To Air or Not to Air: The Cho Multimedia Manifesto
In 1975, Squeaky Fromme tried to assassinate Gerald Ford. A Manson follower, she wanted to give old Charlie the opportunity to testify at her trial and spread his message to the world, knowing that it would be covered by the global media community.
If only she had a digital camera and the address of NBC... that would have made mass distribution of hate much easier.
"After much debate", NBC decided to run clips (of course, spread out over time to get ratings) of the Virginia Tech killer's "Multimedia Manifesto" on national and online broadcasts.
Right... As if there was even a chance that NBC wouldn't have posted as much of this "news" as possible. The twisted reality of human nature is that I'm sure NBC execs can't help but feel a just a little bit lucky it was them that got the video, not Fox, or *gasp* YouTube. (We all probably would have if we worked there, despite the obviously tragic nature of the events.) Score one for the peacock. Because whereas 30 unfortunate students at VT accidently stepped on a landmine, NBC accidently fell into a goldmine.
Explain this logic to me. If NBC Sports covered a baseball or football game, and someone ran out onto the field naked, they would go out of their way not to record the idiot so as not to encourage that kind of behavior.
Yet, the ravings of a lunatic who clearly references the Columbine killers by name that he learned, that we all learned, through the media... that goes right up into the ether for mass consumption.
How can we justify the airing of this video as news? Is this informative? It's hard to argue that this won't encourage other troubled kids looking to lash out against the world.
Kill as many people as you can, send the video to NBC, and become an insta-martyr. It's that simple.
This is becoming a multimedia car-accident in the worst way... and onlookers of car accidents often get into accidents of their own as they watch.
Does the media encourage people to kill? No... but does the behavior of the media and borderline glorification of killers 'cause people to want to make a bigger splash--to go out in a blaze of glory killing off as many people as possible... I gotta say its an awfully compelling argument.
Isn't this kind of hate poisoning our airwaves worse than what Imus said... or hey, at least as bad?
This kid committed this act knowing full well the scope of media attention this would draw. He didn't kill 30 people out of blind rage. He did it as a calculated statement to the world that he knew we'd all jump at the chance to broadcast. It's not just NBC. It's all of us. Everyone who sticks to NBC over the next few days to see more clips. Everyone, including myself, who publishes about it. We are a media machine and Cho Seung-Hui is playing us like a violin.
I just really hate the phone...
I had two conversations today with really fantastic and interesting people. (No, I'm not buttering them up...I really think that.) One of them took place in person over breakfast and the other was on the phone at the end of the day. My behavior during each couldn't have been any more different. In person, I'd like to think I have a clear train of thought, I'm focused, responsive. Visual communication, to me, represents a safe set of boundries... you can't really go wandering off phyisically or mentally because you are bound by not only the propreity of locking up with someone face to face, but by the constraints of real observation. There is a face in front of you...its a constant throughout your conversation and it acts as an anchor. A good chunk of your brain focuses on that face and nothing else. On the phone, you are cast off into the churning sea of the day's images and soundbites...unteathered by an opposing face, free to drift. I feel like I make less sense when I can't look at a face. My mouth is moving, but I hear myself drowning. Someone throw me an eyebrow or a chin! Anything to hold me in place! Text is fine. I've always loved text. Even as far back as Prodigy chat rooms, I always found text to be a focused and expressive form of communication. There are words on the screen and I'm supposed to look at them. It's like a track...one of those hand trigger car racing games. Very easy to play as long as you don't go too fast. So, if you ever ask to get on the phone with me, just know that you're probably going to get the short end of the stick in terms of all the possible ways to communicate with me.
MySpace Add Friends from Your Contacts Finally Working
Because more friends make us feel more loved... Finally, you can now upload your webmail contacts to find all those people who previously didn't want to admit to having a MySpace profile.
Sah-weet.... stalker features.
However, it's painfully slow... I mean, like Friendster 2004 slow.
Who are you people? Part 45
One question I ask every now and then on this blog is, "Who are all you people?"
Through a combination of reporting improvements and overall growth, my subscriber count now stands at 1679... and, I probably know about 100 people that I think subscribe... Other than that, the other 1500 or so of you are anyone's guess.
I find myself asking this question even more with Twitter and MyBlogLog. Little heads pop up on my blog and people twitterfriend me and I have no clue who they are, how they got here, or why they read.
So, as I've done in the past, if you are a new reader and you're pretty sure I don't know you, feel free to introduce yourself to me and everyone else in the comments.
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms... Which is the easiest to buy? Ask Cho Seung-Hui...
The interweb did a fantastic job of fingering the wrong killer yesterday in the tragic events at Virginia Tech, due in much part to another Asian VT student's web presence containing photos and notes about guns. For a day, he became the Richard Jewell of this incident and yesterday, the unfortunate victim turned gun lobbyist issued the following statement:
"I will be available for interview by a news agency to clear my name, talk about the experience, and give my opinion on how the situation could have turned out better if other students were allowed to be armed."
Right... that's what would have made this situation better: More guns. I hope no one interviews this guy, because I'd rather not have his 15 minutes of fame remixed and rebroadcast everywhere if he's going to be all gun crazy. Because, really, the Walther .22-caliber semi-automatic and a 9 mm Glock that made their appearence weren't really enough. These guns apparently had the serial numbers etched off, meaning that they were probably not purchased at the local Walmart. Its this kind of thinking that makes people want to arm passengers on planes to fight terrorism, too. A gun for everyone and no one will get shot, right?
