As some friends, acquaintances and readers may have noticed, I haven't been doing a whole lot so far this year at this blog. I haven't been doing too much commenting on the PolitiFact Facebook page, either, or surveying my nemesis' work as is my usual custom. After the election I had grown a little weary of politics in general and decided to take a brief sabbatical. At the same time, PolitiFact was pretty much doing the same, particularly at National level, where they did very few rulings. But January came and went, and I was having trouble getting my butt back in gear.
In February at the encouragement of a YouTube acquaintance, I decided to give a try at making a "non-personal" video--that is, instead of another video about my cats or my travels, as I had already uploaded to YouTube, I made one about an even more controversial subject than politics. I first revved up my Windows 7 Movie Maker skills by doing an "amusing and double-entendred" religous sign video, followed by a lengthier video responding to another YouTuber. That video concerned Biblical slavery.
Many videos on YouTube are what can best be described as "Vlogs"--the video blog, the next step up from the blog, where the YouTuber videotapes herself or himself speaking at various lengths on certain subjects. That's also the easiest way to do it: a camera, webcam or smartphone can easily record and upload a video in just a few easy steps. (Although I consider it difficult in respect to keeping on topic and communicating well.) My "YouTube Style" is a bit more sophisticated. I generally splice other videos together as a response to another video: I research for other videos which may answer the "question" or "opinion" of the video I've targeted for response, especially if it comes from experts who are known in that field. I try to match one expression to its opposing expression for some congruity. So I have to use the Movie Maker to clip each video, as well as adding an intro and a closing, where I have to list any credits in case I use music or a some other copyrighted material in making my point. Occasionally I may add some audio I've recorded where I provide any needed explanation(s).
The Biblical slavery video was noticed by a "hub" YouTube site which "mirrored" it and it's received almost 1,000 views. While that's not 1.4 billion like Psy of "Gangnam Style" it's given me some confidence in my ability to produce an interesting, quality video. I've done a few more using Corel Video Studio, an "upgrade" to Windows 7 Movie Maker. More learning pains and time lost to this blog.
So that's become a sort of hobby of mine, and of course, it's apparent I can do that with PolitiFact's rulings as well. So I've finally gotten back to compiling the rulings for the first quarter of 2013, and when I am finished I really want to attempt to do a "PolitiFact Rulings and Truth Index" video for YouTube to be shared with this blog.
In the course of my foray into video editing (which is really what I do) I've also learned from some YouTube Christian apologists and counter-apologists (YouTube has a large loud atheist community) much more about logical fallacies, where they are often employed, and are probably used to some excess by my conservative counterpart. So, I may be renewing PolitiFact Bias and Zebra Factcheck criticisms from this perspective, although this will be more occasional as I want to concentrate on my efforts on the database of PolitiFact rulings, now approaching 7,000 in count.
So, I'm not done here, and I will be back in a different, hopefully more interesting way. Thanks for your support!
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