Mister Rogers just wants everyone to sing together.

Luckily for America’s favorite neighbor, Symphony of Science mastermind John Boswell has turned that into a reality by once again turning Rogers into a catchy, autotuned lyricist.

Boswell's been working with PBS Digital Studios for the past year, making popular PBS figures such as Bob Ross, LeVar Burton, and Julia Child into unlikely music stars. Rogers, whose original songs have convinced congress to fund PBS and made even the most cynical comedians cry, starred in Boswell’s first PBS remix—it now has over 8 million views.

That first video told children that they can grow ideas in the garden of their minds. The new one focuses on one of Rogers’ many loves: song.

We may remember his words of wisdom, but Mister Rogers was also whimsical. He often sang to the camera with the many guests on his show over the years, and more often than not, he "just felt like dancing."

He also played a lot of instruments over the years—from his piano to a giant drum—and his famous puppets even shared in the musical spirit. But after we've enjoyed a bit of song and dance, it's also good to quietly reflect on the music we just listened to.

"Let's just sit and think about what we've heard," Rogers says.

Here's a moment for you, Mister Rogers.

Photo via pbsdigitalstudios/YouTube

YouTube has evolved into a growing entertainment culture over the past eight years, and nobody has noticed that more than the site’s video creators.

PBS Off Book looked at the very question of creating content in an online culture and argued that the environment of YouTube wouldn't be able to exist anywhere else in its latest episode.

The channel recruited media research specialist Joshua Green, Jake Roper (Vsauce3), Molly Templeton (mememolly), and Tubefilter cofounder Josh Cohen to look at the different aspects that make YouTube a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry.

Broadcasting used to be a difficult medium to get into before YouTube, but now the content is being created by the audience, and they’re making shows that are more timely and more interactive than what you’d get on TV.

YouTube creators thrive on the near-instant feedback they get from their audience each time they release a new video.

"That helps content creators to understand relatively quickly what is successful," Green said. "And I think that affects the types of content that get made. I think that affects the type of content that gets valued."

According to Green, it was that feedback that made people rethink how to speak to the camera and create entertaining content.

The audience is even influencing what gets made. Roper gets many of his video ideas from the YouTube comments.

"We want the audience to be aware of like, we're just making this for you," Roper noted. "Spending hours just doing this, and we want to interact with you."

With YouTube, it's about knowing your audience instead of making generic content that could appeal to anyone. The viewers know what they're signing up for when they hit the "subscribe" button.

Video blogs also give you a look into stars’ lives in a way that TV never does. That intimate close-up gives you the feeling that particular vlogger is talking to you, according to Templeton.

"When you have to be your own editor and your own director and your own promoter and marketer, it comes across in everything that you do, and it feels very personal," she said.

With over 100 hours of content uploaded to YouTube each second, there's a seemingly endless amount of programming that you can access, but even the shows that look like they could air on TV are unique to YouTube and the Internet, leading to an explosion of different YouTube networks and online media companies.

Soon, Cohen wagers, younger generations will be as comfortable watching online content as they are with TV, if not more.

"Not since television was invented has there been this kind of programming that's developed that's spawned this whole new type of entertainment industry."

Photo via PBSoffbook/YouTube

When it comes to popular impersonations, Twitter is the new Saturday Night Live.

For every color commentator or popular public figure, there’s often an even more colorful parody account, offering the sincerest form of flattery in 140-character bursts.

In many cases, the parody is even better than the real deal, at least online, taking the most absurd aspect about a subject and creating an entirely new character from it. The best parodies can run for years if the creators and supporters have enough material to work with.

Parodies are as much a part of Twitter as news and celebrity interactions. Fact and fiction gets blended into a single timeline, letting us hear from and laugh at (or with) an individual in the space of a couple of tweets. The most important parodies, like @WillMcAvoyACN, a personification of The Newsroom’s protagonist, hold a fun-house mirror up to their subject, shining a new light on them and the world around them.

On SNL, you know the actors behind the impersonations. On Twitter, that’s not always the case, and some notable accounts, like @NotBillWalton and @BigGhostFASE, have managed to successfully hide their identities for years now.

Many others have come clean. They range from celebrities and writers to mom bloggers and students. Here’s a look at the real people behind some of your favorite Twitter accounts.

@DrunkHulk | Christian Dumais

Started: October 2009
Followers: 190,400

THEY SAY CHRIS BROWN GOT WORST TATTOO EVER! NO AGREE! DRUNK HULK THINK TATTOO GOT WORST PERSON EVER!

— DRUNK HULK (@DRUNKHULK) September 11, 2012

You wouldn’t guess it from his belligerent ALL-CAPS rants, but Christian Dumais, the man behind Drunk Hulk, is actually a mild-mannered author and lecturer. He moved to Poland to work on his first novel and told the Daily Dot last year the parody has helped him take life less seriously and to loosen up his writing. He also said Drunk Hulk has led to contact from publishers, agents, and TV networks about his work.

“Writing Drunk Hulk is a wonderful challenge that has managed to carry over to my other writing projects . . .  And most importantly, every day I get to read responses from amazing people all over the world on Twitter or by email about Drunk Hulk.”

Photos via @DrunkHulk, @PuffChrissy/Twitter

@Fake_NikkiFinke | Alex Litel

Started: July 2012
Followers: 1,100

Guillermo del Toro In Talks To Write And Direct "Dark And Imaginative" Reboot Of Intergalactic Basketball Fantasy 'Space Jam'

— Fake Nikki Finke (@Fake_NikkiFinke) April 2, 2013

Entertainment writer Nikki Finke once had a Twitter parody shut down, bringing down her own account in the process for a while. Litel, a self-described "Internet provocateur" and “freelance human being,” outed himself as @Fake_NikkiFinke’s brainchild last September. Litel, who creates abstract art and animations, claimed Finke “has the skills of a great journalist while lacking the ethical sense for those skills to mean anything.” His fake Hollywood headlines are as ridiculous as anything you might see in a blockbuster these days.

