we need to chat about kissing girls.

found via Dear Jane Sample. click to view source and Katy Perry's obnoxious video.

i am not even going to get into the religious aspect of this. no. instead i'm going to bitch about the song. i'll grant you it's catchy. but i'll tell you why the church is afraid for your daughter's heterosexuality. it has nothing to do with 'catching lesbianism' and everything to do with going to an all girls' school. don't believe me? clearly you've never dated, or had a friend date, a Catholic school girl. sucks for you.

this song is not about reveling in the awesomeness of kissing some femme wonder. it's about getting "rebel cred." even if you don't know any other words to the song, you know the chorus: i kissed a girl and i liked it / the taste of her cherry chap stick / i kissed a girl just to try it / hope my boyfriend don't mind it.

a) it assumes that kissing a girl is just some fun thing to do on the side--while you are busy being respectable and having a boyfriend. no boyfriend?! OMG. you're such a LEZZIE. having the boyfriend element in the song makes kissing a girl "okay." especially when she's unimportant--after all, you're drunk and just met her, you "don't even know [her] name."

b) so we've already got heterosexuality down while remaining cool by dismissing people who are actually homosexual. after all, it doesn't mean you're "in love tonight"--it's just something to do. "it's no big deal, it's innocent." we'll just go back to being hetero in 5 mins. that okay with you honey? oh good. go get me a coca cola.

c) "it's not what good girls do." OOOOOH REBEL! that's right. mommy and daddy will hate you, the church will condemn you, your boyfriend will think it's hot, and tomorrow you can pull an Anne Heche about how 'crazy' you went. it'll all be okay by 3pm and you can laugh about the Facebook pictures and talk about Lindsay Lohan.

in short i think that contrary to opening up possibilities of alternate sexuality in mainstream pop culture, it instead reinforces the fact that alternate sexualities are just a 'game' that can be elected to be acted on--or not--and that we should all return to our regularly scheduled hetero programming.

this does not lift up homosexual--or hell, even bisexual--women as a theme song. even if it were a man singing about kissing a girl, it's terrible. it's too derogatory to the rest of the situation, especially the girl the narrator is kissing. it's certainly not enticing you, or your daughter, to go date girls. if anything, it's trained on the "male gaze" and acting out for it, emphasizing that "oh shit did i just make out with that girl in front of you--oops!" moment that drunk chicks get. so congrats to them. they get one more hit to fall down on the floor to. so rest assured. you have nothing to fear for her heterosexuality. you may want to watch that socolime intake, though.

and if i have to hear that girls are MAGICAL one more time i will fucking vomit. what is that word. seriously. magical? that's for unicorns and My Little Ponies and movies like Legend.

"quietly" pissing me off, Verizon.

Verizon has done the unthinkable. they've succeeding in pissing me off. mind you, i love(d?) Verizon. a devout Verizon advocate and recommender type. swear by Verizon's service in the NY area.

Dear Verizon,

Verizon, you suck right now. you suck for "quietly shutting down" sms txt confirmation from vzw to vzw customers.

i first noticed this september 18th and no one could tell me why i wasn't getting my little delivery notifications. and i certainly wasn't notified. nor asked--far be it.

don't you THINK that MAYBE if you're going to remove a feature that we're all used to having you MIGHT want to run that BY US?! or TELL me or something. i don't care if it saves you 1KB each way. we paid for that inclusion and now we're paying the same amount but get one less feature.

more over, there are unconfirmed rumours that it's so it can be a paid-for add-on feature. uh. why don't you just allow people who don't give a shit, of which there are quite a few, to opt-out? rather than removing it from those of us who care and are paying for it already?

how much more money is going to be wasted now that i have to ask if someone's received my txt? or do i sit in wait, wondering if i'm being ignored, or if it's a Verizon fuckup, or if their phone is off?

OKAY i know that sounds silly and teenager or something but i swear it's not. it's actually a big deal to a lot of us. especially my gen when half our lives are spent texting and half the benefit of being on Verizon is that all our friends are on Verizon so we know when we're talking to one another.

i heard that so many people complained that they're turning it back on October 1st. can anyone confirm or deny this? i'm trying to find out. i want my check marks back.

UPDATE: my Verizon rep, Cain (Kane?), tells me that delivery messages will NOT be returning October 1st. they WILL be phased out indefinitely in due course; apparently the phase out is 'on pause' right now. there is NO truth to the $1.99/mo rumour. this is what i'm told, anyway. i requested updates and made suggestions.

