My 2024 Christmas Ad Playlist has been updated

My annotated post of my ”2024 New Zealand Christmas TV Ads” playlist has been updated: Last night I added two ads that hadn’t been running, as far as I know, until recently (Numbers 5 and 6 on the 2024 playlist). I found more ads because I again searched on YouTube for any ads I’ve seen on TV since I posted the playlist. This mystifies me: If a company’s goal is to get as many people as possible to see an ad, wouldn’t it make sense to post videos of the ads to a site as widely accessible as You Tube is? Apparently not. My original post is also updated to include my annotations about the ads. To get to the Playlist, simply follow the link above.

2024 New Zealand Christmas TV Ads

New Zealand's Christmas TV advertising has been a bit odd this year. The first one I saw (Number 1 below) was aired on or about October 25—around a week before Halloween. That sort of early start to Christmas TV ads isn’t unusual—for example, the first ad I saw last year also started airing before Halloween. I still think that’s far too early for any Christmas ads, however, the economy’s been horrible, so I expected an avalanche of Christmas ads—and then nothing happened.

Other ads started (very) slowly popping up, but there have been very few ads specifically for Christmas, and several that are (more or less…) haven’t been uploaded to YouTube, at least not yet. The key thing is that the ads must be on the company’s official website, because I learned when I made 2022’s playlist that ads that aren’t posted to official YouTube Channels are more likely be deleted (that happened to ad number 7 that year). However, even official videos can be removed or made private (as happened to Number 2 on last year’s playlist). Whenever an ad is removed/unlisted, I have to remove it from the playlist or the playback of the playlist will stop when it gets to that point, which I think is pretty dumb, actually. In any case, I just delete the removed ad from the playlist and it plays normally—and I don’t get the big black “Video unavailable” box where a video once was, as happened frequently when I used to post individual ads. Sure, playlists are a bit more work, and sometimes, like this year, posting a playlist may be delayed while I wait for ads to be posted on official YouTube channels (if they are…), but despite all that, I still think it’s the best option.

As always, I compiled this year’s Christmas ad playlist in the order that I first saw the ads on TV, and if any of the other ads posted later on, I’ll add them to the playlist and the descriptions below. And, of course, if any are deleted, I’ll update the playlist and this post.

The criteria: Ads must must be airing on New Zealand television (not merely online or on social media or whatever). Second, they have to be New Zealand companies, or companies that are connected to New Zealand. This is because international ads might be seen in many countries, though our ads aren’t necessarily seen elsewhere. Finally, as I said, the ads must be on an official YouTube Channel, not one belonging to third parties.

A warning: Just like in past years, the annotations below include spoilers, which I mention in case you want to watch the videos first. All that out of the way, here’s a bit more about the videos, all of which are, as I said, in the order I first saw them on TV:

1. “Give a Gift That Unleashes Theirs | Spark Christmas 2024” – Spark NZ. This ad is for Spark NZ, one of the largest mobile phone (etc…) companies in New Zealand. When I first saw this ad around October 25 (!), I didn’t realise it was a Christmas ad. I was making dinner, and that's a time I don’t pay close attention to ads if I see them at all: Many nights I only hear ads because I’m busy in the kitchen. I suppose I should’ve realised what it was right away, since the first scene has a woman wrapping a present, but the surreal animation (which reminded me of the work of artist Peter Max) kind of threw me off—until I actually paid attention to the ad. This ad is much more subtle than other Christmas ads from the company, but I kind of like the laid-back vibe. [Full disclosure: At the moment, I’m a Spark NZ customer.]

2. “New World Christmas 2024 - 30” – New World. This ad is one of my two favourite Christmas ads this year. New World is owned by one of two supermarket companies in New Zealand, and the only one that’s New Zealand-owned (each store is individually owned, and together they’re part of a cooperative). This year’s ad is part of their “find your wonderful” series of ads, and I think it hits all the right emotions for Christmas, and is a truly heartwarming ad. I think it works especially well because it’s not centred on folks shopping in their supermarket, but instead focuses on the human connection to the food (and each other) that the supermarket helps facilitate. It creates subtle positive vibes about New World without smacking viewers in the face with “Buy! Buy! Buy!” messaging, and this year's approach is actually more likely to make viewers feel good about shopping there because who doesn’t want to feel a connection with our loved ones? A very well done ad.

A bit of trivia: The theme song used ad series (that’s played in the background in part of the ad), is sung by a young woman who actually worked at New World and was picked when the company was looking for a singer to record the song. [Full disclosure: I shop at both New World and Australian-owned Woolworths.]

3. “Feels like Christmas at Woolworths” – Woolworths NZ. This is an ad for Australian-owned supermarket chain Woolworths (formerly called Countdown in New Zealand, but since rebranded to match the branding in Australia). This ad is part of their “Fresh food feeling” series of ads, many of which highlight New Zealand farm-grown produce sold by Woolworths, and the centring of this ad on a farm is in keeping with that, as is the shot of a Woolworths truck leaving the farm. However, the down-home wholesome family farm feeling is a slight departure for the company’s ads—and I think it’s extremely well done. The ad is cute, reinforces the other ads in the series, and in particular the “Fresh food feeling” message. Most import for a Christmas ad, it has an actual connection to the holiday, one that’s appropriate for the business Countdown is in. What I said about New World’s Christmas ad (Second on this year’s list), is equally true about this ad, that it’s “not centred on folks shopping in their supermarket, but instead focuses on the human connection to the food (and each other) that the supermarket helps facilitate.” All of which is why this is my other favourite for this year. [Full disclosure: I shop at both Woolworths and New Zealand-owned New World.]

A bit of trivia: The central North Island town of Ohakune is known colloquially as “the carrot capital of New Zealand”, and the town features a giant carrot, which, the Wikipedia article on the town says, “is reputedly the world's largest model carrot”. When I think of carrots, I really do associate them with Ohakune.

4. “Let the Magic Find You This Christmas #AirNZXmas” – Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand starts their Christmas TV advertising a little later than many others (usually somewhere around the beginning of December), and that’s fine with me! This year’s ad is more focused on the airline as an airline than some other years have been, and I think the surreal magic taking place aboard the plane is, well, magical—as a good Christmas should be. I bet “certain people” will be saying “Bah! Humbug!” when they see the Christmas ornament emblazoned with “Meri Kirihimete”, but one can hope that their grinchy hearts might grow three sizes (metaphorically speaking) that day, and that they can, ya know, get over it.

This isn’t exactly trivia, but a bit of a fact check for other kinds of “certain people”. The kid's seat back screen shows that the magical flight is from San Francisco to Auckland, and the date of arrival is listed as “Dec 26”, which is why the mother says to the son, “I promise we won’t miss Christmas next year,” and the flight attendant sees the sad boy, and the cabin crew launches into magic making—with all of them waiting until it officially becomes December 25 on board, meaning the plane took off on December 24. So, they lost a day? YES! It happened to me: When I flew to New Zealand to live, I took off on October 31, 1995 and arrived on November 2, 1995—I had NO November 1, 1995 (something I wrote about back in 2012). So, while the ad depicts a magical trip, that doesn’t include magically altering time. However, people doubting that the passengers would ever all be asleep at the same time do have a point—it’s magic!

Some possible trivia: In the past, Air New Zealand always used actual employees in ads and safety videos. I don’t know if that’s true for this ad, but I think it’s kind of nice to think it might be.  [Full disclosure: I personally prefer to fly Air New Zealand over any other airline.]

Update – December 22, 2024: I found a couple more ads that started airing, or the videos only became available, after the original post. They are:

5. “All I want for Christmas...” – Mitre 10 New Zealand. Mitre 10 New Zealand is a chain of New Zealand-owned home improvement and hardware big box stores, and this particular ad is part of their “With you all the way” series of ads and instructional and “How To” videos. It’s appeared on both TV and on YouTube, though on TV they’re also running ads from their 2022 Christmas ad series [see also Number 6 on my 2022 Christmas ad playlist].