Photos via @Fake_NikkiFinke, @AlexLitel/Twitter

@NextTechBlog | Jon Mitchell

Started: October 2011
Followers: 3,700

BREAKING: People On Internet Said “Wow”

— NextTechBlog (@NextTechBlog) February 28, 2013

If you have a prominent tech blog and post something ridiculous, chances are @NextTechBlog will ruthlessly mock you. “People think it’s going to cause me to be more self-conscious and stop being so brutal, but they obviously haven’t talked to me about this stuff,” Mitchell, an Oakland-based journalist, told BetaBeat in November. “The garbage encouraged by the economics of this business makes me so angry.” He left ReadWrite in February to build the Daily Portal.

Photos via @NextTechBlog, @ablaze/Twitter

@Michael_Haneke | Benjamin Lee

Started: November 2012
Followers: 31,300

did u no that in germany evry episode of friends was called 'the one wear gunther slowly poisons there coffee' lol

— Michael Haneke (@Michael_Haneke) February 3, 2013

The deputy online editor of Shortlist, Lee lampooned director Michael Haneke’s super serious persona. Lee, who lives in London, halted the parody after the real Haneke won an Oscar for Amour this year, though his other novelty account, Middle Class Problem, is retweeting some of the inane issues faced by those in the reasonably high throngs of society.

Photos via @Michael_Haneke, @benfraserlee/Twitter

@DadBoner | Mike Burns

Started: April 2010
Followers: 142,400

Change in your pocket, domesto cans on ice, your team on top, arms on swoll, a jam on the radio, and babes in the night. The American Dream.

— Karl Welzein (@DadBoner) May 24, 2013

Less a parody than a fully realized character, @DadBoner is Karl Welzein, a downbeat, deadbeat dad from Middle America. After several attempts to figure out the voice behind Welzein failed over the last few years, comedian and writer Burns outed himself as the creator in April. As seen in the Vice video where he revealed his true identity, L.A. resident Burns is a pro wrestling fan, and there are certainly more than a few hints of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s attitude in Welzein. Meanwhile, a book written from Welzein’s perspective is on the way.

Photos via @DadBoner, @pizzanachos69/Twitter

@bill_nye_tho| Lucas Gardner

When the reimagining of everyone's favorite scientist Bill Nye as a pothead was suspended last September, creator Lucas Gardner, then a senior at the University at Buffalo, said he was laying the account to rest for good. He had hundreds of thousands of followers at the time it met its demise, though Gardner admitted he was more or less out of ideas by that point. Gardner has tried his hand at standup around Buffalo and hopes to make a living as a TV writer. He also runs the terrific Dragonball Z novelty account @love_that_Goku.

Photos via @bill_nye_tho/Favstar; @Lucas_Gardner/Twitter

@PaulRyanGosling| Karen Gerwin, Wendi Aarons, Kristine Cook, and friends

Started: August 2012
Followers: 60,200

Hey girl, I know I'm only 42, but my ideas on women's rights are over 500 years old.

— Paul Ryan Gosling (@PaulRyanGosling) August 12, 2012

A blend of cultural icon Ryan Gosling and former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Paul Ryan Gosling brought the "hey girl" meme to the steps of Congress.

It's run by a group of mom bloggers and humor writers responsible for the advice site the Mouthy Housewives, one told New York Magazine. Gerwin told the Daily Dot that the account gained popularity due to the “winning humor and sarcasm, of course. Plus, Paul Ryan is inherently easy to mock.”

Photos via @PaulRyanGosling, @KarenGerwin/Twitter

@InvisibleObama | Ian Schafer

Started: August 2012
Followers: 57,900

FOUR MORE LEGS.

— Invisible Obama (@InvisibleObama) November 7, 2012

A reasonably funny take on a singular moment, Invisible Obama spoofs that time Clint Eastwood pretended to be talking to President Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention. @InvisibleObama was set up within minutes by Schafer, founder and chief executive of a digital agency.

He claimed he didn’t start it for personal attention but “accidentally took advantage of” the inevitable conversation that would ensue from Eastwood’s faux interview. Schafer said he kept it going perhaps beyond the sell-by date because of his “passion for politics, media, and social media.”

Photos via @InvisibleObama, @ischafer/Twitter

@sergeantbrody| Aziz Ansari (probably)

Started: October 2012
Followers: 30,500

Spending time with my boring son Chris is almost worse torture than I experienced in Iraq. #MySonisSoBoring

— Nicholas Brody (@SergeantBrody) November 28, 2012

We can't completely be certain Aziz Ansari is the mastermind behind this spoof of Homeland's Nicholas Brody, but the evidence indicates he is. The Hollywood Reporter outed the comedian as the puppet master when he apparently sent a tweet intended for @SergeantBrody to his own account before quickly deleting it.

Ansari is, of course, a successful standup and actor, who these days can be seen on TV’s best comedy, Parks and Recreation. His honest perspective on life drives much of his observational humor, and that spilled over to the Brody parody, where he lambasted the character’s horribly boring son.

Photos via @sergeantbrody, @azizansari/Twitter

@SeinfeldToday | Jack Moore, Josh Gondelman

Started: December 2012
Followers: 596,300

Elaine accidentally does a British accent in a job interview after marathoning Downton Abbey. She gets the job and has to keep faking it.

— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) February 11, 2013

Ex-BuzzFeed sports editor Jack Moore tweeted possible plot lines for a modern version of Seinfeld along with friend Josh Gondelman. Moore is a Seinfeld fanatic, admitting to the Atlantic he has the show on a thumb drive at all times and usually has the show on in the background. The pair joked around with a number of current-day scenarios and decided to create a dedicated account for the gags.

