- Book Review: “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age”: This sounds interesting. I’m fascinated to learn (if this review is correct) that the conventional wisdom is that the digital is ephemeral. Apparently Stewart Brand said, “There is still nothing in the digital world like acid-free paper.” Really? I think the digital world is ALL acid-free paper. Digital is forever. You can wayback almost anything that’s ever happened online. The problem will be Too Much Evidence. Not too little.
- Lunch exposure: “The publicity-loving patrons of Michael’s are getting a bonus with their $35 hamburgers. The staff is using Twitter to alert the world of who’s in the media-heavy eatery. Yesterday, as the lunch crowd arrived, ‘In the house: Howard Rubenstein and Robert Morgenthau.'” I’m assuming these people don’t actually mind. But there’s a blurring of the line here between public and private that I find creepy. Is anyone who might be recognized by an stranger at all now a de facto public figure?
- The Cellphone Refuseniks: “Though many cellphone owners express growing displeasure about cellphones intrusions into their lives, according to Pew, a tiny and most likely shrinking number actually manage to resist them completely.”
These links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious. Not enough stuff? Not the stuff you wanted? Try visiting unconsumption.tumblr.com, murketing.tumblr.com, and/or the Consumed Facebook page.
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 23, 2009
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The blog of Burlesque Of North America pointed out the following a little while back. Here is a poster (amoxicillin) designed by Minneapolis artist Amy Jo (who you may recall is one of the folks I hired to create a promo poster for Buying In), back in 2005:
And here is a T-shirt from LRG, in 2009 :
I’m not in the business, of course, but it’s hard for me to believe that the designer of the latter just coincidentally came up with that psychedelic swirl/flower pattern, among other similarities. (And yes there are differences — the LRG shirt in my opinion is pretty sophomoric compared to the more-striking Amy Jo effort.) And I was actually surprised to see that one of the comments on the Burlesque of North America blog linked to this Frank 151 item alleging LRG had lifted another design, from Sailor Jerry, and claiming that “they have done this several other times.”
To be clear, I’m not making any allegations myself, as I have no idea what LRG’s side of the story might be. As you probably know, a variety of similar instances involving big companies and indie creators are explored on the (cytotec) site You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice. Often the posts there come from creators who feel ripped off.
A prominent theory of Web-thought is that such exposure ought to spark some kind of response and ideally resolution of the specific instances — and, you would think, a downtick in the number of such instances. And yet it seems routine. And it looks like LRG didn’t even respond to the allegations on either the Burlesque of North America blog, or on Frank151. Aren’t there swarms of social-media consultants out there claiming that companies have to seek out and address complaints and allegations — whether they come from the creator, or from a third-party observer — or suffer marketplace consequences? Is that theory true or not?
Or does a creator who feels aggrieved have to do what Jenny Hart did and file a lawsuit*? I don’t want to get sued myself, so let me just be clear, again, that I really do not know enough about copyright law to say how the various allegations noted above would fare in the legal system. And maybe there (priligy) are explanations — maybe LRG, for example, has some plausible reason for the apparent similarities between their designs and Amy Jo’s, and Sailor Jerry’s. If so, you’d think that they’d want to say so in public. But maybe in real life, despite what the social-media folks say, it’s easier for them to just ignore it?
[*10/24 update: I originally wrote that Hart “sued,” but that’s technically wrong as the suit was filed, but not served. My apologies. I’ll follow up later on this to set the record straight in a clearer way.]
One thing that’s changed in the decade or so that I’ve been freelancing is the amount of time I devote to a story after it’s been published. Partly this is a matter of “doing media,” which isn’t all that new. (I have my last Pandora-related interview in about ten minutes.) But I definitely spend more aftermath time on chasing down, monitoring, obsessing about, online reactions (or even lack-of-reactions). In part this is just trying to be responsible and learn from what people have to say, etc. — just part of the process that has actually improved, in some ways, because it’s easier to encounter far-flung reactions in ways that would have been impossible in the past. (Although it can be annoying, too, but that’s just part of the game.)
Second Place
But partly it’s about trying to figure out, for lack of a better word, the “buzz” payoff. The must absurd example is keeping a nervous eye on the Times‘s “most emailed” list. Why does this matter to me? It’s not like I get extra money if the story gets emailed (or blogged or Tweeted about) a lot. Even so, I think for better or for worse, things like “most emailed” have become a kind of proxy for value in the media business. So if my story gets emailed a lot, and that’s reflected on a list, well, that’s good for me as a writer, in a professional sense. It’s good, in other words, for My Brand. This doesn’t really matter so much to really big-name successful writers (Pulitzer winners, best-sellers, etc.), but to someone in my position, maybe it means my next story pitch gets taken more seriously, since my last piece was “buzz worthy,” at least according to the emailed ranking.
