My library hold was taking way too long, so I went to Barnes and Noble and bought Andrew Keen's book, and something telling happened while I was in the store.
At first, I couldn't find it. I scoured the "cultural studies" section (which was mislabeled, and what was labeled as "cultural studies" was actually authors A-G in "African-American studies"). I scoured the "current affairs" shelves and the "new nonfiction" area. Nope.
I go get in line at the information kiosk. The guy in front of me, a 14-15-year-old kid with his mom, was ordering Uncanny X-Men books. Does he not know you can order anything you want from the Internet? And they bring it to your house? And usually it's cheaper? Guess not. Maybe the information age hasn't quite reached everyone yet. I wonder if that kid has a MySpace page.
The guy helping him is probably my age, and at oldest he's maybe 27. He finishes with the other guy and motions me up to the counter. I'm hoarse from this cold/sinus infection I've had for 10 days so I have to lean in to be heard. "I'm looking for a book by Andrew Keen, K-E-E-N." "What's it called?" he asks. I tell him. He types it into his book-locater computer.
"Let's go take a look in our Science and Technology section." And there it was, on the bottom shelf, three hardback copies under the "Chemistry for Dummies" selection. He picks up a copy and hands it to me.
"If you read it, come back and let me know what you thought of it. I just wrote a review," he said.
"Oh. I read that this guy was a has-been that's kind of wrong and really full of himself," I said. I mean, I had read that. It's not really what I think, but I wanted to see what kind of reaction I'd get out of this guy.
"Maybe you're not old enough," he says, and purposefully walks away. I hope he meant he thought I was a teenager, and that I was part of the Googlegeneration, with a Wikipedian world view that pays no mind to intellectual property rights or editorial hierarchy. I hope he meant that he thought I was so young I couldn't be helped (I mean, I guess I look younger than I am, and it probably didn't help that I was there in the middle of the day with a cold in jeans and a t-shirt). I hope he didn't mean that I looked stupid.
Anyway, I've read the first chapter and he's already said a lot of things I've said here in this blog, plus some other things. He's mentioned the monkeys with typewriters and the dogs on the Internet. He's talked about Huxley and Big Brother and Facebook and MySpace all in one chapter. I wonder what the rest of the book could be? I mean, it feels like he's already covered all the bases.
I'll keep you posted.
Oh, and while I was typing this, the library called. They have the Keen book for me. Crap.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Revised television article
I'm sick today. So instead of reading, I worked on the second draft of my television article, which is here, for your enjoyment. I'll be back to reading tomorrow.
Hopefully, the library will call me about that Keen book too!
Dude, where’s my TV show?
How ratings miscount television viewers, no matter how they’re watching
In the 2006-2007 television season, the much-hyped program “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” premiered on NBC at #22. This means that for that week (Sept. 18), it was the 22nd most-watched regularly-scheduled television broadcast. Almost 13 million people watched it; roughly the same as the population of Illinois. For 2006, it was the No. 1 program recorded on digital recording systems (like TiVo) for “timeshifted” viewing. Three months later, however, in December, NBC announced the show would share its timeslot with another show, and in February 2007, announced that the last episode would air mid-month. Why the sudden change? How did a fairly popular show go from 13 million viewers to cancellation? One way: ratings.
From 1928 (when the first experimental television images were broadcast) until 1951 (when Nielsen started publishing ratings), television operated without much real, concrete knowledge of who was watching. In 1951, Nielsen announced that the Texaco Star Theater, a variety show featuring star Milton Berle, was the most-watched program on television. Why was this data important? Well, aside from the curiosity of broadcasters, it satisfied a need for advertisers. Broadcasters could more effectively price their advertising space. If more people were watching Texaco Star Theater than anything else, then advertising on that show should cost more. Ever wonder why commercials on the Super Bowl are so expensive? Super Bowl broadcasts are some of the most-watched telecasts. In fact, out of the top-20 prime-time telecasts of all time, half are Super Bowls. In 1982, more than 40 million households watched Super Bowl XVI, and a 30-second commercial cost $324,000. The prices are set by analyzing previous ratings, projecting how many people will be watching when the commercial airs and then charging accordingly. And the shows that nobody’s watching? Well, they get cancelled, since the network can’t sell advertising on shows without audiences. It really is a popularity contest. But how to they determine which shows are being watched?
In the beginning, the system was simple. Nielsen sent you a diary and you wrote down what you watched. Nielsen would send diaries to enough people to produce a statistically accurate sample to estimate the nationwide counts. But, in spite of its simplicity, there were numerous problems with this system. People didn’t send the diaries back on time, or didn’t fill them out at all, or lied when they filled them out. Why did they lie? Sometimes to make themselves seem smarter (it’s been published that people say they watch a lot more PBS than they really do), or to try to protect certain shows from being cancelled. In 2004, Nielsen came under fire for testing “Peoplemeters,” special remote controls each household member used to track demographic use, and a special box that sent all the information to Nielsen. You couldn’t lie and you couldn’t cheat, but somehow, the Peoplemeters were giving drastically different information than the diaries were, and most of the changes involved television shows with minority casts. The Peoplemeters were scrapped after testing revealed their flaws, and Nielsen has gone back to the (also flawed) diaries. The bottom line is that the ratings numbers aren’t right. They’re not only susceptible to fibbing viewers and bad counting, but samples are only measured for home viewing. Plenty of televisions are watched in airports, bars and restaurants, and those viewers aren’t accounted for. And what about all the rest of the ways we watch television programs, like on DVD or the Internet? Can they affect a show’s fate? Why, yes, they can … at least sometimes.
