Attending the A.N. Smith lecture in Journalism at Melbourne University last night, Fairfax Media Chief executive and General Manager Greg Hywood outlined the digital media strategy for Fairfax in a "post-classified ad" revenue present and of course, future. Apart from the oh-so humble reminders that the Age and Sydney Morning Herald embraced the internet long before their competitors, his subtle investor pitch demonstrating the media convergence that Fairfax employs to derive its revenue was finally indicative of a media ecological approach to journalism and content communication across a mass yet still fragmented (in terms of point of access) audience. Print in the morning, smartphones on the go and accessing the web during the day, etc.
Mr. Hywood made a salient point in terms of devising a business model to ensure not only survival, but growth in quality journalism and content creation. Leaving the privileged curatorship vs. citizen engagement debate aside; he struck at the core of the problem for lumbering giants resistant to changes in their once robust classified ad "rivers of gold." The journalism, he said, was a solution to the fundamental problem of people trying to "make sense of the world around them." The media can no longer sit idle and react to changes in the consumption of their products, they must now find "solutions" in the skein of Postman and the Media Ecologists.
For example, Neil Postman only months prior to his passing remarked in a lecture that an airline wished to spend a substantial sum to improve the speed of their aeroplanes. Researchers found that they could cut at least three hours from the Los Angeles to New York trip utilizing new engine technologies. But then engineers wondered; what did passengers do with their three hour surplus of time?
Go back to their hotels and watch television.
Thus money was saved by installing televisions into the backs of their seats - the solution was much more ingenious than attempting to appeal to the abstraction of "progress." Just like News Ltd. recognizing that the medium in the afternoon was in fact the train platform and bus and tailored its message accordingly in the form of free, portable and "light" newspapers that can be read while waiting to arrive at one's destination.
Just because journalism can be uploaded and broadcast to smartphones and tablets doesn't mean it always, in every case should; if the problem is not knowing when or where rock gigs are and the solution is a weekly street press to guide you, why force change when it isn't required? Perhaps pondering this question will write the next chapter of journalism; whether in print or online or something unheard of.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
11.11.11
Media Consulting: The Yard Restaurant and Bar (mX Melbourne)
A client of mine, the Yard Restaurant and Bar was featured in the mX "Night Out" section on November 10, 2011. Here's a peek:
Assuming the frontage of a quiet terrace, inside one finds an idyllic escape from the city that's not too far away from all the comforts of urban life, nestled in the back streets of South Melbourne. Warming oneself under the glass atrium is a delight to behold - and will become a fixture for dozy after work drinks and "morning after the night before" brunchers.
Interested? Feel free to contact me for further information.
Assuming the frontage of a quiet terrace, inside one finds an idyllic escape from the city that's not too far away from all the comforts of urban life, nestled in the back streets of South Melbourne. Warming oneself under the glass atrium is a delight to behold - and will become a fixture for dozy after work drinks and "morning after the night before" brunchers.
Interested? Feel free to contact me for further information.
11.10.11
The Facebookless Frontier, two months on
Two months ago I deactivated my Facebook account and never looked back. Last month sat from the sidelines, irritated by the routine "complainageddons" that spring from a well of minor interface changes to the free social platform/marketing exercise. People said that throwing away Facebook was akin to severing a healthy limb which had served me well and would continue to in the future. But after two months, I barely recognize that it still exists to other people. The my social world continues to turn and I've come to view this so-called "third hand" as useless as if both necrotic and lame (and selling my particulars to third parties.)
My phone hasn't been ringing off the hook with former Facebook friends wondering if I'm still alive, but the core of my friendship groups has been strengthened since I'm taking the effort to call, text or email friends instead of passively staring at an abstracted representation of them on a screen. Interestingly, I've met more people through Twitter via the Melbourne, Australia twitter meetup known as MTUB than I ever have through Facebook. I've made many new friends this way. Post-Facebook, I still keep up attendance at my interest group meetings, either through organizing them myself or attending new ones.
Thus I pondered it from a media ecological perspective, in the vein of my revered Neil Postman; just what problem did Facebook solve for me? Discovering that it caused no subsequent problems resulting from my exit, it actually spurred some solutions insofar my relationships and how I approach them is concerned.
My phone hasn't been ringing off the hook with former Facebook friends wondering if I'm still alive, but the core of my friendship groups has been strengthened since I'm taking the effort to call, text or email friends instead of passively staring at an abstracted representation of them on a screen. Interestingly, I've met more people through Twitter via the Melbourne, Australia twitter meetup known as MTUB than I ever have through Facebook. I've made many new friends this way. Post-Facebook, I still keep up attendance at my interest group meetings, either through organizing them myself or attending new ones.
Thus I pondered it from a media ecological perspective, in the vein of my revered Neil Postman; just what problem did Facebook solve for me? Discovering that it caused no subsequent problems resulting from my exit, it actually spurred some solutions insofar my relationships and how I approach them is concerned.
- New friend? Give them a text or a call: Adding them to Facebook is much like slipping a dollar bill in a wallet. People aren't trading cards to be collected and traded. If I genuinely like someone or enjoy their company, I will let them know one way or another. The experiential "addition" to one's Facebook friends list means many things to many people. There's a certain personal development "bonus" for acting as an initiator.
- No invitation, no attendance: I've missed out on various social engagements the past two months; but if I don't know about it, I'm not there! I don't miss whatever I'm unaware of, right?
If I'm told in person, I reserve the date and make sure I attend. There's only a "yes" or "no" option for me! - Less distraction: Yesterday, I went on a half-day Twitter moratorium and completed all my "to-do" tasks prior to 2pm. I interviewed broadcaster and journalist Steve Cannane for the book project, completed an article for an online mag and started work for a new client. With no "Twitter-Facebook moebius strip of distraction" for my attention to contend with, stuff gets done!
21.9.11
Thesis Diary #13: The Debrief
Yesterday I steeled myself against the wind to solemnly march into Tony Moore's office for my thesis mark. I could see bare parts of his desktop for the first time to which I remarked "Wow, I didn't even know your desk was made out of wood!"
He ignored mounting e-mails and handed me a miniature novel of examiner's comments regarding my thesis. Agonizing in what felt like a Oakeshottian duration of dithering, he finally announced that I had gained a distinction for my efforts.
A sigh of relief. I did far better than I expected.
Tony was supremely supportive of the mark; he knew it lay within me to achieve a high distinction and I agreed. He was impressed considering that I'd never taken honors classes (which apparently teach one to write in the academic style requisite for such long tasks) and that my previous degree was from outside the field of communications and journalism. He complimented me on my academic rigor despite these deficiencies and praised me as a "good writer"; I felt very humbled by it.
The comments and tips Tony bestowed will prove valuable for my book project with Leticia Supple on rock journalism. Some even provided additional sources such as a thorough BBC documentary on rock journalism that was screened in 2009 - which came as a surprise to both Tony and I!
As I left, he wished me luck, saying: "Remember to invite me to the book launch."
I shook his hand and smiled. "Mate, you're at the top of the list."
---
If you have an hour or two to kill and want to know more about rock journalism theory than you'd ever care to, my thesis is now available for download.
He ignored mounting e-mails and handed me a miniature novel of examiner's comments regarding my thesis. Agonizing in what felt like a Oakeshottian duration of dithering, he finally announced that I had gained a distinction for my efforts.
A sigh of relief. I did far better than I expected.
Tony was supremely supportive of the mark; he knew it lay within me to achieve a high distinction and I agreed. He was impressed considering that I'd never taken honors classes (which apparently teach one to write in the academic style requisite for such long tasks) and that my previous degree was from outside the field of communications and journalism. He complimented me on my academic rigor despite these deficiencies and praised me as a "good writer"; I felt very humbled by it.
The comments and tips Tony bestowed will prove valuable for my book project with Leticia Supple on rock journalism. Some even provided additional sources such as a thorough BBC documentary on rock journalism that was screened in 2009 - which came as a surprise to both Tony and I!
As I left, he wished me luck, saying: "Remember to invite me to the book launch."
I shook his hand and smiled. "Mate, you're at the top of the list."
---
If you have an hour or two to kill and want to know more about rock journalism theory than you'd ever care to, my thesis is now available for download.
4.9.11
100% Genuine, Bonafide Corporate Rock: What is rock authenticity?
One of the ironies of “critical rock journalism,” writes cultural studies theorist Andy Brown is “that it is operated in a hegemonic fashion across the popular music market in the period of its pomp, willfully obscuring its actual commercial dynamics and its cultural and institutional role in shaping the rock canon and the rock audience.” Critical rock journalism by its reliance on advertising dollars and the industry for its own copy or sellable capital (interviews from artists, advanced promo copies, etc.) is “inauthentic” by journalistic standards. The stories on artists or the industry, even if they do not engage with the sources directly service the music creators and copyright holders; those who have everything to gain from words being printed about them. What differentiates the “trade paper” or the “mainstream” from the “cool” or the “genuine” is a concept known as “authenticity” or “cultural capital.” But how do publications and journalists wield it and accumulate it? We must first deconstruct authenticity as an abstract and observe it in “action.”
Cultural capital is conferred on certain publications, granting them a subcultural “rock authority.” This gives rise to the conception of cultural capital as “cool” or “authenticity.” Whether its journalism thrives in the underground “zine” culture or written for “payola,” traditionally known as the act of labels paying deejays or journalists to promote certain artists, cultural capital is closely linked with “monetary” capital.
With the invention of the printing press and other more advanced technologies such as the internet and television, the “eye becomes more important than the ear” – a system of signification and meaning emerges in the form of a subculture with its own discrete and extensional rituals. Thus we can point toward a rock subculture with its own internal consistencies and tendency for self and other identification. According to the philosopher Heidegger, authenticity is defined to “be one’s own self, as part of the history of one’s community.” In a broader philosophical context, authenticity is to say:
The image of a rock band according to rock scholar and critic Simon Frith must have certain characteristics for it to be accepted as “authentic” by people who self-identify as part of the rock subculture and its various sub-divided subcultures almost as much as the sound and arrangement of the music, and be recognized as part of the “subcultural sphere” of rock music. If an artist exists in a rock subculture which is overwhelmingly dominated by corporate interests, how can an artist stay “authentic?” How can a “rocker” such as Bruce Springsteen dress like a working-class, thirty-seven year old “teenager” and be celebrated for it despite his multi-million dollar success?
Authenticity can be described as the performative “image” based aspect of the music as an experience, a cultural product and “within the ascription carries the corollary that every type of music, and every example, can conceivably be found authentic by a particular group of perceivers; it is the success with which a particular performance conveys the impression that counts,” especially if it is consecrated by a publication with cultural capital such as NME or Rolling Stone and/or if it is written by a preeminent and established consecrator such as Richard Christgau or Greil Marcus.
Frith writes of a “continuing struggle between music and commerce [at] the core of rock ideology.” There is a very real tension between identity vs. difference at the heart of this struggle; rock music has been important as a rallying point for a collective identity but the music industry itself has appropriated this phenomenon and incorporated it as a sales pitch: “market choices aren’t just a matter of self-indulgence,” Frith writes, but a link to communities; “musical tastes matter so much to people because…they take them to be a statement of what sort of people they are” and rock fans and those who “buy into” the subculture are not immune. The rock music media culture seems to matter to individuals with “mutual interests leading to the sharing of accumulated knowledge and the creation of a specialized language (be it visual or oral) and other cultural products.” By all accounts, the perceived “image” and expression of this culture through style is more important than whether it is performed in the service of fans, artists or corporate entities. The “what, where and who” of rock subculture is more important than the “why” and the “how.”
A trend or a scene must be defined and via its musical or visual style in order to be communicated to an audience as genuinely as possible. This is achieved by establishing an order, setting up exemplars of this order, making it concrete and then “initiating the collapse.” By setting up a movement through the accumulation and expenditure of cultural capital, record labels via rock journalists can package the content for sale and target it to subcultural groups and conversely, attempt to dismantle older styles and “overcome human resistance” to make way for new trends. Such is the case of Nirvana in the 1990s.
Nirvana is an example of authenticity being embedded in the “cultural capital” that music press project to their readership in order to consecrate it. In the early 1990s Kurt Cobain, lead guitarist and vocalist for Nirvana, was at the forefront of the grunge movement. He became the template for its authenticity in this (albeit fragmented) subculture. Cobain grew up in a Seattle, Washington suburb called Aberdeen and led a troubled youth moving from house to house. He had no formal artistic education yet produced sculpture and poetry regardless. His past history was one of alienation, delinquency and homelessness. He also suffered from debilitating stomach cramps and was encouraged by girlfriend Courtney Love, herself a rock musician, to use heroin to ease the pain. Kurt and his bandmates (Kris Novoselic and Dave Grohl) were also known for their Bohemianism, subverting codes of gender and masculinity, kissing one another while in cross dress for an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1992.
Despite the semi-romanticized punk-rock upbringing and “slacker” ethos, Nirvana was one of the biggest alternative rock bands in modern rock music history. Carrying the flag for the Seattle grunge sound, a mélange of down-tuned, mid-tempo post-punk and metal edged riffs, their second record Nevermind topped the US charts in January 1992 and eventually sold over 9 million units worldwide. They were described in “sociological terms” as
However the massive success that came with selling that many records would be considered unthinkable in terms of projecting authenticity in the 1960s and 1970s context (although relatively speaking, the Beatles et. al. sold millions without it effecting their authenticity); Cobain appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with a t-shirt emblazoned with “Corporate rock magazines suck” on the front – he appeared to be the antidote to mainstream style despite embracing it almost in its totality; Nirvana in deed embraced the mainstream despite appearing to rail against it in word. Rock journalists also attempted to portray Kurt Cobain’s authenticity, placing him as literate in the rock subculture; one interviewer spied “scores of CDs and tapes are strewn around [his] stereo – obscurities such as Calamity Jane, Cosmic Psychos and Billy Childish, as well as Cheap Trick and the Beatles.” What Cobain listened to matters in this context; the “why” is obvious – these bands were part of a canon of authentic rock that was once established by rock journalists.
