(Taken from: Brisbane times )
A satirical video on teenage affluence is influencing hearts and
minds through YouTube.
With the title 'Teenage Affluenza is Spreading Fast', the video
clip from World Vision is a clever parody of materialism in the suburbs.
When it was released online, it was quickly picked up by YouTube's editors and marked as one worth watching, leading to more than 200,000 hits in its first four days on the web.
Starring two typical teenagers, Erin and Red, living in
Melbourne, it uses the same male voice-over artist as the
mainstream World Vision television appeals, which focus on the
lives of deprived children from developing countries.
Instead of starving children in the YouTube clip, we watch the
Australian teens struggling with such horrors as eating dry cereal
without milk because the family has run out. The voice-over
intones: "Each mouthful of her cereal is so much harder to bear
with the knowledge that the milk bar is literally metres away from
her home."
The scenes are intercut with footage of children in developing
countries struggling with the harsh realities of their life in war
zones and famine-stricken regions.
Watch the video:
We learn that Red, who is described as an "incredibly gifted
computer gamer", is unable to "take it to the next level" because
he still has only a PlayStation 2 console from early 2004 rather
than a PlayStation 3.
This scene is contrasted with the life of Fen Ching, who is
playing with his one and only toy - a brass bomb-shell casing we
are told he found while foraging for food.
In the last sequence, which jumps between the two worlds, we
learn that today is particularly hard for 15-year-old Erin because
she knows "after dinner, after homework, before she can watch
Home and Away, it's her turn ... to unpack the dishwasher".
It is funny and moving and at the end viewers are urged to take
action by joining the 40-hour famine fundraiser on August 17-19.
One teenager who watched it, 16-year-old Luke Jarman from Sydney's northern beaches, says he typically gives a YouTube video about 15 to 30 seconds to capture his attention and this one passed the test.
He also admits there are parts of his and his friends' lives which he recognised in the video. "The bit about the gaming console made me think. I had been wanting an Xbox 360 but we already have about four different consoles in our house. I am thinking that maybe I don't a need new one."
Meanwhile, the video has attracted thousands of responses on
YouTube's online-comments section, including some honest
self-analysis from teenagers, while others started a discussion
about who is to blame - corrupt governments or first-world
greed.
This debate is very satisfying for Adam Valvasori, who runs
Stir, World Vision's youth arm, which produced the video.
"The response has been overwhelming," he says. "We have known for a while that it is not good enough just to have your own website but that we had to have a presence on MySpace and YouTube and you must have a two-way communication to motivate people to act."
The format of YouTube has been very useful, he says, because
when people are engaged they are often willing to watch for up to
five minutes, which is enough time to convey a complex message.
In the video, instead of asking people to simply put their hands
in the pocket, they are urged to "do something real" wherever they
are and the 40-hour famine is given as an inspiration.
You tube video link:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZz6ICzpjI
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