adbusters, authenticity, and the inherent insult.

Kalle Lasn thinks everyone is a moron.

Reading his most recent editorial, where he states "Suddenly, people are waking up in droves from the dreamland of corporate cool. We’re realizing that ever since we were little babies crawling around the TV sets in our living rooms, we’ve been lied to, propagandized, and told incessantly, day after day, that we can find happiness through consumption. That’s why, like rats in a Skinner box, we’ve kept on pressing that BUY button – millions of us marching in lockstep, all dreaming the same consumerist dream." it becomes clear that he thinks we're all morons. Lasn, and the entire ethos behind Adbusters, buys into the idea that 'authenticity' is something that the chosen few counterculture warriors can understand and identify, and that the rest of us are so worn down by advertising that we cannot possibly understand it.

If you've been reading for a minute, you know that I think the concept of authenticity, as it applies to consumerism, is really code for 'continues-to-represent-consumer-identity-over-time'. The same concept can be applied to music, as bands 'sell out' when they stop being a signifier for the kind of identity that the fan wants to project.

I would submit that the assumption that authenticity is like taste, and only a certain, dashing, revolutionary few can locate it, is a bigger endorsement of the capitalist mindset than anything else. Adbusters advocates consumer action, a lifestyle, and more or less a uniform (blackspot sneakers, a no blood for oil pin, and a keffiyeh) in it's fan base. And it tells you to do this because it is supposed to suggest you are better than other people. This is the core of the suggestion that everyone else (who isn't buying the magazine) is being duped.

The idea that consumers don't realize the separation between the corporately created and the 'authentic' offends me. Because it's the companies that lose touch with consumer needs that fail, and it's the ones that identify a niche and change with it that succeed. But anyone who assumes that the consumer, that the society is composed of mindless sheep should, and will eventually fail hard.

But Kalle Lasn thinks that everyone who doesn't agree with his interpretation of capitalist culture is an idiot. And people keep looking to him for ideas on how to kill this dominant culture that only tricks the unlucky morons who don't see the truth available to his chosen few.

bundling for good.

This is a random post to start out 2008, but I figure it fits better there than in my informal tumblr account. Here's my question: why does software only get bundled for pain-in-the-ass reasons, and never for betterment-of-service reasons?

This popped into my head the way everything does, by taking multiple pieces of new information, and then looking at either the compatibility, or incompatibility of them. This time it was the final death of Netscape Navigator (due to MSFT bundling IE with Windows for the win) and an article where David Suzuki was discussing how little we actually know about the environment.

Then my mind went to the SETI@home project, which is one of those things I have no issues with whatsoever, to the point where I will actually argue FOR it, although it provides me no direct or indirect benefit.

Imagine if every new computer came with software that dedicated the spare processing time to breaking down information on, I dunno, protein folding in relation to AIDS, or what ever problem out there could be helped by a few million more computers looking for certain flags, and forwarding that information back from said nebulous cloud to home base.

The reason I think this post fits in the brokengent mandate is the potential benefit from a reputational aspect for the company. Instead of offering 5% of profits to a rotating cast of charities, or what have you, imagine being able to say 'oh, and in case you were on the fence? the very act of buying and using our product makes you an active participant in the fight against disease in the third world, for as long as you use our product, with no extra effort on your end.

Project (RED) seems even less meaningful, in comparison.

[Standard apology for radio silence.]

My good friend at Ghost Razor got me thinking about advertising and social networks. Well, he, the Microsoft-cash-certified 15 billion facebook valuation, and the fact that targeted advertising hasn’t really shown me much other than location targeting, and google style text ads that are based on the content of your screen / email / profile, etc.

The short version of this is there is a complete lack of creative work in these ads – text ads are boring. And text targeted ads result in some hilarious missteps, as well. Google is home of the brilliant proprietary algorithm, but I still get ads that suggest things based on sarcasm.

The response I’ve been seeing from advertising pros seem to be the most phoned in things in recent memory. I keep reading commentary about how targeted ads need ‘authenticity’ or how the essential missing ingredient is ‘engaging content’. For anyone who hasn’t been watching, this is the solution that is generally proposed by adver/creatives for anything in the universe. And it makes sense, because it’s important that spots be somewhat authentic, engaging, because these are code words for ‘not-insulting’ and ‘not boring’. Bravo.

There is place for creative content in targeted ads, and it just requires two major things – more work per account, and a better tool for profiling than just looking for keywords and spitting out the content that best fits.

My immediate reaction to being posed this problem was to think of profiling. Not in terms of looking for certain keywords and responding with certain ads, although that has a place. My interest is more in creating a dozen or so profiles for users that fit within the target market for your product, and then finding the interests, keywords, and relationships that identify these groups. This would require not only tracking the interests and usage of one person, but more important to track how interests spread between friends in the network – this could help in tracking the alpha consumers who are the holy grail. More importantly, it allows separation of users based on personality type, interest type in your product, related interests, etc.

Targeted advertising should be more than just sending people who say they care about something related to your product information, it should be about walking into the conversation of social networking, and treating different people with a past of different actions and different interests, differently. Treating people differently makes no sense in terms of broadcast model advertising, ie, advertising at scale.

This is different.

