Thursday was the definition of last minute. Now that might sound like a bit of an overstatement but trust me it's not, I not only had nothing prepared for the mentor interview I wasn't even sure if it was going to happen. But what does your man the best blogger to ever write a blog do? Simple he wings it and gets it done. So without further a due this is the transcript of this impromptu interview with my mentor Ryan Laughy the schools digital art teacher.
ME: What is your background in the digital world?
RYAN: Well I majored in college i did no video editing of any sort because their where no computers in collage. I have been working with photo shop for 22 years now, so i have a good foundation in Photoshop. I've taught premiere for 7 years, I have always had apple computers which means i have had access to i movie since its inception. I have done many productions with i movie and honestly prefer it to premiere, premier is a very complex program but most of the time you don't need that complexity. I movie is genius because of how intuitive it is which is typical of an apple product, your mother could figure it out in half an hour. I currently have a good number of students doing blogs and video blogs (vlogs). For different classes we have put together. Of course that is the nature of this school we can put things together and make magical things if we want to.
ME: Kind of like this interview, it's pretty magical to be able to do this on the fly.
RYAN: You can defiantly call it that. I had a student who graduated some years ago and now lives in Texas, because he can do what he loves to do in Texas and that is blow things up. He runs a you tube channel for a living and its called GY6 it's a gun aficionado channel.
ME: Kind of like fpsrussia?
RYAN: Yes they are actually friends. Andrew(GY6) probably makes 4 times as much as i do a year on you tube.
ME: Do you know a rough subscriber count?
RYAN: He hit 500,000 over Chrismas. he has sponsor ships with gun and explosive manufacturers to do reviews of their products, honestly a lot of his reviews slam the product. He is a valuable resource for the industry and a lot of companies are welling to pay for the exposure. the foundation of his work is audacity he said "theirs no reason why i can't do it so i'll do it" and he did it.
ME: Do you think that YouTube changing the world?
RYAN: I feel that it's just a system of the change that were already going through, every thing has digitized. their are good and bad things to that. i have had 2 students now who have been diagnosed with this thing called anhedonia which is the inability to feel pleasure. About 20 years ago about 3000 of a present had any systems of anhedonia, now they figure 15% of people have go through this on some level. It is based on how every thing is electric. You are plugged in and there is a price for that. Like how people don't need to remember things the way they use to scene they can just google it. I think YouTube is another system of that, which is fine it's very entertaining but it is a chruch that we use for many things. A lot of us older teachers are trying to find a difference between the old and the new. because the new is inevitable but there is a lot of value in the old. i can get almost anything from the internet so i don't have to learn it but the thing is i have to because we can not lose that ability and we are slowly losing that. which is dangerous because if we forget the past we are doomed to repeat it.
ME: How would you feel if your job was at jeopardy every second?
RYAN: My job is on the line every second. Because we don't have a union we are whats called at will employees. We can be fired for any or no reason. So we always have to be relevant. But even if we were a union school we wouldn't do anything different., we are the strangest school around welling to do things no one else well and that's wonderful. Safe is boring if it works great if it doesn't failure is the best teacher.
ME: a lot of that is like the life of a YouTuber, so what do you think about the "wheres the fair use"controversy on YouTube?
RYAN: There's a big belief in digital anarchy. Is there a digital morality? I really like what you said early that this is the wild west of media. But the wild west was not the best place do we adopt a new set of laws? Have we lost a bit of humanity buy blurring the line of owner ship? I think that we need to define that line. One big problem is that piracy has plagued the internet. I know many people who are totally strait arrow people who have no problem stealing things, and then use mental gymnastics to make it seem ok. I don't know how to solve that.
ME: Another problem that YouTubers and anyone who works on the internet face is ad block. What do you think about that?
RYAN: That's a tough question as I used ad block for years. Because it is annoying to have my content invaded by ads, but i really don't have the right to have every thing i want but no reward for the people giving that to me. Fair is fair that is capitalism and that works pretty well, What i want may not be right and that's a problem I have to deal with. I have actually turned off ad block on all of my computers. But I pay no attention to any of them.
Alright beautiful people I hope you enjoyed that I know I had a lot of fun transcribing it (sarcasm). See you all next time on the best blog in the world. Same awesome time, same awesome blog