ill google something, looking for it, and google will present me with things only barely related to what im looking for. that shows me that what im looking for is really lost .
I have a few problems, complaints and moans to make about this hobby and even this community.
80% of our major finds comes from a small percent of the users (sorry if I misspell) dyacate, supersonic Q, Whang and and a few power users who have connections in the industry or who are particularly outgoing are able to find most of the lost media, and they do a great job, I would argue that these users are indispensable pillars of our community. I am eternally grateful to many of our powerusers here who have had amazing finds like rapsittie street kids, a day with SpongeBob SquarePants, and other amazing finds. However, if those users quit, have other obligations or have to leave the community for some reason, we become far less effective. Essentially, we are dependent on a few power users.
There are only so many of us, in fact we are a small community, yet we seem to be spread across too many platdorms. LMW, YouTube, Reddit, discord and Facebook all have lost media enthusiasts with varying levels of overlap. While projects like a day with SpongeBob SquarePants and clockman bring us together in intense searches, most of our lost media searches have a habit of never expanding beyond a few small users look for it (see the countless number of dead threads in this forum), gain steam quickly then die (thankfully like saki), or are spread across so many platforms that efforts are repeated (see Ed edd n Eddy lost pilot), this is why many creators stop responding to us, they get flooded with 200 emails from fanboys with no coordination. This is why many people don't respond to you, you are the 50th person to email them, whereas people who don't feel harassed are more likely to respond to just 1 or 2 requests
Many of us get distracted with obviously fake projects like saki sanobashi ("go for a punch") or "squidwards suicide." There is a lack of quality control for creepypastas in this community. Some of this comes from the fact that "creepypastas" have netted fruit before (see: crybaby lane, clockman) but those are outliers. For every 1 clockman there are 50 Squidward suicides.
Lack of initial effort. There seems to be little barrier to entry and a lot of people who just want a personal army to find a piece of lost media that may matter a great deal to them, but matters little in the grand scheme. For example, I would love to find ESW wrestling's human Cockfighting. However, it has no historical significance whatsoever, it was a crude wrestling event from an unknown company, if it was found it would add almost nothing to the lost media community. Additionally, I am so inexperienced I wouldn't even know where to start, thus my post never gained traction. I believe if there was an "initial effort" rule, we would see less low quality searches. Prove that you made some progress, make it such a low hanging fruit that it would be easy or so close that we are just on the cusp. Don't do what I did and say "hey guise here is an obscure media I like, go find it... Why did no one reply?"
Finally, copyright is never on our side and lost media has been copyright striked. That sucks but there is nothing the community can do about it.
I have a few problems, complaints and moans to make about this hobby and even this community.
80% of our major finds comes from a small percent of the users (sorry if I misspell) dyacate, supersonic Q, Whang and and a few power users who have connections in the industry or who are particularly outgoing are able to find most of the lost media, and they do a great job, I would argue that these users are indispensable pillars of our community. I am eternally grateful to many of our powerusers here who have had amazing finds like rapsittie street kids, a day with SpongeBob SquarePants, and other amazing finds. However, if those users quit, have other obligations or have to leave the community for some reason, we become far less effective. Essentially, we are dependent on a few power users.
There are only so many of us, in fact we are a small community, yet we seem to be spread across too many platdorms. LMW, YouTube, Reddit, discord and Facebook all have lost media enthusiasts with varying levels of overlap. While projects like a day with SpongeBob SquarePants and clockman bring us together in intense searches, most of our lost media searches have a habit of never expanding beyond a few small users look for it (see the countless number of dead threads in this forum), gain steam quickly then die (thankfully like saki), or are spread across so many platforms that efforts are repeated (see Ed edd n Eddy lost pilot), this is why many creators stop responding to us, they get flooded with 200 emails from fanboys with no coordination. This is why many people don't respond to you, you are the 50th person to email them, whereas people who don't feel harassed are more likely to respond to just 1 or 2 requests
Many of us get distracted with obviously fake projects like saki sanobashi ("go for a punch") or "squidwards suicide." There is a lack of quality control for creepypastas in this community. Some of this comes from the fact that "creepypastas" have netted fruit before (see: crybaby lane, clockman) but those are outliers. For every 1 clockman there are 50 Squidward suicides.
Lack of initial effort. There seems to be little barrier to entry and a lot of people who just want a personal army to find a piece of lost media that may matter a great deal to them, but matters little in the grand scheme. For example, I would love to find ESW wrestling's human Cockfighting. However, it has no historical significance whatsoever, it was a crude wrestling event from an unknown company, if it was found it would add almost nothing to the lost media community. Additionally, I am so inexperienced I wouldn't even know where to start, thus my post never gained traction. I believe if there was an "initial effort" rule, we would see less low quality searches. Prove that you made some progress, make it such a low hanging fruit that it would be easy or so close that we are just on the cusp. Don't do what I did and say "hey guise here is an obscure media I like, go find it... Why did no one reply?"
