BSG’s season, after a terrific start, culminating in one of the greatest sci-fi space battle scenes ever has gone downhill since. Far too much X-Files-like myth twisting over character and story development finalized last night in the killing off of it’s most developed, interesting character – Kara Thrace – “Starbuck”.
Good bye BSG. The move to Sunday night was killing me anyways. At least now I have my time back.
Ummm…. NSFW due to language okay?
Sounds ludicrous right? Not really. Because that’s where Survivor is going to need to go to top the concept behind this year’s series – dividing the tribes up by race. Yes you read that right. By blacks, whites, Asians, and Hispanics.
I’m a free speech absolutist. I don’t believe in the suppression of it whatsoever. And I’m as un-politically correct as they come. Sam Kinison and George Carlin are my favorite comedians. South Park is one of my favorite shows. So never would I advocate banning or fining this.
The FCC is no friend to free speech.
So why be concerned or upset? I’ve talked to people in my line of work who don’t feel the way I do. That this will be great TV. That generating any kind of discussion is good. And this last sentiment is one I always agree with.
But they don’t come from where *I* come from. They don’t know by what rationale my old neighbors will decide who to root for. And when “our” race’s members lose – it will be talk of conspiracy and bias.
And hey, Survivor’s Jeff Probst pretty much admits this in a recent interview. Watch it.
Survivor isn’t a comedy. It’s a competition in the hearts of its fans, and in the minds of some social scientists and economists. It’s producers call the show a social experiment. Check out the ongoing conversation about Game Theory and how it applies to Survivor. So is it really surprising that this season is already being thought of as “Survivor: Race War”? No. Not at all. It’s to be expected.
A dark part of me admires the marketing genius behind it. The degree to which the show’s producers will go to get ratings. Sure the season will sprinkle heart warming lessons in a few episodes. And they will move to integrate the tribes within two or three shows and those that integrate the best, supposedly, will do the best. But that does nothing to change this show’s exploitive starting point – segregated tribes – and it will be that, which sets the tone for the audience.
And bring in the viewers.
Are they holding a mirror to the reality of American society? Maybe.
But I can’t help but feel this story joins a growing number of race and racism related stories surfacing in the news. Stories that, when coupled with rising crime and poverty figures, set us back to the early nineties – at least.
This, at a time, when real bridges must be built, and re-built, between members of different races, different religions, different classes, and different sexes, and different political parties.
Ask yourself, does this Survivor season help or hurt fight the realities that Katrina exposed? The story of Katrina is one of race, class, and indifferent government and society.
Does it help? Or does it exploit?
There is a difference. Think about it.
From my point of view, there seem to be too many damn people are busy dividing us, to sell us something.
Too damn many.
Finding the old Wayne’s World trailer on YouTube was sublime.
Don’t you think the story line – new medium enables amature to reach many, the amature gets lured by money and power the big corps offer, disillusion follows, and wisdom (well that’s one of the endings) results – timely?
It both marked the end of the 80s metal subculture I grew up in, and foretold the rise in participatory media.
New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin thought the idea of “Wayne and Garth’s late-night, public-access television show, the one they do from the sofa in Wayne’s basement, is so good that a wily television executive (Rob Lowe) will scheme to exploit their commercial potential” strained the movie’s credibility.
Heh. No foresight that one.
More in this story and on Metafilter.
The Long Tail suggested that it will be within narrow communities of interest where the future of entertainment lies. Jeff Jarvis has long been a proponent of this point of view. With online music it is probably already so (Washington Post). But would you ever think this applied to Beer?
Check out this quote by Scots whisky manufacturer James Thompson in comments at gapingvoid: “We have decided to create a drinks product that will never be made available to large retailers – ever. We don’t need them and we don’t like them that much.”
Technology shortens distance and time between people and the things they desire. Likewise, it enables companies to market to individuals, or small communities, instead of the masses.
Related thread in Slashdot.
Jon Stewart hosting the Oscars has helped draw the attention of many, many bloggers. Lots are trying to cash in on the hype by publishing prediction lists of winners – an old cheap writing trick. Admittedly, I’m curious, so for once I will tune in for a few minutes, but nothing more. If something interesting happens, I will hear about it from my online community of friends and I will download it via Bittorrent. Even with all the new buzz this year, I’m sure the Oscars remain the self-congratulatory circle-jerk they always were. ‘Nuff-said, right? Well no. This opens a door to connect some dots…
Publishing a list is one type of attention drawing tactic, being snarky is another…
These days you could rename Memeorandum to Snarksforall, with one blogger trying to top another for the most vacuous post.
So true! Performancing has a handy guide to these techniques: 10 Killer Post Ideas:
…Here are ten proven post formulas to get your creative juices, and your traffic, flowing.
…1. How to…2. Lists…3. Campaign…4. Interview…5. Review…6. Case study…7. Research results…8. What’s new, trends…9. Attack!…10. Ask the audience…
There are other linkbait guides out there for you, go ahead and search if so inclined. Howard Stern was ahead of his time man. Way ahead of his time.