6. “Where you'll find everything Christmas.” – The Warehouse. This ad is part of a series of ads NZ's discount retailer The Warehouse began running a few weeks ago. To me, the series is weird: They each show a family doing autotuned singing of new lyrics to Lou Bega’s 1999 global Number One hit, “Mambo No. 5 (A Little bit of…)” [WATCH/LISTEN to the original] as they shop in store, filling the trolley to overflowing. To me, the first ad in the series [WATCH/LISTEN the 60 second version] is closest to Bega's original, but when I first saw that ad, it was definitely a "WTF?" moment for me. I'm used to it now, I suppose (and the backing track is undeniably catchy), so, maybe in that sense it works? In any case, it takes my award for New Zealand's Oddest Christmas Ad of 2024. [Full disclosure: I sometimes shop at The Warehouse].

🎅🏻 🎅🏻 🎅🏻 🎅🏻 🎅🏻

As always, there are more NZ Christmas ads I’ve seen on TV, but they're not on the companies’ official YouTube Channels. For example, Michael Hill Jeweller has been running very brief ads (10 seconds), but I've mainly seen them on YouTube videos. The common theme is people in older high rise apartment buildings in some Northern Hemisphere city giving each other jewellery for Christmas as it snows outside. Most retailers’ ads this year are just generic promotions for specific products on special, the kind of ad they might run for any special promotion tied to any holiday. If any of those ads were online, they might create a dilemma for me, because they’re not Christmas ads as such. Maybe I need to tighten my criteria?

At any rate, these are the only ads available at the moment, though if more NZ Christmas TV ads do become available on an official YouTube Channel I’ll (probably?) add the videos to the Playlist and annotations to this post, and then post an announcement on the blog that the playlist is updated. However, you can also follow the direct link the YouTube Playlist if you’d rather skip my comments, or even just to share the playlist.

In any event. Merry watching-mas!

A tale of two tales

Pretty much everyone who has used social media has seen how easy it is to inadvertently confuse people, whether we posted a photo, shared something from someone else, or maybe it was something we said, the opportunities to sow confusion seem endless. Last night, I found out it’s also possible to look a bit muddled.

I made two social media posts last night while I was watching the recorded version of a tech show that streams live on YouTube every Saturday afternoon (NZ time), something I watch in the evening because I almost never watch TV in the daytime, even on weekends, and I also watch other YouTube videos before I wathc the recording of the live stream. My first post was one I made to my personal Facebook, and the other was a photo I shared on Instagram (at the top of this post), and my Instagram posts are set to share to automatically post on Facebook, too. However, the two posts were very different in tone and focus.

My first post, directly Facebook, was about what I was watching, and how I related to the show’s content:

Tonight I was watching a discussion on the weekly live show (recorded in my time zone) show from a tech channel that made videos Nigel and I watched, often together, and as my eyes glazed over watching the video, I thought about how Nigel could both explain to me what they were on about AND educate me about what to do. I find it extremely difficult to navigate *some* of these tech issues, and while I do my best, I’m second-tier at the very, very best. To this very day, despite all my best efforts, I still struggle. And so it continues.🤷🏻‍♂️

I don’t remember what topic made me reflective, and that’s partly because they talk about a lot of subjects on the show. The bigger reason, though, is that once I start thinking about something, especially if I’m wring down my thoughts (even on Facebook), I tune out other things going on around me, especially things on TV.

The hosts of the show were most likely talking about something to do with parts for PCs, or things related to Windows, however, my computers and devices are all Apple (I even watch YouTube videos using an Apple TV attached to my television). The fact I didn’t fully grasp what they were talking about merely made me remember how well Nigel understood it all, and how much I relied on him for all things tech, something I’ve talked about many times.

Shortly after I made that Facebook post, Leo jumped up in my lap and went to sleep. He fell deeply asleep, so much so that he even snored a bit. I took the photo, and shared it to Instagram, writing:

Tonight I was watching the weekly livestream video (after the fact…) of a YouTube tech channel Nigel and I used to watch (though we never watched the streaming shows…), and I looked down. Leo was sound asleep on my lap. He’s somewhere near me always. He’s a good boy. ❤️

My Instagram post was really about Leo, and it actually didn’t matter what I was watching at the time. However, I was still feeling reflective, about an hour after my Facebook post, and that’s why I mentioned watching it. The post automatically shared to my personal Facebook, where it appeared above my first post.

There have been times in the past where I’ve decided to not share an Instagram post to Facebook, usually because I shared a different photo there. Or maybe I shared one to Facebook first. It’s more common, though, for me to share things only to Facebook—actually, I often forget about Instagram for weeks.

All of this means that it’s extremely unusual for me to have two Facebook posts that cover similar ground follow one another. I don’t have a social media “strategy”—though maybe I should—but I often try to share nice or even sweet photos on Instagram because that’s public, and I’m well aware how much of social media is worse than a clogged sewer line. Those same photos then show up on Facebook (and ones of Leo usually get more “reactions” (like Likes) than almost anything else I post there.

Like Instagram, I seldom post anything terribly serious on my personal Facebook, either, however, I’m much more likely to post something reflective on Facebook precisely because it’s not public. It never occurred to me to post the photo only to Instagram, partly because I seldom do that, but in retrospect I wish I hadn’t mentioned watching the show on the Instagram caption. In fact, I thought about editing the caption to take that reference out, but I usually only edit to correct typos, not to completely change what I’ve said.

In the end, it made me realise I need to pay a little more attention to what I’m posting, not as obsessively as “influencers” seem to do, but simply for clarity and to avoid seeming like I’m being inconsistent. In that sense, it’s a good thing that posts were even more jarring right next to each other

There’s one thing more about all this, and it’s the reason I didn’t make any changes to what I posted: Facebook is notorious for not showing FB “Friends” everything that their “Friends” post, and that means it’s probable that only a handful of my “Friends” saw even one post, and that even fewer saw, so I was quite possibly the only one who noticed the difference in tone between the two. Besides, photos of Leo are probably seen more often by my Facebook “Friends” than almost anything else I post (and yes, I'm aware that talking about the two posts could mean more people see the text of both than ever would've otherwise).

It’s easy to inadvertently confuse people when we post to social media. Last night, I found out it’s also possible to look a bit muddled, even if the only one who noticed was me.

My 2023 Christmas Ad Playlist has been updated

Exactly one week after I posted ”2023 New Zealand Christmas TV Ads”, my annotated post with this year’s edition of my annual YouTube Playlist, the last ad I was expecting, Air New Zealand, was posted on YouTube and also started airing on TV. I didn’t have a chance to update the playlist until today, partly because I also wanted to search YouTube for any other ads I’ve seen on TV (the Animates ad, Number 7, was also there—and may have been broadcast before the Air NZ ad). After updating the Playlist itself, I then also had to update that November 24 post so it includes the updated video playlist as well as my annotations for the newly included ads (and all the ads in the Playlist, of course). To get to the Playlist, simply follow the link above.

2023 New Zealand Christmas TV Ads

New Zealand's Christmas advertising began late last month ago—once they were done with Halloween and the NZ General Election. This year, I shared the first Christmas TV ad I saw, mainly because of how surprised I was to see an ad in October—far too early for Christmas ads. However, last year the ads began even earlier, and it’s at least possible that election advertising may have helped delay Christmas ads this year—which I guess is one good thing about them (there had to be something). At any rate, I started compiling this list the same day I posted that first ad.

In the nearly three weeks since I shared that first ad, a few more have started airing—but not all that many. Moreover, some of the ads that are on TV aren’t on YouTube, generally because the companies don’t do much (or even anything…) with their YouTube Channels, and that presents a problem.

I learned when I made last year’s playlist to not share any ads that aren’t posted to official YouTube Channels. That’s because of one ad, for retail chain Noel Leeming (originally Number 7 on last year’s list). I found it from an unusual YouTube Channel that was eventually deleted, taking the video with it. I had to re-jig the playlist and update it, then update the blog post—all because of one ad that came from a “non-official” YouTube Channel. On the other hand, it allowed me to add the ad from Countdown supermarket, which I didn’t even realise they’d posted to their YouTube Channel (it was a couple weeks after I made the playlist). This year, Countdown has a revised version of that same ad, but it’s not on their YouTube Channel—maybe I’ll be able to add it later? [Update – December 3, 2023: I added ads 7 and 8 to the Playlist and to this post]

At any rate, I began doing these playlists because I had so many Christmas ad posts from previous years with missing videos—which makes those posts utterly pointless. I figured that if a particular ad was later deleted by the company, the playlist itself would still be fine. The Noel Leeming incident taught me that if an ad is deleted or made private, I need to delete it from the playlist or it will stop its playback when it gets to the deleted ad (it doesn’t just skip it). Always learning!

