About The Founder (Benny, aka "B.")

A true tale of B.'s life-draining and changing journies through the entertainment industry and how it would eventually lead him to the formation of an honest, artist-centered company called BetterStream, which would ultimately lead him in a direction of, not just a Better conduit of Media, but a Better life.

WRITTEN AUGUST 22, 2008 (modified for BetterStream.com on June 30, 2009).

THE YOUTUBE LAWSUIT

After getting over 4 million views on his 100+ videos that were on YouTube, and not receiving a penny for his thousand hours of effort, nor even the option to monetize his page or put his own banner on it where there was just BLANK, WASTED SPACE, Benny opened BetterStream.com to the creative public--where every video creator is an instant revenue-sharing partner.

B.'s experiences on YouTube(i.e., YouTube's complete disregard for his work in building the site, marketing for the site, fixing site problems, and the huge amount of traffic he brought them, along with their refusal to even correspond with him by email, mail, or phone other than to get work out of him--prompted B. to allow other users to upload videos and receive promotion on BetterStream.com, a site which originally just hosted his own videos.

B. has sued YouTube for, among many other things, their false representations to him on their revenue-sharing Partner Program, their contractual breaches, their DMCA violations, and their fraudulent inducement and embezzlement of the proceeds of his traffic. He's asking for over a million dollars in damages for himself (based on Google's traffic meter) and an additional 300 million dollars, not for himself, but for the 9,000 most viewed YouTube users who he suspects may also be in a similar boat of being defrauded by YouTube. If you don't redress these things in court, they can't be redressed in court. While B. definitely encourages the heavy filing of lawsuits, he's also lost a great deal of faith in the courts, and feels, like Buddy Cianci, that the media is a much Better way to redress corporate indiscretions, the only problem was (until BetterStream) the media was controlled by these indiscrete corporations. And it still is, sadly, but we're going to change that.

[Read the YouTube Lawsuit ~ warning, it's very long, only for the highly interested].

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

B. has been entertaining people (or expressing himself, however you want to look at it) since he was a child, in various ways. In high school, he delivered an "entertaining" speech for class president which earned him praises from students and parents and expulsion from high school for the crime of expressing himself. Normally, B. isn't trying to make you laugh or cry, per se, he is trying to share his view of the world with you. In that sense, his artistic expressions could be called parables. Whatever. Words suck right now.

SCREENPLAYS, MARKETING, AND THE FBI

Benny wrote several short and feature screenplays, including "A Man's World" (a satirical coming of age romantic comedy about a college freshman who wakes up in a role reversed world where women just want sex and men just want to be loved) and "The Lark and the Cannibal" (a satirical detective/horror parody about three Silence-Of-the-Lambs-obsessed detectives on a hunt for a sexy femme fatale cannibal).

After writing these screenplays, Benny then exhausted almost every avenue to market them (specifically A Man's World) to studios and director's, etc., but his material was usually returned unopened, often with letters all stating the same BS policy: "we do not accept unsolicited material" along with no other suggested avenue for gaining solicitation.

Benny also had script services email the highly commercial one-liner for A Man's World to all the major producers as well as emailed agencies and studios himself, and got the same no soliticting policy as well -- which is kind of a nonsensical policy, because how can any new material be solicited? It's new, who knows about it? You have to solicit it. Maybe that's why the dictionary defines "mainstream" as innately outdated. At BetterStream, we DO accept unsolicited material. The goal with this site is to encourage artists to discuss creative ideas and work together with the help of BetterStream's financing and support.

Of course, Benny didn't stop there trying to market his screenwriting...

I tried the avenues that longtime screenwriters were exhausting too. I flew down to LA to attend the dumb Creative Screenwriting screenplay pitch expo--a few-thousand-dollar idea that I didn't have the money for--where I pitched A Man's World to the representatives of about thirty major studios and production companies -- who almost unanimously said they "loved" the story, but never contacted me for the script. Why couldn't I just submit my one page pitch through email, I had to fly down and talk to these lackies so that they could give me a sense of self-importance and steal my ideas. Now I see bits and pieces of my screenplay in various movies.

The rep. from Kevin Spacey's company (Trigger Street Productions) said that A Man's World was exactly the type of thing that Mr. Spacey was looking for, but they never requested the script either.

In fact, after emailing Trigger Street numerous times, only to be answered each time like I was a homeless solicitor, and finally telling them something like "I'd bet my life the movie will gross a half a billion dollars," I was finally contacted by phone and threatened with a call to the FBI, apparently they get a lot of death threats and the FBI is routinely investigating them. And so they were calling to make sure I wasn't serious.. That's how stupid these people are. And not only that, I'm paying tax dollars to the FBI for Hollywood mismanagement?!

