REVIEW

YouTube vs Xtube vs Zoopy vs Sondeza. And the Winner is....!


They tell me the jury's still out on what is the difference between art and sleaze. More like art imitating life and life imitating art. That's when it comes to pornography of course. I don't know how they judge this given that I haven't been to any funeral of someone who died and made some people authority.

I am a liberated folk who detests with all my heart, body and soul, child porn. Fortunately, or deliberately I have never seen a childporn video or still picture and I want to keep it this way. I support that cookies should be programmed into every child porn site so that we can be able to trace all the folk who visit them and arrest them. There should be a pedophile register to shame forever all the visitors of such sites.

However, in my journalistic journey I recently discovered a site called Sondeza. Don't get me wrong I discovered it through a friend who also got information from a friend. I visited, the same way I had visited YouTube, Zoopy and Xtube after discovering them. On YouTube I visited and immediately set up an account and posted a video on the same day of my discovery. Until some few months ago when I had at least ten videos with minimal comments. Somebody told me to get comments and reviews I should tag my video with anything from Obama to McCain to Bush and Osama.

I wondered what was the significance given that one video elicited racist comments about why I referred to Pretoria as Tshwane and vice versa. All I got for one year of loyalty to YouTube is less than a thousand visits and less than ten comments.

I hadn't been posting since I discovered that contrary to YouTube's intentions of providing spaces and opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn't have such on the mainstream, the video sharing service suddenly became where people from the mainstream decided to launch their mainstream videos. Suddenly one would get P.Diddy, Souljah Boy, The Game, Tupac and many other entertainers' videos on YouTube. Suddenly YouTube was looking more like MTV and VH1 than an alternative for material that wouldn't make it to mainstream.

When P.Diddy's perfume commercial was deemed too sexy for family time television he took it straight to YouTube. Now, ordinary folks like me ended up competing with the Seans of this world for a slot on the site. I decided, 'well, au revior folks, no hard feelings, but your service suddenly sucks'

Then I discovered Xtube and visited it some couple of times. I'm over eighteen so I can actually build a house there instead of just visiting. I realised that there was no way that my videos would make an impact there given that it is too commercial, it caters for everyone and is too money-orientated. They sell everything from pumps to pills to DVDs to skanks from Pretoria. I visited it some couple of times and decided, 'no ways'

Then I discovered Zoopy, which is actually a South African site which recently landed a big Vodacom booster. They guys are now making serious moolah. I posted a picture there and struggled many times to post a single video. Web2.0 was finally defeating itself. After seven attempts to have videos posted I decided to quit, also because it was now more of a commercial site than just plain alternative.

Then came Sondeza. Before you crucify me for promoting Xtube and Sondeza understand my position. First of all I'm a journalist and an art critic and a humanitarian and a leftist and many other things that you are not.

I went to Sondeza and what stuck to me the first time was that the language was familiar. The chaps there go by names like Tau, Mochacho etc. I had a feeling most of them are your Pretoria type sods who worship at the temple situated between the legs of a woman. Hedonistic folks. These muthafuckas have serious devotion I tell you.

But within a day I opened an account with Sondeza and posted my own video after watching how whack some of the stuff there was. No, offense, the guys can do their thing but I had a killer vid I wanted to share with the world. Now, see if you can spot it cuz I'm not going to give you my Sondeza Name or Video tag. I edited some raw footage I had and posted it to Sondeza and within a day I had 400 visitors and 10 comments. All comments were testimony to my other skills apart from blogging.

Now, on Sunday I went to Sondeza and saw this other black and white video from the Eastern Cape of this other guy crossing the rubicon in a big way. It was well done with music and would have made Hype Williams and Little X green with envy.

Like I said the jury's still out on this sites but I should give a big up to Sondeza, first it's local, second it speaks my language (not this second language you are reading) and last, well I don't know who owns it since it could be some larney hiding behind a pair of darkies who speak ghetto lingo, but if it's owned by the folks who claim to own it, I would like to say 'nice one bo my bra!'