weekend observations: tsc, quiznos, facebook.

things i deduced this weekend:

:. TSC advertisers are morons. or perhaps just truthful.

...is that supposed to be an arrow? because its squished nature is more like a something reminiscent of calculus. sorry, but as an insurance company, do you want to advertise as "TSC less than direct"? the things i ponder on the local train... [hook, line, and sinker, tsc]
:. Quiznos is too poor for another 'm.'

...case in point: Beef Brisket. m m m m m. that's five m's, guys. update the ads or make the voiceover guy say one m less. otherwise, it's just weird. [hook, line, and sinker...]

:. things are funnier through 3rd parties.

...what's funnier than writing "i'll stop by at 2:43 am" on your friend's Facebook wall? finding a bumper sticker that says it for you! there's something about the omnipotent third party that enhances humour. it's funny if you and i think it's funny. it's ridiculously funny if someone we don't know agrees so wholeheartedly as to save us from saying it ourselves.

deadlines ftw.

some claim ftw means for the win.
my sixteen year old brother has a second meaning.
an inversion of wtf. you do the math.

short posting hiatus while i kick this copy's ass.
should be back to the blogging grind on monday.
sorry for interrupting this week's theme.

turns out this spiffy pic belongs to a band i've never heard of.
go them. deadlines are totally taking over.

1 draft, 3 editing sessions to go...
if anyone is going to SheSays tonight at Razorfish, i'll be there.
wearing a To Write Love on Her Arms necklace
(technically, it says Love is the Movement).
with Am&a, of @reverieapparel (& .com) fame.

why i still buy CDs. & the issue of transference.

"Last April, Microsoft met with criticism when it announced that it would deactivate all music purchased from MSN Music." more at my legal love, the EFF.

as we move more and more digital, we will be experiencing ownership risks. i'm not talking copyright. i'm talking unabashed cynicism. i'm saying as money becomes credits and CDs become digital--as these things are subjected to hacking, crashing, burning, and who knows what else--we are going to be faced with the dilemma of easy transference. when something intangible goes "missing" who owns it?

for an easy example. i purchased for my mother a Starbucks iTunes card which would theoretically have enabled her to download, via iTunes, the entire new Duffy album. i spent tangible cash on it. she goes home and it won't download. now, yes, the iTunes reps have been very helpful. but that's not the point. the point is, it's not in her purchase history--so she can't report a problem on it. it's not downloaded somewhere odd on her hard drive, and yet, it says it's already been redeemed. where did my $14 go? to a little 5x7 plastic card with some musician in chiaroscuro on the front.

now with things like MSN threatening to "deactivate purchased music" by 2011, what happens with that? it was purchased. ownership was transferred. and yet, they are able to legally retract that. purchase not valid after X date. sounds like a library to me--and yet there was a monetary exchange. where did that go? if you can't hold your music in your hands--do you own it? have you purchased it? or just lent a big company some cash? in a way it reminds me of folks paying real dollars for intangible World of Warcraft objects.

"DRM-crippled music still has an expiration date –- whenever the company that sold that music becomes unable or unwilling to continue supporting the copy protection."

but hey. maybe that's just my affinity for the stone gods talking.

Lovefool: 2: Pandora

i am going to be having a music-based theme this week. i am looking to consider and address different aspects of how digitalization, technological distribution, and social media have affected our consumption and understanding of music.

----

this is the second official post of project Lovefool, wherein i promised i would:
"post about how much i love your brand. why i love your brand. and how much i'm willing to talk about how much i love your brand."

this is actually proving harder than i'd thought. i definitely hardcore love less brands than i'd previously thought. sure, i like a lot. but we all know how fickle i can be with brands. heh. anyway...

target #2: Pandora

why you should care:
if you're into music, this is the thing you want to be paying attention to. yes, stereogum, pitchfork, and obscure are awesome too, but to my knowledge they just hook me up with new tunes and don't yet create entire radio stations for me. Pandora will make radio stations just for you with music you WILL like. they're the best site to date to accomplish this. to boot, you can follow Pandora on twitter and get to know the folks behind it. Lucia at @pandora_radio is a favourite of mine, but there's also @pandora_kevin, too.

why i love them:
i have finely tuned at least 3 of my stations to the point where not one song i dislike comes on. i love that. rather than submit a band or a song i like and have an entire station based off of that, Pandora lets me add multiple bands or songs and configures the station to my exact tastes, rather than "artists similar to X." this combined with the thumb up/down function to better instruct the station makes this net radio amazing. i can listen to other members' stations as well as add an already existing station as my own to finesse, as i did with @spdracerx, whose riot grrrl station had a few years on my own, on the recommendation of Lucia.

i know this sounds simple, but for example, take Last.fm. sure, they can track what i'm listening to, which i grant is cool. but my "neighbours" never listen to what i like, and their stations are so vague that i hate almost everything that comes up. i put in Panic! at the Disco as a band i like, and i'm stuck listening to Simple Plan. GAG ME WITH A SPOON. i hate Simple Plan. i hate Good Charlotte. i hate most anything they toss up. so i stopped listening. no amount of scrobblizing or whatever is going to bring me back when i can't even stomach the music--or, for that matter, the fluctuating levels. constantly adjusting my volume DNE fun.

