What the Heck? Audition Video Has Negative View Count

by Matt Keeley. @reallymattkeeley.

CHICAGO - In his latest bout of technical hiccups and audition frustrations, confounded local actor Craig Marvin reported that his recent self tape’s view count appeared in the negatives.

“I know that it’s best to try and put a submission out of mind once it’s out in the world, but it’d be reassuring enough to know they watched it,” vented Marvin, whose video "Submission: Porch Park Players Generals - Craig Marvin - Non-Union - Local Hire - Prize at the End" had displayed a total watch count of zero times in the three weeks since he had sent in his tape.

“I was checking every day to see if they’d seen it yet, but for weeks it sat with no views at all. I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with the link. But then I saw it had changed! To -1. How does that even work?”

Indeed, our publication’s tech team was able to verify Marvin’s video count actively defying the law of linear time progression and dropping each day.

“Video counts periodically readjust, but in Marvin’s case it’s deeper than you might think: These are what we call anti-views,” explained lead Broadway Beat tech researcher Hannah Simpson, displaying Marvin’s analytics graph resembling a stock market crash. “It seems that his audition was so absolute dogshit that it caused viewers to physically regurgitate the video back out of their system. Thus, the negative view. Yowza.” 

Perhaps more troubling, however, was Marvin’s negative view count growing larger by the day.

“Oh, that self tape? Yeah, it was so dreadful that I had to send it not only to the rest of the production team, but every single influential contact I know in the industry as well,” recounted Porch Park Players casting director Raquel Holland, who ensured his video had been anti-viewed by any potential company that would even consider giving Marvin work. “It’s an open secret in the casting world that we absolutely pass the awful tapes around. It’s like the next viral video, but the opposite.” 

As of press release, Marvin’s video has garnered a total of one view reportedly from his very proud mother.