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"Brave" fans fight back against Disney's Merida makeover

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Merida, from the animated movie Brave, has just been inducted into the pantheon of Disney Princesses. As the daughter of a king and the star of a Disney/Pixar movie, she does seem like an obvious choice. The only problem is that prior to being officially crowned as a Disney Princess, she was given a makeover.

In Brave, Merida has messy, curly hair to match her rebellious personality. She wears a long, plain dress, looks like normal girl in her early teens, and is seldom seen without her bow and arrow. Disney’s “Princess” Merida tells a different story: flowing hair, a more “adult” figure and facial features, and an off-the-shoulder dress with sparkly details. Instead of having a quiver full of arrows slung around her hips, she accessorizes with a stylish belt.


Photo via therotoscopers

Brave fans are far from happy about this new development, but few are as annoyed as Merida’s original co-creator, Oscar-winning director Brenda Chapman. Since she based Merida on her own daughter and intended the character to be a role model to young girls, it’s not surprising that she’s angry about Disney’s alterations. In fact, these are not the only changes that were made to her original vision, as Chapman was fired halfway through filming and replaced by a male director.

In an email to the Marin Independent Journal, she described the makeover as “a blatantly sexist marketing move based on money,” continuing:

“When little girls say they like it because it's more sparkly, that's all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy 'come hither' look and the skinny aspect of the new version. It's horrible! Merida was created to break that mold.”

Significantly, there is even a scene in Brave where Merida turns up her nose at being forced to wear a sparkly gown rather than her more practical everyday outfit.

Girls’ toy, book and media website A Mighty Girl has already set up a Change.org petition to protest against this new version of Merida. In a request for Disney to “keep Merida Brave”, they write:

“Merida was the princess that countless girls and their parents were waiting for—a strong, confident, self-rescuing princess ready to set off on her next adventure with her bow at the ready... by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value—to be recognized as true princesses—they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty.”

With the traditionally “girly” princess demographic already covered by old favorites like Cinderella, Belle, and Snow White, it seems strange that Disney would feel the need to homogenize the group further. Characters like Merida and Mulan widen the audience for Disney Princesses, and it doesn’t make sense to alienate fans who were introduced to the franchise by the tough, independent heroine of Brave.

Just ask the people who signed A Mighty Girl’s petition. There are already more than 100,000 of them.

Photo via Tumblr / aclashofcaps


Inside the making of "Shaun of the Dead"

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Edgar Wright's latest blog project is a slice of fried gold.

Wright, cowriter and director of the glorious zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, is providing readers of his blog with a day-by-day look at the production on his cult film, 10 years after he started production.

Wright's team went through "personal photos, stills, rushes and continuity photos to give you an unique day by day account of our shoot."

On the first day of shooting—May 11, 2003—Wright filmed perhaps the most complex shot of the movie: a long Steadicam shot of Shaun (Simon Pegg) going to the newsagent's, blissfully unaware of the zombies on his way there.


 

On the second day, Wright and crew were shooting a zombie scene with plenty of gory makeup in the street close to where a kids' birthday party was taking place. Day three saw a logistical headache: a low loader, a trailer on which car footage is often shot, couldn't easily make it around the streets of North London. 

Wright has always been fairly generous in providing fans with a behind-the-scenes look at his work, dating back to his days directing Spaced, a cult TV show starring Pegg. The DVD set of the show contains an option to see where all the pop culture references came from. The DVDs and Blu-rays of his movies contain extensive backstage featurettes to give fans a real insight.

Even if you're not a fan, you should check out the blog anyway—if only to see how much zombie shooting a director was able to cram into a single day. Impressive.

Photos via Edgar Wright Here

Lizzie Bennet Diaries team takes on "Sanditon," Austen's unfinished novel

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Fans of the recently completed Lizzie Bennet Diaries are in luck, as one of their beloved characters from the hit webseries returns today with Sanditon, an all-new mini-series adaptation of Jane Austen’s only unfinished major work.  

A teaser promo shortly after the end of the LBD, and a trailer last week expanded the production team’s universe of interconnected stories, as LBD character Gigi Darcy—more well-known as Georgiana Darcy from Pride and Prejudice—stepped out of her own YouTube series and into the worlds of other Austen stories.

A novel Austen began and abandoned just a few months before her death, Sanditon is, on the surface, the story of a developing seaside resort, perhaps similar to the seaside town of Worthing, where Austen spent some time. In the novel’s 11 existing chapters, however, Austen focuses less on the town’s real estate and more on the superficialities and distorted realities of the people who inhabit it, as they attempt to spread the town’s fame far and wide. In this sense, perhaps Sanditon owes more to Bath, another seaside resort that Austen spent time in—and loathed.

In the LBD team’s take on the story, Gigi becomes a major character who visits Sanditon under the guise of demonstrating new technology for her brother’s media company. Transmedia producer Alexandra Edwards, who worked on both the Diaries and Sanditon, tells the Daily Dot that the production team just didn’t want to let Gigi go:

I think we all felt a little attached to Gigi Darcy, who emerged during The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as a strong, sweet, fun, and smart character.  She deserved to [do] more than just serve as a vehicle for demonstrating George Wickham's terrible behavior.  And the fans really responded to her, so we felt like that was a great way to kind of carry them into this miniseries.

Sanditon is meant to be a short teaser series before the LBD production team’s next “big” adaptation—whatever it may be. But whether or not the LBD team chooses to leave Sanditon unfinished or attempt to give it a conclusion, fans looking for a light summer romance may be in for a shock. Full of Austen’s typical sparkling and sometimes scathing social satire, Sanditon is nonetheless something of an outlier—not just because it’s unfinished, but because it doesn’t explicitly deal with romance. In fact, it’s been called an “anti-romance,” though almost all of the many attempts by modern writers to finish it have been romantic in nature. “There was vanity in all they did, as well as in all they endured,” Austen writes of the fairytale town’s inhabitants.

The novel’s shifting point of view makes it uniquely adaptable for the LBD’s vlog-style narrative format. In this adaptation, updates from the series’ all-new cast and interviews with Gigi and her smartphone seem to be replacing the novel’s epistolary format. The smartphone technology known as “Domino” proved to be something of a deus ex appina during the last leg of the LBD, but it’s also the window that will connect each of the universes to each other, presumably ensuring that LBD fans have plenty of reasons to keep watching this lesser-known sibling of Austen’s novels.