This year I used the same criteria I’ve used in the past: The ads must must be airing on New Zealand television (not merely online or on social media or whatever). Second, they have to be New Zealand companies, or companies that are connected to New Zealand. This is because international ads might be seen in many countries, though our ads aren’t necessarily seen elsewhere (the word “necessarily” is actually relevant to this list). However, if there was an “international” ad that was dubbed with NZ voice actors, I might consider including it for the novelty—assuming it’s not geoblocked, as such things so often are. Finally, as I said, the ads must be on an official YouTube Channel, not one belonging to third parties.

A warning: Just like in the past, the annotations below include spoilers, which I mention in case you want to watch the videos first. All that out of the way, here’s a bit more about the videos, all of which are, as before, in the order I first saw them:

1. “However you do Christmas, we've got you sorted at New World - 30 seconds” – New World. New World is owned by one of two supermarket companies in New Zealand, and the only one that’s New Zealand-owned (each store is individually owned). This year’s ad is more straightforward than last year’s, and maybe a bit less fun. Still, it’s a supermarket ad, so it does the job. [Full disclosure: I shop at both New World and Australian-owned Countdown.]

2. “Christmas spent together" – The Warehouse. This ad is my absolute favourite of the year (so far?). It’s also much more straightforward than last year’s ad, but it’s designed to tug at the heartstrings as the boy, Jack, notices the older man next door living alone, seemingly forgotten at Christmas. Jack gets an idea: Using a cricket ball he got for Christmas, he invites the man over for Christmas lunch. The ad has included bargain prices for various things, then in final scene is the cricket ball with “Lunch?” written on it, and a tag “Christmas Invitation $5”. The point of the add is summed up in the narrated tagline when the ball is shown: “Bargain! But the real bargain, a Christmas spent together”. Indeed. [Update: I deleted this ad from the Playlist because it was made "Private", and the playlist stopped because of that; it works again after I deleted the video].

3. “Give A Gift That Unleashes Theirs This Christmas” – Spark NZ. This ad is for Spark NZ, one of the two main mobile phone (etc…) companies in New Zealand. It was originally part of Telecom New Zealand until that company was broken into thirds to free up the market. The Spark name began in 2014.

This ad centres on a boy dancing around the house as the family snoozes after their Christmas lunch—a real enough thing, actually. He takes off the paper crown thing at some point and we see he’s wearing earbuds. The tagline on screen at the end underscores what the video is about: “Give a gift that unleashes theirs”, by which they mean a tech gift, one must assume, especially because the final shot of of earbuds given as a gift. [Full disclosure: At the moment, I’m a Spark NZ customer.]

4. “The Home of Christmas” – Farmers. This ad has the same name as last year’s ad, but it’s different. This year, there are more families shown celebrating Christmas, all giving each other presents they bought at NZ department store chain Farmers. Still, it’s a nice, upbeat ad, and, I think, better than last year’s. [Full disclosure: I sometimes shop at Farmers.]

5. “A Christmas to Remember” – Michael Hill Jeweller. This long-version ad, like the ones they’ve run for the past two years, was pretty obviously not shot in New Zealand, and also like previous years, the characters never speak out loud. Still, the company began in New Zealand, which is why it makes this playlist. The version in the playlist is 2:31 long—far longer than the version shown on TV, and that’s a good thing: When I saw the much shorter ad on TV, I couldn’t really work out what was going on, apart from the fact there was a sullen teenage girl, but the specific reason for it wasn’t obvious. This long version make it clearer what the characters’ story is, but maybe a better edit of the TV version would’ve made it clear, too? At any rate, this ad is all that's on YouTube, and I think it's fine—maybe not as good as the previous two years, in my opinion, but still good for what it is.

6. “Variety's Christmas Appeal 2023” – Variety New Zealand. This ad is from the New Zealand branch of Variety – The Children's Charity, and it promotes their Christmas Appeal. This isn’t the first time I’ve shared a charity Christmas ad, and I think they’re good reminders that Christmas isn’t just about gifts and lavish celebrations: It’s about people, children in particular.

7. “Christmas Brand Ad - 15 seconds” – Animates Vetcare NZ. This ad is for Animates (usually called “Animates Vetcare NZ” in social media, due to the co-location of many Animates pet shops with the company’s Vetcare vet practices), and, obviously, the ad promotes Christmas shopping for pets at their shops. This ad is based on a series of other TV ads that use the same music and focus on individual pets looking happy, and it’s fine for what it is—and the tune IS catchy. I don’t know, but I suspect that this may be an Animates-branded version of ads being run by its Australian owners in that country. While Animates began in 1996 in Christchurch, in 2014 it was bought by then-ASX listed Australian pet care company Greencross, which, in turn—well, let’s just say it ended up with the usual labyrinthine world of corporations’ fractured organisation. This ad was posted on YouTube on November 6, but I don’t remember seeing it on TV until very recently. [Full disclosure: I’ve long shopped at Animates, and my furbabies have been patients at Vetcare for years, too—and before that at the predecessors Animates aquired along the way.]

“Air New Zealand presents ‘The Great Christmas Chase’” – Air New Zealand. This adl like last year’s started airing on December 1, which is also when it was posted to YouTube. This year’s ad is—obviously—not about the airline’s service, even though it features a woman dressed as a flight attendant. In the YouTube description, they say, “The magic of Christmas makes the impossible, possible 😉🎁”, which I suppose is kind of what the running woman is doing. The description continues: “…Seriously though, please don't rush at the airport or try this at work. All stunts are performed by professionals; have a nice, slow, safe, relaxing Christmas.” Um, okay? I think this ad is a bit more straightforward than last year’s, even if neither is particularly focused on the airline. Having said all that, I think it kind of works, and the very end is sweet: The flight attendant helps the boy hide the lost gift to his mum before exiting kind of adventure movie style, before the mum can see any of it, and ending with the boy whistling the music used. This ad is kind of a nice alternative to the crass “Buy! Buy! Buy!” of most other TV ads this time of year.

An ad for Mitre 10 has also been running, but it’s the same ad they used in last year, and it’s included in the 2022 New Zealand Christmas TV Ads playlist. I thought about including it again, but decided against it, mainly because if I included it on both playlists and the company later removes the ad from YouTube, it would cause problems for both playlists—and so, more work for me.

There are more ads I’ve seen on TV, but since they're not on the retailers’ official YouTube Channels, they’re not in this year’s playlist. Among those ads is one for Australian-owned supermarket Countdown, and it's similar to the one from 2022 that I mentioned above, but it also includes the rebranding of the chain as the company changes the name of the stores from Countdown to Woolworths, the same as the Australian parent.

As always, if more NZ ads start airing—and they’re available on an official YouTube Channel—I’ll add the videos to the Playlist and the annotations to this post (and post an announcement on the blog that the playlist is updated). However, you can also follow the direct link the YouTube Playlist if you’d rather skip my comments, or even just to share the playlist.

In any event. Merry watching-mas!

Stabilising goals

The image above is a Facebook “Memory” that popped up today, as it does every year on this date. I blogged about the story behind it back in 2021, but what I didn’t talk about back then (or very often) is that the goal for that stabiliser is one that’s still not realised. I often wonder if it ever will be.

That stabiliser wasn’t exactly cheap, though less expensive than a good oue would’ve been, and that’s the reason I was so determined to get it working—and why I still haven’t given up on it. However, not being able to use it didn’t stop me from taking photos, many of which were to illustrate blog posts. None of them needed that stabiliser, of course.

In 2015, I started making some YouTube videos, and the stabiliser would’ve been handy for some of them. I might have eventually worked it out, but in October 2016 I stopped making any videos. I always intended to make more, but just never did.

At that time, I had plans to make a portable studio for the garage, and was researching lighting options. However, in February of 2017, we moved to the other end of Auckland, along the southern edge of the Manukau Harbour, and there was too much work to do to settle into the new house.

Even so, I continued making plans for a garage studio, and in March 2019 I refurbished some old worklights that I planned to use for photography and video lighting. Nigel and I used them to take photos for some stuff we were selling on NZ’s auction site, Trade Me.

Then, of course, all my plans stopped on September 20, 2019.

