening," he said. "I'd eventually like to make arrangements of an entire game soundtrack."

Paging Scooter Braun: We may have found your next project.

Photo via Smooth McGroove/Facebook


"Supernatural" finally gets a fan film—with one major twist

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Joining the ranks of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, the CW’s fantasy/horror series Supernatural now has its own fan film. Written by award-winning fantasy author Naomi Novik (of the Temeraire series) and directed by fanvidder Counteragent, The Other Side runs like a typical Supernatural episode—but with one important twist.

Slotting into the show somewhere around season 4, “The Other Side features a humanoid “dragon” who transforms the two main characters, Sam and Dean Winchester, into women. This handily provides the film with a believably Supernatural-esque problem to solve (seriously, for the Winchester brothers, this situation is barely weird at all), as well as avoiding the difficulty of tracking down a male fan actor who resembles the luminously beautiful Jensen Ackles.

Considering the show’s love of cheesy sci-fi storylines—not to mention the comedy potential of the hyper-masculine Dean Winchester having to walk a mile in women’s shoes—it’s surprising that Supernatural hasn’t yet featured a real episode like this. Still, The Other Side is pretty convincing. Opening with a typical “The Road So Far” sequence and a short scene with the “real” Sam and Dean, this fan film seems authentic enough that aside from some unavoidable budget issues, it could easily be a lost episode from the show. The only thing missing is Dean’s 1967 Chevy Impala, which was probably a little harder to get hold of than most props. 

Genderswapped characters are a popular fanfiction trope, particularly for sources that don’t have many female characters to begin with. And for a show with a predominantly female audience, Supernatural is known for some surprisingly poor representation of women. After eight seasons on the air, Cracked.com’s Supernatural female characters chart still mostly holds true: If you’re a woman on this show, you’re probably either evil or doomed to die an early death, and you almost certainly look like an underwear model.

If anything, The Other Side isn’t just a sign of this fandom’s devotion to the show—it also highlights the gender imbalance on a “normal” episode of the show. Even if you don’t count the briefly female-bodied Sam and Dean, The Other Side already features a wider variety of female characters than your average episode of Supernatural—and it certainly doesn’t suffer from it. 

Released in three parts, The Other Side will continue on May 7 and conclude on May 14. Until then, the Counteragent Films blog has production notes from the film’s two-year creation, as well as some stills from later in the episode. 

Image via Counteragent

A trip through history with 150 video game backgrounds

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If you grew up playing video games like Street Fighter II or Samurai Showdown, chances are the only thing you focused on was figuring out the right button combination to beat the pulp out of your opponent. 

What you probably didn't realize: With every fight, you were getting a subtle history lesson.

In each one of these early fighting games, developers like Capcom created intricate moving backgrounds in which their characters would fight in front of. Some backgrounds took the minimalistic approach, having only one element animated like a running fountain. While others featured a plethora of animation, like this one of a hilarious Japanese car accident. Yet each background provided players with a glimpse into places like Japan, China, and Africa. 

A collection of 150 of these beautiful backgrounds as GIFs was posted on Reddit about a week ago. In the thread, redditor anothergaijin figured out where the real-life inspiration for some of the scenes had come from.

Statues at Okinawa


Photo by boviate

Japanese bathhouse 


Photo by heiwa4126

View from a traditional Japanese residence


Photo by john weiss

Japanese shopping district (shotengai)


Photo by michaelvito

Tori Gates leading to Mount Fuji


Photo by 1la


Check out the rest of the backgrounds below.

The Morning GIF: Dispatches from the Juggalo camp

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Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

They came wearing face paint and spitting lyrics about hatchets, gangbangers, and "the mighty death pop." The higher the crowd's hands went, the more diet Faygo cola the Insane Clown Posse (ICP) and a cadre of masked cretins dumped on their heads. And when the horrorcore rappers from Detroit had dispensed with more than 200 bottles of cheap soda, ICP rushed off the stage and disappeared into the night aboard a Chrysler minivan.

This is how I spent my Cinco de Mayo, and it's one I will never forget.

For as long as I've worked at the Daily Dot, ICP has never ceased to fascinate me or the world, for that matter. The group was founded in 1989 by friends Joseph "Violent J" Bruce and Joseph "Shaggy 2 Dope" Utsler. Since then, the duo has sold more than 7 million albums, been featured in a documentary and profiled in Wired magazine, and fostered the culture of Juggalos—that is, ICP fans who wear face paint and use phrases like "whoop whoop" to greet one another. Despite claims from Bruce and Utsler that Juggalos are good people who are just misunderstood, some fans have been linked to illicit activity. In 2011 ICP and its juggalos were classified as a gang by the FBI; ICP is suing.