i also love that when i find music i like with Pandora, i can click on the song and it links directly to iTunes to let me buy it. yes, i am one of those oddballs who's alright with paying .99 per song (i also still purchase CDs, but hey, that's me). my only sadness about this is on iTunes' part: they don't yet sell every song Pandora offers. for example, i couldn't purchase More Than I Can by Jane Jensen (though i could add it to my myspace profile!). it's just a little counterintuitive. another thing Pandora has on Last.fm: i buy CDs from Amazon, not .mp3s. iTunes pwns there. in short, Pandora has made it easier to locate new music i love online, taking the place of a net radio that died for me (i used to use Spinner in high school).

how much i'm willing to talk about how much i love them:
well, i already chat them up any time i'm listening or talking about music online; i reference them in this blog quite a bit; if they were on SocialVibe, Pandora would be my sponsor and help me support my favourite charity; if Pandora made buttons or tee shirts, i would wear them (but they don't). i do refer Pandora to my friends. where music in concerned, they are the top online tool that i talk about. they do what they do well, and that gets a huge kudos in my book.

how much i love them/aka/the backstory:
! Pandora is important to me because it filled a void.

! in high school, i was that girl who knew seventy bands you'd never heard of (but would in a few years); i knew the EPs, what would make great singles, where they came from, what their band name meant, and probably knew either their booker or their main contact. it's what made me originally want to go into music business.

! since going to college and realizing that music business didn't have a future as i knew it, and that entertainment law was bloody boring, etc etc, i threw myself into the english/writing/art aspect i'd also done in high school, forgoing my musical hobbies in favour of newfound passion and a sincere lack of time due to work and classes.

! since graduating, i miss indulging that part of myself. being into music was part of what defined me as a person. without that piece, i had felt somehow less myself. Pandora is helping me to get back to where i want to be.

...previous lovefool projects: To Write Love on Her Arms.

late breaking politics on twitter.

Obama and McCain reps go tech on twitter.

debates around technology for the future ensue this evening with Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) mediating between "two officially sanctioned stand-ins for the rival campaigns -- Mike Nelson [(@MikeNelson)], who's advising the Obama campaign on tech issues, and Liz Mair [(@LizMair)], online communications [sic] director for the Republican National Committee."

you can follow all three participants via twitter or you can search for them on Summize, using the #pdfdebate hashtag. more on this here. i will likely respond with my thoughts after their debates conclude in a few days.

bits of wisdom.

--Noah Brier

and a story between the lines:


--A.V. Flox // Evelyn


--Joel // Alisa

[some of my 'favourites' starred from twitter]

pseudomodernity and "hyperliteracy."

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
... Life is very long [Eliot]

a response to Gavin at servant of chaos. a long theoretical friday-candy post.

i do have to agree that while both modernism and postmodernism had a "burdensome sense of a preceding cultural inheritance," that what Kirby calls pseudomodernism, i would argue, has this same sense of inheritance--in a different way. postmodernism worked to break up the linear. to think in circles. understands cycles, and also to step away from them. to know that A can link to F without any letters in between; that logic jumps are products of inflicted learning methods. which is also why i agree that the internet is the pinnacle of postmodern thought.

and yet, it is this internet-style pomo thought process which we have inherited, which produced the thought patterns necessary for this pseudomodernity. it is this which enabled classroom computers in which teachers are assigning Facebook profiles as homework to express Holden Caulfield. what Kirby, who feels that his "pseudo modernists are spookily devoid of agency, caught in the neverland between the capacity to effect change and the overwhelming minutiae digital interactions," did not anticipate is our capacity to navigate that space because of our inherited postmodern thought.

i agree with Gavin when he says that "production fails (and always will) in its effort to capture the live moment" because i have that postmodern schema. that is, with Magritte-like wonder, the video of the event will never be the event (for example): it is a representation of an event purchased and reproduced through angles, moments elongated or not long enough--editing, for lack of a better word, regardless of quality of craft. even if it is live-fed, those watching will not have the same experience as those experiencing firsthand. but the temptation to get it to that space has prompted movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield as well as a rise in mundane youtube videos, etc.

but because of my place as a gen-y "pseudomodernist" i cannot say this will always be the case, that we will never be able to access that. i think we have a genuine skepticism in these productions even as we participate in them. we know they consume our time and that it places a distance between ourselves and the experience, even if we are the ones experiencing. which is to say, if i'm having a friend video my morning routine, my morning routine will be different simply because of the presence of the video camera. and we know this, moreso than our parents' generation who believe youtube videos as true (generalization, but i've noticed a certain naiveté there).

