This isn’t one of the usual funny ones I post, but I thought it was interesting, especially in regards to what we do here at SMITH. One YouTube user, Renetto, is pretty popular; this is his video, offering other users the chance to use his popularity to jumpstart their own viral video career. It’s interesting, I think, because of the way that personal media has begun to resemble traditional media: there are the big guys out there now, the established ones who dominate the industry, and though it’s certainly easier to break through on YouTube than it would be to, say, get a six-picture deal with Paramount, a hierarchy has begun to develop. (I think the same thing is especially true of political blogs, a lot of whom complain about the traditional media’s “punditocracy,” but have formed, in some sense, their own punditocracy, as hard to break into as Washington’s.)

Anyway, here’s the video. I think it may be too late to enter, but it never hurts to try.