The band was signed to the major label Geffen Records which was once cutting edge and alternative but now a major player; they made frequent appearances on MTV the international music channel (eventually releasing an acoustic record from an “MTV Unplugged” session) and even appeared on the aforementioned Saturday Night Live, a US national network television program. To demonstrate just how far Nirvana and Cobain operated outside of the perceived conventions of authenticity in terms of independence, he regularly appeared on MTV. MTV is owned by Viacom, the world’s fourth largest media conglomerate. MTV operates on a simple business model as explained by media critic Robert McChesney in Douglas Rushkoff’s PBS documentary The Merchants of Cool: “everything at MTV is a commercial…sometimes it’s a music video other times it’s paid advertisements…there’s no non-commercial part of MTV.” Keith Cameron writing for NME, positioning himself and the magazine as an authentic consecrator (as opposed to the publications part of “tabloid” tradition of pre-1967 trade press) of the rock field to authentically explain Cobain’s success:
Despite this wholesale “sellout,” the style Cobain embodied was considered as authentic by the rock subculture and its readership regardless. In fact, as journalist Simon Reynolds points out in his review of Nevermind for the New York Times, commenting on the irony inherent in “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “ teen spirit is routinely bottled, shrink-wrapped and sold. Mr. Cobain, acutely aware of the contradiction of operating in an industry of today’s youth with lyrics like “Here we are now, entertain us/How stupid and contagious.”
But even this conceptualization of subcultural “authenticity” is problematic. The symbolic objects that authenticate style are not born directly from the exponents of the style itself but by commercial interests which is communicated by the authenticity of the rock press; only those who participate in rock music culture and the lengths at which they “jealously defend” the use of cultural symbols, music and style differentiates those who identify with the rock culture and subcultures (punk, indie, etc.) and those who do not. In the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of commercial music television such as MTV and the horizontal integration of the music press, fashion and other concerns, the Nirvana as pre-packaged rebellion trajectory is much more commonplace – the authentic counter-culture is now a field of cultural production dominated by commercial interests. McChesney thinks that:
This rings especially true when considering the now disbanded rap-rock group Rage Against the Machine; – a politically-charged hangover from the heady days of left-activist counterculture that were supporters of socialist and even anarcho-syndicalist causes yet were signed to Epic Records, owned by global media conglomerate Sony Music Entertainment.
Zack De La Rocha, lead vocalist for the group has maintained his authenticity by being gassed by police during a concert and traveling to Mexico to engage with the left-wing rebel Zapatista movement. He insisted in an interview with Kerrang! Magazine that using the mainstream media to consciously promote the band’s political message and their routine refusal to talk to journalists has merely:
The fact their message appears more authentic is more important than the medium it arrives on in their view and most likely the views of their fans. To a fashion, de la Rocha has transformed his own band into a prized commodity that oozes authenticity through reluctantly granting access to journalists. It gives those in the rock field a point of departure to determine who are the most powerful in the rock field and how to market this to a readership.
However, ultimately, whomever identifies with the alternative rock subculture is merely affording opportunities to major labels like “Warner [to] sell you the Throwing Muses instead of Madonna.”
Taking Marxist positions that “all products of the culture industry are inherently inauthentic,” it seems like a non-concern amongst actors and participants in the rock field that legitimate rock’s authenticity. Modernist scholar Schumway argues with the example of Cobain and de la Rocha, their super-stardom in the rock field
It seemingly is the task of rock journalists and the rock press to communicate opposition or difference in their own fashion in accordance with staying true to the “cultural capital” that is conferred upon them by fans and others who participate in the rock subculture even though, through journalism, attempt to bridge that divide between “fan” and “star” without seeming beholden to either yet servicing both - lies the real irony. Authenticity in rock and its journalism is "authenticated" if one cares only about the image and care not not how it gets to you and "why."
---
This essay is part of a collaborative project with blogger, music critic and MetalAsFuck.net founder Leticia Supple on rock journalism and criticism. You can read her excellent and incisive contributions here.
References:
Cultural capital is conferred on certain publications, granting them a subcultural “rock authority.” This gives rise to the conception of cultural capital as “cool” or “authenticity.” Whether its journalism thrives in the underground “zine” culture or written for “payola,” traditionally known as the act of labels paying deejays or journalists to promote certain artists, cultural capital is closely linked with “monetary” capital.
With the invention of the printing press and other more advanced technologies such as the internet and television, the “eye becomes more important than the ear” – a system of signification and meaning emerges in the form of a subculture with its own discrete and extensional rituals. Thus we can point toward a rock subculture with its own internal consistencies and tendency for self and other identification. According to the philosopher Heidegger, authenticity is defined to “be one’s own self, as part of the history of one’s community.” In a broader philosophical context, authenticity is to say:
“that his or her actions truly express what lies at their origin, that is, the dispositions, feelings, desires, and convictions that motivate them. Built into this conception of authenticity is a distinction between what is really going on within me – the emotions, core beliefs, and bedrock desires that make me the person I am – and the outer avowals and actions that make up my being in the public world…We commonly suppose that authenticity has a considerable value even if it does not produce such extrinsic goods as wealth, fame, or pleasure.”[1]
The image of a rock band according to rock scholar and critic Simon Frith must have certain characteristics for it to be accepted as “authentic” by people who self-identify as part of the rock subculture and its various sub-divided subcultures almost as much as the sound and arrangement of the music, and be recognized as part of the “subcultural sphere” of rock music. If an artist exists in a rock subculture which is overwhelmingly dominated by corporate interests, how can an artist stay “authentic?” How can a “rocker” such as Bruce Springsteen dress like a working-class, thirty-seven year old “teenager” and be celebrated for it despite his multi-million dollar success?
Authenticity can be described as the performative “image” based aspect of the music as an experience, a cultural product and “within the ascription carries the corollary that every type of music, and every example, can conceivably be found authentic by a particular group of perceivers; it is the success with which a particular performance conveys the impression that counts,” especially if it is consecrated by a publication with cultural capital such as NME or Rolling Stone and/or if it is written by a preeminent and established consecrator such as Richard Christgau or Greil Marcus.
Frith writes of a “continuing struggle between music and commerce [at] the core of rock ideology.” There is a very real tension between identity vs. difference at the heart of this struggle; rock music has been important as a rallying point for a collective identity but the music industry itself has appropriated this phenomenon and incorporated it as a sales pitch: “market choices aren’t just a matter of self-indulgence,” Frith writes, but a link to communities; “musical tastes matter so much to people because…they take them to be a statement of what sort of people they are” and rock fans and those who “buy into” the subculture are not immune. The rock music media culture seems to matter to individuals with “mutual interests leading to the sharing of accumulated knowledge and the creation of a specialized language (be it visual or oral) and other cultural products.” By all accounts, the perceived “image” and expression of this culture through style is more important than whether it is performed in the service of fans, artists or corporate entities. The “what, where and who” of rock subculture is more important than the “why” and the “how.”
A trend or a scene must be defined and via its musical or visual style in order to be communicated to an audience as genuinely as possible. This is achieved by establishing an order, setting up exemplars of this order, making it concrete and then “initiating the collapse.” By setting up a movement through the accumulation and expenditure of cultural capital, record labels via rock journalists can package the content for sale and target it to subcultural groups and conversely, attempt to dismantle older styles and “overcome human resistance” to make way for new trends. Such is the case of Nirvana in the 1990s.
Nirvana is an example of authenticity being embedded in the “cultural capital” that music press project to their readership in order to consecrate it. In the early 1990s Kurt Cobain, lead guitarist and vocalist for Nirvana, was at the forefront of the grunge movement. He became the template for its authenticity in this (albeit fragmented) subculture. Cobain grew up in a Seattle, Washington suburb called Aberdeen and led a troubled youth moving from house to house. He had no formal artistic education yet produced sculpture and poetry regardless. His past history was one of alienation, delinquency and homelessness. He also suffered from debilitating stomach cramps and was encouraged by girlfriend Courtney Love, herself a rock musician, to use heroin to ease the pain. Kurt and his bandmates (Kris Novoselic and Dave Grohl) were also known for their Bohemianism, subverting codes of gender and masculinity, kissing one another while in cross dress for an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1992.
Despite the semi-romanticized punk-rock upbringing and “slacker” ethos, Nirvana was one of the biggest alternative rock bands in modern rock music history. Carrying the flag for the Seattle grunge sound, a mélange of down-tuned, mid-tempo post-punk and metal edged riffs, their second record Nevermind topped the US charts in January 1992 and eventually sold over 9 million units worldwide. They were described in “sociological terms” as
“defining a new generation, the twentysomething "slackers" who have retreated from life; as telling unattractive home truths about a country losing its empire and hit by recessing as representing the final, delayed impact of British punk on America.”[2]
However the massive success that came with selling that many records would be considered unthinkable in terms of projecting authenticity in the 1960s and 1970s context (although relatively speaking, the Beatles et. al. sold millions without it effecting their authenticity); Cobain appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with a t-shirt emblazoned with “Corporate rock magazines suck” on the front – he appeared to be the antidote to mainstream style despite embracing it almost in its totality; Nirvana in deed embraced the mainstream despite appearing to rail against it in word. Rock journalists also attempted to portray Kurt Cobain’s authenticity, placing him as literate in the rock subculture; one interviewer spied “scores of CDs and tapes are strewn around [his] stereo – obscurities such as Calamity Jane, Cosmic Psychos and Billy Childish, as well as Cheap Trick and the Beatles.” What Cobain listened to matters in this context; the “why” is obvious – these bands were part of a canon of authentic rock that was once established by rock journalists.
The band was signed to the major label Geffen Records which was once cutting edge and alternative but now a major player; they made frequent appearances on MTV the international music channel (eventually releasing an acoustic record from an “MTV Unplugged” session) and even appeared on the aforementioned Saturday Night Live, a US national network television program. To demonstrate just how far Nirvana and Cobain operated outside of the perceived conventions of authenticity in terms of independence, he regularly appeared on MTV. MTV is owned by Viacom, the world’s fourth largest media conglomerate. MTV operates on a simple business model as explained by media critic Robert McChesney in Douglas Rushkoff’s PBS documentary The Merchants of Cool: “everything at MTV is a commercial…sometimes it’s a music video other times it’s paid advertisements…there’s no non-commercial part of MTV.” Keith Cameron writing for NME, positioning himself and the magazine as an authentic consecrator (as opposed to the publications part of “tabloid” tradition of pre-1967 trade press) of the rock field to authentically explain Cobain’s success:
As far as the tabloid music press were concerned, Nirvana were just too good to be true. Rarely had the rollercoaster dynamic of rock'n'roll been so extreme – unknowns shoot from nowhere to top of charts with incendiary musical formula. The all-important twist? They didn't even try! They don't want to be successful! Brilliant. And now, with the accountants still hiring bulldozers to gather up the money, they've begun to blow it all via smack, the biggest sucker punch of the lot. From nobodies to superstars to fuck ups in the space of six months?! That had to be a record.[3]
Despite this wholesale “sellout,” the style Cobain embodied was considered as authentic by the rock subculture and its readership regardless. In fact, as journalist Simon Reynolds points out in his review of Nevermind for the New York Times, commenting on the irony inherent in “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “ teen spirit is routinely bottled, shrink-wrapped and sold. Mr. Cobain, acutely aware of the contradiction of operating in an industry of today’s youth with lyrics like “Here we are now, entertain us/How stupid and contagious.”
But even this conceptualization of subcultural “authenticity” is problematic. The symbolic objects that authenticate style are not born directly from the exponents of the style itself but by commercial interests which is communicated by the authenticity of the rock press; only those who participate in rock music culture and the lengths at which they “jealously defend” the use of cultural symbols, music and style differentiates those who identify with the rock culture and subcultures (punk, indie, etc.) and those who do not. In the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of commercial music television such as MTV and the horizontal integration of the music press, fashion and other concerns, the Nirvana as pre-packaged rebellion trajectory is much more commonplace – the authentic counter-culture is now a field of cultural production dominated by commercial interests. McChesney thinks that:
“we're in a really interesting phase culturally where the notion that there's something distinct from commercial culture comes into question when everything's commercialized.... I think it's a troubling notion, the idea that our references are so commercialized now that all our dissidents, all our autonomous voices are getting their cues from MTV on how to revolt. And I think that's a real tension that's going on among young people today.”[4]
This rings especially true when considering the now disbanded rap-rock group Rage Against the Machine; – a politically-charged hangover from the heady days of left-activist counterculture that were supporters of socialist and even anarcho-syndicalist causes yet were signed to Epic Records, owned by global media conglomerate Sony Music Entertainment.
Zack De La Rocha, lead vocalist for the group has maintained his authenticity by being gassed by police during a concert and traveling to Mexico to engage with the left-wing rebel Zapatista movement. He insisted in an interview with Kerrang! Magazine that using the mainstream media to consciously promote the band’s political message and their routine refusal to talk to journalists has merely:
"[ensured] the protection of this band's integrity…That we were walking what we were talking, as opposed to just talking. We're dealing with a monstrous pop culture that has a tendency to commodify and pacify everything - it's happened to so many bands in the past. It's important that artists in my position set an example and there's a fine line between the promotion of a product and the promotion of an idea."[5]
The fact their message appears more authentic is more important than the medium it arrives on in their view and most likely the views of their fans. To a fashion, de la Rocha has transformed his own band into a prized commodity that oozes authenticity through reluctantly granting access to journalists. It gives those in the rock field a point of departure to determine who are the most powerful in the rock field and how to market this to a readership.
However, ultimately, whomever identifies with the alternative rock subculture is merely affording opportunities to major labels like “Warner [to] sell you the Throwing Muses instead of Madonna.”