Gavin points out social media as a possibility for the beginning of navigation between those spaces of experience and production because they result in real-life experiences (eg, tweetups). while i think this is an excellent start, i think it's only part of the picture. i think just as before us came oral tradition, we are hyperliterate; we are writing a hyperliteral tradition. this is not the same as books, which had too much 'production value' with editors and publishers. this is your point of view and my point of view on the same thing, both available, both time-transcendent and hyper-recorded on 18 different search engines.

it is this connectivity, like microblogging from a mobile device, which moves real-time information from people to the internet to records to the future. what youtube videos lack are the personalized element. and "me" in the youtube video is superseded by the "me" watching it. what film editors try to artfully capture: the thoughts, emotions, and feelings of an experience, expressed through only audio and visual. eventually, someone will sort out how to merge the recording with the experience seamlessly. you won't have to disrupt your experience to record it. there will be no "postmodern gap," the anxiety between the interactive and the action.

it will feel like freedom. and it will be scary. as this emerges, so too will those who search out total experiences, who reject the idea of this recording, i'm sure. i hope to be one of them. but maybe that's the postmodern, rather than the pseudomodern, in me.

distracting your fridays. step 1.

my random Google search for kittens produced the greatest waste of time ever. for those of you who loved Noah Brier's Brand Tags (and its subsequent battle mode, there's a feline version (no relation).

Kitten War. what's not to love?

or, for those of you who enjoyed the oddity of the myspace takeover, @johnny_bones gives you the new Dark Knight game.

first impressions. i want to go to prison.

...i mean CP+B. or are they one and the same?
they bring us Prison Bus, their mode of agency public transportation.

excerpt:
"It's designed to look like a prison bus," Bogusky said. "I didn't want it to look like regular public transportation [...] We were trying to describe what we do in a way that's fun. It creates so many different reactions in your mind."

The idea to provide his employees a free means of commuting to the Gunbarrel Business Park offices from Vic's Coffee, Target and area hotels where new recruits often stay was born out of Bogusky's own passion for public transportation.

"I like buses," he said. "But there's a certain hurdle to get people to accept them. I didn't expect that."

yeah. cos dressing up ride to work to look like i'm heading right into prison make me more accepting of buses. public transportation = good. save gas, meet people. making it look like you're heading to work prison = not so good?

---

other first impressions:

Mobile Sensors = scary.
Dimpls = possibility.
Postmodern Social Media = trippy.
Cell Phone Popcorn = funny.
[even funnier when it makes my parents rush out to buy bluetooth headsets.]

all of these to be followed up with further commentary... except the last one.

it's like street fighter for your mouth.

alright... this is actually pretty funny. i'm speaking mainly because i was an avid user of Tekken. yes, i was that girl geek, and yes, i competed as Nina. i can still kick your ass. regardless. Mentos has created a street fighter-esque online game, Kiss Fight, where you can get your flirt on in three different scenarios.

as the narrator, someone with a silly name that i forget, you must seduce your date (asian girl #1, emo cheerleader of choice, and MILF), and kiss her more than she kisses you (aggressive much? it's like cat and mouse only visually twisted). you must duck to avoid her strategic blowing of kisses and jump over her head when cornered.

to get your kiss-bar all the way up to WIN (if you don't fill it, you lose, as i learned; i had more than she did, but i still lost) it helps if you get some kiss-boosting by letting the Mentos that magically drop from the sky fall on your head. you will then perform a Sims-like action causing ecstasy in your level partner and music to sound.

my only logic-complaints? i had thought in order to win you had to wait for the falling Mentos before kissing, otherwise be rejected. apparently, that's not the case. you must kiss. at every chance. and duck her attempts. even run. i'm not sure what that actually says, but some folks really enjoy it. i can definitely see her point about the "action kiss effect."

whatever, it encourages fresh breath in men (because apparently they need it more?) in a way they (and i?) can relate to (i'm such an oldschool gamer. what is this PS3 you speak of?). reasonably well made and surely entertaining, it does function as a useful tool to spike talk about Mentos. reminds me a little of that M&Ms Dark game that i loved.

[there, look! i provided distractions for two days. tipoff of Kiss Fight courtesy Michael @ Desedo]

hook, line: pioneering creativology

made it to cannes and can't write for shit.

in case you were wondering... this even fails as a critique of advertising buzzwords. this can't even survive as satire. not that i would think satire is in line with microsoft's brand image. oh man. click for bigger view. pioneering creativology. yeah, okay, if by creativology you mean verbal diarrhea. and post script. that twitter page causes migraines. for real. sledgehammer. i get it.

another side note to make you laugh:
things younger than mccain dot com. oh yeah, they went there. score.

in other news. google porn & edible wives.

two awkward situations:

yesterday in the middle of talking about annoying elitist social media arrogance, particularly surrounding those who specify just who should use plurk and how, David and i discovered that Google Doesn't Believe in Free Will (read: porn).



i think an image search with adult censors off will show that Google does, in fact, believe in porn. and yet, should i have wanted to send my big brother here some porn, he doesn't even get the option to receive my chat im. it simply isn't sent. i had to type out "x x x . com" to be able to explain what i'd found funny in my Gmail window. not that i'd be sending porn, since in fact i have some scruples, though it does make variable choices somewhat more difficult. must resort to yyy.com (which ironically results in a world trade site that isn't yet functional).

in other news, Italy believes in eating your wife--and not in the sexy way. Italian wine company Freschello released a campaign depicting variant meals (fish, steak, pork) in their animal form--in female wedding get-up. not only do i not want to consider the masculinization of a phallic wine bottle and how exactly it is "happily wedded" to my personified meal, i certainly don't want to consider eating a happily married cow--even if the adorable tramp is married to a wine bottle. uhm. this is just awkward. vegetarianism anyone?

