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| I was looking up Chinese video sharing sites after my buddy teople introduced me to a few, and I came across a great post on Danwei.org with an overly-lengthy-in-a-good-way list of them. Careful not to overdose, Chinese junkies. And if you’re interested in seeing a good comparison of the sites, check out this post on China Web2.0 Review. | |
| I swear I need to start a Magibon category. This is the third or fourth post about her. I really didn’t plan on making any more posts about her, but in the interests of answering the biggest question about Magibon (WHY?!?!), and because I’m way too busy lately to look for anything else interesting to post about, I’m posting these two videos. They’re the entire interview from her debut on Japanese TV, complete with awesome Engrish subtitles. |
| She she talks more in this short appearance on Japanese TV than she does in all of her Youtube videos combined, I think. And that’s great! And she finally explains why she started Youtubing in the first place: just to see what she looked like on her new web cam. Things just kind of took off from there. Here it straight from her. Two vids below: |
| My heart goes out to her for being so worried about showing her teeth on camera. She’s a very pretty girl otherwise. Hopefully she’ll get some braces out of this whole thing at the very least so that she’ll feel better about herself. Although I suspect there’s a lot more to her lack of self esteem than just her teeth. Poor girl…Here’s the link to the GyaO news page about Magibon that’s referenced in the second video. |
| A couple of months ago, I commented on the Magibon phenomenon and how her videos are both infuriatingly pointless and incredibly mesmerizing. I didn’t expect it, but that post for some reason put the site right near the top of Google’s search results when you search for her name. Apparently a lot of people are finding the site looking for info about her, so when someone in the comments section on that post mentioned the video below, I had to check it out and post it here so that people could find it. I’m not going to turn this into a Magibon news site; I have neither the time nor the desire to cyber-stalk anybody. But the video is pretty great because it shows how far intense interest (some might call it obsession) and the internet can take a person. Here’s the video: |
| Congratulations, Magibon! You’ve managed to find just the right mix of pointlessness, cuteness, and interestingness (? - needed another ‘ness’) to get the whole world talking, and it’s paid off with what seems like a pretty incredible experience. You’re either one very smart or very fortunate girl; probably a good combination of both. In any case, you rock. No telling where things could go from here… |
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| Wow, I didn’t know people could get this small. The world’s smallest girl hails from India and is only 1 ft. 11 in. tall at 15 years old. Amazing! She seems to have a positive attitude about the whole thing, though, saying, “I am proud of being small. I love the attention I get.” Good for her. | |
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| Learning Chinese is a pretty daunting task. The tones, the ambiguous tenses, the multi-use particles…it can be extremely frustrating at times. And Chinese people recognize that, so when they see someone working hard to learn their language, they’re usually more than happy to help out. They’re also usually really encouraging about students’ efforts. Well that’s all fine and dandy if you have lots of Chinese people around you, but what about people who live in Podunk, South Dakota? How can they get feedback on their Chinese to help them improve their pronunciation and grammar? Thanks to the wonders of the internet, that help isn’t too hard to find. |
| A new site that I think has a pretty cool idea is Howma.com. It’s designed to help Chinese learners improve their pronunciation using feedback from the site’s community. Basically, here’s how it works: you record yourself saying one of the phrases they have on the site, and it gets posted for the community to listen to. Then, site users can rate your pronunciation on a 5-star scale and leave comments on how to make it better. If you’re too timid to record yourself so that others can listen and critique you, you can always pick someone with a high rating and mimic their pronunciation. Of course, as you practice saying the phrases available on the site, your vocabulary and grammar will improve, too. And Chinese people learning English have the same features available to them on the site as well. So everybody benefits. Pretty cool idea, huh? There’s also an interesting blog with some helpful tips and information for learning Chinese, including a post about different programs for learning Chinese via Youtube videos. Howma.com is in beta right now, so expect some glitches and strangeness, but I think the idea is a good one, and if enough people support it, it could be a big help to a lot of isolated self-learners out there. |
| I found the video below on blog.howma.com and had to post about it because of how awesome it is. Yeah, it’s pretty cool how well the guy in the video dances, but the real story is the old lady on the couch behind him… | |
| If you had a guy in your living room wearing a suit coat with no shirt, pajama bottoms, and slippers, and he was dancing all up in ya face like MC Hammer, you’d probably laugh hysterically, right? Or you’d glance up once in a while to watch for a few seconds, right? At the very least, you’d giggle or something. I think most Westerners would. But not old Chinese ladies! The one in the video just keeps on knitting/sewing/doing-whatever-she’s-doing and pays absolutely no attention to the guy whatsoever. It’s like the he isn’t even in the room! I don’t think it’s possible to concentrate any harder than that. And that’s why if I ever find myself in a tag-team Operation competition, I’m taking an old Chinese lady as my partner. | |