If a YouTube video falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

This is how I feel when I check my YouTube stats.

In case you haven't been following—and I know for a fact that you haven't been following— I've recently been uploading new content to YouTube every single day. That's right. I have a channel of my own right here. Currently, I'm trying to figure out what kind of content works best there. But for that to happen, I need at least some of you out there to actually watch these videos and give me any kind of feedback, be it positive, negative, or somewhere in between.

For the last few days, I've literally been the only one watching my videos. They get no other views. Literally zero views. I don't want to carpet bomb Twitter and Facebook with self-promotion every day. I hate doing that. And I don't want to clog up Dead 2 Rights with idiotic reminders like this one. I just want to know that someone out there can hear me. Is that so horrible?

Anyway, here are a few recent videos. They'll give you an idea of what my channel is like.

There's more, but I'll leave it to you to discover. I was wondering if maybe people might want to see more review-type videos, i.e. me giving my opinion of some movie or album. I could do that, too. Let me know. Thanks.

Social Media Buzz: Another short story by Joe Blevins

"Eat your soul? Who, me?"

     After gently knocking twice, the dapper young man cracked open the door of his immediate supervisor's tastefully-appointed office and tentatively peered in.
     "Mr. Van Landingham?"
     The other man, fiftyish and conservative, did not rise to greet the young man but remained seated behind his desk as he said, "Come in, Korey. Have a seat, please."
     The young man entered the room, closed the door behind him, and respectfully sat down in a chair across the desk from his boss.
     "How do you think you've been doing in your role of Social Media Manager for the General Mills family of cereals?" said the older man.
     "Uh, good, I guess?"
     "Okay. Okay. Interesting. Now, one of your professional duties these last six months has been maintaining the Twitter account of Buzz the Bee, the cartoon mascot of our Honey Nut Cheerios brand. Is that correct?"
     "Uh, yes, it is."
     "All right. Now we're getting somewhere. Well, Korey, I took the liberty of printing out some of your recent tweets from that account. I have them right here. Do you mind if I read them out loud?"
     "Not at all."
     "Okay, here's one: 'Nothing like a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios to start your morning right.' Now, normally, that would be a damned fine tweet, Korey, but you chose to end it with the hashtag '911WasAnInsideJob.' Can you explain that?"
     "Well, uh, Mr. Van Landingham..."
     "Please. It's Kevin."
     "Well, Kevin, it's not that I personally think 9-11 was an inside job. But, of course, the account is written from Buzz's point of view. It's what he thinks. He's a multi-faceted character."
     "Okay, fair enough. But how about this one? 'Bee happy. Bee healthy. Life begins at conception.'"
     "Well, children do make up a substantial portion of our customer base, Kevin. And if they're not carried to term, they're not going to be eating any of our delicious Honey Nut Cheerios, are they?"
     "Hmmm. I suppose not. But then, there was this tweet that contained only a photo of actress Neve Campbell topless in the 2007 film I Really Hate My Job."
     "What, specifically, is the issue with that one?"
     "The issue, specifically, is that it's a photo of actress Neve Campbell topless in the 2007 film I Really Hate My Job. We try to keep our social media content family-friendly, Korey."
     "Are you saying then, Kevin, that General Mills considers the female body to be inherently shameful, something to be hidden away from view?"
     "Well, no, not exactly. But..."
     "Haven't you heard of the Free the Nipple campaign, Roderick?"
     "Kevin."
     "Whatever. It's a vital, burgeoning movement in this country right now. Shouldn't General Motors..."
     "Mills."
     "...Mills be at the forefront of change for once? There's nothing wrong with breasts, Kevin. Breasts produce milk, and what goes better with cereal than milk?"
     "Yes, but did you have to post that same photo every hour on the hour during the Paris terrorist attacks? People were beginning to wonder if it was some kind of code. Now I have the NSA breathing down my neck."
     "People always fear what they don't understand, Kevin. That's what I'm up against every time I tweet something on behalf of Buzz the Bee. You don't know what kind of an awesome responsibility this is. While you're tucked away in this cozy little office of yours, I'm out there on the front lines! Right now, people are starving for the truth, and I'm there to feed it to them, 140 characters at a time. The new millennium needs its own Che Guevara, and why shouldn't it be a cartoon spokes-bee? The truth will out! Viva the Bee!"
     As the young man pumped his fist in the air and assumed a pose of hard-won victory, the older man reached into a desk drawer, pulled out a small blow gun, raised it to his mouth, and shot a dart directly into his subordinate's neck. The young man slumped over instantly. The older man paused, sighed, then picked up the landline phone on his desk.
     "Gladys? Have maintenance send a crew to my office immediately. We have another Code B to take care of. Say, how many more nephews do you think the CEO has left, anyway?"

Winning the Internet, one comment at a time

An image from a once-wholesome, now-horrifying Wendy's commercial.

