Why You Should Unlock Your Flipnotes.

The Lock of Doom

Every time you post a Flipnote, be it on Flipnote Hatena, Sudomemo, or Flipnote Gallery: World, you are asked if you want to lock your Flipnote.

As you all know, a "locked" Flipnote cannot be modified or "spun off" by other users. A lot of people consider this to be a good thing, and     it does kind of make sense. If you lock your Flipnote, nobody can steal or take credit for your work. But how often does this really happen?

In theory, another user could download your Flipnote, make some tiny edit to it (such as a tiny dot on one frame), and repost it to their own Creator Room. And then, because your Flipnote is so good, this user gets Flipnote Famous through no work of their own, while you are left in the dust.

I submit that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. In fact, without realizing it, you might have encouraged people to do this very thing on another social network. On Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Tumblr, and even Facebook, having other people "retweet," "revine," "regram," "reblog," and "share" your posts is considered a good thing.

When you post a spinoff, the purple icon in the bottom of the Flipnote shows the world that the Flipnote isn't 100% original. Many users, after watching the spinoff, will use the Details button to view the original as well. And even if they don't see the original, that's one more person who saw and hopefully enjoyed your work, the thing you created, whether or not you got views and coins/stars for it. And isn't that the important thing?

Now, it is possible that, upon downloading your Flipnote, the thief goes to all the excruciating work of copying and pasting every single frame of your Flipnote into a brand new Flipnote to avoid having their theft appearing as a spinoff. This is the only case where I'd consider a Flipnote to be "Stolen." In a case like this, I'd do two things. 1) Be flattered that they went through all that work to steal your work. 2) Report the Flipnote. Cases like this are extremely rare due to the amount of work required.

In this post I have been defending Flipnote "theft." But even if you want a monopoly on posting your content (don't use Twitter, then), is the risk of having your Flipnote "stolen" so bad that you want to stifle all legitimate spinoffs as well? I feel like the Spinoff feature was underused and oft abused.

Something like 90% of spinoffs  were of MVs or unoriginal comedy Flips, with the audio being the only thing that wasn't changed. In this case, the original poster often got credit that they didn't deserve, simply for recording the music into a Flipnote. The only reason the spinoff was a spinoff is because the spinner-offer (not an actual word) was too lazy to record the music or ASDF Movie audio themselves. (Of course, for original comedy Flipnotes, this type of spinoff is great as it highlights the original creator's creativity, and the editor's animation skills. But even the best animation can't make asdfmovie funny again after hearing it and seeing it hundreds of times.)

What are some other uses of the spinoff function?

RPs - Doing Roleplays in comic form was one of the unexpected and awesome uses of Flipnote Studio. Unfortunately, most RPs consisted of wolves or Pokemon doing completely unfunny things. It seemed like users would either try to create quality content, or just have fun with RPs. I would have liked to see RPs used to create amazing worlds and stories as an experiment in collaborative storytelling. But I never saw any RPs reach that potential. Maybe on Flipnote Gallery: World.

Ooh, a leaf!!! Guess what? I looked at a tree! I found literally HUNDREDS of leaves! You lose, Star Pup!

Chains - Oh, there were a ton of these. Most of them were filled with OCs doing random things, but there were some pretty cool ones. My favorites were animated chains, with characters catching and passing a ball, or stickmen running along, each new animator adding their own style to the Flipnote. The downside the chains was that by the time they were done, you would be so sick of seeing the beginning that you didn't feel like sitting through until the end.

Audio Spinoffs - Most people chose to change the actual animation when they spun off. Very occasionally, people would change the audio instead. This idea is all over Youtube, with things like Abridged Series and Bad Lip Readings. We didn't see many of these parodies on Hatena.

Bad Flip Reading

Mashups - Copying frames from several different Flipnotes can make for some interesting mashups. On Hatena, I did this with my own Flipnotes, creating a "Mashup MV" of many of my Flipnotes. I would love to see mashups like this on Flipnote Gallery: World. Just imagine, random animations from top creators edited together into a bizarre music video. The Spinoff feature can't track down the original Flipnote each frame was copied from, but responsible mashers would doubtless provide credit where credit was due. Of course, if you lock your Flipnotes, you're not just blocking "thieves" but you're also blocking the potential for creative mashups.

As you can see, there are a ton of creative ways that people can use the spinoff function. You might see a certain part of your animation become a funny new meme that everybody wants to use, but if it can't be copied, it can't be shared. Talented voice actors might re-dub your comedy Flips, making them even funnier. And of course, if you post an MV, many people will spin your Flipnote off just to use the audio. But none of this is possible if you're so afraid of people "stealing" your work that you choose to lock all your Flipnotes.

And if somebody does repost your Flipnote with little or no change, remember that they didn't really steal it.

They just "refrogged" it to their followers.