The animated comedy show “Family Guy” proved that networks are paying attention to the DVDs we buy. “Family Guy” was cancelled twice, in 2000 and 2002, but DVD sales figures and high syndication ratings convinced the FOX network to bring it back in 2005. According to USA Today, this was the first time a show was reinstated after cancellation due to DVD popularity. So, at least the networks are paying attention to what we buy, but how about what we rent? Or what we download? The simple answer is that they aren’t. As evidenced by the fact that “Studio 60” was the No. 1 “timeshifted” (that means TiVo-ed) program of 2006, but was still cancelled. The answer is simple: you can skip the commercials on TiVo, so it doesn’t matter to advertisers if the viewers are counted. Why pay for advertising on a show most people don’t watch ads on?
Some networks are capitalizing on the “timeshifting” idea and profiting by showing streaming video of shows on their Web sites and charging for advertising there. For example, you can watch the season finale of “Studio 60” on NBC.com, brought to you by the T-Mobile Sidekick. The episode is split into five short streaming video segments, each preceded by a commercial for T-Mobile. According to a recent article in TV Week, total advertising revenue for streaming video like this should hit $1.31 billion this year. It’s clear that advertisers know who’s watching, or they wouldn’t be paying more than a billion dollars for advertising on streaming video. The networks are counting too. NBC announced that it had delivered more than 300 million streams this season alone. It still isn’t enough to save some shows. Shows with steep production costs (like “Studio 60,” or another NBC hit “ER”) have to make up their costs in ad revenue, and sometimes they just can’t. Spending $40 on a DVD box set is one thing, but paying $1.99 to download a single missed episode from iTunes just won’t add up the same way. And there are no profits at all for illegally-downloaded episodes. Even though you can build a strong and dedicated fan base that way, to the networks, it’s just more lost revenue.
The good news is that, according to Nielsen, new methods are being developed to measure what is being watched on portable media devices like iPods and cell phones. This is called “placeshifting,” Nielsen plans to study ways to accurately track not just what people are downloading to watch on these devices, but actually what they are watching. One of the many potential problems here, which would affect more than just one show, is there’s no accidental viewing. For instance, when you’re watching a television show on television, there’s a chance you can accidentally happen upon another show (the show before or after what you’re watching, or on a nearby channel). You might find your new favorite show this way, or at least something else to watch. With downloading, however, you only download the shows you want, so there’s less of a chance you’ll ever try anything new. Which only adds to the possibility of new shows being cancelled from low ratings, because people won’t download them on a whim. Of course, there are many more potential problems, and I’m sure the Nielsen researchers will try to overcome them, but it just might not be enough.
Of course, there are still the old-fashioned ways of trying to protect your favorite show from cancellation: letter-writing campaigns and petitions, but they aren’t working anymore. Letters and petitions aren’t dollars, and when there are so many media competing for our eyes and ears, money is the only thing that talks. In the 50s, the original Nielsen company didn’t have to deal with cable television options, satellite radio or the Internet stealing away their television viewers. Even show quality doesn’t necessarily matter. “Studio 60” was just nominated for five Emmy awards (in casting, directing, cinematography, and two for guest actors), but even that won’t save it from cancellation. Sadly, shows that aren’t winning Emmy awards are consistently rated at the top. For 2006, the top three most-watched shows were Tuesday and Wednesday’s “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars.” It seems like quality is being sacrificed left and right for high viewership numbers, and it’s all about the money. Being a Nielsen test subject and watching the show is the only way to make a difference, Just like always, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is.
Hopefully, the library will call me about that Keen book too!
Dude, where’s my TV show?
How ratings miscount television viewers, no matter how they’re watching
In the 2006-2007 television season, the much-hyped program “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” premiered on NBC at #22. This means that for that week (Sept. 18), it was the 22nd most-watched regularly-scheduled television broadcast. Almost 13 million people watched it; roughly the same as the population of Illinois. For 2006, it was the No. 1 program recorded on digital recording systems (like TiVo) for “timeshifted” viewing. Three months later, however, in December, NBC announced the show would share its timeslot with another show, and in February 2007, announced that the last episode would air mid-month. Why the sudden change? How did a fairly popular show go from 13 million viewers to cancellation? One way: ratings.