well, i don't want to be you; why should you be?

it's the Year of Creativity, don't you know? well, i know, and so does darryl, and so does greg. clearly, there's a bandwagon. as such, it requires you to get on it. so check that shite out. after all, not only are people brands, "people are [like] ideas. new ones can change the world."

i'm for it. hell, if i can change my iPod shuffle with my eyeshadow with my hair colour daily now (and how!), i may as well change my profession daily with minimal damage to my paycheck. i may adopt a persona and write a blog post from that POV every few weeks. i have to imagine it must be interestingly verbose to write a post as an "instant intellectual." i must first ponder the consequences of such immediate gratification. "ego booster" sounds far safer provided i don't have to agree with anything important.

today i have selected Distraction Inventor.

as such, i am going to plague you with distractions both invented and prepackaged. feel free to respond with follow-ups on any of the following:

--go to the aforementioned website. pretend you're in college again and you must be educated into one of these professions. what're your top 3 hopeful jobs? what made-up major would you be paying to get a degree in? what made-up profession is most similar to your current one? (eg, ego booster E/DNE public relations? you decide.)

--tell me four things i didn't know about you that are entirely random and unlikely to define you as a person. then tell me three things that you believe are close to entirely unique to and indicative of your habits.

--write a haiku in my honour. or a sonnet. brownie points for a terza rima, but i won't ask that much. besides, i think a haiku will likely be funnier.

--distract yourself with any of the following:
> Kongregate - play craploads of games online. kill zombies or save ponies. it's all there.
> Reverie - go shopping. their sale is almost over. and that's sad.
> Bored - everything you need to relieve the ennui, though some are less inspiring than others.
> Bubble Wrap - pop your frustration away. it will always come back (the bubble wrap, and likely your frustration, too).
> Feline Fun - wrap your head around Shroedinger's Cat and learn something, too.
> Urban Prankster - because you want to do 6-story jumping jacks in NYC, too.

my job here is done.

how the internets are boosting music integrity.

i was considering this the other day when Am&a (@reverieapparel) and i were talking about how apparently Mae performs poorly live... among other bands. it had come from a discussion about this post, among other things. so if you want to read about the effect of social media on music, read that. it's good. i'm not going to repeat.

regardless. as the internets go up, the physical record sales go down.

itunes is pwning, amazon has a piece of the pie. record labels floundering. surprise nowhere to be found. bands are being forced to do a lot for themselves, often by choice. moreover, most of the pretty money is coming in from "grass roots" places: ie, the merch, the concerts--the experience, rather than the disc.

i argue: this is a good thing.

ming you, i love buying CDs, the actual physical thing. but for music integrity, i think this is doing wonders.

placing emphasis on live shows to bring in cash monies also places emphasis on the talent and ability to perform live, as was previously more prevalent. this enables people to actually see the acts they want to see--likely (or hopefully, i should say) for less money, in ratio to the amount of shows that should be played.

moreover, even if this should not be the case, it heightens the quality of music insofar as its integrity. there would be far less episodes of lip syncing, and those bands who perform poorly will be less likely to make money on the road where the music has to stand for itself outside of the "fixing" of record labels and track rooms, which has cast a pallour across the music industry.

(the more amusing aspect is once everything finishes its shift to live-base again, there will likely be a postmodern backlash of bands which never play life and only released synth-esque music in order to make a statement. they will be elusive and their cult following will be elitist. all of this will be wonderful. heh.)

2 spots that i actually remember

unfortunately i can't seem to locate them on youtube. if you can, pass them my way and i'll edit them into this post, <3 just comment. thx.

anyway. i've already been up front about how my memory is a sieve. blame my generation. everyone else does. something about loony tunes and too many frames per second. i don't know. regardless. i have to love--or hate--a spot a lot to be able to remember it. so here are two Mnemosyne Award Winners from this weekend, haha.

Verizon Samsung where the sleeper has his hand come alive like Thing from Addams' family. the isolationism was really well done and i enjoyed the music selected to accompany the spot. it had so much character that at first i thought it was an iPhone commercial, but then i was confused when it didn't have the same brand style. to find out it's from samsung was a surprise, albeit a good one. i think it reached a lot of heavy users in an endearing, amusing way. i sleep next to my phone. i won't lie. someone txts me at 5am, unless i'm deeply gone, i answer. ...sad? you decide.

