Whoa

On December 1, a new concept in co-created entertainment took flight when The Whoa Show debuted. The tagline reads: “You will be entertained. You will be the entertainer.”

In a November post in TechCrunch, creator David Hissami described it this way:

At the end of every clip, someone gives a direction. The first person to follow it makes it on the show, and gets to direct the next person.

Basically, this is a collaborative movie of sorts. Substitute a visual game of Truth or Dare for a substantive plot.

The first community movie—First In Action—is only up to clip #9. Clearly, this young community could benefit from one of Jeff Bardzell’s lectures on amateur creativity. After the initial command was issued, the action thus far has been limited to:

2. A guy modeling his mom’s clothing
3. A woman bowing down to that guy, saying he’s a god
4. “something random,” which turned out to be a woman putting peanut butter on her face and then rubbing pets on that
5. A guy shaving his legs
6. A woman showering with her clothes on
7. A guy doing “something funny and exciting with chocolate syrup“
8. A guy acting like a hooker
9. A woman with “a juicy ass” shaking that booty and doing the splits both ways
10. Next? … Someone has to eat a bowl of ice cream with mustard.

Nothing to write Cannes about. Indications on the blog and comments for the movie segments give no indication that will change anytime soon.

The Whoa Show might be a more interesting creative community to watch if it weren’t constrained by the rule of first-to-post getting the honors. There is only one thread progressing at a time—although the site does indicate two others, “Opposite Line” and “The Count Drop,” are in the works. That limits the amount of community innovation that might occur. I don’t think it would take that long to get out of the string of sexually-latent dares and into real storytelling, perhaps a video version of the twittories, where each person has to advance plot as well as length.

Without the pace of community creativity speeding up, it is a better use of time to just browse YouTube Bubbles.