我们家没有电视。所有读过我前面文章的人都知道这件事儿。到现在为止我已经说过好几次了。因为不能看电视，我就找了其它的消遣方式。看书、看电影，当然最好的还是——上网。
我想说两件跟互联网有关的事儿，对我来说，它们都非常、非常地好玩儿。然而，今天我的时间只够说其中的一件。所以，我选……油管子！！！
我确信每个人都听过油管子。但是以防万一，比如如果你是个抱树嬉皮士的话（嘿！我不是说那是一件坏事儿！我最喜欢的一本书的人物就是一个抱树嬉皮士），我还是先对油管子做一个简介为好。油管子是一个视频（译者注：视频可以理解为影片或片子）共享网站，用户可以在那儿上传、观看、评论和欣赏视频。视频从几秒钟到几个小时那么长的都有，不过我想多数都在一个小时之内。我不确定，那里是否有几十亿个视频，我只是看过其中的百分之一吧。
我真是喜欢油管子，因为基本上你可以在上面找到任何东西——教程类的视频、其它电影的片段、完整的电影、人们随手拍的录像，还有就是我最喜欢的幽默片。那里简直包括了任何一个好玩的视频，但是我想特别地谈谈几个油管子高手和他们有名的频道（每一个油管子注册用户都有一个频道，他们在自己的频道里上传视频，然后人们可以到他们的频道来观看，或者用关键字搜索这些视频）。
我一直都喜欢的油管子高手是赖恩.海加。他有两个频道，尼加海加和海加电视。每周一次，他会在尼加海加频道上传一个非常好玩儿的片子（不到十分钟长），然后在海加电视频道上传一个幕后花絮。片子可能是正常生活中的任何一件事儿——比如怎么当一个日本武士、灯的部队、亲爱的赖恩（那是用人们给他发送的亲爱的赖恩短信制作的视频）、假广告、假电影预告片、音乐视频等等……我真的、真的、真的是崇拜他。我想，他从初中或高中起就开始做这件事儿了，不过我拿不准。赖恩最开始制作的视频，内容有些滑稽，但是摄像质量并不好。即使质量不怎么地，这些片子也会逗得我哈哈大笑，因为它们的创意很好。不过那是六年前的片子。现在，他的视频是质量最好的、能跟好莱坞相媲美的滑稽秀。片子拍得都非常清晰（除了有不聚焦的需求时），编辑得也令人赞叹（比我强多了），每看几秒钟我就要感慨一下。和他六年前的视频相比进了一大步（他现在已经参与了很多视频大会什么的，并在其中扮演了重要角色。他是互联网图标的三个裁判之一！了不起！）！那是他最让我羡慕的事儿，我的看法而已。
对比观看他开始时的和现在的视频很令人惊叹，就像……我用个比喻来描述吧：以前，他的视频就像是一个很脏的喷泉，油漆破裂处堆积着落叶，好似披着一件令人生厌的外套一样；他做的改进工作就是给喷泉清洁和翻新，将喷泉重新涂漆，擦去泥点和污渍，然后擦干，直到那一直不被留意的绚丽终于呈现在众人面前。那就是他的视频现在看起来的感觉。神奇吧？每一次观看他的片子我都会大笑。
你知道吗？当他第一次开始制作视频时，他只是孤独的一个人在房间里，对着一部相机和很多灯而已。是的，你没读错，很多灯。这些灯在赖恩的很多视频中都出演了主角儿。它们在赖恩的心中有一个特殊的位置，在我的心中也是如此。它们好似赖恩在视频制作方面的第一批朋友。赖恩不但要一个人非常努力地工作，还要冒着视频上传后获得差评的尴尬。他是怎么坚持下来的啊？！这份执着真是令人替他高兴啊！所有的这些都得到了回报！现在他有很多朋友，在互联网是个名人，获邀参加很多活动，有着百万计的粉丝！当然，他也有反对者，这和所有的油管子高手一样。不过赖恩的反对者相对算是少的了。我想那是因为他最真诚的视频（他时而也上传象日本大地震那类的视频）之一就是专门拍给反对者看的演讲。当然也许这对反对者并不起什么作用，但是他的粉丝（包括我）却会因此更爱他。
（说到爱，我不是指希望他成为我们的男朋友。他在情人节的视频中说得很清楚，他是一个很差劲儿的男朋友。我只是喜欢他的视频，仅此。）
我喜欢的其它油管子高手……嗯，没有人能达到赖恩.海加的高度，但我想切斯特.西紧随其后。我不确定那是不是他的真实姓名，但我想是的。他上传了很多视频，半数是歌曲。我彻底被他这个天才般的钢琴手和歌手给征服了。他的片子也有一些非常好的创意，但在我的眼里，不如赖恩的搞笑。尽管如此，我也还是相当喜欢他的片子（他是我第二喜欢的），他已经有很多的订阅者了。我觉得好莱坞应该雇佣他和赖恩，但是，当然，如果他们被雇佣了，他们就不会在油管子这儿上传视频了。
当然，还有喜莱坞制作，我前几周为她们写了满满几页纸的作文。但是她们不是我最喜欢的油管子高手，虽然她们是我生命中的偶像。她们不常在油管子这儿上传视频，一两个月才会上传一次而已，而我订阅的其它人则至少每周上传一次，甚至还会更多。我也喜欢斯莫希（斯莫希是两个朋友的组合，一个是安东尼，很火；一个是伊恩，不是那么地火。他们的频道经营得很大。他们在油管子高手中一直很稳定地排名前三。赖恩也是。），但是做为我最喜欢的前三名，他们的幽默则显得有点粗俗和不恰当。他们的片子虽然很逗乐，但是没有赖恩的搞笑。赖恩的搞笑不会太不合时宜，在他的视频里你基本上找不到任何粗话，它们都很文明。斯莫希嘛……就不同了。他们在播放中间说着脏话，很不恰当，非常地不恰当，真是过了头。我确实很喜欢他们的视频，他们也确实很搞笑，但我对他们的喜欢程度不如对其它人那么多。