Taking Marxist positions that “all products of the culture industry are inherently inauthentic,” it seems like a non-concern amongst actors and participants in the rock field that legitimate rock’s authenticity. Modernist scholar Schumway argues with the example of Cobain and de la Rocha, their super-stardom in the rock field
“comes a new question of authenticity: is the star the person he or she appears to be on screen or on stage? The answer must always in the strict sense be “no” because to be a star is to be presented to the public packaged and mediated. The audience knows this at some level, and yet the desire to know the authentic individual persists. As David Marshall has argued, “the relationship that the audience builds with the film celebrity is configured through a tension between the possibility and impossibility of knowing the authentic individual.”[6]The notion of the impossibility of an authentic individual is also conferred on to journalists that work in the rock music field. Jones argues that ideology plays a central role in rock music and rock subcultural authenticity; ideology and common sense. In his view, it is “common sensical” to view that a common human activity, i.e., music making has been “colonized by commerce” and that the authentic expression of style speaks more “truth” about the music than whether it was born out of autonomy or not, or to some unacceptable extent that would deem the music or band “inauthentic.”
It seemingly is the task of rock journalists and the rock press to communicate opposition or difference in their own fashion in accordance with staying true to the “cultural capital” that is conferred upon them by fans and others who participate in the rock subculture even though, through journalism, attempt to bridge that divide between “fan” and “star” without seeming beholden to either yet servicing both - lies the real irony. Authenticity in rock and its journalism is "authenticated" if one cares only about the image and care not not how it gets to you and "why."
---
This essay is part of a collaborative project with blogger, music critic and MetalAsFuck.net founder Leticia Supple on rock journalism and criticism. You can read her excellent and incisive contributions here.
References:
- Guinon, C. “Authenticity” in Philosophy Compass, (Vol. 3, No. 2, 2008) p. 278.
- Savage, J. “Sounds Dirty: Truth about Nirvana” in The Observer, 15 August 1993.
- Cameron, K. “Nirvana: Love Will Tear Us Apart” in NME, 29 August 1992. http://bit.ly/lrFxNo
- McChesney, R., “The Symbiotic Relationship Between the Media and Teens” in Frontline: The Merchants of Cool, PBS website, 2001 http://to.pbs.org/gQyD3g
- Myers, B. “Hello, Hello...It's Good To Be Back: Rage Against the Machine” in Kerrang! 16 October, 1999
- Schumway, D. R. “Authenticity, Stardom and Rock ‘n’ Roll” in Modernism/Modernity (Vol 14, No. 3. 2007) p. 530.
29.8.11
The Graduate School of Rock: Scholars sculpting rock into art
On November 9, 1967, Jann Wenner’s first editorial appeared in the inaugural edition of Rolling Stone magazine. It read:
By imbuing it with an authority of publications of record similar to that of newspapers, Wenner laid down the charge for all “serious” rock music magazines that endeavored to present rock music as serious instead of frivolous, a part of the real experience of a culture instead of mere entertainment – as intelligent art as opposed to vacuous "pop." Throughout history, popular and folk music has been defined in opposition to classical “art” music. Prior to the 1960s, pop music could not be considered high culture like the great classical canon – it was commercial, trashy and intended for the lowest common denominator. But rock, like jazz and folk before it ultimately gained merit for its inherent artistry, bringing it to bear scholastic examination.
Scholars and rock journalists’ unifying contention in the early era of rock was that the music mattered in a way that “surpassed pure entertainment, breeding an equally strong need to understand and explain why this was so…in the critics’ view rock was as much art as jazz, but like film, far more democratic.” Cultural theorist Tim Wall cites the academic scholarship of Black American blues music of the 1940s as hugely influential on mainstream American and European popular music of the 1950s and 1960s which eventually was applied to rock music. Rock sociologist and critic Simon Frith devotes the first chapter of his landmark text on rock music and subculture Sound Effects to “rock roots” from both a sociological and musicological perspective as a launching point for academic analysis. Frith describes rock music as an art form that is “primitive” insofar that rock musicians impart emotion through pre-linguistic devices such as sounds and rhythms. He contends that “rock music is the result of an ever changing combination of independently developed musical elements, each of which carries its own cultural message.” Rock and roll came into its own in the 1960s during a re-appropriation of Black music such as soul and pop through interlocutors like Chuck Berry who then went on to influence the Beatles, “opening up the space for the development of rock music” by further appropriating Black American blues, soul and of course rhythm and blues (R’n’B.) Prior to the 1967 Wenner moment, rock music was largely ignored by the establishment, especially in Britain. The BBC had not ventured to play rock music which was instead broadcast by pirate stations and others such as Radio Luxembourg. John Peel, a DJ for pirate station Radio London was considered by the rock music subculture as one of their consecrators and eventually was “poached” by the BBC to head up its new pop music radio station, BBC Radio 1. This motley collection of “fans” became a “real,” structured hierarchy – there were consistencies in the dress, style, taste, politics and activities of these people that consumed and produced rock music. Outside observers could easily identify rock fans; it was the beginnings of an expressive rock subculture.
Ever since the 1930s, studies on subculture had been the domain of academia. Rock music, rock fashion and rock performance was and still is a mass leisure activity or pursuit, giving rise to a self-conscious group of consumers that identify as part of a rock subculture. The Birmingham School of Contemporary Cultural Studies was one of the first academic units to purposefully examine the rock subculture in Britain which lent further credence to rock music as not only an art form but the linchpin, expression and overall rallying point for a subculture. Frith and Horne in Art into Pop explain rock and pop music’s explosion into academia can be explained by the “extraordinary art school connection” with British musicians and later American musicians adding “image, style and self-consciousness – an attitude to what commercial music should and could be…This attitude has been influential even when a particular genre (like punk) didn’t actually sell records.” Subcultures express a response to a set of conditions that are tied together into structured, relatively coherent wholes and rock music is a binding force for a rock subculture can also be viewed in this fashion. However, the mere appreciable existence of rock music subculture did not make it an artform worthy of academic criticism, debate and study. Rock music criticism – the act of thinking and writing critically about rock as art - did not fully begin until the post-1967 Wenner moment.
In Britain in the 1950s and early 1960s, writing on rock music was limited to trade publications and “fan pages” that were analogous to “film fan” magazines of the 1930s. These papers focused primarily on the “stars” and not a literary or discursive analysis of films unlike the French art cinema journal Cahiers du Cinema or similar publication; some trade publications in the US such as Billboard tracked chart positions and industry news but there was little in the way that could be described as criticism or journalism. The music press at this time could be viewed as merely an instrument of the music industry reflecting the “increasing importance of records and record sales” and provided “no perspective, historical or otherwise on the music they covered; they had no developed critical positions…they presented the industry’s own public view of itself.” In the 1960s onwards, rock journalism emerged into its own field, critically evaluating rock music so as to develop an “account of the music as art” as distinct from other previous forms of music reporting such as the aforementioned trade papers and “teeny bopper” fan-oriented magazines. American rock magazine Crawdaddy! was launched in February 1966. Editor Paul Williams proclaimed it “free from teenage-magazine perspectives” and proudly proclaiming that the magazine’s specialty would be “intelligent writing about pop music” while charging Billboard with “non-critical criticism,” opening up the high-low cultural dichotomy arguably for the first time. These magazines attempted, as Simon Frith wrote in 1981, to “take the new musicians and their audiences as seriously as they took themselves.” Rock fans could now determine what cultural products were noteworthy for their artistry and which ones were lesser or inferior through specialized cultural interpreters – rock critics and rock journalists.
The emergence of rock radio stations, magazines such as the aforementioned, article collections, specialist periodicals and record guides all set up a “critical apparatus” that positioned academically credentialed journalists as both “participants and observers of the rock revolution” thus conferring the authority on their works from mere participants or observers of rock music. Those interested in the subculture could not only use these magazines as reflections of their readership, but also act as an entry point into these readerships. The subculture’s artistic expression was under scrutiny from writers of a scholarly background, using similar appraisal techniques usually reserved for critiques of literature, visual art or classical and jazz music. Through such analysis, we can view rock as a true “art.”
This criticism is produced in a professional manner from a position of influence and cultural authority. Rock critics become “arbiters of taste” from the aforementioned “cultivated disposition” imbued upon them from academia, the emergence of a “genius” styles of writing and a sustained body of works of that quality in the rock music field. Their “self-defined task is not only to suggest what to buy, but how to make sense of [rock journalism as a movement, style, subculture, etc.]” This role as navigator through the world of the rock subculture is not cast arbitrarily. The notion of what constitutes authenticity in the rock subculture and how it is expressed through rock journalism, rock music and rock style is another question in the discourse which will be discussed at length in another essay.
Rock critics and journalists in the 1967 moment onwards and arguably until the 1999 “flattening” of the industry by rapid-fire online content distribution and generation “fought” the battle for rock music; the writing that elucidated and analyzed it was armed with an immersion in academia and a revolt into style. Bringing art into pop (or merely viewing pop as art) laid the foundations for rock criticism and journalism to flourish into the mainstream culture and accepted as a popular “art.” Though much has been made of the “high/low” dichotomy of culture in the past, the new media ecology and conceptualization of consumer/producer/critic as a singular, “remixed” entity existing on the internet or digital media breaks down these distinctions into a multi-valued orientation in which artistic or subcultural merit can be found in almost any production (according to the viewpoint of the subculture or individual.) Though some academics would froth at the mouth if one asserts a loss in the fidelity of “high culture,” the simple fact is that rock as a subculture values this music and style as art and as such, is given praise or criticism by those knowledgeable in the art of rock and of course, the art of analysis and criticism. If one can articulate the points of difference or commendable attributes of rock music then they too can shape the canon as a “cultural interlocutor” through their transmission of authenticity and “professional” or historical awareness as an art.
This essay is an early draft in a series of critical examinations of music criticism and journalism. The project is being co-written by Leticia Supple, blogger and founder of MetalAsFuck.net. Read her essays here.
---
[1] Lindberg, U., Gudmundsson, G., Michelsen, M. and Weisethaunet, H. Rock Criticism from the Beginning: Amusers, bruisers and cool-headed cruisers, Peter Lang Publishing: New York, NY, 2005. p. 146.
“We have begun a new publication…sort of a magazine and sort of a newspaper…reflecting what we see are the changes in rock and roll and the changes related to rock and roll. Because the trade papers have become so inaccurate and irrelevant and because the fan magazines are an anachronism, fashioned in the mold of myth and nonsense…Rolling Stone is not just about music but also the things and attitudes that the music embraces.”[1]
By imbuing it with an authority of publications of record similar to that of newspapers, Wenner laid down the charge for all “serious” rock music magazines that endeavored to present rock music as serious instead of frivolous, a part of the real experience of a culture instead of mere entertainment – as intelligent art as opposed to vacuous "pop." Throughout history, popular and folk music has been defined in opposition to classical “art” music. Prior to the 1960s, pop music could not be considered high culture like the great classical canon – it was commercial, trashy and intended for the lowest common denominator. But rock, like jazz and folk before it ultimately gained merit for its inherent artistry, bringing it to bear scholastic examination.
Scholars and rock journalists’ unifying contention in the early era of rock was that the music mattered in a way that “surpassed pure entertainment, breeding an equally strong need to understand and explain why this was so…in the critics’ view rock was as much art as jazz, but like film, far more democratic.” Cultural theorist Tim Wall cites the academic scholarship of Black American blues music of the 1940s as hugely influential on mainstream American and European popular music of the 1950s and 1960s which eventually was applied to rock music. Rock sociologist and critic Simon Frith devotes the first chapter of his landmark text on rock music and subculture Sound Effects to “rock roots” from both a sociological and musicological perspective as a launching point for academic analysis. Frith describes rock music as an art form that is “primitive” insofar that rock musicians impart emotion through pre-linguistic devices such as sounds and rhythms. He contends that “rock music is the result of an ever changing combination of independently developed musical elements, each of which carries its own cultural message.” Rock and roll came into its own in the 1960s during a re-appropriation of Black music such as soul and pop through interlocutors like Chuck Berry who then went on to influence the Beatles, “opening up the space for the development of rock music” by further appropriating Black American blues, soul and of course rhythm and blues (R’n’B.) Prior to the 1967 Wenner moment, rock music was largely ignored by the establishment, especially in Britain. The BBC had not ventured to play rock music which was instead broadcast by pirate stations and others such as Radio Luxembourg. John Peel, a DJ for pirate station Radio London was considered by the rock music subculture as one of their consecrators and eventually was “poached” by the BBC to head up its new pop music radio station, BBC Radio 1. This motley collection of “fans” became a “real,” structured hierarchy – there were consistencies in the dress, style, taste, politics and activities of these people that consumed and produced rock music. Outside observers could easily identify rock fans; it was the beginnings of an expressive rock subculture.
Ever since the 1930s, studies on subculture had been the domain of academia. Rock music, rock fashion and rock performance was and still is a mass leisure activity or pursuit, giving rise to a self-conscious group of consumers that identify as part of a rock subculture. The Birmingham School of Contemporary Cultural Studies was one of the first academic units to purposefully examine the rock subculture in Britain which lent further credence to rock music as not only an art form but the linchpin, expression and overall rallying point for a subculture. Frith and Horne in Art into Pop explain rock and pop music’s explosion into academia can be explained by the “extraordinary art school connection” with British musicians and later American musicians adding “image, style and self-consciousness – an attitude to what commercial music should and could be…This attitude has been influential even when a particular genre (like punk) didn’t actually sell records.” Subcultures express a response to a set of conditions that are tied together into structured, relatively coherent wholes and rock music is a binding force for a rock subculture can also be viewed in this fashion. However, the mere appreciable existence of rock music subculture did not make it an artform worthy of academic criticism, debate and study. Rock music criticism – the act of thinking and writing critically about rock as art - did not fully begin until the post-1967 Wenner moment.
In Britain in the 1950s and early 1960s, writing on rock music was limited to trade publications and “fan pages” that were analogous to “film fan” magazines of the 1930s. These papers focused primarily on the “stars” and not a literary or discursive analysis of films unlike the French art cinema journal Cahiers du Cinema or similar publication; some trade publications in the US such as Billboard tracked chart positions and industry news but there was little in the way that could be described as criticism or journalism. The music press at this time could be viewed as merely an instrument of the music industry reflecting the “increasing importance of records and record sales” and provided “no perspective, historical or otherwise on the music they covered; they had no developed critical positions…they presented the industry’s own public view of itself.” In the 1960s onwards, rock journalism emerged into its own field, critically evaluating rock music so as to develop an “account of the music as art” as distinct from other previous forms of music reporting such as the aforementioned trade papers and “teeny bopper” fan-oriented magazines. American rock magazine Crawdaddy! was launched in February 1966. Editor Paul Williams proclaimed it “free from teenage-magazine perspectives” and proudly proclaiming that the magazine’s specialty would be “intelligent writing about pop music” while charging Billboard with “non-critical criticism,” opening up the high-low cultural dichotomy arguably for the first time. These magazines attempted, as Simon Frith wrote in 1981, to “take the new musicians and their audiences as seriously as they took themselves.” Rock fans could now determine what cultural products were noteworthy for their artistry and which ones were lesser or inferior through specialized cultural interpreters – rock critics and rock journalists.
