you, my friend, are hella awkward.

let me set a few things straight. yes, i'm a GenYer. yes, we are wicked awesome and good for business. but we are also hella awkward. and, my friend, most likely you are too.

GenYers spend most of our days on the internet. but let's not kid ourselves. if you're reading this, you probably do too. you have a digi-positive 9-5; you write emails, texts, and generally communicate with words first--voice second; it's faster, sure. short of being Grandma who still (bless her heart) can't quite get all this new fangled stuff, you are in danger.

that's right.
you're becoming more awkward.
and likely, less understood.

that's the irony in this day and age. social networking. all points access to your friends 24/7. transparency to the enth. and yet, you still have no idea what i'm saying. and i'm an highly educated word-person-thingy.

half our country is still leaving 'h' out of "wat" and using "c" in place of 'see,' etc. there is no diction, no word choice, to convey emotion behind the txting, beyond maybe an ambiguous ":)"--and that is the primary mode of communication.

we're losing our body language, our vocal tone, our inclination to have conversations in real life, in person as well as the skills needed to decode those aspects.

we're just stuck in our heads. the Googling of thoughts, we read and intonate what we want to. personalized communication, it is what i want it to be--not necessarily what you mean for it to be. or so i'm noticing.

i had this issue this weekend. wanted to have a semi-serious chat with my sig other, who prefers only talking in txt (i prefer in-person). compromised, chatted on AIM (...no joke). and you know what? i 'walked out' of that chat not at all confident that anything i said actually was understood. the responses were just not on the level.

how do you combat your 'awkward' in an increasingly text-only driven world? do you feel less understood more frequently, or does the "140 character limit" just get you off? are you more in your head, or less? can you even tell if a person is lying by looking at them any more, or do you trust the transparency of consonants and vowels?

things to think about.

[img via.]

somethin' about the way garyvee says douchebag

...just makes me feel all aflutter inside.



i found this via @TDefren's new post. in this video, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about passion and patience.

which is funny, considering both have the same Latin root, pati, meaning "to suffer." [HOL reference for you there, kids <3]

which is to say, garyvee [it just rolls so nicely, i have to type it like that] believes that if you don't like what you do--not even a little--STOP. just STOP. and do SOMETHING ELSE. even if that thing is smurfs. me, i don't buy into the monetization of a smurf blog, but hell, i believe him, and his Pinot Grigio Hour. that's where the passion comes in. life is too short to be doing something you hate. yadda yadda motivational speech.

[hey does it sound like that stuff your generation sold my generation and now you want to take it back because we all think we're genuinely entitled to that Pursuit of Happiness? i thought so--but there's a catch.]

yeah, that patience thing, which has to do with that suffering thing i mentioned earlier. "how do i monetize my new Smurf Empire?" you may ask, and he answers: by doing some serious damage between the hours of 7pm and 2am, before you pass out, go to work, take an hour break to "kiss the dog," and do it all over again. so that you still have to go to work. to make the money. to do serious damage. to make your new Empire.

i'm not at all belittling garyvee's view. i think it's powerful, poignant, and necessary. its passion is inspiring and the message is spot-on. but i've also heard it before.

i think that, reading between the lines, it's also a message that requires you to keep that passion when you're up until 2am working on the new Empire, have barely seen family or friends, and still aren't so keen on the job you're spending 8-10 hours of daylight on. the message is to feel like he does on that stage, only every morning. and i think that's the hardest part. not just saying "I Quit!" as Audience Man #1 did, but sticking out the suck for the better ahead.

not the interest, not the late night Empire, and not the years of development.
but keeping the passion, and acquiring the patience, through those times of suffering.

hate hate: keira knightley. & boobs.

alright, i don't hate boobs. but i do hate keira knightley. her poor excuse, stoic, mouth-acting has ruined every single period piece film for the past half a decade (i won't get into star wars or pirates). and the only historic one she didn't corrupt was overrun with her twin natalie portman.

but, as Adrants has pointed out, keira did something maybe kinda halfway decent (arguably for the first time). she declined post-production touch-ups to enhance her breasts for the collateral on the new movie The Duchess. and you know what? i'm more than okay with that. dare i say i wish other actresses would follow suit.

it's nice for someone to make a stand like that and say, my body is good the way it is. kudos to keira for that. the real thing is, though, i wonder how many magazines are going to cover this information, or is it just going to be an afterthought (somewhere after the thought 'did she get a breast reduction?'). i recognize it's all over google and the celeb dish blogs, but i'm talking about the kids.

i would love for a girls' magazine to cover this, interview her, and let her be that role model. i want to see it in Elle Girl, in CosmoGirl, in Seventeen, in YM. disappointing to just have it fall by the wayside, covered by us folks intrigued by advertising and photoshop, and not the folks who should be sending the message.

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.

Yeas & Nays: III

the site, adgoodness, re: party art Power Plant
Riot saith: YEA!
despite the following comment on the adgoodness post (where you can also see the other 2 in this campaign) -- Although it’s pretty lame photography, and the models them selves are not that interesting. Nor is the scene all that believable in the case of the third one.. It’s a good concept. 3/5 not so much on the execution though. -- i like this campaign. i don't think the photography is particularly 'lame.' it reminds me of a campaign i did for the Museum of Modern Art. as in--trying to make the prospect of a museum not boring to anyone who doesn't already go. making the museum into the party is, i counter, a clever idea. especially when modern and contemporary art lends itself to some wacky and interesting pieces. not to mention, it ties into the fact that they're actually hosting a party, which doubles on its usefulness. kind of like that "go metro. miss traffic" ad.

the site, brandweek, re: targeted ads
Riot saith: DUH!
haven't i been saying this for, oh, say... ever? yes, i think so. "These users want, and welcome, information about new products, savings and other offers, and they're clearly stating that if the ads were more targeted and relevant, it would be worthwhile to them," said Jere Doyle, CEO of Prospectiv. no shit sherlock. we need studies for this? i shouldn't talk. i know it takes a lot to convince people who don't already see that. but i feel like i'm seeing a lot of things quoted, referenced, and studied lately that make me go "DUH!?" isn't that a GIVEN? i'm going to start keeping track of things that make me go "duh" rather than make me say "huh!" am i alone in this feeling? or do people just need validation on the obvious?

the site, greg verdino, re: 'generation v'
Riot saith: NAY!
don't get me wrong. it's truly not all bad. like greg points out, some of my peers don't know what Twitter is. me, i've never used, or wanted to use, Second Life. i don't podcast, even if i know what it is. but to claim that "the generational distinctions break down" online is an unfair and, i believe, flawed generalization. i'm all about connecting human experiences, but you need to understand that each human has a distinct experience they bring to the table. my values are radically different than the generation before me, and no amount of Facebook Chat is going to rectify that. not to mention, HOW each generation comes to the "virtual generation" is different. how and why we interact with it is often different. how we think about it, craft ourselves, to why, and why--all of these are different. my little brother's reason for using Myspace is not my aunt's reason for using Myspace. it's simply not. i think that to fall prey to this idea as a new "generation merger" is a product of living too long in the social media state of the internet bubble. treating each personae, even if a person has multiple personae, different from a marketing standpoint does have merit. i'm just saying that not everything is that easy, and i do believe digital natives--whether or not they podcast as well as a 35 year old--do come to the virtual table for different reasons, values, and views. technographics is a better answer, to me, than "generation v." i find the umbrella term dangerous.