雷.威廉姆.杰克逊也值得一提。他审阅其它人的视频，然后给出非常有趣的评价。他很能讲，但是他脏话太多，有点像斯莫希…不过他的视频很搞笑，所以算是可以弥补一下！噢！还有，不能忘了奥尼斯特.崔勒斯（译者：名称的英文含义是“诚实的电影预告片”）。我也很喜爱他们。他们制作著名电影的、其实并不那么诚实的预告片。他们并不真的生产新东西，他们只是从那些电影中剪辑出来一些片段合成预告片，感觉上就像真的预告片一样。但是，这些预告片通常都是恶搞这些电影……他们真的真的真的很搞笑，奥尼斯特.崔勒斯可以成功地做到既指出电影制作人的错误，又取笑了他们，还能听起来没什么恶意。那就是我为什么那么喜欢他们的原因。但是片后的那些留言真的非常恶毒，通常都是侮辱电影的，因此我从来不读。
除了这些很棒的搞笑油管子高手外，油管子上还有其它一些我也很喜欢的东西。比如那上面有很多歌唱家的粉丝上传的歌曲，我可以把它们下载后转成MP3格式的文件，然后再传到我的电子书阅读器上，这非常方便；还有，那儿有时也有一些我能看的电影，在油管子上看电影可以省去到图书馆借碟的麻烦；那还有一些电影的预告片；还有一些教程性质的视频，我前面提到过；还有在家里制作的电影，有些真的真的是很专业很棒；还有谜语、谜宫和脑筋急转弯什么的……真是太多东西了！油管子真是一个神奇的地方，就像是一个全新的世界，许多的新世界。人们在那儿可以出名。
我希望有一天我也能在油管子那儿上传人们真正喜爱的、并且会订阅的视频。我现在还没有勇气和智慧去做这件事儿，但是我确信一年之内我会做。也许我不会把视频上传到油管子上，我可能只是把他们保存在我的电脑中……我不知道。但是我一直在读的这本书《怎样度过初中生活》非常地激励人。在这本书中，一个初中生正在制作电影并且把电影上传到了油管子上。它们相当地搞笑，是非专业的家庭视频，几乎没有人知道它们的存在，直到……(不能毁掉了你看这本书的兴趣)
这本书鼓励我去上传视频。但是我要先把视频制作出来才行。我所需要的只不过是一个相机和我的大脑……
当然，不止那些。我还需要一个三角架，一个编辑软件，还有一些创意，可是，现在我什么都没有……
【小哭介绍背景】这是一周来译得最辛苦的一篇。不知道是我的水平不够，还是Susan写得不清楚，总之工作难度明显增大了。抱树嬉皮士的概念是和她讨论后才敢落的笔；那个喷泉的比喻我花了不少时间也没有弄明白，最后只好向她求助才算翻译清楚。可是过程中她又把下一段的首句给挪到前一段的末尾了！说那样表达更具有逻辑性。唉，她自己都没有认真检查过的文章，到底值不值得我这么认真地对待呢？关于那个比喻，我倒是认为，她用一套旧得发暗的银器来比喻可能更好：）对了，那个抱树嬉皮士是指那些关心大自然并且只关心大自然的而对工业社会排拆到几乎一无所知的人们（这是Susan解释给我听的，我在维基百科上一看字太多了，就没花功夫了）。
在油管子上观看视频，我一般都是直接粘上别人发过来的地址，极少自己在上面搜索什么。相比之下，Susan对油管子的使用明显比我熟练得多，她还动不动就给小宝在上面找车啊、打仗啊什么的视频看。可是她什么时候开始频繁地使用油管子的呢？我竟然根本不知道！
为了控制她的网络使用权限，我们在书房给她留了有线接口，无线上网的密码一直没有告诉她。以为这样她上网的时候无法留在她自己的房间里，我们就容易监控了。可是事实上，真的如她在《我的妈妈》文中所言，我给了她足够的“信任”，她竟然一直随意在油管子上“驰骋”。虽说几十亿的百分之一我想她是肯定不可能看过的，我也不知道是否油管子上有几十亿的视频存在，但是她没少在上面看也是明摆着的了。每天放学后，我在厨房忙碌的那两三个小时，她老是做不完作业，老是说作业需要上网，是否是在那会儿看的呢？我还是有点不相信她在我的眼皮子底下看了这么多的视频！我更愿意相信，是我回国期间，她成绩明显下滑的时候看的。此事不得而知，留当世界未解之谜吧：）以后得留心这事儿才行。
上网反正是无法堵得住的事情，如果程度还在她文中所言的范围内，那还算好。她目前还有明辨是非的能力，看她喜欢的人和事儿，基本上也符合我的价值观，甚至觉得她这个人比我可厚道多了。可是如果不符合呢？这种事情上，我觉得家长能做的就是尽力。如果结果并不理想那也只能说是自己水平不够，水平不够也不是自己不想够，上帝赐予的是啥水平就是啥水平了，跟上帝较劲儿肯定赢不了。非常地无奈，非常地无助。在育儿的过程中，我时时就会想到上帝，因为时时地就不得不面对自己的无知、无助与渺小，需要更多的智慧来相助。
看Susan写了这么多的兴趣与爱好，怎么觉得她的爱好比较集中在电影制作这一大范围内呢？也许她将来真的要做这一行？谁能说得清呢？
附上英文原文：
My family don’t have a TV. Anyone who’s read my past writings should know that. I’ve mentioned it a few times by now. And since I don’t have access to a TV, I find other forms of entertainment. Books. Movies. And the best of all—the internet.
So, there are two things I’d like to mention about the internet that are both very, very entertaining for me. However, I only have time to mention one of them today, so I’ll do… YOUTUBE!!!
