Muppets and Convergence Culture

If you haven't seen this meme, you will soon. Beaker does "Dust in the Wind" and gets comment-spammed by YouTube. (faked, but funny commentary on the medium. It's both funny and shows deep understanding of social media.

YouTube is not a new medium for the Muppets. Naturally, the Muppets are ingrained in our culture and naturally emerge into new media like YouTube. Smart brands, like the Muppets, are using that as a springboard to release new content. Such as the pop-culture-savvy Sesame Street sketch about "Mad Men". ("Good work, sycophants!)

The Mad Men sketch illustrates the use of YouTube to reach a mass audience, especially one that doesn't normally watch a young child's learning TV show. It also shows an understanding of the popular television that people like. The Beaker video goes much further. Let me tell you why.

1. Convergence.

Muppets are one media, and when Sesame Street first aired, that was a first example of convergence of children's education with television. The Sesame Street producers were very meticulous at utilizing advertising methods of television commercials to appeal to children in the same way. They nailed it, and have made an award-winning children's show that has been on for decades and syndicated and re-made for dozens and dozens of countries around the world.

This video with Beaker is an entry into YouTube, not only converging with that, but with the 2-way nature of social media like YouTube. The whole comedy of this sketch is Beaker interacting with the comments popping up on the screen. It was deliberately aware of how people consume media and interact with it, and used that to make comedy. That's gold.

Then there's the Waldorf and Statler comments at the end about Digg. (I do declare "Let's keep Digging 'til this thing is buried!" ought to be the new motto of Digg.)

So, by my count, we have puppeteering, TV, YouTube, and Digg converging on one video. Nice work!

2. Interactive.

The Beaker video could have just stopped with the comments coming up, and having him be frustrated, burn down the set, etc. However, notice around 0:45 into the video, and Beaker moving around actually causes the comments on-screen to move. This serves both as a way to illustrate Beaker's frustration and panic as he has to push through the comments, but as a wink and acknowledgment of the fourth wall that is present in television, and is torn down with interactive social media like YouTube.

3. Social References.

Look at some of the comments. The writers of this sketch clearly know their audience. They know the memes and the terminology. Here's a list of some that stand out to me:
- "You're doing it wrong.", "moar" (LOLcat references)
- "teh lose", "Epic win", "fail", "OWN3D" (gamer lingo)
- "zero stars" and other hyperbolic statements
- "BURNINATION" (reference to Trogdor, a character from Homestar Runner.)

The writers are saying, "we know you, we know what you like, and we speak your language, and we can be intelligent about it".

Please, God, Let the Muppets Do More Web Videos

That would make me very happy. The videos are smart, funny, and use the medium very well. And everyone loves Muppets.