1GyAp2x

Creative Production 283eight-year-old), described the moment when his video was shown at AnimeExpo (AX), the largest anime convention in the United States:It was replayed again to an even-more-packed house during Masquerade, AX’s mostpopular event. Never had I ever seen so many people laugh so hard in my entirelife. The only people who could ever come close to experiencing such a feeling areHollywood directors having won an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was thefinest, greatest, most moving moment of my entire existence. Nothing will ever topit. Ever.XStylus received recognition for his work in the context of a formal competitionorganized by the convention. Most major anime conventions nowwill include an AMV competition in which the winning works are showcased,in addition to providing venues for fan artists to display and selltheir work. The young hip-hop artists Dilan Mahendran spoke to alsoparticipated in musical competitions that gave them visibility, particularlyif they went home with awards. Even fansubbers who insist that qualityand respect among peers are more important than download numbers willadmit that they do track the numbers. As one subber in Ito’s study described,“Deep down inside, every fansubber wants to have their work watched,and a high amount of viewers causes them some kind of joy whether theyexpress it or not.” Fansub groups generally make their “trackers,” whichrecord the number of downloads, public on their sites.Similarly, on YouTube, people have access to “view counts” of particularvideos, although these are generally regarded as unreliable (YouTube wassometimes slow and inconsistent in updating them) and easily manipulated(by makers who can create automated refresh programs to reload thevideo and make it appear as though it is being viewed widely). For youthproducers who wish to professionalize or maintain an advanced-amateurstatus in which they can partner with YouTube, numbers of views andcomments are used as a rough metric for granting partnership and promotingtheir work. Another metric involves the number of “subscribers” thata person on YouTube has. Being a subscriber of someone on YouTubemeans that you will be alerted (usually via email) when he or she postsnew videos. Some YouTubers participate in a kind of “sub-for-sub” reciprocityin which a video maker subscribes to someone else with the expectationor hope that the subscription will be reciprocated. However, manypeople actively resist this assumption and prefer to subscribe only whencontent interests them.