Hippie Yoga Farmers vs. Internet Video Archivists

Every once in a while, something happens on the internet so bizarre, so random, and so borderline terrifying that it really makes you think about all the strange people who live out there, and what a truly horrifying yet fascinating place the world is. This is a story about one of them.

Maybe about a week ago the blog Coilhouse did a post about the website Everything Is Terrible. I hadn't heard of Everything Is Terrible before I read this post, but I've been reading Coilhouse for a while, and if you don't read it then you should, it's a really great blog about art and pop culture. Anyway, as Coilhouse describes, Everything is Terrible is a website where people link to bizarre tape-recorded videos of random strange things they found on TV. The Coilhouse post didn't really do anything more than praise the website and link to a few of the videos on it, but it was one of these videos that got them into trouble. This video was one entitled "Weird Hippie Yoga Farmers."

I wish I could show you this video. I really, really wish I could. Suffice to say that involved a guy with bleached blond hair singing cheesy kids country songs about yoga with the help of "Rasta the Rooster," a stereotypically Jamaican rooster character, both of whom taught yoga to a bunch of kids in a slightly creepy, new-agey, touchy feely way. And just for your information, I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible in this description. The reason why I can't show you this video is because the person who owned the copyright to this video was a colossal douchebag. I mean, someone trying to protect her copyright. 

Apparently, this was an edited video of clips from a late 90s show called "Ei Ei Yoga." This show starred some dude named Max Thomas, a yoga teacher working in LA, apparently a very good one. The show went nowhere and was forgotten for a while, but some nerd taped it a while back and uploaded an edited clip of it to Everything is Terrible, where everyone proceeded to make fun of it. The clip lingered on that website for a while making almost no impact, until a writer for Coilhouse found out about the website and generated traffic for it, and especially for the yoga video, which she directly embedded in the blog post. When Robin Maxwell, the wife of the Ei Ei Yoga guru, found out as a result of this increased traffic about this video making fun of her husband, she immediately pulled it from youtube and Everything is Terrible, and shortly afterwards EIT had all of their videos pulled from youtube. 

Meanwhile, a yoga website, upon seeing this video, did a post where they encouraged everyone to "make fun of the hippy dippy Ei Ei Yoga farmer." Robin Maxwell was not too pleased, and wrote a comment on this post, which led to the website doing an update. In her comment, she essentially describes Max as a saint who has great wisdom and teaches yoga to sick children. She also paints the viewers of EIT as stupid idiots who did nothing but demonize a good person, and quotes youtube comments that use insults and racial slurs as evidence of this, which is kind of unfair, since there are comments for every video on youtube that have insults and racial slurs. There are lots of other problems with her comment as well.

For one thing, she says, "[Max] was one of the first yoga teachers to acknowledge that if children were taught yoga we would be living in a much saner world," as if this is something that has been scientifically proven, and as if this even has any grain of truth to it. First of all, I've worked with children before. It's hard to get them to sit still, let alone to master yoga positions. Plus, kids could seriously get hurt doing yoga. Maybe some kids would take well to learning yoga, but definitely not all of them. Second of all, yoga is not the key to living in a saner world. That idea displays so many levels of ignorance I don't know where to begin. Yoga can't change the way a person thinks. Yoga can't change the way society functions. And if yoga involves stereotypically Jamaican roosters, I don't see how it could lead to people living in a saner world. 

That's another major issue I have: Rasta the Rooster. While Max may be a hero who feeds the bodies of criminals to starving children, I still can't forgive him for allowing Rasta the Rooster to exist. That character is nothing more than a gigantic insult. First of all, Rastafari is a religion. It's one that I don't believe in, it's one that I have a lot of issues with, but it's still a religion, and it should be shown a certain level of respect. Naming a character "Rasta" is basically the equivalent of naming a character "Jew," especially if that character talked in a stereotypically Jewish voice and had curly hair and a beard (Rasta the rooster had a fake Jamaican accent and massive dreadlocks). The inclusion of Rasta the Rooster is representative of a problem many wannabe progressives have. They are fascinated by "exotic" cultures, such as India, China, and in this case Jamaica, and appropriate the aesthetics of these cultures without knowing anything about what they really mean. I recall one time when I went to a reggae concert on a college campus. I ran into someone I knew after the show. I said something casual to him along the lines of "Hey man, did you enjoy the show?" and he replied by saying "Yeah, Jah, Rastafari!" I immediately left, thinking to myself, "Wow, you have absolutely know idea what that actually means." Rastafari is a religion. A postcolonial, nationalistic, deeply spiritual, homophobic religion. Not an image.

I also take issue with Robin's decision to shut down EIT. Her decision to pull the hippy weirdo yoga video from youtube is kind of an ethical grey area for me. Basically, I think that videos generally shouldn't be put up for free if the creator of it hasn't made much money off of it already, but that if someone uses footage in a video, any footage, they should be able to put it up as long as they cite their sources. On one hand, this video was technically not an original, since it was chopped up, so according to my ethical code it was technically ok for whoever edited it to put it up. But on the other hand, it wasn't edited that much. It was just chopped up, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a remix. It was more of a montage. Also, on one hand the crazy yoga people probably hadn't made much money off the original video already. But on the other hand, there isn't any way they would have made any more money off of it than they already did. And on one hand, whoever edited it did so in a way to make fun of someone who was probably a decent guy. But on the other hand, the show seems really creepy to begin with.

Still, getting all of EIT shut down is just not ok. Robin did not hold a copyright on every video on the website, and there were probably some videos on there that did not violate copyright. And in addition, most of these videos were remixes, and the original copyright holders would not make any money off of them anyway. As with most instances of this happening, this whole ordeal was free publicity for Max Thomas. He could have turned it into good publicity, but instead he turned it into bad publicity. This is also an instance of what Sarinee Achavanuntaku talked about in the interview Bobbicus linked to; the whole idea copyright holders have that "I'm not going to use this product I own anymore, so that means no one can ever see it."

On the other hand, I do feel that I have to criticize EIT just a tiny bit, in a little bit of a hypocritical way. As I've said before, I love making fun of stuff, but sometimes I do feel bad about the people I make fun of. Despite all of Max's cultural insensitivity, creepiness, and douchebaggery, he seems like at least somewhat of a good person. I guess I have to criticize some of the viewers in this case. It was out of line for them to call him things like a pedophile. That said, criticizing youtube comments is one of the stupidest things anyone can ever do, and EIT is definitely far more in the right here.

The only completely innocent party in this story, however, is Coilhouse, and their role is without a doubt the most fascinating one to me, largely because I'm a blogger. It's amazing in this story to see the powerful role that a relatively small blog can have. Coilhouse linked to a website that they thought was funny, and as a result the website got shut down just two days later. It amazes me that a blog post can generate that much traffic and essentially slightly change the course of the internet in such a short amount of time. This makes me feel an incredible sense of power, and makes me want to be careful about what sites I link to, and who I make fun of. Coilhouse definitely gets more traffic than us, but they're still not an insanely popular blog by any means. And if one blog post by them can get an entire website shut down, think about what better power that can be used for. 

Anyway, feel free to chime in with who you think is in the right in this story. Also, EIT will probably be back up soon, so all is not lost.