Must. Be. AWESOME!!!

In this information overloaded culture in 2010, Our Foul Year of the Interwebz, the noise to signal ratio has never been higher. Anyone who communicates on the web these days faces a growing competitive landscape across different media, so much so that it becomes necessary to develop and nurture trust networks amongst one’s social familiars to even have a slight hope of getting your content seen (much less acted upon).

Courtesy of Chris Sims of The Invincible Super Blog

While said trust networks naturally develop audience loyalty and attention over time, there is another method you can employ that will guarantee eyeballs on your content.

Make your fucking content ENTERTAINING.

At the end of the day, people are going to remember the stuff that makes ‘em laugh or tickles their AWESOME bone. As a content provider, you should be aiming to deliver entertaining stuff every time. You want everyone who stumbles across your content to come away having the same reaction you did when you walked out of the opening day IMAX screening of The Dark Knight: “THAT WAS FUCKING AWESOME!!!”

Entertainment enables AWESOME. You must perform. You have to raise your game to match and beat web personalities like Gary Vaynerchuk, whose every video blog is a blast to watch even if you don’t immediately dig his content (which caters to wine). You have to transcend this homogenization of social capital across the web and bring thunder like you’re a goddamn Greek god.

I’ll challenge you to take an even further step out on the ledge: your entertainment must be provocative. Don’t just think that by adding a soundtrack to your podcast you’re automatically more entertaining. What kind of music is it? Is it AWESOME? Do your listeners rock out to it and pay more attention to your content because of it? Using provocative methods like dirty words, shocking images, and flat-out ballsy boldness will punch your signal past all the other noise.

Many will decry my endorsement of such methods as mere shock tactics; causing controversy to draw an audience in. Well, no shit, sherlock. Content providers are competing against so many different channels of entertainment today that you must enable some Shock and Ahhh to be heard. This doesn’t mean you should let these tactics overshadow your content or your message. You can be entertaining, shocking, memorable, and deliver great stuff people will love.

Here are some examples of AWESOME entertainment across a couple different online media:

• Chris Sims’ Invincible Super-Blog raises the bar on comics commentary by incorporating funny, often ridiculous instances of comics AWESOMENESS. Chris likes his comics full of punches and kicks, and not just normal punches and kicks, but punches and kicks delivered in the most insane ways possible. Ergo, the Punisher punching a polar bear.

"Cuddly. Lovable. Docile. That won't do at all."

• Jon Stewart transformed the face of mainstream media and news through the simple art of making fun of it. The Daily Show provides a hilarious take on current events and the personalities that report on them. Comedy Central wisely made all episodes of this show available via its website as more and more of its audience professed that they get their news from The Daily Show versus other traditional news reporting.
• The maestros at The Cheezbuger Network took photo editing comedy to the next level with Comixed.com. In this new crowdsourcing experiment in hilarity, Comixed encourages people to remix 3-4 photos into panels that tell a story (similar to a Japanese manga technique explained here). This entertaining site has birthed several great new internet memes like “The Reaction Guys.”

The Reaction Guys

I confess I’m having a tough time finding some badass examples of online music or podcasting that really flip my shitbiscuits. If you have any suggestions for AWESOME content I should be paying attention, by all means comment away.

Now, I admit I’m just as guilty of not being as entertaining as I could be on this blog. We’re gonna change that today. If the above pics and links weren’t AWESOME enough for you, let me leave you with this little bit of Alec Baldwin love that never gets old:

I’ve just escaped the Snowpocalypse that ate DC this past weekend for the fair airs of Fort Worth, Texas. Said Snowmageddon gave me a few days to test drive Mass Effect on Xbox… which is AWESOME (more on that, perhaps an Experience Series post, later).

Everybody have a lovely Christmas holiday and enjoy your New Year. My plans involve a lot of Mexican food, some cool eBooks on my new Nook, and mucho consumption of adult beverages. Your humble author is hard at work on some Evil Plans for 2010, so stay tuned.

In the interim, to make up for periodic inebriation of the author, here’s some AWESOME shit to delight you Here At The End of All Things.