How about making it impossible to get a gun in the first place? Don't stats show that most gun deaths are either innocent people or victims of accidents, and not intruders/attackers?
Clearly, this guy had some major issues... and more so than anyone, he himself is to blame... not the school who was taken by surprise as any other school would have...not the media... not violent video games... but the one thing that sticks out in my head is that it is absolutely too damn easy to get a gun in this country.
They should make a law that if you sell a gun to someone and that person uses it to shoot someone, you can get charged as an accessory to that crime... That would lead to some real careful background checking, I think.
Hold the phone... WeeWorld Survey Cracks the Avatar Code: Stats reveal why Gen Y likes avatars
"82% of respondents noted having an avatar “because it is fun,” while 66% also noted a key driver was “because it’s a cartoon version of myself""
Man... that's just so amazingly insightful... People like avatars because they are fun and because they are cartoon versions of themselves. Wow.
I mean... wow.
I gotta hand it to the WeeWorld folks... the survey they just released really sheds some light on why people like avatars. And here we were making avatars that were NOT fun and ones that looked like OTHER people. Well, shit... now we've got to push back this week's Voki launch and rebuild the whole damn thing from scratch. At least we saved ourselves from a lot of embarrassment.
Also discovered in this survey...
- 100% of WeeWorld users also use the internet.
- WeeWorld users win coin flips about 50% of the time.
- 0% of WeeWorld users are time-travelers.
- 100% of WeeWorld users have answered survey questions before.
I guess that's what you do when you have $15 million sitting in the bank... you pay PR firms to makeup surveys.
Next week: WeeWorld surveys its users on whether or not they like cheese.
Gettin' Outta Dodge: Crowley Leaves Google
If you're a young entrepreneur tempted to get bought by a big company because you think it will be a safe, supporting place to help nuture your idea, talk to Dennis Crowley:
"It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us..."
Dennis had hinted about his departure back at SXSW and I'm sure the growth of Twitter didn't help make him feel any better about being stuck in a place that wasn't helping Dodgeball innovate.
I think it's fair to say that if you get your startup bought by someone, you should pretty much consider it to be the end of innovation and, if nothing else, the beginning of monetization. That's why I hope Ev and Biz take an investment from a VC for Twitter (I hear there's a great VC firm in NYC, btw...) and get enough resources to help it really grow. Let it ride boys... because no one likes wondering what coulda been from inside a big corporate cube.
links for 2007-04-16
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Oooh...I like the little emo kid characters on her shirt... we need to make those
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hmm... ok... made some changes... Raleigh axed... plus now I gotta figure out where I want to start from to take into consideration my cousin's Boston wedding on 6/30
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Take 3
OMG, They're up to Wrestlemania 23??
Jeez...I remember 3. Is Capt'n Lou still alive? And why is Trump even on this billboard?
Hittin' the Road...
Just wanted to put it out there... Plans are in the works for a cross country trip the first two weeks of July. No, I probably won't be driving the 'Stang... one because I don't want to put her through that, and two because I get such crappy gas mileage. :) Also, I plan on coming back and I'm going to just make this a one way drive. So, I'll probably just be running a rental car into the ground instead.
So, if anyone has any suggestions on routes, stops, etc... please feel free to tag them for me.
nextNY Members: Now that's some steady growth
I don't even think I could draw a line straighter than this... Here's the growth of nextNY over the last year+. We started out with 79 interested members, and we're at about 780 at the moment.
Outrage and Taboos Create the Problem
Now we have two "n-words".... the new one being "nappy".
Until this week, I'm fairly sure that I've never even spoken or let alone thought this word before... but now I can't avoid it. It's on TV left and right. The fact is, more people heard the term "Nappy headed ho's" spoken by newspeople than heard it spoken originally by Don Imus in the first place.
It was a dumb comment... It was wrong. Don Imus was being a bully... but you know what the best way to deal with bullies is?
Ignore them.
In fact, people were ignoring Imus on their own. In 2005, Imus in the Morning had half the listeners he had ten years earlier.
When you get outraged over something and you create a taboo around words, you only increase the incentive for someone looking to draw attention to themselves to use those words.
And its not only about hate... we have all sorts of taboos in this country that don't reflect our own individual moralities. We're so scared of the kind of flash mob that went after Imus that we have to make grandiose gestures like firing a guy right in the middle of a radio telethon campaign for charity. We have taboos about drinking... we push the drinking age to 21 and send our kids off to war before they can nip a beer and then we wonder why college binge drinking is such a big issue. We've got so many taboos around sex that we can't even have an open dialogue with our kids about it, leaving them largely in the dark about sexual health. We want to ban MySpace and limit what bloggers can say. Janet Jackson pops a boob in the Superbowl and we're "outraged". You think if we weren't so horrified by our own bodies and what we can do with them in this country that w
What's the Standard?
"Every other day
Another bitch another drop"
- This is Why I'm Hot - MIMS (#1 Rap Song in America This Week)
“... A victory for public decency. No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation.”
- Rev. Jesse Jackson on the firing of Don Imus
"When it come down to these hoez
I dont love em....
...And anything fine im bag-gin it
And if she got a man, I dont care...
...Now the moral of the story is cuff yo chick"
- I'm a Flirt - R. Kelly (#2 Rap Song in America)
"...We cannot afford a precedent established that the airways can commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism."
- Rev. Al Sharpton commenting on the Imus Situation
I just want to know what's ok to say and when... that's all...