Photos via @SeinfeldToday, @JackPMoore/Twitter

@MayorEmanuel | Dan Sinker

Started: September 2010
Followers: 49,724

Don't know if Obama's going to use the draft of the speech I wrote before I left. If he opens with double fucking birds, it's mine.

— Rahm Emanuel (@MayorEmanuel) January 26, 2011

Perhaps the greatest of all political parodies, former journalism professor Dan Sinker took the art of Twitter storytelling to new heights with this absurd, longform take on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Sinker founded Punk Planet, a zine that ran from 1994 until 2007. He brought a ballsy punk attitude to the spoof account, and one of his former students told the Atlantic he is “down-to-earth, knowledgeable, and interesting.” His leftist political work and affinity for Chicago seemed to seep into Mayor Emanuel. Sinker’s now running Knight-Mozilla OpenNews, a project aimed at “producing next-generation web solutions that solve real problems in news.”

Photos via @MayorEmanuel, @dansinker/Twitter

@FiveThirtyNate | Matt Ford

Started: September 2012
Followers: 11,700

The Noise circles my camp - teeth bared, haunches raised. I toss the final Gallup poll onto the fire. Dawn approaches.

— Nate Silver 2.0 (@fivethirtynate) November 6, 2012

This short-lived account painted statistician Silver as an omniscient pundit, with a penchant for the surreal and the dark side. Ford is a political science graduate with a long-held interest in politics. He told the Daily Dot his parents emphasized the “importance of civic participation,” and he has volunteered for campaigns in the past.

Ford, a northern Nevada resident, wrote recently that he’s been looking for work since returning to the U.S. last August. He’s a smart, funny chap, so follow him on Twitter.

Photos via @FiveThirtyNate, @HemlockMartinis/Twitter

@NotTildaSwinton  | Eli Yudin, Carey O’Donnell

Started: May 2012
Followers: 53,789

I sit in a puddle, and pluck every spine from a hedgehog.He waddles away unencumbered.The year is 1783.I have created the guinea pig.

— Tilda Swinton (@NotTildaSwinton) May 24, 2012

This fleeting parody of actress Tilda Swinton as a mystical being expertly lampooned the perception that she is not of this world.

Eli Yudin started the parody in May last year after graduating from the University of Michigan. “There were plenty of jokes about Tilda Swinton being weird before we took it to the next level," Yudin told the Daily Dot. He said he was looking for work in the illustration, graphic design, and animation fields but also hoped to dip his toes into comedy. He’s tried his hand at comedy nights and claimed“[g]oing to open mics is the closest feeling I'll ever have to panning for gold.”

Photos via @nottildaswinton, @EliYudin/Twitter

Illustration by Jason Reed

We're still not over the Red Wedding.

Many of us dove straight into George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series during a Game of Thrones hiatus, but plenty of Martin fans have been with him since the very beginning.

Show watchers might have had nagging hints from knowing book readers for weeks, but for those people who first read A Storm of Swords in 2000, there were few people with whom they could find any sort of comfort.

One book reader, however, got creative in order to cope.

This isn't actually the first video reaction to the Red Wedding. For one thing, Jon Bander is reading the mass paperback version released in 2011—but it perfectly captures the year 2000 in a nutshell, from the dated Staind song to the block Nokia cell phone he uses.

He tries AIM and multiple calls on his "cellie," but nobody has read it. In fact, one friend is too preoccupied with "something called Azkaban" and playing his Dreamcast to read the books.

"I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS WITH SOMEONE!" he shouted.

But when he finally does find someone to talk about it with, he runs into another 2000-era problem.

When in doubt, reload your minutes. You never know what you could be missing out on.

H/T: Reddit | Photo via William K. Surry Jr./YouTube

W. Kamau Bell knows the importance of viral videos. As the host of FX’s Totally Biased, the year-old half-hour late night show produced by Chris Rock, he tackles a lot of political and social issues that the Internet loves to discuss ad infinitum. “The more biased, the better” might even be a perfect motto for Internet debates.

The show’s most entertaining and intelligent clips live long lives on YouTube, where they’re shared by bloggers making points about feminism, wage inequality, classism, racism, and other hot-button issues. It’s always better to emphasize your point with well-written jokes—like when Bell talked to people on the street about the reasons women don’t like being catcalled, or when writer Janine Brito listed famous lesbian athletes who came out publicly before NBA player Jason Collins.

The comment sections on Bell’s videos are a combination of arguing against the show’s liberal perspective and praise for someone “finally calling this out!” That word-of-mouth social media and Internet presence earned the show a second season—and a move to a daily format on the new FX brand, FXX, this fall.

The show’s writers and host are also embarking on a summer-long standup tour, which kicks off July 11, in Boston, Mass. The Daily Dot talked to Bell about the importance of creating TV that also works online, hiring writers who are integrated in Internet communities, and the damage too much social media use can cause.

How much consideration goes into whether a sketch has the potential to do well online when it’s pitched for the show?

I don’t think we think of it that directly. I think you can go crazy, as many people have, trying to think about something going viral. We know when we’re writing something, if it’s about a specific issue, we try to write it as specifically as possible, because we know whether it goes viral or not, at least the people who are interested in that issue will have a new weapon in their arsenal with which to promote that issue.

For example, Mike Lawrence, a New York comedian, did a piece about working at McDonald’s for seven years and what it’s like to work in the fast food industry. Now that video only has 32,000 views, but it’s been shared a lot among the fast food workers blogs. Those people now have a thing where they go, “This is what we’re talking about!” but with jokes. Another video we did about men catcalling women, every now and again it’ll get another 20,000 views because something new will happen with catcalling and that video will be discovered and a bunch of people will watch it over a couple of days and so it’ll creep up on our video list.