Clearly, I wasn't making a death threat but I found it interesting that the industry was consumed by them (and by solicited writers). I wonder why. Again, my only crime was maybe being entertaining in a world of stodgy entertainment companies run by a robotic staff consisting of exploited people turned monotone zombie exploiters -- yeah, the same people controlling your entertainment choices. Go turn on the TV and take a closer look. If you really pay attention, a whole nother door opens to a whole nother world of BS. Mainstream TV is more methologically scientifically patternized than it is creative. Trust me, the Mainstream is faking you out.

The experience at Trigger [Happy] Street tempted me to make a t-shirt that would read, "I spent two years writing a highly commercial smart comedy and traveled the country marketing it and received a lot of verbal praise, but all I really got was a lousy FBI threat" but it wouldn't fit on a shirt at the size I wanted.

SKETCH WRITING vs. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

I never intended to create sketches myself or act in them. I wanted to write them. And prior to creating parody videos of my own and uploading them to such video sharing sites as YouTube, Revver, and Metacafe, only to find that their revenue sharing programs were a lot of BS, I had first written about fifty comedy skits years before -- sketches made in the style of tv sketch shows like Saturday Night Live and MAD tv, and I tried to market them to those very companies.

I found it impossible to get through to SNL or MADtv in any way, or anyone else for that matter (even though you hear about them having freelance writers from time to time). This was around 2005/2006 when SNL was already knee deep in [intentional**] content bankruptcy.

The excuse that Lorne Michaels gave--and still gives--on his website for not accepting sketches was that they might be working on the "same sketch" and then their could be a copyright issue--talk about new content butterfles.

So how is it done? I don't know. But I overcame this ridiculous copyright excuse by writing a SPEC sketch for an existing SNL series (Bill Brasky) and offered it to SNL for free to either air it or simply use it to judge my work on. The sketch was returned unopened. I'm pretty sure the letter itself was never returned.

One comment I received on my "Bill Brasky In A Gay Bar" SPEC sketch was, "I must say, it's funnier than 99% of what's been on SNL in the last 20 years." This was by someone who really disliked me on a writer's board, and didn't realize he was commenting on my script.

[ Read the original Bill Brasky In A Gay Bar ]

SNL's policy (on LorneMichaels.com): "We welcome your comments but our policy does not allow us to accept or consider creative ideas, suggestions, or materials other than those that we have specifically requested." Our policy does not allow us to consider creative ideas?? Talk about "no means no". When did considering creative ideas become such a taboo in the creative industry? Or was it always? And w're talking about a show that almost everyone has grown to hate. Maybe they should be taking our ideas.. Hm..

And how do you specifically request a creative idea?? And what the F##K?? Whatever. Anyway, we consider creative ideas here, we live and sleep and mate with creative ideas here. We 69 creative ideas here. That's what this planet is for: creative ideas. That's all it's for. That's what formed this planet and this universe. Some entity said "let there be light" and a ball of grass to reflect it and the mainstream media said back "let there be bullshit and no creativity".

DEAR LORNE MICHAELS and YAHOO!

Well, numerous letters to SNL and NBC did not get me any closer to marketing creative ideas, so I personally created a website called DearLorneMichaels.com ] (that's a link to the original relic), which was my digital-smoke-signals attempt to show Lorne Michaels that I was serious about sketch writing, and not just some fly-by-night -- which they made it sound like they were getting a lot of. Which I doubt. It takes a great deal of commitment to write sketches and to even find an address for Saturday Night Live.

I emailed the page to Lorne, other NBC representatives, and other sketch comedy communities and organizations, such as Second City and The Groundlings, and also paid for sponsor listings, on the top of Yahoo.com, to market the site to NBC, SNL, Lorne Michaels, and others that might serve as conduits to the SNL writing dep't. Still nothing.

sorry if it sounds like I'm bitching in my "about me" section, but they do call me Bitchy Benny, and there is a reason for the bitching, and that reason is just over the horizon.. so stay tuned..

"WRITING FOR SNL"

Anyway, I discovered a class at the People's Improv Theater ("P.I.T.") called "Writing for SNL", taught by a former writer on SNL. I signed up and drove eight hours roundtrip to New York each Sunday for the class, hoping to find a shoe in to contact the show's exec's: Tina Fey, Lorne or any other person hiring or sub-contracting. I was told that they didn't refer, they just taught -- a highly typical dilemma in the entertainment industry (they'll take an artist's money but not his art). And any struggling artist reading this right now is probably saying to themselves, "Are you planning on saying anything new today?"

