Ask A Ninja + LonelyGirl15 = Less than the Sum of Its Parts

I have watched Ask a Ninja from the beginning, and I am a fan. I think some shows are more hilarious and some are less hilarious, but I have never known them to not bring the funny. That is – until today. Catching up on my videos at lunch, I watched the episode where they had on the actress from LonelyGirl15. Wow. The whole video was about 5 minutes long including intro, outro, shilling for the store, etc and it felt like 15. About 2/3 through I checked the time on this to see how much was left, because if it was a whole lot more I would have bailed. I’ve never watched LonelyGirl15, and listening to the creators on their panel at SXSW really did an anti-sell job on me. Had there been any danger of me watching, this crossover put that to rest. It wasn’t funny, the actress had negative charisma – she had none herself and she sucked some out of the ninja. Great googly moogly.

I realize that I’m old and some things are meant to baffle me, but an increasingly large percentage of the popular new media things (pretty much always video) just perplex me why they are popular. I understand the different strokes nature of the field, I just don’t understand how anyone’s stroke can be that different.