Red Rooster

Because I wasn’t getting anything truly meaningful done today…

I’ve been doing the whole “online” thing for the past 12 years. Half of my lifetime and counting further. I’ve been involved in a variety of scenes and activities. Several have threatened to eat me alive, and some came pretty close to wrecking my life. However, this is a wholly negative outlook on things, because I wouldn’t be who I am today without the Internet. Or, more specifically, spending any kind of time on the Internet continues to be a big mistake from which I keep learning the avoidable ways of wasting time.

Computers are a remarkable tool for information storage and retrieval. They are also quite complicated and fucked up to the extent that anyone who does anything creative with a computer at this point is generally wasting time or making a speculative wager.

Which brings us to blogging.

Without knowing it, I’ve been on the blog scene for about seven years. I started early in college and have proceeded to be well connected over the years. I know about hot shit before it becomes played out, which is somehow a big deal to me. Hell, I knew about blogs themselves before blogs were hot shit for becoming the underground source for hot shit… and also before blogs started recently becoming played out altogether. Over that time, I’ve been exposed to so much whining, blabbering, and drooling that it’s become a permanent part of my daily articulation.

Today’s versions of blogs are more addictive than they have ever been before. Yes, I am New York City obsessed, but generally for any topic on the planet, you can do a Google search and end up at some journal-ish site that links you to the entire blogosphere rather quickly. Unless you purposely isolate yourself from the blogosphere (which is akin to trying to avoid spam on your AOL account, or trying to hold your breath in outer space), you will be invariably cross-tied to some other site, which will be cross-tied to other sites, and so on until you reach Gawker, Slashdot, Fark, Ain’t It Cool News, or DrudgeReport. The biggest blog sites are increasingly tied into everything big and small in the world, all without truly existing in the world.

I bet you that someone can take down a million-hit-per-day independent site and it would truly affect no one except those mentally-ill enough to have linked their self-identity with that site. There will always be another site with the latest episode of Red Vs. Blue, you could always get headlines straight from Yahoo! News or Google News, you could always write your own personal memoir of your thoughts rather than post it to a discussion forum to argue it against all the other big hairy shirtless geeks. Regardless, we’ll start hearing about things like “A 28-year-old white male committed suicide in Bryant Park after failing to see either a Homestar Runner cartoon, a column from The Sports Guy Bill Simmons, or an Aaron Karo e-mail over a month’s period.” And we’ll probably read about it on Lockhart Steele and FuckedCompany.

This week’s Time Out New York… yes I did buy it and please don’t judge… has a good article on the information overload that comes with this whole Google/blog/mass-media thing. I think it’s somewhat sobering and illustrative of the false perception of information intake that we possess as a society. Cynically speaking, the Illuminati have done themselves well on this one. Our information overlords have us continually distracted by constant cable TV news zippers, In Style magazine issues the size of phone books, and an estimated 10.3 million blogs this year, of which only 4 may consist of wholly original and noteworthy content. It’s also thoroughly interesting how they keep sacrificing their own to the general public to keep us entranced. Lesser members of the elite corps, certainly, but I don’t know why they’re so desperate to keep us in line. Maybe it’s the oil.

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Regardless of any intent by rich fuckers or happy accidents (if by “happy” we mean “global head-numbing”), they do have people sucked into this thing, and only more are on the way. I’ve urged myself to maintain a clear and focused mind on my life, my hobbies, and my time-management. When I start seeing any non-money-generating activity sucking all of my time away, my initial reaction is to halt it immediately until I figure out its usefulness. I’m defintiely trying to search for my true happiness, but my time is worth money and I don’t have much money. In blogging, I see a semi-useful activity that’s making me desperate for a version of daylight savings that gives me 40 extra hours per week to read all of these things. Meanwhile, I haven’t touched a book in ages, bad cases of MEGO occur for me on a nightly basis, and I still haven’t found completely effective ways to cope with my mind’s focus (as in, my complete lack of it).

But it is useful. I’ve changed my life with the information I’ve gotten off of blogs. I’m a lot less boring now. As I’ve stated here, maybe I can use my familiarity, and my inevitable future information overload, to make something for the world. It would be nice if I could pull a Nick Denton and make money off this shit. That would indeed tie back to what I said earlier about computers, the Internet, and speculative wagers. It’s not a sure thing and would need some acquired skills, but a bet based on an educated guess has a better chance of coming up a winner.

