Analyze My Alligator Dream
Let’s start with the disclaimer that this post has little to do with online video, except to the degree that a video camera is involved. Hey it’s a blog, so we’re allowed to wander off point. Right?
Do you want to analyze what was surely a symbolic dream from which I just awakened? I’ve read that when analyzing dreams you’re supposed to ask the dreamer what certain things mean to them. So let’s introduce the most vivid elements with my personal definition:
- Alligators: They’re usually in my stress dreams. Only I’m typically in a weak boat on a bayou (from New Orleans) and they’re usually a threat.
- Mardi Gras loot: In New Orleans, parades toss cheap shiny plastic that people collect as if it was solid gold. It’s all pretty but cheap plastic from the Orient. Fool’s gold.
Part 1: I’m in a restaurant in what appears to be an end of either college or business school. Graduation time. An Asian woman (from my business school) is providing free Mardi Gras loot for anyone that can recall a complex code of Chinese characters. I had a cheat code but was driven to utter frustration trying to relay it. I finally cheat my way to the answer, and I’m rolling out a cart of this junk. I see YouTube’s Winekone, who is boasting that he collected more of it.
Part 2: Now we’re passing homes on route to Graduation dinner. I see an enormous Alligator who was more comical than threatening. Like one of the evil minion crocodiles (Brutus and Nero) from Rescuers (see video). I pull out my flipcam for some footage. He’s almost walking on his hind legs and he’s swiped a scarecrow. He knocks on a door, and the human owners (apparently his family) greet him with enthusiasm. I continue to shoot, and suddenly I’m inside the house. My joy turns to fear when I realize the alligator sees me as a threat and had decided to keep me inside a front room… there’s no escaping. I’m swarmed with fear. Suddenly Anthony Hopkins (Dr. Hannibal Lecter) appears out of character, and is joined by Tim Blake Nelson (in his “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” character). Nelson begins singing the blues, but Hopkins decides not to join him. The alligator stands guard, and it’s clear I’m not leaving for a few days.
That’s it. I’m awake. What the hell does it mean? It has the cadence of an insecurity dream, but with additional surreal and humorous dimensions. What’s it mean?
I’m going to take the Ebenezer Scrooge approach and ask, what did you have for dinner?
Dreams from your past . Then stuck in a family house… Maybe you’re worried about family coming for the Holidays??? Not being able to get away for some quiet time?? Hope it helps.
you view life & things all at one huge potential viral video rep by the- the comical alligator… whom everyone will love~ *whip out the cam… “wait till everyone sees this, i will be a huge hit at that party!” and as you close in the frame the comical alligator is actually a potential enemy, who has you trapped in this thinking
~your new york friend716
(im working on the fools gold part… im thinking its about expectations… or false hope, or maybe reality vs dreams/expectations/promise of the future)
For the first part, I would have to say your having mental issues trying to come to terms with YouTube’s new Search algorithms.
As for the Second part, it’s obvious that your span of “recording” so much of your life in a daily sense is causing you to feel almost ashamed or concerned with recording others without their permission. Maybe it’s time to start having more people record you instead of recording others while they are just being themselves?
Part Three- I really don’t know, just guessing 🙂
Peace, Ace77man
P.S. Hope you have a great Holiday Season. I hear Fried Gator is better than Fried Turkey.
Maybe u just need to cut down on late night cartoons 😉
Just a perhaps:
Part 1: Like everyone sometimes, you are insecure and feel like a fraud. You got your degrees, but you don’t always know what you’re doing. Perhaps your degrees are just “fool’s gold.” They look impressive, but what good are they if you feel like you faked your way through your college/grad school work to get them. You didn’t even understand a lot of it; it was like Chinese to you. (Maybe you’re also a perfectionist in that your self esteem is tied to either being perfect or to not letting others down, not letting things be your fault.)
But you have to put up the facade that you know what you’re doing, fool people, so that people will take you seriously and so that you can keep your marketing job and get promoted (and now get consulting jobs).
Part 2: You’ve “graduated” from a “real job” to making videos (and consulting), which had been a fun thing in adolescence and is now a real make-a-living thing. But it’s not all fun and comical. Like comical alligators from a childhood movie in your childhood city, there are still real dangers. You worry about the backlash from the subjects of pranks, etc. (as Ace77man said). You worry that your kids don’t like you videoing them so much anymore and that some viewers say they only watch you for the family videos.