Once I was here in my current house, I started thinking about what I wanted to do, and I knew whatever it was, it would include all sorts of creative work. The various Covid lockdowns gave me plenty of time to work on ideas and plans, including for making videos again.

In October 2021, a couple months after I blogged about that Facebook “Memory”, I ordered some studio lights from a photography supply company in Auckland, along a light cube (basically a small collapsible cube used for taking photos of objects). I planned to use both for photos, and the lights (possibly?) for making videos. In the end, the only thing I’ve used them for (so far…) was—once again—to take photos of things I was selling on Trade Me.

In that same era, I also got a ring light, which are used for vlog-style videos, selfies, and video conferencing (I used it for the latter, a family night on Zoom during a Covid lockdown). More recently, I bought a rig to hold a cellphone, something that gives me two handles on either side of my phone, something that makes it more stable than holding the phone by itself using one hand—or even two. Since phones’ video recording includes image stabilisation, the rig gives me just enough stability to make the image appear as if it my phone was on a tripod—well, it did in my tests, anyway. The rig also has a tripod mount and can accept “cold shoe” camera lights (this means lights that don’t get power from a camera), and I bought a pair of battery-powered lights for it, and all of that was pretty inexpensive.

Meanwhile, I also shortened the length of my audio podcasts, trying to keep them to around 18 minutes or less. My idea was that if I could shorten the podcast episodes, I could record them as video to upload to my YouTube Channel, and also post the audio as I always have. The videos have never happened, obviously, but my audio podcast has become weekly, which I think happened in part because I started making them shorter.

All of this lighting and other filming gear was always about making videos again—in fact, that’s the only thing a stabiliser is used for (nearly all the other equipment I bought could be used for photography, too, or it was usable only for photos). I’d enjoyed making videos for the time I did, and I thought I’d like to see if I could get good at it.

More recently, it became obvious to me that what many people now perceive of as a “podcast” is in video format, not audio, and audio-only podcasts have become kind of a quaint relic in some ways. I watched various YouTubers to get a sense of how they did what they do, but I noticed that much of what they did was about “monetising” their channels, which allows them to make a living from YouTube, something that was never my goal (not the least because it would mean paying tax on the income to two countries, along with twice the compliance costs). As it happens, YouTube places ads in front of some of my videos right now, but I don’t get a single cent of that—YouTube gets all of the money (my Channel isn’t even eligible to be monetised at the moment). I think it’s funny how much time I spent entertaining the idea of trying to make money from my videos while YouTube already was—but just for Google, not for me!

I still have no idea whether I’ll resume making videos of any sort, but my equipment has been, and will continue to be, useful for photos. For me, right now, that’s enough. I guess there’s stability in that, too.

My 2022 Christmas Ad Playlist has been updated

Two weeks ago tonight, I posted my annual YouTube Playlist of New Zealand Christmas TV ads. Since then, I found a copy of one ad that was missing from the Playlist, and another ad (Air New Zealand) just started airing today. That post is now updated to include all that, and it has my annotations for all the ads in the Playlist, with things like background, my reactions, etc. To get to the Playlist, simply follow the link above.

2022 New Zealand Christmas TV Ads

It’s the Christmas Season (already…), because New Zealand's promotional and advertising push actually began at least a month ago, when I saw the first Christmas ad on TV. I held off sharing any ads then, not only because I felt early/mid October was far too early for Christmas, but also because, at the time, I’d only seen one ad on TV.

In the weeks since I saw that first ad, more have joined the pack, so I started creating this year’s YouTube playlist (above). I began this new playlist tradition last year when I noticed how many posts now have missing videos (ads in particular), which kind of makes those posts pointless. It’s only been one year, but so far this has proven to be a good idea: All of last year’s ads are still available.

I have a set of criteria I use for the ads I include in the playlists. First, they must be airing on New Zealand television, not merely online or on social media or whatever. Second, they have to be New Zealand companies, or companies that are connected to New Zealand. This is because international ads might be seen in many countries, though our ads aren’t necessarily seen elsewhere (the word “necessarily” is actually relevant to this list).

At any rate, on to this year’s list. The annotations below include spoilers, so you may want to watch the videos first. All that out of the way, here’s a bit more about the videos, all of which are included in the order I first saw them:

1. “Make Someone Happy” – Michael Hill Jeweller. This is what I was actually thinking of when I said ads “have to be New Zealand companies, or companies that are connected to New Zealand”, because Michael Hill Jeweller, although founded in New Zealand in 1979, is an international company headquartered in Brisbane, Australia. They operate in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, and their Christmas ads run in all three countries, however, they “aren’t necessarily seen elsewhere” (which is why this ad is “relevant to this list”). If they have a Christmas TV ad next year, I can just link to this rather than explain it again, right?

Anyway, this ad focuses on a small part of last year’s ad, “Make Their Christmas”—literally. The little boy in that ad passes a present to a girl through a stone wall, and that scene is repeated in this ad—and updated with the now-adult characters. In last year's ad, the boy also hands a Christmas present to his mother with the tag, “to the love of my life”, one assumes from his father, and that line is also repeated in this year's ad. Finally, the backing song is, once again, "Only You" by Yazoo, a song I blogged about in 2020 because it had become strongly personal for me. In fact, it still is, which is probably why I like the ad so much—even if New Zealand doesn’t have snow at Christmas. It's also kind of refreshing to see ads revisit characters from previous ads and show them in an entirely new context. That's not done enough, in my opinion.

The rest of the ads on this year's playlist are from New Zealand companies.

2. “Let's make Christmas magic (30 seconds)" – New World. New World is one of two supermarket chains in New Zealand, and the only one that is New Zealand-owned (each store is individually owned). I think this ad is fun—especially the guy’s rapid-fire explanation for why they’re doing the “impromptu Christmas song”. One of the people sings about “glasses for free”, and glassware is in a lot of shots. This year, New World is offering a glassware promotion, but the song is the only place it’s even hinted at, unlike last year’s “Something’s cooking at New World” ad, which prominently featured the cookware promotion they had on at the time. Personally, I much prefer this year’s approach. [Full disclosure: I shop at both New World and Australian-owned Countdown.]

3. “Get Christmas magic delivered (15 Seconds)” – New World. This ad is related to the ad Number Two, but promotes Christmas delivery of groceries. I thought this ad was a clever add-on to their main Christmas ad. [Full disclosure: I've never used New World's delivery service, but I do use the one from Countdown.]

4. “Nigel's Christmas Wish” – The Warehouse. This ad is—well, kind of odd. It reminds me of some UK stores' Christmas ads from years past, and it’s nice and all, but I kind of don’t get the message? I mean, apart from the obvious, the “Whatever your Christmas wish. The Warehouse.” tagline. I any case, I didn’t know it was called “Nigel's Christmas Wish” until I went to create this year’s Christmas ad playlist, and it made me smile. I think my Nigel would’ve smiled, too. [Full disclosure: I shop at The Warehouse.] Update – December 1: The Warehouse has been partnering with a radio station brand on “12 Days of Wishmas” to give people around the country a prize package and $3,000 cash, and part of that involves taking “Nigel” on tour around the country for the presentations. The short videos of each stop are broadcast each evening during the news broadcast (and can be seen at the link).

5. “The Home of Christmas” – Farmers. This ad is for Farmers, a 113-year-old New Zealand department store. They’re also running some specific product ads, but this is their sort of general Christmas ad. The ad is fine, but their ads are generally not particularly special or creative—not that it matters to me: I shop at Farmers (especially for clothes), both in person and online, and it’s probably my favourite department-type store in New Zealand.

6. “Mitre 10 With You All The Way This Christmas” – Mitre 10 New Zealand. This ad is from Mitre 10, a New Zealand-owned chain of home improvement stores. Unlike it’s largest competitor, Australian-owned Bunnings, Mitre 10 is a co-operative. This year’s ad is built on a series of TV ads they’ve run promoting DIY [for example, watch one such ad, “Mitre 10 With you all the way 45 sec”]. I think the ad works by itself, and also as part of the series. [Full disclosure: I often shop at Mitre 10, as well as Austrian-owned Bunnings Warehouse.]