From 1928 (when the first experimental television images were broadcast) until 1951 (when Nielsen started publishing ratings), television operated without much real, concrete knowledge of who was watching. In 1951, Nielsen announced that the Texaco Star Theater, a variety show featuring star Milton Berle, was the most-watched program on television. Why was this data important? Well, aside from the curiosity of broadcasters, it satisfied a need for advertisers. Broadcasters could more effectively price their advertising space. If more people were watching Texaco Star Theater than anything else, then advertising on that show should cost more. Ever wonder why commercials on the Super Bowl are so expensive? Super Bowl broadcasts are some of the most-watched telecasts. In fact, out of the top-20 prime-time telecasts of all time, half are Super Bowls. In 1982, more than 40 million households watched Super Bowl XVI, and a 30-second commercial cost $324,000. The prices are set by analyzing previous ratings, projecting how many people will be watching when the commercial airs and then charging accordingly. And the shows that nobody’s watching? Well, they get cancelled, since the network can’t sell advertising on shows without audiences. It really is a popularity contest. But how to they determine which shows are being watched?
In the beginning, the system was simple. Nielsen sent you a diary and you wrote down what you watched. Nielsen would send diaries to enough people to produce a statistically accurate sample to estimate the nationwide counts. But, in spite of its simplicity, there were numerous problems with this system. People didn’t send the diaries back on time, or didn’t fill them out at all, or lied when they filled them out. Why did they lie? Sometimes to make themselves seem smarter (it’s been published that people say they watch a lot more PBS than they really do), or to try to protect certain shows from being cancelled. In 2004, Nielsen came under fire for testing “Peoplemeters,” special remote controls each household member used to track demographic use, and a special box that sent all the information to Nielsen. You couldn’t lie and you couldn’t cheat, but somehow, the Peoplemeters were giving drastically different information than the diaries were, and most of the changes involved television shows with minority casts. The Peoplemeters were scrapped after testing revealed their flaws, and Nielsen has gone back to the (also flawed) diaries. The bottom line is that the ratings numbers aren’t right. They’re not only susceptible to fibbing viewers and bad counting, but samples are only measured for home viewing. Plenty of televisions are watched in airports, bars and restaurants, and those viewers aren’t accounted for. And what about all the rest of the ways we watch television programs, like on DVD or the Internet? Can they affect a show’s fate? Why, yes, they can … at least sometimes.
The animated comedy show “Family Guy” proved that networks are paying attention to the DVDs we buy. “Family Guy” was cancelled twice, in 2000 and 2002, but DVD sales figures and high syndication ratings convinced the FOX network to bring it back in 2005. According to USA Today, this was the first time a show was reinstated after cancellation due to DVD popularity. So, at least the networks are paying attention to what we buy, but how about what we rent? Or what we download? The simple answer is that they aren’t. As evidenced by the fact that “Studio 60” was the No. 1 “timeshifted” (that means TiVo-ed) program of 2006, but was still cancelled. The answer is simple: you can skip the commercials on TiVo, so it doesn’t matter to advertisers if the viewers are counted. Why pay for advertising on a show most people don’t watch ads on?
Some networks are capitalizing on the “timeshifting” idea and profiting by showing streaming video of shows on their Web sites and charging for advertising there. For example, you can watch the season finale of “Studio 60” on NBC.com, brought to you by the T-Mobile Sidekick. The episode is split into five short streaming video segments, each preceded by a commercial for T-Mobile. According to a recent article in TV Week, total advertising revenue for streaming video like this should hit $1.31 billion this year. It’s clear that advertisers know who’s watching, or they wouldn’t be paying more than a billion dollars for advertising on streaming video. The networks are counting too. NBC announced that it had delivered more than 300 million streams this season alone. It still isn’t enough to save some shows. Shows with steep production costs (like “Studio 60,” or another NBC hit “ER”) have to make up their costs in ad revenue, and sometimes they just can’t. Spending $40 on a DVD box set is one thing, but paying $1.99 to download a single missed episode from iTunes just won’t add up the same way. And there are no profits at all for illegally-downloaded episodes. Even though you can build a strong and dedicated fan base that way, to the networks, it’s just more lost revenue.
The good news is that, according to Nielsen, new methods are being developed to measure what is being watched on portable media devices like iPods and cell phones. This is called “placeshifting,” Nielsen plans to study ways to accurately track not just what people are downloading to watch on these devices, but actually what they are watching. One of the many potential problems here, which would affect more than just one show, is there’s no accidental viewing. For instance, when you’re watching a television show on television, there’s a chance you can accidentally happen upon another show (the show before or after what you’re watching, or on a nearby channel). You might find your new favorite show this way, or at least something else to watch. With downloading, however, you only download the shows you want, so there’s less of a chance you’ll ever try anything new. Which only adds to the possibility of new shows being cancelled from low ratings, because people won’t download them on a whim. Of course, there are many more potential problems, and I’m sure the Nielsen researchers will try to overcome them, but it just might not be enough.
Of course, there are still the old-fashioned ways of trying to protect your favorite show from cancellation: letter-writing campaigns and petitions, but they aren’t working anymore. Letters and petitions aren’t dollars, and when there are so many media competing for our eyes and ears, money is the only thing that talks. In the 50s, the original Nielsen company didn’t have to deal with cable television options, satellite radio or the Internet stealing away their television viewers. Even show quality doesn’t necessarily matter. “Studio 60” was just nominated for five Emmy awards (in casting, directing, cinematography, and two for guest actors), but even that won’t save it from cancellation. Sadly, shows that aren’t winning Emmy awards are consistently rated at the top. For 2006, the top three most-watched shows were Tuesday and Wednesday’s “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars.” It seems like quality is being sacrificed left and right for high viewership numbers, and it’s all about the money. Being a Nielsen test subject and watching the show is the only way to make a difference, Just like always, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Hard reading
Today, I read a pretty difficult essay. Partially it was difficult because the book it’s in uses 8-point type, and no pictures or graphs. My new-media-spoiled brain craves interactivity and visuals. Or maybe I’m just lazy.