And yet while a few Juggalos may have ruined it for the rest, that hasn't diminished the group's familial atmosphere. 

"It's great to see you guys," one random Juggalo in a ICP jersey told my friend Kenny and me as we rested against the wall of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.'s Chance Theater, waiting for the show to start. "Love the design."

He was referring to our black and white face paint we had donned in homage to Bruce and Utsler courtesy of Kenny's girlfriend:

   

Other Juggalos with painted faces got a similar reaction—even from complete strangers. Some people even received hugs. Then the lights dimmed. 

"I'm scared man," Kenny said to me, as the crowd roared. "Faygo just doesn't sound right."

Kenny was correct. Over the next 90 minutes, two-liter bottles of Faygo smashed against the ceiling and speakers after being shaken by the band and its entourage. One bottle which was shaken by a roadie dressed as a demented clown crashed into the face of a fan near near me. The man grimaced in pain as he leaned over on his knees. As I approached to see if he needed help, he reached for the now dented bottle on the floor, and cheered before tossing it toward the stage. 

"This is f*****g crazy," Kenny told me as a stray bottle of Faygo sprayed us. "These people are crazy."

"No," I answered. "They're just Juggalos."

Images by Fernando Alfonso III

Amplifier Worship: A Spotify introduction to Boris

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Leave it to Boris to tour behind an import-only album, self-released more than a decade ago.

The most important indie rock band that you've likely never heard, Boris has never been one for conventionality. 

Billed "from the past, the present and through to the future," the Japanese iconoclasts are performing 2000’s Flood—a climactic, 70-minute post-rock suite—in its entirety for the opening night of their current U.S. tour, followed by a career retrospective.

It’s actually the concept of the second evening that I have a harder time wrapping my head around. Since forming at Tokyo's Musashino Art University in 1992, Boris has defied categorization, along with anything even remotely resembling a “hit.” The band exists in a state of constant transition, as if determined to push the boundaries of rock music in all directions, with the distinction between albums at times as drastic as Radiohead from OK Computer to Kid A.

In the simplest of terms, Boris is the penultimate power trio, capable of the amphetamine rush of Motörhead, Earth’s slow-as-molasses drone, and the cinematic triumph of Explosions in the Sky, often times in a single number. Petite guitarist Wata doesn’t shred—she cleaves, operating an E-bow like a laser beam. Takeshi’s dual guitar/bass riffs shift like tectonic plates while drummer Atsuo powers the operation, intuitive but commanding.

“There's something really interesting in their embracing of so many forms of music,” director Jim Jarmusch, who spotlighted the band on soundtrack to The Limits of Control, told me. “They play like jazz musicians in that they're listening and reacting to what they're building. It's so transporting, like landscapes they take you through.”

Building a Spotify retrospective for Boris, presumably like culling a set list for the tour, is no easy feat. For starters, a significant amount of band’s catalog, from Flood to 1996 debut Absolutego, isn’t available for streaming. Vinyl pressings tend to error on the side of limited edition, especially for the imports, and the group tends to release multiple versions of the same album, with alternate track listings, bonus material, and serious discrepancies between the Japanese and stateside versions. The Japanese version of Smile, for example, is actually an alternate version produced and mixed White Heaven’s You Ishihara. (Neither release is available on Spotify.)

“In a lot of ways, some of this material is not meant to be readily available,” Greg Anderson of SunnO))) and Southern Lord Records noted. “Boris looks at music almost as art projects. They need to create and get things out of their system so they can move on to the next idea.”

Even still, there’s enough material on Spotify to cull a beginner’s guide to Boris’s merch booth.

This playlist opens with exit music, the celestial “Farewell” from 2006 critical breakthrough Pink, and closes with “Feedbacker,” a live, 35-minute perfect storm of eerie suspense—the pelts of white noise from longtime collaborator Merzbow crackling in the distance first, then circling closer, until it’s hailing on windshields. Denting.

In the nearly two hours in between, there’s the full arc of Boris’s trajectory: maximum psych-blues of Akuma No Uta (“Ibitsu”), the cackling ambiance of Cosmos, and the band’s more recent J-pop explorations (“Black Original”). There’s “Afterburner,” which sounds like a John Lee Hooker 45 at half speed and played backwards, and “The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep),” a fatal hymn with SunnO))) and Jesse Skyes.

It’s a study in extremes: abrasive yet beautiful, blown-out but understated—and despite the distinct language barrier, none of it gets lost in translation.

"Translation is only a tool for the listener to picture the music,” Atsuo once told me. "Ultimately, we try to make music that lets people discover something new no matter how many times they listen to it. We aren't expecting listeners to understand our music. We just want to create an experience for them."

Photo by Sandy Carson

"Maker vs. Marker": The ultimate Street Fighter showdown

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One artist's animation has shattered the fourth wall.

