When you have a countdown of ten videos and you're counting down to the #1 video of the week the #6th video in the countdown is really the fifth video; counting up from #1 to #10 the #6th video is really the sixth video of the countdown. Why? Counting backwards the #6th is just a representation of the fifth video, not the actual number of the video being shown.
Perhaps subconsciously we choose to count backwards instead of counting up to #10, making the tenth video "#1" because when you reach the #1 in a countdown it becomes the only number besides #10 that its # represents accurately its true "figure". Emphasizing (subconsciously) its significance... its greatness. And the other videos (in a strange way, also the numbers themselves) are striving to become true with the actual number in the countdown that they represent, striving to become '1-one'.
#10 is the 'first' video in the countdown; its place is tenth, represented by the #10, its actual number and representation are 'one'.
#10 is one, #9 is two, #8 is three, #7 is four, #6 is five, #5 is six, #4 is seven, #3 is eight, #2 is nine and #1 is ten.
#1 is not representing its actual number; #1 is the tenth video. Hmm!
Counting up to #10 and making the tenth video "#1" is the same thing, except that #10 now represents its actual number in the progression from the first video shown to the tenth. Making the "#1" completely subjective [if that's the right word].
But counting up just isn't the same; it loses its effect.
Counting down, subconsciously and at first glance, the videos are striving to become #1 and the numbers themselves: one with their actual number. So, subconsciously, that's why we count down: for the effect, but numerically [if that's the right word], in a countdown the #1 is an illusion, and the last video but first shown is technically "number one".
In a race though, #1 represents accurately its actual number because the runner was 'first' to cross the finish line, and #2 represents accurately its actual number because the runner was 'second' to cross the finish line, and so on... because they're counting up!
So how do we bring music videos with their 'representative' numbers and their 'actual' numbers together, without making the tenth video "#1"? We must count up, making the #1 video the first video shown.
The effect of counting down is lost some but not as much as were you to make the tenth video "#1".
Or maybe you just need to ignore the "actual numbers", and the "representative" numbers, in the case of a countdown, are the "actual numbers": representative numbers to the videos, not representative numbers to the number of videos being shown [something like that] because, in the end, that relation-representative numbers to the number of videos being shown-equals out anyway.
They're not counting down "ten videos", they're counting down the "least" to "best" of ten videos. [something like that]
WARNING: refer to previous submission/article [whatever] entitled, SHume: Cause and Effect, posted on Nov/15/2001 [even though it says the sixteenth, which is impossible since I posted it yesterday and today is the sixteenth]; before and directly under this one... unless of course, someone has submitted an article during the course of writing this, in which case it will be the second under this one, and if two were submitted it will be the third under this one... |
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