My latest Comment of the Week triumph!

I think I've been posting stuff to the Internet for about 20 years now. Yep. If I haven't had my two-decade online anniversary yet, then it's definitely creeping up on me. Of course, I haven't kept meticulous records of these things, but I became an official "Netizen" (I still hate that term) only a year or so after graduating high school, so that puts the date somewhere in the mid-1990s. Jeez Louise! That was two or three Presidents ago!

In the early days, I confined myself to text-only Usenet message boards. That wasn't by choice. That was simply all I could manage with a 2400 bps modem. Then I went through a whole America Online phrase, during which I went by the handle "DelVarmint." Yeah, I know. It was the '90s. That's what we did back then. People actually used to use the word "cyberspace" without irony in those days. Ah, memories.

Of course, the Internet is about fifty blajillion times better now than it was when I started traversing the virtual seas. If there's something I miss about those early days, it's that it was so much easier to get people's attention and find an audience back then. All you really had to do was post original content of -- no exaggeration -- any kind. It just had to be something that people hadn't seen elsewhere. That was the basic requirement.

I know this from first-hand experience, because one of my original successes was a script I wrote called The Rocky & Bullwinkle Horror Picture Show. I posted it to a few Rocky Horror message boards, and it became what we'd now call a "viral" hit of sorts. Nowadays, there are people posting professional-caliber content to sites like YouTube every hour of every day. A clunky, homemade creation like Bullwinkle Horror (which was just a script and had no accompanying video or pictures) would have zero chance of becoming an online success in 2014.

But have I given up? I have not. I'm both an attention whore and a recluse, so the internet is pretty much the perfect venue for me. And I have a whole bunch of ideas and opinions that I desperately want to share with the public, if only so the rest of the world will acknowledge that I exist. It's my way of saying, "I WAS HERE, GODDAMNIT!" How do I do that? Well, I still have this blog, naturally, and I use every form of social media I can find to promote it. (Here's a shout out to literally everyone on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google Plus, and Bloglovin!)

And when the mountain won't come to Muhammad, then Muhammad is going to bloody well schlep his ass to that mountain. In other words, if my site isn't generating enough traffic (and it usually isn't), I'll go to places which already have established readership bases and see if I can't stir up some shit there instead. Like this:

• Here's my latest article for the AV Club. I think it's funny. Or funny enough. Go read it. Please?

• Once again, I've won the coveted Comment of the Week at Josh Fruhlinger's Comics Curmudgeon Blog. Now, that might not mean a heck of a lot to you, but (to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson): "In some circles, the Comment of the Week is a far, far better thing than the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, and the Lower Oakland Roller Derby Finals all rolled into one."

Wayne, for reasons of his own, is on Google Plus

A screenshot of my Google Plus profile, which exists for some reason.

What can I say, readers? My sympathies always go to the underdog, and that includes the field of social media. Maybe that's because, as a living-impaired American, I am the ultimate underdog... a six feet underdog, if you will. So instead of going the typical route and getting a Facebook account, I've decided to take the infamous road less traveled and put all my networking eggs in a Google Plus-shaped basket. That's right! Even though G+ seems to be the Washington Generals to Facebook's Harlem Globetrotters, I've been a semi-reliable presence on the fledgling site.

Check me out! Original content and every damned thing. Please! I need people in my circle(s) to feel worthwhile! Is that desperate? Since when have I not been desperate? Here's a link to get you started!

Social Media Vs. Zombies!

I found this interesting chart on the BuzzFeed website.

While I can't speak for social media addicts, I can and will speak for the living impaired when it comes to the accuracy of these statements.

1. They never sleep.

False. We sleep. In fact, I'm about to nod off right now. In fact, I sleep a good 10-15 hours a day on average, probably more. It's no coincidence that death is sometimes called "the big dirt nap."

2. They're focused on one thing, and it's hard to distract them.

False. The living impaired, especially those who have very recently "returned," are easy to distract. Try it yourself sometime. If you are ever cornered by a "zombie," try jangling your keys. Or if there is a tennis ball nearby, pick it up and show it to the zombie while saying something like, "See the ball? See the ball?" Then throw it and see what happens.

3. They come in groups.

Often, though not always, true. Naturally, I'm a team-builder and group-leader type of guy. But there are zombie loners. Whatever your personality was like in life, that's basically what it'll be in death.

4. They lose body parts in the process.

Regrettably true, as I know from first-hand experience. Things do fall off. But science is making wonderful strides in the area of lifelike prostheses... which I'd be happy to demonstrate in person, ladies.

5. Hygiene is last on the list.

Absolutely false. Now, this is where I start to lose patience with the "lame-stream" media and its horribly inaccurate depiction of the living impaired. The media loves to portray us as being filthy and unsanitary, but this is simply not the case.... which I'd be happy to demonstrate in person, ladies.