Jonny Lawrence, a U.K.-based storyboard artist, goes head-to-head against his creation in a stop-motion animation battle reminiscent of Street Fighter.

Drawn on a whiteboard, it's Lawrence's hand against Street Fighter’s Akuma, who’s meditating until the Lawrence starts poking around.

These two pull out more moves in a battle of resourcefulness. It’s like watching an alternate version of rock-paper-scissors set in Street Fighter. All they're really missing is the health meter at the top of the screen.

The concept of an animator taking on his own art has already been tackled in a number of cartoons. SpongeBob SquarePants had to defeat a doodle of himself brought to life in one episode of the long-running show. Daffy Duck was tormented by an unseen animator in a 1953 short, and Alan Becker even battled a number of stick figures he intended to torment in Flash interface in a number of videos on DeviantART.

All of these times, the creator ultimately won by deleting or erasing his opponent. Unlike the other animators, however, Lawrence doesn't use his access to a pencil or computer program to thwart his art and instead focuses on blunt force.

And left to its own devices, the animation can finally get the upper hand in this smackdown.

Now all we need is to add the hand as a playable Street Fighter character.

Photo via Jonny Lawrence/YouTube

Watch redditors get intentionally banned from an online kids' game

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Whether it's seeing how many times you can flip a car in Grand Theft Auto III or trying to draw things with bullets on the walls of GoldenEye 007, avid gamers have had a knack for at making a game's quirks more fun than the game itself.

There’s one group of gamers who have taken that ethos to extremes in Club Penguin, a massive, kid-friendlymultiplayer game where users play minigames and interact with one another online as different colored penguins. Only instead of seeing how far the game’s limits can be pushed, these gamers want to see what it takes to get banned.

For the past two months, the Reddit forum r/BannedFromClubPenguin has tracked the different ways users have been banned from game and rewarded them with upvotes, the social news site's internal ranking mechanism. (Club Penguin is aimed at ages 6-14 but open for anyone—including adult trolls, apparently—to play.)

“The purpose of this subreddit is to make people laugh at everyone getting banned from Club Penguin for using offensive language, like that witty title in this post, or something more extreme like 'omg stop farting u fucking asshole fuuuuuuuck,'" redditor KangaDude873 wrote Thursday in a post featuring r/BannedFromClubPenguin as the subreddit of the day. "Or something like that. Don’t really know why, but there’s something amusing about swearing/getting banned from a server in a kids game such as Club Penguin."

Such antics have been a regular fixture on Club Penguin since 2009, when 4chan's video game community, /v/, began raiding the children's game with obscene content and occasionally crippled its servers.

One popular 4chan prank involved masses of trolls signing onto the game with purple penguin avatars, and acting “racist”toward other “inferior” colors of penguin. Know Your Meme has a thorough entry about this so-called “Purple Republic,” which apparently peaked in 2011.

To date, r/BannedFromClubPenguin has collected more than 4,000 readers and hundreds of screeshots of gamers being banned. The following are some of the funniest images out there (many may contain language not suitable for work).

By jameso527

By RockasaurusRex

By lamescreename

By xerosus

By JoHnFkEr

Image by Fernando Alfonso III

The Morning GIF: 11 Doctors, 1 half-century run

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Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

Over the course of its 50-year run, the cult TV show Doctor Who has had 11 different actors assume the role of its title character. 

While each Doctor has looked a little bit different, the one thing they've all had in common is running.

Whether facing an alien or a robot parrot, each Doctor has always used his brain and his legs to get out of trouble and save the day. This is what inspired deviantART user Randy Mayor to create the following illustration featuring each Doctor Who actor and their famous time-traveling machine TARDIS.

"I struggled with an idea for a good two months and didn't come up with this particular concept until recently," Mayor wrote on deviantART. "But I am so satisfied with how this turned out!! The idea was to play with the word "run" as it is the longest running sci-fi show (and still going strong) The hardest part about this concept was trying to get the right colors for the earlier Doctors."

The illustration has been a big hit on deviantART, collecting more than 10,000 views and 80 comments. It has also inspired the elusive Tumblr GIF artist known as madebyavbh to transform the illustration into a spectacular animation. Since the GIF was posted late Monday evening, it has already collected more than 2,500 notes.

Art by Randy Mayor; GIF by madebyavbh


YouTube Trend Map confirms America loves country music, "True Blood"

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You now can see what everyone in the U.S. is watching and sharing on YouTube—and it’s mostly country music and True Blood

YouTube Trends, which has highlighted rising YouTube videos and trends since 2010, has launched a map that shows the most viewed or most shared YouTube video in a particular region in the last 12-24 hours.