I was told, I think by my teacher at the P.I.T., that Lorne recruits from an improv organization known as Second City. The location in New York wasn't offering any classes, so I flew to Los Angeles and took their Level 1 (of I think 5) sketch writing class, hoping once again to find a "shoe in" to SNL.

I walked each day from my motel off Hollywood BLVD to the BLVD to take the class, wearing a shirt that read front and back (YouTube.com/Bennybaby), which is now "the channel that we do not speak of."

I was just starting on YouTube at this time and my views were suddenly starting to increase a lot during my time in LA, which I could only credit to my shirt being seen by thousands of people each day.

After completion of the Second City program, I was promoted past Level 2 sketch writing to "Level 3" sketch writing, but I think the class was only available in Chicago. Even if it was in LA, I simply didn't have the finances to run around the world taking sketch classes that weren't helping me get that that "shoe in" that I was looking for, and I was starting to learn that Lorne ceased recruiting sketch writers from sketch schools and was instead recruiting them from ivy league's, which I thought kind of flew in the face of the original "working class" humor that made the show from the beginning.

Needless to say, I did a lot of work to try and get my material (that people were saying was Better than anything on SNL) to SNL for at least a five minute read and consideration. I had traveled to New York and Los Angeles for classes, written letters, built ten thousand dollar websites to try and contact these bums, but couldn't even get a skit read. Damn, I did everything, didn't I? Called agents and guilds, they only take you once you "GET IN." The ironies were eating me alive.

COMEDY CENTRAL

Later, I would create a comedy tv show pilot and attempt to interest Comedy Central into airing it on a late slot somewhere, possibly after Southpark or something. I didn't expect miracles, it was sort of a last ditch effort in my attempts to break through to a living, breathing person in the Mainstream. I was still willing to even write for them.

It took me a week to negotiate a phone number for Comedy Central. And once I obtained the number, that didn't mean much in the way of getting through to anyone who could get me through to someone who could get me through to someone who could speak any one of the English dialects. But after days of intense battalion-style scheming to get in touch with a non-operator at Comedy Central, I finally found an alleged conduit for "new programming."

I spoke to a lady from the "Development and Original Programming" department, who sounded like she would rather be in Bermuda. After sending in the show and following up with her on the phone, she said that she reviewed my tv show and told me in her best monotone and emotionally-devoid voice that it wasn't the "genre" that Comedy Central was currently looking for (=ready for).

I didn't believe much of what she said, particularly, I didn't believe that she even watched the show, and when pressed, she put me on hold and came back with some more details to try and prove that she watched it.

Some people like to respond to my story of woes by saying, "well, ben, whaddya expect, it's a tough business to break into." I never expected it to be easy to "break in", but I expected it to be a lot easier to at least MAKE CONTACT WITH SOMEONE or to have a resume or writing sample reviewed without the full fledged attack from their lawfirms (lawfirms are lame). If they didn't like my work, no problem, I go back to the drawing boards and work harder. But I just wanted a yes or a no. Or a hello or a goodbye. If I can't get even get a no, what's the point of working on anything. And that's what I notice happen to many artists, they don't ever really explore their creativity because they never get backed. Artists wither up, they can't take the legal battle to express themselves so they stop altogether. I can't blame them in many ways. Anyway, here's where I'm going with this story of woes...

MAINSTREAM vs. BETTERSTREAM

After being essentially crapped on from all the major networks and entertainment companies (not because they didn't like my material, because they usually returned it unopened without checking it out), and especially after seeing how coporate greed, robotically-applied policies, arbitrary and contradictory practice, as well as sheer stupidity stifled the mainstream's ability to be creative, unique, or to think outside the box or bun, I realized that anyone with a pulse, common sense, and a serious no-quitter attitude could do it a lot Better :)

Mainstream means old and boring, and so I started BetterStream with the mission: to be "Better than Mainstream". Better policies, Better content, Better sponsors, much Better treatment of artists, as opposed to exploitation, and a friggin open-door policy to review and acquire content. In fact, a wide open-door policy.

Granted, there's some great material that comes out of what you might call the mainstream, but that's because out of a million great ideas, one snuck in through the cracks due to the law of arbitrary and nonsensical probability. Or because it was so good that it developed a paying following and the mainstream had to let it in. But even then, the Mainstream ends up destroying the original artist and quickly looking to replace him/her with a poser who will help them sell Revlon and Clearasil. Don't get me wrong, I wish to help people working with BetterStream to achieve mainstream success, if that be their goal. But I just think it'll be easier to achieve success working in the BetterStream arena in the longrun. If you don't get it already, we're committed to doing things intelligently. That already puts us lightyears ahead of the Mainstream.

