Aije: The Interview

Thanks to companies like YouTube, Liberated Syndication, Deviant Art and others there's a place for everyone's voice, visage, and opinion on the internet. As long as you don't attempt to reference copyrighted material. Media companies of the previous century struggle daily to keep their monopoly on what gets heard and seen. These companies seem unwilling to accept a business model that isn't built on scarcity.

Can the concept of fair use survive the digital age?

With corporations battling over intellectual property on the internet like rival gangs in a turf war, sometimes bystanders get caught in the crossfire. Sometimes the very people to whom these companies owe their phenomenal success are caught in the legal drive-bys. One of the most recently wounded made her way into the offices of Raging Titter.

YouTube luminary, Aije, sits down with SinisterPurpose and talks abut her YouTube deletion and resurrection, reconnecting with her subscribers, and her future contributions to the sum of human expression.

SP: Why was your original account deleted from YouTube?

Aije: It took me a while to connect the dots for this one. YouTube, only a few days ago, sent me a reason for my suspension.

I used to have some anime videos dubbed by myself and friends on the profile. The animes were, at the time, not licensed in the United States. As soon as they were licensed companies like Geneon and Sunrise filed copyright infringement notices against me. For sure I can say that that happened twice.

I took down all "dub" videos of mine to avoid a third occurrence. My entire account was deleted months later. According to YouTube it had to do with "repeat offences".

SP: Are you pleased with the rate at which your subscribers are returning?

Aije:Yes, 100 in one week is very pleasing. It originally took me one year to gain 350, so, doing the math, you can see the difference.

SP: Are you consciously striving toward becoming one of YouTube's Stars like
LonelyGirl15, The Guys from Smosh, or Happyslip?

Aije: Well, I have to look forward to something, right?

SP: Are your videos Entertainment, Art, or Journalism? Are these distinctions important to you when you set out to make a video? For example, in Ask a Chonga: Asisleysis Edition it seems as though you could have easily edited out the moments when you broke character. Why didn't you?

Aije: See, I know I'll get my points across a lot faster on YouTube than I would writing an editorial in my LiveJournal. I guess you'd have to call that journalism but I'm really not a fan of journalism in essence. Let's just say that my youtube account is one collective editorial.

In my 'skit videos' such as Asisleysis and WTF Tribe (which, I've yet to transfer over to the new account) I tend to leave in certain bloopers. I'm a big fan of anything that's a comedy of errors. I suppose that's a big influence on my videos. Those moments make the videos funnier, in my
opinion.


SP: What's your take on YouTube's ever tightening restrictions on copyrighted
material?

Aije: Well, I don't see much of a difference from day to day. Simply that they've got more reminders up when you're uploading a video. Such a big company coming up with such measly solutions is disheartening.


SP: The description tags on some of your videos seem to have taken on a certain...let's call it a theme. Has Youtube's deletion of your original account caused you to adopt more aggressive methods of marketing?

Aije: Yes it has. I've blatantly tagged short skirts and hot chicks because it's the trend nowadays on youtube. Like Daffy Duck, I can't beat the others, so I'm joining them.

SP: You've mentioned you're a writer once or twice. What's your genre? What themes are you exploring in your writing? What's at stake in your stories?

Aije: I'm a science fiction writer fascinated by cyborgs and androids. Themes that usually come up in my writing are those of loss, predestination, or control. I tend to create characters who constantly change and others that serve as ideals: the perfect woman, the perfect soldier, and etcetera. What's at stake in my stories is the ordinary, I suppose.


SP: Are there any samples of your writing on the internet? Where can they be found?

Aije: There are few. I have a livejournal, that I occasionally update, specifically set up for snippets of my novel. It's hard to read since I write out of context and only post up a few paragraphs of each segment that I work on. That would be on http://aije_enhanced.livejournal.com.

SP: The question on the minds of everyone out there in regard to your writing is do you secretly write Sailor Moon fanfic or is it not a secret?

Aije: I wrote an Ayashi No Ceres badfic the other day… I would never disgrace Sailor Moon.

SP:Are you working on a new video? When can your subscribers expect to see it?

Aije: I have about 3 that are halfway in the making: one editorial on my neighbors, another about Feng Shui, and a skit about scaring children. I'm actually about to start working on a video about my first tattoo. Chances are they're up already or will be in the next few days.

When you've got a fan of FFVII on your hands there are certain questions one needs to ask.

Aerith or Tifa? Aerith; she had an awesome death scene. Tifa's a total
fanservice bunny.
Does Cloud seem a bit whiny? He's EMO.
Is Sephiroth just misunderstood? No, he's way past that stage now.
Are you haunted by Sephiroth's theme? Nope. *gasp*
Aerith's ghost: game glitch or intentional story element? Aerith's WHAT?!

Raging Titter would like to thank Aije, now Aij3, for taking the time and giving us a little insight from the front lines in the war on content control.