For the LBD Team to take on the task of bringing the town and all its quirky inhabitants to life is a daunting task, but in typical LBD form, they’ve thrown all their considerable transmedia resources at the project, creating Twitter accounts for all the characters, Facebook pages, numerous Tumblr accounts, and an interactive web page for the city complete with more video footage. And many of the fans have already responded by creating their own town characters and interacting with the town’s biggest events, such as the town’s ongoing rivalry with rival resort town, Dolphinton.

“My biggest hope for the show is that people respond to it,” says Edwards, “however they choose.  

If they just want to watch Sanditon's story play out in the videos, that's great.  Or, if they want to get more in-depth and become part of Sanditon, that's also great.  I hope the world of Sanditon grows beyond our show, and keeps growing long after the miniseries has ended.

Screengrab via PemberleyDigital/YouTube

Joss Whedon is alive and on Twitter

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Few possibly fake Twitter accounts have burst onto the scene with as much gusto as Joss Whedon's possibly fake Twitter account. When @JossActual showed up on Twitter this morning, it was with a wit and verve that can only be described as, well, Whedonesque.

For the past few weeks, Joss has been tweeting from the official Twitter account for his upcoming film release, the widely anticipated Much Ado About Nothing, which Joss and friends filmed at his house over a 12-day period during the making of last year's Avengers, and only publicly released after his legions of fans went "WE WANT THIS."

Apparently one little taste of Twitter glory was not enough—not if the official Twitter for his upcoming production of Agent S.H.I.E.L.D. (Coulson Lives!) is to be believed:

A tweet from the Film Society of Lincoln Center also seemed to confirm Joss's Twitter was the real deal, as did his Twitter profile photo, which is unique to his account. 

Besides, we can't think of any sockpuppet Twitter accounts who would bother to make sure that the second person Joss Whedon followed was... comedian Louis C.K.

What can we say? Along with the account's 70,000 followers, we want to believe. 

Whedon's joining Twitter comes just days after ABC Family officially picked up Agents of SHIELD for a full series. The star vehicle for Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson is a tie-in to the mighty Avengers franchise and a pet project for Whedon. With both Much Ado and Agents of SHIELD currently occupying the limelight, and standing securely at the helm of Avengers 2, it might have occurred to Whedon that having conquered the whole planet, he might as well conquer Twitter.

Or, you know, that it would be easier to promote both projects from his own Twitter account. 

Whatever the reason, we'll take it. With three more weeks before Much Ado's wide release, we have nothing better to do than sit around waiting for Joss Whedon to tweet again. What if he and Clark Gregg start Tweeting at each other? What if he and Wil Wheaton become besties? What if we find out why he's following both DanRad and Emma Watson and the reason is he's making Harry Potter Season 8? The possibilities are endless! WE NEED TO HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING JOSS WHEDON ON TWITTER OUR WHOLE LIVES. #syphilis.

Photo via JossActual/Twitter

Old architecture and retro graphics blend in new ANI GIF exhibition

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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.

Imagine you discovered a stockpile of old floppy disks sitting next to a gray computer buried deep inside your closet. After dusting off the disks and plugging in the boxy machine, you push a floppy inside. The disk drive whirs to life as a slight hum emanates from the computer.

What appears on the screen are a series of pixelated GIF animations that are jarring, beautiful, and strangely familiar. They contain moving walls and shapes that resemble a forever changing home that belongs to Malgosia Woznica, the latest artist to have her work displayed on the online art gallery known as ANI GIF.

Woznica's exhibition is called ARXITEKTON I and II.

"I was inspired by architecture, browsing old architecture, interior and design magazines, architecture photo blogs, 80s furniture design and sculpture," Woznica told the Daily Dot. "Another major inspiration here was old school computer games. I wanted to mix together the two opposing styles I love: 8-bit graphics aesthetic with 3D design, and retro computer graphics with contemporary techniques and trends (like 'glitching')."

The result was a collection of colorful GIFs with moving squares which look like staircases, walls, and floors. As the shapes slide in and out, each GIF can resemble an architectural blueprint or completed home, depending on how you look at it. And like a blueprint, Woznica's GIFs were large and needed special handling, said Sarah Caluag, founder and co-curator of ANI GIF.

"Malgosia is the first to truly push the file-size boundary," Caluag said. "ARXITEKTON I and II combined are a whopping 139MB. This posed a challenge for us to exhibit the work while maintaining the integrity of the GIFs and allowing users to easily view them.  Ultimately, the work itself (and the era it references) led to our solution: slow/fast connection buttons and a loading bar reminiscent of modem dialers."

ANI GIF was founded in 2009 as a place for artists to explore the artistic possibilities of the GIF. To date Caluag and co-curator Daniel Rehn have featured GIFs from eight artists who have pushed the 25-year-old file format to its limit, including Woznica.

"A lot of experimenting was involved and some effects just came out in the making," she added. "I also wanted the gifs to work with the background, having some of the objects coming out of it or 'installed' in it (like the windows). I really love how the gallery turned out."

Images by Malgosia Woznica

Google Easter egg lets you play Atari's Breakout

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In what's becoming a spring tradition, Google has hidden another video game–inspired Easter egg in its powerful search engine.

This time, Google's celebrating the 37-year anniversary of Atari's Breakout, one of the most influential video games in history. 

To find the Easter egg, type "Atari Breakout" into Google's image search engine (or just click that link). When the results come up, the images transform into bricks and a movable paddle appears.

In April 2012, Google paid homage to Starcraft by allowing people to shoot colorful letter O's as if they were killing Zergs, a race of insectoids.

If you can't get caught playing Breakout at work, we made a GIF version for you:

Photo via turtletechie

Oops: "Doctor Who" season finale DVDs arrive 3 weeks early

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In the world of cult sci-fi show Doctor Who, spoilers are a big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that one of the characters actually warns about them within the show—an important consideration when you’re a time traveler and someone might “spoil” your own future life. 

Unfortunately, Doctor Who’s DVD distributors are not quite so careful. Yesterday, BBC Worldwide revealed that it accidentally sent out a handful of season 7 DVDs three weeks early—meaning that several fans in the U.S. will already know what happens in next week’s momentous season finale, “The Doctor’s Name.”

As well as some heavily foreshadowed revelations regarding the Doctor’s identity, the finale will feature guest appearances from former Who stars David Tennant and Billie Piper, among others. But don’t worry, we haven’t looked for any of the real spoilers (yet). 