Jack Daniels had a stand out that i noticed this weekend as well. it's a spot entirely composed of still images. not one is video footage. a really nice touch. it's an artistic rendering of photographs in a montage sort of way that was very reminiscent of a 1920s era feel with modern imagery. it closed up with what i understand is something of a new tagline, which reinforced the feel and, for me, cinched it as a nostalgic, feel-good rebellious spot: "enjoyed in fine establishments and questionable joints everywhere." now where can i get me a pool table to lie on?

revolution, inc. :: in a name.

so some folks have already been coaxing me out of anonymity, a leap i'm not quite ready to make yet--but don't let that dissuade you from any fancy invitations you may want to be sending my direction ;) contact information doesn't change. but, in light of this, i've always been, well, a tease. rather than tell you all about me... i'm going to do scattered posts about facets of myself. what i like or don't, what i own or won't, where i come from, what i eat--whatever brings you closer to me.

think of it like a scavenger hunt. or a riddle.
---

so like anything else, i'm going to start at the middle, because it's more interesting than the beginning.

we'll start with the name, because someone asked me about it yesterday. naming is an intensely important thing. naming has always held weight. and still does. why call the "me series" revolution, inc? it ties in with the essential question;

why Riot?

i have been called Riot, in real life, since high school. and no--it has nothing to do with Paramore; i predate their second album, thank you very much. i had a guy friend then who introduced himself to me as Tony Rebel. he had me going for a minute, but not for long.

i adopted Riot as my pseudonym surname then, selecting the word because i'm really into riot grrrl music, a female-emphasized development out of punk rock in the early to mid 90s. i love Kathleen Hanna (see image above) who was in most notably Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and Julie Ruin. she helped/inspired Slim Moon to make Kill Rock Stars, a notable indie label even today. (did you know Nirvana was on it for a hot minute?)

the movement meant a lot to me in high school, and still does. i did research on it in college, actually, surrounding commercialism, capitalism and the consumerism (or lack therof) of riot grrrl music (like how punk rock was appropriated, but not riot grrrl). "revolution grrrl style now" was a mantra used. in college, i used my name with the Riot surname as my DJ name for the radio station, 92WICB.

since switching my focus from band management/PR to English/marketing my freshman year, Riot was recreated in accord with my views on branding. while creating a story character i fell in love with, who was a DJ, i inverted "the riot grrrl" to be "the girl Riot" (i wasn't big on the grrr, personally)--and it stuck. and so, i'm the first to coin the phrase.

oh hey, yeah, you know--that girl, Riot? that girl called Riot. her.

so i became the girl Riot™. i treat myself as a brand, both professionally and often personally; so, in line with that, i go by Riot rather than my given name. if you Googled me, you would find more information searching "thegirlriot" than my actual name. no joke.

...so now you know.

---
and besides, it's a friday post. who reads those, anyway?

twitter as int'l pr/ad firm merger.

so yesterday i was chatting with my 'big brother' @griner on GChat and, among other things that are likely unrepeatable, we got to talking about what we look for in our jobs, and, what our jobs would look like ideally.

both of us are intrigued by social media (big shocker right?) and somehow we got on the topic of twitter... as many of us tend to do. it seems everyone wants to figure out why, exactly, twitter is awesome, how it could be more awesome, and why younger kids (and older folks?) aren't yet sold on its proverbial awesome awesomeness.

David and i realized that twitter is pretty much the best ad agency we could ever want to work at. as in, if we selected folks we know on twitter, regardless of location, it would make for a pretty sick setting. the thinktank there is marvellous. so many ideas are being bounced, debated, and realized. we're cerebral professionals, only also people, and accepting of that.

twitter is pretty much the staff meeting we always wanted.

in consideration hence, i think this is why its so alluring to our demographic, which i'm going to gingerly put in the 22-50 age bracket of varying professions. i know us social media and digital types are all up on it, but we're not the only ones. study the Everyone tab long enough and many professional communities emerge, from clothing designers to astrologists.

if someone were to form an agency from just our circle of twitter insanity, David and i suggest the following names:

Swallow (David adds: "We do what others won't." har har, pervy social media)
Finch (i counter in buzz cliche: "The next evolution in communication.")

but, to go back to why it's not catching on down the line, young kids don't need that same thinktank. a lot of them are very localized to one another and their desire for idea sharing isn't quite the same as ours (not that it doesn't exist--it just has different needs), a lot of which are solved via regular txt messaging and don't need a supplementary txt message program.

perhaps if there were an organization to join twitter and inform of parties in each area, that may be more attractive to a younger demographic across multiple spaces. or if charities working with a younger target market did it. i mean, even my personal fave charity, TWLOHA, doesn't have a twitter--and given its demographic influence, i would think they should.

mccain's admorons go one further.

truthiness! first, i gave you last week, a plagiarist you can believe in.

this week, i'm afraid it doesn't end. i regretfully, fretfully give you, some bullshit you can believe in.

ohmy. who is paying these people? who said this was a good idea? WHO?
[and yes, you should also hear colbert in the background saying "repore" in your head.]

it's so sad it's not even funny.
[if you can't compete: steal, mutilate until useless, repeat.]

to make it up to you, in the news today is also a unicorn you can believe in.

the socialcash monstrosity. cashify baby.

right on the heels of Facebook's leap forward (previous post, ability to vote up/down on advertisements users see) is this monstrosity called SocialCash.

