We can’t all be like Ryan Seacrest… the perfect platform manifestation of a human. I don’t know if we all have those gifts for restraining our emotions… or whatever it is he does.
I’ve been fascinated by the Internet from the very start. In 2001, I had made a funny black-and-white film called ‘How to Dance Properly,’ a short video of me dancing to a Madonna song. I sent it to 17 of my friends on a Thursday, and by Monday, one million people a day were logging on to view it.
For some reason, we stopped getting gold stars at some age. It’s time to bring them back.
What’s so funny about cats is that they have this kind of aloof, superior vibe to them. Even if you love them, they are unpredictable. Dogs are more social, and the way that they attach and bond to us is much more human.
I think this is one of the greatest gifts of this era: Because of the Internet, we can start to type a question into Google and watch the question auto-fill. In that moment, we know someone else has asked that same question. The gift of realizing you’re not alone is incredibly powerful.
The thing that has always struck me is that there has always been a bit of a hole at YouTube when it comes to authenticity, human emotion, fun and play.
I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity – you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.
What better way to connect with people than by staring and talking straight at them? Don’t blink – that’s one less connection you could have made.
I’m always glad when people come together to help each other – whether they’re raising money for somebody in a bad situation or making a creative piece like a song.
Most of us yearn for really intimate, healthy, in-person relationships. People have a deep desire to be understood, to be told that it’s OK, that you’re not isolated and broken, that this is part of the human challenge, and that there is hope. The capacity for online interactions to do that is powerful.
Mobile video is now a reality and a force to be reckoned with. I think it is essential to think about how people interact with their phones; how they consume content and how they share.
Video has become much more social, and as a result, there are many opportunities to use video as a way to connect people, to give them opportunities to play and participate, to make things together and have a shared social experience. I think we are just at the beginning of really exploring what social video is and what we can make of it.
The naked mole is, like, the ugliest freakin’ creature in the world. It is so radically, unbelievably disgusting. And the star-nosed mole is also. It looks like it snorted a firecracker. They live way underground, and to get footage of them is basically impossible.
The story of technology seems to go up and then retract into simplicity again.
We have this incredible ability to communicate with each other. I want to play around with it, see what this mass audience is really capable of.
In an ever-changing technological landscape, where today’s platforms are not tomorrow’s platforms, the key seems to be that any one of these spaces can use a dose of humanity and art and culture.
Trust is a confusing thing. It seems so simple, but when you try to pin it down, it can be so elusive.
A good procrastination should feel like you’re inserting lots and lots of commas into the sentence of your life.
I don’t want to get too philosophical, but in a sense, you’re given this gift, this sort of creative force in you, and I think everyone has it, and it’s completely unique to you. And you as a person have a little bit of a responsibility as its shepherd if you choose to incorporate that into your life.
Let me think about the people who I care about the most, and how when they fail or disappoint me… I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.
On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cell phones, and it’s easy to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is life is being lived there. When they smile – right, you’ve seen people stop – all of a sudden, life is being lived there, somewhere up in that weird, dense network.