 

"The Trends Map is the result of all the great feedback you've given us from the Trends Dashboard, as we keep working to help you find great videos and channels on YouTube," Kevin Allocca wrote.

The service is currently available in the U.S. and highlights the regions "large enough to consistently return enough results with some reliability”—in other words, it works for most major metro areas.

You can view the most popular video by region and break it down by gender and age, although so far, most demographics are watching the same few videos.

 

 

A majority of the country can't stop watching a video of two Florida water polo teams getting heated during the postgame handshake or a Spanish PSA for child abuse.

As for the most-shared videos, we can't seem to get enough country music. Overall, Jackson's rendition of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" at George Jones's funeral and a Blake Shelton music video were the top videos for 45 percent of regions.

The latest trailer for True Blood is still being passed around days after its release, and it's the most shared video by women.

That’s not to say a trending local story can’t crack the most-shared list, though. A Charles Ramsey interview is the most popular video in the Cleveland-Akron, Ohio area, while thousands in Juneau, Alaska are sharing a cell phone video from April which resulted in an investigation of the two police officers involved.

While we may know what people are watching, the map has its limits—it still can’t tell us why some of these videos are so popular. 

Photo via trueblood/YouTube

 

 

Model's website suspended after not-so-private fight with photog

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Once upon a time, a starry-eyed hopeful met a man with long lens and a big portfolio, and it was bromance at first sight.

That was three months ago. Now it's a model vs. photographer battle to the bottom of the Internet.

If you, a prospective model-ogler, were to have swung by the site of doe-eyed brunet Jordan Selph yesterday, you'd have seen something amazing. Something appalling. Something so horribly, unspeakably, jaw-droppingly, eye-gogglingly awful that it was, in fact, wonderful.

And NSFW!

Screenshot from JordanSelph.com

"I did it!

"I finally DID IT! I got so frustrated with my own life, lack of importance, and inability to be authentic, so I decided to vent and hurt someone who was REALLY good to me. My Photag (that is the industry word for “Professional Photographer”, just so you know). He did over 3600 pictures for me, and NEVER once charged me a dime. He believed in me, my ability, my career aspirations, and shared the dream I had. But boy did I screw him over!"

The site, adorned with bed-lolling nude shots of Selph, went on to claim (in multicolored fonts of refreshingly variable heights and sizes, though all in BOLD, as you can well imagine) that Selph had slandered his beneficent photog(tag?) on Facebook, claiming the shutterbug had scarpered with Selph's tax refund. 

"I went on Facebook and blatantly lied about him. Told everyone I know that he STOLE my IRS Tax Refund from me, even though I have failed to simply call the IRS and inquire about the status of my return. … I just chose to be a small, mean, insignificant man, and lash out at SOMEONE. What I failed to do was tell the WHOLE story….so, I am dedicating this site to COMING CLEAN, and EXPOSING MYSELF to the world for who I REALLY am….nothing is off limits."

For his revenge, the unnamed photographer (who also appears to be the webmaster) promised to update the site throughout the day, adding the soon-to-be-hot-but-currently-empty pages: How I Screwed Over My Photographer, My Naked Existance [sic, oh it's all so sic], and ALL the photos I NEVER wanted you to see (XXX Rated).

A now-poignant Google cache of the site includes a forum entry in which Selph lauds his friend and photographer Jarrett Simonds. “My photographer is a great guy located here in the Brentwood area, Jarrett Simonds. He provides knowledge, that not only have I been looking for in a friend but as well as a partner.” That, however, was yesterday.

A quick perusal of Selph's Facebook fan page (and is there a sadder collection of words than "Jordan Selph, Public Figure, 65 Likes?" We think not. We very much think not) shows our protagonist dutifully pointing people to his website from Feb. 21. Back then it wasn't very content-rich, and in fact the thumbnail of the site on Facebook clearly says "Copyright Jarrett Simonds." He also uploaded 20 photos of himself with the notation they were copyright Jarrett Simonds, along with several other galleries of photos credited to different photographers. A quick Google search for Simonds reveals he's a photographer from the same area of Tennessee as Selph. On a hunch, a quick LinkedIn search turned up a computer tech also from Brentwood, Tenn., by that name, using the same photo as Simonds does on his Facebook page, and listing a past as a Ford model.  A peek at his portfolio reveals a familiar Selphish someone, or did until...

Screenshot from JarrettSimonds.com

Bluehost, the site host, suspended it for unspecified reasons Tuesday. Being fair-minded and impartial, they also suspended Selph's site, perhaps thinking that both sides could use a little time-out.

Incidentally, both sites appear to be subsidiaries of TechnologyThatWorksToday.com, which, as of yesterday, no longer works. Whoever set it up thought ahead and purchased some privacy protection, so his name doesn’t turn up in a WhoIs search. Still, it’s not the world’s farthest stretch to imagine who owns that URL, and set up both websites.