"What that means, is that users are given the option to earn stuff in return for completing offers -- like applying for credit cards, getting information about vacation rentals, receiving free trials of magazines, or finding out their credit score. The offers subsidize the reward (like, say, an iPod Touch or an XBox 360) and the developer gets a cut."

so wait, wait--let me get this right.
i click stupid advertisements, fill them out and pretend to like them, and instead of paying me, you give me branded products. yeah, cos that sounds revolutionary. or like a banner ad in and of itself: "click me and a win a free ipod!" yeah thanx no.

i don't want to sign up for credit cards, give out information to third parties via banner ads, or learn more about vacation rentals i won't use, just so i can have a chance at an ipod. no value there. this won't work.

when i said users should be involved with their advertisements, i said in the ads selection. "paying me off" taking time to do shit i don't want to do for stuff i don't want when i could be playing with facebook apps (talking beneath me, here, but you get the idea) is not my idea of a good time.

the only reason socialvibe works with perks is because a) i don't have to DO anything -- the badge stays on my page. b) the information i share is with socialvibe only, or may be shared with my sponsor/charity of choice. c) i go into it knowing that i'm not doing it for the perks, i'm doing it for charity, so if i don't get a $20 gift certificate, i'm not going to be cranky.

but if i fill out hundreds of stupid banner ads or pop up offers or what have you and don't see anything for it--except for lots of credit card bills well then i'm still going to have to go with a HELL NO. this is not RELEVANT. REMEMBER to be relevant when dealing with a teen market! you are not important to them unless you're doing something they already want to do. newsflash: they don't already want to fill out for vacation rental deals. they're sixteen.

"The Gratis concept works for two reasons: 1. people love free stuff, and 2. in order to get the stuff, users must invite a certain number of users who also complete the program (the number varies based on the value of the reward). So the customer pool grows virally and exponentially."

...stop calling it viral. it makes you look bad. < /peeve >

"Clearly, the viral spread didn't work"--anyone else find that sentence funny twofold?

a triumph: advertising and facebook

check this out, courtesy of readwriteweb. seems facebook has quietly enabled users to vote up or down on advertisements they see, according to relevancy, redundancy, and felicity.

sure, it's not quite what i'd like to see, but it's a helluvalot better than nothing at all. kudos, and thank you, facebook.

a plagiarist we can believe in.

...for real mccain?

i mean, i know you feel threatened... and maybe even, like you predecessor, you feel that you're clever. but really, you just lack that.

and what does this really say to me?
"i don't believe in change. i just want you to vote for me."
by omitting the key phrase--change--and shifting the emphasis from an ideal to a person.

yeah, you're not changing my mind. ick.
[new slogan released june 3]

HELP!

talk about wicked awesome packaging. check that shite out.
and while you're at it, engage in the most fun i've had all day: you can make help! shirts.

vote... i don't know which to get for myself:

OPTION A:
help
i do not have
an indoor voice

OPTION B:
help
i am a scene queen
trapped in a suit

OPTION C:
help
i want to have
a conversation

....or! tell me what you think i should be wearing. lord knows i need a lot of help.

even your cellphone is being stalked.

stalkerrrr!! ...or perhaps, stalkee.

apparently a Northeastern study is tracking cellphones and their locations without letting the users know. 100,000 cellphone users were selected at random from a population of six million for six months. there is no opt-in or opt-out, however they do say all identifying information has been "scrambled." they only want to study human habitual patterns to help with traffic, urban planning, et al.

i believe them...

i just don't believe the folks who're going to capitalize on that concept.

Marc Rotenberg, a founder of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in washington, said the study "raises questions about the protection of privacy in physical spaces, when devices make possible the capture of locational data."

Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said "your cellphone is not something I would consider a public entity."

...this is why i Just Say No to BrightKite.

revisiting facebook, jobs, millenials

in light of this post, i'm revisiting this post.

i wonder if this is going to change.

me, i am a brand. i embrace my inner brand and utilize it. i am the CEO of the brand of the girl Riot™. however, even CEOs get to go home. no one is Cheerios, or BMW, or Adidas all day long. even Adi, Adidas' founder, shares the responsibility with other well-titled folks. at one point, you go home. you sleep. you see friends. you connect with other people. you know... a la the point of social media: being social. and after hours, i'm sure they don't all sleep in Armani and talk jargon in their theta-state.

what gives you the right to inspect a person's private life for their job?

isn't that what applying is about? references, presentations, self-craft. now we're pushing away from that, toward transparency. "twit-pitch me. tell me what you're after and how you can help me--i'll do the background check. nevermind that you can't control what pictures other folks put up of you. nevermind that you can no longer access accounts to things you created, age 14. nevermind what exploration you did in your youth years that made you a good creative--i don't want to see it."

then how transparent are you, really? you want the real person--but only after they've covered their tracks? deleted their pics during those college years everyone had but everyone is supposed to deny? it's a shame facebook wasn't around when you Xers and Boomers were younger. are we handling this like 50s prudes asked to sit in on a sex addicts' meeting in a church basement? if you don't want the "full story" then why are you looking? keep it to the "legit" side of things. we craft those.

sure, check out their blog, their website, their portfolio, newspapers who reference them, other blogs who link to them. i'm not saying don't Google search. i'm saying to assess your digital detective choices--chances are you won't find that information solely on their facebook accounts. to me, that level of invasion borders on pervy. all 100+ pics of me on facebook? i haven't uploaded one. not one. i don't care if it's "personal and public"--it's discerned as a private space for friends (unlike, say, Twitter, which is searchable, Google tracked, and anyone can follow). just like your brand is not my friend, my employer is not my friend unless i invite you in. those spaces are not about you. they're about me.