UPDATE 2 [next day]: 1: Cain/Kane, the service rep, just called me back. that's awesome in and of itself. yay customer service! to tell me that 2: Verizon WILL be giving SMS delivery confirmation messaging back as of tomorrow to the cancelled sectors. so many people complained that they decided 1KB wasn't worth it, i guess.

i just threw away 8 bucks.

and i'm hella pissed about it.

see, i came in really early to work today due to circumstances of my life and the inane scheduling of the LIRR trains. so to kill an hour and inject caffeine (which i normally don't do...) i figured i'd sacrifice my better judgment and head on in to Starfucks.

also against my better judgment, i decided to get a coffee derivative. usually i forgo all such nonsense in favour of the blended lemonade with raspberry (which is the only Starfucks thing i'm currently not cranky about), but i figured, of all mornings, today was a mocha frapp morning.

i had memories of high school. when they used to be good.
or when i was stupid enough to think so.

for real. do they burn everything? even cold stuff? i don't get it. I JUST THREW OUT a frapp. that's right. i couldn't even swallow it. i tried. i had a moral dilemma past FOUR trash cans. it was so expensive to throw out. but i could not. could not drink it. strike two?

those fruit platter bullshits. strawberry kiwi mango. the kiwi was weird, the strawberries were glazed with i have no fucking idea what, and the mango wasn't even ripe (read: edible). needless to say, didn't eat that either, and threw it out. oh, and the barista was a bitch and had her own deal going on.

I AM CRANKY ABOUT MY MORNING EXPERIENCE.
is it too much to ask for some sensible caffeine?? clearly.
at least i'm not the only one. the sad thing? they gave me a coupon for a $2 cold drink provided i use it this afternoon. i may do it. just so i can get this godawful taste out of my mouth. how in the hell this came out of Seattle and into the rest of the world, i will never know.

thin women effect: hating self, loving brands.

according to a study reported on by AdAge, thin women in advertising make women feel poorly about themselves, but good about the brand. viewers will eat less or choose low-calorie options after seeing a thin model, feeling inadequate, but will like whatever product better; yet, when faced with a "normal" sized woman, women are less inclined to purchase the advertised product, but won't monitor their eating. the study was comprised of "a sample of 194 college students aged 18-24."

i feel the need to address this, especially because it's getting attention as a reason for marketers to return to skinny models: they sell product better.

i don't think this is the case. i think for a long time now, women have been living in 'the valley.' no, not like valley girls. i mean this trench from which we try to crawl out of. on one side, expectations and traditions (and don't you dare get me started in a debate by saying 'but they aren't there any more'--bullshit); on the other side, a long way up and out, paved with dogmas and philosophies difficult to navigate, aiming to feel alright in this world and in our bodies.

this shift is still changing.
the valley is getting smaller, but it will take time. this movement is helping more than hurting, if marketers/brands can suck it up a while longer. only in the past decade (being generous) have girls been able to see 'real women' in the media around them. wait for these girls to grow up. then tell me about their confidence, their eating habits, their response to thin models. if the same results hold in 20 years, then i'd consent to maybe there being something in it.

because right now, the valley effect is such that women see skinny women in skinny jeans (for example). that's a goal and aspiration that they were brought up (in many cases) to fulfill, understanding that this is what our Western society views as desirable. they want to be the skinny woman so they can buy the skinny jeans. thus, they get down on themselves, eat less, and do like the brand more--it's a status symbol, a version of self-growth and attainment/contentment.

that is removed for current 18-24 year olds, many of whom grew up on Britney Spears and Spice Girls, when they are shown images like themselves. there is no push to better oneself, no goal to reach, no status attached to something they can readily buy. to put it in perspective: the iPhone. if it was cheap and easy to get, tech geeks wouldn't be all over that shit. the iPhone are the skinny jeans of today's market gurus.

but that desire for the skinny jean will dissipate when it is no longer a status symbol. if the regular jeans are as desirable as the size 00s. to extend the metaphor, when it becomes more about the cut and style of the jeans, rather than the size. this is the shift. don't cut it off from happening. the study also found that seeing regular women was self-affirming, though brand-denying. but i should know better than to ask the industry to consider the end user over the almighty dollar.

[side note.
i'm not even getting into the fact that 194 students is a shitty sample size to be parading this data around on.]

relevant ads are relevant?

"If you have an ad that is relevant, you are more likely to pay attention," said Juenger.

really? you think so? you mean ads can be funny... or inspiring... or have a good soundtrack... or generally try and notify us of things we may actually need? ...you mean people haven't entirely lost all interest in trying to spend money? you mean that possibly, just maybe, good advertising is... good? well-targeted? dare i say relevant? nofuckingshit.

but in case you needed a case study to tell you something you could have probably deduced (that the :30 isn't going anywhere, that people watch good advertising, and that like everything else as we move forward, it's about relevancy) then you can read this TiVo study. have fun.

