Yeas & Nays: II

the site, adrants review, re: whore diamonds.
Riot saith: NAY!
this is revolting on so very many levels--and probably none of the ones you're thinking of, either. Two cents from Sam Elhag, head of strategy for Drunk University Network: "We don't feel that only politicians and Emperors Club members should have an exclusive on rating today's generation of working girls. This opens up the process to the masses. Who knows, a 'five diamond' girl to a Spitzer may only be a 'three diamond' to the rest of the world." ...is the rest of the world buying?? i don't care what YOU think about this woman. YOU are (likely) not going to employ her. this is NOT a democracy; it's a business. you shouldn't be able to vote on how hot a "whore" is unless you're spending money on her or one of her colleagues. you could be hurting her sales simply because a bunch of numb nuts decided they don't like her nose, when she was making fine sales before--and now someone with money won't buy her for fear of what a hundred anonymous internet geeks will think of them for it. this is not Hot-or-Not. these aren't candids, this isn't Girls Gone Wild (don't get me started there). she is not your girlfriend, even if you paid her to be. if this is what it says it is, this is about employment, not your latest social network where you get to degrade women and their choices or situations. shame on you. go watch porn. at least you pay for that. on a side note, do these women get to opt-in to be on the site? that's also relevant. if they don't get a choice, it's worse. if they do, perhaps it helps the sales of lesser-known women? i am trying to see how this could be empowering, and i just don't.

cnet, eff, re: Universal.
Riot saith: YEA!
you go, EFF. i just don't understand how out of hand the record labels can get over this sort of stuff. Lenz was not selling her YouTube video. she didn't even show the full song. are we as humans supposed to never interact with the products you convince us to buy? she can own a Prince CD but she can't video her kid dancing to it and share it with her family and friends, who might also find the child somewhat adorable when dancing to Prince? it's not like Lenz is making DVD copies and selling them on eBay under the title 'Beborn Baby Prince' or something. ye gods. at least it's back on YouTube, the whiny brats. if record labels want to win people back, making us pissed off at you isn't the way to do it.

the site, adage review, re: Heineken
Riot saith: NAY!
wow. talk about shitty. that song is really, really annoying. the syncing of the images doesn't flow with the music, either. the cuts feel off and forced. some of it is really nonsensical. a ballerina serving beer to a sauna full of old guys? right. some of these situations i buy, and some i don't, at all. i don't feel united, or even happy. i feel like the spot instead grated on my nerves and took away my last interest in Heineken (which wasn't that great to begin with, so you didn't sell me on it). i don't think the heart of the issue is "get drunk" versus "pay it forward"--i just think the ad fails to relate to anyone currently. a better idea would have been to take where sharing beer is relevant: different party scenes (bachelor's, reunions, birthdays, etc) and show buying a round and celebrating. that's what we do, right? eat, drink, and be merry? bring in some more merry and less kumbaya.

full circle, 2 of 2: 2.0 literacy & literature

i forget how, exactly, or rather who, first tweeted me about @smallplaces, but i figured it was worth a look. "small places" is to my knowledge the first Twitter-book. it's a novel(la?) written via continuous tweets, and the followers can read at their leisure.

this is not for interacting. it's a 'bestseller' straight to your phone (or browser, as the case may be). in this way, just as the book was revolutionary for its time, and now internet has revolutionized communication, the two have met in realtime.

as a student of the history of the book, and as a 'digital native,' i figure it's my duty to give my two cents on the matter.

1] it's a really cool idea, otherwise i wouldn't have followed.
2] it is an essentially flawed idea, as i'm discovering.

POSITIVES
> it seems to at once take on what the internet can do for literacy and novel expression, and,
> it also seems to pick up where Palahniuk left off, with the desire to tell a story through slips of scenes, the heart of the matter; to try to express through minimalism but still move the reader.
[don't know what i mean? read the Afterword in a post-95 copy of Fight Club. thank me later.]