Maybe also there is the danger of the lack of security of the whole endeavor. You don’t have a 9-5, pension kind of job now (with four kids, mortgage, etc.), and the book isn’t selling phenomenally. And Youtube’s new algorithm may mean even less money from videos.
Life is uncertain and scary and part of you doesn’t know if you’re up to the challenges and if you’ve made the right decisions.
In short: You’re living your life.
But you’ve got a wife and friends to rely on, and kids in a different way.
You’ll make it, Nalts.
The alligator is clearly You Tube. Lecter is Shaycarl and Nelson is Charles Trippy. I would ask 1000lurkers about the Mardi Gras loot because he clearly has the inside scoop about You Tube insider trading. I think that the Asian woman may either be Happy Slip or Sukatra, depending on what you had to eat for dinner last night.
…You got beat by TheWineKone?
When you obtained success on Youtube, you didn’t do it by using the traditional marketing techniques you learned (which failed), but by cracking YouTube’s weak metadata algorithm instead (like a less repulsive Joel Comm).
You seen TheWineKone obtaining even greater success while apparently not even trying. Pretending that he wasn’t trying made people doing less well than TWK (aka everyone else) feel that much worse about themselves (well played TWK, boasting in such a modest fashion).
YouTube success (during TWK’s time at the top at least) was the equivalent of Mardi Gras loot, shiney, easily obtained by showing your boobs and practically worthless except for regifting to another YouTuber.
In your dream you stumble upon generic content for a viral video. The iconic central character in the content is accepted (loved?) by the general public. You hang out with movie stars signifying success. Then you find out that you are trapped.
YouTube does trap content creators. If I told you exactly how and exactly why then I would want 50% of the royalties of the book you wrote about the phenomenon.
The thing is, you woke up.
In the awake world you don’t quit the puzzle until the puzzle is solved or the code is cracked or the next step becomes clear. If you had stayed asleep you may have found the way out and then forgotten the dream altogether.
There are lots of ways out of the YouTube trap. None of them work unless YOU WANT to get out of the trap. For the last three years you have not wanted to get out of the “YouTube virtual world”. Every time you beat YouTube you walked right back in, sometimes starting from square one again on purpose.
There are many reasons why you would do that. If I were to guess I would say that the foremost reason was that you were concentrating on “being there” for the real life people that you care about and the “YouTube virtual world” was a distraction that allowed you to generate a modest income while stopping your real skillset from going completely rusty.
Right now YouTube needs inhouse marketing managers to sell their ad space to corporate America (not Hollywood, they have that covered) and inspire the evolution of their site. (Dear YouTube, when TheResident spams his “Feature TheResident again like you used to” suggestion to the top of the Partner Product Improvement poll and then You put TheResident in the NextUp program so he gets featured, you are telling the world that “you got nothing”.)
One hundred new companies or company departments are forming to create TV quality content for YouTube. That creates maybe 100 new positions that need to be filled by people with a YouTube skillset/mindset, as opposed to a Hollywood skillset/mindset. The difference between the two is as day and night as the difference in the YouTube reception received by The Old Spice Guy and that received by Oprah.
If you really can’t find a way out of the YouTube trap that allows you to build upon what you have and move forward while keeping what is important to you, then you really aren’t looking.
Personally, I would feed Tim Blake Nelson to both the alligator and Anthony Hopkins, then make my escape when they are full.
Gas. You just needed to fart.
Sukatra has the best answer so far!
On Anthony Hopkins:
You might have first seen Anthony Hopkins in your childhood as St. Paul in “Peter and Paul,” the guy who had the scales fall from his eyes and changed the course of his life 180 degrees. You need to stop making online videos and work to ban them forever. Unless you first saw Hopkins a few years later in “The Bounty.” Then you need to be oppressive and go to Tahiti.
Holy CRAP! This is better than therapy. Who gets the $15 copay?
@Nalts, you can make the check out to me. Thanks.
You’ve Studied the Viral Video and Online Video Phenomenon so much that it has you trapped. You’ve attempted to make successful viral videos and had some success, but content of a few videos have “Bitten” you back. Now you are afraid that anything new might have further consequences. you are afraid to fail again and get “bitten”