It’s not so cut-and-dried as that in real life of course. But it’s absurd to pretend these things don’t matter now in a way that would have been unthinkable in the past. It’s bothersome because the “metrics” that are available strike me as pretty crude. For all I know, the story rose the email charts because thousands of people were sending it to friends with notes like, “This sucks,” or “Can you believe someone published this?” But in the logic of buzz-measurement, really, that wouldn’t even matter. If it’s Number One, it’s Number One. And on that score haters who email a story “count” more than someone who quietly read it on the couch and enjoyed it.
All this is particularly ironic in the context of this specific article, since it was about a company trying to evaluate a cultural product (music) on intrinsic terms, in a way that marginalizes the opinion of “the crowd.” That’s the idea that I wanted to explore. And once it was published … I turned my attention to what “the crowd” thought!
- Whence Middlebrow?: Wherein, among other things,hilobrow.com explains what it is up to. More or less.
- Facebook and Google Expected to Offer Song Sampling: NYT story.
- New authors produce sequels to famous books written by others: “Writers are commissioned to breathe new life into orphaned characters.”
- Art & Politics of Prescription Pill Bottles: Interesting box vox post.
- Baseball Cap Maker Adjusts to Fit the Times: I missed this when it ran: Overview of New Era, which has seen something of a sales slump. Beyond that it’s mostly just a recap. (Recap! Ha ha!) June 6, 2004 Consumed on New Era here.
- Pandora: Music’s Genes vs. Musicians’ Jeans: Interesting, although vaguely hostile, for reasons that are not made apparent, reaction to my story. I’m guessing this’ll be the last link to a reaction to that piece, you’ll be relieved to hear.
These links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious. Not enough stuff? Not the stuff you wanted? Try visiting unconsumption.tumblr.com, murketing.tumblr.com, and/or the Consumed Facebook page.
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 22, 2009
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- Privileged Little Artiste Writing Something Oh-So-Precious Into His Moleskine Notebook: “These are much higher quality than the notebooks you find at CVS,” lilted the auteur, who couldn’t be bothered to usedare it be saida journal of lesser craftsmanship or pedigree. On The Onion, via Moleskinerie.
- Compulsive Hoarding: “Experts estimate that as much as 2% of the population meets the criteria, a group that spans all education and income levels.”
- Sales of ‘The Beatles: Rock Band’ aren’t so fab: Says USA Today. Game was expected to sell 1 million in first month; sold 595,000.
- Pandora and authentic taste: “One possibility is that these two ways of conceiving musical taste are incommensurable, irreconcilable, what Žižek calls a parallax. It’s not that one explanation is an ideological cover-up for the other, real reason—these are two separate explanations that are perhaps operating simultaneously, and we oscillate between them in comprehending ourselves, forming our consciousness of what we want to appeal to us.”
- Tweets about Pandora story: From other people, not from me.
These links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious. Not enough stuff? Not the stuff you wanted? Try visiting unconsumption.tumblr.com, murketing.tumblr.com, and/or the Consumed Facebook page.
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 21, 2009
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 19, 2009
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No Consumed this week. Instead I have a longer piece about Web radio service Pandora’s method of recommending songs and building music streams on the basis of music’s intrinsic acoustic information:
However things play out for Pandora as a business, its approach is worth understanding if you’re interested in the future of listening. It’s the “social” theories of music-liking that get most of the attention these days: systems that connect you with friends with similar tastes, or that rely on “collaborative filtering” strategies that cross-match your music-consumption habits with those of like-minded strangers. These popular approaches marginalize traditional gatekeepers; instead of trusting the talent scout, the radio programmer or the music critic, you trust your friends (actual or virtual), or maybe just “the crowd.”
Pandora’s approach more or less ignores the crowd. It is indifferent to the possibility that any given piece of music in its system might become a hit. The idea is to figure out what you like, not what a market might like. More interesting, the idea is that the taste of your cool friends, your peers, the traditional music critics, big-label talent scouts and the latest influential music blog are all equally irrelevant. That’s all cultural information, not musical information. And theoretically at least, Pandora’s approach distances music-liking from the cultural information that generally attaches to it.
Which raises interesting questions. Do you really love listening to the latest Jack White project? Do you really hate the sound of Britney Spears? Or are your music-consumption habits, in fact, not merely guided but partly shaped by the cultural information that Pandora largely screens out — like what’s considered awesome (or insufferable) by your peers, or by music tastemakers, or by anybody else? Is it really possible to separate musical taste from such social factors, online or off, and make it purely about the raw stuff of the music itself?
