12.14.06
Posted in News, Internet at 11:42 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: Sapping the will of the populace
So, I found out that the FTC is probably going to start requiring “viral” marketers to identify themselves as such. That’s good news, because such marketing (I like to call it guerilla marketing) has been eroding trust in opinions for too long already. I read a book by Paco Underhill a few years ago called Why We Buy that alerted me to the practice. In an example cited by Underhill, kids as young as twelve years old were being paid to promote toys to their friends. They weren’t paid in money but rather in things like free toys, backpacks, and sports equipment. When twelve year olds can’t even trust their friends to give them an honest opinion, the world has truly gone mad.
I bring this up because I’ve noticed the practice happening increasingly across the internet. Sony hired the scum of the earth, Zipatoni, to try to prop up the PSP. Zipatoni promptly created a blog purpoting to be run by people who desperately wanted a PSP for Christmas. The blog is gone now, vanished in a haze of gamer-induced shame, or I’d link to it and show you what a disgusting attempt to mimic real, personal writing it is. I’m glad gamers are still outraged about being cynically manipulated.
Word of mouth is the most powerful force in the consumer market today. People, being constantly bombarded by billboards, radio spots, Flash banners, and TV commercials, are tuning more and more of them out. We still trust the opinions of our friends and family though. I didn’t really want an iPod until my brother bought one and I saw how cool it really was. You can’t buy that kind of publicity. Well, not until recently.
With the advent of TiVo, podcasts, and various other technologies that allow you to skip or miss ads entirely, companies are getting desperate to manipulate people into buying their products through emotional attachment rather than an actual, reasoned decision. They’re creating and purchasing what used to be the consumer’s reward to good companies: great word-of-mouth. That’s why I don’t read customer reviews very often. They’re seeded by paid advertisers. The same goes for message boards, blog comments, and a lot of other things that used to belong to the public-at-large. These people disgust me - everything advertisers touch turns to dust. Once the web has become another ad-covered hell, where will we run next?
There’s another good example of this in Arrested Development, but liquor companies have been using this tactic since the 1930s when Smirnoff broke vodka to America: Lindsay is paid to sit in a bar, drink a new liquor and comment about how much she likes it. It’s hilarious: “This is so good, I hardly have any judgment left at all.” These sort of seeds are used all over the place today, but their roots go back a long way.
Advertising at the beginning of the 20th century was primarily informative: ads were viewed as a dialog, a way to convince your consumer that your product’s quality, features, etc. were better for them than the competitors. This sort of ad lives on today mostly in sales of expensive equipment to customers. Medical equipment advertising, for example, is primarily fact-based: “Our MRI machine has twice as many channels.” The more an item costs (with glaring exceptions like automobiles), the less likely viral, emotional advertising is to work.
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12.13.06
Posted in Personal at 10:50 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: Melt Away, Fall Away
It’s that schizophrenic early-winter time here in the midwest, where there will be blizzards and car crashes and gloom followed by weeks of spring-like calm and warmth. It’s unsettling weather, and every year I feel that I am living in a strange place, no matter how many winters like this pass.
Of course, the whole world frequently strikes me as a strange place. Sometimes it seems strange and wondrous, especially when I am learning something amazing like the fact that turtles do not age like other animals. More often, the world seems strange and cruel.
The increase in impersonal communication in my life has probably had a lot to do with this. The more newspapers I read, television I watch, websites I visit, the more depressed I get. We start wars without good reason, we fail to protect people from the predations of the greedy and powerful. We grow stupid and slack. I get angry, and that anger turns into depression and malaise.
I can’t decide whether cutting back my intake of world news would be helpful. It would be good for me personally, but it also seems like an abdication of responsibility. I’d be happier, but I’d be ignorant, and the happiness of ignorance is complacent and delusional. Not knowing about tragedies doesn’t stop them from happening, and I live in a world of great and terrible powers, powers that have no care for our survival.
While ignorant happiness may be delusional, it’s hard to stay sane for long.
The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. -Milton
We have a tremendous capacity for self-deception, for acclimating to whatever surrounds us and surviving as best as we can. I catch myself doing this, making do, being satisfied, but I don’t believe that the current state of affairs is something to be satisfied about.
