This is for anyone who is involved with @vikicommunity activities in a meaningful, practical, ongoing way . . .
While checking out the synopsis for (and looking at clips for) Love Scams earlier this evening, I noticed a few things at the bottom of that drama’s show page which (when I checked them out) made me roll my eyes. Viki is supposedly fighting for supremacy as THE platform for streaming Asian entertainment, but it’s all a matter (IMHO) of trying doing as little as possible to attract followers and users and then not bothering to clean up the mess when it doesn’t work.
At the bottom of the Love Scams show page, I saw a logo I’ve never paid attention to before. When I “moused over” the logo and saw “Follow Viki on Viber,” I clicked on the logo and ended up on a page that says, "This account does not exist or has been removed. Oh, really?
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(Screen caps)
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Well, then, why hasn’t the Viki webmaster removed that logo?
At one point about seven years ago, when I was employed by the City of Rochester, NY, there was a web team composed of representatives from every department, and I was responsible for providing up-to-date web content for the Parking Bureau which was part of the Economic Development Department. Depending on what was happening with ticket hearings, road repair, parking meters, or whatever, I had to write up information, get it approved, and get it to the webmaster or the head of public relations or somebody once or twice a month.
Because if I didn’t, issues affecting about 206,000 people (in the second most diverse city in the state of New York outside of "the Big Apple) would create a lot of anger, frustration, and angry phone calls to the Parking Bureau. And employees in a woefully understaffed office would have to work overtime to calm people down, explain things, and pass lots of angry messages up the organizational ladder to supervisors.
The City of Rochester could not afford to have a link to a page that didn’t exist.
I also noticed a link to the Viki Blog. That seemed like something that would put a human face on an impersonal conglomerate.
The dates on the blog entries are all from 2019, about six months before the state of New York started really badly mishandling pandemic issues and creating an environment in which Asian and Asian-appearing persons were harassed, beaten, set on fire, and otherwise blamed for bringing COVID to the United States (when, in actual fact, it was the Governor of New York whose mishandling of everything allowed the virus to spread throughout the United States).
At that time, I had no idea that I, too, could sub for Viki. I was distracted by the worries of dear friends and neighbors whose lives were increasingly in danger. Viki was still primarily the visual equivalent of a glass of beer and a large pizza at the end of a long, stressful day.
So how exciting was it to read on the Viki blog (earlier this evening) about members of the Viki community whom I have since gotten to know through the discussion board and through working on English pre-subs and subs?
Very!
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https://blog.viki.com/celebrating-the-rakuten-viki-community-featured-volunteers-vol-1-6aac02b2bf73
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But wait. It’s not 2019 anymore. Evidence would seem to indicate, at least outside the United States, that there is no longer a pandemic threatening the world, there is now an endemic bringing people hope that normal daily life will be more and more possible for everyone.
Here in the summer of 2022, shouldn’t there be clear-thinking, well-educated, highly computer-literate, web-savvy journalism and public relations majors adding blog entries every . . . day? Week? Month?
The Viki blog, supposedly celebrating all aspects of the @vikicommunity, seemingly hasn’t celebrated much of anything in two years. If nobody’s been uploading entries for two years, that tells me the blog probably has not generated the buzz or the bling or the fan loyalty that some “money source” was hoping for.
And if that’s true, shouldn’t the Viki blog be quietly retired?
Or, if the money sources don’t want to be bothered with it . . . what about turning it over to skilled volunteers who are not only in touch with the Viki fan base . . . they ARE the Viki fan base?
Volunteers . . . saving Viki gobs of money by doing it all for love of the dramas . . . who better to know how to promote and publicize “the heart of Asian drama” . . . ?
Oh, but wait. That would mean mostly women who are mostly older and who are quite often incredibly intelligent multi-tasking helmoi types in real life . . . would end up doing something better than incredibly overpaid so-called professionals. They would end up being charge of part of the destiny of a company worth bee-zillions of whatever currency is the preferred medium of economic exchange at the moment.
Oh, no. That cannot possibly happen. What am I thinking???
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https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohc1gUMYGXQZbxb9u/giphy-downsized.gif
(Giphy website)
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