It is not the case that I am unwilling to put my ass on the line for a good idea… rather, the reality is that I have nothing to put on the line. It’s like I’m in the Bellagio with a great blackjack strategy and I’ve got only 75 cents in my pocket. I could have all the brains in the world and, sin el dinero, I’m still as useless as a guard dog with no teeth and no bark.

So the question becomes, how do I work on my bankroll without succumbing to the mental traps of the unenlightened masses - including being an unpaid hipster wannabe blogger? I am honestly unsure how to do this and keep my sanity, but I’m currently bullshitting my way through some job interviews as a start.

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Note: this was originally written and published 04/11/2004 05:39:17 PM

(yeah, holy shit, how did this NOT age except for the FuckedCompany reference?)

 Seems that NowPublic took a break from poaching Flickr photos long enough to assemble a list of… frankly, I don’t know what this list is about. “50 Names We Drew Out Of A Von Dutch Hat” is about the only explanation that makes sense to me.

Let’s do a quick cavity search:  Arianna Huffington is what Dina McGreevey would be if she were friends with Ken Lerer; Noah Brier is a very smart and likeable guy who will be relieved to know he’s not the fifth most influential web person in New York (and lucky to crack #100); Anil Dash realistically fell off this list three years ago; everyone PUH-LEASE stop sucking @garyvee’s dick; Alex Blagg? Another guy who will be relieved to know that he’s not influential (just entertaining); Kottke is rarely seen in public, but he runs a link blog!; is Rex one of our top 50 influencers, or has he been here 50 days already?; followed by a group of people who’s names I’ve only seen on email lists; John Hodgman is influential? He’s a goddamn comedian who stars in an Apple commercial, as THE MOTHERFUCKING PC, squaring off against the guy who was dating Drew Barrymore!;  Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung, like Anil, have not been relevant since 2005; I love how Scott Kidder is almost as influential as Nick Denton himself! (and Denton comes behind Dobkin on the list! What fucking bizarro Internet are they using?); Meghan Asha makes the list but Julia Allison doesn’t?; Allison Mooney makes the list but Mike Hudack doesn’t?; Laurel Touby is another one from the 2005 time machine; Emily Gould is a writer whose presence on the web is incidental and not influential.

Did I leave out any snide observations? Go for it in the comments.

NOWPUBLIC LAUNCHES THE

“MOSTPUBLIC INDEX”

IDENTIFIES THE WEB’S 50 MOST

INFLUENTIAL INDIVIDUALS IN

NEW YORK

                                                                                       

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube Upend Traditional Elites; NowPublic—The World’s Largest Participatory News Network—Measures Whose Voices Are Most Heard

in Today’s Digital World

 

Vancouver, B. C. – July 21, 2008—NowPublic (http://www.nowpublic.com/), the world’s largest participatory news network, today announced the launch of the MostPublic Index, a detailed barometer of the most public news influencers of today’s digital world, illustrating how a new breed of influencer is shaping the media environment and what’s heard by the general population.  Today, news makers and reporters are increasingly indistinguishable.  In fact, a teenage Twitterer may have as powerful a voice as the New York Times editorial board.  Therefore, NowPublic has defined this new type as “news influencer.”  The first MostPublic Index identifies the 50 most influential individuals in New York.

 

“Visibility and connectedness define today’s elite,” said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic.  “Today, there are innumerable new ways for one’s voice to be heard.  The goal of the MostPublic Index is to measure who is currently most effective in broadcasting their own personal brand online, as well as identify emerging players.”

 

“Our ‘MostPublic Index’ is a leading indicator and benchmark of who is really changing the way in which news is being produced and distributed, a core goal of NowPublic and its army of reporters.”

 

NowPublic created a formula to measure influence and “publicness” across four categories, including:

o       Online Visibility

o       Presence on User-Generated Content and Social Networking Sites

o       Interactivity and Accessibility

o       The “R” Factor: Presence on Microblogging Platforms (Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

 

NowPublic measured statistics in each of these categories from Facebook, Flickr, Google, Technorati, YouTube, and various other blogs and sites, to create a list of New York’s leading influencers.  NowPublic then narrowed the list to 50 by analyzing and documenting individuals’ presence and popularity in each of these channels, applying a weighted scoring system, determined by the strength of specific traits held in each online community.   A detailed account of the scoring system can be viewed here: http://www.nowpublic.com/world/most-public-index.