BBC America’s official Tumblr account urged fans not to reveal any plot details, adding, “If everyone keeps the secrets safe until next Saturday we will release a special new clip featuring material of the Tenth AND Eleventh Doctor!”

So far, Whovians are taking it pretty well. Spoiler-phobic fans already tend to avoid social media on the days leading up to a big season finale, and most of the “spoilery” comments on the official Facebook page seem rather... unlikely. For example, we’re pretty sure that “The Doctor’s Name” doesn’t include any appearances from Bruce Willis, or the shocking revelation that he’s actually a ghost. 

Photo via doctorwho/Tumblr

Hopefully the BBC’s bribe works, because the return of David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) is already hotly anticipated. Any new scenes between him and Matt Smith would be a coup for Who fandom, as reunions on this scale are very unusual. After this year’s 50th anniversary special, things will be back to normal: one Doctor, one TARDIS, and definitely no more David Tennant. 

As for the season finale spoilers, there’s no real way to prevent people from sharing them—but then, there never is. In the meantime, we just recommend that you stay away from the Doctor Who and “Doctor’s Name” tags on Tumblr, just in case. 

Image via Tumblr/peek-a-dillo

"Kitchen Nightmares" episode leads to astounding Facebook meltdown

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On Friday's episode of Kitchen Nightmares, tireless celebrity chef and amateur culinary psychiatrist Gordon Ramsay finally gave up.

In Scottsdale, Arizona, the owners of Amy's Bakery and Cafe are infamous for their vitriolic tirades against unhappy customers, both in their restaurant and online. They responded to Ramsay's attempt to help with a mixture of hostility and paranoid rants. Watching the chef attempt to talk sense into the couple was like watching a mathematician explain arithmetic to a pair of wooden planks. For the first time in the show's history, Ramsay walked away.

Amy and Samy Bouzaglo responded with what is certainly one of the more awe-inspiring social media meltdowns we've ever seen, launching a series of grammatically challenged all-caps Facebook rants against their enemies: the "Yelpers and Reddits."

Let's go through it all step-by-step. Before the show aired on May 10, the couple was already defending itself.

We do not feel the need to make any excuses for our behavior on tonight’s show. However we would like to make the following statement: We do not, nor have we ever stolen or taken any of our servers, waitresses, or waiters' tips at Amy’s Baking Company.

Once the show aired, the restaurant's Yelp page was flooded with one-star comments, and the tone of the messages the couple posted to Facebook changed considerably.


 

Soon Reddit's r/cringepics subreddit had discovered the Facebook page. The couple responded:

To all of the Yelpers and Reddits: Bring it on. you are just pussies. come to arizona. you are weaker than my wife, and weaker than me. come to my business. say it to my face. man to man. my wife is a jewel in the desert. you are just trash. reddits and yelpers just working together to bring us down. pathetic.

Within a few hours they were threatening legal action. Though it's worth noting that Amy is no stranger to the law. In 2003, she was found guilty of identify theft after she was caught using another person's social security card to secure a $15,000 line of credit.

This is Samy. I am keeping note of all names here. We will be pursuing action against you legaly, and against reddit and yelp, for this plot you have come together on. you are all just punks.

It was not a witch hunt because there were no actual witches involved, Amy noted:


 

Eventually Wonder Woman made an appearance:

I AM WONDER WOMAN. I AM A GREAT CHEF, A GREAT WIFE, AND A GREAT MOM TO MY KIDS. AND WE WILL BE PARENTS TO A HUMAN KID, ONE DAY TO. WE WILL SHOW ALL OF YOU.

They were ready to take their disagreement with the Internet outside:


 

Unofficial uploads of the videos have gone viral, collecting nearly 90,000 views on YouTube. Amy and Samy's maelstrom of madness just won't stop exapnding. At this point we kind of wish a benevolent Facebook employee would just step and do the right thing: Shut down their Facebook page. It's only humane. Save the Bouzaglos from themselves.

Photo via Fox/Eater


Cellphone footage shows an "Amazing Spider-Man 2" fight scene in action

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Every evening, the Daily Dot delivers a selection of links worth clicking from around the Web, along with the day's must-see image or video. We call it Dotted Lines.

H/T Reddit | Image via tales2astonish/Flickr

Every recurring joke in "Arrested Development"

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If I hear someone else say "there's always money in the banana stand" again over the next month, I'll probably throw them to the loose seals.

We're just 11 short days away from the first new Arrested Development episodes in seven years hopping on Netflix, which means we're at peak Arrested Development. People are quoting the cult show, and that infamous gag in particular, incessantly on Twitter.

But there are many, many other great running jokes threaded through the show you can bug your friends with. It doesn't all have to be about the $250,000 lining the walls of the Bluth's Original Frozen Banana stand.

Enter Recurring Developments, a tool that highlights most—if not all—of the running jokes in the show, the episodes in which they appear, and the context of the gag in each episode.

Hints that Tobias is gay, George Michael and Maeby being awkward with each other, Gob screwing up a magic trick (sorry, illusion), and the stair car are among the most-used bits, according to the tool. Sadly, it overlooks the frequent use of "The Final Countdown," most commonly associated with Gob's act.

Recurring Developments offers a handy cheat sheet to it all, a good way to bone up before the official Arrested Development reboot.

Photo via KimudaWasHere/YouTube

6.5 million people die every day in League of Legends

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Did you know that, for every baby born, roughly 18 League of Legends players meet their deaths?

That's a lot of virtual deaths, and it just goes to show how tenaciously popular the 5-year-old game really is. A new YouTube video from Machinima, the animation studio that exclusively employs in-game graphics to tell stories, reveals even more stunning facts about this hugely popular multiplayer battle arena game.

Since its 2009 release, League of Legends (LoL) has attracted millions of players and casual fans alike. The debut episode of Machinima's "Graphic Content" tells us, for instance, that an April 2013 battle between LoL combatants Wickd and sOAZ, vying for the chance to represent Europe at the League Championship Series All-Star Game, set a personal livestreaming record of over 137,000 concurrent viewers, 

"That's nearly 4 times the population of Liechtenstein!" the video boasts. Liechtenstein!

Graphic Content placed several other LoL figures into perspective for the casual fan:

  • Since 2012, LoL players have logged an average of over 1 billion hours of playing time each month. In the same amount of time, the Mars Curiosity Rover could have made over 82,000 trips between Earth and Mars.

