Brotherhood 2.0

My big brother Johnny (Hi Johnny!) called me last night to tell me about a video he thought I should see since I had been making fun of him and my little brother Neil for their excessive excitement over the newest Harry Potter book.

But I'm intrigued by the video's opening, "Two Brothers, One Video Blog, 365 Days of Textless Communication." The two creators call their project Brotherhood 2.0. And their video messages to one another are hilarious. I especially like all the "in my pants" jokes. I can't help wondering, though, if this kind of communication is really satisfying for them, or if they actually miss each other. Yes, they're responding to each others videos, but it's with the knowledge that other people, and a lot of them, are watching them communicate. It's so un-intimate. I'm a big fan of YouTube and the kinds of things it can make possible, but as a way of keeping in touch, it seems sort of disjointed.

You know who's not a fan of You Tube? President Bush, apparently. In an article titled "Will the G.O.P. say No to YouTube?" TIME reports that many of the Republicans running for the presidential nomination have decided not to attend the Republican version of the YouTube-based debate in which the the Democratic hopefuls participated earlier this week. They think it's silly. "White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters that the President had not even watched, saying Bush was 'not big on YouTube debates.'" ...That cocky son-of-a-bitch. Too cool for those new-fangled technological advances, Mr. Bush? Especially those that allow real people to ask presidential candidates their real questions? Shocking.

Anyway, I'm leaving Mobile now, and I have some new close friends to keep in touch with. Maybe I'll give this "Textless Communication" stuff a shot before I decide how I feel about it.