Finally, copyright is never on our side and lost media has been copyright striked. That sucks but there is nothing the community can do about it.
Honestly I've said this before but I'll say it again, to me it's not always about the big searches. They're cool and are totally part of the reason why I'm here, but I actually get a lot more satisfaction helping people find childhood things or solving the small stuff in general really.
Being involved in the PMC search was a lot of fun (even if I wasn't much help), but my takeaway from that search was that lost media searches in a sense are about reconnecting with artists and their works. Not always of course, but seeing that Ella Flowers' daughter got to see a snippet of an old animation her mother made, and in a sense the search generated more eyes on Ella Flowers' efforts as a whole, it just gave me a great deal of hope.
I guess I'm just glad that someone out there, even maybe just one single person, remembers something totally random like an old YouTube video made by somebody and they want to find it. They want to revisit that memory, and in turn that piece of art (even if it's something as silly as a youtube poop or whatever). This is what I love about the community, it's those obscure connections we just don't usually pay a lot of mind too. And sometimes it can uncover an unknown person's complete legacy which is neat. Imagine dying but you once wrote a random comic that got published once, and then someone is like "what happened to that comic I saw once years ago?" And they in turn remember you and get to discover what you did. I don't know, I just think it's neat.
As for the creepy stuff, I used to find lost media to be creepy until I became active in the forums. And I think for any interest things are going to be spread across different sites, and I'm kinda glad for it to be honest. A lot of stuff gets solved because some rando was also looking for it on reddit or whatever.
Post by forlornjackalope on Sept 27, 2020 19:33:24 GMT
I'm going to have to say the dead ends are probably the most disappointing or disheartening, especially when it comes to the older or more obscure type of media of media out there. I try to not get too hung up on not getting an email or message back anymore since I get that people are busy and they sometimes abandon certain social media accounts, but it's when you're ultimately stuck because there's little to no information that it becomes a real pain in the ass. For me, I've been wanting to find a bit more information on silent horror films from the 1890s-1920s and it's hard to accept that they're likely long gone at this point. I don't want to give up the search, but it feels like beating a dead horse since there's no where else to go from here now.
I'm going to have to say the dead ends are probably the most disappointing or disheartening, especially when it comes to the older or more obscure type of media of media out there. I try to not get too hung up on not getting an email or message back anymore since I get that people are busy and they sometimes abandon certain social media accounts, but it's when you're ultimately stuck because there's little to no information that it becomes a real pain in the ass. For me, I've been wanting to find a bit more information on silent horror films from the 1890s-1920s and it's hard to accept that they're likely long gone at this point. I don't want to give up the search, but it feels like beating a dead horse since there's no where else to go from here now.
I hate to say this, but the movies from the 1890s-1920s are generally gone, even through the 40s is generally a lost cause. Movies that old have 2 issues. 1. Film was very expensive and few people (before walt disney) believed that anyone wanted to see a movie twice. We filmed it, now get the silver out the film so we can buy more film! 2. Several warehouse fires at MGM and other studios destroyed archives. Film is extremely flammable.
I’m still new to Lost media hunting but my least favorite things about trying to find something would be when you try to google find nothing and feel like an idiot and when people make videos on YouTube with a title claiming to be the true lost video when in reality it’s just they’re garbage parody *cough* gamerguy324_ *cough*
I'm going to have to say the dead ends are probably the most disappointing or disheartening, especially when it comes to the older or more obscure type of media of media out there. I try to not get too hung up on not getting an email or message back anymore since I get that people are busy and they sometimes abandon certain social media accounts, but it's when you're ultimately stuck because there's little to no information that it becomes a real pain in the ass. For me, I've been wanting to find a bit more information on silent horror films from the 1890s-1920s and it's hard to accept that they're likely long gone at this point. I don't want to give up the search, but it feels like beating a dead horse since there's no where else to go from here now.
I hate to say this, but the movies from the 1890s-1920s are generally gone, even through the 40s is generally a lost cause. Movies that old have 2 issues. 1. Film was very expensive and few people (before walt disney) believed that anyone wanted to see a movie twice. We filmed it, now get the silver out the film so we can buy more film! 2. Several warehouse fires at MGM and other studios destroyed archives. Film is extremely flammable.
Yeah, that's the thing that sucks. I hate lamenting over knowing it's long gone at this point, even though we've had the rare instances of films resurfacing nearly 100 years after they went missing in decent shape. The foreign and international stuff is probably the hardest ones to really get over, especially if they were destroyed or seized by the government, or were likely destroyed due to natural disaster and the various wars going on. It feels like pulling teeth to get more information on them since they don't seem to have a ton of surviving records left, so that alone can make it all the more sadder since it's almost like it never existed.
There's a short film from 1913 that comes to mind that was based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that was adapted into a play called Dr. Goudron's System (aka The Lunatics), and I remember initially writing it off as a potential hoax film years ago because there was no cast and crew listing, no summary details, no reviews or publication details, no surviving stills or news articles - nothing. It was truly bizarre and even now I don't know what to entirely make of it or how much of what we know now is true. We do have a publication that resurfaced from Moving World Picture's April-June 1914 entry, but outside of that and some minor things to resurface (I'm not sure if they're verified or not), I don't know where this little gem went. It would be nice to see at some point just going off the supposed details about how violent it was for the time, which I'm sure would be shocking to some today.