The fact of the matter is, the mainstream could be a lot more creative, a lot more original, a lot less prefab, and altogether a lot Better. I mean, a lot, a great, great deal. I mean, a reaaaal lot. And they could definitely treat artists a lot, lot, lot Better too.

But people just don't realize how much Better it could be because the major entertainment companies won't let them realize artistic potential. To me, that's the biggest problem with the Mainstream. They control your programming, or try their best to, and on top of that, they are unlawfully teaming and "content setting" to make people believe that shows like "A Shot At Love" are the best we can come up with as a species (=humans) that has travelled through space and time. I mean, the mainstream is really suffocating artists. And we're going to change that.

And they do their best to make you believe it's "reality" tv. The programming might be a reality, but it's not real-ity. It's an exploitative set-up like all mainstream programming. In fact, if it's not BS, then it's not mainstream, it's probably BetterStream.

Oh, and unintelligent mainstream programming isn't due to a lack of creative people in the world (oh no, there's more creative people out there than you could probably count in your lifetime and we hope to find them all), it's due to a lack of creative media companies -- companies that are [intentionally**] complacent because they have the power to be so. We intend to take that power from them. Yes, we intend to take advantage or capitalize on mainstream complacency.

However, the war against mainstream is best won by infiltrating it with good content and people.

INDUSTRY NEGLECT

Benny is highly principled when it comes to business and believes (unlike your average company) that honesty, integrity, and fair dealings are much, much higher on the priority list than personal profits or any profits. Benny believes that artists are altogether neglected by the mainstream industries and one of his missions, in addition to social advancements, is to create a BetterStream Economy that treats its artists and independent businesspeople with the highest respect and integrity and gives them the ability to earn from their creative work, all while operating his business union in a highly legitimate manner.

A business union that promotes creators and helps them become the successes that they want to become, can become, and should become. A business that even promotes entertainers to be discovered in the mainstream media circuits too,. And a union that might someday replace the mainstream with a constant BetterStream.

Benny believes that artists should earn what they're worth and not what a company can force them to take. You could say that he's more socialistic than capitalistic in his business dealings. But those are two heavily loaded words that really have no meaning anymore.

Basically, he believes in a higher form of business governing than capitalism or democracy. He believes in simplicity, application of intelligence, and, most of all, truth. He believes in creativity. He believes in freedom. He believes in the elementary school slogan "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Yes, he still believes in that. And that's one of the few things he took from schooling. And he believes in...

'OBVIOUS ANSWERISM'

An answer is a solution to a problem. Most problems have obvious answers. Often when an answer seems unavailable, it's because the problem's intricacies are covered in bullshit**, usually by a corrupt or feeble-spirited power.

Obvious Answerism is B.'s self-founded ideology which essentially means: don't "just do it", look before you do it, look for the obvious answer and apply it. All answers are obvious, unless covered in bullshit. We'd all know exactly who God is right now, there'd be no illness, there'd be no problems in the world if the answers weren't covered in bullshit in an attempt to squeeze profit in the sickest of the sickest capitalistic ways. Think about that for a second. And no, Benny doesn't blame people for not finding the answers, he blames the bullshit**.

You might say, "Well, Benny has a lot of bullshit in his videos." No, you mean shit, not bullshit. See, I made fun of myself. You always gotta make fun of yourself after a long cocky "about me" section. It's the social law of the day. And even my "grand" ego makes me fall for the egoic need to be humble, the greatest of egoic needs.

Anyway, back to bullshit. I define bullshit as dishonest exploitation (aka, dishonesty). You won't ever see bullshit in my work. The only "bullshit" in my parody videos is the mainstream element referenced for expose purposes through the satire medium. Highlighted bullshit (meaning, bullshit brought to light) is the opposite of bullshit. Because if it's in the light, it's no longer bullshit. The very essence of bullshit is a deception by the information-holder had upon the one ignorant of that information held by the bullshitter.

For example, one of my parody characters, BiGGa BLD, is a gangster rapper who raps about his penis, his bling, and his hoes, all in an attempt to unveil the bullshit in the bling-ho-penis division of gangster rap that has taken over the collective conscious of much of the youth. Parody is simply "fun education." You get to learn and have fun all at the same time. I love to learn. I love to have fun. That's why I love it so much.

I believe in the adage "Fight bullshit by exposing bullshit by making fun of bullshit." Hence the play on letters in BetterStream. BetterStream stands for anti-BS. Not that everything has to be a friggin' learning experience or a quest . Sometimes I just want to have fun too. Ya know, throw my hands up in the air and stuff. Ya follow me? In fact, throw your hands up in the air right now. See, wasn't that fun?