Read it in today’s issue of the Times Magazine, or here.
This won’t make sense unless you are/were at my chat in Minneapolis, but this is the easiest way for me to do this, so just ignore if you don’t have any idea what I’m referring to.
If you do know what I’m referring to, here are the promised links:
- Harriete Estel Berman’s site; Murketing Q&A with her.
- BustedTypewriter’s Etsy Shop, where a gutted copy of Buying In was sold, is here.
- Rubi McGrory’s site.
Was there other stuff I should link to? If so, let me know in the comments and I will.
Thanks to ACC and to everyone there; it was fun.
- Filtering Reality: “After California’s Prop 8 ban on gay marriage passed, opponents of the measure dug up public records of donors supporting the ban, and linked that data to an online map. Suddenly, you could find out which of your neighbors (or the businesses you frequent) were so opposed to gay marriage that they donated to the cause. Now imagine that instead of a map, those records were combined with an augmented reality system able to identify faces. You want to know who exactly gave money to the 2014 ban on SUVs? Easy—they now have green arrows pointing at their heads.”
- FTC To Target Advertisers, Not Bloggers, In New Guidelines: “In an attempt to clarify misconceptions that the FTC now will be mining the blogosphere for unsavory endorsements, Engle said the FTC’s focus has always been on “bad actor” advertisers.”
- The Google Wave chatting tool is too complicated for its own good. – By Farhad Manjoo: “Everything you type into Wave is transmitted live, in real time.” This sounds absolutely horrible. I assume people will love it.
- Bleak U.S. job market boosts military recruitment | Reuters: “The U.S. military met all of its recruitment goals in the past year for the first time since it became an all-volunteer force in 1973.”
- Letters of Note: Savin’ It!: “June 2003: Al Franken sends the following satirical letter to then Attorney General John Ashcroft and 27 other Republicans. In the letter, written on Harvard University letterhead, Franken requests abstinence-related stories for a (non-existent) book he’s writing entitled ‘Savin’ It!’ and claims to have already received responses from a selection of prominent figures.” It’s funny.
- The Chemistry of Information Addiction: Experiment said to find neural basis for this well-known trait: “The majority of us are all too familiar with the urge to know more about the future, whether it is an exam grade, an experimental result, or the status of a new job. Prior knowledge frequently has no effect on the actual outcome of the event – we’ll get the same grade regardless – and yet we still desperately want to know. This leads to what scientists refer to as “information-seeking behavior” – our mind craves relevant information.” Of course when you’re talking about real life, much depends on the meaning of “relevant,” and “information.”
- They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?: Friend of Murketing Susannah Breslin: “Today marks the debut of “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?,” a text-and-photos essay about the adult movie industry and the recession.” Pretty interesting, check it out.
These links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious. Not enough stuff? Not the stuff you wanted? Try visiting unconsumption.tumblr.com, murketing.tumblr.com, and/or the Consumed Facebook page.
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 15, 2009
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 13, 2009
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Shouts & Murmers this week is written in the form of a note to an author from one Gineen Klein, “an intern to replace the promotion department here at Propensity Books.”
To start: Do you blog? If not, get in touch with Kris and Christopher from our online department, although at this point I think only Christopher is left. I’ll be out of the office from tomorrow until Monday, but when I get back I’ll ask him if he spoke to you. We use CopyBuoy via Hoster Broaster, because it streams really easily into a Plaxo/LinkedIn yak-fest meld.
When you register, click “Endless,” and under “Contacts” just list everyone you’ve ever met. It would be great if you could post at least six hundred words every day until further notice.
This is actually pretty much how it works. Although you might read it in a way that suggests a system shot through with techno-fluency. You shouldn’t. Anyway, this is pretty good too:
I’ve attached a list of celebrities we think would be great to blurb your book, so find out their numbers and call them up. Be sure to do all this by Monday, because Sales Conference starts Tuesday. We come back Friday and then immediately on Saturday (!) all of editorial (Janet, plus probably Michelle, her assistant) and I go to the Frankfurt Book Fair for a week. During that time the office will be closed. …
Once we get back from Frankfurt, we’d like to see you on morning talk shows like the “Today” show and “The View,” so please get yourself booked on them and keep us “in the loop.”
Ha ha.
Posted Under:
Annals of publicity by Rob Walker on October 12, 2009
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- WTF Safeway Blog?: “I’ve seen some bad food photography in my day, but none compares to what’s on the Safeway blog.” The examples are funny.