Then again, you can have the best writing or service in the world, if no one knows about it, you’re shit outta luck. You need to know how to get the word out. You need to know who has influence and who doesn’t.
Publishing 2.0: Who Are the New Media Gatekeepers?:
Who decides what�s worthy of your attention � a Web 2.0 application, a newspaper columnist, a talk show host, an editorial staff, an influential blogger, a community of thousands, a community of millions?
Answer for today: bloggers!
Jeremy Zawodny: How to give Oral Sex to Bloggers in Return for PR Favors:
..there’s nothing like a few excited bloggers to kick off a good viral marketing campaign, right?! Who cares if your product is lame. Just get some bloggers to talk about it!
But which ones? Well it’s Technorati to the rescue…
Guy Kawasakli: How to Suck Up to a Blogger:
…Nowadays buzz begets ink. Journalists no longer anticipate or create buzz–rather, they react to it: “Everyone is buzzing about FaceBook. There must be something to this, so I had better write a story about it.” This role reversal has fried people’s minds.
The latest development is that blogs beget buzz. Blogs have changed everything because they represent a cheap, effective podium for creating buzz on a massive scale. Technorati provides an easy way to identify the A-listers, so all you have to do is attract the most influential bloggers.
…Sucking up is not an event–it’s a process.
Don Dodge: The new way to launch your product or company:
It doesn’t cost anything to publicize your new product or service. Simply engage a couple of the “A-List” bloggers (Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Steve Gillmor, Cory Doctorow, Richard MacManus, Stowe Boyd, and others) by sending them a link to your new product or service. Tell them what problem it solves and why it is cool. When they blog, people listen. When their stories hit Tech Memeorandum, Digg, TailRank, and other services the story explodes across thousands of blogs within hours.
You see, if you don’t have buzz, you don’t have reach. You don’t have reach, no one will know you exist without one hell of a hard slog – no matter how good you are.
NYMag: Blogs to Riches: The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom:
…By all appearances, the blog boom is the most democratized revolution in media ever. Starting a blog is ridiculously cheap; indeed, blogging software and hosting can be had for free online. There are also easy-to-use ad services that, for a small fee, will place advertisements from major corporations on blogs, then mail the blogger his profits. Blogging, therefore, should be the purest meritocracy there is.
…In theory, sure. But if you talk to many of today�s bloggers, they�ll complain that the game seems fixed. They�ve targeted one of the more lucrative niches�gossip or politics or gadgets (or sex, of course)�yet they cannot reach anywhere close to the size of the existing big blogs. It�s as if there were an A-list of a few extremely lucky, well-trafficked blogs�then hordes of people stuck on the B-list or C-list, also-rans who can�t figure out why their audiences stay so comparatively puny no matter how hard they work. �It just seems like it�s a big in-party,� one blogger complained to me. (Indeed, a couple of pranksters last spring started a joke site called Blogebrity and posted actual lists of the blogs they figured were A-, B-, and C-level famous.)
That�s a lot of inequality for a supposedly democratic medium.
It’s because the web resembles the wishes, desires, and motives of humanity. And humanity, while striving for something greater, is grounded in behaviors inscribed in our hearts, in our minds, in our genes.
Clay Shirky: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality:
…In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.
…inbound link data is just an example: power law distributions are ubiquitous. Yahoo Groups mailing lists ranked by subscribers is a power law distribution. (Figure #2) LiveJournal users ranked by friends is a power law. (Figure #3) Jason Kottke has graphed the power law distribution of Technorati link data. The traffic to this article will be a power law, with a tiny percentage of the sites sending most of the traffic. If you run a website with more than a couple dozen pages, pick any time period where the traffic amounted to at least 1000 page views, and you will find that both the page views themselves and the traffic from the referring sites will follow power laws.
…any tendency towards agreement in diverse and free systems, however small and for whatever reason, can create power law distributions.
Because it arises naturally, changing this distribution would mean forcing hundreds of thousands of bloggers to link to certain blogs and to de-link others, which would require both global oversight and the application of force. Reversing the star system would mean destroying the village in order to save it.
Given the ubiquity of power law distributions, asking whether there is inequality in the weblog world (or indeed almost any social system) is the wrong question, since the answer will always be yes. The question to ask is “Is the inequality fair?”
So, lets get this straight shall we? The new way of doing things looks remarkably like the old way. The names and methods have have changed, but that’s pretty much it. At least Technorati lets me see who those with influence are. I wonder when that will go behind a pay wall?
Some A-listers seem to want to keep this knowledge obscured while selling an ideal that doesn’t exist. It’s a very sellable ideal. In a way, these few folks exhibit a form of long tail denial. Kent Newsome connects the dots nicely here: Bloglogic and the Litmus Test for Link Love:
…making traffic and links your focus is not the most effective way to build a blog. Most of the people who have been at the table when we’ve talked about it seem to agree with that.
But just because traffic and links aren’t the focus doesn’t mean they aren’t legitimate goals. To tell someone that traffic and links don’t matter at all is a little like a rich guy telling a poor guy not to be so concerned about money. I don’t obsess about money, but making some is certainly one of my goals when I head out the door each weekday morning.