  • The game has currently attracted over 70 million "summoners." If these people were all converted into cocoa beans, it would result in over 175,000 pounds of chocolate.

  • If you eat 175,000 pounds of chocolate, you will get fat and die.

Using the facts from the video, The Daily Dot crunched some of its own numbers.

  • League of Legends' 70 million summoners easily outpopulate France (65.4 million), the United Kingdom (62 million), Italy (60.3 million), and Canada (34.2 million).

  • Approximately 6.5 million in-game deaths are recorded each day. If these were real-life casualties, they could fill the entirety of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC roughly 16 times over.

  • The 1 billion hours players spend on playing League of Legends each month is equivalent to watching the original Lord of the Rings film trilogy over 1 million times.

H/T  Kotaku / Screengrab via Machinima/YouTube

"Brave" fans win: Disney will keep the old Merida

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After a huge public outcry, Disney is doing what it should have done from the start, and giving Brave's heroine a nice, sensible dress to go with her sensible coronation ceremony.

As a Disney princess, one of the most iconic figures in modern pop culture, Merida bore perhaps the greatest burden of any Disney or Pixar hero when she appeared in 2012's Brave. Not only was she the first female hero of any Pixar film, but her creator, Brenda Chapman, was the studio's first female director. Disney was taking on the project shortly after allegedly ending its long line of princess films and changing the name of its 2011 animated project, Rapunzel, to what it felt was the more boy-friendly Tangled.

Interest in the film grew even more intense when Chapman was fired a year out from the film's release. All this within an industry where only about 50 percent of films pass the Bechdel Test and expectations and hopes were always going to be impossibly, unreasonably high for Merida and her story.

In a famous scene from Brave, widely publicized as part of the trailer, Merida tears her fancy coronation dress so that she can more skillfully and flexibly shoot arrows as part of an attempt to "win her own hand" in marriage. Her rejection of the dress symbolized her independence and leadership skills, as well as her inability to conform to the typical princess role.

That's why it was so inexplicable  that when Disney went to market its new Merida doll as part of what it called her "coronation ceremony," it gave the Scottish princess-turned-queen an overtly sexualized makeover.

Photo via therotoscopers

The new design made her thinner, bustier, older, and hotter, and put her in a slinkier, lower-cut version of the dress she loathed from the film. The new look may have been designed to bring Merida in line with the other princesses on Disney's princess site, all of whom are canonically older and, well, hot. But it was also a move that undid everything the character fought against in her own movie.

After Chapman herself wrote an angry open letter on May 11 addressing the sexualization of the character and the message it sent to teenage girls everywhere, the floodgates opened on an Internet backlash. A Change.org petition started by the media watch website A Mighty Girl received over 200,000 signatures in a couple of days.

Earlier today, just as quietly as it had unveiled Merida's new look, Disney substituted an image of Merida from the film on its princess website, and removed all of the images of the new doll from the website. A Mighty Girl's Carolyn Danckaert stated that she was pleased but wary:

While this is very exciting news, it's still too early to declare victory in our effort to keep Merida brave and preserve her original image. Making changes to a website are easy and easily undone; the true test will be how Disney plans on depicting Merida on merchandise now that she is part of the official Disney Princess collection.

IGN earlier today blamed the divide between Disney's marketing department and its creative teams for the fiasco, speculating that eventually "this tampering will one day extend beyond ephemeral marketing material and stupid title changes, and start to affect the content of the films themselves."

But with a subject as broad as the portrayal of women in Disney films, it's never that simple. Yesterday FeministDisney pointed out that much of the language being used to argue for Merida's wardrobe change was language that overlooked the accomplishments of Disney's non-white princesses, several of whom went through similar battles for their independence:

Merida is hailed so much because she breaks the white princess mold. Mulan and Jasmine and the other princesses of color aren’t celebrated because they’re performing what’s ‘expected’ of WOC [women of color]. Merida is a groundbreaking white princess. But let’s be real: she’s still a white princess in a pantheon that’s glaringly white.

If Disney truly has given up the princess game, we may be waiting for a long time for another entry into the princess pantheon. Frozen, out this November, is rumored to be the latest entry, featuring a possible princess named Anna.

We can only hope the marketing department will let her keep all her winter furs.

Photo via Princess.disney.com

 

Smosh launches "Gamers Alliance" on YouTube

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Smosh is closing in on becoming the first YouTube channel to reach eight digit subscribers, and one of the duo’s secondary channels is now looking to use their influence to power an entire network of creators. Smosh has launched the Smosh Games Alliance, which will consist of videos from aspiring gamers all over YouTube.

A video on the Smosh Games channel gives a nice introduction to the program, which is specifically noted as an alliance even though “that’s just a fancy word for network.” Basically, gamers are invited to join the Alliance, where they can be featured on its new channel. More enticingly, a weekly show on Smosh Games will spotlight certain videos from the Alliance in front of millions of viewers.

We recently explored how guest hosting on the popular YouTube show =3 caused Sarah Silverman’s YouTube channel to gain a huge number of new subscribers. Theoretically, the Smosh Games Alliance now allows previously unknown gamers to benefit from the ‘Smosh bump’, where a one-time guest appearance on Smosh Games leads to a long-lasting increase in audience size. Of course, the introductory video also implies that channels featured on Smosh Games Alliance Spotlight will be both “great” and “complete s**t”, so joining the Alliance means you may be ridiculed instead of celebrated.

Channel creators who join the alliance also get free video making tips and the potential to earn cash money if their content proves popular. If you’re a gamer with a dream, now’s your chance to try and make it with all these other gaming channels on YouTube. And these ones. And these onestoo. Good luck, you’re going to need it.

 

Zach Braff clarifies funding dispute for his upcoming feature

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No, Zach Braff did not take any money from traditional financiers to fund his upcoming film.

On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter published a now-scrubbed article claiming that Braff had obtained significant financing from Worldview Entertainment for Wish I Was Here, the actor's second directorial effort and a film that made headlines in April after Braff took to Kickstarter to raise $2 million. So far, the campaign has netted more than $2.6 million from nearly 39,000 backers.

The trade publication alleged that Worldview Entertainment was going to provide the bulk of a supposed $10 million budget.

These allegations, however, were quickly dismissed by Braff himself, who wrote a lengthy rebuttal in a Kickstarter update.

"The story out there about the movie being fully funded by some financier is wrong," he stated. 

