Last summer, my cousin and his wife, the future co-doctors Steven and Kara Ford, wanted to share a new user-generated video with me. They had read my posts about the remake of The Skeletor Show and consequently showed me a Brokeback Mountain remake of the Zach/Slater relationship from Saved by the Bell.
But, I'll have to admit that nothing could prepare me for what they would show me next: Baby Got Bible.
The parody video presented a Christian version of the rap classic from Sir Mixalot, except this brother has a fetish for big Bibles instead of badonkadonks. "You Christian brothers can't deny/That when a girl walks in with a KJV/And a book mark in Proverbs/You get stoked/Got her name engraved/So you know that girl is saved."
The full lyrics are available from 52tease.
Imagine my surprise, then, when "Baby Got Bible" reappeared, almost a year later, and this time on Steve Bryant's Reel Pop blog. Bryant was writing about an interesting new service called GodTube, now in beta form.
Newsweek's Lisa Miller has the full story, which focuses on the YouTube alternative site for Christian youth, created by former Internet entrepreneur and TV producer Chris Wyatt, 38, who is now a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary. According to the story, "The site gets between 50,000 ad 60,000 unique users a day and it hasn't officially launched yet."
GodTube provides yet another site for a niche YouTube alternative that provides the ability to share user-generated content but for a specific type of content. See other examples of sites meant to serve niche interests in user-generated content here and here.
This is also an interesting answer to the question of whether one can steal the Word, as I asked back in October. At the time, there was controversy over whether it was illegal, and more importantly immoral, to share Christian music virally, if it was a violation of copyright. Opponents were equating it to theft and against one of the 10 Commandments, while proponents were pointing out that the raison d'etre of Christian music was supposed to be to spread the word of God, not to make money, and spreading that music virally just got the music out further.
This is a safe place for sharing, in which copyrights doesn't matter and being Christian is a common community interest. The "Baby Got Bible" video has been spread around to scores of other sites, and while I don't know if people are going to convert on the heels of watching this goofy video, it does show that Christians have a sense of humor, even if it's a particularly goofy one.
See some of my previous writing about the intersection between convergence and religion here.
I really enjoy GodTube. there are plenty of funny videos on there, as well as some really interesting ones as well.
i like the mac vs. pc remakes like this one: http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=240ad5b9b413aa7346a1
there's also a lot of videos that get you thinking too. check out some of these:
http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=027454a783c841250ba7
God Bless!
Thanks for posting some other videos you particularly like. Do you know the creators of either or both, or did you just become a fan through encountering them on GodTube?