My Frenchy Experience with North-American Internet and VGA

[spirealMember]

Today i wanna tell you about VGA in my point of view.

Yea, i know it looks useless on the first place, but I thought it can be interesting to see the show like americano-canadian culture is not the one you live.

As some people knows it, I’m 100% French and I live in a small village in the west of the country. There was nothing which can bring me to this place.

Why ? Because French Internet is clearly not an open-minded one. There are only a few things that can bring us to NA’s creative content because we essentially have some. For example, the most famous videomaker is called “Norman Fait des Videos”, He makes short podcasts about makes like 4 millions views per videos and now he will be on films and maybe on TV. The other ones who makes +1 million views makes nearly the same thing (Cyprien, Mister V, etc) This content basically “lock” the possibilities to see the anglophon creative shows. But there’s a hope, because the only really awesome +2 million views youtuber (Le Joueur du grenier) is now described as an AVGN “copy” by some journalists, and we’ve just begun doing Rage Comics. But mainly, what is on the French Internet stays on it (like people are not knows by technophobic persons)

That’s a reason why I can’t remember how and when i began watching anglophon stuff, but I’m sure that i was introduced by the AVGN. The AVGN “showed” me TGWTG.com, which introduced to me Blistered Thumbs, then VGA.

So how do you see the show as a French person ?

First, well, It’s in english. Although I have a great level with the language (sometimes, i admit, my way of saying things is awkward) , It’s sometimes hard to catch words in the continuous flow of what the person says. But mostly, with some clues, you understand what’s going on, but it’s odd to think in English and “understanding “doesn’t always mean “directly behave to it” (I hope you’ll understand what i was meaning here ^^ ). You’re also Very happy when one of the hosts of a shows speaks your language.

Then, and it’s the most hard and disappointing thing in NA shows, comes the references. It goes much furthen that not seeing the thing the team references to, but it’s not HAVE A CHANCE to catch the reference. Things like your series, movie or music mostly don’t cross the Atlantic. It’s sometimes painful to admit because you literraly can’t laugh. It’s like if i say “C’est pas faux”. You can translate it , but you can’t possibly know what it really means. ( SNARF : Here, it’s a quotation of the humerous series Kaamelot (takes place in King Arthur’s universe) which you use after someone has said an clever and very simple idea or an affirmation you would never have thought). But it’s less annoying in VGA than a NC for example.

Then you have the internal memes. It’s difficult to everyone who begin to follow a show “late”, so it’s not a “cultural problem”. You see people say “SNARF” “Frage” or “Unsubbing” and you’re like “WTF is going on ?”. WHen you start on the Chatroom you’re pretty shy, you randomly say a thing you think is relevant to the show, but not to the precise situation, like a striker runs naked around a football stadium (Quite bad exemple, tought)

Last, and not the least, the liveshows hours. 3 PM PST, the medium start of a VGA show, is midnight. You’re tired and sometimes a little dizzy as the time goes. (For exemple, it’s 11 PM as I wrote this, and maybe i’m writing useless stuff as I will go aware tomorrow^^.) You have school, driving lesson and stuff at 8 AM, so you can basically watch maximum the first hour. ANd maybe it’s a psycological thing, but waiting for a VGA to start that late in the night makes you a little ill-at-ease. Midnight is an hour to watch porn, not awesome gaming.

But these 4 main obstacles to the show are less annoying if you watch the show regularly. In this case, you’re totally integrated in the community and in the show, and it’s a sort of milestone. And I’ve decided to build it with my Turboship appliance. I don’t plan of regretting it. Like “Shut Up and Take my student money”

So that’s how you see the North American shows as a “foreign” guy. That’s a different experience compared to watching the show with a NA’s culture, but like your studies, you wish to understand everything quicker than you actually do. But you wish to and you put some effort into it.

Because, well, Video Games AWESOME is AWESOME.

[heigenMember]

I think the hardest thing as a foreigner is to understand the stuff’s name they are referencing to, if you have never heard about it.

[anoysterMember]

References to various shows North-Americans watched as kids is probably the toughest thing to get on board as a foreigner since plenty of American culture gets shown around the world but kids get their entertainment mostly from their native country and the American kids stuff that makes it way abroad gets a complete translation overhaul so everything from characters to theme songs get changed for this new market during translation.

I’m Finnish so we have that edge in getting started on understanding English that we don’t dub foreign stuff (except kids stuff like animated movies etc gets dubbed) so you get exposed to the language through your life. I actually remember there being some study a few years back determening Finland ‘the most USA-like country in Europe’, so I guess we have absorbed a lot of NA culture as a part of ours.

[iwashiMember]

Same thing for mee too basically (but we have little-to-no online/youtube community) :D I’m from Hungary and I also literally went the same way as you. Found AVGN, then got introduced to tgwtg via the NC vs Nerd fights. Only difference is that I found AVG once before the team became featured on TGWTG, but couldn’t really make sense of it, and I thought it wasn’t informative about the reviewed games at all (yeah, totally missing the point of the show.-.-”)

And yeah… The references are sometimes really hard to follow (SNL and 80′s cartoons especially) The only advantage I had is that because of the Russians being here until 1990, most of the western 80′s cartoons, sitcoms and movies got translated here in the 90′s.(ofc it doesn’t mean we didn’t get anything from the west, but it was much more lacking than now) While watching AVGN/NC I found out that I watched the same cartoons when I was young as them, even though there’s a 7-10(or more… dunno their age) year difference. (I’m 18 now)

One example is pokemon. It started airing here in Hungary in 2000 even though the original started in 1997. Oh and basically nobody knew about the games here. I found out that there were actual Pokemon games, in 7th grade way after the initial craze ended. (2007). And I was like: “OMG! THESE EXIST?! I WAS ALWAYS DREAMING ABOUT GAMES”

Fortunately I didn’t really have problems with the language, mostly because of the fact that I was exposed to video games since I was 5. We used to play NES and PC games a lot with my father and uncle, and we always were neck-deep in walkthroughs and dictionaries, because we didn’t know the language. In the end I got quite good in English by the time I started watching anglophone shows especially after I started studying the language in high school.

Wow this post got long ^^… Hope I didn’t bore anyone who read this.

[pixi4688Member]

im from the UK and im usally ok with the referances the only problem i used to have not so much now was the chat it does take a while to get used to everything thats going on and im a shy person as it is also my humour dosent come across very well us brits have a dry sense of humor that dosent come across very well in text form somtimes.

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