Pressure City, Bus Uncle on Youtube

   According to Wikipedia, "Bus Uncle" had received 1.7 million hits in the first 3 weeks since the video clip released, and until now it reach a million of viewers, with not only Hong Kong viewers, it also attract the whole world to click in this "interesting" video.

I would say the video is of high quality in its realistic representation. It rates a high mark in terms of the content/ conversation, yet there is only little aesthetic value. The content is kind of amusing and surprising for the audience, because the whole incident alike a drama so much, which arouse viewers' curiosity. But other than that, I think it is quite poor in terms of the audio, the output (resolution) is also blurry as it is taken by a camera phone only, not any professional device. The "production" is causal, no special camera angle was used, because it is actually a candid video clip, recording an abusive incident happened in a bus. All we can see, is a pair of "object" setting in the middle, which shows the focus point of the clip. Frankly, we don't expect to find any cinematic skills or aesthetic value in it, it is about the incident itself, we want to know the interesting conversation that's why we click in it.

It raise a lot of voice and socio-cultural issues, unexpectedly. The video somehow turns out as a cultural sensation and discussion topic locally, and around the world. Media paid fully attention to "Bus Uncle", for example, invite the Bus Uncle (the middle-aged man), the "victim" (the young passenger) and even the "director" to explain the whole incident, making it as a social issue,headline news and gossip. UK media, Guardian and USA's The New York Times also reported the video as a news, and describe the middle-aged man as "Grumpy man" http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/may/26/news.newmedia . As a daily incident, "Bus Uncle"even own its page on Wikipedia,
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bus_Uncle , showing the importance of it.

And the most important slogan,  "I have pressure. You have pressure" reveals the tensive life of Hong Kong people, as a thriving city, are we being too crowd or busy? This video inspire the viewers to re-think our lifestyle. Apart from that, we start to discuss the problem of civic awareness. Bus Uncle's rudeness appears to ruin the image of Chinese', are Hong Kong citizens civic-mindedless? Setting such a bad role to the world?

For the cultural impact, it inspires a lot of spoofs, like G.O.D men underwear, social debates, or other similar clips, such as a karaoke version and rap song with the content/ slogan of bus uncle. Though the video is not that hit as few years ago, those terms have became common to describe Hong Kong people. Perhaps, it is because pressure never ends in here.

I think it deserved the attention although it may regard as meaningless and dull. People may think this kind of trifle, especially those from the internet community are not worthy to discuss. Yet, it truly reveals the lifestyle and problem of Hong Kong people, which is good for us to introspect and study. Besides, as a internet user, when seeing this sort of documentary-like video clip, we are free to make moral judgement and express our opinion, involved in more social discussion.