Do you get a lot of your ideas from the Internet?

No, that’s backwards engineering. We have writers on the show that were already reading Jezebel or Feministing or Tumblr blogs before they got hired on the show. They were already engaged in the LGBT community, or the South Asian-American community so they say, “I’m already in this community, I know a lot about it and I want to write something about it because it’s a great way to get some comedy out of it.”

For example, I read Jezebel regularly and I’m also a comedian, so I’m very caught up in the middle of the rape joke debate. I’ve been accused of being a comedian, and I’ve been accused of being a feminist, so I’m the sweet spot for that argument. The arguments online are between feminists and comedians, so we wanted to reenact that on the show. So we did the thing “Feminists vs. Comedians” and the two best people we picked were Lindy West, who I knew would be great and be funny and smart, and I knew Jim Norton would be on the other side, but also be sensitive enough not to devolve into name-calling. I think they both did an incredible job. … It was quickly clear this was going to be our most-viewed clip ever. It’s also by far the longest clip we’ve ever posted.

It’s nice to know that people will sit and watch a longer YouTube video if it’s something they care about.

Do you have trouble selling more Internet-y stuff to a TV audience or is Totally Biased as niche as the Internet?

We’re more niche than the Internet. [Producer] Chris [Rock] has that perspective. You can talk about whatever you want, but don’t act like everything is a major news story. Paula Deen is a major news story, however I tend to think rape jokes and comedy culture is a more important, interesting story than the Paula Deen story. I think social media causes us to have a skewed perspective on what’s “going viral” because we can tailor our social media so what we think is a big deal is based on what’s getting posted about on your feed or your timeline.

On Totally Biased, we’ll talk about whatever we want to talk about. We just have to frame it in a way that someone who isn’t on the Internet every day isn’t going, “What is this?” My father-in-law one time said, “When you do jokes about Chris Brown, you really need to explain who he is.” I thought, wow. That’s crazy. To me, he seems famous. To him, Michael Jackson is famous.

How much does having an online following for the show factor into getting a second season or going daily?

I don’t know how much it matters to FX, because they’ve never said to us, “You need to get your views up on YouTube.” But that doesn’t mean they’re not behind closed doors talking about it. I think they’re not used to shows having big YouTube presences, because they’re not used to putting content from shows on YouTube. They put up snippets from other shows, where we try to put up as much of the show as possible. We probably post like 60 percent of Totally Biased.

I’m always comparing our YouTube views to like, Epic Rap Battles of History, where they have 30 million views a video or Fallon and Kimmel’s YouTube game and I’m like, “We are not doing a good job.” But then you compare us to other FX shows, and we certainly have a more active presence. I think FX believes in the show and right now it’s the Field of Dreams phenomenon. If we build it, they will come.

How important to you is maintaining a social media presence?

It’s of the utmost importance, and because I was no level of celebrity when the show started, I was always maintaining a social media presence and engaging with people. Not to the same extent as now but sometimes I’ll just go on Twitter for an hour and engage with people and answer intriguing tweets. I’m a big fan of turning people, if they’re being mean.

Do people on Twitter want to debate you?

Absolutely. We have a lot of “fact-checkers” out there, who are like, "That’s not how that goes!" And guess what? I don’t care. Not the news! Not pretending to be the news! Not even pretending to be the fake news! Just being totally biased.

I’ve said this before, but it’s like, man, what would Lenny Bruce’s Twitter feed have been like? Can you imagine? If Lenny Bruce had Twitter, how much more quickly he would have gotten boring? How many fights with trolls? “Lenny Bruce can’t come on stage tonight because he’s engaged in an epic Twitter fight with a troll.” We may be losing some of the great artistic statements of our time, especially from some of our comedians, because we’ve given up too much of our artistic energy to Twitter.

Fans take everything too literally.

Yeah! We did this thing about George Zimmerman that I pitched to the writers as “I want to write the ultimate character assassination of George Zimmerman” so clearly not something fair or balanced. People wanted to attack us because it wasn’t fair or balanced. I was like, “Yeah. I know. Comedy show.”

One thing social media can do is ruin your ability to be profane for the sake of being profane. That’s a big part of comedy and the history of comedy, going, “I’m going to be outrageous for outrageous’s sake just to see what happens.” I’m not talking about hate speech. Part of comedy is walking that line, being on the edge and sometimes going over the edge and seeing what happens. People are like, “How can you say that?” And as my friend [comedian] Moshe Kasher puts it, “Uh, because I was kidding.” That’s not an excuse for every joke. Two things happen: Sometimes comedians hide behind that “I was kidding” and sometimes audiences pretend they don’t know you were kidding. Both of those things can be problems.

Do you agree the Internet never forgets?

It doesn’t. It kind of sucks. There’s a clip of me on Comedy Central from 2005 telling a joke that I wish I could take down because it’s like a baby picture. Except it’s not cute or adorable. It’s, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that that way now. That was a different me.” But it’s up there forever. Eventually humans are going to learn that you can’t criticize every Internet clip like it just came out today. There’s different contexts for different things.

Right now, humanity and the Internet are at the same place cavemen were when they first discovered fire. They were like, “This fire thing is so cool! I love it! Ow! It keeps burning my hand. Anyway, gotta eat this raw meat. I wish I could figure out some way to make this meat taste better but this fire keeps burning my hand.”

Right now, with the Internet, we’re sort of just burning our hands with it. In 50 years, they’re going to be like, “Man, they really didn’t know what they were doing with the Internet.”

Photo via Counter Pulse/Flickr

Oregon band The Doubleclicks are adding their voices to the fight against “fake geek girl” claims and misogyny in geek culture with a new track called “Nothing to Prove.”