"I have said on here and in every interview I've done on this project that the film would be fully financed from 3 sources: [m]y Kickstarter Backers, [m]y own money, [and] Pre-Selling foreign theatrical distribution."

These three would eventually constitute a budget between $5 million and $6 million.

Braff also clarified the involvement of Worldview Entertainment.

"When you pre-sell foreign distribution, you don't get that money for some time. So you need to go to a company to provide something called 'Gap Financing,'" the director/actor explained. 

"They are essentially a bank. Loaning us the 'gap' between what we've raised together and what we need to actually make the movie."

This was also confirmed by Variety—a rival to The Hollywood Reporter—on Wednesday afternoon.

"Because the film is scheduled to begin shooting in August, the production won’t have enough time to get bank loans against foreign pre-sale letters," explained Andrew Wallenstein, editor-in-chief of Variety's digital property. 

"Worldview essentially backstops those loans, supplementing the dollars raised on Kickstarter, which currently amounts to $2.6 million, and an unspecified sum Braff himself has ponied up."

This incident is the second time Braff has gotten bad publicity since launching his Kickstarter campaign. On May 7, famed comedy writer Ken Levine wrote a post explaining that he was not going to contribute to Wish I Were Here because it was taking money away from other worthy projects, a sentiment shared by many of Braff's detractors. That assertion was shot down by Kickstarter itself, whick revealed data that showed that big-name projects like Wish I Was Here and the Veronica Mars movie actually brought tens of thousands of new users to the crowdfunding platform. These newcomers would go on to pledge more than $400,000 to 2,200 other projects.

Photo via GabboT/Flickr

Behind "Lone Star Horizons": A Texas tribute to Jason Molina

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Jason Molina was a songwriter of staggering proportion. His output as Songs:Ohio, Magnolia Electric Co., and under his own name warrants inclusion in a new Great American Songbook, full of raw heartbreak and devastating beauty.

He passed away on March 16, at the far-too-young age of 39. The news came to me via Facebook while on maternity leave with my wife and our newborn son, Oscar. I instantly thought of the many times I felt moved to action by Molina’s work over the years. I reached out to friends and acquaintances I’ve made over the years to try to put together a tribute to who I consider a pinnacle artist: Lone Star Horizons: A Texas Tribute to Jason Molina.

A few recollections:

Didn't It Rain by Songs:Ohia got me away from the classic rock worship of folks like Neil Young and showed me (and many others) that the song was still most important. I bought Didn’t It Rain while visiting my friend Christina Rentz in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. That trip proved to be revelatory for me. Not only was Didn’t It Rain a moving soundtrack while wandering Franklin Street and searching the crowded shelves of CD Alley, it also fell right in line with my other purchases during my stay, including Bob Dylan’s Hard Rain, Richard Thompson’s Shoot Out The Lights, and Smog’s Knock Knock. “Ring the Bell” and “Blue Factory Flame” will always remind me of white chapels on hilltops.

One of the best shows I have ever seen was on Sept. 29, 2006, at Emo's. It was one of those double bills for one price gigs where you're able to go both indoors and outdoors. Indoors was Xiu Xiu (I think) and outdoors was Magnolia Electric Co. Molina and crew were so great that night that you heard the sound guy through the monitors in the middle of the set say, "You guys are really good." That is rare, and it was true that night for sure.

This tribute is a culmination of many people’s hard work includes contributions by White Denim’s James Petralli, Some Say Leland, and Lex Land, among others. I cannot go without thanking Tony Ferraro for the artwork, Seth Gibbs for mastering the recordings for nothing but a six pack of Shiner Seasonal Beer,  Ned Norland of magnoliaelectricco.com, and all my friends and acquaintances who gave their time and artistry to this collection and of course to Jason Molina for his inspiring music and the amazing work he left behind.

Lone Star Horizons: A Texas Tribute to Jason Molina is offically available on May 16. ALL proceeds go directly to the Jason Molina Medical Fund. Accrue Cassettes will be releasing a limited run of the tribute on cassette (of course) in June.

Randy Reynolds, better known as Leatherbag, is a critically acclaimed songwriter and the producer of the KLRU music documentary series, Hardly Sound.


Touring the fake websites of "Arrested Development"

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The Internet may have saved the Bluths, but the websites mentioned throughout Arrested Development's initial run no longer exist.

Fox actually set up real versions of several sites mentioned by characters and on screen in the show's first three seasons. With Arrested Development about to emerge from the ashes on Netflix, we thought we'd take a look back at those sites to see how they look now.

You might have expected Netflix to resurrect the sites mentioned in the show as part of its comprehensive marketing campaign. The streaming video service has offered fans the chance to win a walk-on role through Twitter, created a series of fake Arrested Development-related shows on Netflix, and this week, they’ve even started taking a real-life Bluth's Original Frozen Banana stand around the U.S.

But reviving classic in-joke sites like Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog isn’t in the cards—at least not yet.

So, for right now, we’ll just have to settle for reliving the magic through Archive.org's Wayback Machine:

IMOSCAR.COM

When Oscar Bluth was wrongly imprisoned in his twin brother's stead, he set up a site to campaign for his release. The site is gone, replaced by a placeholder owned by a private entity. However, someone set up a mirror of the site on Tumblr, called imstilloscar.com.

IMNOSCAR.COM

A Saddam Hussein lookalike captured in the third season claimed he was not the real Hussein. He protested with a site almost identical to imoscar.com, save for the text replaced with Arabic and the photos switched. Fox still owns that domain, but now it just redirects to the Fox homepage.

SAVEOURBLUTHS.ORG

As much of a meta nudge-nudge-wink-wink to fans as was seen on the show, it suggested that fans start a campaign to help save the Bluths in the face of impending cancellation. This site never actually existed, though saveourbluths.com was set up as a fan site.

TONYWONDER.COM

Ben Stiller's character Tony Wonder is almost as ridiculous as Gob when it comes to his magic act. His site appeared in the show in a gag mocking Fox's constant promotion of Family Guy during episodes. It existed in real life and while Fox still owns the domain, it too does not hold any content.

COMASENSE.COM

Fox never bothered to set up this site. Comasense was a company in the show which offered families of people in comas to profit by allowing medical students and aspiring makeup artists to practice on a live body. Poor Buster was faking his coma and had to grin and bear minor medical procedures without anesthetic.

