Buddylube: A company greases the wheels between (the online presences of) celebrities and their fans.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published earlier this year, Bob Dylan commented that “the relationship between a performer and the audience is anything but a buddy-buddy thing.” The role of the Dylan fan, he suggested, is to appreciate Dylan music. This seems out of step with the pop zeitgeist. While the impact of digital technology on record labels gets more attention, it also affects the fan-star dynamic: online social networking tools promise us more interaction, or a more direct connection (to use the buzz terms of the moment), with artists. This version of the “buddy-buddy thing” has obvious appeal — so much so that the birth of a company like Buddylube seems almost inevitable….
Continue reading at the NYT site.
UPDATE: Nancy Baym (quoted in the column) has these interesting follow-up thoughts.
In a rare – indeed, unprecedented — move, Murketing.com brings you now a Q&A with an (https://www.drsunilthanvi.com/phentermine-37-5-adipex/) author. The author is Anne Elizabeth Moore, who can also be described as an artist, an activist, co-editor of (recently departed) Punk Planet, series editor of Best American Comics, and a surprisingly nice person. The book is Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity, and I think it’s quite good. (I should disclose that I was interviewed for the book and am quoted in it a few times, but I’m pretty sure I’d like the book if I weren’t mentioned in it, and possibly even it had singled me out as corporate shill.)
The book is described as “both a scathing critique of of corporate marketing’s dalliances with the cultural underground and a highly entertaining depiction of the absurdity produced by” some of those very dalliances. The description is accurate.
Plenty more on that below in the Q&A, along with interesting observations about 1) how indie culture has changed, 2) whether the argument that corporations are “funding cool stuff” holds water, 3) whether the revolution might take the form of a handbag from a DIY/crafter, 4) the “soul crushing” experience of explaining the book to professional marketers, 5) the surprisingly bad payoffs of “selling out,” and 6) why it’s really important for some things to remain truly “unmarketable.” I know it’s long but please read it all anyway – especially if you are, yourself, in any way involved something that you think of as sub-, or counter-, or indie culture. Take your time. It’s important. amoxil Thanks.
Q. I bet your publisher asked you: “Why did you write this book?” Or maybe not. But if they did, what did you say? And what’s the real answer?
A. No, in fact my editor really never questioned why I would do this book at all, and I believe on at least two occasions I had to ask her why I was writing it. At which point I think the answer was pretty much “because now you’re legally obligated under the contract you already signed,” so there it was.
The short answer to why I wrote it is that I apparently have a space in my brain where I store my discomfort with popular modes of activism, and where I was turning over projects like Dispepsi for years, just chewing on, well, the fact that a bunch of Bay-Area troublemakers kind of made a soft drink commercial unpaid. That is crazy. Why would they do that? And then when I read No Logo, and as I watched marketing change clearly as a result of that book, something clicked. My book does collect about six years of research and thought into these issues that I couldn’t even really get activists to discuss too deeply. Which I do, totally, understand: they are too damn busy to also be constantly re-theorizing their methods. Anyway I guess that space in my brain got filled up and it had to go on paper so I could start thinking about, like, my cat again.
Conceptually, the book kinda came together when, in 2005, Nike SB — long reviled by the skateboarders I’d grown up with — appropriated the image and ethos of the stridently anticorporate band Minor Threat, a part of the Dischord Records crew in DC. Some kind of circle seemed to close at that point. I started to suspect that maybe they were co-opting the underground’s strategy for debating intellectual property rights issues, called copyfighting sort of informally. At which point I just felt like, this has got to stop.
So then I stopped it. It’s over, now that the book has been written. Ha ha ha ha ha.
What’s different about “indie” culture (or whatever you want to call it, you know what I mean) now compared to 10-15 years ago? Read more
NikeTalk, the massive sneakerhead chat community (claiming 64,000+ registered users), is finally selling branded merch, Freshnessmag reports. So if it’s not enough for you to express your Nike fandom by wearing Nike products, or by communicating with others about Nike products, you might want to get a product that commemorates your participation in communication about Nike products. In other words, you will be not simply fan, but a fan of the form of fandom in which you are participating. A metafan.
In other news, Freshness also notes the new round of Nike T’s commemorating all things Dunk-y. Maybe it’s just me, but they seem pretty weak.
According to this A.P. story, the author of Harry Potter has “expressed support” for fandom-driven efforts like The Harry Potter Lexicon site — “a fan-created collection of essays and encyclopedic material on the Harry Potter universe.”
But apparently a book collecting material from the site is a different matter: Rowling (and Warner Brothers) are suing to block its publication.
In the lawsuit — filed on Halloween — Rowling claimed that the print version of the Lexicon would improperly interfere with her plans ambien to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia, one that would include new material not in the novels.
“I cannot, therefore, approve of ‘companion books’ or ‘encyclopedias’ that seek to preempt my definitive Potter reference book for their authors’ own personal gain,” Rowling said in a news release issued by Warner Bros. The film giant owns all the intellectual property related to the Potter books and movies.
It’s pretty easy to see the difference between the two sorts of “companion” books being discussed here, and it’s hard to believe that a fan-created one would really undercut sales of an official version with Rowling’s name (tramadol) on it.
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