The emergence of rock radio stations, magazines such as the aforementioned, article collections, specialist periodicals and record guides all set up a “critical apparatus” that positioned academically credentialed journalists as both “participants and observers of the rock revolution” thus conferring the authority on their works from mere participants or observers of rock music. Those interested in the subculture could not only use these magazines as reflections of their readership, but also act as an entry point into these readerships. The subculture’s artistic expression was under scrutiny from writers of a scholarly background, using similar appraisal techniques usually reserved for critiques of literature, visual art or classical and jazz music. Through such analysis, we can view rock as a true “art.”
This criticism is produced in a professional manner from a position of influence and cultural authority. Rock critics become “arbiters of taste” from the aforementioned “cultivated disposition” imbued upon them from academia, the emergence of a “genius” styles of writing and a sustained body of works of that quality in the rock music field. Their “self-defined task is not only to suggest what to buy, but how to make sense of [rock journalism as a movement, style, subculture, etc.]” This role as navigator through the world of the rock subculture is not cast arbitrarily. The notion of what constitutes authenticity in the rock subculture and how it is expressed through rock journalism, rock music and rock style is another question in the discourse which will be discussed at length in another essay.
Rock critics and journalists in the 1967 moment onwards and arguably until the 1999 “flattening” of the industry by rapid-fire online content distribution and generation “fought” the battle for rock music; the writing that elucidated and analyzed it was armed with an immersion in academia and a revolt into style. Bringing art into pop (or merely viewing pop as art) laid the foundations for rock criticism and journalism to flourish into the mainstream culture and accepted as a popular “art.” Though much has been made of the “high/low” dichotomy of culture in the past, the new media ecology and conceptualization of consumer/producer/critic as a singular, “remixed” entity existing on the internet or digital media breaks down these distinctions into a multi-valued orientation in which artistic or subcultural merit can be found in almost any production (according to the viewpoint of the subculture or individual.) Though some academics would froth at the mouth if one asserts a loss in the fidelity of “high culture,” the simple fact is that rock as a subculture values this music and style as art and as such, is given praise or criticism by those knowledgeable in the art of rock and of course, the art of analysis and criticism. If one can articulate the points of difference or commendable attributes of rock music then they too can shape the canon as a “cultural interlocutor” through their transmission of authenticity and “professional” or historical awareness as an art.
This essay is an early draft in a series of critical examinations of music criticism and journalism. The project is being co-written by Leticia Supple, blogger and founder of MetalAsFuck.net. Read her essays here.
---
[1] Lindberg, U., Gudmundsson, G., Michelsen, M. and Weisethaunet, H. Rock Criticism from the Beginning: Amusers, bruisers and cool-headed cruisers, Peter Lang Publishing: New York, NY, 2005. p. 146.
21.8.11
Push-Button Professionalism: The origin and evolution of the role of professional music critics
If you write on the internet, you’re blogging. There’s an indissoluble link between the two terms – if you have an opinion and have the means to publish on the internet, you are elevated into the “blogosphere” of online opinion. One can blog on virtually any subject they wish, including rock music. These bloggers offer music criticism with lighting fast rapidity and in some cases, keener cultural and intellectual insight compared with academically trained, and establishment-oriented “professionals.” Is there much truth to the charge of popular music academic Don McLeese when he asks:
Music criticism and journalism lends meaning to the subculture or “communities of consumers” as they may be viewed and as an extension of itself. The bands characterizing themselves as artists address their fans through the “interlocutor” or interpreter of critic and rock journalist. However, the force of community building is at tension with the forces of commodification as rock journalism derives its revenue through label advertising in order to sell their own cultural product. Labels seek to reach their markets through magazines. Then we must determine the initial impulse for music writers to start writing about this subject as well.
Charlie Gillett of the underground magazine Rock File wrote in 1972 that “records are the reason most of the journalists are [writers], which is often as frustrating to them as it is to the readers who have to plough through their copy. Records are bait and currency for the rock 'n' roll journalist; he gets ‘review copies,’ free from the record companies, keeps those he likes, and sells or trades off what he doesn't want.” But in 2011 a “music critic” (as defined as someone who actively writes about music with some degree of critical positioning) can download an album, perhaps before its release date and write a review with as much import as a piece written by a critic that works within the traditional structures of the industry and is recognized by others in the subculture as such.
Of course, back in the 1960s and 70s the media ecology of the music marketplace was firmly in the grasp of the music industry. Record labels and their holding companies controlled the means of reproduction (vinyl records, 8-tracks etc.) and how these products were manufactured and sold. Similarly, music magazines controlled the sphere of criticism and music news reporting. In the time of Gillett, Roxon and Bangs, music critics were handed records by publicists or editors and encouraged, “bribed” or ordered to write about what they heard or were charged with finding new sounds or emerging trends in music-centric subcultures. In some cases, these journalists almost uncritically championed styles they favored.
On the whole, critics were charged to communicate to other readers using their cultivated disposition – perceived or otherwise - if what they heard was culturally significant or aesthetically creative; it was their job to appraise whether the music in question was enjoyable, to determine to what extent and why. A reader would have to buy, physically pick up or subscribe to a magazine or street press, read the review and decide whether to purchase the album or single based on the resulting content. In terms of criticism, there was a literal and cultural distance from the work being appraised and the work itself; the record and the magazine existed in two parallel and distinct mediums as opposed to non-critical music-as-content mediums such as radio or television.
Radio ever since its invention and mass adoption, likewise with television in the 1980s, has exposed cultures and subcultures to budding trends in pop and rock music. The content of radio primarily is music (or arguably the commercials that bookend the songs), not music criticism. Once a song was played, the listener was at the mercy of the DJ to spin it again (until the 1980s, when home taping became prevalent although this phenomenon was not as wide-spread as record labels would have us imagine.) Almost all music in rotation at commercial or even community access radio stations was almost always readily available for purchase in record stores or in other outlets. The institution of the radio station serves to actively publicize music (or rather, the records) as a commercial product for retail sale by presenting it as the content itself. When media critic Robert McChesney posited that “there’s no non-commercial part of MTV” in the mid-90s he could easily have applied the same assertion to commercial radio of the 50s onwards (especially in the face of cash-for-airplay scandals known as “payola.”) In the age of media convergence, new media and portable, digital formats such as endlessly duplicable CD or mp3, the once prevailing view of music as a controlled, commercial product becomes problematic. Thus the role and usefulness of the “privileged interlocutor” is thrown into question.
In the twilight of the last century, the file-sharing service Napster along with scores of others forced a usually reactionary music industry to transition towards the portable and online era. Musicians and labels discovered to their dismay they could not merely legislate or litigate the control of their products back to them and how they were covered or evaluated in publications. The age of monetizing the content by controlling the technology was at a close. The advance promo “bait” as a currency to entice music journalists to write favorable copy – or any copy at all – lost all worth virtually overnight.
Likewise, the “underground” publications such as street-press or fanzines, revered for their authenticity due to their autonomy and limited production in comparison to the “mainstream” could no longer maintain this physical distance from Rolling Stone or NME once these blog-zines were only one click away. In terms of music criticism, the dimension between “insider” or “interpreter” and “consumer” or “fan” collapsed. Industry publicists, fans, musicians, technicians and professional journalists could all don the persona of music critic with a few simple clicks of a mouse. We don’t even have to read reviews; websites such as Last.fm, MySpace and ReverbNation allow us to hear music on demand and allows consumers to individually decide whether to purchase (or illegally download) the content for themselves. So do we need professionals to tell us what it all means?
In Australia, there are many fanzines and blogs that have risen from the grassroots to later be co-opted by the music industry to propel mutual success. FasterLouder.com.au, Beat Magazine, KillYourStereo, MetalForge.com, MetalAsFuck.net, Mess+Noise, Collapse Board, the AU Review and various others are examples of fan-established and maintained blogs or street press that have risen to prominence significantly due to gaining artist access via official channels. Sites and street press such as these are privy to the sphere of cultural production (to be discussed in detail in another essay) in terms of providing the basis for content creation for these sites. For record label, it’s arguably the last vestige of content control they retain.
In the origins of pop music criticism, when pop was to be considered “art” by academia and eventually the mainstream (radio, television, newspapers and other widely consumed cultural products intended for a mass audience) it was pushed by students and university graduates occupying positions of influence in the media or academia. Alternatively, publications such as the aforementioned Rolling Stone, Creem or Melody Maker (after it went “progressive”) were created to lead the charge for pop music and its adherents as an artistically authentic subculture and not merely as pleasure-driven kids seeking vacuous entertainment. Pop music critic authenticity was conferred upon writers by writing for publications that others considered to be representative of the subculture it was reflecting or shaping. In the internet age, the “professionals” are not chosen by the public, but the labels.
The labels offer the interviews, the advance copies, the free concert tickets to writers they believe carry this authenticity or popularity and are able to act as “cultural interlocutors.” “Amateur” music critics that garner a significant amount of traffic or attention do not tend to stay “amateur” for long. Labels on the prowl for more avenues to publicize their content will seek to co-opt these writers or journalists into their cultural production “sphere” or circuit. Whether the writer publishes his own blog or is employed by conglomerates such as News Limited or Fairfax Media, the task that falls on the writer to “explore meaning” in pop music is granted by the fact labels allow the writer to test these boundaries through controlling who gains access to these artists and who does not.
There is no question there are shills, “hacks” and other fan-writers who write nothing but borderline hagiography when afforded an opportunity to meet or talk to their favorite artist. Others pride themselves on acting as “haters,” harshly critiquing almost everything that they hear. Despite either method (or even striking a moderate balance of coverage) that guarantees the initial access, once inside the label-content circuit, one’s inclusion is not assured indefinitely. If new, more popular writers emerge and the writer in question does not deliver a return on investment (writing negative copy in a publication with declining readership, for example) they eventually are excluded from the circuit. At this juncture, it becomes apparent who is granted "privileged interlocutorship."
It would be naïve to assume that the most popular music writers are considered the “best” writers; its essentially a subjective position. In the view of the music industry, these critics and writers are given more access for the greatest return on investment. Even though music is stolen with more haste than it is bought, the intrinsic task of the privileged music critic is the same; to promote records through the discussion of it in mass media publications. But do we need them?
To answer simply, the co-opted critic may not be as insightful, incisive or knowledgeable about their chosen critic as one who is not. The “special licence” is conferred upon writer from without, by the source of the content being written about; not inversely as it did in the post-1968 moment until around 1986 and new media trends and transmission methods were integrated into our media culture. A critic that actively resists co-option may enjoy heightened authenticity through maintaining a critical distance from the industry cultural production circuit, much like those in the underground zine culture of the 70s and 80s. By rejecting the compromising “lures” of privileged interlocutorship may work in their favor in terms of shaping the musical zeitgeist in certain subcultures (such as punk and hardcore music for example.) This sounds like a romanticized authenticity rooted in the do-it-yourself punk philosophy, but ultimately the writer with the “all access pass” carries more authenticity as a music critic and journalist than the writer without one.
The simple, undeniable fact remains: the writer with the most reach is given that privilege and writes to sustain it; and that license is very much granted at the discretion of the labels and publicists. We don’t need these “privileged” writers, no; but in terms of getting the story and advancing the narrative of music criticism, we do seem to want them. The critics that elevate their craft into an art as much as the music they write about are the ones that deserve the privilege; but unfortunately may not always get it. As long as the participants of a subculture yearn for an authentic story behind artists and their products conveyed from the mouths of the artists themselves - critically or not - the “privilege” is there for the taking and increasingly, exists for our continued consumption.
This essay is an early draft in a series of critical examinations of music criticism and journalism. The project is being co-written by Leticia Supple, blogger and founder of MetalAsFuck.net. Read her first essay here.
---
[1]: McLeese, D. 'Straddling the Cultural Chasm: The Great Divide between Music Criticism and Popular Consumption' in Popular Music and Society (Vol. 33, No. 4. 2010) p. 436.
"[C]ritical writing about pop music has grown steadily more irrelevant. . . . Pinning the entire rap on the Internet allows music critics to dodge some painful but necessary questions. How should journalists illuminate the zeitgeist at a moment when the dominant culture narrative is that there is no dominant cultural narrative? Do critics have any special license to serve as pop music’s cultural interlocutors when anyone with an Internet connection can attempt to do the same thing? In other words: if anyone can make pop music and anyone can be a pop-music critic, do we really need professional critics to tell us what it all means?"[1]If we can curate to our own exacting tastes, access music from a variety of sources and similarly the criticism – how can one delineate between “cultural interlocutor,” loud-mouth blogger or publicist shill? How did we end up at this (non-)critical juncture in the first place?
Music criticism and journalism lends meaning to the subculture or “communities of consumers” as they may be viewed and as an extension of itself. The bands characterizing themselves as artists address their fans through the “interlocutor” or interpreter of critic and rock journalist. However, the force of community building is at tension with the forces of commodification as rock journalism derives its revenue through label advertising in order to sell their own cultural product. Labels seek to reach their markets through magazines. Then we must determine the initial impulse for music writers to start writing about this subject as well.
Charlie Gillett of the underground magazine Rock File wrote in 1972 that “records are the reason most of the journalists are [writers], which is often as frustrating to them as it is to the readers who have to plough through their copy. Records are bait and currency for the rock 'n' roll journalist; he gets ‘review copies,’ free from the record companies, keeps those he likes, and sells or trades off what he doesn't want.” But in 2011 a “music critic” (as defined as someone who actively writes about music with some degree of critical positioning) can download an album, perhaps before its release date and write a review with as much import as a piece written by a critic that works within the traditional structures of the industry and is recognized by others in the subculture as such.