[note: no offense to the blog. studies like this just never cease to amaze me. because what's worse than the deductions is that someone is sitting on a conference room asking for these supportive stats. hello. you watch tv. you are a consumer. what do you do? it slays me when people stop acting like people and become marketers 24/7.]

ok, for real iPhone? this isn't high school.

it isn't even elementary school.

at least i can relate to the iPhone insanity.
way back when, when the earth was cooling and i was a wee 5th grader, cell phones were on the periphery of our existence. they were something nebulous, though we were conscious of them. more importantly, someone picked up on that.

there were these walkie-talkies in ridiculously fun colours. you could "dial" your friends. they were all the rage. ALL. THE. RAGE. that was what we subjected our parents to. miles of lines outside Toys R Us. only to find they were sold out. but we had to. had to have them! it would have been the end of my little 5th grader life.

i was so excited the day i finally got my teal walkie talkie set.
except then they were banned from school the very. next. day. [sigh]

lesson here kids? yes, Apple is badass. yes, the iPhone is better than the previous iPhone. yes, it's shiny. but it will still be there tomorrow [and at least they won't be banned from work! haha]. go ahead, be the Pinnacle Of Cool and All that is Shiny Status Symbol for 5 minutes in repayment for the hours spent on line.

but here's a secret: i won't think you're any less tech savvy because you got it on Monday. in fact, since AT&T is losing stock so quickly, you'll probably wind up with it on Monday anyway. just doing up the hype doesn't do it for me [but here are some fun things that might].

i think what a lot of this has to do with is people like things to get excited over. we don't have enough space for surprise, intrigue, and excitement in our day to day lives as we did when we were children. some joke about technology being "our new toys"--but i think it's true. for some folks, this was Black Friday. the day when all the Christmas lines are ridiculous and half the fun is the insanity. but just like Black Friday... i'm staying home.

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.]

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.

how yahoo got on my shitlist.

of all emails, i have been with yahoo the longest.
i still have (i believe) my original 8th grade yahoo account.
if it's not the first, it's the second. at absolute worst.
back when email and AIM were the only social modes of communication.

and i haven't left it yet, if only because i enjoy those random Facebook-esque moments when people look into their address books and rediscover that email. it's easier than updating everyone to my gmail, and besides, i use my yahoo and gmail accounts differently. partly because of the huge influx of spam i get to my yahoo account. i mean on a given day i get upwards of 50 spam messages. that's with spam blocker enabled, and with my specifying "which messages are spam."

i understand the email's been "out there" for years.
i understand you're "doing what you can" to help with spam.
hell, i even get that with all your money, maybe you can't make your spam filters better. i even accept that some people want what i'd consider spam and so filters may not be the best answer.

but the heart of why they're on my shitlist is you can only block a grand total of 500 emails of spam. i'm getting really, really close to that number. to boot, it's really difficult to weed through blocked emails in case i want to unblock someone. if i have 400+ emails blocked and i accidentally blocked an Amazon email, i literally can't find the time to locate and unblock that email address. there is no search function. just one long scrolling list.

regardless. my real question is.
WHY ARE YOU LIMITING THE NUMBER OF EMAIL SENDERS I VIEW AS SPAM TO MY INBOX?
...isn't that MY choice? and after 7+ years, don't you think my numbers might be a bit high? way to penalize your long time users. and make us run screaming from our inbox in a tragically let-down manner. toward your competitors. hell. at least gmail's spamblocker does its job. (we'll see how long that lasts. only had that one for 2-3 years.)

DigitalNext doesn't want your...

...anything.

in fact, don't comment.
if you're passionate and opinionated, give up.
after all, blogging doesn't matter, anyway.

certainly don't attempt to have a conversation.
adage, screw you. take that for personal and offensive.

i went out of my way to REGISTER just to bloody comment on this post, which i addressed in my blog here. i am one for conversing, as many of you know. why not close the gap, get feedback from the person who wrote it? but since i can't use a url on AdAge, i just gave my abbreviated thoughts.

which have been deleted and censored.
"Ad Age reserves the right to delete comments that are insulting or personal in nature."

i did not insult the writer in any fashion. nor was anything i said personal. i was addressing the fact that, perhaps, this was not the best method, and that, perhaps, when i go to a store i like to see a person. a la the post i wrote.

what the fuck, AdAge? communicate this.

we have to change our tune? NYTimes, bite me.

and this is what's wrong (ok, one of the things that's wrong) with the mindset about work in america. i wish i could comment right on the site, because i would.

sure, yes, i agree, don't get me wrong.
persistence? important. hard work? important. paying the rent? important!
as usual, in the words of my dad, 'it's not what you say, but how you're saying it.'

excerpt:
Meanwhile, Eric Papp, the 24-year-old founder of Generation Y Consulting in Tampa, Fla., recalled how he had run into a friend who was dressed in gym clothes having just worked out in the middle of the afternoon. “I asked how his job was going and he said it was going well but he had to quit,” Mr. Papp recounted. “He said ‘It interfered with my social life. I had to work weekends.’ ”

None of this surprises Daniel H. Pink, an author who specializes in navigating the workplace. “This generation has been spoon-fed self-esteem cereal for the past 22 years,” he said. “They’ve been told it’s all about them — what they want, what they are passionate about, what they find fulfilling. That’s not a bad message, but it’s also not a complete message.”