The first, McKenzie Wark’s “The Weird Global Media Event and the Tactical Intellectual,” is complicated. It’s about the strange paradoxes in the concept of “Global Media” and “Global Media Events.” Wark uses the events of Sept. 11, 2001 to illustrate most of her points. These events were global media events, and how they’ve played out in the media (and are still playing out). A few of her most interesting points are:
Wark writes “It proves remarkably difficult to think back from one’s experience to the causes of the event itself.” She explains that even in The New Yorker magazine, where some of the “most distinguished writers in town” were charged with recording their experiences produced “banal” results. The writers, including “stars” like Jonathan Franzen and Adam Gopnik provide “richly detailed versions of their whereabouts on the day, connected to nothing but trivial remarks about the more abstract forces at work.”
Is this paradox a product of the technosphere’s influence? We have the capability to be more connected to more people and more information than ever before, yet, when “Global Media Events” happen, we stake a claim on our individuality by writing about where we were and what we were doing when we found out. This makes me think of something Chuck Klosterman wrote. In his book “Killing Yourself to Live,” he writes "When people want to go into detail about what they were doing on 9/11] "You have to listen, because that person is actually trying to show you that they can talk about life without the safety of ironic distance. September 11 is one issue every American can be completely earnest and unguarded about." When I read this for the first time, in 2005, I was thinking about it in context. It’s in a chapter about a Radiohead record, I think. But now I wonder if there’s some technological voodoo at work here. This sort of relates to what I think is Wark’s second interesting point:
Theydom and Wedom. This comes from John Hartley, and Slavoj Zizek and Edward Said. The “they” in Theydom is the other. “They” are not like “us.” Zizek explains that we don’t like “them” because “they” either want “to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of life) and/or has access to some secret, perverse enjoyment.” But now “Theydom” and “Wedom” has started a war. Isn’t this also opposed to the “Global Village” mindset? If we can contact these people and access information about them from the comfort of our laptop computers, does that make us more or less likely to blow them up? Wark says it like this, “The frightening paradox of September 11 is how this attack on actual human lives in New York and Afghanistan is at the same time merely an attack on abstract signifiers of Wedom and Theydom. This is an interesting, albeit scary, point.
I guess both of these points kind of make an argument for the futility of the “Global Village” nomenclature. Things, at least things like this, haven’t really changed. We aren’t really a village at all.
Tomorrow, hopefully, I’m going to read another hard essay, “Imperceptible Perceptions in Our Technological Modernity” by Arvind Rajagopal.
In other news, over the weekend I watched all three “Back to the Future” movies. In the fictitious 2015, there were fax machines and hoverboards and videophones and flying cars and “Jaws 19,” but there wasn’t an Internet. I don’t know if I would have even noticed that if I hadn’t been working on this course.
The first, McKenzie Wark’s “The Weird Global Media Event and the Tactical Intellectual,” is complicated. It’s about the strange paradoxes in the concept of “Global Media” and “Global Media Events.” Wark uses the events of Sept. 11, 2001 to illustrate most of her points. These events were global media events, and how they’ve played out in the media (and are still playing out). A few of her most interesting points are:
Wark writes “It proves remarkably difficult to think back from one’s experience to the causes of the event itself.” She explains that even in The New Yorker magazine, where some of the “most distinguished writers in town” were charged with recording their experiences produced “banal” results. The writers, including “stars” like Jonathan Franzen and Adam Gopnik provide “richly detailed versions of their whereabouts on the day, connected to nothing but trivial remarks about the more abstract forces at work.”
Is this paradox a product of the technosphere’s influence? We have the capability to be more connected to more people and more information than ever before, yet, when “Global Media Events” happen, we stake a claim on our individuality by writing about where we were and what we were doing when we found out. This makes me think of something Chuck Klosterman wrote. In his book “Killing Yourself to Live,” he writes "When people want to go into detail about what they were doing on 9/11] "You have to listen, because that person is actually trying to show you that they can talk about life without the safety of ironic distance. September 11 is one issue every American can be completely earnest and unguarded about." When I read this for the first time, in 2005, I was thinking about it in context. It’s in a chapter about a Radiohead record, I think. But now I wonder if there’s some technological voodoo at work here. This sort of relates to what I think is Wark’s second interesting point:
Theydom and Wedom. This comes from John Hartley, and Slavoj Zizek and Edward Said. The “they” in Theydom is the other. “They” are not like “us.” Zizek explains that we don’t like “them” because “they” either want “to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of life) and/or has access to some secret, perverse enjoyment.” But now “Theydom” and “Wedom” has started a war. Isn’t this also opposed to the “Global Village” mindset? If we can contact these people and access information about them from the comfort of our laptop computers, does that make us more or less likely to blow them up? Wark says it like this, “The frightening paradox of September 11 is how this attack on actual human lives in New York and Afghanistan is at the same time merely an attack on abstract signifiers of Wedom and Theydom. This is an interesting, albeit scary, point.
