Everybody loves fantasy, but nobody likes to be made a fool.
When I blogged about Spiral Moon Media Inc.’s recent viral attempt, I left it about as ambiguous as the company itself left things. Is this for real, or is this a prank? What’s going on here?
The difficulty is that people are going to get angry. If a person sees the video, spends time thinking about how stupid this whole thing is, and then discovers that it was just an ad for Spiral Moon Media, there’s a reaction at that moment. What you WANT is: “Gee, that’s great! I’ll hire them!”
In the case of the “Share The Air” viral campaign, I don’t think that’s the reaction being generated. I try not too swear too much on this blog so I won’t type out what people’s reactions are.
Take, by way of contrast, Opulence, I has it:
Dogs playing poker. Gold grapes. A miniature giraffe. Plus, as an added bonus, an entire hoax website for Sokoblovsky Farms, “Russia’s finest purveyors of petite lap giraffes.”
The website itself has gone viral, and people find it completely awesome whether or not they think it’s real. But… why?
When you “peek behind the curtain” and see the wizard back there, you smile and laugh along with him. He wasn’t trying to trick you. Rather, he was putting on a show for your benefit. This was about you, not him. More to the point:
If you call people stupid, they’ll hate you.
If you call people smart, they’ll love you.
This is true whether they are, in fact, smart or stupid. It’s also true if they actually believed the deception or not.
Also see The North American House Hippo:
Respect the audience at all costs folks.
Hmm. This has to be the cutest blog post I’ve ever done.
If you haven’t seen this movie, you are missing out on a major piece of Internet culture’s history. Here’s the trailer:
We Live in Public – 2008, 18A, 88 minutes
Ondi Timoner’s documentary chronicles a decade in the life of Internet pioneer Josh Harris, who instigated an “artificial society” experiment in which more than 100 artists lived under 24-hour surveillance in an underground compound in New York City. After FEMA broke up the project, Harris turned the cameras on himself and his girlfriend. Timoner’s provocative film (winner of the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance) includes clips from Harris’s projects as well as her own original footage.
Keep it digital and catch it on Netflix. It’s scary and awesome, although the ending is a little weak. The point, through, is this notion that we are all encouraged to make our lives public. It is the way forward. “Web 2.0″, “User-created content”, “Social media”, assorted buzzwords yadda yadda…
Now that we’ve lived with these ideas for a few years, the hipster movement makes sense. After all, you can’t be cool all the time, and in an age of constant surveillance and recording you’re bound to do something stupid that people will take notice of. As a result, people claim it was “supposed to be ironic”.
That, or your idiotic status update was “just trolling lololollol”… sure, we believe you. No, really, I’m not typing sarcastically or anything.
The older generation got flinchy about public perception by doing what they always do: hiding behind “professionalism”. The number of dry, sterile public profiles that tell you nothing about the person in question is staggering. People have thrown themselves into mediocrity enthusiastically in order to keep the all-seeing eye of the Internet from making them look like an ass. So, instead, they look ignorable.
Now, if “ignorable” is part of the job description, then your resume is perfect. For the rest of us, its time to just be guileless and let the chips fall where they may. Either you’ll run your business yourself, or you’ll let the world run it for you.
The Social Network is a movie based on the construction of Facebook.com. Its another story about a quirky genius who lives for his art, doesn’t care about money, and just wants to be loved. Just take that, mix in a bunch of standard “going into business movie” tropes, and you have this. In a sense the only thing that makes it unique is that most scenes are filmed in David Fincher’s preferred “dark-green-o-vision” to indicate the murky and manly depths of introspective turmoil, and lots of low-angled shots to force us to be impressed by everyone’s godliness.
It’s fine. A fair rating gives it 3 stars (of 5), or 4 stars if you really love this genre.
Most people don’t want to give it a fair rating though. They’re screaming “5 stars!” as loudly as they can with fingers in their ears to block out any dissenters, and telling everyone who will listen to get in to see this thing. The buzz has been unbelievable. People are even talking about Academy Awards for the leading actors, despite the lack of any moments in the movie dramatic enough to justify this.
Why?
People hope that this makes it cool to spend too much time on Facebook.