This is lucrative for both sides of the equation – the advertising agencies would now be creating multi-pronged campaigns with materials targeted to each of the X profiles created, so they would be (logically) charging substantially more. Also presumably logical would be increased effect from (actually) targeted advertising.

I guess all I’m saying is that targeted advertising means more to me than throwing the same content, or less involved content, at people who are more likely to care.

If facebook is worth 15 billion on the strength of the information it has gathered from it’s community, maybe targeted advertising should mean a little bit more in terms of giving people a personalized experience, rather than just very specifically aimed generic content.

children of the apocalypse.

Firstly, apologies for the long absence of useful content. And now, to business.

I've been rambling about this for a few weeks, and the responses I've gotten range from accusations of insanity, to quiet nodding, to the assertion that the idea that the sky is falling is universal. However, I still think it's valid, and I think it's worth exploring, if only because it partially explains a rapidly growing sector of consumer habit.

Everyone in my generation has at least an inkling that we are doomed. (Excuse the hyperbole.) Massive climate change, AIDS, cancer, the animals are dying, the plants are dying, the BEES are dying, and we are probably on a similar chopping block. We're the children of the apocalypse, and the only interesting part is that we're responding with apathy, empty gestures, and praising ideology over results.

I think it's important to now differentiate between the apathy of my generation, and the apathy of generation x. Instead of a response to lost values, commericalism, and easy affluence, it's indifference as the only rational response. Everyone is aware that things are getting messy. I don't mean to suggest that the world is actually ending. But at the very least, this way of life is going to be forced to change so rapidly I plan on losing my footing. And, I find in my experience, the result is a generation of people who are aware, but indifferent.

People are still doing things. The problems are too massive for anything less than a concerted effort by world governments to curb behaviours, but the 'every little bit helps' mentality is mixing with the important of at least addressing the understanding of the coming trials, and the desire for a solution. This is what is pushing consumer behaviour to active steps, like hybrids, carbon credits, buying organic and fairtrade. There is an effect to these choices, and I'm not downplaying the ideologies involved. I'm just saying, a step in the right direction still leaves miles to go before we sleep, and unilateral 'right action' isn't going to happen unless people stop seeing hellfire in the tomorrow. It's also driving the greenwashing trend. I find it hard to believe that everyone who buys a (RED) product or some other 'ethical' choice that may or may not translate into any direct result at all, is ignorant of what they are investing in. But, if the futility is always at the back of your mind, simply wearing or buying something that indicates an INTEREST in changing things for the better is a positive step. If what will actually result in change is a rising perception of public demand for better, more ethical, more sustainable business and government, then wearing the AIDS-fighting tshirt that is really a GAP promotional tool almost makes sense.

Frankly, I have and will continue to pay the extra for organic options, or fairtrade options, because I like what it stands for. At the same time, it feels like a kind of ideological greenwashing, as opposed to behavioural greenwashing. I'm doing the right things, my money is going in the right directions, but at the same time, it's meaningless on the grand scale of the problems I'm attempting to address.

I read somewhere recently (and welcome corrections if I'm wrong) than in the last 20 years, the average age for a depression diagnosis went from 30something to 14. 14 is interesting to me, because it's what I think of as the point of awareness for challenging accepted truths. 14 is when I dropped religion because I found it meaningless and insulting (for me, personally). 14 is the age where what reason tells you becomes more important than what hope tells you. It would make a lot of sense to me, today, if every 14 year old looked at tomorrow, and began to feel deeply depressed about their prospects and options.

So, to crib from the fantastic Children of Men, how do you deal with the idea that we are running out of tomorrows? You just don't think about it, at least not deeply or honestly. You buy your tshirt and your fairtrade organic green tea, and you hope voting with your persona changes things, at least a little.

a thing of beauty.

Thanks to the wonderful people at CoolHunting, I discovered the work of Jonathan Harris.

Wow. Anyone who knows me knows my obsession with what Angus labeled 'crossreferencillia', or in essence the interrelation of information. There's also a strong current of design related lust in my view of the world, so it should be obvious that I would love this. We Feel Fine, in particular, is beautiful for it's ability to make palpable the mass amount of emotional data that is thrown into the void, mostly to only be seen by a select few.

It's nice that some people remember that information can be art. The Ground War pdf magazine preparations continue, despite driver issues for my ancient digital camera's memory card. I may have to post some of the photos on here, just so someone other than myself can enjoy them. But that's at least a short while in the future.

Unrelated, but from the less than noble corpse of compassionate conservatism, I've been thinking about the label compassionate consumerism. It's far too obvious for me to have coined it, but, it has captivated me as a label.

If I believe that one can't change the world by burning everything down without having a solid plan for afterwards, then, at the moment at least, I am putting my stock in some facet of human nature that can be appealed to in the name of the good of us all. Given my cynicism, I suppose that greed and pride are my current bets on what will come out on top. Compassionate Consumerism (which apparently gets 174,000 returns on google, indicating my lack of originality) is a nicer way of saying that ethics only have a direct say in the running of our world if we make them a matter of status. There's a reason people are willing to pay so much for fair trade coffee, and I have trouble believing even the majority of them are doing it for ethical reasons, instead of the connotation that 'ethical behaviour' has for their perceived personas.

But that's for another day.