I guess both of these points kind of make an argument for the futility of the “Global Village” nomenclature. Things, at least things like this, haven’t really changed. We aren’t really a village at all.
Tomorrow, hopefully, I’m going to read another hard essay, “Imperceptible Perceptions in Our Technological Modernity” by Arvind Rajagopal.
In other news, over the weekend I watched all three “Back to the Future” movies. In the fictitious 2015, there were fax machines and hoverboards and videophones and flying cars and “Jaws 19,” but there wasn’t an Internet. I don’t know if I would have even noticed that if I hadn’t been working on this course.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Social Networking essay - Revised
Our Networks, Ourselves
Two years ago, a student I work with told me something terrifying. A recruiter at a job fair had told her she’d never get a job without a MySpace page. She wanted to know how I got a job without a MySpace page. I told her the truth: connections. I knew the person that hired me. I’d worked with him before.
“So, you networked,” she said.
“Um… yeah, I guess.”
She explained that this is what MySpace was for: networking, meeting people and getting jobs. I guess I didn’t get it then, and I still don’t. I don’t get the “networking” value of social networking sites. Social networking sites have given me something valuable: a replacement for my outdated address book, where the entries update themselves and I can always find who I’m looking for. They haven’t connected me with my dream job, or my future soul mate, or even any new friends, so why are they such a big deal?
People with titles like “ethnographic sociological researcher” are trying their best to figure it out, but most of us are out of the loop and behind the times. For example, Danah Boyd just published an essay on class issues in social networking Web sites. In her essay, she gives the history, and shows how it set up the class struggle. In 2003-2004, MySpace went from being a 20-30-something site to a teen site that helped bands promote themselves. In 2004, Facebook started at Harvard University. She doesn’t really touch on the why though. Why are Facebook and MySpace so popular? Before them, Friendster and other social networking sites could show you who you knew, and who they know so you can connect with new people (that’s what networking is, right?). But MySpace and Facebook took off because they had plenty of space for the users to talk about themselves. The theory is that you can list your favorite hobbies, or movies, or books on your profile and make friends with people with the same interests. It doesn’t work that way in practice though. Most people just write about themselves. These sites are called “Social Networking Sites,” but very little social networking really goes around. I can list my friends and you can list yours, and if we have friends in common, it will tell us.
But how is that really changing anything? Are we meeting new people? Are we finding people with similar interests? We can find them, but then we aren’t really making the effort to get to know them. And aren’t these things we could do before the Internet? Meeting people is pretty much the same. You have to make the effort. But now, we can make the effort in a passive way, and a much more creative way. We aren’t exactly tied to the physical and “real-life” attributes of ourselves, and can craft a persona better equipped to “social network” on the Internet.
I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but I’m not exactly the same person on the Internet that I am in real life. It’s not like I’m really a middle-aged man from Indiana in real life, but I’m less polished in person than I am on the Web. I’m sure everyone fibs a little bit, even those who say they aren’t fibbing. The Internet affords one luxury of communication you don’t have in person: time. I have time to cleverly concoct and assemble my lists of likes and dislikes for my social networking profile. It’s like writing your résumé, only it’s not to compete for a job, it’s to compete in the hierarchy of hip. You get to work on it for months, but your interview might only last 10 minutes. Even though I’m not any smarter, I can sound smarter on the Internet.
But it’s not all for the better. If people were trying to network with me based on my interests, though, they might be out of luck. Sure, my Facebook profile may list my favorite movie, but you know what? I lied. My favorite movie is “Caddyshack”; the profile says it’s “The Royal Tenenbaums.” “Tenenbaums” is one of my favorite movies, so it’s not an entire untruth, but it changes my entire online persona. Stoned frat boys like “Caddyshack,” but cool people like “Tenenbaums.” Did I do this consciously? Kind of. I thought of the movie that would give me something in common with the people I know. I didn’t pick the movie because it would help me get a job, or help me meet new people. I didn’t pick the movie that would help me “network.” I picked the movie that would prove I already knew the people I was supposed to know. And I picked the movie that would make me look cool.
But was it the Internet that influenced the decision to fib? Kind of. If I was at a dinner party with my hip, educated friends, I probably wouldn’t admit to be the type of philistine that enjoyed the story of golfers and an overzealous gopher. At a sports bar with my college-football-watching friends, I wouldn’t admit to being the hip poseur that likes “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Everybody fibs. Everybody bends the truth to their advantage, whether it’s in your job interview or your résumé or your MySpace. On your résumé though, it’s to get a better job, on your social networking profile, it’s just to be cool. It’s like that saying; On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re not cool. On the Internet, you can cover up all your insecurities. In Boyd’s research, she found that popularity of these sites peaked with teenagers. Isn’t this when you’re feeling the most insecure about yourself? Isn’t it nice to be able to go on the Web and make yourself cool?