Right now I’m terrified that I’ll go through life striving, saving, hearing that happiness will be right around the corner, trying to create good things but funding my own disaffection every time I buy dinner. Either that, or I’ll forget being motivated to do something and live mechanically until I die. How hard to find a balance, somewhere that I can be happy but not complacent.
Aren’t you gonna come along, aren’t you going to fight?
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Posted in Personal, Internet at 9:01 am by Joe Blubaugh
Because of a discussion on another web site regarding not making a fool of oneself online, I decided that it would be wise to Google myself. Unfortunately, I am not the #1 Joe Blubaugh on the web. The title goes to one Joe Blubaugh, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. He’s in a bunch of newspapers, but none of those pages have outpaced me. His ‘quotes’ page at ThinkExist.com is beating me, though. Some highlights:
To get more support, we have projects that hit close to home, so residents can get excited about it. The scope of the project is to increase the capacity and safety (of the road).
There are some things that could be changed, but at this point it’s too early to tell.
Imagine me saying those with a hard hat and a tie on, and I think you’ll get the gist of it.
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12.12.06
Posted in Internet at 10:47 am by Joe Blubaugh
Bookmark Corduroy Orange if you have any interest at all in cooking or food. It’s like an encyclopedia of great cooking/kitchen tips. Just do it. For example, check out his knife skills section. Some of these things I knew - but there’s a wealth of information that I wasn’t even aware of. I’ve been holding my knives all wrong!
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12.07.06
Posted in Personal at 5:36 pm by Joe Blubaugh
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12.05.06
Posted in News at 10:46 am by Joe Blubaugh
Or: The Media belongs to Washington, Washington belongs to the Media
A must read piece from Theresa Niels-Hayden called “Why I Blog” that is filled with examples of why large media outlets cannot be trusted by anyone in this country. The first several examples show that the media tells you what they want you to know, so you will make the decisions they want you to make. Some are ‘liberal’ decisions and some are ‘conservative’ decisions.
Americans used to be fairly informed while doing fairly little. News services were trustworthy, so reading the paper or watching the evening news was enough. To be equally informed now requires significantly more effort. Multiple stories need to be heard on the same subject from a variety of sources. Consequently, we’re less informed and more manipulated. Managing media perception is a huge part of any politician’s job, and it makes sense, because the media makes kings as it wishes. It’s no longer a conduit of information, but rather an advocacy group of its own.
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12.04.06
Posted in Personal at 7:53 pm by Joe Blubaugh
So check out what my roommate built: The Bar. It will be in our house in Lafayette this spring. Expect some truly sophisticated and awesome get-togethers!
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Posted in News at 7:39 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Or: Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Soldiers
I have four friends, two uncles, and a cousin who are planning to serve or have served in the military. I know at least a score of people who have joined the military in some capacity. Consequently, this report infuriated me. I recommend that you listen to the audio report in addition to reading, as it contains more information. An investigation of mental health practices at Fort Collins, CO seems to indicate that the Army harasses and dishonorably discharges soldiers with mental health problems, especially PTSD. Support the troops, indeed.
I know that being in the military is one of our sacred cows of altruistic self-sacrifice. I have a great deal of respect for people who will lay down their lives for the benefit of other people. I couldn’t counsel anyone to join the military these days, though. The most likely path for enlistment to take seems to be rapid and repeated deployment to dangerous zones where even the civilians frequently despise you. Soldiers today are deployed more frequently than they were in World War II or Vietnam, and many of them return with stress disorders. Since it’s pretty apparent that the Army doesn’t support its troops with PTSD, the odds that you’ll be dishonorably discharged with little to no benefits seem far too high. It’s tragic that soldiers die in service. It’s a crime that the institution that risks their lives turns around and spits on them if they get a bit messed up in a war zone.
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Posted in Personal at 10:04 am by Joe Blubaugh
The only way they seem to be able to ‘protect’ me from malware is to add more confirmation dialogs.
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12.03.06
Posted in Photo at 11:51 pm by Joe Blubaugh
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