Update – December 1, 2022: Additional ads either started airing or the videos only became available after the original post. They are:

7. “Merry Techmas Song” – Noel Leeming. Noel Leeming is owned by the same retail group that owns The Warehouse (Number 4 above), and specialises in tech things, small appliances, whiteware, that sort of thing. This commercial is a continuation of a series of ads in which a character is called “Noel”, and personifies the store brand, very knowledgeable about tech, and always willing to help. A previous version of the Noel character was played by a female actor, and the most recent is played by a male actor, the first actor to start singing in this ad. This ad breaks my usual procedure because it’s not from the store itself (it still hasn’t posted the video), but from a new (August 2022) YouTube Channel that seems to be focused on ad analytics. Because of that, this ad is the most likely of this year’s bunch to disappear. [Update: I deleted this ad from the Playlist because I was right: The entire Channel was deleted, and the playlist stopped because of it; it works again after I deleted the video].

8. “Air New Zealand presents ‘Not quite Silent Night’” – Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand started their Christmas TV advertising a little later this year than last year (this ad just started airing on December 1), and this year’s ad is less focused on the airline than previous years’ ads have been. Maybe it’s intended for multiple markets? It’s a simple, sweet ad, but I bet that “certain people” will be upset about the use of Christian Christmas Carol as the backing music in an ad centred on Santa Claus, but I know for sure that “certain people” definitely will be upset by the fact the song is sung in Te Reo Māori. Bah! Humbug! Personally, I don’t have a problem with either, but I did think that “Silent Night” was an odd kind of song choice, though the ad takes its title from the song.

9. The Countdown to Christmas is now underway" – Countdown. This is an ad for Australian-owned supermarket chain Countdown, and I almost missed it—mainly because it's so similar to their ordinary weekly promotional ads. On the other hand, it's actually not all that different from other supermarket ads promoting Christmas supermarket shopping that I've shared in the past, including ads from overseas, so it makes sense to include this ad, too. The last notable Christmas ad they've had (in my opinion…) was back in 2018.   

Those are all the Christmas ads—so far, at least. It's possible I missed some by not watching at the right time (or maybe just not paying attention during the ad breaks…), but I don't think so. Actually, it seems to me that there’s been less variety in Christmas ads the past couple years than there used to be, especially not as many international ads (like, for example, Christmas ads for soft drinks). There's another ad running, one for NZ Post, but I featured that one in my first Christmas Ad post in 2019, and it hasn't changed.

If any more NZ ads start airing—and it's still possible since, as of today, it's still more than five weeks until Christmas. If there are more, I’ll add the videos to the Playlist and the annotations to this post. However, you can also follow the direct link the YouTube Playlist if you’d rather skip my comments. In any event. Merry watching-mas!

Further meal experiments

Yesterday evening, I tried another meal experiment, one that was a bit unusual because I got the recipe from a YouTube video, and it was similar to a recipe I’d tried a week ago that I got from a different YouTube video. I felt the first attempt needed changes, and when I saw the second video, I knew it would be much better. It turned out I was right. If nothing else, this experimentation is showing me that I’m becoming able to pretty accurately anticipate what a recipe will be like.

The first recipe, the one I thought was “alright, I guess…”, came from a YouTube video posted by a New Zealand supermarket chain. I originally subscribed to their channel so I could more easily find their TV commercials to share here on the blog—but they seldom post the ads any more, and it’s now mostly just about recipes. This one was the first I thought I’d like to try making.

I’ve never actually cooked red lentils before (only brown), and I didn’t realise that they can turn mushy when they’re cooked. I thought about adding a can of chickpeas to bulk it up, but added a can of brown lentils instead. The results was okay, but not awesome. I also served it on basmati rice, which wasn’t really necessary.

I was thinking about how to change it to improve it, when I saw a video by a British YouTuber I subscribe to, Luke Catleugh. I watch all his videos, but that particular one caught my attention because of the title: “MEALS FOR UNDER £1”. I’ve been fascinated lately by trying to make yummy, nutritious meals (especially meatless ones) for as little money as possible. This particular recipe stood out for me because it seemed to fix all the problems I felt the first recipe had—and I was right (the video is at the bottom of this post, queued for this recipe, or you can watch it on YouTube).

The first difference was the use of chickpeas—I should’ve followed my instincts with the first recipe! The spice blend was also somewhat different (a lot less ginger for example), and the blend that Luke used suited my tastes better. My only real variation was that I used dried chilli flakes instead of fresh chilli, something I’ve never cooked with and am leery of because I don’t like food to me too hot.

Repeating what I did when I talked about my homemade chicken soup, here’s what’s in the recipe, the unit cost, and the amount used, and actual cost:

Dried red lentils: $2.70/375g bag, 90g used: $0.16. 1 can chopped tomatoes: $1.20. 1 can coconut milk: $3.00. 1 red onion: $4/1.5kg bag, 150g used: $0.40. One low-salt vegetable stock cube: $3.90/box of 10: $0.39. Various spices (pantry staple): approx $0.25. Olive oil (panty staple): $10.70 per 1 litre bottle, approx 15 millilitres used: $0.16.

This time, I included the cost of pantry staples, mostly because I happened to need a new bottle of olive oil, so I had the current price available; I don’t know that I’ll always do that. In any case, with all the things I could cost out, it came to a total of $6.05 for the entire meal (today, around US$3.75, or £3.12—I mention the prices in pounds sterling because Luke originally priced it in that currency). This means it’d be $3.03 per person (today, around US$1.56 or £1.88) if two people were fed, $2.02 per person (today, around US$1.25 or £1.04) if three people were fed, and $1.51 per person (today, around US$0.94 or £0.78) per person if four people were fed.

In my opinion, the amount the recipe as presented (and as I made it) makes would probably suit two to three people, unless, maybe it was extended with a salad, naan or other bread, etc., which would add to the cost, of course. However, doubling the recipe to have larger portions, to feed more people, or even just to have leftovers would still be quite inexpensive. In fact, it would be pretty comparable in cost to my homemade chicken soup, and arguably heartier.

I really liked this meal, so I’m adding it to my list of meals to make several times a year; the only real barrier to making it with any kind of frequency is that I don’t normally have coconut milk in my pantry. Maybe I can make it whenever coconut milk is on special (or stock up so I have it in the pantry when I want to make this).

All of this is part of my effort to live more frugally/sustainably, while still eating well and more healthily. I’m enjoying the challenge of doing all three at once, and this recipe is definitely one to help me achieve my food goals.

Wins all around!

Here’s the full video, queued to start with the recipe I followed:

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 363 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 363, “Fifteen Years”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast. A list of relevant links is included in shownotes.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

A blog version of a ‘haul’ video

I watch a lot of YouTube Channels across a lot of types, genres, fields, etc. While there’s no single unifying factor in my choices, the most common thing would be an engaging or entertaining host. Among them are “lifestyle vloggers”, for lack of a better description, which includes many gay and gay-friendly hosts who are so chipper that they provide a welcome antidote to much of the negativity I run across on news and political Channels (which I also watch).

This was on my mind because yesterday I was getting ready to put away the stuff I bought on my outing to Mitre 10 (etc.) last week. All the stuff was still together, and as I looked at it I realised that some of those vloggers would do a “haul” video of such a collection of newly purchased stuff, basically, a kind of “show and tell”.

I don’t make YouTube videos right now (and may never do so again), so it wasn’t that I was thinking that I could make such a video. Instead, I was just kind of amused by the thought that I could—until I realised that I could come up with a way to do a blog version of a “haul video”. This, then is that attempt.

This blog idea is actually nothing new for me: I’ve frequently posted photos of some tech thing I’ve bought, sometimes in some state of undress—sorry, unboxing. Back in September 2020, I talked about my compost bin and showed photos of the box and once it was opened, saying in the caption, “this is as close to an ‘unboxing’ post as I'm likely to get.” That was literally true—I’ve never done an “unboxing” post—but I’ve come pretty close, photographically, at least.

This time, I’m skipping such a reserved approach. So, as so many YouTubers like to say, that being said, let’s get into it (I wanted to add a layer of authenticity).

The photo above is everything I bought at Mitre 10 Mega that day, apart from hand sanitiser I keep in my car.