and i'll be damned if you want me to censor my life to fit your desk job. you wanted a forward-thinking creative, you wanted experience and intellect--this shaped me. this is who i am. and yes, my stuff is on private. but then you're going to want to know why it's on private, aren't you? i'm supposed to connect with friends but not with employers. can i have a "only folks born 1986 or later can access this profile" option? why do i have to keep my personal life private if the whole reason of having the profile is to share?

moreover--will this disdain for (supposed) transparency change as more millenials enter the work space?

and if you think just cos i can do a keg-stand that i'm going to do one with your client, then i'm really concerned. my maturity isn't directly related to my flip cup abilities (which, mind you, are stellar). don't ask for transparency (look at personal sites) if you don't want it. my brand is excellently crafted. my personal life isn't. and if you can tell me how to control all aspects of your personal life, that's really a blog post worth writing.

so i return the question to you all:
how well do you expect someone to cover their tracks? what are you really looking to get out of trawling potential employees' facebooks and myspaces as opposed to their blogs, LinkedIns, websites? ...what are you really expecting? --and will those expectations change?

[post script & further transparency--i had a really engaging conversation with Jason Falls about his post; this is not an affront on his views: i actually highly value and understand them, and respect him, which is why i engaged in the conversation to begin with. after all, my facebook is on private. i'm just arguing that it shouldn't have to be.]

challenge me! taking World of Advertising to the streets... err blogs.

[longest blog post title evarrrrr]

Creative Beef has taken agency fun and games to the next level: BATTLE. mwuaha. in the spirit of a certain mmorpg, adhack brings you World of Advertising. click for all the different classes, from CD to AE.

on Dear Jane Sample, Jane and i are putting that game to work. she asked for a challenger, and so now we are comment-battling (for what prize, i have no idea. someone level us up? haha). amusing nonetheless.

she nearly slew me with her Shaolin Jargon:
[...]they won’t pay for that” which slowly brings you back to reality. But to restore goodwill, I will let you present your “best idea ever” to the client … as long as you deliver to me what I asked for in the brief. Oh and you don’t get and extension.

i rebutted Tiger Style with a near-fatal:
[...]it’s the “they won’t pay for that” which causes the damage. we don’t want the Creative Vision ruined by Shitty Production (booo, hisssss). so we drink some english tea which enhances our Ability to Work Under Pressure (+5 which combined with Free Pizza), enabling us to Meet Brief 2 Minutes Before Deadline.

who will win? only time will tell. want to do battle? leave me a comment! get creative.

hey radar's robert, sure your name's not richard?

"They felt threatened by our youth, confused by our lack of earnestness, and deeply troubled by our lack of appreciation for James Taylor. The boomers' entire identity was wrapped around being young and progressive. Gen X was an affront to their place in the world." -- Robert Lanham

[stop][rewind][rewrite][play]

You feel threatened by our youth, confused by our lack of earnestness, and deeply troubled by our lack of appreciation for Your Ass. The Gen X's entire identity was wrapped around being young and progressive. "The Millennials" are an affront to your place in the world.

...that's really what you're saying, isn't it?

reading: Chet > Safer > Lanham > Anastasia > Adrian > Me in April.

then again, radar is all about "pop + politics + scandal + style."
this is jack's complete lack of surprise.

haha dude, i love friendster.

and that's the only time you will ever, ever hear me say that.



unremarkable in the land of social networking war vids, but friendster makes it.

if you're looking for more silly branding videos, try this intervention piece.

hook, line: an open letter to Burpee etc.

dear Burpee:

i seem to have a problem. i bought a package of your seeds the other day from my local supermarket. seeds seemed simple enough to me, and i know you're a well-known, reputable name, so i don't impugn your seeds at all--i just seem to be having trouble.

i took them home and placed them on the window sill. should i not have done that? i thought plants needed light, but i could be wrong. i know it says that your seeds grow but i've seen minimal results.

i'm really disappointed in your product. i don't know that i will be purchasing again.

cordially, miss Riot.

----

"seeds that grow"?! wtf? as opposed to seed that don't? auto-growing seeds?
picture courtesy of my brother, who shot and pic messaged it to me last night.

plurkers, plurking, and plurk you.

plurk.
what does this evoke for you? lurking pigs? fluorescent pork? frat boy puke?
something unspeedy and possibly the antithesis of a bird, say... twitter?

some are pointing this new platform as the answer to our twitter addiction problems. it's new--that means more uptime, right? and it has to be better, if it's new. new and improved, or something.

well, i'm going to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly on plurk.

THE GOOD:
for visual learners, this is a plus. it's a flash reminiscent timeline that enables users to scroll through the day, with most recent plurks on the left, and a pull of the mouse enabling you to view back previous plurks (do i really have to say that?).

it's more visually engaging, offering different emoticon sets for those with different levels of Karma (which is earned via participation and recruitment), as well as personalized "plurk user mascots" to better express your plurkiness on your plurk profile. case in point:

[this winged thing best represents the digital plurk me]

to boot, when you respond to a plurk, it's like a little mini comment feed, enabling you to keep track of conversations in a neatly organized way. the following system is set up very similarly to Ning. you can have friends (mutual followers) and fans (those who you don't follow back) all plain to see (for some this may be a bad thing!) however, you can select what group (clique) sees a particular plurk, which i know some folks have been wanting (though i personally don't).

lastly, my personal favourite aspect is the Twistori effect, wherein my plurks are fed through tags like "loves," "likes," "shares," "feels," "thinks," and "asks." i'm sure i'm just associating my zen in its use, but it is, i find, a fun aspect.