We reached out on Facebook to both Selph and Simonds for comment but haven’t heard back.

Back on March 12, Selph posted on Simonds's Facebook page a poignant message. "My name is Jordan, and I was wondering if you think I could model? 3 months later...We have built a 'brand' that would've taken 2 years. Oh, and a friendship that makes me feel a thousand emotions at once. Love you brother ♥" 

Now, less than a month later, nobody is smizing.

Photo via Mitko_Denev/Flickr

The Morning GIF: Iman Shumpert's insane dunk on the Pacers

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Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

After what he did to the Indiana Pacers Tuesday night, New York Knicks guard Iman Shumpert may need to change his last name to Jumpert.

During the second quarter of the game at Madison Square Garden, the 22-year-old threw down one of the most monstrous dunks of the entire playoffs following a 3-point miss from teammate Chris Copeland.

"I think I was trying to make a statement," Shumpert said after the game, according to ESPN. "That was the most perfect miss. It came off so perfect. It was beautiful. I wanted to win this game so bad. I knew we needed this game." 

Shumpert finished the game with 15 points, six rebounds, three assists, and one steal which helped the Knicks trounce the Pacers 105-79. The second-round playoff series between the teams is now tied 1-1. 

Images by Fernando Alfonso III

Guess what percentage of Machinima's audience is female

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Machinima is one of YouTube’s largest multi-channel networks generating over 2 billion (with a “b”) views per month worldwide across its 7,600-plus channels and 213-plus million subscribers that traditionally tend to produce and watch programming geared towards hardcore gamers.

The network-slash-new-media-studio is also self-defined as the “programming movement that captures the hard-to-reach 18 to 34-year-old male demographic.”

Given the above, and the fact that Machinima is your go-to destination if you want to check out some sick Splinter Cell: Blacklist gameplay or a look at what Sonic the Hedgehog is up to in a post-Sega world, you’d think that the majority of the “programming movement’s” audience is male. And you’d be right. But just how vast is that majority? Three years ago it was over 90 percent.

As of March 2010, 91.2 percent of Machinima’s audience was in possession of a Y chromosome. Though that was still in the network’s adolescent years, when the gaming industry had not reached total world domination by continuously releasing the biggest entertainment launches of all-time, the percentage of female gamers was not yet bumping 50 percent, and sci-fi-niche-turned-mainstream hits with mass appeal across both sexes (i.e. The Hunger Games) had not yet become global phenomenons.

So, given the above, what percentage of Machinima’s audience would you guess is male today? As of March 2013, it was 75.6 percent. That means over the last 36 months, Machinima’s female audience has seen an almost 300 percent increase, from 8.8 percent of the network’s total share to 24.4 percent. At this rate, nearly half of Machinima’s audience will be female by March 2016.

Just like the demographics of the gaming industry at largeMachinima’s core fan is changing.

By 

Photo courtesy of NextGenUpdate

There's an app that lets you play dress-up with Drake

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We are truly living in the future. We live in a time in which pretty much all of recorded music is at your fingertips, you could eradicate paper today and it wouldn't be that big of a deal, and you can use a fake cigarette to get real nicotine into your body. I would seriously be surprised if we didn't figure out hoverboards pretty soon, too, on a Back to the Future II tip. So yeah, technology is wondrous and beautiful, something that's never been more apparent to me than when I was confronted with an iPhone app called Dress Drake, which is literally just an iPhone app where you put clothes on Drake. It's kind of like when you create a character at the beginng of The Sims, only, y'know, with Drake.

Dress up Drake made by a company called Happy Girl Games, which seems to only make games in which you dress someone up, whether they're members of One Direction, Adele, Hello Kitty, Jennifer Lawrence, Joe Jonas, or merely a generic "Pretty Princess." You get a few options of shirts to dress Drake in (see the above image), plus a few pairs of pants as well as shoes and various accessories. The app description is amazing and beautiful and real, featuring such wonderful pitches as, "A big fan of Drake? Ever wanted to TAKE CARE of his fashion choices as his personal stylist?" and, "If you like dress up games, this one is hte BEST I EVER HAD! Dress Drake up in FANCY outfits when he's out making HEADLINES!"

I'd have to ask a lawyer about the absolute legalities of this app, but it just seems like it can't actually be legal. They're using Drake's likeness to get downloads of their app; plus you can make Drake wear this:

...in front of that background. Meanwhile, the app plays an elevator muzak version of "Take Care" while you dress Drake up. Download it quick because it's probably going to get shut down by OVOXOTHEMAN soon. With the knowledge that this app will be eradicated from the face of the earth soon, here are some of the best outfits I dressed Drake up in, with their official Noisey Style Outfit Names:

"THE 'IT'S HOT OUTSIDE, BUT ONLY FROM THE WAIST UP IF YOU ARE ME'"

 

"THE 2006"

Read the full story on Noisey.

