Comments on: Musing about YouTube moments

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 22:22:56 +0000

JP, I think you are confusing usage with commercial sloganeering. A “Kodak moment” was an instant when you thought either “Gee, I wish I had brought my camera” or “Thank God I have my camera with me!” Kodak was basically selling you on the idea that you should always carry your camera. (Perhaps this campaign was never mounted on your side of the pond.) Little did they know what the cell phone would to do that injunction! Now the persuasion has escalated to the level of video capture,

By: JP

JP — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:40:31 +0000

Don’t want to return “moment” to Kodak, not unless it was theirs in the first place. And I’m unconvinced of their possession.

I think “moment” has richer meanings; even Chambers allows its use from “a point in time” to “a short while”. The particular usage I recall, that of “waiting for his big moment”, sustains the definition. My OED is awaiting unpacking so I can’t check the detail.

My guess would be that it is the use of the word Kodak that qualifies “moment” into “a single frame”; maybe, when qualified by YouTube, it can be ” a short while” after all.

By: Anant

Anant — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:53:30 +0000

The YouTube moment is more than a mere neologism; it’s about the clearest reminder of how times have changed. It’s just about 10 years since an entry by Kodak — a Kodak moment — won a media Gold at Cannes, arguably the greatest recognition in the field.
The YouTube moment, even when called a moment, is a few seconds or perhaps even a minute long. The Kodak moment was just a frame, with the “seconds” preceding and following the moment left to the imagination of the reader — the YouTube moment leaves one with no work to do.
Can we return “moment” to Kodak and christen the YouTube whatever afresh, please?

By: David Butler

David Butler — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:54:59 +0000

How about an REM catastrophe? A great song (Losing my religion) ruined by a crap video.