IT ALL STARTS WITH A KNOCK ON THE DOOR

Yesterday I heard a knock on my door. Thought that it was my friend since I am not from Tampere and nobody here knows where I live, except the friend who's also an exchange student from Latvia. Anyways, after opening the doors I saw two young ladies. They greeted me and asked if I have time. I said yes. The lady asked if I believe that there can be good news also besides all the bad news that are everywhere. I got confused and asked what did she mean. Then she pulled out her phone and said that she will show me just a one minute long video. See the video below.

After the watching it I explained to her my position towards the video and religion in general. Didn't wanted to waste my time much more on the conversation. Suggested to both of them to watch "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis and wished a good day. She said to me that in case I have some questions that I can visit a site that she showed me on the back of the booklet. Both of them went to the next door.

I felt very amused about the video.

The visual side to it consists of classical royalty-free stock footage videos as well as the soundtrack. It is nothing too original, specific or artsy to please everyone. It's polite. For me personally it doesn't work. These kind of videos seem very basic and fake, they disaffect me in the first three seconds.

If we think of informational videos that every one of them shouldn't be abstract and artsy. Some videos are there just to simply deliver the message. Still you can do that without being banal and misinforming. It all depends on the auditory, goals, budget and what kind of self image authors of the video are trying to make.

What irritates me most about the video that it just yells without any facts. Okay, yes, some bad footage is used in the beginning, but what is happening there? From where is it taken? After switching to the Bible part, it seems that they are suggesting not to dig deeper in what is actually happening if it contains suffering and just open the Bible and get lost in it, to concentrate only on the "most important" stuff (what's the meaning of the life etc.). And I thought why it is like that? It's because this Bible video is not an informational video it is a commercial that's why it lacks facts. It is just a trap for the viewer. I think that this commercial is effective if we think of the certain auditory it is trying to reach. According to the video - people who would not prefer to think too much, everything is spoon-fed to them.

If we look at their webpage we can see that they are using all kinds of media - books, magazines, videos, music, brochures, photos, internet. From this I can conclude that their goal is simple - to reach as most people as possible. They are laying out for you to the maximum, that makes them seem not desirable to me. The game is weak. Maybe they should start getting into the theory of gamification and try to put it into practice, hahaha. "Download this AR app and go out to meet all the personas from the Bible to solve the big puzzle!" Ding ding ding!

"Bad news is everywhere." We have a solution!!! "Good news from God." This simple concept reminds me of silly TV commercials about household products – infomercials.

There's a lot of parodies about the format of infomercials. "Cinco Pasta Bear" by comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim is one good example.

After the Jehovah's Witnesses went away I thought: "Since I am not going into the website that they gave me, I expect them to not watch the movie. It was all a waste of time for all of us." Ha! Turns out I opened the website after all to find the video for this post. But I didn't do that to find some "good" news, so I was right about myself. Maybe the same as me guided by different reason they will watch the movie eventually.