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Slap-Boxing With Jesus

YouTube Is The New Blackface

I don’t particularly watch television. Actually, I do watch television, but I spend so little time watching it (and less paying attention to it when I do turn it on) that I think I’m wasting my money on the cable bill, especially for a whole bunch of channels I don’t bother watching at all (Lifetime, anyone?).

I’ve deduced my logic of still having a TV to a few reasonings: a) being raised in a household full of sisters, I got used to the adventures of the Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers and the Saiyans of Dragon Ball Z to ease the pain of living through one of my four sisters’ “time of the month” on an almost weekly basis, b) I need it to play video games or watch bootleg movies and c) to catch a music video every now and then.

In the latter case scenario though, it gets rather trite looking at he same eight videos (since I refuse to pay extra money for those video-only channels), so most of the time I hop on my computer and head straight for the marvelous train wreck known as YouTube.

I first heard about this site in my college days, where I realized I could watch classic videos I had never seen due to that brief, five-year stint where my parents refused to pay for cable after our illegal hookup was discovered and disconnected. But soon after, I began to notice this trend where people would post other random videos. While some were amusing, and others simply quenched my lust for violence, in the time where this little-known website had exploded into a world-renowned sensation, where viewers can watch virtually anything from around the world.

It’s also during this time that a lot of random schlubs were inspired to slap a video of themselves doing a variety of cornball dances, cornier raps or just acting like an idiot in public. Watching people posing like Desmond Howard was one thing, but shuffling their feet to a rap version of “The Lion King” instantly brings to mind the minstrel shows of the past, which is just wrong on so many levels.

But perhaps that is simply the current generation’s form of expression, similar to the b-boys of the past and the (ugh) krumping styles of today. If that is the case then, I may have to stay away from my computer like I do the television now.

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