The song, from the duo’s forthcoming album “Lasers and Feelings,” highlights the questioning geek girls often face about their authenticity and sends a message of geek pride in spite of the haters.

Now the band is backing up that message with a music video for the song, created with the help of geek girls online. 

The band is asking female geeks to submit 5- to 8-second videos of themselves holding up a sign that answers one or two of these four questions: What got you into geekdom? What kind of geek are you now? How can being a geek girl be weird and frustrating? What message would you like to give to the bullies who try to shame women out of the geek community?

If you submit a sign by July 8, your message could be part of the video—especially if you answer question 3 or 4, the two questions the band needs the most help with. 

Lasers and Feelings is due out July 9.

H/T Jezebel| Photos via The Doubleclicks

An unusual YouTube clip from the NBC series American Ninja Warrior has been blowing up since it aired on Monday: It depicts a man, nude except for a headband and appropriate shoes, invading and running the show’s intimidating obstacle course, stopping now and then to dance provocatively.  

Whether this was staged or not—and most viewers seem to agree it was—this guy is good.

The commentators offer some canned shock as the streaker preempts a clothed competitor’s run on the course, laughing and calling the incident “atrocious” even as they praise the mystery man’s moves. When one element calls for him to do a near-split, they take the opportunity to mention the importance of prostate health. Throughout, the audience is jubilant.

The streaker is at last defeated by the difficult Warped Wall and escorted off by security guards who had respectfully held off until then. The faux scandal charmed some fans but angered others who saw it as a cheap stunt designed to gain the show viral exposure. At least one commenter insists the man, despite the pixelated crotch, is still wearing underwear.

So who is this mostly naked ninja? The video refers to a Thomas, who is employing his “Johnny Rocket alter ego” here. It was uploaded by the Tapp brothers, who have a number of parkour clips on YouTube, and we can therefore deduce that the streaker was none other than Thomas Tapp. Here he is doing similar acrobatic street tricks, just not in the buff:

Free publicity for a parkour star and a prime-time network program? Sounds like a win-win all around—and really, in Las Vegas, would you expect anything less shameless? This ploy may be an affront to the original Japanese Sasuke, upon which NBC’s show is heavily based, but you can’t accuse it of being anything other than totally American.

Photo via TappBrothers/YouTube 

By SAM GUTELLE

The NSA’s controversial PRISM program came to light less than a month ago, but a group of enterprising creators have already turned the story into online entertainment. A group of filmmakers from Hong Kong have released Verax, a short film based around whistleblower Edward Snowden‘s arrival in Hong Kong after fleeing the United States.

The title refers to Snowden’s alter ego, which is Latin for “truth teller”, and the film is interested in uncovering the truth about the mysterious yet fascinating character. We are a band of independent and amateur filmmakers in Hong Kong who were both excited and puzzled as to why Snowden chose to come to Hong Kong,” explains the film’s description. Whether or not Verax actually unravels any of Snowden’s motives is up to the viewer.

Verax was shot and edited in just five days, and it shows. The acting is very rigid and the whole production feels more like a collection of related scenes than a completed scene. Still, you have to admire how professional the film looks, especially considering its short shooting timeline. The music is also a strong point.

Regardless of Verax‘s quality, it is a film that shows the power of YouTube as an instant gratification stuff. Snowden’s story is Hollywood stuff, and while Verax won’t be the best creation born from the NSA scandal, it has provided the first visual impression for thousands of viewers. Codefellas may have caught our eye first thanks to its absurdly fortunate timing, but Verax represents the enterprising spirit that embodies the average online creator.

Jay-Z can now add at least one more to his list of 99 problems.

Two weeks ago, the rapper and entrepreneur announced that he was dropping Magna Carta Holy Grail—his 12th studio album—on July 4 via an Android app exclusively for a select number of Samsung smartphones. The move has seen some success: More than half a million people have downloaded the sponsored app. But according to security company McAfee, some who thought they were getting the new album actually ended up downloading malware.

The company announced on its blog that a group of hacktivists had launched a malicious version of the app that derided the United States and PRISM, the National Security Agency’s online snooping program recently exposed by former contract analyst Edward Snowden.

"On the surface, the malware app functions identically to the legit app. But in the in the background, the malware sends info about the infected device to an external server every time the phone restarts," the blog explains.

'The malware then attempts to download and install additional packages. The only visible indication that a user is infected comes via a time-based trigger that is set to activate on July 4, Independence Day in the United States. On that day, the malware will replace the wallpaper on the infected device with an altered image (below, second from right) of President Obama that comments on recent events in the United States."

Photo via McAfee

McAfee also believes that the spoof app could potentially be used to obtain financial information or other critical data from users.

The malware is only the latest hiccup for the much anticipated app. On Monday, Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike tweeted a screenshot of the terms of services for the Magna Carta Holy Grail app to point out just how much information it was requesting from the user.

I read this and........"Naw I'm cool" pic.twitter.com/x8fXPG1tvC

— Killer Mike (@KillerMikeGTO) July 2, 2013

Meanwhile, Magna Carta Holy Grail has leaked to popular BitTorrent sites, where it’s being shared by tens of thousands of fans—who may or may not have Samsung phones.

Photo via NRK P3/Flickr

In comedy, timing is everything. It’s all about the anticipation and delivery, playing off of expectation and striking when the moment’s right.

With just six seconds to work, Vine doesn’t leave much room for error. But as with Twitter, whose 140-character limit spurred its own brand of online humor, the mobile video app has given rise to a new crop of amateur comedians who are using its time constraint in their favor.

The comedy on Vine hits hard and low, with all of the subtlety of a kick in the groin. The best ones are self-contained and meant to be played for a couple of loops to maximize the impact. (Vines repeat ad infinitum like an animated GIF.)