- Buying Green Can Be License For Bad Behavior, Study Finds: Mentioned earlier here.
- Tech version of placebo effect?: “Sixty people were shown the same video clip on the same television. Half were told to expect clearer, sharper pictures thanks to HD technology: an impression backed up by posters, flyers and the presence of an extra-thick cable connected to the screen. The other half were told to expect a normal DVD image. Questionnaires revealed that the people who had been led to expect HD reported seeing higher-quality images.” Via Mind Hacks
- Great time for US consumers: America is on sale: “‘The deals out there are unbelievable,’ says Wilmes, 36, who writes the Frugal Rhode Island Mama blog, which tracks local and national bargains. ‘We can put the money I save toward something else.’ And she’s doing just that, but only when she can find another deal. Wilmes and her husband recently bought a Samsung television from Best Buy’s Web site for $1,299, about $300 less than she found at other stores. She also got free delivery and another $13 back from ebates.com, which receives commissions from online retailers for directing customers their way.”
These links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious. Not enough stuff? Not the stuff you wanted? Try visiting unconsumption.tumblr.com, murketing.tumblr.com, and/or the Consumed Facebook page.
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 12, 2009
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CULT CLASSIC:
An American icon’s Mexican formula develops a devoted following.
Spend a few years writing about consumer culture, and you might get a little jaded about products or brands with cult followings. The extreme-loyalist customer always insists that there are perfectly rational reasons for his or her devotion; to the disinterested observer, the reasons seem dubious. This is good news for me, because it assures that I have plenty to write about. But this week, for once, I’m casting myself in the role not of the reasonable observer but of the dubious product-cultist.
Read the column in the October 11, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.
Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.
UPDATE: Amusing segment on The World, I was interviewed, but then the host did a personal taste test. http://www.theworld.org/tag/10132009/ (scroll down).
Save
- Blogged and Sold: “The more we are sold to — and, believe it, we are being pitched every minute — the more immune we are to it all.” That’s exactly what the marketing industry experts always say. Probably because it’s what they want you to believe it. And why not? It’s certainly easier than thinking.
- The Biking Life: Is It the Fault of Hipsterization or Social Media?: “Biking in the U.S.—much like, for example, shopping at farmer’s markets—constitutes an identity many people want no part of even though it offers an ostensibly healthier and/or saner way to live. You have to become one of “those people”; you enter a peculiar spotlight and invite all sorts of assumptions about what you are like.”
- 31 Unbelievable High School Mascots: Somebody could make a serious business out of this. Via Coudal.
- FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials: “Bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.”
- On the Internet, Everyone’s a Critic But They’re Not Very Critical: Great WSJ piece, if you missed it.
- Mirror Moves: A Review of Rob Walker’s Buying In: Thoughtful writeup on Generation Bubble. I’m amazed to be getting attention for the book of any kind, and cool that it’s actually well done and interesting (for me at least) to read.
These links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious. Not enough stuff? Not the stuff you wanted? Try visiting unconsumption.tumblr.com, murketing.tumblr.com, and/or the Consumed Facebook page.
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Non-Daily Linkpile by Rob Walker on October 9, 2009
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The New York Review has a quite interesting writeup about controversy over whether certain works attributed to Warhol are or are not authentic. One set of images in particular is at the center of a lawsuit because a board of the Warhol Foundation, which passes judgment on such matters, has ruled negatively. The piece says:
When a work is deemed not to be by Warhol, it is mutilated by stamping it in ink on the reverse with the word “DENIED”—thereby rendering the picture unsaleable even if the board later changes its mind. Although a lawyer for the board has said that no one forces applicants to submit works for authentication, no auction house or dealer will handle a work whose authenticity the board has questioned. A painting stamped DENIED is worthless.
My initial reaction to this was: Really? I’ll take them all! Give you a hundred bucks, even.
But I suppose “worthless” is relative. Probably the owner paid a lot and couldn’t get that amount again.
So my second reaction was that if I had the wherewithal, I’d mount a show called “WARHOL DENIED,” made up of works the board has “mutilated” with that “Denied” stamp.
For starters, I’d actually like to see them. With the series at the center of the lawsuit, the issue appears to boil down to whether or not Warhol’s hand was in any way involved in the work. But of course Warhol devoted a lot of clever thinking to the ambiguity of what the artist’s hand really meant. The NYR piece spells all this out so I won’t rehash it. I’m more just curious to see what else the board has thumbs-downed.
Moreover, I think the show could actually be profitable — by converting the “DENIED” into a status marker of sorts: Yes, this an Official Denied Warhol.
I happen to think Warhol himself would endorse that idea.
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