And that’s the draw. That’s the attraction. You can talk endlessly about yourself, and make yourself so cool. And that’s also exactly why these sites aren’t promoting networking — social or employment or otherwise. People are all too busy making themselves look cool, and showing their intelligent and fascinating interests and hobbies, great photos of themselves where they look thin and pretty, and listing how many friends they have. The features that made MySpace and Facebook popular (photo sharing, detailed personal profile pages, etc.) are the exact things that are preventing people from meeting anybody new, from actually “networking.”
So really, the social networking site is the new Narcissus’ pond. I see how it can be so addictive to some people like plastic surgery and makeup and fashion are addictive. It’s just not for me, I guess. I’m content to wait it out, and meet people the old-fashioned way, network the old-fashioned way and even get a job the old-fashioned way. For everyone’s sake, let’s try not to drown ourselves.
Two years ago, a student I work with told me something terrifying. A recruiter at a job fair had told her she’d never get a job without a MySpace page. She wanted to know how I got a job without a MySpace page. I told her the truth: connections. I knew the person that hired me. I’d worked with him before.
“So, you networked,” she said.
“Um… yeah, I guess.”
She explained that this is what MySpace was for: networking, meeting people and getting jobs. I guess I didn’t get it then, and I still don’t. I don’t get the “networking” value of social networking sites. Social networking sites have given me something valuable: a replacement for my outdated address book, where the entries update themselves and I can always find who I’m looking for. They haven’t connected me with my dream job, or my future soul mate, or even any new friends, so why are they such a big deal?
People with titles like “ethnographic sociological researcher” are trying their best to figure it out, but most of us are out of the loop and behind the times. For example, Danah Boyd just published an essay on class issues in social networking Web sites. In her essay, she gives the history, and shows how it set up the class struggle. In 2003-2004, MySpace went from being a 20-30-something site to a teen site that helped bands promote themselves. In 2004, Facebook started at Harvard University. She doesn’t really touch on the why though. Why are Facebook and MySpace so popular? Before them, Friendster and other social networking sites could show you who you knew, and who they know so you can connect with new people (that’s what networking is, right?). But MySpace and Facebook took off because they had plenty of space for the users to talk about themselves. The theory is that you can list your favorite hobbies, or movies, or books on your profile and make friends with people with the same interests. It doesn’t work that way in practice though. Most people just write about themselves. These sites are called “Social Networking Sites,” but very little social networking really goes around. I can list my friends and you can list yours, and if we have friends in common, it will tell us.
But how is that really changing anything? Are we meeting new people? Are we finding people with similar interests? We can find them, but then we aren’t really making the effort to get to know them. And aren’t these things we could do before the Internet? Meeting people is pretty much the same. You have to make the effort. But now, we can make the effort in a passive way, and a much more creative way. We aren’t exactly tied to the physical and “real-life” attributes of ourselves, and can craft a persona better equipped to “social network” on the Internet.
I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but I’m not exactly the same person on the Internet that I am in real life. It’s not like I’m really a middle-aged man from Indiana in real life, but I’m less polished in person than I am on the Web. I’m sure everyone fibs a little bit, even those who say they aren’t fibbing. The Internet affords one luxury of communication you don’t have in person: time. I have time to cleverly concoct and assemble my lists of likes and dislikes for my social networking profile. It’s like writing your résumé, only it’s not to compete for a job, it’s to compete in the hierarchy of hip. You get to work on it for months, but your interview might only last 10 minutes. Even though I’m not any smarter, I can sound smarter on the Internet.
But it’s not all for the better. If people were trying to network with me based on my interests, though, they might be out of luck. Sure, my Facebook profile may list my favorite movie, but you know what? I lied. My favorite movie is “Caddyshack”; the profile says it’s “The Royal Tenenbaums.” “Tenenbaums” is one of my favorite movies, so it’s not an entire untruth, but it changes my entire online persona. Stoned frat boys like “Caddyshack,” but cool people like “Tenenbaums.” Did I do this consciously? Kind of. I thought of the movie that would give me something in common with the people I know. I didn’t pick the movie because it would help me get a job, or help me meet new people. I didn’t pick the movie that would help me “network.” I picked the movie that would prove I already knew the people I was supposed to know. And I picked the movie that would make me look cool.
But was it the Internet that influenced the decision to fib? Kind of. If I was at a dinner party with my hip, educated friends, I probably wouldn’t admit to be the type of philistine that enjoyed the story of golfers and an overzealous gopher. At a sports bar with my college-football-watching friends, I wouldn’t admit to being the hip poseur that likes “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Everybody fibs. Everybody bends the truth to their advantage, whether it’s in your job interview or your résumé or your MySpace. On your résumé though, it’s to get a better job, on your social networking profile, it’s just to be cool. It’s like that saying; On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re not cool. On the Internet, you can cover up all your insecurities. In Boyd’s research, she found that popularity of these sites peaked with teenagers. Isn’t this when you’re feeling the most insecure about yourself? Isn’t it nice to be able to go on the Web and make yourself cool?