Even with the arrival of Instagram Video, which emphasizes memories over creativity, comedy on Vine has continued to flourish. The Facebook group Best Vines, which spotlights clever videos, has more than 1.4 million fans, while its recent 2013 compilation has close to 2 million views. The more popular users have follower bases well into the hundreds of thousands (and in some cases more than a million).  

"Vine is a lot of problem solving," Max Burlingame, who gives facetious tutorials on Vine as whoismaxwell, told the Daily Dot.

The “problem” is always one of condensing—figuring how to achieve the maximum effect in minimal time.

"I count the syllables in every line and try to rephrase the line to be more compressed but with the same amount of comedy," Burlingame said.

Burlingame spends hours on each vine: planning video, enlisting friends to help, and carrying out several dry runs to perfect the timing.  

"It's an awful process," he said. "If I don't initially laugh at a vine when I'm done recording it, I delete it right away, then do a retake and realized that I actually did like the one before. At that point I'm screwed."

But the return on investment lasts far longer than mere seconds. Burlingame has more than 185,000 followers and a portfolio worthy of Saturday Night Live.

The range of humor on Vine is surprising. Jerome Jarre has a whole series where he films awkward interactions with strangers in public places. Actor Will Sasso has a running gag on Vine in which a lemon magically appears in his mouth and he spits it across the room.

Simon Rex, the former MTV VJ created a number of alter egos, including Contradiction Rick (who contradicts himself with every statement) and his twin brother Steven. The latter even has his own Vine account, from which we can see battles with Rick from his perspective.

That sort of meta humor runs deep on Vine. Artist Marlo Meekins started #everybodyspurts meme, in which users drool fake blood in some form or fashion while listening to R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts."

Likewise, New York musician Nicholas Megalis has mastered the art of the song snippet, to the tune of 1 million followers.

"I eat a stale pretzel and see a ridiculously cute dog walking down the street and those are both my little songs,” he told the Daily Dot. “Anybody can sing a little song or do a little dance and share it with the world, because Vine put the power in our hands."

It all boils down to how much you can cram into that six seconds.

"The shooting is the rehearsal. I shoot vines sometimes 10 or 15 times to get it right and then I publish the best one," Megalis told the Daily Dot.

"[Vine] showed us that you can do so much with so little."

Steve Martin once said, “Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.” On Vine, you can achieve both.

Illustration by Fernando Alfonso III

In what might be the most British thing to ever happen, Prince Charles imitated a Dalek during a tour on the set of long-running BBC series Doctor Who.

The prince, flanked by his wife Camilla Duchess of Cornwall, picked up a voice modulating microphone and uttered the villain's catchphrase: "Exterminate" as well as a Christmas greeting which sounded ridiculous coming from the robot-voiced Dalek.

The royals visited the show's Cardiff studio this week in anticipation of Doctor Who's massive 50th Anniversary Special which will reportedly feature every incarnation of the beloved Time Lord. Even Prince Charles couldn't resist asking for spoilers; When he met current Doctor Matt Smith and his companion, played by Jenna Louise Coleman, he asked about the storyline for the upcoming special. Coleman said she didn't get details away, even to a royal.

That's right. Prince Charles is a diehard Whovian, who said he's watched the show since he was 15 years old. And even he couldn't get any spoilers.

Photo by Melinda Seckington/Flickr

John Williams’ classic Jurassic Park soundtrack is instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen the movie or been to Universal Studios. And it’s downright beautiful.

Now the theme, played by New Zealander Thomas Oliver on a German slide guitar called the Weissenborn, will make you cry a thousand tears. If you feel like your day is a little boring, press play and get ready to feel like whatever you’re doing is incredibly important (especially toward the end of the fourth minute).

Oliver is the lead singer of The Thomas Oliver Band who, according to their website, “have taken modern rock by the collar and shaken the soul back into it.” If forced to recast Jurassic Park based on Oliver’s twang-infused, soul-shaken theme, I think Jeff Bridges would play a great Dr. Grant, Andie MacDowell would play Dr. Sattler, and Jeff Goldblum would still play Dr. Malcolm—because you can’t have Jurassic Park without Jeff Goldblum.

For more Weissenborn covers, Thomas Oliver also plays a song called Dear Fishy and a cover of Cocaine Blues. For more Jurassic Park theme covers, you always have this and obviously this.

Photo via Thomas Oliver/YouTube

It’s been called “The Indecision.” Soon, potentially, NBA superstar Dwight Howard will announce which team he’ll be suiting up for next season.

Houston Rockets have stepped into the conversation with the unlikeliest of allies: Sheldon Cooper.

Cooper, the genius theoretical physicist from The Big Bang Theory, doesn't seem like he'd be a big basketball fan. But Jim Parsons, the Emmy award-winning actor who's portrayed him on TV for the past six years, certainly is.

The Houston native is a lifelong Rockets fan and would love to see the Los Angeles Lakers center come to Houston. He pleaded his case on YouTube in a personal video, which was uploaded to Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey's channel.

"I personally believe that the center is the most important position on any basketball team, and I think that's what usually leads to winning championships," Parson explained.

If you're looking for laughs, you might want to stick to watching The Big Bang Theory. Parsons is speaking to Howard as a fan, and he wants them to succeed. What that will take, according to Parsons, is an elite center like Howard.

"I believe if you play for the Rockets, you could play some of the best and most exciting basketball of your entire career, and I think bring home a few rings," Parsons said.

Howard's still deciding his best move, but if he joins Houston he'll already have a fanbase waiting for him.

Update: USA Today reports that Howard will sign with the Rockets. 

H/T USA Today | Photo via Daryl Morey/YouTube

It looks like one actress couldn't hardly wait to distance herself from Twitter.

Jennifer Love Hewitt announced she was leaving Twitter on July 3, citing the site's tendency to attract "negativity" as the reason for her departure.