NEGATIVES
> unless i'm hooked up 24/7, i lose part of the story.
> the story moves slowly due to the 140 char limit.
..."i tie my shoes." "i shut the door and walk." etc.
[this does not belittle the story itself; i think it could be an interesting plot.]
> if i don't wish to be hooked up 24/7, it's difficult to read on the smallplaces twitterfeed because it moves in reverse (ie, i have to go "back" however many pages until i found where i last left off).

so, in summary, it's certainly an experiment worth watching. however, the medium may make me unable to follow the story in a cohesive sense. it would be, perhaps, worthwhile to do a chapter a week, and let everyone catch up during the next week, and continuing writing another chapter the week after. or, take a total leaf from Palahniuk by tying in a refrain to ground me in understanding as it moves along. or, craft it in such a way, like House of Leaves, where i don't necessarily have to follow along (well) to appreciate it.

Break in transmission...@smallplaces is a twitter-form novel experiment by @nlbelardes: ABC newsroom twitterer, novelist, human coffeedroid.

full circle, 1 of 2: 2.0 literacy "IRL"

study 1: students say "e-text" isn't writing (CNetNews)

study 2: students use "text speak" in school work (TimesOnline)

funny thing? they're talking about the same study: Pew Internet and American Life Project. so how can, in the same study, it be found that 1) students differentiate between txting and writing, and that differentiation makes them understand the time and place for each, and, 2) that in fact that differentiation means nothing and txting is used within scholarly writing.

"What's at stake here is just the ability to express oneself in more than one register," she said. "As long as children are taught to use the standard spelling and to appreciate the difference between registers, this could even be positive."
(excerpt from Times)

yes yes, i agree. there is no trouble with being "multiliterate"--able to txt-speak and write essays also. the problem here is, why, oh why, would you ever need 'LOL' in your essay? or a smiley face? why would there be a need for this expression in academic writing which a teacher must assess and decipher??

i enjoyed this comment response: "I hope those students who do use abbreviations in their essays receive an unhappy face sticker for their incorrect use of the English language." (Farore, Melbourne, Australia)

hahaha, could you imagine? i'd have been livid to get back a frowny face sticker. what does it MEAN? B-? F? it's almost as ambiguous as "A-/B+" (i hated those with a passion). pick one! oh, the teachers' revenge.

in essence, i think the CNet article about the study got it better; it seems that students believe correct spelling/grammar is vital in the academic sphere as well as central to future success in their careers. however, that doesn't stop the error, every so often, of slipping into "native tongue" (txt speak).
[though i'd still love to know when its usage is called for... "and then atticus finch defended tom robinson at trial, showing the ewells for the liars that they are--LOL!" ?]

and now for something completely different.

okay, that's somewhat of a lie. it's still advertising. it's just different insofar as: i like it. these are two spots i enjoy. more friday viewing. cheers!

[yanked from agencyspy, where i can't comment because i hate registering to do so]

of course it's only airing in europe because our president may pee himself if he ever laid eyes on it. why do i like it? not just because i'm young and 'radical' (though probably that too); i like it because it offers Karis as Karis-the-person, not a story about Karis-as-tranny. it's Karis' voice (we are led to assume) and even if Karis didn't get to write his (pronoun choice based on script identifying himself as a "boy"--if in error, apologies) own material, the first-person voice makes the message more heartfelt, even if the intent was shock value. it even discusses gender issues out loud (like when Karis talks about taking his top off at the end of his routine) and doesn't just stick to a "total queen" talking about how great shaving his legs is and how smooth he feels. in fact, the product isn't even mentioned until the end. thank you, DDB and Tribal London. kudos.

--

another spot i liked... i was watching ESPN Classic last night (don't ask... flipping through, American Gladiator was on, and they were beating one another with those silly oversized cotton swabs. i couldn't help it.) and a spot came on that simply said "these [XX] seconds of silence brought to you by Karako" with some other, limited factual text beneath. it was really effective. definitely made me pause, particularly because i'm not used to hearing silence on the television. enough to make me remember the name of the brand, and, to blog about it. it's likely not the first time someone's done it, but it's the first in a long while that i've seen it. kudos there, as well.

directv, revisited. now, with spot!

thanks to @funincalifweric, i have been supplied with the directv spot that i criti(cized/tiqued?) in this post on monday.

so now, for your friday viewing pleasure, a spot i hate:

but what do i love? conversations. [feed/back]
comment/tweet if you want to tell me why it doesn't suck, or, commiserate with me on its shortcomings.

on these websites everyone keeps talking about

case in point.

i mean, alright. some of us are forgetting functionality a wee bit.