I’m still new to Lost media hunting but my least favorite things about trying to find something would be when you try to google find nothing and feel like an idiot and when people make videos on YouTube with a title claiming to be the true lost video when in reality it’s just they’re garbage parody *cough* gamerguy324_ *cough*
I remember a few years back when the christine chubbuck search was red hot. Some user (something-squid?) posted a pretty good fake of the suicide. It was a $200 knock-off rolex though, just good enough to fool you on first glance so you buy it, but once someone else looks at it and finds a flaw, you know you have been had.
Fakes are one of the bigger issues in the community
ill google something, looking for it, and google will present me with things only barely related to what im looking for. that shows me that what im looking for is really lost .
The biggest setback in investigating lost media for me is contacting leads. I don't use Twitter or Facebook, and I don't like looking for people's emails because I don't wanna look like a creep (Imagine getting an email from someone you don't know talking about a thing you worked on 20 years ago). So the only real thing I can do is scrub through archives and see if something is there.
Maybe I should get over my fear of contacting people.
The biggest setback in investigating lost media for me is contacting leads. I don't use Twitter or Facebook, and I don't like looking for people's emails because I don't wanna look like a creep (Imagine getting an email from someone you don't know talking about a thing you worked on 20 years ago). So the only real thing I can do is scrub through archives and see if something is there.
Maybe I should get over my fear of contacting people.
I need to do this more too. It's usually an annoying pain in the ass when you have to ask a friend of a friend if they can relay a message for you, and then it's all about waiting to see if it works out or not. For me, a good example of this is looking for information about the original cut of Ax'Em. The director, Michael Mfume doesn't have a social media presence these days, but someone who was in a documentary he shot back in 2003 posted a photo of the two of them together a few years back. So, it doesn't seem too hard to see if anyone can get in contact with him, but asking about his history without seeming weird is the hard part.
I have a few problems, complaints and moans to make about this hobby and even this community.
80% of our major finds comes from a small percent of the users (sorry if I misspell) dyacate, supersonic Q, Whang and and a few power users who have connections in the industry or who are particularly outgoing are able to find most of the lost media, and they do a great job, I would argue that these users are indispensable pillars of our community. I am eternally grateful to many of our powerusers here who have had amazing finds like rapsittie street kids, a day with SpongeBob SquarePants, and other amazing finds. However, if those users quit, have other obligations or have to leave the community for some reason, we become far less effective. Essentially, we are dependent on a few power users.
There are only so many of us, in fact we are a small community, yet we seem to be spread across too many platdorms. LMW, YouTube, Reddit, discord and Facebook all have lost media enthusiasts with varying levels of overlap. While projects like a day with SpongeBob SquarePants and clockman bring us together in intense searches, most of our lost media searches have a habit of never expanding beyond a few small users look for it (see the countless number of dead threads in this forum), gain steam quickly then die (thankfully like saki), or are spread across so many platforms that efforts are repeated (see Ed edd n Eddy lost pilot), this is why many creators stop responding to us, they get flooded with 200 emails from fanboys with no coordination. This is why many people don't respond to you, you are the 50th person to email them, whereas people who don't feel harassed are more likely to respond to just 1 or 2 requests
Many of us get distracted with obviously fake projects like saki sanobashi ("go for a punch") or "squidwards suicide." There is a lack of quality control for creepypastas in this community. Some of this comes from the fact that "creepypastas" have netted fruit before (see: crybaby lane, clockman) but those are outliers. For every 1 clockman there are 50 Squidward suicides.
Lack of initial effort. There seems to be little barrier to entry and a lot of people who just want a personal army to find a piece of lost media that may matter a great deal to them, but matters little in the grand scheme. For example, I would love to find ESW wrestling's human Cockfighting. However, it has no historical significance whatsoever, it was a crude wrestling event from an unknown company, if it was found it would add almost nothing to the lost media community. Additionally, I am so inexperienced I wouldn't even know where to start, thus my post never gained traction. I believe if there was an "initial effort" rule, we would see less low quality searches. Prove that you made some progress, make it such a low hanging fruit that it would be easy or so close that we are just on the cusp. Don't do what I did and say "hey guise here is an obscure media I like, go find it... Why did no one reply?"
Finally, copyright is never on our side and lost media has been copyright striked. That sucks but there is nothing the community can do about it.
I completely agree with you when it comes to the community being spread out and the lack of initial effort. I think that "personal army" mindset comes from more passive lost media fans who's only exposure to it is from the Youtube side. I think we're going to be seeing more low effort posting when inevitably more and more Youtube video's get taken down. Internet media is something we all need to be talking about more.
Last Edit: Oct 31, 2020 0:09:01 GMT by Frankenstein