By Drew Millard

Vampires shooting up heroin is your Morning GIF

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Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

The typical feelings most people have after watching Requiem for a Dream are of sadness, shock, and disbelief. For Tumblr artist Yuriy "MiRon" MiRonoff, on the other hand, the scenes of Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly maneuvering heroin-filled needles into their veins reminded him of vampires.

And GIF animations.

"It was so heavy and powerful for me that [it left an] impression [over the] next few days," MiRonoff told the Daily Dot. "So I decided to make my response to this great movie creating my vampire GIF." It's just three short scenes: First the vampire bites a woman, then we see the blood's reaction, and finally, there's the eye's reaction.

It took about a night for MiRonoff, of Kiev, Ukraine, to create the GIF using a Wacom tablet. MiRonoff posted the GIF on Tumblr about three months ago, and it has continued to garner attention. On Wednesday it was featured on Tumblr's GIF tag page and has collected more than 220 notes.

Art by MiRon

"Burger Lab" takes cooking to an absurd new level

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“Some commenters have suggested we tone it down a little,” explains host Richard Blais in the first episode of the second season of Burger Lab“take it easy on the sound effects, maybe go less epic with the music, not make it feel like every time we flip a burger that the universe is coming to an end. We thought long and hard about it, and the answer is NO.”

This  introduction sets a perfect stage not just for Burger Lab, but for the entire landscape of online cooking shows. Ever since Epic Meal Time‘s creators rose from “a bunch of dudes screwing around in the kitchen” to “drunk bacon YouTube gods”, every show is trying to do cooking with a drunkerfattier,messier, or just plain bigger twist, and no series exemplifies that trend better than Burger Lab.

The first episode of season two, which is available on the Tasted channel, has Blais, a former Top Chef All-Stars winner, cooking up what he calls a “Spicy Po’ Boy Muffaletta Burger”. Boiled down to its essence, the episode is just showing viewers how to make good Cajun/Creole food. But Burger Lab also throws in an excessive amount of meat and carbs. Why? It’s epic, that’s why.

The new cooking show trend is reminiscent of the current tone in many popular horror movies, where a certain amount of camp and cheese is encouraged because it makes the movie that much more fun. Burger Lab (and the many shows like it) are definitely over-the-top, but the Epic Meal Time effect is a positive one. After all, if I want a show about the fine details of culinary excellence, I can turn on the TV. On the Internet, anything goes.

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Out of the top 100 Vines, these are the ones worth watching

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Vine users are already sharing five clips to Twitter every second.

That's just one of the stats to emerge from a study by video technology firm Unruly, which looked at tweets about almost 11 million Vines over the Vine community's first 100 days. 

Unruly found Vines are shared more often at weekends than they are during the week. It also shared the top 100 Vines tweeted about most often during the study period, between March 22 and April 22. Four of these videos were from brands, rather than people.

The top Vine examined in the timeframe is one shared by One Direction's Harry Styles. It picked up more than 47,000 tweets during the study period (now up to more than 48,700).

Also in the top 10 is the teaser for the new Wolverine movie, which picked up a lot of press. Familiar names such as Tyler, the Creator, Wiz Khalifa, Panic! at the Disco's Brendan Urie, and the Glee cast appear frequently in the top 100.

It's worth noting that these stats only relate to how Vines are shared on Twitter. They may be viewed many more times in the Vine app as well. Also, Vine's been around for 100 days while the study only looks at a month of Vines. 

Here are our favorite five from the top 100.

Tyler, the Creator: "SIKE!!!!!" (16,708 tweets)

Tyler seems like the kind of guy who'll do just about anything to elicit a reaction from people. Thanks to the dance party, this attempt is pretty funny.

Mike Carroll: "LOL again, this FBI agent did not have to climb this fence #manhunt" (11,015 tweets)

That poor agent's fleeting decision will endure, thanks to TV cameras picking it up. Oh, and Vine.

Will Sasso: "I Will Always Love You" (7,076 tweets)

The lemon materializing in his mouth before spitting it out is a running gag in comedian Sasso's vines. It's hilariously gross.

Harry Shum Jr: "Don't text and drive" (2,065 tweets)

Shum, of Glee fame, shows the dangers of texting while driving a really slow golf cart on a studio lot.

Mac Miller: "Airport dodging" (1,570 tweets)

The rapper's busy travel schedule makes him an airport expert. Here's a tip on dodging crowds.

H/T Social Times | Photo via Mac Miller/Vine

This computer program can teach itself to beat Super Mario Bros.