 

Without further ado, NowPublic proudly presents the MostPublic individuals in New York:

 

1.          Fred Wilson

2.          Arianna Huffington

3.          Sarah Austin

4.          Steve Rubel

5.          Noah Brier

6.          Anil Dash

7.          Gary Vaynerchuk

8.          Jeff Jarvis

9.          Liza Sabater

10.     Loren Feldman

11.     Paul Allison

12.     Tamar Weinberg

13.     Alex Blagg

14.     Greg Verdino

15.     Jason Kottke

16.     Rex Sorgatz

17.     Alisa Leonard

18.     Brian Morrissey

19.     Eric Friedman

20.     Jeffrey Zeldman

21.     Natali Del Conte

22.     Tim Shey

23.     Kyle Bunch

24.     Anthony Volodkin

25.     John Hodgman

26.     Nancy Scola

27.     Jay Rosen

28.     Jen Simmons

29.     John Biggs

30.     Jake Dobkin

31.     Caroline McCarthy

32.     Lindsay Robertson

33.     Lockhart Steele

34.     Nick Denton

35.     Scott Kidder

36.     Kelly Reeves

37.     Rachel Sklar

38.     Peter Kafka

39.     Jill Fehrenbacher

40.     Peter Rojas

41.     Robert Lanham

42.     Jen Chung

43.     Meghan Asha

44.     Amy Langfield

45.     Josh Levy

46.     Allison Mooney

47.     Nicholas Carlson

48.     Laurel Touby

49.     Emily Gould

50.     Brian Stelter

 

The entire list can be viewed here: http://www.nowpublic.com/world/most-public-index.

 

The MostPublic Index will issue periodic indexes across a variety of categories, including the MostPublic: American cities; European cities; Asian Cities; Indian Cities; musical influencers; political influencers, pop culture influencers and sports influencers, among others.  The next MostPublic Index will identify the 50 most public individuals in Silicon Valley.

 

About NowPublic

NowPublic is a crowd-sourced, participatory news network that mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world.  In its short history, the company has become the largest news organization of its kind with contributing reporters in more than 5,500 cities and 160 countries.  The Guardian has named NowPublic one of the top five most useful news sites on the Web and Time Magazine named it one of the Top 50 Websites for 2007.  The company has received funding from Rho Ventures, Rho Canada, Brightspark, GrowthWorks and members of the New York Angels.

A bit of mind clearing before tackling the last day of the week…

I’m finally done with a long stretch of parties that took place unusually at the beginning of June. This is supposed to be dead quiet time for social engagements, but it’s actually been incredibly busy lately. Even though we skipped the tail end of Internet Week, other engagements kept us busy over the past couple of days. Read the rest of this entry »

So, after a brutal progression of parties and fluff events over the past eight days, I’d like to share my thoughts on what I’ve experienced.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of odd things have happened over the prior months. One, Tumblr has taken off as a singular application phenomenon almost unlike any I’ve ever seen in the past. Rarely does a web application pick up this many users this quickly unless it is something destined to become a core web application. Two, it’s been very noticable that Gawker, one of the most prominent blogs, has been taking quite a bit of credited and uncredited content from various Tumblr users. (I cite “uncredited content” because, given the circumstances in individual cases, it’s most likely that Gawker editors discovered the content in question from a lone Tumblr user who mentioned the concept for the first time earlier in the day) The idea I’m presenting here is not that they actually did it (or that they are fair or unfair in their attribution habits), but that they clearly CAN do it.

Tumblr, being highly efficient in the spread of ideas, is useful to news organizations in a way that makes obsolete existing parts of the business. The role of a writer as a expert, as an experienced and learned person, is being lost to the increasing practice of using crowdsourced information to build editorial content. It seems that, as amateur publishing applications improve in their reach and connectivity, well-developed ideas are easier to pluck out of the blogosphere/zeitgeist. And if the ideas are not just well-thought but well-written (cue the “infinite monkeys” metaphor), this eliminates the need for news writers altogether.