Unfortunately with all the negativity people choose to send on twitter as well as threats to there own well being. I'm sad to say twitter is

— Jennifer Love Hewitt (@TheReal_Jlh) July 3, 2013

No longer for me. I have enjoyed all the kindness and love that came my way, as well as support. But this break is needed.

— Jennifer Love Hewitt (@TheReal_Jlh) July 3, 2013

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

— Jennifer Love Hewitt (@TheReal_Jlh) July 3, 2013

Hewitt, who has appeared in the TV series Ghost Whisperer and Party of Five, currently stars on the drama series The Client List. The 34-year-old actress recently got engaged, and she and her fiancé, fellow Client List actor Brian Hallisay, are expecting a child together. She did not cite specific examples of the "negativity" or "bad vibes" she has endured on Twitter.

Hewitt neglected to delete her Twitter account altogether, possibly indicating that she may one day decide to return to the service. She leaves behind over 600,000 followers.

Hewitt's fans were quick to react to the announcement.

@TheReal_Jlh Don't leave! We love you!

— Gregory Gold (@niceworkmsft) July 5, 2013

@TheReal_Jlh I'm sad to see you go,but I understand. Congratulations & best wishes to the future! #talkhard

— Scotty_doesknow (@Scotty_doesknow) July 5, 2013

Some Twitter users, however, exemplified the very negativity that Hewitt spoke of in reacting to the actress' departure.

Remember the time Jennifer Love Hewitt quit Twitter and nobody cared? http://t.co/0ANOu8yiKN#GurlBYE

— Hot Shiitake (@HotShiitake) July 5, 2013

Jennifer Love Hewitt is quitting Twitter. Our long national nightmare is over, or something.

— Davho Pldal (@SnarkOnTap) July 5, 2013

Hewitt is far from the first celebrity to quit Twitter due to harsh words from its users. Just last week, actor Alec Baldwin left the service (again) after calling out a Daily Mail reporter who criticized Baldwin's wife's tweets at actor James Gandolfini's funeral. 

In June 2012, British soap star Shobna Gulati quit Twitter because of racist tweets directed at her, and in May 2012, Game of Thrones writer Bryan Cogman bowed out after fans sent him angry tweets and threats.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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.

• First Jay-Z’s new album was hit by hackers, and now it’s fallen victim to thousands of pirates.
• CDZA covers Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” jazz-style.
• The promise of a crateload of smartphones ends up with a Craigslist robbery.
• Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, the shopping capital of the wizarding world, is now on Google Maps Street View. Have fun exploring!

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• 5 reasons the PlayStation 4 will crush its competition.
• No, wait: 5 reasons the XBox One is sure to win.
• Could you pass the U.S. citizenship test? Mental Floss throws out some tricky questions.

A couple of years ago, Lady Gaga burst onto the stage from an egg at the Grammy Awards. Now she's going back inside the egg.

Gaga's pretty much shunted her Twitter account back to the womb, reinstating the default egg avatar and deleting all of her tweets from the last five months. A few retweets remain, but this is a Twitter account that's been sanitized of its last few months of existence.

But what does it all mean, Mama Monster? Why have you forsaken the interface of Twitter?

Here are our theories why Stefani Germanotta (if she's going back to the egg state, her name should regress too) sanitized one of the planet's biggest Twitter accounts.

1) She's working on her new album

The Internet's ruined the mystery of making art. All too often, we see behind-the-scenes shots and videos of movies being made, dips and drabs of anticipated novels, and nuggets of new songs being pushed onto the Web before they're fully cooked.

Gaga's reportedly working on her third album, and maybe she wants to grab back the air of mystery that's missing from art. The last time we really saw it was David Bowie exploding from nowhere with a new record this year. Maybe she wants to remerge with new album in hand in a similar way.

2) It's a stunt

Gaga's pulled her share of attention-seeking stunts. That meat dress way back when is a notable one. If it is a ploy for attention to get people talking about where she's gone and her missing tweets, it's a sneakily clever one, and a trick that's obviously working.

It's a far more subtle Twitter ploy than we've seen from the pathetically desperate Amanda Bynes over the last few months. Gaga's getting attention by doing the opposite of tweeting: she's deleting things she's already said. So smart.

3) A wizard put her under a spell

Maybe Gaga was forced to hit the delete button on dozens of tweets by a wizard elf who then forced her into a giant cocoon to get some slumber after the operation she had a while back to rest up and think really long and really hard about her next record. Her army of fans expects great things and there's a lot of pressure riding on her so she really just needs a break from this whole Internet nonsense because if she loses focus and her next record sucks she'll lose all her followers and fans to Bruno Mars and One Direction. That just can't happen or the record company will get really mad and not let her put dresses made from fairy dust on her expenses anymore.

Hey, it's a theory. There are no wrong answers when it comes to speculation. 

H/T Huffington Post | Photo via LadyGagaVEVO/YouTube

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.

• Right now in Apple’s App Store, a ton of popular paid iPhone and iPad apps are free. Get ‘em while they’re ... well, free.
• 7 incredibly deep life lessons from Candy Crush Saga. 
• Tumblr reimagines Game of Thrones in the style of The Simpsons.
• DJ Earworm, the mashup legend behind The United State of Pop, drops a mix incorporating all the biggest hits of the summer.

• Mental Floss runs down 8 drugs that exist in nature.
• And now, how 5 popular 8-bit characters would actually look. (Warning: May ruin your childhood.)

This post is sponsored by Kia.

For 60 years until its decertification in 1985, U.S. Route 66 was considered by many to be the Main Street of America. Running from Los Angeles to Chicago, the 2,451-mile stretch captured the vastness of American geography—crossing beaches, mountains, desert, and the heartland—before settling in our nation's Second City, the adopted mecca of American blues.