I’m sure everyone’s heard of YouTube. But just in case you’re some tree-hugging hippie (Hey! I’m not saying that’s a bad thing! One of my favorite book character was a tree-hugging hippie), YouTube is a video sharing website, where users can upload, view, share, comment on, and enjoy videos. The videos can last from a few seconds to a few hours. Though most are within one hour. I think. I’m not sure, there are billions of videos on there, I’ve only watched about 1 % of them.
I really like YouTube, because you can find basically anything on there. How-to videos, clips of other movies, full movies, just random videos that people make, and my favorite—the comedy videos. That includes about any video that’s funny, but I’m talking specifically about a few YouTubers and their channels that are really famous (everyone that has a YouTube account has a channel, and they post videos on their channel, and people can watch them from their channels or search for them with keywords).
My favorite YouTuber of all time—Ryan Higa. He has two channels, Nigahiga and HigaTV. Once every week, he posts a really funny video (less than ten minutes long) on Nigahiga, and then post the behind-the-scenes on HigaTV. The videos can be about any random subject in general—how to be a ninja, army of lamps, dear ryan (that’s when people send him dear ryan messages and he makes them into videos), fake commercials, fake trailers, music videos… I really really really admire him. He started in, I think, Middle School or High School, I’m not too sure. Ryan’s videos started out kind of funny, but without very good quality. They had really good ideas, and made me laugh anyway, even though the quality was pretty bad. That was six years ago. Now, his videos are top-quality Hollywood-worthy comedy shows. The shots are all very clear (except when it’s suppose to look unfocused), the editing is amazing (way better than me), and they make me crack up about every few seconds. A really big step compared to his videos six years ago! (He’s already participating and have very big and important roles in many video conventions and things. He’s one of the three judges for Internet Icon! Amazing!)