This isn’t just about news writers, though. This is about any task that requires thinking and ideas. Advertisers increasingly rely on consumer contests for new ideas, something that was eliminated long ago within the profession by the stigmatization of “spec work”. Fashion designers can increasingly rely on blogging amateurs to do much of the work of presenting new samples and combinations. Entertainment companies can scour the web for amateur performers who are desperate to be “discovered”, but who are far more likely to either be “copied” or “exploited”. Really, any activity that doesn’t strictly involve pushing numbers can be crowdsourced. (Sometimes, even that can be farmed out over the Internet to amateurs, depending on how charitable or competitive the cause looks)

There’s a problem in this. How do you finance this? Without wealth, it’s unlikely that people will be able to continue sharing ideas online forever. Rent needs to be paid, computers need to be bought, Internet access costs money. If ideas are no longer saleable in the career marketplace (because they’re available so freely online), then what pays the bills? Tedious work? Actually, that won’t do it either, because that’s all getting farmed out to India and Russia. Remember, the first wave of outsourcing (aka “importing”) worked because we could push physical labor overseas or across borders and get the finished product for cheaper. Then the next wave of outsourcing (which is what you think of when you hear that term) promised that common office functions and repetitive/tedious tasks could be pushed overseas for even more efficient business operations. But this was supposed to help us by keeping all the really valuable mental jobs here in the US. Now, finally, this last wave of outsourcing threatens to eliminate creative work by simply relying on bloggers who talk enough on the Internet to do creative things you’d normally need done on deadline.

So, basically, there’s no financing left for people who have ideas, because there’s not enough jobs here (that pay enough) to finance the people who are educated and talented enough to have these ideas, and these same people were coincidentally the ones writing the blogs in the first place - what, you thought the Tumblrites were anyone but college-educated working professionals? If there isn’t money to pay for people going to college and then getting on the Internet after the fact, people aren’t going to go to college and then go on the Internet. Which means the ideas disappear. And then the whole system falls apart, because the ideas drive both the office work (including finance, which is grossly overpaid right now) and the need for manufacturing. Not to mention the fact that jobs and wealth drive the consumer economy, which is now falling apart due to the abuse of credit facilities across all financial markets and economies.

The great thing about smart people, though, is that they’ll go where the money is, because that’s the smart thing to do… and, even in the presence of business trends that are moving toward crowdsourced ideas in the short-term, smart investors and managers will continue to seek highly-creative employeeswho will keep them ahead of the game when the idea-thirsty companies are suffering. In other words, the solution to the problem is to do what has always been done - keep the people who drive your business happy and well-paid.

I write this as a warning to anyone who tries to get away with excessive crowdsourcing. It simply doesn’t work. It creates unsustainable products of negligible value. The market rejects it. Businesses thrive on ideas and the progress obtained from them, and businesses need a lot of ideas to really flourish. But ideas need to have worth and pricing in order for people to reliably produce them. People don’t stick around the web to provide valuable free ideas forever. Employees and managers who rely on that are lame ducks in the business world.

alexbalk: I used to be disgusted, but now I’m just — actually, I’m still disgusted.

The Indiana law was challenged in separate suits filed by the Indiana Democratic Party and by another group of plaintiffs that included elected officials and community groups. The plaintiffs argued that the state had failed to justify a requirement they said would place a special burden on thousands of eligible voters in Indiana who lack driver’s licenses, a group that disproportionately includes the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities.

The plaintiffs lost, both in Federal District Court in Indianapolis and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. Writing for the 2-to-1 majority at the appeals court, Judge Richard A. Posner agreed with the plaintiffs that the law would have the greatest impact on people who were “low on the economic ladder and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates.” While that fact gave the Democratic Party standing to sue, he said, it did not make the law unconstitutional.

What’s correct about that Indiana voting ID Supreme Court decision is that, while it will prevent people from voting, it does not do so in an unconstitutional way. It really has nothing to do with true justice or fairness; the Constitution aspires to be fair and just, yet is a document as human as its creators (it even needs amendments from time-to-time) and it occasionally does not serve all its followers fairly. The Supreme Court only decides on the consistency of laws to the Constitution as it stands, not on whether or not the laws or Constitution themselves are fair or have unfair loopholes. Is a youth curfew fair? Is the drinking age fair? Is the smoking ban fair?

But you knew this already. I’m just pointing this out because I find it strange that people are criticizing the SC decision, not the state of Indiana for having the law in the first place.

Moving onto that: what’s wrong with the law? I think it’s pretty equitable and useful (voter fraud is a serious problem). Have you seen any rich people lately? Many of them are so addled and drunk half the time (they’re just like us!) that I’m sure it’s just as burdensome to them to obtain government photo ID as it is for people who have less wealth. They go to the same DMV that we do! As it is, wealth is not the problem - it is mental capacity that presents the issue. For brevity’s sake (not to be un-PC) you have to be retarded to misunderstand the law and/or have your life so out-of-order as to not have a photo ID in the year 2008.