In the background is a new laundry basket, which was actually the one thing I intended to buy at Mitre 10 that day (mine had irreparably broken a couple days earlier). This particular one is a brand called Sistema, which was founded in Cambridge (about a half hour south of Hamilton) in 1987. In 2017, company founder Brendan Lindsay sold Sistema to American giant Newell Brands. As part of the sale, Newell Brands agreed to keep manufacturing the products in New Zealand for 20 years. I also remember reading that they also agreed to provide lifetime employment to Lindsay’s first employee.

So, for now, the BPA- and Phthalate-free plastic products are New Zealand made, though foreign owned; I always choose NZ-made when possible. In this case, the basket was about 50% more expensive than the cheapest one (made in Thailand), but cheaper than some others (I didn’t consider them, so I didn’t look at where they were made). The one I bought is also far more robust than the cheapest basket, or the one that broke (a roughly 20 year old one that was also made in New Zealand, by a different company).

The other things in the “haul” are pretty simple.

Leaning up against the right side of the basket is a trigger that can be put onto a can of spraypaint. I saw similar ones used on furniture makeover and some decoration Channels I watch, and had never seen them in NZ—until last week. Basically, they make it easier to paint with a can of spraypaint, making it work more like a paint gun. I have several things I need to paint, and I’m looking forward to seeing how well it works.

Leaning horizontally against the basket is a telescoping magnetic stick that makes it easier to pick up screws, etc., that have been dropped. This, too, is something I saw on furniture makeover Channels. Anything that can reduce how much I have to bend over is a very good thing these days (Nigel and I bought a magnetised metal tray that screws are put into so they won’t fall all over the place before they’re needed).

Moving forward from the telescoping magnetic stick is a tool with curved picks on each end. This particular tool is used to remove O rings (like from a motor), however, I’ll use it when I’m refinishing furniture to clean out grooves, particularly when I use paint stripper. Many years ago (seven? More?) Nigel and I saw a set of dental instrument-like picks at a home centre on Auckland’s North Shore. He joked about buying them so he could do the periodontal work I needed. I’ve never seen them in New Zealand since. This tool will be good enough for now.

To the right of that is a set of foam earplugs for when I’m using power tools. I already bought safety glasses, replacing a pair that was cheap and nasty (and probably thrown away) and one that wasn’t a lot better; the ones I bought are good quality, but not top of the line). I think the conventional earphone-like hearing protection would be too hot, so I thought I’d try these first.

Finally, at the bottom of the photo, is the ruler I bought (I’d already returned the one I hadn’t paid for). As with everything else in this “haul”, I haven’t used the ruler yet, but will soon.

And that’s it. Not exactly a big “haul”, but I’ve seen some YouTubers who could make a video about this stuff last 15-20 minutes. Mind you, I suppose a slow reader might have the same time commitment with this post?

This time, I’m not going to daringly (recklessly?) declare I won’t do a “haul” again, which would be similar to what I said about not doing an “unboxing” post. One just never knows, really, especially because when I talk about my projects, talking about anything special I needed to do or buy is kind of part of it. So, maybe a “haul-lite” part of future posts?

Mainly, this whole post was intended as a bit of fun. My teasing YouTubers in this post is done with affection (I love watching their videos, obviously), and respect (I don’t make any videos about anything, yet they do videos one to several times a week). If I ever did make a “haul video” it would, no doubt, poke just as much fun at myself.

Right now, though, I need to haul myself out to the lounge to take on another part of a mini-project, and that, too, relates to recent blog posts. It’s the circle of blogging, or something.

Weekend Diversion: Conan Gray

A recurring theme of these Weekend Diversion posts is that the videos I share are often from people I’d never have heard of if I hadn’t seen the videos. Today’s artist is an example of exactly that.

Conan Gray is a 21 year old American singer-songwriter who began his a career by uploading videos to YouTube, which made him a "YouTube Personality". The songs in this post are all on his debut album, Kid Krow, which was released March 20 of this year. The album hit Number 26 in Australia, 5 in Canada, 32 in New Zealand, 30 in the UK, and 5 in the USA.

The video up top is the first one of his I’ve seen, and, so far, the only one I’ve seen on TV. The song is “Maniac”. When I saw the video I at first thought it was very superficial, but I saw it several times afterward and I eventually wanted to know more about the artist, someone I’d never heard of.

I ended up watching several of his earlier videos, non-musical ones in particular. In some of them he talked about his songwriting, and how the songs were largely fully formed pretty quickly, and each one has a particular meaning. Many of the songs have pretty complex and interesting structures, which is always a plus in pop music, in my opinion.

The song “Maniac” is mainly a sort of middle finger to “maniac” ex-lovers, in a full-on pop music frame. It works, I think, as did others: The song hit Number 24 in Australia (Platinum), 29 in New Zealand, 25 on the USA’s “Bubbling under the Hot 100” chart (and 38 on Billboard’s “Mainstream Top 40 chart”). It was also certified Gold in Canada and the USA, despite not charting in either country.

Next up is the single before “Maniac”, “Comfort Crowd”:



The song was released on September 5, 2019, but it didn't chart. Gray wrote the song after moving to California, where he was born, to attend university. He has said he was lonely and missed his friends, and the song is about that. He also said that any adolescent would understand the idea that they need to “kill off” several versions of themselves along the way.

Next up, the first single of this year, released in January, “The Story”:



This song, which also didn’t chart, is more melancholy than the others, and is basically about his difficult childhood. He’s talked about that (including in some of his non-musical videos), especially the fact that he was bullied growing up in Texas because of his Japanese ancestry. But, despite the bad things, “it’s not the end of the story”.

Finally, “Wish You Were Sober”, which was released this past March:



The song is a pretty straightforward pop song, about what’s lost from the use of alcohol. He apparently had folks say they loved him only when they were drunk, which is referenced in the lyrics, too. The song hit Number 14 in New Zealand, but otherwise didn’t chart.

And that’s it for yet another artist I hadn’t heard of until I saw his video on TV. I’m sure there will be more.

Latest YouTube controversy: Justified or over reaction?

YouTube is mired in controversy and trouble once again, this time not about videos on the platform, but about comments left on some videos. As in previous controversies, advertisers are abandoning YouTube. But is this a justified or over-reaction? Do they have a point, or is it just grandstanding?

The controversy is over comments left by pedophiles on YouTube videos featuring children and very young teens, mostly girls. In many cases, the videos were innocently posted by parents or as vlogs by young teens, but pedophiles flocked to them to leave comments including timestamps of their favourite parts, promising to trade more explicit videos privately, etc. Assuming they’re all real, which they probably are, and if media reports are accurate, which they probably are, they’re at best crude and inappropriate, and at worst they’re veering toward criminality.

The response of advertisers has been to suspend their campaigns. This included major international corporations, online companies, and even the New Zealand Government. The question here though is, why didn’t the advertisers already know this was going on?

As Patricio Robles put it on Econsultancy:

…the fact that advertisers are apparently only now learning that they’re buying inventory associated with such videos raises many questions about how they create and manage their advertising campaigns.

In short, if YouTube is incapable of or not sufficiently motivated to police its content, advertisers are just as responsible for the ill-effects because they are clearly incapable of – or perhaps too lazy to – keep a close eye on their campaigns.

That seems like a reasonable point. It’s all well and good to be outraged when this was discovered, but shouldn’t they have been monitoring their ad buys all along?

Despite the horrific nature of the comments at the heart of this controversy, one has to feel some sympathy for YouTube. By most estimates, there are 300 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube every minute, which amounts to 18,000 hours uploaded every hour. No matter how good their internal checks and review processes, no matter how well-rafted their algorithms, some bad videos, and bad comments on them, will slip through. And considering the millions of comments posted on YouTube, it seems unlikely that YouTube can possibly ban all bad people or their comments.

Partly because of that, a few days ago YouTube disabled comments on “tens of millions of videos that could be subject to predatory behavior,” as they put it on their Creator Blog. They continued, “While we have been removing hundreds of millions of comments for violating our policies, we had been working on an even more effective classifier [meaning, their algorithms] that will identify and remove predatory comments… We accelerated its launch and now have a new comments classifier in place that is more sweeping in scope, and will detect and remove 2X more individual comments.”