Of course, back in the 1960s and 70s the media ecology of the music marketplace was firmly in the grasp of the music industry. Record labels and their holding companies controlled the means of reproduction (vinyl records, 8-tracks etc.) and how these products were manufactured and sold. Similarly, music magazines controlled the sphere of criticism and music news reporting. In the time of Gillett, Roxon and Bangs, music critics were handed records by publicists or editors and encouraged, “bribed” or ordered to write about what they heard or were charged with finding new sounds or emerging trends in music-centric subcultures. In some cases, these journalists almost uncritically championed styles they favored.
On the whole, critics were charged to communicate to other readers using their cultivated disposition – perceived or otherwise - if what they heard was culturally significant or aesthetically creative; it was their job to appraise whether the music in question was enjoyable, to determine to what extent and why. A reader would have to buy, physically pick up or subscribe to a magazine or street press, read the review and decide whether to purchase the album or single based on the resulting content. In terms of criticism, there was a literal and cultural distance from the work being appraised and the work itself; the record and the magazine existed in two parallel and distinct mediums as opposed to non-critical music-as-content mediums such as radio or television.
Radio ever since its invention and mass adoption, likewise with television in the 1980s, has exposed cultures and subcultures to budding trends in pop and rock music. The content of radio primarily is music (or arguably the commercials that bookend the songs), not music criticism. Once a song was played, the listener was at the mercy of the DJ to spin it again (until the 1980s, when home taping became prevalent although this phenomenon was not as wide-spread as record labels would have us imagine.) Almost all music in rotation at commercial or even community access radio stations was almost always readily available for purchase in record stores or in other outlets. The institution of the radio station serves to actively publicize music (or rather, the records) as a commercial product for retail sale by presenting it as the content itself. When media critic Robert McChesney posited that “there’s no non-commercial part of MTV” in the mid-90s he could easily have applied the same assertion to commercial radio of the 50s onwards (especially in the face of cash-for-airplay scandals known as “payola.”) In the age of media convergence, new media and portable, digital formats such as endlessly duplicable CD or mp3, the once prevailing view of music as a controlled, commercial product becomes problematic. Thus the role and usefulness of the “privileged interlocutor” is thrown into question.
In the twilight of the last century, the file-sharing service Napster along with scores of others forced a usually reactionary music industry to transition towards the portable and online era. Musicians and labels discovered to their dismay they could not merely legislate or litigate the control of their products back to them and how they were covered or evaluated in publications. The age of monetizing the content by controlling the technology was at a close. The advance promo “bait” as a currency to entice music journalists to write favorable copy – or any copy at all – lost all worth virtually overnight.
Likewise, the “underground” publications such as street-press or fanzines, revered for their authenticity due to their autonomy and limited production in comparison to the “mainstream” could no longer maintain this physical distance from Rolling Stone or NME once these blog-zines were only one click away. In terms of music criticism, the dimension between “insider” or “interpreter” and “consumer” or “fan” collapsed. Industry publicists, fans, musicians, technicians and professional journalists could all don the persona of music critic with a few simple clicks of a mouse. We don’t even have to read reviews; websites such as Last.fm, MySpace and ReverbNation allow us to hear music on demand and allows consumers to individually decide whether to purchase (or illegally download) the content for themselves. So do we need professionals to tell us what it all means?
In Australia, there are many fanzines and blogs that have risen from the grassroots to later be co-opted by the music industry to propel mutual success. FasterLouder.com.au, Beat Magazine, KillYourStereo, MetalForge.com, MetalAsFuck.net, Mess+Noise, Collapse Board, the AU Review and various others are examples of fan-established and maintained blogs or street press that have risen to prominence significantly due to gaining artist access via official channels. Sites and street press such as these are privy to the sphere of cultural production (to be discussed in detail in another essay) in terms of providing the basis for content creation for these sites. For record label, it’s arguably the last vestige of content control they retain.
In the origins of pop music criticism, when pop was to be considered “art” by academia and eventually the mainstream (radio, television, newspapers and other widely consumed cultural products intended for a mass audience) it was pushed by students and university graduates occupying positions of influence in the media or academia. Alternatively, publications such as the aforementioned Rolling Stone, Creem or Melody Maker (after it went “progressive”) were created to lead the charge for pop music and its adherents as an artistically authentic subculture and not merely as pleasure-driven kids seeking vacuous entertainment. Pop music critic authenticity was conferred upon writers by writing for publications that others considered to be representative of the subculture it was reflecting or shaping. In the internet age, the “professionals” are not chosen by the public, but the labels.
The labels offer the interviews, the advance copies, the free concert tickets to writers they believe carry this authenticity or popularity and are able to act as “cultural interlocutors.” “Amateur” music critics that garner a significant amount of traffic or attention do not tend to stay “amateur” for long. Labels on the prowl for more avenues to publicize their content will seek to co-opt these writers or journalists into their cultural production “sphere” or circuit. Whether the writer publishes his own blog or is employed by conglomerates such as News Limited or Fairfax Media, the task that falls on the writer to “explore meaning” in pop music is granted by the fact labels allow the writer to test these boundaries through controlling who gains access to these artists and who does not.
There is no question there are shills, “hacks” and other fan-writers who write nothing but borderline hagiography when afforded an opportunity to meet or talk to their favorite artist. Others pride themselves on acting as “haters,” harshly critiquing almost everything that they hear. Despite either method (or even striking a moderate balance of coverage) that guarantees the initial access, once inside the label-content circuit, one’s inclusion is not assured indefinitely. If new, more popular writers emerge and the writer in question does not deliver a return on investment (writing negative copy in a publication with declining readership, for example) they eventually are excluded from the circuit. At this juncture, it becomes apparent who is granted "privileged interlocutorship."
It would be naïve to assume that the most popular music writers are considered the “best” writers; its essentially a subjective position. In the view of the music industry, these critics and writers are given more access for the greatest return on investment. Even though music is stolen with more haste than it is bought, the intrinsic task of the privileged music critic is the same; to promote records through the discussion of it in mass media publications. But do we need them?
To answer simply, the co-opted critic may not be as insightful, incisive or knowledgeable about their chosen critic as one who is not. The “special licence” is conferred upon writer from without, by the source of the content being written about; not inversely as it did in the post-1968 moment until around 1986 and new media trends and transmission methods were integrated into our media culture. A critic that actively resists co-option may enjoy heightened authenticity through maintaining a critical distance from the industry cultural production circuit, much like those in the underground zine culture of the 70s and 80s. By rejecting the compromising “lures” of privileged interlocutorship may work in their favor in terms of shaping the musical zeitgeist in certain subcultures (such as punk and hardcore music for example.) This sounds like a romanticized authenticity rooted in the do-it-yourself punk philosophy, but ultimately the writer with the “all access pass” carries more authenticity as a music critic and journalist than the writer without one.
The simple, undeniable fact remains: the writer with the most reach is given that privilege and writes to sustain it; and that license is very much granted at the discretion of the labels and publicists. We don’t need these “privileged” writers, no; but in terms of getting the story and advancing the narrative of music criticism, we do seem to want them. The critics that elevate their craft into an art as much as the music they write about are the ones that deserve the privilege; but unfortunately may not always get it. As long as the participants of a subculture yearn for an authentic story behind artists and their products conveyed from the mouths of the artists themselves - critically or not - the “privilege” is there for the taking and increasingly, exists for our continued consumption.
This essay is an early draft in a series of critical examinations of music criticism and journalism. The project is being co-written by Leticia Supple, blogger and founder of MetalAsFuck.net. Read her first essay here.
---
[1]: McLeese, D. 'Straddling the Cultural Chasm: The Great Divide between Music Criticism and Popular Consumption' in Popular Music and Society (Vol. 33, No. 4. 2010) p. 436.
22.7.11
Killing the Facebook - A Welcome Disconnection
On Thursday night, I made a pre-meditated, well-planned and spontaneous decision to deactivate my Facebook. Ignoring it wasn't enough. I wanted it dead.
When one decides to shut down Facebook, the cybernetic entity controlling its blue and white projection tries to guilt you into staying. It feebly attempts to convince you its privacy violations are ingenuous, the premise behind it is half-way useful and even resorts to emotional blackmail, insistent that certain real life friends will miss your cyberpresence. Despite the electronic pleading and bureaucracy it entangles you in (are you really, truly sure? Enter your Tax File Number and mother's father's aunt's maiden name to continue.) I pulled the plug.
Let me tell you, what a relief.
The last year and a half, I've experienced overwhelming, world-view shifting changes. Some are physical - I feel stronger and fitter. Others are mental - I know more that I did last year. A lot of them are intangible, yet bound up with my very being. Facebook does a disservice to our being. It labels it, it regulates it and alters our perception of it. It's not a window into our being. It's a map of it that's barely accurate at the best of times.
Prior to the advent of social media and my own return from the brink of oblivion, I almost wished I could use some kind of benign platform to convince myself that my friends were routinely ignoring me or were acting like sinister villains behind my back. My mind with paranoia's snakes coiled tight around it was convinced - convinced! - that these smiles masked a cruel intent.
Maybe they did. More rationally and overall, likely, they most probably didn't. Sure, by the time I'd reached the end of my tether with this colloquial monstrosity, I'd noticed a pattern had emerged when I'd made a post. Only about 10 or 15 "friends" seemed even remotely interested in what I'd had to say. Sure, I'd made some new contacts along the way but I'd also made some "indifferents." I was "hidden" from view by everyone else - or so it seemed.
But then I figured that my fatigue with Facebook stemmed from viewing an overabundance of useless and intellectually void information about people I barely knew. Yet, the otherness lay in myself: I made little to no effort to get to know the people - the real people behind the "book" obscuring their "faces" - and at that instant, there was clarity as I emerged from beyond the murk: I was out of integrity with my use of Facebook. It was all bullshit, man.
The last year I've made many lasting friendships. Brotherhoods indissoluble, loves everlasting. But they weren't made over Facebook. They were forged as sunlight beat down on our faces, as tears streaked down our cheeks, as frost billowed through the cadence of our breaths. Friends are made and re-made over cheap meals and cheaper laughs in second-rate cafes. Facebook, the great concealer of real, open and visceral humanity didn't let seeds of camaraderie take root and flourish; it kept them in stasis until someone decided to let it expire.
So I got rid of it. I was bullshitting myself if I chose to keep my interactive dossier of half-truths up and running. I'm not even remotely concerned that it's a great "tool" for promoting my journalism work or services as a consultant. I get enough rejection e-mails from editors and managers in my good old fashioned email inbox, thank you very much.
My once enthusiastic adoration for Twitter has all but evaporated too. The only "social medium" (although that's a contestable term) I'm rather enjoying is Tumblr - it's like running one's own pop-culture museum. There's a certain joy in stealing from others' small collections and discoveries to curate in one's own permanent exhibition. It's superficial, that's a given. But it's artifice does not purport to foster "friendships" in the physical sense. Online community, yes. "A place for your friends," not so much.
Will I miss it? I'm not suffering from any measure of withdrawal. But like the aims of my (numerous) social media moratoriums, the payoff is in rising to challenge of relying on it no longer. If I want to know what's going on with my social circles, I'll have to talk to someone and engage in a real conversation to find out. If I'm forgotten by fair-weather friends, then so what? I know who my brothers and sisters are on this magnificent journey. I'll love and support them as long as I'm able. In kind, they will support me, too.
So I give praise to Facebook precisely as I bury it (with the cumulative personal information I've fed it over the years clutched firmly in its cold, dead hands.) You've opened my eyes to see where my real friends truly are.
When one decides to shut down Facebook, the cybernetic entity controlling its blue and white projection tries to guilt you into staying. It feebly attempts to convince you its privacy violations are ingenuous, the premise behind it is half-way useful and even resorts to emotional blackmail, insistent that certain real life friends will miss your cyberpresence. Despite the electronic pleading and bureaucracy it entangles you in (are you really, truly sure? Enter your Tax File Number and mother's father's aunt's maiden name to continue.) I pulled the plug.
Let me tell you, what a relief.
The last year and a half, I've experienced overwhelming, world-view shifting changes. Some are physical - I feel stronger and fitter. Others are mental - I know more that I did last year. A lot of them are intangible, yet bound up with my very being. Facebook does a disservice to our being. It labels it, it regulates it and alters our perception of it. It's not a window into our being. It's a map of it that's barely accurate at the best of times.
Prior to the advent of social media and my own return from the brink of oblivion, I almost wished I could use some kind of benign platform to convince myself that my friends were routinely ignoring me or were acting like sinister villains behind my back. My mind with paranoia's snakes coiled tight around it was convinced - convinced! - that these smiles masked a cruel intent.
Maybe they did. More rationally and overall, likely, they most probably didn't. Sure, by the time I'd reached the end of my tether with this colloquial monstrosity, I'd noticed a pattern had emerged when I'd made a post. Only about 10 or 15 "friends" seemed even remotely interested in what I'd had to say. Sure, I'd made some new contacts along the way but I'd also made some "indifferents." I was "hidden" from view by everyone else - or so it seemed.
But then I figured that my fatigue with Facebook stemmed from viewing an overabundance of useless and intellectually void information about people I barely knew. Yet, the otherness lay in myself: I made little to no effort to get to know the people - the real people behind the "book" obscuring their "faces" - and at that instant, there was clarity as I emerged from beyond the murk: I was out of integrity with my use of Facebook. It was all bullshit, man.
The last year I've made many lasting friendships. Brotherhoods indissoluble, loves everlasting. But they weren't made over Facebook. They were forged as sunlight beat down on our faces, as tears streaked down our cheeks, as frost billowed through the cadence of our breaths. Friends are made and re-made over cheap meals and cheaper laughs in second-rate cafes. Facebook, the great concealer of real, open and visceral humanity didn't let seeds of camaraderie take root and flourish; it kept them in stasis until someone decided to let it expire.
So I got rid of it. I was bullshitting myself if I chose to keep my interactive dossier of half-truths up and running. I'm not even remotely concerned that it's a great "tool" for promoting my journalism work or services as a consultant. I get enough rejection e-mails from editors and managers in my good old fashioned email inbox, thank you very much.