I don’t feel - actually, I’m strongly against the idea - that society should aspire to make all things functional to the dysfunctional. Because then society itself would be completely dysfunctional (and not just partially). Reasonable accommodations are great things - handicapped ramps, websites that are friendly to color-blind and fully-blind browsers, etc. Unreasonable situations - a citizen, given plenty of prior notice, with a birth certificate and Social Security number who chose not to obtain a drivers’ license, passport or government-issued ID - are probably best left aside.

It says a lot about the Democrats that they find these sort of people strategically important in elections. It puts them at a disadvantage if they can’t get that all important pants-crappingly dysfunctional demographic. (Though I like to be equitable too, I can’t come up with a counteracting swipe at Republicans on this matter. And I really tried hard!) Also, there’s nothing stopping Democrats from sponsoring photo ID initiatives for the disenfranchsed to help resolve the issue of people-not-voting. Unlike some disgustingly long legal process that lines the pockets of the lawyers and judges, that sort of thing might actually help people.

Jezebel Moe had a series of posts the other day, regarding an article in the New York Times Magazine about Ivy League virgin groups (first glance: how pretentious can you get? “My lack of sex is better than your sex.”) with a predictable counterpoint from a harlot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fimoculous.com - nyc - Lip Dub

The first time you saw the video, you probably also felt the pang of cool — a jealousy of all those pretty young thangs bouncing and boozing at their successful dot-com. Maybe it’s a recession, or maybe those particular hot cool kids have expired, but a year later don’t you sorta want them all dead like the Cloverfield yups?

I feel like I’m going to get myself in trouble by going here, but:

The Collegehumor kids came up with the most obvious idea in the world and had enough financial backing to toy with their favorite ideas constantly, and somehow got rich off of it. I think the financial backing was the key part. Out of hundreds of comp-sci stars cranking out ideas, they somehow became the biggest rockstars with the least talent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I figured I’d had the time to execute on a couple of desired purchases: I needed an iPod Shuffle for workout purposes, and I needed a Flip Ultra camera for video experimentation. (Both are modestly-priced items for their respective gadget categories, and I’m on a budget, so I really had to think about it) From the nearby intersection of Houston and Allen, the closest electronics store I’d trust is Best Buy on Broadway and Houston. So I walked there.

My experience at Best Buy went as follows: I found the Flip Ultra on display. I then looked around for a staff member to help me, since there were none available to simply pick up and purchase at the register. I waited. For 15 minutes. Someone finally told me, “I’ll be with you in a minute”, and then then did help me - they told me the Flip Ultra was sold out. Apparently, the BB on 45th/5th is the only store with it in stock. I was pissed for having to wait so long just to find that out. I then slided over to the section with the music players, saw that again I’d need sales help to even find out if they had what I wanted, and simply walked out of the store.

At the Apple Store Soho, a greeter pretty much did her job perfectly, engaging me with eye contact until my reticence to return the gesture completely dissipated and I answered her with a smile. Now, forget that the store is much brighter and nicer looking, and that the products are RIGHT THERE, and that there was enough sales help around to answer questions immediately and accurately. No, all you need to know is that they figured out within 60 seconds that they had what I wanted (a 2GB shuffle), that I could get the color I wanted (red, for PRODUCT(RED), portions go to charity), and I was already in line for checkout with it.  And it was $30 cheaper at the Apple Store than it was at Best Buy.

There’s an obvious Goofus-and-Gallant track to this story, but I’m not going to rub it in. However, I will say that if the Apple Store sold Flip cameras, they’d probably be another $180 richer. (Here’s where someone emails me to tell me that they carry them, and I walked right past one.)

Men Create More Housework for Women - Yahoo! News

Hah. Sure. This is breakfast table fodder for idiots. The short take is, cooperative living creates efficiencies when both (or all) adults act reasonably. And in the typical post-war suburban setup, men will resent the media for unappreciation of their breadwinner role and the implications that they are slovely (among other broad accusations), and women will resent the implication that they’re supposed to be chained to the stove and the vacuum - or worse, that men won’t pick up the slack if she wants some career time too. Guess what, it’s all lies. It all comes down to writers  and columnists applying a Ward and June Cleaver setup that works for some people and doesn’t for others. The entire thing falls apart upon application of critical thinking - something you are definitely supposed to stay FAR, FAR AWAY from in modern American culture.