CAPITALISM & FRIENDS

Simply put, to capitalize means to take advantage of someone or something. Benny believes in the latter (capitalizing on something), not the former (capitalizing on someone). In other words, he only believes in capitalism to the extent that the capitalizing is on something positive.

For example, Benny wouldn't "take advantage" of an artist at the expense of the artist, he would however take advantage of honest methodologies and modalities that would lead to the symbiotic success of that artist and the BetterStream. A true form of capitalism, if you will allow me to use that dirty word.

As opposed to a Wal-Mart style exploitation capitalism that says, "let's enslave the world so we can net a half a percent on our economy-sized gross revenue" and do nobody any good. What's the point of Wal-Mart anyway? Does anyone have that answer. I challenge the CEO of Wal-Mart to tell me the point of Wal-Mart.

THE WAL-MART INTERLUDE

By the way, I don't make a habit of shopping at Wal-Mart, but if you catch me in one grabbing a water because the next store was 20 miles across the parking lot, don't say "What a hypocrite Benny is." I wouldn't put it on people to protest shopping at one of the only existent stores left in America, though I would encourage non-shopping there. (And soon, when the BetterStream economy is large enough to sustain all your needs, we'd like to build a charter group that doesn't shop at destructive corporate enterprises like this). I would, however, put it on our government to temper the dominance of this company. It's not the job of the people in a Representative Democracy to balance Corporate America.

I'm just waiting for a good attorney general to take Wal-Mart to court on the most obvious of federal violations: Antitrust/Unfair Competition. And not just because people go to "mom and pop" electonic stores and waste an hour of the owner's time asking about the different models, only to go to Wal-Mart to get it for fifty cents less.

Why don't they ask a Wal-Mart associate? Because the answer you'll get is "Honestly, I have no idea." And you know what, that employee is being honest. They don't even have an idea of how they ended up working at Wal-Mart in the first place, nevermind an understanding of those endless 'goods' being dragged in and out of the mart's cinder block vortex that a preschool grad could put together.

Actually, my biggest problem with Wal-Mart, while we're on the topic, is their total degradation of the creative life force that drives humankind. First off, their store is ugly. No wonder we have to travel to Europe disguised as tourists to explore everyday life and architecture -- as if it's a vacation to see a normal looking city not enshrouded with warehouses of toilet paper and half-price socks and electronics that don't work.

I contend that the current application of bullshit capitalism by corporate america is not at all the "individual-freedom-to execute-your-will" form of capitalism that was the capitalism model that was originally philosophized on, but rather, that it's closer to the opposite.

Capitalism, as unlawfully applied in this country, is in fact "Fascism to An Authoritarian Capitalizing Order". In other words, when your capitalism impedes my capitalism, it's not capitalism anymore, it's Fascist Capitalism. That's the American System. Though I respect our progress as a world, I am dissatisfied with where we are.

In fact, we don't have a government. We have anarchy. Anarchy with corporate control. Or, Corporate Anarchy. The worst form of anarchy, I might add. Because there's no government, yet you're completely controlled.

Goodnight and Good Luck,

Signed, Whatever You Want Me To Be, or Just

"B."

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

"INTENTIONAL"

the word intentional is referenced a few times above as to entertainment groups like Saturday Night Live who seem to be intentionally sabotaging themselves with their own policies. But is this seeming sabotage really sabotage at all? Meaning, why would anyone intentionally sabotage themselves if they didn't have a reason for it. For example, maybe SNL is trying to bankrupt the show, maybe Lorne is trying to hurt NBC, maybe NBC is trying to hurt him. Maybe both. Maybe they're all trying to hurt us. This thought process got me thinking, maybe egoic responses are what control and propel the entertainment industry, as opposed to a quest for creative content programming, talent, and unique and interesting material. Or, maybe it's more twisted and carefully engineered -- for example, maybe they want to make their material boring and uninventive in order to make the commercials seem more exciting. I'm not 100% sure as of this writing.

"BULLSHIT"

Benny's definition of bullshit is essentially this: dishonesty used to achieve an unscrupulous result. Or, simply, dishonest exploitation -- which takes exploitation to the next level of not only exploiting someone or something, but doing so in an obscenely unethical and dishonest manner. For example, McDonalds attempting to proclaim themselves a part of the health food revolution, even going so far as handing out pamphlets in fitness centers, is some serious bullshit! Another gigantic bullshit artist is YouTube. No, I'm not mad at the world, I love the world, I just don't like the bullshit on top. I believe in the people, just not the bullshit.

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