IT SHOULD BE ALL ABOUT US. and yeah, maybe that's my "GenY" mentality.
why SHOULD the guy have to work weekends if he doesn't want to? it wasn't the job for him. he didn't love it enough, or find it fulfilling enough, to sacrifice his weekends and be a slave to the clock like other workaholics. clearly he's not doing too badly if he can quit that job and still have the funds for his social life. where's the rest of that picture, NYTimes, hmmm?

not to mention that in the same breath as you defunct GenY's values, you cite a GenYer who created his own consulting firm. how does that fit into your description? he took those values of self-esteem, work-fulfillment, and self-definition and made it work for him. kudos to that, sir, kudos to that.

if i never sat down and asked myself what i wanted in a job, i would never have gone into advertising. i know this for fact, because it's something i had to sort out midway through my college years sitting in a career services office hating my internship options.

it's not how "it's not about us" or these old rules you think we should follow.
it IS about us because we're going to be in your shoes. and well, we think they need to be shinier.

to struggling students entering, i wouldn't spout out negative dogma about how no one has a plan and how you are unimportant. you are important. it's your life. everyone's priorities are different, and i'd say to examine yours. write a list, seriously. do you need your weekends? what salary do you want to make in the future? do you want to take your work home with you after hours? would those answers change if you really loved what you did? what do you love to do?

persist. don't settle.
all the costs--photocopying and coffee retrieval--are worth it. correct, you may not land the thing you love in your first job, but PLEASE, please please, pursue what you love. if you love what you do, i'm going to love that you do it well, and there's success in that. and yes, it will look like work, NYTimes. but it doesn't have to. i still wake up every morning and say "do not want" because i sacrificed my love of sleeping in for the love of my work. but i love my work.

someone out there is doing what you love. join them.
do whatever it takes to join them. get involved.
and if no one is doing what you love? make it happen.
someone else loves it, too.

stop txting me pls. (!)

subtitle: i have an adcrush on danah boyd.

if you don't know about her yet, what's wrong with you? love her or hate her but you need to know. she's doing ethnographies that are incredibly relevant to the shifts of emphasis in the ad biz. so listen up. i know some of you are, and i love you for it. [brief rundown? Agency Spy rocks my socks.]

anyway. long story short? stop texting me.
i know that email won't remain the best way to get in touch with my generation in the future, but that doesn't mean you need to turn to text messaging. as we all know, my generation is increasingly more public with our information on the internet, regardless of how we craft ourselves. key words? on the internet.

if your spamails aren't working out for you, text messaging surely won't. i would be more annoyed receiving texts (and being charged for them by my service provider!) that are unwanted than emails. not to mention, you can't opt-out of text spam like you can unsub from emails. that results in me getting cranky with my carrier.

cell phones? personal and business. spam has taken over email. if it takes over text messaging, that will a) be less productive than intended because of the unwanted setting and b) will only decrease in effectiveness.

! but i'm not all bitch and no suggestions here, folks.
you want to utilize text message spam so badly? how about you do this crazy thing called... respect. i know that means very little on the 'net these days, but it's something that might be considered over phrases like friendly stalking and privacy invasion.

why don't you offer people the ability to subscribe to text messaging for products they like? some commercials advertise this ability. because that changes the game. that means i am interested in what you're trying to sell me. you want me to subscribe to a DriveThru Records (or any other label for that matter) text messaging feed in order to tell me what concerts are now up and when tickets go on sale? GO FOR IT, i'm in.

it's all about relevance, which is what the lovely danah boyd and others keep trying to express. you can't just throw up an ad into a Facebook setting and expect people to suddenly love you and be loyal to your brand. engage with them. become relevant. i know the movement is toward mobile, but can't you be respectful about it?

a la miss danah:
"I think that most brands make mistakes because they don’t understand the social dynamics. Think of MySpace/Facebook as a public hangout space. When is it socially acceptable to go up to a group of friends hanging out at a pub or having a picnic in the park? If you treat it that way, the boundaries are much more logical. If you have something relevant to add to the conversation, you might be asked to pull up a seat/join the mat. If not, you will be seen as sketchy and annoying. You are always welcome in the backdrop, but don’t expect to be included just because you’re there. And be careful.. there’s a fine line between being an active participant on an SNS and being seen as a spammer. You’re often better off being a legitimate participant (a.k.a. buying ads) than trying to coldcall folks."

take home message: if i WANT your spam, i'll ASK FOR IT.