BOB LOBLAW'S LAW BLOG

There actually was a law blog run by a Bob Loblaw—only it seemed like it was the work of a fan, rather than Fox. The blog was hosted on Blogspot, rather than its own domain and Decision of the Day, as the blog was called, was operated by a Robert Loblaw. It covered the best and worst of federal appellate decisions each day and was "intended purely for entertainment." There's every chance that there was a real Bob Loblaw who ran a law blog, though the timing of the first post coincided with Loblaw's first appearance on Arrested Development.

FREEANNYONG.COM

Matriarch Lucille adopted a son from Korea just to get back at Buster. Freeannyong.com was campaigning to free the newest Bluth from the family "before their skewed values and utter lack of human decency destroys his life." And guess what? Fox owns the domain, and it is completely dead.



NEVER-NUDE.COM

As a "never nude," Tobias always wore jean cutoffs to avoid being completely naked at any time. His condition, though unrecognized by the American Medical Association, was shared by dozens of others. Dozens! Tobias set up a site to explain the condition. The domain is still registered to Fox and while the site's gone (unsurprisingly), it featured many photos of Tobias in his famed non-nude attire.

Screenshots via Wayback Machine

YouTube star Ray William Johnson inks deal with FX

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Blip isn’t the only entertainment entity outside of YouTube with which Ray William Johnson is making deals. The 31-year-old with the third most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time just signed the papers that may make him a television star.

Lesley Goldberg at the Hollywood Reporter broke the news FX gave a script commitment to “a comedy inspired by the life of the internet star.” Mike Gagerman and Andrew Waller will write the script, and along with with Dave Becky and Troy Zien they will also executive produce. Johnson will also receive a co-creator credit. Should it get picked up for a full-fledged series, the program will air either on FX or the cable network’s soon-to-launch spinoff FXX and place Johnson within an elite pantheon of YouTube-turned-TV-stars alongside Lucas Cruikshank (a.k.a. Fred) and the Annoying Orange.

Regardless of where the series is distributed, executives at FX are undoubtedly hoping Johnson’s fanbase tunes in. The veteran online video star has accumulated 8.7 million subscribers and over 2.2 billion views on his primary YouTube channel, where he once-weekly provides peppy, sardonic commentary on a fresh set of viral videos. Check out the latest:

 

The Morning GIF: Miguel, his crotch, and the WWE

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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.

Miguel should have just stuck to singing and left the WWE moves to the professionals. 

During his performance of "Adorn" Sunday night at the Billboard Music Awards, the 27-year-old American singer leaped into the air and performed what looked like the Bronco Buster, the signature move from WWE wrestler X-Pac. Miguel was attempting to leap over the audience to the catwalk, but instead, he ended up landing crotch first on top of some fans, leaving at least one person bruised. One woman who got a faceful of Miguel's man region "ended up pinned on the catwalk by the singer’s right leg," the New York Post reported

"She appeared to quickly shake off the unforeseen foulup, brushing back her hair and stepping away from the stage," the newspaper added

The Bronco Buster is nothing to mess with. In March famed WWE wrestler X-Pac was performing the move at a tribute show when he accidentally tore his anus

After the Billboard performance, Miguel consoled one of the injured fans backstage as she held an ice pack over her arm.

"Well, I think it's kind of clear what happened," Miguel told Billboard. "But I'm very happy to bring my new friend, Khyati, we just met. Unfortunately we did not meet under the best circumstances, but I think we're okay."

GIF via gifulmination.com | Photo via @MiguelUnlimited

10 Tumblr webcomics you should be following

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Since the days of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, comics and editorial cartoons have been a fixture on American coffee tables, closely tied to a newspaper or magazine's success.

As the print industry continues to struggle in the digital age, a new generation of artists have emerged on Tumblr, the social network purchased by Yahoo this week for $1.1 billion.

In fact, Tumblr is an ideal comics platform for all of the reasons Yahoo made such a monumental investment to begin with: It’s a mobile service, with a minimalistic interface, powerful sharing tools, and most importantly, a rapidly growing teen audience.

By using Tumblr's reblog feature, users can easily share and cite other people's work. And unlike Twitter and Facebook, Tumblr users are free to design their blogs and feature paid advertisements.

Tumblr also has a powerful discovery system. The comics tag is updated daily with more than 20 pieces of art chosen by a team of 25 volunteer editors. Comics featured on the curated page typically receive more than 300 notes—the site’s internal mechanism for measuring a particular post’s reblogs, likes, and comments.

In a sense, Tumblr is slowly changing the art form as a whole. While you can find classic black-and-white celled comics on Tumblr, a growing number of artists are putting down their pens and learning how to GIF instead. By adding subtle animated elements—like a basketball player wagging his tongue back and forth or a boxer being punched in the face—comics are able to place added emphasis on certain elements and bring their work to life like never before.

What works in print doesn’t necessarily work online. Success on Tumblr comes with its unique set of standards and expectations.

"A great comic can lose its chance at being popular if it is presented poorly," Benjamin "The Frogman" Grelle noted recently on his blog. "When creating your comics, always assume that no one will click to enlarge your images. You must present your comic so it is clearly viewed on the dashboard. You can make it high resolution, but be sure that the text is easily read and the detail in the images is not lost at 500 pixels wide."

The following list exemplifies some of the best webcomics Tumblr has to offer. It was compiled with the help of Tumblr comics tag editor and Daily Dot contributorSam Brown, best known for his longstanding Explodingdog comic.

1) Liz Climo

When Liz Climo isn't making sure Homer Simpson's two strands of hair are in order as storyboard revisionist for The Simpsons, she's creating minimalistic comics that capture the cute, light-hearted moments we all imagine dogs, whales, sharks, and bears have together when we're not looking.

“If I hear something or see a situation that is easily relatable and simple, it'll usually spark something in my mind like, ‘Hey, this might be sort of funny if an animal were dealing with this,'” Climo told the Daily Dot in August. “If the idea is especially ridiculous (which it often is), hopefully the drawing is funny enough that, even if there isn't much of a joke there, the final product is still appealing and relatable in some way.”

2) Maya Kern

If college theses were graded according to Tumblr notes, Maya Kern would have received an A+. Kern's 23-page thesis for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a Little Red Riding Hood-inspired comic series called redden. So far Kern has posted more than 13 pages from the series on Tumblr, where they have collected hundreds of notes each. Like Kern's other webcomics, redden features a strong female lead character set for adventure in a world of unknown obstacles.