All of which is a good thing. They’re moving to address a problem that, unlike allowing inappropriate videos to be uploaded and/or monetised, isn’t of their making. There’s also something easy that YouTube users can do to help. As popular YouTuber Philip DeFranco said on one of his recent videos [WATCH – link is queued to when he talks about all this], we call all help YouTube in this process of cleaning up comments by reporting any inappropriate ones we see. As Phil put it, we can “help YouTube to take out the trash.” That’s both a good idea, and a good way of describing it. The users themselves can help to clean up the problem.

At the same time, advertisers could be better about managing their own ad campaigns to find and deal to problems quickly, rather than having to be shamed into withdrawing all advertising. If they do that, and if users help police comments, that will help fill in the gaps that YouTube may never be able to close themselves.

Why all this matters is simple: Money. Sure, that means profits for YouTube, but those profits make it possible for individuals, companies, non-profits, and governments to share videos widely and easily, and all for free. The ads are the price we all pay for being able to make, share, and watch videos without paying to do so.

The other aspect is that some video makers get a share of the advertising revenue. Although YouTube has steadily raised the bar for monetisation to make it all but impossible for small video makers to get any money, it’s still at least theoretically possible to make money from one’s videos. But previous controversies and advertiser boycotts have led YouTube to be overly zealous in de-monetising videos that are even mildly controversial (including some that no reasonable person would call “controversial”). So every time advertisers walk, it potentially costs small, independent video makers money because of something that they’re powerless to fix.

Because of the fact that advertisers, too, have a responsibility to monitor their ad campaigns, and because YouTube is moving to do what it can to reduce the risk to minors, it does seem to me that advertisers are over-reacting. By all means, let’s “take out the trash”, but let’s be sure that what we do directly addresses the problem and isn’t mere grandstanding to appear responsible and responsive—if they had actually been so they would have discovered the problems themselves.

This isn’t a particularly popular viewpoint in the midst of the latest anti-YouTube frenzy, I know. But I can’t see the sense or justice in attacking YouTube alone while letting advertisers—and even users—completely off the hook, allowing them to shirk their responsibility to be good citizens.

This much we know for certain: The current controversy will end, and there will be another one sooner or later. We may come to believe that, ultimately, YouTube simply cannot be controlled by the company, and, if so, that will reinforce the responsibility of everyone to do their part. We really can “help YouTube to take out the trash.”

Further reading:

YouTube has a pedophilia problem, and its advertisers are jumping ship – Vox

YouTube is disabling comments on videos with minors after advertisers back out over abuse – CNBC

Advertisers Boycott YouTube — And If History Is A Guide, They'll Be Back Soon – Forbes

The year in search – 2018

The video above is Google’s “year in search” for 2018. Google tells us that, “the world searched for ‘good’ more than ever before”. There’s plenty to said—or speculated on—as to why this might be the case, but I think we should just skip that: People wanted to look up “good” things, and that’s, well, good.

Google says: “Lists are based on search terms that had the highest spike this year as compared to the previous year.” That suggests that the popular searches we also temporary, at least some of the time. But, then, that’s kind of the point of searching: We become aware of something, like a topic or a person, and we want to know more about it.

The top rankings by country tell us in more detail about what, specifically, people wanted to know more about. That makes them more revealing than any of these videos could do.

The top 5 overall searches for the world were: 1 World Cup, 2 Avicii, 3. Mac Miller, 4 Stan Lee, 5 Black Panther. The top 5 global news searches were: 1 World Cup, 2 Hurricane Florence, 3. Mega Millions, 4 Royal Wedding, 5 Election Results.

The top 5 overall searches for the USA were: 1 World Cup, 2. Hurricane Florence, 3 Mac Miller, 4 Kate Spade, 5 Anthony Bourdain. The top 5 news searches in the USA were: 1 World Cup, 2 Hurricane Florence, 3. Mega Millions, 4 Election Results, 5. Hurricane Michael. The fact that this news list is so similar to the global list suggests that the USA really does dominate global searches.

Normally, I share Google’s top 5 overall searches for New Zealand, but they haven’t made that publicly available yet. Fortunately, Radio New Zealand has published a piece on “What Kiwis searched for on Google this year”. According to them, the top five overall searches in NZ were: 1 World Cup, 2 Stuff news NZ, 3 Commonwealth Games, 4 Census NZ, and 5 Cyclone Gita. The most-searched things in news were: 1. Census NZ, 2. Cyclone Gita, 3. Royal Wedding, 4. Thai cave rescue, 5. Jacinda Ardern’s baby. The RNZ report on the searches was interesting, but when TVNZ re-published it on their One News site, they deleted all references to Google, which means that it wasn’t clear where the data came from. Sure, we could guess what it was based on, but we couldn’t know for sure. For a site that’s supposed to report news, the lack of any detail was shockingly sloppy and stupid.

What I personally find so interesting about these annual summaries is that they give us a snapshot of life in a given year. The videos Google makes kind of dramatise and animate that data, but it’s the lists themselves that are the interesting part. They tell us what captured our attention, even if we don’t necessarily know why, at least, not without more research.

We humans are curious by nature, and we want to understand things. That’s what the searches really show. It, too, is good.

And, it was nice to see the New Zealand Prime Minister, her partner and newborn baby were in the video, too. That was good for a whole lot of reasons.

Related previous posts:
The Year in Search – 2017
The Year in Search – 2016
The Year in Search 2015
Spirit of the Times – 2014
Visual Reminders

YouTube Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind

The video above is the annual “rewind” video from YouTube, this year introduced by actor Will Smith, who is not a YouTuber (and, at 50, seemingly a little old to be one…). I said about last year’s “Rewind” that it was “apparently a colourful amorphous blob that doesn’t actually have any point.” This year’s is the same, but has a sort of structure, and a bit of a focus.

As has been common in recent years, I don’t recognise most of the YouTubers included in the video (they’re all listed in the video description on YouTube and also on a separate page called “2018 Rewind Creators”, which links to each of their YouTube Channels). In fact, out of the dozens listed, I only recognised 8 people from four Channels: The AsapSCIENCE boys, Casey Neistat, Sam Tsui, and The Try Guys.

The video’s theme is people controlling this year’s “Rewind”, and, as they say in the description, “All comments featured in Rewind inspired by real comments from the YouTube community.” So, technically, the video has a point: The “YouTube community” determines not just what’s in the Rewind, but also what YouTube is. Personally, I think that point is kind of muddled, but it’s there nevertheless.

In addition to Will Smith, this year’s rewind also has other non-YouTubers I’m familiar with—Marshmello, Adam Rippon, John Oliver, and Trevor Noah—all of whom (apart from Rippon) I’ve watched on YouTube. No, that doesn’t make them YouTubers, because they create stuff for other media, and it may be posted to YouTube, too. I don’t recall a “Rewind” video having so many non-YouTubers before.

I liked this year’s Rewind more than last year’s, but that’s probably not saying much, considering how much I disliked the 2017 version. Still, it’s an improvement, right?

Still, everything else aside, what makes these videos interesting is that they’re a sort of time capsule about what videos people were into in a year. Well, maybe it’s just what people in the “YouTube community” were into. That’s still something.

It would be nice if they made one that was a little more accessible for the rest of us, though.

Related – Previous posts about YouTube Rewind videos:
YouTube Rewind: The Shape of 2017
YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge
YouTube Rewind: Now Watch Me 2015
YouTube Rewind: Turn Down for 2014
YouTube Rewind: What Does 2013 Say?

Old Gays React to Troye Sivan Videos

The video above is the latest in the “Old Gays…” series of videos from Into on their Intomore YouTube Channel. They have a similar “Old Lesbians…” series, and in both cases they show people from earlier times what younger LGBT+ people are into now. It can be interesting and entertaining, and this one is a bit of both.

I wrote about Troye Sivan’s Blue Neighbourhood trilogy back in 2015, so I was interested to see what these older gay men thought of it, and that many of their reactions were similar to my own. I don’t know if that means I’m “old” or that what I saw is typical enough of old-ER gay men, or maybe even more common than that. But I kind of felt vindicated, for lack of a better word.

Later in the video, they talk about Troye’s song “Bloom” (video below). Apparently, he received a lot of flack for it because it is about bottoming for the first time, and because of the gender-bending visuals. He, however, was nonplussed [See “Troye Sivan Refuses To Feel Ashamed For Singing About Gay Sex” in Sydney’s LGBT newspaper, Star Observer].