And that’s the draw. That’s the attraction. You can talk endlessly about yourself, and make yourself so cool. And that’s also exactly why these sites aren’t promoting networking — social or employment or otherwise. People are all too busy making themselves look cool, and showing their intelligent and fascinating interests and hobbies, great photos of themselves where they look thin and pretty, and listing how many friends they have. The features that made MySpace and Facebook popular (photo sharing, detailed personal profile pages, etc.) are the exact things that are preventing people from meeting anybody new, from actually “networking.”
So really, the social networking site is the new Narcissus’ pond. I see how it can be so addictive to some people like plastic surgery and makeup and fashion are addictive. It’s just not for me, I guess. I’m content to wait it out, and meet people the old-fashioned way, network the old-fashioned way and even get a job the old-fashioned way. For everyone’s sake, let’s try not to drown ourselves.
Web Politics
I think I get an email a day from Barack Obama, or his people, or his e-mail minion David Plouffe (when you Google search Mr. Plouffe you get the phrase "one of the most experienced and successful strategists in the Democratic party." Apparently, his strategy now is to e-mail me all the time and blog. Mr. Plouffe's blog is just one of the many ways politicians are trying to use the web to attract young, democratic voters. Good luck to them, because it didn't really work last time. I just re-read Stephen Elliott's book "Looking Forward To It," a Hunter-S.-Thompson-esque romp through the 2004 democratic primaries. It includes such salacious tales as being on a bus with Howard Dean and eating buffets with second-rate media correspondents. Its point, however, is that no matter what weird, wacky things you do, you will not win an election on new voters. Period.
It isn't stopping the candidates from trying though. Yesterday, the kind-of-political (and well-named) site BarelyPolitical.com (possibly not safe to open at work) crashed due to traffic for the "Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl" video. Their clothes stay on, and they sing-debate. Of course, it's also on YouTube.
Since I started typing this entry (a whole six minutes ago) I've been trying to think of a word to describe YouTube. It's weird. Where else can you go to watch :30 second clips of dogs on skateboards and teenage girls talking? (Well, I guess you could go to Google Videos.) But, right now on YouTube, you can watch a lot of videos about politics. You can watch more than 26,700 by searching for "Obama." And next Monday, you can watch a debate. Specifically, the CNN-YouTube debate coming to you live from Charleston, S.C. And there's CitizenTube, the YouTube political vlog.
Here's the issue Elliott proved in his book. Yes, you can draw potential voters in with your snazzy bells and whistles aimed at them. You can get them to donate money. You can get them to buy a t-shirt with your candidate's face on it. But in this bells-and-whistles society, that doesn't always translate into getting them to actually drive to some weird municipal building with total strangers and actually vote for you. Maybe this election will be different. Maybe this will be the turning point. The presidential elections are only 219 years old, which is practical infantcy as far as governments go, so maybe we can enter our rebellious teenage years and people 18-24 will actually vote.
The "Obama Girl" video has more than 2 million views on YouTube. In South Carolina, where this CNN-YouTube debate will be held, there are about 2.5 million registered voters, and only 45% of them voted in the last election. Does this mean viewership of the "Obama Girl" video could sway the electoral votes of a whole state? By the numbers, sure, but in practice, probably not. Definitely not. No way. In the 2004 election, 64% of eligible voters nationwide voted (way to bring down the average, S.C.). While I'm sure getting the other 36% to vote for you in the next election would definitely sway things your way, getting the 64% of people that actually have a proven track record of voting might be a better gamble.
So who has a proven track record of voting? Old people. Citizens age 65 and up have a 79% turnout rate! People 45 and up have a 70% turnout rate. Your voter turnout rate also increases the more education you have. Of course, you also have to consider who old, overeducated people vote for: republicans.
While I guess bombarding YouTube and e-mail boxes and other hip new media with your candidate can't hurt you, time will tell if it can actually help you.
It isn't stopping the candidates from trying though. Yesterday, the kind-of-political (and well-named) site BarelyPolitical.com (possibly not safe to open at work) crashed due to traffic for the "Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl" video. Their clothes stay on, and they sing-debate. Of course, it's also on YouTube.
Since I started typing this entry (a whole six minutes ago) I've been trying to think of a word to describe YouTube. It's weird. Where else can you go to watch :30 second clips of dogs on skateboards and teenage girls talking? (Well, I guess you could go to Google Videos.) But, right now on YouTube, you can watch a lot of videos about politics. You can watch more than 26,700 by searching for "Obama." And next Monday, you can watch a debate. Specifically, the CNN-YouTube debate coming to you live from Charleston, S.C. And there's CitizenTube, the YouTube political vlog.
Here's the issue Elliott proved in his book. Yes, you can draw potential voters in with your snazzy bells and whistles aimed at them. You can get them to donate money. You can get them to buy a t-shirt with your candidate's face on it. But in this bells-and-whistles society, that doesn't always translate into getting them to actually drive to some weird municipal building with total strangers and actually vote for you. Maybe this election will be different. Maybe this will be the turning point. The presidential elections are only 219 years old, which is practical infantcy as far as governments go, so maybe we can enter our rebellious teenage years and people 18-24 will actually vote.