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It's fairly well known that the first part of the first level of Super Mario Bros. was designed to teach new players how to jump on bad guys, eat mushrooms, and so forth. But what about players that aren't human? Could a computer be programmed to learn how to play classic games? Work done by computer scientist Dr. Tom Murphy suggests that yes, AI can learn to game.

The video above features Murphy explaining the results of a paper he recently published and presented at the 2013 SigBovik conference. (SigBovik is held annually on April 1, and prominently features spoof research, although Murphy clearly states that his research isn't fake. For posterity's sake, I've yet to find any sources claiming this is a prank.) In short, his goal was to develop a program that could learn from a user what it takes to beat a game, and then apply that to its own methods.

"The basic idea is to deduce an objective function from a short recording of a player's inputs to the game," he writes. "The objective function is then used to guide search over possible inputs, using an emulator. This allows the player's notion of progress to be generalized in order to produce novel gameplay."

As you can see by the early gameplay testing (starting around the 6:00 mark in the above video), the first iteration of Murphy's program (a pair of them, actually) basically mashed buttons and got nowhere. But as its goals and methods were refined (scoring a lot of points was one static goal, aside from simply "winning") by Murphy, it slowly gets better.

As he notes in the paper's title, Murphy's system is based on lexicographic ordering, which is essentially the mathematical technique for figuring out how a set of data should be sorted. The first of his programs he used, called LearnFun, recorded all of the output data from his gameplay–everything from the number of coins he had to how far right he scrolled–to learn what values could be manipulated and which ones changed as a result of that.

He then fed that data into his second program, PlayFun, which essentially tried to figure out which combination of input values would result in the most desirable outputs–mainly, these goals were scoring lots of points and scrolling as far right as possible.

Read the full story on Motherboard

By Derek Mead | Photo via labnol/Flickr

One Direction fandom adds billionaire record exec to conspiracy theory

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The Internet is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories—9/11 truthers, moon landing denialists, people who believe that the world is secretly ruled by an elite caste of reptiloid aliens hidden inside human flesh-suits. But for a true connoisseur, One Direction fandom provides some of the best conspiracy theories around. 

While plenty of Directioners are as reasonable as the next pop fan, some are embroiled in a cultlike belief in “Larry Stylinson”: a secret relationship between singers Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles. With many fans convinced that the band’s homophobic “Management” are forcing “Larry” into the closet, the lack of hard evidence for the relationship only proves the effectiveness of the cover-up. Never mind the fact that Tomlinson has called Larry theories “bullshit,” and Management are seemingly unconcerned about any rumours inspired by Styles’ close friendship with gay DJ Nick Grimshaw. 

The latest Larry theory involves Tomlinson’s longtime girlfriend, English university student Eleanor Calder. You’d think that a straight relationship would put a damper on Larry Stylinson, but many believe that Eleanor is a beard hired by Management. And according to a very popular new post by Tumblr user thisisnotthem, Eleanor is also the daughter of the billionaire co-founder of Jive Records, Clive Calder.

This isn’t the first time such a theory has surfaced. But when 1D fan this-ismyteenagedream tried to contact Murray Calder (another suspect for Eleanor’s dad) last year, she received death threats from Eleanor’s own fans. This time round, Tumblr seemed more receptive of thisisnotthem’s research—which is surprising, because she went way beyond just tweeting some guy who happened to be named Calder.  

“I spent HOURS trying to locate her family, I went through birth certificates,marriage papers (public ones) and we even tracked down every person with the last name Calder in the UK. Hell, I even talked with 15 i REPEAT 15 calderics [fans of Eleanor Calder] and NONE of them knew her parents name.”

The post goes on to explain that Calder, as “a billionaire, a man with so much power, who has connections to the boys record label AND therefore... Management,” must surely be the origin of the Management/Eleanor conspiracy. Particularly since unlike his son, Keith, Calder’s daughter remains unnamed on Wikipedia. This daughter must be Eleanor, but Management erased her name to avoid further evidence of the conspiracy.

Photo via thisisnotthem/Tumblr

The post points out that this lack of definitive information is very suspicious. If a young woman is dating a world-famous pop star, details of her personal life and family connections should obviously be a matter of public record. Clearly, Eleanor’s lack of a significant Internet footprint is evidence that her relationship with Louis is a lie.

"But here’s the thing, if you’re a beard ( I know this because I’ve studied the background of what a beard is and what they do, and how management cooperates with her personal life) and you’re working for management they could easily lie up so much about your identy [sic]. They can fake your ENTIRE identy by giving you a fake name etc,

it’s like when people say that her name is Christina because there’s no 'Eleanor Calder' who’s signed as a student for Manchester University, though there’s a Christina Calder."