One of the things that LGBT+ people don’t talk about very often is the divisions between and among us. We have sex-positive folks and deep prudes, we have hyper-masculine types and ultra-feminine, and we have people within our LGBT+ communities who hate those people. I don’t understand that, and it exasperates me when LGBT+ people start excluding other LGBT+ people because of who they are or how they present. It seems to me that people from a still marginalised community have no business oppressing anyone. Besides, they miss so many awesome people by being so bloody narrow-minded.

In any case, I still like Troye, and recognise his voice whenever I hear it. In fact, just this evening TVNZ’s “Seven Sharp” programme played a snippet of “Bloom” as their closing music. Quite a coincidence considering I was planning on this post.

There’s one thing more. There are so many young gay people on YouTube, young guys in particular, and even though many of them are really good at what they do and are interesting, it’s still really nice to hear from some older LGBT+ people, at least sometimes. I think we older gays deserve to have our lives and realities reflected, too.

July’s welcome

Today is the beginning of a new month, and the middle of winter. Both are good, the latter because it means we’re getting ever closer to spring and summer. But starting another month is always a good opportunity to refresh and renew and restore ourselves and our resolve. All of that is true for all things AmeriNZ.

June was in many was a pretty good month for me. It was my most blogged month of the year so far, just five posts short of an average on one per day, and that meant it was also my most productive month by far (by that measure) all year. This is good in itself.

This appears to have been mostly due my recent health journey development, specifically that Ī’m starting being weaned off beta blockers. I feel clearer in my head than I have in a year, and that’s a really good thing all by itself, not just for blogging, obviously.

Then last week I felt like the stuffing was kicked out of me, as I mentioned on Friday. This was, in fact, the sole reason I didn’t have 30 (or more) posts in June. This was a pity, because I had so many I was working on, mostly still in process. On the other hand, none of them were time-specific, so I have plenty of time to finish them. At the moment, it looks as if this month may have many days with two or more posts in a day (like today). Or, I have a head start on August. Either way, it’s a good thing.

There was one other blogging development this month. As long time readers know, I’ve quite literally agonised over the structure of this blog: Should I focus it narrowly? I’d often talked about spinning off all talk of US politics, sometimes adding non-New Zealand topics to the list to be spun off. I even set up another blog to take those political posts, but could never get the political ones from here to import there. This turned out to be a good thing.

I am, as Roger Green calls himself, a magpie blogger, that is, I write about what interests me at that moment. Sometimes I’ll follow the same topic day after day and then abandon it for months. Other times I kind of skip around from day to day as the newest, shiniest topic captures my eye. In other words, this blog is me, an epiphany I had only recently. Avoiding certain topics, such as US politics, would mean avoiding parts of myself.

This realisation/epiphany dragged up some other issues. I felt bad about how my AmeriNZ Podcast had become, basically, an audio blog (aublog?), as if that was a bad thing. And yet, way back in episode one I’d said I saw it as an extension of this blog. So, not only is the current format NOT a problem or a defect, it’s what I envisioned when I started it back in 2007.

In 2009, I was bullied, basically, into dropping talk of US politics from my podcast. Part of it was an iTunes review that said my podcast was “too political”, a criticism that ended up becoming the name of an expressly political podcast I created with my friend Jason, 2Political Podcast (and no, I don’t know when it’ll return). I also wanted it to be our podcast, not just episodes of mine, but once it was launched I stopped talking about US politics on AmeriNZ Podcast, and since then I almost never have.

Similarly, my YouTube Channel is mainly videos about New Zealand, one way or another, but nothing about any of the many other subjects that interest me. I think this is actually one of the main reasons I haven’t made more videos. At one point I even considered using a second YouTube Channel I have (which is not public) to make other videos and vlogs (video blogs). “Video blogs” on a different channel? When I already have a written blog and a podcast where I already, well, blog? This was one of two catalysts for changing my thinking.

The other catalyst was thinking about Facebook, as I did recently. I wrote about how I don’t post anything about US politics to my personal Facebook, and how I had my blog and the AmeriNZ Facebook Page for political things. I also wrote:

I still rarely post anything political on my personal Facebook. That self-censorship means that anyone reading what I post there, arguably, isn't seeing the authentic me because there’s so much more that they never see.

And that, dear reader, was the aha! moment, because the exact same thing is true of my podcast and my YouTube Channel—everything except this blog, in fact.

And so, years of agonising about this blog are now over. This blog will remain as it always has been—clearly the authentic me—and my podcast will remain as it has become, with the re-introduction of political talk when I have something I want to talk about. I'll share more details about all that here and in the next episode of the podcast, as well as on the podcast site, at that time. And any future videos I make will be about whatever I’m interested in at the time, just like this blog and my podcast.

All of this was tied up with a pretty little bow just yesterday. As part of some research for a future blog post, I read some of my old posts that, I quickly realised, could have been YouTube videos (too, not necessarily instead of). It was then I realised there was no reason that I couldn’t make videos about absolutely anything I might blog about.

So everything AmeriNZ—which, after all, is actually a name I originally made up to describe myself—may now include anything and everything that interests me, with very little out of bounds. Each part can for the first time truly reinforce the other parts, so I really can use the best medium to tell a story.

This is incredibly liberating—and energising.

I may in the future set up a different blog and podcast feed that are specialised (for example, just about New Zealand), but those will have material repackaged from the equivalent AmeriNZ channel. AmeriNZ will have everything.

There are good reasons why deciding this all now is important, as I’ll talk about later this month. For now, though, I’ll just say that having a specific direction and unity for all things AmeriNZ will begin to matter quite a lot.

So, it’s a really awesome feeling that years of agonising about this blog are now over—well, I THINK they are, anyway…

The year in search – 2017

The video above is Google’s “year in search” for 2017. This year, Google tells us, the world looked for “how”. Maybe so, but apparently the one “how” much of the world wanted to know was “how to make slime”—but that probably wouldn’t make a good video. Even so, this video is, like all the others Google has made, interesting for the portrait it paints of a the year we’re about to leave. Whether they’re accurate portraits or not is up to us to decide.

These Google videos are always emotive and maybe just a bit manipulative, in that they try to evoke a feeling or impression of what the year was like. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re not “true”—after all, people really did search for the things they pictured, and those searches really do suggest that the world was a bit at a loss this year. This was underscored, so to speak, by their music choice: Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” (video below). There’s no wonder in any of that, especially for the USA, which is always over-represented in global searches and has had a particularly difficult year, for many reasons. But was the year really as depressing as the video suggests?

The overall rankings of the top searches people made during the year, both globally and in various countries, probably tells us more than these videos do. They also tells us the things that people in the various countries worry about or just want to know more about (like “how to make slime”). Even so, because these videos are a glance over the year we’ve just survived, I think they’re valuable.

Besides, I really like that song.

The top 5 overall searches for the world were: 1 Hurricane Irma, 2 iPhone 8, 3. iPhone X, 4 Matt Lauer, 5 Meghan Markle.

The top 5 overall searches for the USA were: 1 Hurricane Irma, 2 Matt Lauer, 3 Tom Petty, 4 Super Bowl, 5 Las Vegas shooting

The top 5 overall searches for New Zealand were:
1 Lotto result NZ, 2 America’s Cup 2017, 3 Fidget spinner, 4 Election NZ 2017, and 5 NZTA road closures. The fourth and fifth most-searched things were also the first and second (respectively) most-searched news things (Cyclone Cook was third, North Korea was fourth, and Hurricane Irma was fifth).

Looking at those searches, it suggests that people were focused on a lot of sad or depressing things, as the video suggests. This is not to suggest that there was nothing good in the year that’ about to end (and earlier this month I shared a video talking about some of those good things).

The fact is that every year has good and bad in it, and how we perceive a year is largely, though not entirely, shaped by what happens in our own lives: Whether we personally had a good year or a bad one will influence how we perceive the year in general. We all know this intuitively. And yet, we also are influenced by what happens around us, what we see and hear, what people are talking about.

It’s because our perception of a year is so highly personal that one’s reactions to a video like this, or any other “year in review”, is so personal. Whether videos like this or other reviews are accurate portraits of a year or not is up to us to decide.

And that’s how it should be. Perceiving any Sign of the Times is always up to us.



Previously:
The Year in Search – 2016
The Year in Search 2015
Spirit of the Times – 2014
Visual Reminders (2011)