• This hilarious Twitter hash (if you miss the joke, get thee to a Die Hard screening ASAP): #TweetsFromNakatomiXmasParty
• The best new Saturday Night Live skit in YEARS: What Up With That??!
• An interview with futurist Venessa Miemis, one of the most amazing headspace challengers and my odds on pick for best social media personality of 2009.

This is Must. Be. AWESOME!!! Dot com. Happy holidays.

Having one of those “WTF?” kind of days. Thank God for Captain Picard.

Courtesy of image_macro

Who, BTW, is not nearly as badass as Captain Kirk. So there.

Courtesy roflrazzi.com

Errrr…

This is Must. Be. AWESOME. Dot Com.

Sometimes, AWESOME simply defies description. Sometimes, the best emotional explosions and reactions to AWESOME are unexpected. Sometimes, it just happens. You can’t explain it. You can’t predict it. You can’t model it.

It just works.

Such is the case of The Venture Brothers.

GO, TEAM VENTURE!

The Venture Bros. premiered to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim time block in 2003. Over the course of its 3 seasons (currently in its 4th), the cartoon exemplified an unabashed and unadulterated love of classic genre staples – from depictions of a drug-addled grown up Johnny Quest to a Fantastic Four amalgam voiced by Stephen Colbert. However, each and every episode attacked and murdered genre expectations. The comedic timing of this sharply dialogued show arose not from the stale trappings of one-off jokes or sarcastic parodies of real life, but from the adoration and respect of the humor inherent in the show’s inspirational material. Jackson Publick, along with his showrunning cohort Doc Hammer, has even said that despite the rolling hilarity, the show is ultimately about failure… and how we can find humor in it.

Now, if this hasn’t convinced you to check this wondrous show out on DVD yet… GOOD. What??? Now, I’m discouraging you from checking out this sexy sin of AWESOME? Well, that’s part of the beauty of The Venture Bros’ AWESOMENESS.

The Ventures’ audience grew slowly, almost dismally over the past six years. Indeed, the producers have only just now begun their 4th season. That’s what’s brilliant about the show’s appeal: You have to self-select in to get the joke.

What I mean by that is that The Venture Bros is something of a private club. Part of what has made the show such a phenomenon is its use of the genre culture as marketing. In season 3, for example, Doc Hammer announced a special weekly gig where hardcore fans of the show could order exclusive T-shirts based on each episode, but only for a limited time. These shirts became hot commodities even amongst non-fans, and they drew in larger numbers to the show. Why? Because everyone who discovered the show not only liked the content (and let’s be honest, the content fucking RULES YOUR FACE), but they also liked being in on something exclusive. Something… underground.

This sense of exclusive insider knowledge perpetuated the AWESOMENESS of the show. Granted, there is a level of geektitude and nerdosity built into many Venture Bros fans. As a fan myself, I value that niche fandom too much to let the hoi polloi in on it. Except y’all. Y’all are OK.

One you get in on the inside joke, it’s something you can never come back from. The AWESOME inherent in The Venture Bros makes you a fan for life. You can’t help but ask when the next season is due out, or be mildly curious about the live action dress-up the show’s creators performed on the season 1 DVD, or wonder why the hell you keep coming back to watching stuff like THIS despite its mind-shatteringly weirdness:

I’ll tell you why.

Because it’s AWESOME.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Venture Bros. Season 4 Trailer, (or, Why Aren’t You Watching the Best Show On Television?!) (tor.com)
• Why aren’t Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick crazy-famous? (tvsquad.com)
• Animated Shorts 610: The VENTURE BROS Return! (newsarama.com)

How in the name of Sir Isaac H. Newton is there not more of this show online? David Lynch’s abortive 1992 follow-up to Twin Peaks, On the Air, was probably the funniest thing I have ever seen… EVER.

It is the SOUL of AWESOME.

Look for Blinky Watts at 6:11 and feel my LOLZ. Anyone who can find high quality video clips of this show (including the 4 unaired episodes), send ‘em my way and I’ll give yez a prize.

This is Must. Be. Awesome. Dot com.