“Christina Calder,” by the way, is the remnant of a previous conspiracy theory that combines two popular Larry fandom beliefs: that Eleanor Calder is secretly a pair of twins (don’t ask), and that she was never actually enrolled at Manchester University. However, it's unclear why Management would change her first name rather than the surname that apparently connects her to a billionaire record exec. 

The next step for thisisnotthem and friends was to track down Clive Calder’s son, Keith. Unsurprisingly, @KeithCalder wasn’t particularly happy about strangers tweeting him to ask about any sisters he may or may not have. 

thisisnotthem quickly decided that Keith Calder’s defensiveness was further evidence of the Clive Calder/Eleanor/Management cover-up. However, a quick glance at his Twitter indicates that either he’s a really good liar or he doesn’t know anything about 1D or Eleanor Calder. Still, the steady stream of tweets from Larry Believers doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. 

Intriguingly, an “ex-friend” of Keith Calder then came forward to offer a different story. According to screencaps from thisisnotthem, Twitter user @nostrich claims that Keith attended "some kind of ceremony between Harry and Louis last year,” where they “got lots of gifts.” Another ex-friend appears, seconding the ceremony story. They then add, ominously, “I’ve probably said too much,” before conveniently deleting all their tweets. Is it a sure sign that Management conspired to cover up Harry and Louis’ summer wedding last year, or are people on Twitter cheerfully trolling the hell out of Larry Believers?

Moving on to compare photos of various Calders to check for facial similarities, thisisnotthem’s conspiracy exposé is an ode to Reverse Occam’s Razor: The most complicated explanation is always the truth. And with almost 4,000 notes on Tumblr, many Larry Stylinson fans seem to agree. 

As 1D conspiracy theories go, this one isn’t wholly implausible. There’s nothing to say that Clive Calder isn’t Eleanor’s father—it just doesn’t have anything to do with Larry Stylinson. If “Management” felt the need to hire a fake girlfriend for Louis Tomlinson, why would they pick the teenaged daughter of a recording executive with such a distant, tangential attachment to the band’s own record label? (Jive is a now-defunct subsidiary of Sony, 1D's label.) And what’s Eleanor getting out of this? Not money, if her father is already a billionaire. And not fame, because she and Louis are a very private couple—particularly when compared to Harry Styles’ regular appearances in the tabloids. We like the idea that the whole thing might actually be the other way round: Eleanor Calder, billionaire heiress, using her father’s money to hire famous boyband star Louis Tomlinson to be her boyfriend. 

If the popularity of the Clive Calder post proves anything, it’s that there are few things more intimidating than a 1D fan with a mission. Using the kind of obsessive detective work usually reserved for professional background checks, Larry Believers have systematically investigated a middle-aged man and his son in the hopes that it'll yield some gay conspiracy “evidence” to forward their cause. 

As Tumblr user freekicks put it, “If we told the 1D shippers that a man named jimmy hoffa had proof larry stylinson was real, they'd have his body found and dug up in 45 minutes, tops.”

Oh, and if you Google Clive Calder, the first result after Wikipedia is now the One Direction conspiracy post. That’s above his page on Forbes.com. 

UPDATE: In case you missed Nostrich's post on Buzzfeed, revealing that he had egged on the Larry believers (with his friend Keith Calder's permission), the answer is "cheerfully trolling."

Photo via DeviantArt/RockitRocket-RIR

Chris Hadfield, the Internet's favorite astronaut, sings "Space Oddity"

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David Bowie has been upstaged—hundreds of miles away.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, who traveled to the International Space Station in December, has spent his time in orbit as an Internet celebrity. From tweeting at William Shatner to hosting Reddit AMA sessions from outer space, Hadfield won the hearts of many online communities.

Hadfield is set to return to Earth tomorrow. As a result, he decided to take advantage of zero gravity one last time and properly close his experience aboard the ISS.

In a video posted to YouTube on May 12 and linked to Reddit by Hadfield himself, the astronaut performs a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity." The video features a guitar-strumming Hadfield floating throughout the station and occasionally looking at the Earth through its windows. It's simply stunning. So far, it's received more than 1 million views.

Elton John, be warned: "Rocket Man" might be next.

More reasons we love Chris Hadfield: 

H/T HyperVocal | Screengrab via YouTube

The "Arrested Development" season 4 trailer is no illusion

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If the latest trailer is any indication, the upcoming season of Arrested Development looks like it will pick up right where the award-winning series left off in 2006.

Only there're a few changes.

George Michael and Maeby are now in college and still in some sort of pseudo-incestual relationship. Buster has a bedazzled claw instead of a hook. But GOB is still a struggling magician searching for true love.

Check out the full trailer below and catch the entire new series on Netflix on May 26. 

Photo by numberstumper/Flickr

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