It’s one of many stops on our ultimate summer playlist, a musical roadmap and tribute to iconic destinations captured in song. This isn’t your father’s mixtape, though. It’s a Spotify album full of contemporary cuts by the likes of Band of Horses, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, and Justin Vernon’s the Shouting Matches. It’s meant to be played loud, with windows down, and for long stretches of open road. Tune in, tune up, turn up, and drive.

Our summer road trip starts in Texas, where the Daily Dot resides. From there, it chases sunshine west, cruising around the Lone Star State before knocking off to New Mexico and California, home to both "Green River" (the Credence Clearwater Revival classic takes its name from a river in northern California) and Buck Owens' Bakersfield.

From there, it's straight onto that Route 66, a road that spawned the birth of one of music's most memorable anthems, before linking up with Route 61 outside of Illinois. Surely, its appropriation needs no clarification.

Once you've reached the bottom, and matched eyes with that beautiful bayou in New Orleans, it's back up through the great American south, cruising past "Tennessee," "Carolina," and on your way to Asbury Park, N.J., the home of Bruce Springsteen. Nothing in this world sings "Summer" like the Boss.

The songs on this playlist don't just bear names that fit within a roadmap; each embodies the spirit of its city or states in a way that can only be accomplished through melodies and lyrics. Doug Sahm’s "(Is Anybody Going To) San Antone), for example, sounds like it was served up on a pan fryer, while can hear the expansiveness that surrounds "Gallup, NM," and the back porch swing that shakes Bob Dylan’s "Nashville Skyline Rag."

It's a tour of our country. Go on and get your kicks.

Photo via Einar Jørgen Haraldseid/Flickr

Imagine yourself on the way to work—crisp suit, tie, briefcase in hand—just another content worker in the daily rat race. You turn a familiar corner, a corner you've turned a thousand mornings before this one, when suddenly you see this:

Your mind is completely blown. It’s confrontational. Uncompromising. Upsetting, but in a confusing way. Not very good, actually. Wait, what are you even looking at?

The unmistakable work of Lazy Banksy.

Of course, these lesser works of Bansky aren't real in any sense. They’re neither created by Banksy himself nor physically painted out in the world. They're actually the work of Lazy Banksy, a Tumblr run by comedy writer Cullen Crawford and illustrator Michael Nudelman. (Full-disclosure: Both individuals are friends and former coworkers of mine.)

It began, like so many snarky things, on Twitter. Last year, Crawford and his followers spent a productive day on the hashtag #Banksy2013, sarcastically predicting what the seminal street artist had in store for the world.

Kennedy assassination but everyone is recording it with their phones...*including Kennedy* #Banksy2013

— Cullen Crawford (@HelloCullen) November 12, 2012

A mural of an Instagram breakfast snapshot on the wall of a soup kitchen #Banksy2013

— Abbi Crutchfield (@curlycomedy) November 12, 2012

Trampled Santa in front of a Best Buy on Black Friday. #Banksy2013

— Thea Lux (@thealux) November 12, 2012

"Banksy is just basically hilarious to me," Crawford relates. "He's like if an overwrought editorial cartoon went to college at Urban Outfitters."

The jokes resonated, and he sought out collaborator Michael Nudelman, a freelance illustrator to take the logical next step of bringing these half-assed Banksy concepts to life. One image sees iPhone fanatics lining up willingly for an Apple-manufactured electric chair. Another shows President Obama riding atop a drone that—for probably no reason—bears the face of Falcor from The NeverEnding Story.

"For each image, Cullen sends me a one line idea and I make the picture, then maybe we have one or two rounds of some edits to get it right," notes Nudelman, a freelance illustrator with a decidedly un-Banksy background in fine art.

"Banksy's work, I think, is seen as being clever because they're efficient images,” Nudelman adds. “They're often simple and effective juxtapositions of incongruous imagery that project a very consistent attitude.

“In just about every way, our Lazy Banksy's are the opposite; nothing quite adds-up, the common 'enemy' is generally pretty unclear, the imagery is so ubiquitous that it's pretty much meaningless."

Still, the effort that goes into aping Banksy's style, overwriting the concept, and digitally altering the street scenes makes their claim of "laziness" a little dubious.

"Sometimes I do think we're trying harder than him!" Nudelman laughs. "For me, I think the 'laziness' comes more from the concepts for each illustration. They're like the least tight political cartoons. Each one has way too much going on and is just a mess. Though, if these are less lazy than actual Banksy's, I think it's just because ours are 100 percent self-aware."

Crawford agrees. "Our Banksy—and to some extent the real Banksy—has seemingly run out of things to say, and what he does say is so ham-fisted that I had to ham-fistedly make fun of it."

For its relentless sarcasm, Lazy Banksy does stumble onto an interesting truth. The un-lazy Bansky had to pound pavement, scale buildings, and risk arrest to bring confrontational art directly to the public. The activist artists of today can reach millions from their MacBooks, effectively unleashing an entire generation of lazy imitations.

The Lazy Bansky creators are no exceptions, producing other subversive digital content on the side. Cullen Crawford is the Onion News Network staff writer who revealed Mitt Romney's Google history, and Michael Nudelman's work veers frequently into the experimental. For now, Lazy Banksy is just a cathartic hobby, but the creators would be open to expanding into other media.

"Maybe to a coffee table book that we could sell directly to the people we are making fun of."

"I just assume that Tumblr is completely full of Banksy pictures anyway, and if one of these could get mistaken for the real thing that would make me extremely happy," Crawford says.

"We're like the real Banksy, just silently putting things out there and seeing what happens, a mysterious Robin Hood who hates advertising and loves it when rats wear the clothes that people would wear."

All photos via Lazy Banksy/Tumblr