My once enthusiastic adoration for Twitter has all but evaporated too. The only "social medium" (although that's a contestable term) I'm rather enjoying is Tumblr - it's like running one's own pop-culture museum. There's a certain joy in stealing from others' small collections and discoveries to curate in one's own permanent exhibition. It's superficial, that's a given. But it's artifice does not purport to foster "friendships" in the physical sense. Online community, yes. "A place for your friends," not so much.
Will I miss it? I'm not suffering from any measure of withdrawal. But like the aims of my (numerous) social media moratoriums, the payoff is in rising to challenge of relying on it no longer. If I want to know what's going on with my social circles, I'll have to talk to someone and engage in a real conversation to find out. If I'm forgotten by fair-weather friends, then so what? I know who my brothers and sisters are on this magnificent journey. I'll love and support them as long as I'm able. In kind, they will support me, too.
So I give praise to Facebook precisely as I bury it (with the cumulative personal information I've fed it over the years clutched firmly in its cold, dead hands.) You've opened my eyes to see where my real friends truly are.
16.7.11
Where's Our Google, Too?
I felt compelled to add my opinion to the billion-strong chorus of ill-baked and half-formed critiques and hagiographies of Google+ on the basis none of them seemed to catch on to some fundamental facets of media ecology. Media ecology put simply is the study of media as an environment and was pioneered by Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Jacques Ellul and many others. In honor of ABC Radio National's week-long celebration of the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, I present my simple media ecological analysis of Google+ and why I don't feel it'll take off to Facebook proportions.
1. Because it's Google+, not Google 2: Electric Googleoo
The mantra of media ecology, especially that of the late great Neil Postman is that new media is not additive but transformative. You don't get a culture plus television, you get a completely new way of disseminating and interpreting information. 20 years ago, not everyone needed a computer. But in 2011 you go into someone's home, chances are you'll see a computer in residence with a connection to the internet. Computers hooked up to the internet are a material change to our culture that results in a behavioral change. Go to any restaurant and see the new table adornments: black rectangles that go "ping" when your date is talking about new boots or football or whatever.
Google+ only works on the premise that it will make a material or behavioral change to your life somehow. If you intend to own a Chromebook, then yes - Google+ makes total sense. Using Chromium OS, Google+ fits right in to the entire purpose of the operating system and the computer; making it a purely web-based machine and experience.
If you don't own one nor do you intend to own one, it has to offer something drastically new and something substantially more cooler than Facebook to kick the Facebook habit.
2. The people who give a shit about it give a shit already
I've noticed no one is pestering me for invites any more - partly because they don't like me and mostly because those who already want it, have it and those who don't give a shit...well, don't give a shit. Google+ has almost already hit a critical mass of people who give a shit about it and now that anyone can send an invite the give a shit factor has taken a nosedive. Those who do give a shit evangelize about it as the Facebook killer but inevitably hit the obvious roadblock:
"So what's it like?" asks the incredulous bystander. "It's like bringing all your friends together, but you can follow other people you think are cool and you put them into circles and it's AWESOME," replies the Google+ zealot.
"So it's like Facebook."
"Yes, but better."
But is it better? Faster? Harder? Stronger? In what way? Pick any one of the preceding and it's especially difficult to evaluate if that's even true or not. But there is one way, which I'll explain later.
3. Pitching something to everyone means you need to make a habit out of it
Facebook was revered by university students because it couched them in a sort of electronic elitism - don't go to uni? Well fuck you, you can't use Facebook. Before long it was available to high school students, technical colleges and eventually everyone. Then it opened itself up to the internet and segued into the background of the web experience, not as the go-to site of the minute. It became a habit.
G+ seems to work on the premise that it's ridiculously simple enough for the web-only Chromium set but also powerful and malleable enough for the media "gurus" and code monkeys. Where does it leave the people in the middle? Killing e-cows with their mafia goons on Facebook. It's difficult to change a habitual behavior and the reason has to be compelling for those to change. Facebook wasn't built on a new premise, but its advantage over MySpace? It successfully broke down an ingrained habit (for some) and facilitated other people to form new ones.
Your friend posts a photo of what they're eating, every day? It's the online equivalent of twirling one's hair or tapping one's foot, mostly unconsciously. (How can you spend 2 hours on that fucking thing without realizing, I mean, seriously.) Perhaps we all need an e-Gestalt therapist to ask us "Vat is the sik-niff-ee-kunss of zat what you are doing zere?"
Can Google+ achieve the same thing? I doubt it - at this stage. To get to Facebook or even Twitter status, it has to be come a lasting and integral part of our everyday experience. Right now it's like "Oh yeah, shit, I have Google+. I should post this blog post about Google+ on it, right now!"
Even those who signed up for Facebook and didn't make a habit out of it would probably log in and find their notifications area awash with red. If there's no sustained buzz, I suppose we can wave it away.
1. Because it's Google+, not Google 2: Electric Googleoo
The mantra of media ecology, especially that of the late great Neil Postman is that new media is not additive but transformative. You don't get a culture plus television, you get a completely new way of disseminating and interpreting information. 20 years ago, not everyone needed a computer. But in 2011 you go into someone's home, chances are you'll see a computer in residence with a connection to the internet. Computers hooked up to the internet are a material change to our culture that results in a behavioral change. Go to any restaurant and see the new table adornments: black rectangles that go "ping" when your date is talking about new boots or football or whatever.
Google+ only works on the premise that it will make a material or behavioral change to your life somehow. If you intend to own a Chromebook, then yes - Google+ makes total sense. Using Chromium OS, Google+ fits right in to the entire purpose of the operating system and the computer; making it a purely web-based machine and experience.
If you don't own one nor do you intend to own one, it has to offer something drastically new and something substantially more cooler than Facebook to kick the Facebook habit.
2. The people who give a shit about it give a shit already
I've noticed no one is pestering me for invites any more - partly because they don't like me and mostly because those who already want it, have it and those who don't give a shit...well, don't give a shit. Google+ has almost already hit a critical mass of people who give a shit about it and now that anyone can send an invite the give a shit factor has taken a nosedive. Those who do give a shit evangelize about it as the Facebook killer but inevitably hit the obvious roadblock:
"So what's it like?" asks the incredulous bystander. "It's like bringing all your friends together, but you can follow other people you think are cool and you put them into circles and it's AWESOME," replies the Google+ zealot.
"So it's like Facebook."
"Yes, but better."
But is it better? Faster? Harder? Stronger? In what way? Pick any one of the preceding and it's especially difficult to evaluate if that's even true or not. But there is one way, which I'll explain later.
3. Pitching something to everyone means you need to make a habit out of it
Facebook was revered by university students because it couched them in a sort of electronic elitism - don't go to uni? Well fuck you, you can't use Facebook. Before long it was available to high school students, technical colleges and eventually everyone. Then it opened itself up to the internet and segued into the background of the web experience, not as the go-to site of the minute. It became a habit.
G+ seems to work on the premise that it's ridiculously simple enough for the web-only Chromium set but also powerful and malleable enough for the media "gurus" and code monkeys. Where does it leave the people in the middle? Killing e-cows with their mafia goons on Facebook. It's difficult to change a habitual behavior and the reason has to be compelling for those to change. Facebook wasn't built on a new premise, but its advantage over MySpace? It successfully broke down an ingrained habit (for some) and facilitated other people to form new ones.
Your friend posts a photo of what they're eating, every day? It's the online equivalent of twirling one's hair or tapping one's foot, mostly unconsciously. (How can you spend 2 hours on that fucking thing without realizing, I mean, seriously.) Perhaps we all need an e-Gestalt therapist to ask us "Vat is the sik-niff-ee-kunss of zat what you are doing zere?"
Can Google+ achieve the same thing? I doubt it - at this stage. To get to Facebook or even Twitter status, it has to be come a lasting and integral part of our everyday experience. Right now it's like "Oh yeah, shit, I have Google+. I should post this blog post about Google+ on it, right now!"
Even those who signed up for Facebook and didn't make a habit out of it would probably log in and find their notifications area awash with red. If there's no sustained buzz, I suppose we can wave it away.
2.7.11
Out of Commission
Just a small note to myself to say - don't leave drinks on tables with a reach over one's computer. Gravity is not your friend in those situations. I spilled some iced tea on my laptop yesterday. Miraculously - it still works! But that doesn't mean there were unintended effects.
The keyboard has some dead letters (including the spacebar. Of all keys, the spacebar! Why didn't it hit 'Q' or something just as useless?) and the LCD screen has a rather noticeable wet patch on/in it. Through using another, older PC I'm able to access basic "potato" functions but all my "meat" is left on my lappy's HDD.
So if you're a band or a contact that's asking me "where my article is" - don't. At this stage, it's not going to be finished any time soon. Also, I'm not here as a public service to you; I'm a professional writer trying to make a living from my craft. Not only is it unprofessional to demand, it's also quite irritating. Relegating my work to that of a cake in an oven is actually quite insulting.
So I'm out of commission for a few days until my replacements and thorough drying cycle takes its course. Bummer.
The keyboard has some dead letters (including the spacebar. Of all keys, the spacebar! Why didn't it hit 'Q' or something just as useless?) and the LCD screen has a rather noticeable wet patch on/in it. Through using another, older PC I'm able to access basic "potato" functions but all my "meat" is left on my lappy's HDD.
So if you're a band or a contact that's asking me "where my article is" - don't. At this stage, it's not going to be finished any time soon. Also, I'm not here as a public service to you; I'm a professional writer trying to make a living from my craft. Not only is it unprofessional to demand, it's also quite irritating. Relegating my work to that of a cake in an oven is actually quite insulting.
So I'm out of commission for a few days until my replacements and thorough drying cycle takes its course. Bummer.
29.1.11
Your Own Private Wikileaks
In October 2010, Facebook made available a downloadable zipped archive of your "sensitive information" to any user that wishes to access it. You make a query to the server to prepare your folder and it's available for download within hours. When I finally opened it, I was shocked at what I found.
At 33MB long, it contained all my profile information - past and present - likes, dislikes, comments, posts, photos and videos. Everything I had ever typed into a white field with a blue button marked "Comment" underneath. Interestingly, one can mark the dates of occasions, when significant people entered (and departed) one's life and retrace the origin and evolution of shitty internet memes.
That's all great, but what happens when it gets into the wrong hands?
The package is so convenient, any user that can at least "use" Facebook is able to navigate through it. It's akin to IRC or MSN Messenger chatlogs in that everything written is timestamped and all the links are clickable right from within the (very very) long homepage. If some kind of savvy private investigator or kid with a keylogger nabs your password they can access your complete Facebook record. They'd also need access to your email; but to be honest what kind of stretch is that from getting one's Facebook password? As great the trip down memory lane is, the more chilling it gets as you realize who else might be looking at this information - those we have "authorized" to or not.
Of course, all of this is used to aggregate "targeted ads" with parts of it sold to private corporations. I can't exactly criticize them for their advertising function since I have used it myself. But then again, I've never been privy to the exact information it uses.
Like the tagline of the Social Network suggests, you don't make 500 million friends without making a few enemies and your company most certainly doesn't get a market valuation of $50 billion without selling something. Of course, information is as much of an asset as an abstract financial instrument (like a derivative security - it is essentially ephemeral and may become worthless over time as the market shifts); Facebook will need to figure out new ways of goading new information out of you to keep its targeted advertising relevant. Newspapers and other marketers had to "guess" where trends were heading and who their target demographic was - now the verisimilitude of information that marketers possess to attract potential buyers is phenomenally heightened by Facebook.
So what can people theoretically do with your entire "wall" page, photos and videos? Well, who knows? Assuming you posted whatever you posted for a decent enough reason, you ought to have nothing to fear. Take some comfort if you plan to run for public office; perhaps in the future a "semi-nude Facebook photo" will become the new "I smoked pot but didn't inhale."
At 33MB long, it contained all my profile information - past and present - likes, dislikes, comments, posts, photos and videos. Everything I had ever typed into a white field with a blue button marked "Comment" underneath. Interestingly, one can mark the dates of occasions, when significant people entered (and departed) one's life and retrace the origin and evolution of shitty internet memes.
That's all great, but what happens when it gets into the wrong hands?
The package is so convenient, any user that can at least "use" Facebook is able to navigate through it. It's akin to IRC or MSN Messenger chatlogs in that everything written is timestamped and all the links are clickable right from within the (very very) long homepage. If some kind of savvy private investigator or kid with a keylogger nabs your password they can access your complete Facebook record. They'd also need access to your email; but to be honest what kind of stretch is that from getting one's Facebook password? As great the trip down memory lane is, the more chilling it gets as you realize who else might be looking at this information - those we have "authorized" to or not.
Of course, all of this is used to aggregate "targeted ads" with parts of it sold to private corporations. I can't exactly criticize them for their advertising function since I have used it myself. But then again, I've never been privy to the exact information it uses.
Like the tagline of the Social Network suggests, you don't make 500 million friends without making a few enemies and your company most certainly doesn't get a market valuation of $50 billion without selling something. Of course, information is as much of an asset as an abstract financial instrument (like a derivative security - it is essentially ephemeral and may become worthless over time as the market shifts); Facebook will need to figure out new ways of goading new information out of you to keep its targeted advertising relevant. Newspapers and other marketers had to "guess" where trends were heading and who their target demographic was - now the verisimilitude of information that marketers possess to attract potential buyers is phenomenally heightened by Facebook.
So what can people theoretically do with your entire "wall" page, photos and videos? Well, who knows? Assuming you posted whatever you posted for a decent enough reason, you ought to have nothing to fear. Take some comfort if you plan to run for public office; perhaps in the future a "semi-nude Facebook photo" will become the new "I smoked pot but didn't inhale."
20.12.10
The Top 10 Metal of 2010 - #2
Finished in the Golden Hall of Asgard we descend into the long darkness - into the Spiral Shadow...
#2
Kylesa - Spiral Shadow
I went to Georgia. I met the devil down there. Luckily, I escaped with my sanity and balls in tact - just. It's like another world - a world I'm lucky to escape from. Nevertheless, I'm still able to enjoy what the state has to offer - namely the seductive insanity that Kylesa produce each time they commit their sound to tape (or hard drive.)