3) Zac Gorman

Zac Gorman's comics reflect a deep kinship with video games that only a lifetime of button mashing can foster. His comics reimagine the stories of characters like Link of the Legend of Zelda series who not only save the princess but discover the true meaning of life.

“I always loved games of all kinds, not just video games, but when we got the NES though, that's when my life changed forever,” Gorman told the Daily Dot in August 2011.

4) Henry

Elongating his characters like a an overused Stretch Armstrong action figure, the mysterious Henry creates leggy caricatures of cartoons like Wolverine, Doctor Eggman, and the Justice Friends. Where traditional comics use word bubbles to get their message across, Henry animates particular elements of his comics to accentuate the mood of each piece.  

5) Marlo Meekins

Maybe it was her stint at Spumco, the animation production company behind The Ren & Stimpy Show, or her budding friendship with Tumblr's GIF princess Lacey "lulinternet" Micallef, but Marlo Meekins has embraced toilet humor in all its glory. She also has found a way to use it to address serious issues surrounding sex, beauty, and men.

"I think I was born to draw,” Meekins told the Daily Dot in July 2012, only about a month after joining Tumblr. “Young people prefer the absurd, which is perfect.”

6) Ryan Selvy

Awkward teenage moments—like having a stranger knock on the bathroom stall you're occupying or figuring out how to respond to a nonsensical Tumblr comment—are what inspire the work of college comic artist Ryan Selvy. Using rounded cartoon characters and colorful textures, Selvy tackles Internet phenomena with a wink and a nod. Just check this comic about Tumblr users' penchant for asking nonsensical questions.

“I’ve always been artistic in some form, but I never have taken any of it too seriously,” Selvy told the Daily Dot in August. “I still don’t. I feel like I should have elaborate ideas about my work and deep emotional connections to my work, but I’m still just having fun. I grew up watching cartoons and I still do. It’s a weird occurrence to go a week without watching Spongebob, Futurama, or Adventure Time, so it’s kind of just a part of me.”

7) Dakota McFadzean

Dakota McFadzean's work illustrates the deep, dark thoughts you'd never share in public, like being angry enough to punch a baby, in a style reminiscent of Mother Goose and Grimm. McFadzean has a master's of fine arts degree from from the Center for Cartoon Studies and has had his work featured in the anthology The Best American Comics: 2012.

8) Grant Snider

“There are worlds out there waiting to be drawn,” reads the caption to one of Grant Snider’s recent works. Since he started a weekly comic strip years ago for the Kansas City Star, Snider, an orthodontics student at the University of Colorado-Denver, has been doing his part to capture those imaginative realms. His work is equally humorous and inspirational, tackling questions of love, life, and ambition.

9) Lisa Hanawalt

Lisa Hanawalt's comics are delightfully demented, a curious mix of imagery that feels like the Brooklyn artist is throwing everything at the wall. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Vanity Fair.

10) KC Green

Don't let the innocent-looking characters and warm colors fool you. KC Green comics are deceptively dark, like the comedy of Rocko's Modern Life cut with the childish horror of Goosebumps. Green's work explores the world of cemetery caretakers and ghosts, leaving readers guessing where life ends and the afterlife begins.

Main art by Maya Kern

Which of these teen YouTube stars is the next Justin Bieber?

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In February of 2008, a 14-year-old boy put his cover of Chris Brown's “With You” up on YouTube, the video-sharing website made popular just a few years earlier. Wearing jeans and a polo, the teenager sat on a couch in his basement, the walls adorned with posters of The Simpsons and Tupac, crooning the popular tune like a natural. 

I first saw it when I was in college; it had only a couple hundred thousand views. “SO cute!” I wrote on the Facebook walls of my friends and in AIM message boxes. Like many others with the similar sentiment, I shared it because I liked it. 

I wasn't the only one.

By July of the same year, the little kid in the video, a mop-topped Canadian by the name of Justin Bieber, was signed to Island Def Jam records with Usher as his mentor—and the rest is history. The video now has over 40 million views.

In many ways, Justin paved the way for a new generation of teen stardom. Gone are the days of hawking demo tapes to record labels. Now there’s a new formula: sing popular songs, record them, put them on YouTube, build a fan base, and hope the right people see it and love it. 

We scoured the would-be stars of the post-Bieber YouTube generation, trying to find the next Justin. Here are our favorites. Usher, you can thank us later.

Drew Tabor

Song:"Mirrors" (Justin Timberlake)

Views: 330,000

Why we love it:“Mirrors” is everything to love about J.T., so it's a pretty big pair of shoes to fill for an acoustic guitar cover. Drew nails it.

What to listen for: She gets a little raspy on the hook—and it sounds super-indie.

Where you'd hear it: At the end of an episode of The Hills if it were 2006, or at a college coffee house open mic night.

Swag factor: She’s playing “Mirrors” against a MIRROR and the irony isn’t lost on us, folks. We also like that she's not trying to wear anything too showy. 

Bieber index: 3½ Biebers

Isaac and Ian Roney

Song: “U Smile” (Justin Bieber)

Views: 480,000

Why we picked it: Watching dozens of Justin Bieber covers on YouTube is enough to bring on that alcohol dependency that not even applying to marketing and PR jobs off of Craigslist can match. Every boy with shiny shaggy hair, a ukulele, and a dream is on the Internet trying to be the next JB, but these two brothers were our top choice.

Yeah, but why? Well, they’re, like, 8. They do a pretty good job with the song in a I-guess-I’m-stuck-going-to-my-sister’s-chorus-concert kind of way. Some of us watched the whole thing (twice!) (OK, it was me).

Bonus: They are being filmed by their mom, who can't not be a stage mother. This makes it even better: molding and grooming and primping future idols of America! The boys do hand motions that someone had to teach them.

Swag factor: They've been studying the Justin method, but we hope they don't quit their day jobs (of being 4th graders). Little pitchy, dawgs.

Fan insanity:


 

The verdict: We don't think the record labels will be knocking down their door anytime soon (the world is only big enough for one Bieber), but we're confident they could sell out a high school auditorium.

Bieber index: 2 ½ Biebers

Cimorelli

Song:"We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" (Taylor Swift)

Views: 10 million

Why it's different: These six sisters have made themselves Internet-famous with their covers of popular songs and impeccable harmonizing. They're cute and approachable. And they have five brothers and don’t seem to be of Duggar descent. They put up a video every month and rack up thousands of views within hours of its debut.