HRP: kudos on the red smoke. it's visually engaging. i like red and grey together, even if it looks like 80 or so images on iStock. but overall, i'm going to go with a no. it is cool that, if i had a webcam, i could navigate your site with my finger (or something). but i don't. and, moreover, it takes for-ever-er to load. i'm already not interested. it's hard to navigate and hard to understand. HRP? sacrifice some art. especially when it's a wee bit s t o c k y.

R/GA and Grey are still stuck somewhere in the span of last year. come on, it's a spring update. how come Grey looks like the bastard lovechild of a smaller, lesser agency and a Gravitron? at least R/GA is visually pleasing in that flashy, fade-in fade-out javascript sort of way. i just feel like it's nothing i haven't seen before. not bad, but not buzzworthy.

Barbarian is interesting insofar as it's different. it holds with content is king, and, as a blogger, i like that. unfortunately, it also reminds me of--well--a blog. and while that's well and good, i also want it to remind me of an advertising agency, which, it currently does not. i'm not saying it needs more images, but i am saying it needs more style. less newspaper, more colour differentiation, perhaps.

and then, of course, there's Modernista. chances are you've seen it already, but if you haven't, be warned: it will appear on top of this page. the reds and pinks will clash. it will be an eye sore. consider yourself warned. that being said. i initially like this. it's new, it's funky, it's integrated, it's sexy. i'm for it. except for the first time, the links didn't work in my browser, so i was left confused. and then, if you scroll down too fast, the M! site hiccups all over the page. 3.5 stars and my fave of the group.

but you know what other site i really like? Zeus Jones. also funky, integrated, and sexy--but in a different way. the word that jumps to mind is "flatter," but that's not necessarily a bad thing in this site's case, i'd argue. and, kind of like the twitpitch, it speaks for itself. i'm for it. click away.

digital natives and the elevator twitpitch

i read this plea to ban employers trawling Facebook some time ago via a link through danah's blog, and while yes, i agreed to an extent, i didn't really think long and hard about it until elevator (twit)pitches arose.

now, i do think twitpitches can be useful. i like the simplicity, the conciseness, the mandate for effectiveness and efficiency. it does not allow for fluff but instead lets the work (ie, a link) do the talking. this is, on the whole, a brilliant idea--especially when aimed toward those who know well enough to craft themselves online; those who know and expect their online 'persona' to affect their working world.

but what about the up-and-coming folks, the "digital natives" as the phrase goes? they were not considering the twitpitch (and all that follows) when they were journaling online at age 13, sneaking into frats at 16, or generally doing "self-exploration" that they may not later wish to admit to (especially when some sites, like Facebook, make it so hard to delete the tracks later on).

as the article i first link to states,
“A world where even a 14-year-old has to think twice before posting an adolescent poem suddenly looks very unappealing and increases the pressure on children and young people to conform to a set of tightly focused adult norms.” (excerpt)

i recently asked my twitter followers this question;
@luckthelady was nice enough to respond, saying that:
To a degree, certainly. I definitely wouldn't hold it against a girl if she got drunk at a frat party, but...
If she's considered to be dishonest, a repeated flake or someone with a bad reputation, it would definitely affect the offer.

do you agree? disagree?
what do you take into account in your employment decision when "e-searching" someone? how well do you expect them to "cover their tracks" (or do you expect at all)? do you think this is unfair to begin with and puts digital natives on an uneven playing field with their more-crafted, older brethren?

and, my question also: how do you determine if someone is a "repeated flake" (for example) online? ie, what if they simply don't check Facebook in particular a lot? or how to measure this over the span of 4 years on Facebook? at what point is social media, aimed at friends, no longer about personal facts but professional representation?

i have questions. i'd be interested in any answers.