It does feel like this record is from another world. It's like a metal album that's slipped up through the portal depicted on the cover, landing in your hand from a parallel universe. If they want to beat both their drumsets to dervish-like guitar patterns, they will. If they want to pen browbeaten marches with an oozing Celtic black magic jig through the middle like Crowded Road, then it's a case of "fuck you" - they will. It's metal that feels scary because it's so alien yet wonderful. It's not done ironically like The Sword (thanks for nothing, guys) or as pretentious, pompous "art" a la Isis; it's a criminally enjoyable fusion of unadulterated brutality and jammin' sludge melody.
The track Don't Look Back was lent a considerable portion of my initial review just dedicated to its deconstruction:
Don’t Look Back is a true original. It’s in a league of its own. Imagine if Weezer made good on their promise to bring “Death to False Metal.” This is what it would sound like. Cascading, bright power-pop riffs abound this track, the right amount of despondent longing in the vocals with “oohing” and “aahing” female harmonies bubbling underneath; it’s some of the slickest songwriting you’ll hear all year without a doubt.
It stretches the limit to what metalheads will find acceptable - sludge metal, grunge and psychedelica heard on the same record? Are you shitting me? No - I'm not. That's why this record is so damn good. Crushing, wicked and brilliant.
17.12.10
The Top 10 Metal of 2010 - #5
Returning from the inky blackness of the void we're thrust into the land of sinners...
If the band went back to the drawing board and came back with this, the time spent polishing their riffs, beefing up their sound and taking a symphonic and detailed approach to their songwriting was exceedingly well spent. The band have never been one for pomp and pageantry - and when they have they've always done it with their tongue firmly in their cheek. There's cheesy and forgettable and then there's fun and Helloween. With flutes and bombast and choirs galore they're not afraid to dig deep into their memories of childhood rock heroes to treat their cherished cliches with love to bring them new life. Yes, it's power metal at its core - but it's also a virulently catchy form of rock n' roll that deserves careful attention.
7 Sinners is a really complete Euro metal record that celebrates our diverse genre from past to present and adds to the future giving it the respect it deserves. From bluesy licks, pounding thrash rhythms, touches of death metal vocals it screams from the high heavens that Helloween aren't just a power metal band, they are band that plays - and loves - heavy metal music.
On this record they ask each and every listener - Are You Metal? If not, that's fine. You're just missing out.
The Top 10
#6: Dark Tranquillity - We Are the Void
#5
Helloween - 7 Sinners
I said in my review earlier this year that Helloween's new record is a result of "the fresh blood injected into the wintry veins of Helloween in the form of guitarist Sascha Gerstner and drummer Dani Loble...[resurrecting] a sleeping metal leviathan from the bed of mediocrity." I stand by my words since 7 Sinners greatness increases more and more with every spin.If the band went back to the drawing board and came back with this, the time spent polishing their riffs, beefing up their sound and taking a symphonic and detailed approach to their songwriting was exceedingly well spent. The band have never been one for pomp and pageantry - and when they have they've always done it with their tongue firmly in their cheek. There's cheesy and forgettable and then there's fun and Helloween. With flutes and bombast and choirs galore they're not afraid to dig deep into their memories of childhood rock heroes to treat their cherished cliches with love to bring them new life. Yes, it's power metal at its core - but it's also a virulently catchy form of rock n' roll that deserves careful attention.
7 Sinners is a really complete Euro metal record that celebrates our diverse genre from past to present and adds to the future giving it the respect it deserves. From bluesy licks, pounding thrash rhythms, touches of death metal vocals it screams from the high heavens that Helloween aren't just a power metal band, they are band that plays - and loves - heavy metal music.
On this record they ask each and every listener - Are You Metal? If not, that's fine. You're just missing out.
The Top 10
#6: Dark Tranquillity - We Are the Void
8.12.10
Scientific Journalism? Like Artistic Mathematics?
Most people in the Western world already know of the Wikileaks Cablegate and it's intrepid founder, Mr. Julian Assange and his recent legal troubles. Government enemy No. 1, he's either hated for shining light on the dark, shadowy recesses of authority or hailed as a champion for free speech and the rights of citizens to keep their governments in check.
Like him or not, he and his cohorts have swung an almighty hammer that's left a noticeable and almost unrepairable crack in the facade of international relations and politics. We are reminded once again that governments are in the service of its citizens and not the other way around.
But one element of the defense for his activities is insistence that his brand of iconoclastic reporting is to be called "scientific journalism," as he writes in the Australian:
If all media outlets adopt scientific journalism then they will also lose the human element in the process. Not every story can be reported via scientific journalism and it would be folly to call for every media producer to do so.
I also believe he misuses the word "scientific" in lieu of the more accurate "evidence-based and cross-verifiable." Science (or rather the scientific method) requires a hypothesis to be tested which is then either refuted or confirmed by the observed results. The nature of human reporting does not bode well for writing stories based on "science." Stories are not experiments to be replicated by other scientific practitioners. The "event" happens only once; we can only infer sense data after the fact. Stories are a medium to convey information from one person to a mass and will contain inaccuracies much like our language which involves a complicated abstraction process.
If our sources are people - witnesses, insiders, etc., we tend to gather information from their impressions - the byproducts of their semantic reactors. How do we know that what they know is accurate and so on into infinite regress.
I am all for an ethical, accurate press and free, open and limited government and I applaud Mr. Assange for his desire (and to a lesser extent, his methods) to tip the balance of power from bureaucratic government toward the people; those who pick up their tab and legitimize its authority. But as for "scientific journalism" Mr. Assange? Stick to what you know - but don't give up.
Like him or not, he and his cohorts have swung an almighty hammer that's left a noticeable and almost unrepairable crack in the facade of international relations and politics. We are reminded once again that governments are in the service of its citizens and not the other way around.
But one element of the defense for his activities is insistence that his brand of iconoclastic reporting is to be called "scientific journalism," as he writes in the Australian:
WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?To me, as a student of General Semantics and a media professional, linking a primary document as a source of a story isn't really scientific, it's also sort of lazy. It's like using one map against another map of the territory to assess which one is more a true-to-fact re-presentation of territory. At the core of it, scientific journalism has its limits much in the same way new media or citizen journalism does as well as the entire debate surrounding "objectivity", ethics, etc.
If all media outlets adopt scientific journalism then they will also lose the human element in the process. Not every story can be reported via scientific journalism and it would be folly to call for every media producer to do so.
I also believe he misuses the word "scientific" in lieu of the more accurate "evidence-based and cross-verifiable." Science (or rather the scientific method) requires a hypothesis to be tested which is then either refuted or confirmed by the observed results. The nature of human reporting does not bode well for writing stories based on "science." Stories are not experiments to be replicated by other scientific practitioners. The "event" happens only once; we can only infer sense data after the fact. Stories are a medium to convey information from one person to a mass and will contain inaccuracies much like our language which involves a complicated abstraction process.
If our sources are people - witnesses, insiders, etc., we tend to gather information from their impressions - the byproducts of their semantic reactors. How do we know that what they know is accurate and so on into infinite regress.
I am all for an ethical, accurate press and free, open and limited government and I applaud Mr. Assange for his desire (and to a lesser extent, his methods) to tip the balance of power from bureaucratic government toward the people; those who pick up their tab and legitimize its authority. But as for "scientific journalism" Mr. Assange? Stick to what you know - but don't give up.
18.11.10
Black Mass, Black Media
A story that I was working on for Metal As Fuck has completely exploded into the mainstream media much to my chagrin. The organizers of the Black Mass Festival in Sydney were forced to find a new venue after the Newtown Returned and Services League (RSL) Club canceled on them after a barrage of Christian lobbyists protested the gig. The organizers and fans were undoubtedly up in arms. But then a few of them got a little stupid, sending death threats to the national president of the RSL, Derek Robson.
Though regrettable, the argument that the RSL curtailed the freedom of these musicians falls very deaf in comparison to the RSL's counter-argument: They all fought and some of their comrades died to protect our freedom. The point being, you have to act very shrewdly when taking on a prominent, national organization with a prestige that is almost unequaled in this country.
The ABC published a story online and also featured it amongst the "top stories" on ABC NewsRadio, replete with an interview with Mr. Robson. One phone call from one of their members can do that - or their PR division. The heavy metal community hasn't even got a one-hundredth of the clout or resources the RSL has or will ever have. That's just the reality of the situation.
Of course, the morons who sent the death threats to Mr. Robson probably didn't have the foresight or knowledge of any of this - they most likely thought the RSL was just a network of pubs that serve cheap drinks. Now they will most likely be visted by nefarious tabloid journalists with steel-capped boots wedged firmly in their front doors, especially when the ABC prints tracts like these, oblivious to the nuances of our particular argot:
The smart option would have been to find co-belligerents - the Secular Party of Australia and other like-minded groups and had them lead the counter-protest on their behalf (since the Black Mass festival is a "fringe" group in terms of the popular consciousness.) The NSW State Government will always favor the RSL, be it Labor or Liberal. If there was a contract signed between the RSL and the Black Mass organizers, the Black Mass, with their added publicity could have found a progressive, secular lawyer to take their case pro bono. The financial burden on the musicians and promoters is now amplified since they will take a massive loss returning money collected for tickets in addition to what has already been spent on flyers, posters, internet advertising, etc.
So some heavy metal fans have protested the wrong way - and that's perfectly normal. We aren't a politically motivated group of people anyway. We just like to rock out, listen to metal and have fun. In the rare cases in which metal and the moral majority collide, metalheads need to draw on the resources they already have - the metal media - to advise them which route to travel to get the best outcome with minimal backlash.
We may be volunteers but we aren't amateurs.
Though regrettable, the argument that the RSL curtailed the freedom of these musicians falls very deaf in comparison to the RSL's counter-argument: They all fought and some of their comrades died to protect our freedom. The point being, you have to act very shrewdly when taking on a prominent, national organization with a prestige that is almost unequaled in this country.
The ABC published a story online and also featured it amongst the "top stories" on ABC NewsRadio, replete with an interview with Mr. Robson. One phone call from one of their members can do that - or their PR division. The heavy metal community hasn't even got a one-hundredth of the clout or resources the RSL has or will ever have. That's just the reality of the situation.
Of course, the morons who sent the death threats to Mr. Robson probably didn't have the foresight or knowledge of any of this - they most likely thought the RSL was just a network of pubs that serve cheap drinks. Now they will most likely be visted by nefarious tabloid journalists with steel-capped boots wedged firmly in their front doors, especially when the ABC prints tracts like these, oblivious to the nuances of our particular argot:
"The festival was billed as a "diabolical union of Australia's black metal elite" and was to have featured a "once in a lifetime live ritual and special black mass performance."
The smart option would have been to find co-belligerents - the Secular Party of Australia and other like-minded groups and had them lead the counter-protest on their behalf (since the Black Mass festival is a "fringe" group in terms of the popular consciousness.) The NSW State Government will always favor the RSL, be it Labor or Liberal. If there was a contract signed between the RSL and the Black Mass organizers, the Black Mass, with their added publicity could have found a progressive, secular lawyer to take their case pro bono. The financial burden on the musicians and promoters is now amplified since they will take a massive loss returning money collected for tickets in addition to what has already been spent on flyers, posters, internet advertising, etc.
So some heavy metal fans have protested the wrong way - and that's perfectly normal. We aren't a politically motivated group of people anyway. We just like to rock out, listen to metal and have fun. In the rare cases in which metal and the moral majority collide, metalheads need to draw on the resources they already have - the metal media - to advise them which route to travel to get the best outcome with minimal backlash.
We may be volunteers but we aren't amateurs.
7.11.10
Returning to a Fold
Last week, I pledged to take a break from Facebook and Twitter. I've mentioned previously that Facebook was almost "unavoidable" due to my running of advertising on behalf of a company I work for. But overall, I feel that my social media "embargo" was a liberating experience.
I saw The Social Network with Steph last week and we discussed whether Facebook is popular because it has a purpose or rather, people discover uses for it ex post facto. We couldn't come up with an answer. Social media, like most media, is created by loathsome people with loose morals for egotistical reasons. Well, it holds true for Mark Zuckerberg, anyway.
So, what the hell have I been doing?
Reading More
I have been reading more. News articles, blogs, magazines, books; you name it, I'm reading it...more. All the while not having any desire for electronic pats on the back, distracting me from actually reading what is written.
Getting Fit
As part of my ongoing personal challenge, I've been going to the gym more. I would usually struggle to go once per week, but this week I have gone there three times and plan to go once more before the week is over. My girlfriend says she notices the difference; I sure as hell don't!
Talking
Relying on social media to get critical messages (as in, ones that initiate action) is like telling a dog to pick you up from the train station. Social media, as a process has different meanings to everyone. Some see it as frivolous, others see it as a marketing tool, more as "agenda" or "trend" setting. (If they did, they certainly require the audience to be as passive as possible.) Using the phone, communicating clearly and concisely without losing the "fidelity" of the message has been a byproduct of this embargo.
Of course, my favorite part of the entire experiment is that people ask me how I'm doing. They no longer have a repository of personal information to make those judgments themselves. They become interested; they listen. I can talk with them instead of at them. Friends are genuinely surprised to know what is happening in my life and how these events effect me.
Social media had for the most part, made me feel I had reduced my life to a rolling headline. But it doesn't and shouldn't; social media attempts merely to make Princess Adelaide's whooping cough front page news all day, every day.
So what now?
I suppose I will use Twitter and Facebook again; albeit not to the inanely rapid frequency that I once did. If I ever "lapse," I can always go back into my personal social media rehab and have a great time there. I have missed talking to some people on there since we also talk outside of Twitter but not to the extent we do "on."
I do feel that Twitter and Facebook are good tools for people to have. However, like every good tool - a spoon, for example - they aren't meant to be used all the time, for every possible application. They have limitations and so do we.