The "Obama Girl" video has more than 2 million views on YouTube. In South Carolina, where this CNN-YouTube debate will be held, there are about 2.5 million registered voters, and only 45% of them voted in the last election. Does this mean viewership of the "Obama Girl" video could sway the electoral votes of a whole state? By the numbers, sure, but in practice, probably not. Definitely not. No way. In the 2004 election, 64% of eligible voters nationwide voted (way to bring down the average, S.C.). While I'm sure getting the other 36% to vote for you in the next election would definitely sway things your way, getting the 64% of people that actually have a proven track record of voting might be a better gamble.
So who has a proven track record of voting? Old people. Citizens age 65 and up have a 79% turnout rate! People 45 and up have a 70% turnout rate. Your voter turnout rate also increases the more education you have. Of course, you also have to consider who old, overeducated people vote for: republicans.
While I guess bombarding YouTube and e-mail boxes and other hip new media with your candidate can't hurt you, time will tell if it can actually help you.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Keen on it
I found Andrew Keen's book and put a library hold on it. Hopefully I'll get it this week and have some interesting responses next week!
Harry Potter and the e-book pirates
Let me preface this by saying I've never read any of the Harry Potter books. Not because I'm a philistine or a snob, but becuase I don't read much fiction, barely any fantasy fiction, and haven't read a book about children since I was a child. It just doesn't interest me. It's not because I'm heartless.
Anyway, the sixth Harry Potter book comes out on Saturday. And, like many media products with devoted fan bases, will have many 12:01 a.m. releases around the country. But it's too late. The thing's online already. And the publisher spent about $20 million to keep it secret. Money well spent? Hmmm.
So what happened? Well, someone got a hold of it, took a photo of every page and uploaded it on a bit torrent page. Then someone else scanned it in, put it through some optical character recognition software, proofread and then put it up. Who are these people? It's simple. They're fans. And mostly, the same dedicated fans who will line up Friday night at bookstores around the country to fight for their right to take home the book and stay up all night reading it. How come the publisher didn't decide, hey, maybe this is the time to release an official e-book? How come e-books aren't nearly as popular as downloading music? I think the answer is human conditioning on intake methods.
I was born in 1981. I grew up watching television on a television, watching movies in a movie theater (or on Betamax at my rich friends' houses), listening to music on the radio or on a cassette deck or record player, and reading books, you know, out of actual books. After 25 years, really only one of these methods has changed drastically, and another has changed mildly. First, I still watch movies in movie theaters, but a DVD player has eclipsed the Betamax. And second, I listen to music on my computer mostly, but sometimes still on a record player. Most importantly, I still read actual paper-and-ink books.
Partially, I think, it's because I have easily-tired eyes, and reading on a computer screen for long periods of time makes me sleepy. Second, maybe, it's because I sit at a computer for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week and when I get home, I just don't want to sit at a computer anymore. But overall, it's conditioning. I learned to read books. If I were to read the Harry Potter book, I'd be buying it in a bookstore (or on Powells.com). But I guess, if I were desperate to read it, I might download it, print it out and read the pages that way. I feel like an official e-book could have made the Harry Potter publishers a lot of money, could have alleviated the leaking problem and could have said to fans "We appreciate you," instead of saying "We don't trust you."
News coverage of this event: LA Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com.
Anyway, the sixth Harry Potter book comes out on Saturday. And, like many media products with devoted fan bases, will have many 12:01 a.m. releases around the country. But it's too late. The thing's online already. And the publisher spent about $20 million to keep it secret. Money well spent? Hmmm.
So what happened? Well, someone got a hold of it, took a photo of every page and uploaded it on a bit torrent page. Then someone else scanned it in, put it through some optical character recognition software, proofread and then put it up. Who are these people? It's simple. They're fans. And mostly, the same dedicated fans who will line up Friday night at bookstores around the country to fight for their right to take home the book and stay up all night reading it. How come the publisher didn't decide, hey, maybe this is the time to release an official e-book? How come e-books aren't nearly as popular as downloading music? I think the answer is human conditioning on intake methods.
I was born in 1981. I grew up watching television on a television, watching movies in a movie theater (or on Betamax at my rich friends' houses), listening to music on the radio or on a cassette deck or record player, and reading books, you know, out of actual books. After 25 years, really only one of these methods has changed drastically, and another has changed mildly. First, I still watch movies in movie theaters, but a DVD player has eclipsed the Betamax. And second, I listen to music on my computer mostly, but sometimes still on a record player. Most importantly, I still read actual paper-and-ink books.
Partially, I think, it's because I have easily-tired eyes, and reading on a computer screen for long periods of time makes me sleepy. Second, maybe, it's because I sit at a computer for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week and when I get home, I just don't want to sit at a computer anymore. But overall, it's conditioning. I learned to read books. If I were to read the Harry Potter book, I'd be buying it in a bookstore (or on Powells.com). But I guess, if I were desperate to read it, I might download it, print it out and read the pages that way. I feel like an official e-book could have made the Harry Potter publishers a lot of money, could have alleviated the leaking problem and could have said to fans "We appreciate you," instead of saying "We don't trust you."
News coverage of this event: LA Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com.
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