That’s the most admirable thing about him, my opinion. It was amazing watching his videos when he first started and watching his videos now. It’s like...... I’ll use a simile here: before, his videos was like a dirty fountain, with chipping paint and grim coating its outside and leaves stuck in its cracks. His improvement is like cleaning and renewing the fountain, repainting the paint, scrubbing off the mud and dirt, and then wipping it down, until its hidden splendor is finally brought out onto the surface. That’s what his videos are like now. Amazing. They make me laugh every time.
Do you know? When he first started out his videos, he was just a lonely guy in his room with a camera and lots of lamps. Yup, you read that right. Lamps. They starred in many of Ryan’s videos. They have a special place in his heart, and in mine too. It seems like they were his first friends in video-making. It’s really sweet, how he kept persisting even though he had to work really hard and work by himself, and risk lots of embarassment by posting his videos, but it all paid off! Now he’s got lots of friends, is an internet celebrity, gets asked to participate in lots of events, and have millions of fans! There are haters, of course, like there are for all the YouTubers out there, but there are less for Ryan. I think it’s because of one of his more serious videos (he posts them now and then, like for the earthquake in Japan) was addressed expecially to his haters. Maybe it didn’t do too much for the haters, but for all his fans (me included), we just loved him even more.
(By love, I don’t mean love as in we all want him to be our boyfriend. He made it clear that he’s a lousy boyfriend in his videos he posts on Valentines days. I just like his videos, that’s all. And I admire him as a person. But I’m sure there are girls out there who would like to marry him.)
Other YouTubers I really like… hmm, none can live up to Ryan Higa, but I suppose it would have to be Chester See. I’m not sure if that’s his real name, I think it is. He posts a lot of videos, half of them songs. I am totally blown away by his talent as a pianist and singer. And he’s got some really good ideas for videos too. But not as funny as Ryan, in my opinion. Still, I really like his videos (he’s my second fav), and he’s got a lot of suscribers. I think Hollywood should hire him and Ryan, but of course, if they do get hired, they wouldn’t be posting videos on YouTube.
There’s of course Hillywood Productions, I dedicated a whole piece of writing to them a few weeks ago. But they’re not my favorite YouTuber, though they are my idols for life. They don’t post videos as often on YouTube, only once in one or two months, while all the other people I suscribed to post them at least once a week, if not more. I also like Smosh (Smosh consists of two friends, Anthony, the hot one, and Ian, the not-so-hot one. Their channel runs pretty big. They’re among the top three YouTubers of all time, statistically. So is Ryan.), but their humor is a bit too crude and inappropriate for them to be among my top three. It’s entertaining, but not as funny as Ryan. Ryan’s funny without being too inappropriate. Hardly any swears in his videos at all, and they’re all good natured. Smosh… not so much. They’re just past that line between playing at inappropriatness and actual inappropriateness. On the wrong side of the line. I do like their videos though, they are funny, just not as much as others.
Ray William Johnson also deserves to be mentioned. He reviews other people’s videos, and give really funny remarks about them. He’s a really good talker. But he does swear a lot, kind of like Smosh… but his videos are funny, so that makes up for it! OH! And, don’t forget Honest Trailers. I love them a lot also. They make not-so-honest trailers of famous movies. They don’t really create new things, but they take clips from those movies and make a trailer out of them, just like actual trailers. But, the trailers are usually making fun of the movies… they’re really really really funny though, and Honest Trailers manages to do it in a way that manages to both point out and make fun of the mistakes of the moviemakers, yet not sound mean or anything. That’s why I like them so much. But the comments are really mean, usually insulting the movie, which is why I never read those.
There are also other parts of YouTube that I like, other than awesome and funny YouTubers. There are the songs that fans of song artists post, which I can download and then convert to mp3 files and then download to my Kindle. It’s very convenient. Also, there are sometimes movies on there that I can watch. Saves me the trouble of getting a disc from the library. And there are trailer for movies. And how-to videos, I’ve mentioned before. And home-made movies, some really really professional and awesome. And riddles and puzzles and brain teasers… and a lot more! YouTube is a really amazing place. Like a whole new world, a lot of new worlds. People become famous that way.
I hope I can be able to post videos on YouTube someday, videos that people will actually like and suscribe to. I don’t have the courage nor the smarts to do it yet, but I’m sure I’ll be able to, in less than a year. But maybe I won’t put it on YouTube, I might just keep them on my computer… I don’t know. But this book I’ve been reading, ‘How To Survive Middle School’, has been very encouraging. In the book, a middle school kid was making videos and posting them on YouTube. They’re pretty funny, amatuer home videos, but few people knows about them. Until… (not going to spoil the book for you)
It encourages me to post videos too. But I’ll have to make them first. All I need is a camera and my brain…
Actually, that’s not true. I need a tripod, an editing software, and some ideas. All of which I don’t have.