Swag factor: These girls look like they stepped out of an Urban Outfitters or Forever21 ad, so whoever is picking out their outfits is doing them a favor. They look like any girl at a high school lunch table, which adds to their extreme appeal. YouTube stars—they're just like us! 

The best part: 2:03–2:07. Taylor doesn’t do that in the original and it sounds so good!

Fan insanity: They have a big audience (this video alone has over 10 million views), and fans make it a point to call out their favorite Cim Sister in the comments. They have more than 360,000 followers on Twitter. (They tweet as a group and each have their own accounts). They've started the Bieber trail—they have their own original album, Believe It, and the songs are pretty good. Listen to their original, “Million Bucks.” Catchy.


 

Daily Dot’s fave Cim Sister: [Ed.: Don’t make us pick! OK, it's Lisa.]

Better than Taylor's original? It just might be.

Bieber index: 4 Biebers

Josie Charlwood

Song:"Skyfall" (Adele)

Views: 168,000

Why we picked it: There aren't many people who can successfully cover Adele, but we think Josie is one of them.

Swag factor: The red hair and the accent, her playing the piano (at least it's not a karaoke track!)—all of it makes it authentic, if not totally original. 

Why we can't give it a lot of Biebers: Because that being said, let Adele do Adele, girl. We’d rather put on the original. Please and fank you.

Bieber index: 2 Biebers

Lennon & Maisy 

Song:"Call Your Girlfriend" (Robyn)

Views: 17 million

We know. You've seen them on Nashville playing Connie Britton's daughters, singing a Lumineers cover. But, like Justin, these two sisters were hanging out on YouTube for 2 years before they ended up on your flatscreen. 

Swag factor:Cups—and they did it before Anna Kendrick did in Pitch Perfect. Plus, their style is impeccable—they're 12 and 8 and dress better than most adults I know. The Warby Parker Brooklyn look that Lennon is rocking makes her a prime contender for Season 13 of Lena Dunham's Girls. With names like Lennon and Maisy, their parents really knew what they were doing.

Super-cute: This cover of Ingrid Michaelson's “You and I,” sung by the sisters a few years ago, will be great footage for their inevitable E! True Hollywood Story episode. 

Leave it to diehard fans to put haters in place:


 

Bieber index: 4 Biebers

Kina Grannis and Boyce Avenue

Song:"Fast Car" (Tracy Chapman)

Why we picked it: Both of these YouTube success stories are now writing original music and touring the country on their own accord, but they have a plethora of covers on their individual channels to get viewers used to their sound and style. This is one of the covers they do together (and who doesn't love this song, really?).

Record a cover using only PhotoBooth so we know it's real: Listen to Kina sing Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy.”

Can a guy do a female vocalist justice? Boyce Avenue does with this cover of Rihanna’s “We Found Love.”

Fan insanity: Kina's fans have dubbed themselves “Kinerds.” Watch this video of Kina performing her original song “Message From Your Heart”  and asking her fans to come up on stage to sing with her. Listen to the crowd go absolutely nuts. It's like watching a small-scale, more endearing version of Taylor Swift appreciating her fans.

Bieber index: 4½ Biebers

Niki and Gabi 

Song:"Beauty and the Beat" (Justin Bieber)

Why the half-Bieber face? Come on! Sorry, but they talk through the dance break, explaining why it's too awkward to dance. Plus, they touch their hair too much. They remind us of the episode of Full House where Stephanie sings “The Sign” with “her band” but they spend too much time on “their look” and ending up bombing their performance at the Smash Club (but learn many valuable lessons in the end!).

Why there's hope: They have good voices, so there's potential for the post-teen YouTube years.

Why we could be wrong: We just looked into their other videos—(check out “Give Your Heart a Break”)—with much hope. BUT. We were disappointed to find a lower-budget Rebecca Black–style music video with lackluster vocals but a lot of over-sexualized gesticulation. Womp womp.

Fans may disagree with us:“good voice”; “one on the left is so hot.” Sex sells; we get it, I guess.

Bieber index: Half a Bieber

George Barnett

Song:"Get Lucky" (Daft Punk)

Views: 2 million

Why’d we pick this one? The video has more than 1 million views because of a few things:

1) It's entertaining. Different camera angles liven up the usually monotonous tone of low-production-cost video.

2) He plays all of the instruments himself, and sings (great editing; this must have taken a while).

3) He owns his performance (take note, Niki and Gabi).

He's got the look: His scruffy, messy skater-boy look is going a long way here.

Swag is when: Fans ask to have your babies in the comments.

Bieber index: 3 Biebers

Alex G

Song:"Heart Attack" (Demi Lovato)

Views: 2 million

Why we love it: Alex has an amazing voice and she fits into the teen pop scene quite perfectly. She also seems to “get” what makes a popular video among her demographic (dreamy lighting! Acoustic guitars! Boyz suck!). Her outfit seems like she's dressing for the video (not like she just sat down in front of the camera randomly). She's a brand; she even has her own beauty channel that she links to throughout the video. (We aren't linking it here. We can't be bought, Alex.) 

Why it gets old fast: Because, well, we'd rather listen to Demi Lovato's original. This seems to be a running theme with most YouTube covers: No one's putting his or her original mark on things. Sorry, Alex.

But… People seem to really love her. She’s got the look and the vocal chops so the (millions of) fans come running. The top comment seems to sum it up the most (at least for us):


 

Bieber index: 2½ Biebers

Sam Tsui and Kurt Schneider

Song:"I Knew You Were Trouble" (Taylor Swift)

Views: 2 million

The 411: Chances are, this isn't the first Sam and Kurt YouTube video you've seen. (If it is, ahh, you're welcome.) These friends hit the (YouTube) scene in 2009 and immediately gained millions of fans and views with their creative takes on popular songs. They gained more notoriety on YouTube than Justin ever did. Yes, really: Justin was picked from the World Wide Web pretty quickly while these two friends have pretty much dominated the viral cover-video market since they began.

This cover of Rihanna's “Stay” is pretty amazing:

Fan insanity:


 

Why they're better than Bieber: There are, like, six of him in this Summer Pop Medley video:

Could Bieber do this? No. No he can't.

You seem a little obsessed. Fine.

Bieber index: A Perfect Bieber.


Illustration by Jason Reed | Bieber heads by Fernando Alfonso III

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