This article deals with a few issues, such as learning from videos, being creative, and critiquing subjective art such as dancing. Recommended reading!

As I was noticing quite recently, there's been a lot of confusion as to what is GS.C policy are toward videos and such. A lot of people have (I think) mistakently taken too far some comments I may have made regarding some aspects of releasing videos. I think comments that some have made are exaggerated and taken too far, or at least interpreted that way. Well-intentioned posters have often taken knee-jerk responses which shouldn't have been that way, which often results in bad feelings all around.

As with everything, there is a polite way to do things and a not so polite way to do things. That goes for everyone.

On the subject of releasing videos:

I personally don't care how many videos you release. I like seeing progress from people. It's the WAY you do it, and HOW you do it that may irk people. If you start spamming people about your new vid in exclamation marks, and is adamant that your video clip with a few figure 8 is the hottest thing around and won't accept criticism, you will annoy a lot of people. Take criticisms graciously, and try not to be too proud of your clips. Having said that, it's good to be confident of your own abilities and not be too worried if other people criticize what you may be working on.

Releasing many videos publically without demonstration of improvement will annoy a lot of people, and to be honest, almost nobody becomes super great in a matter of days or even weeks or months, so you won't be releasing a lot of videos that often. If possible, before you release a video publically, try to get private critiques from people first.

On the subject of copying moves or learning from videos

A lot of people seem to instinctively criticize people who learn moves from videos as if that is bad or something, misinterpreting what I may or others may have said about the subject.

I encourage people to learn from the videos, and even try to do some of the things I do step by step. That's how you will learn some of the concepts. What I don't encourage you to do is to then claim that is your style that you made up yourself and then go back to other newbies and then tell them not to copy from videos.

When you do release a video, it's quite advisable you are honest WITH YOURSELF. A lot of people subconsciuosly absorb a dancing style from videos or watching people and then take on their chracteristic, having thinking they are developing their own style. THAT IS NOT BAD, by itself. You are merely learning and with time you'll see where you can differntiate yourself.

To be honest, if people think you are glowsticking like someone else, you probably are glowsticking like someone else. It often takes YEARS to get to the level of where you can distinctly claim your own style. And not years as in you glowsticked a few times when you were in 9th grade and took it up again when you were in college. It takes years of experience. To be able to accurately assess your level of skill requires tons of experience which I mention in the next section.

On the subject of critiquing and judging dancing:

Dancing is a subjective thing that can't easily be judged. But it's possible to compare styles and a persons' general level of skill. That's why it's possible for a person to say to a person who is just doing the figure 8 or weave for 2 minutes to branch out and learn more moves. That's why you can say this glowsticker XXXX is ON THE WHOLE better than newbie glowsticker BBBB. What makes a person "good" are many factors but a few stand out: Technical Difficulty, Creativity/Uniqueness, and Intangible style (the "X" factor).

Of course, this is ALL subjective and is dependant on individual preference-- especially when something is hard to compare and contrast, such as two vastly different styles of freehand glowsticking. It's possible then, to compare specific subsets, such as, person XXXX generally can do stalls better than person BBBB. That is why when you have a competetive sport that relies on judging, it's a very very narrow field that can somewhat be easily compared. For example, figure skating, vs couples figure skating, and even then you have a lot of disagreements and scandals.

Of course, all of this becomes increasingly hard to judge when a person is sufficiently advanced. A real life example are artists. Who is to say whether an advanced award winning sculpter or an advanced award winning painter is better? Of course, it's possible to say that a beginniner sculpter is a less "accomplished" artist than an advanced award winning painter.

In addition, when critiquing and judging any artform, someone with experience in the field is more likely to make the "correct" analysis. A perspective from someone like me for freehanding will probably go further than a freehand anaylsis from a glowstringer who does not freehand.

So yes, it's possible to say that so and so is on the whole, or overall better than so and so in terms of glowsticking. This becomes increasingly superfluous and difficult as you get more and more creative, and certain styles of glowsticking cannot be compared to each other.

On the subject of innovation and creativity

People instinctively and compulsively tell people to be to creative, but in truth, creativity in terms of dancing is often one of the hardest things to come by. Many GREAT glowstickers and glowstringers aren't really the innovaters but put together the innovations very well (from having known a lot of innovaters and creators).

In all reality, only about 5% of your overall dancing is probably definately your own. The rest are probably your own interpretations of different things you saw different people do (which are things that they saw someone do done slightly differently or modified a little bit). For example, I can only claim a few things as my very own, and even those things are just modifications of other things I've seen in real life. Some great glowstickers have not invented a single thing, but do the things they do so well that it may as well be their own invention. Other glowstickers are a little bit of both, and other glowstickers just invent moves for other people to do. Some are just masters at emulating and copying styles of their friends- does that make them biters and copycats and people to be hated? of course not.

The conclusion is that before criticizing someone that they aren't very creative or that they are just copycats, know that this is just an indication of overall skill and with more experience, new innovations will come.

The corrolary is that you shouldn't really claim the majority of your moves are all original because they probably aren't and you probably shouldn't become egotisitical and criticize newbies for trying to learn some moves by copying when what you are currently doing is the exact same thing but on a different level.

So the basic premise of this rather long post is that

1) Before you react negatively or post negatively, try to see if you aren't being a tad hypocritical.

2) Before you indignantly defend yourself from people you see as having less judgement/skills, remember a) some of them may be right b) some of them may be wrong and thus c) so does it really matter? therefore keep your head up.

3) Perhaps before posting a negative response, you should point out exactly what someone can change in terms of their posting that you found offensive, but in a polite way.

4) I personally expect more from veterans than from noobs. Veterans should know better than to yell at people for trying to learn from videos. Noobs should be educated politely on etiquette and only with repeated offense should be treated harshly. I don't mind a harsh response when it's deserved, but it's kind of crossing the line to yell at someone who has 20 downloads (which i don't care about since we have a lot more bandwidth now) asking to download more vids. Yelling at him won't change the fact that he's just not a posting kind of person and more importantly, JUST DOESN'T KNOW ANY BETTER.

Plenty of people don't post much but glowstick a lot in the scene. I can count at least 10 people i know personally who don't post but are great, totally awesome glowstickers.

I'd rather see someone posting, "Hey, looks like you got grilled-- sorry that had to happen.. it happens sometimes and happened to me once-- just learn from this and people will forget this in no time!"

5) If you are a veteran poster and you see someone educating someone else, don't go jumping in and kicking the noob while he's down with, "Yeah, punk", "Yeah, dumbass noob"

That just makes me think less of you. That goes for all the NHC wannabes who think they can fit in better at GSC by tormenting GS.C newbies. There are certain people who have earned the right and are given some measure of leeway by me to say their thoughts without me thinking less of them-- that doesn't mean you are automatically given the same respect.

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