The key is to have many goals, but a narrow focus.
…Here’s the only question you have to answer to determine whether traffic is one of your blogging goals: would you blog happily for an extended time if no one ever read your blog? No Comments, no clicks, no links. Just a dark corner of cyberspace where your blog sits idle and completely unnoticed
It’s just marketing.
Indeed.
For my part, I’m going to keep doing it the way I always have – by trying to put out the best service I possibly can, and be a good person. That service attempts to use its influence to expose those who should be heard to a wider audience. I don’t have the time, nor inclination, to play suck up. I guess that’s my loss.
Update: I check Technorati fairly regularly to see who is linking here and to my surprise, Memeorandum picked me up. I was indeed there for a few seconds, as you can see from this archived page, but whatever algorithm Memeorandum uses has replaced me, with someone who ranks higher.
Update: Whups. Incorrect. It moved my link reference to someone else. I’m still there. It’s fascinating to watch it move links and references every few minutes to help present a picture of the thread. Okay.. I’m breaking my Lent promise…walk away… walk away…
I’m really enjoying the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Nothing like it on television. These past few episodes have been some of the best.
Here’s some recent related links:
Dave Rogers: BSG: Flying Toasters:
Adama raises the central question, but doesn’t have the answer. Events conspire to propel him even further along this journey as he’s forced to confront loss on a scale that seems incomprehensible. It’s been fascinating to watch his character wrestle with these questions, his conditioned and habituated thinking, and the consequences of the choices he’s forced to make, as someone with authority and responsibility. I was surprised and pleased last night in the scene were Adama confronted Boomer to ask why the Cylons hate humanity so, and Boomer said that “hate” probably wasn’t the right word. Adama indicated his impatience with her by saying he didn’t intend to fence with her. Boomer then reflected his own words back to him, from his retirement speech aboard Galactica.
It is, I think, the logical conclusion of believing one can create a technology that can “patch” or “work around” the worst failings in our own nature.
What happens if we succeed?
The All Spin Zone: SpinDentist: Pray for Herb (via Philly Future):
No, that’s not a stoner’s lament as he scrapes up the last of his stash and wondering where his next hit will come from. It is an emblem of a cyber-phenomenon, where a community residing on the internet, in this case the Philadelphia Eagles Message Board (EMB) (registration required), is mourning for one of their own. Herb, a member of that community for many years, is dying (article by Dave Spadaro is here.) The outpouring of love is amazing, and while this cyber-community has many members who have met each other, it is not like these people are lifelong friends. They all met on a Message Board, yet their love, support, grief, it is very real and touching. It makes me dizzy in a sense, that so much connection can be felt by so many whose real world connection is mostly through a modem.
..He’s a member of the military, a husband of Jess, and the father of three little ones aged seven and below. Today he lies in a bed, and I imagine there are tubes connected. His cancer is in the very last stages, and he may not make it through the weekend. But he will be taking phone calls from his friends on the EMB, all day probably. They will call to cheer him up, and they will call so that Herb can cheer them up, just as if they are real friends. “Real” friends? Well, it seems we aren’t in Kansas anymore, and those definitions we so comfortably hold do not hold any longer.
… I met Herb first in late November of 2003 at an away game in Charlotte, the “MOFO Roadie.” A bunch of us gathered to attend the game, but also to meet. It was odd addressing others by their screen names. I met NotPlainJane there for the first time, and subsequently married her. But EaglesFeva, FastFreddie, Beermonkey, DieHard, RSbirdman22 and Emerald Eagle were also there. So was “73,” Herb, and he was healthy and in remission, but he was already a strong focus for the group, because we’d rallied for his first bout with the big “C.” We joked about his big feet.
Several months ago it was discovered that Herb had a tumor. the cancer had come back and it has now invaded throughout his internal organs. Herb is at the end. And yet, he brings the people of the EMB together in his ending. I expect we’ll run some sort of fundraising for Herb’s kids in the next week or so. We’ve done that before for one of our own, and that fundraising ultimately ended up in inspiring the organization of a charity, Fans Helping Fans. I’m guessing we can raise $10,000 entirely online to help establish a college fund for the kids. In a global sense that’s not much, not “Abramoff-like” money for damned sure. But doing so entirely on the internet among a group of people who first met there is a phenomenal feat. It is the face of the future, where emotion and caring burst from the confines of family and neighborhoods and extends through the internet, as it has here.
A friend at work sent this along over the weekend: BBC: Song sites face legal crackdown:
The US Music Publishers’ Association (MPA), which represents sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.
MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed.
He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were “completely illegal”.
Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can “throw in some jail time I think we’ll be a little more effective”.
Lo and behold, my favorite tab site on the web shut down in reaction to it: Powertabs.net.
Back in 1998 this happened to OLGA, it went overseas and relaunched. OLGA has a solid claim on being the first collaborative file archive on the web – 1992. Guitar tablature written by fans, for fans, in plain text. It is still running today. But probably not for long.
Make archives people. Quickly.