THE BAD
it's closer to a mini social network than a micro blog feed. for those looking for direct comparisons, i don't also see any way for it to feed into your phones the way that twitter does, but i haven't looked that far because i'm a primary web-based twitter user and new to plurk. (as i assumed, i lied: "contrary to the official FAQ, there’s a mobile version of the site located at http://plurk.com/m which works just fine. SMS support is nowhere to be found, though." found here.)

it's really, painfully slow. i can add a friend, and they can add me back, and i won't know for twenty minutes at best. my karma doesn't update. it takes awhile for others' plurks to show up. it doesn't auto-refresh (so there's still that problem). the alerts are always "late" (ie, an alert was still there to add a friend, even after i'd added him ten minutes ago). as we speak, i have 3 plurk "responses" but the feed only clocks me at 1. statistics = fail.

also, it's not intuitive and somewhat confusing. it's certainly going to be more difficult for "easy adopter" types to stick with it. your mom won't be following your plurks anytime soon. the layout is a little clunky--i can't type a response and view my timeline comfortably at the same time. direct messages don't technically exist; instead, you plurk to a particular person and set it to private. clunky. it's hard to get a sense of who is saying what when. also difficult to figure out where someone "replied" to something you said--requires a lot of back-scrolling.

not to mention, it's difficult to find anyone else, though not impossible. you can go through your friends' friends myspace style. you can invite friends. you can search for existing friends via their emails. but it's so convoluted that it's a little hard to be bothered. all in all, it's very much "twitter 2.0" with all the web graphics and complicated nonsense. in some regards, it's cool, but it takes some getting used to with all the "noise." i don't think i'll be switching over fully anytime soon.

but, in case you want to find me, i'm here: user/thegirlriot or use this link, which automatically makes you friends with me, and you can skip that annoying part of the show where you have to locate me: make friends with Riot

THE UGLY
............PLURK?! really? wtf name is that?

what does "plurk" mean to you?
if you heard this on the street and had to define it, what would you say "plurk" is? noun, adjective, verb?

honestly. at least "twitter" and "tweet" is an actual word. "plurk" is like lurk with a superfluous "p" for flair, or pork with a random "l" injected. i keep typing plork instead of plurk. ick.

my contribution is that "plurk" is a noun, slang, for that person who sits in their office plunking away at their keyboards, lurking on extracurricular stuff, and only pretending to do work. heh.

first impressions. om nom nom nom.

random smattering of thoughts. more structured posts to follow. i'm vocal today.

RANDOM: Om Nom Nom Nom
this site, despite my best efforts, has assimilated my life.
i do indeed now say "om nom nom nom" with surprising frequency. never underestimate the power of boredom, sleepiness, late work afternoons, and Microsoft Paint. it's like lolcats version 1.5, if you don't count manbabies.com (and i certainly don't).

FILM: The Strangers
advertising decent enough to get me to go.
however, after conclusions of the movie, tamara still "isn't there." in fact, tamara isn't even mentioned again. who the fuck is tamara? and more over, what did she do with the plot of this movie? because it doesn't exist. way to go for a suspenseful let down. as in, a suspenseful lack of plot arc, motive, and, dare i say, creativity.
prove me wrong. please, somehow validate that 12 bucks i won't get back.

FILM: Kill the Sequels
an uncountable number of sequels you really didn't need to know were occurring. or rather, you could know--but why? lemme go with... i will likely never go see nearly any of these. you could sell me on shrek 4 & 5 (i'm a sucker), the grudge 3 (i'll see any shitty scary movie that comes out; see above), and silent hill 2 (because i liked the 1st one). cars 2? for real? why? [watch. there'll be a Strangers 2. -headdesk-]

ADVERTISING: Change Lingerie
a campaign i think i like. not love, though.
i say "i think" because while i instinctively like the political overtones of the campaign and the aggressive, in-your-face tactic, i'm not sure if it's tasteful. i mean, i think it is? it's odd. it's like one of those things where you feel guilty for liking it. like i think i perhaps shouldn't like it. i'm not sure why. clever, to be sure. caustic? unsure.

ADVERTISING: Bob Garfield, Lasagna?
okay, bad joke, as in, i have shamed myself. regardless.
why the disaffection for cheese? that campaign doesn't offend me enough to get me to stop purchasing cheetos. no, i don't want orange underwear (unless i buy it that way!) and no, i don't think they're very clever commercials. but breeding baby drug lords? come on now. for serious. eat some cheetos and calm down, parents of america. i am losing serious respect for adage by the day.

@dailybiz @thegirlriot - garfield needs readers and no better way to get them than to say something completely ridiculous :)
(he is as wise as he is charismatic.) edit to include his wicked awesome post about this here.