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs fanboys want another hero, and hope that could be Zuckerberg.
Dreamers hope its true that if your girlfriend dumps you, you could get drunk, write some code, and make a billion dollars.
As of October 31st the movie had grossed $132.9 million at the box office. So, what have we learned? The same thing that we learned when those horrid Twilight movies hit it big: insecure people love to spend money. Pander to them.
This is a blog about how new technology solves problems for business. In order to make that meaningful, however, I need to keep a sharp eye out for moments where we’re getting a little carried away with our philosophy. Take, for instance, these two viral videos:
Lady Gaga Telephone (Pomplamoose cover)
See also Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) – Beyonce. Hipsters are just loving this stuff. Ironic takes on popular songs make people feel so good about how very clever and “above it all” they are. Please remember to wear an expression that encapsulates focused disinterest or you’ll spoil it.
From a technological point of view, however, the above video represents how cheap and easy media has become to produce. Two people accomplish here what used to take dozens, using equipment that used to carry a prohibitive cost. A sign of the times, to be sure.
The issue I take is when people talk about us being able to do something fundamentally new here. Cheaper and faster, sure, but this isn’t actually anything new. The fact is that the same “hipster appeal” media can be produced without even using electricity:
Ukranian Polka Band playing “Hot N Cold”
Ok, sure, they’re not true hipsters because they sniggered before they started but it’s counter-balanced by the retro instrumentation. The point is that 20-somethings always consider themselves innovators by default, but pretty much always try to accomplish the exact same thing no matter what decade we’re in.
There’s a difference between new technology and true innovation.
While pop sociology isn’t what I’m primarily interested in, it’s necessary to point out that technological progress is having a ripple effect through the world of business at the moment. First websites, then email, then cell phones, and now smartphones have forced themselves into our daily lives whether we want them to or not.
Those seeking a competitive advantage often ask: “What are the kids into these days?” Many execs still feel scorched from missing the big scores of the dot-com bubble days, and want to know what’s being hyped as the next big thing before it gets forced down their throats.
This works itself out in both positive and negative ways: we sometimes find faster and cheaper ways of being productive, but we also occasionally spend time and money on things that are irrelevant. The real magic happens when we apply a little innovation.
Spinning Flax Into Gold
Take Twitter, for instance. When it first launched it was a waste of time. 90% of the content was completely useless, and only appealed to voyeur celebrity stalkers or friends who were enjoying a new way to chat. Since we were all so paranoid about missing the “next big thing”, however, massive resources were dumped into supporting the platform.
So many people had put their reputations on the line promoting Twitter that, with their backs up against the wall, they were forced to innovate. (Cue defensive technophiles rushing to the comments to tell me how unbelievably useful Twitter was even before it was released etc etc etc… guys, have a quiet moment of honesty with yourselves.) Eventually people figured out how to make it productive, shoehorning in social networking opportunities, hash-tag protocols for live on-location news updates, and quick polling for instant feedback.
The fact is that there was nothing inherently wonderful about Twitter. It was later innovation that turned it into a useful tool.
Here’s another great example: MySpace. Once the darling of the interwebs, everybody just had to be on it. Of course, then people realized that Facebook has a better interface, LinkedIn a more focused network, and custom made websites more flexibility. MySpace started to die.
How did it survive? Innovation. That MP3 player plugin, combined with some good deals with record companies, turned MySpace into one of the easiest and fastest ways for bands to promote themselves to an audience that might never listen to them otherwise. The built-in e-commerce system was a nice touch as well.
Virtual environments have the same issues. They can be a waste of time, or with a little applied innovation, the pivotal tool your business uses to create a serious competitive advantage.
The latest gadget will not save your company. Only innovation will.
I think I’ll have to start doing these general “Stuff You May Have Missed” news roundups on a regular basis again. There’s just too much good stuff out there!
Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, my blip channel, any of the other “Jack of All Strange” stuff that I do, etc etc etc… k here we go:
UPCOMING: Monday, March 1st at 2pm Pacific – Anders Grondstedt, President of The Gronstedt Group, as he tells us how Schneider Electric and IBM have found a strategic planning solution in Second Life. Attend the live event here.
