Caleb Booker

There are times where I’m dazzled by all that is glorious and wonderful about the Internet, social networks, virtual worlds and the coming of the Metaverse. There are other times, however, where the world seems like it exists for morons only.

These are the dark times. The times of Bush and FOX News, of Windows Vista and DRM. These are the days of colorized classics and Uwe Boll movies. These are the Paris Hilton moments.

At the Supernova 2007 conference Paul Kedrosky did a quick tally of certain significant terms and how often they were used by presenting Web 2.0 companies:

For the most part these comments seemed to be about getting celebrity endorsement for their causes, and Paris Hilton is getting a lot of press at the moment. Still, do users really want her?

If you’re in a Web 2.0 company you really should know this bit of history. When Paris Hilton came to YouTube the user community flipped out. Here, have a video link or two or three. People were not pleased, simply because Web 2.0 is supposed to be about the people, and Paris is anything but. She’s above the people, and as a result she didn’t last. The account hasn’t been logged in for two months and the last post from her was nine months ago. She was chased off, and the sun shines again.

Briefly.

Old media doesn’t get new media, but they do get themselves. There’s never-ending coverage of Hilton’s adventures in idiocy for a reason. The general public is eating up. Old media owns their audience’s covetous ass. Paris Hilton may be vapid, but in the world away from your computer, she’s rich and she gets what she wants by doing almost nothing. She lives every day loving herself and being loved without any effort. The public may not even like her, but they want to be her, and so they follow her. That’s the way it is. Oh teh horror.

Acting smug works in old media, just like it did in high school. Treating yourself as an elite goes a long way to making you elite. At least, on TV it does. However, if you do that in a social app, in a virtual world, or in the blogosphere, we’ll crucify you.

Enter Meterati.tv.

These people are serious about getting their inner Paris Hilton on. While refusing to identify themselves they’ve been calmly assuring everybody that they are going to do what everybody else is doing, but much better. They totally rule. Just wait for it. You’ll be impressed.

That’s just a bit insulting to our intelligence isn’t it?

Now to aggravate people… 

They created a Twitter account with this:

About metarati

• Name: Metarati.TV
• Bio: Covering the Metaverse movers, groovers and shakers.
• Location: Metaverse
• Web: http://www.metarati.tv

Their only twitter was “… and so it begins 01:50 AM June 23, 2007 from web”. 

Right there, that’s a problem. Look, “open and opt in” platforms are great, but there are conventions. When somebody subscribes to my (insert random Web 2.0 app here) I always check out their profile. The profile says something about them. We connect.

This profile is an ad. “Hey, we cover the really big guns in the Metaverse!”. That’s it. Metarati.tv says nothing about who they are, and so by extension neither does this. Basically, the profile is an ad, and we’re expected to accept it because, apparently, they are so damn cool.

The response was predictable:

Moo Money: Who is “metarati”? Any idea? 04:04 AM June 23, 2007 from web

Prokofy Neva: If you do media, I don’t care how new and how social it is, take editorial control, show who you are, and don’t feign non-bias. 01:06 PM June 23, 2007 from web 
that way they can pump the illusion that it’s all just some objectivist stream that they facilitate, as if they have no bias. *Cough*. 01:05 PM June 23, 2007 from web 
Tell you what I don’t like about Metarati stream already — no name, no company, complete anonymity of the people doing it so far. 01:05 PM June 23, 2007 from web 

Nick Wilson: That @metarati can kiss my arse. Im blocking it till it has a face. 09:05 PM June 23, 2007 from web

VeeJay Burns: Anyone any idea who’s behind metarati tv? They’re plagiarizing me 09:52 PM June 23, 2007 from web

As I’ve mentioned, the website itself says nothing about who they are or why we should care about them. They did, however, go through the trouble of filling their entire front page with cheeky responses to pissed off people. Guys. Think.

1. You don’t call Nick Wilson a “noob”.
2. You don’t pretend that VeeJay Burns didn’t come up with the term “metarati” in the first place.
3. You don’t scold your potential audience by saying “now do us all a favor and leave Metarati.TV alone to prepare for our launch”.

Paris. F**king. Hilton.

Here comes the crucifixion.

Eric Rice is ticked off along with the others, and posted a nice little blog post entitled “How Metarati.tv lost credibility before they even launched“. He’s just warming up, too - apparently he and Moo are looking into it more. Watch the Eric Rice blog for more. (Yes that’s right I just told my readers to go read another blog. Screw you snobosphere.) Of course I can’t imagine that Nick or VeeJay are going to take this sitting down, and Prokofy has always had an interest in elitism.

Is this what they were going for? Did they want everybody talking about how much they sucked before launching? The Paris Hilton school of media dictates that all press is good press, even (sometimes especially) if it’s bad press. Maybe it’s on purpose. Maybe everybody is playing right into their hands, myself included.

Of course, I don’t think I’ve ever given Hilton that much credit, have you?

UPDATE June 28 2007 - the site has gone to a big blank page. Lucky thing Moo took that screenshot. (see comments)

Posted on June 25th, 2007 under hype, press, writing. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.