I saw The Social Network with Steph last week and we discussed whether Facebook is popular because it has a purpose or rather, people discover uses for it ex post facto. We couldn't come up with an answer. Social media, like most media, is created by loathsome people with loose morals for egotistical reasons. Well, it holds true for Mark Zuckerberg, anyway.
So, what the hell have I been doing?
Reading More
I have been reading more. News articles, blogs, magazines, books; you name it, I'm reading it...more. All the while not having any desire for electronic pats on the back, distracting me from actually reading what is written.
Getting Fit
As part of my ongoing personal challenge, I've been going to the gym more. I would usually struggle to go once per week, but this week I have gone there three times and plan to go once more before the week is over. My girlfriend says she notices the difference; I sure as hell don't!
Talking
Relying on social media to get critical messages (as in, ones that initiate action) is like telling a dog to pick you up from the train station. Social media, as a process has different meanings to everyone. Some see it as frivolous, others see it as a marketing tool, more as "agenda" or "trend" setting. (If they did, they certainly require the audience to be as passive as possible.) Using the phone, communicating clearly and concisely without losing the "fidelity" of the message has been a byproduct of this embargo.
Of course, my favorite part of the entire experiment is that people ask me how I'm doing. They no longer have a repository of personal information to make those judgments themselves. They become interested; they listen. I can talk with them instead of at them. Friends are genuinely surprised to know what is happening in my life and how these events effect me.
Social media had for the most part, made me feel I had reduced my life to a rolling headline. But it doesn't and shouldn't; social media attempts merely to make Princess Adelaide's whooping cough front page news all day, every day.
So what now?
I suppose I will use Twitter and Facebook again; albeit not to the inanely rapid frequency that I once did. If I ever "lapse," I can always go back into my personal social media rehab and have a great time there. I have missed talking to some people on there since we also talk outside of Twitter but not to the extent we do "on."
I do feel that Twitter and Facebook are good tools for people to have. However, like every good tool - a spoon, for example - they aren't meant to be used all the time, for every possible application. They have limitations and so do we.
Olber-mann, what you doin'?
It's been revealed that MSNBC anchor and neo-Murrowite Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely without pay after contributing to three separate Democratic candidate's campaigns this week. But why? What for? FOX News has several Republican candidates on the payroll as contributors; so why is MSNBC struggling to appear "objective?"
If you have ever watched MSNBC side by side with FOX News Channel, it's blatant left-liberal bias is as insidious as FOX' own brand of right-wing conservatism. FOX raison d'etre is to provide "fair and balanced" coverage as an isle of conservative right-wing truth in an ocean of Hollywood dominated liberalism. Like any good right-winger, it appears perpetually assailed from the left like the underdogs of journalism despite being part of the largest media conglomerate that world has ever known.
By exposing Olbermann as a Democratic party supporter, it gives FOX news the upper hand and a free shot at MSNBC. Like O'Reilly's McCarthy to Olbermann's Murrow, O'Reilly can proclaim MSNBC as a "bed of leftists" and continue to rail against their leftist bias. By allowing FOX journalists to contribute to the campaigns of the Republican of their choice, they can not be accused of being anything but journalists doing their job under the strictures of their company's internal policy.
But where was the ethical pressure of MSNBC management for Olbermann to tell the objective, verifiable truth anyway? Where is the funding for real investigative journalism and voices to debunk, with empirical and reasonable evidence, the dubious claims of those they seek to denigrate? I still feel that these two stations degrade and almost mock public discourse in the US, reducing public debate to a nightly slanging match that provides little substance in the way of public policy scrutiny.
FOX news insists that their map is the territory and all other maps by their mere articulation by those who are not part of FOX are false. Their "truth" is validated by the fact it is being reported by them. MSNBC have made it their mission to break free from FOX' sinister Aristotelian nightmare but have only served to ruin their credibility further by doing so.
MSNBC makes its money through being as biased as FOX albeit in the other direction. FOX, like professional wrestlers, don't break kayfabe as readily as their MSNBC counterparts. Paradoxically, people feel more deceived now by MSNBC when they told the truth that their anchor may have been lying.
By keeping up the facade, MSNBC's credibility would have stayed intact as "objective" if they believed Olbermann was (by their own standards) acting ethically.
If MSNBC now strives for journalistic objectivity and integrity, they are going against their best interests. It may just happen that they will report the truth one day and live to regret it.
If you have ever watched MSNBC side by side with FOX News Channel, it's blatant left-liberal bias is as insidious as FOX' own brand of right-wing conservatism. FOX raison d'etre is to provide "fair and balanced" coverage as an isle of conservative right-wing truth in an ocean of Hollywood dominated liberalism. Like any good right-winger, it appears perpetually assailed from the left like the underdogs of journalism despite being part of the largest media conglomerate that world has ever known.
By exposing Olbermann as a Democratic party supporter, it gives FOX news the upper hand and a free shot at MSNBC. Like O'Reilly's McCarthy to Olbermann's Murrow, O'Reilly can proclaim MSNBC as a "bed of leftists" and continue to rail against their leftist bias. By allowing FOX journalists to contribute to the campaigns of the Republican of their choice, they can not be accused of being anything but journalists doing their job under the strictures of their company's internal policy.
But where was the ethical pressure of MSNBC management for Olbermann to tell the objective, verifiable truth anyway? Where is the funding for real investigative journalism and voices to debunk, with empirical and reasonable evidence, the dubious claims of those they seek to denigrate? I still feel that these two stations degrade and almost mock public discourse in the US, reducing public debate to a nightly slanging match that provides little substance in the way of public policy scrutiny.
FOX news insists that their map is the territory and all other maps by their mere articulation by those who are not part of FOX are false. Their "truth" is validated by the fact it is being reported by them. MSNBC have made it their mission to break free from FOX' sinister Aristotelian nightmare but have only served to ruin their credibility further by doing so.
MSNBC makes its money through being as biased as FOX albeit in the other direction. FOX, like professional wrestlers, don't break kayfabe as readily as their MSNBC counterparts. Paradoxically, people feel more deceived now by MSNBC when they told the truth that their anchor may have been lying.
By keeping up the facade, MSNBC's credibility would have stayed intact as "objective" if they believed Olbermann was (by their own standards) acting ethically.
If MSNBC now strives for journalistic objectivity and integrity, they are going against their best interests. It may just happen that they will report the truth one day and live to regret it.
2.11.10
Facebook Follies
Apropos my recent Twitter and Facebook "embargo," I've found it increasingly difficult to avoid Facebook entirely, especially now that I've been contracted as a media consultant to Diamond Dog Food and Bakery, a boutique dog food, drink and product store in Bayside Melbourne. (Please "like it" so I can access a custom URL!)
The experience thus far has given cause to put a personal "value" on the friends I keep on there. One Facebook contact I saw tried to passive-aggressively knock me down a peg - I had no care for his online "friendship" so I deleted him on the spot. I have no time to waste on people like that.
The Twitter hiatus has gone well, despite breaking it once to share a link to an interview I did with Jonas Renkse of Katatonia.
In a recent essay, I charged that Facebook and Twitter aren't just part of our media culture but a culture in and of themselves. I feel now that Facebook is borderline "unavoidable" if you wish to participate in commerce in any meaningful fashion.
Over time, I am becoming less and less enamored with both Twitter and Facebook and more likely to fight the urge to tweet or post. I caught myself thinking in 140 character "bites" to share with other people about 20-30 times over the last few days and had to actively stop myself from reaching into my pocket or firing up TweetDeck. If anything, it's shown me that I still have an attachment to being liked, being seen as witty or intelligent and as a good writer. If I can overcome those attachments, it lifts a massive burden from myself and eases a lot of self-imposed stress.
I don't feel disconnected from my friends - the connections on Facebook are devoid of intimacy and reality. The challenge is to find social relationships with substance in real life with real people, every day.
The experience thus far has given cause to put a personal "value" on the friends I keep on there. One Facebook contact I saw tried to passive-aggressively knock me down a peg - I had no care for his online "friendship" so I deleted him on the spot. I have no time to waste on people like that.
The Twitter hiatus has gone well, despite breaking it once to share a link to an interview I did with Jonas Renkse of Katatonia.
In a recent essay, I charged that Facebook and Twitter aren't just part of our media culture but a culture in and of themselves. I feel now that Facebook is borderline "unavoidable" if you wish to participate in commerce in any meaningful fashion.
Over time, I am becoming less and less enamored with both Twitter and Facebook and more likely to fight the urge to tweet or post. I caught myself thinking in 140 character "bites" to share with other people about 20-30 times over the last few days and had to actively stop myself from reaching into my pocket or firing up TweetDeck. If anything, it's shown me that I still have an attachment to being liked, being seen as witty or intelligent and as a good writer. If I can overcome those attachments, it lifts a massive burden from myself and eases a lot of self-imposed stress.
I don't feel disconnected from my friends - the connections on Facebook are devoid of intimacy and reality. The challenge is to find social relationships with substance in real life with real people, every day.
18.10.10
Embargo of Presence
Some excerpts with commentary from my recent essay (footnotes removed) on media ecology entitled "An iPhone in every hand."
Neil Postman in his magnum opus “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” wrote the easiest way to see through a culture is to “attend to its tools for conversation.” Currently, all of our conversation, save for face to face contact is mediated, at some level, by computers and the internet – the tools – and the conversation – the exchange of messages – is happening globally in which any user of a computer is theoretically part of this “globalized conversation.” But what is the nature of the language of this conversation – the “driver” of conversation that makes it possible?
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presents the formation of language is “not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas, but rather itself is a shaper of ideas.” The computer and the internet and all its various convergent and multimedia forms not only have produced new platforms for communication, they have, in fact, shaped a new way of organizing and regulating ideas; the way humans interact with one another, conduct their business, their politics and their education of future generations.
One such device that achieved this was the mechanical clock. A computer is built on a time-telling function – time regulates the processing of information by creating a sense of “dramatic, fictional or symbolic time as well as a sense of past, present and future.” Computers, like clocks are self-operating machines; they manufacture no physical products. They are able to regulate starting and ending times for social/economic/political engagements; enforce deadlines and are used to track units of remuneration (workers paid by the hour, etc.) For example, all people across the known world began to
"[W]ork, sleep and eat by the clock” and began to “regulate their actions by this arbitrary measure of time, the clock was transformed from an expression of civic pride into a necessity of urban life…the computer too has changed from a luxury to a necessity for modern business and government.”
In 1993, Postman said that it would be possible for us to "privatize" our public space by outsourcing it to computers - we would be able to shop, converse and vote from the comfort of home. We have moved beyond that space - we can now do this anywhere with mobile smartphones. Like the mechanical clock, the computer regulates our movement and how we communicate.
It as if we cannot communicate if we do not have a phone or access to the internet like social media. It's commonplace to hear about events after the fact if you did "not check your Facebook."
Chunks of time can now be graphically represented; we can see the past and the future in our own present by the dynamic exchange of text, video, audio and images. The television was bound by time to show its programs sequentially - now the programs can be viewed in our own "time" at our will from wherever. As Watzlawick says, "one can not not communicate" - but what happens when one does not have an iPhone in his hand to begin with?
Neil Postman in his magnum opus “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” wrote the easiest way to see through a culture is to “attend to its tools for conversation.” Currently, all of our conversation, save for face to face contact is mediated, at some level, by computers and the internet – the tools – and the conversation – the exchange of messages – is happening globally in which any user of a computer is theoretically part of this “globalized conversation.” But what is the nature of the language of this conversation – the “driver” of conversation that makes it possible?
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis presents the formation of language is “not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas, but rather itself is a shaper of ideas.” The computer and the internet and all its various convergent and multimedia forms not only have produced new platforms for communication, they have, in fact, shaped a new way of organizing and regulating ideas; the way humans interact with one another, conduct their business, their politics and their education of future generations.
One such device that achieved this was the mechanical clock. A computer is built on a time-telling function – time regulates the processing of information by creating a sense of “dramatic, fictional or symbolic time as well as a sense of past, present and future.” Computers, like clocks are self-operating machines; they manufacture no physical products. They are able to regulate starting and ending times for social/economic/political engagements; enforce deadlines and are used to track units of remuneration (workers paid by the hour, etc.) For example, all people across the known world began to
"[W]ork, sleep and eat by the clock” and began to “regulate their actions by this arbitrary measure of time, the clock was transformed from an expression of civic pride into a necessity of urban life…the computer too has changed from a luxury to a necessity for modern business and government.”
In 1993, Postman said that it would be possible for us to "privatize" our public space by outsourcing it to computers - we would be able to shop, converse and vote from the comfort of home. We have moved beyond that space - we can now do this anywhere with mobile smartphones. Like the mechanical clock, the computer regulates our movement and how we communicate.
It as if we cannot communicate if we do not have a phone or access to the internet like social media. It's commonplace to hear about events after the fact if you did "not check your Facebook."
Chunks of time can now be graphically represented; we can see the past and the future in our own present by the dynamic exchange of text, video, audio and images. The television was bound by time to show its programs sequentially - now the programs can be viewed in our own "time" at our will from wherever. As Watzlawick says, "one can not not communicate" - but what happens when one does not have an iPhone in his hand to begin with?
10.10.10
Slick with Untruth
Facebook, some contend is an affront to our intelligence. But what happens when the collective intelligence of Facebook isn't much to speak of in the first place? I stumbled upon this Facebook group: “30 days without Shapes: so that rainforests can last the future” started by Ms. Amy Smith. It claimed:
(All typographical errors have been left intact.) Being a journalist I expected proof to be shown that any of these contentions had even a modicum of truth to them. So, I began to investigate.
I probed the main thrust of the claim: that Arnotts have “snuck” palm oil into their products. So I called Arnotts, Choice Magazine, The Borneo Orangutan Survival (Australia) Group and the Rainforest Information Center (Palm Oil Action Group) to find out. Arnotts, Choice and The Palm Oil Action Group all responded to my queries.
The short answer?: No, they weren't.
Arnott's supplied me with a fact sheet that informed me that the company is making efforts to ensure their palm oil is being sourced sustainably. They work with its palm oil supplier, Cargill who is an active member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Arnotts will have switched to sustainable palm oil completely by 2015 (Prior to August 2010, it was not) and will have decreased their total palm oil usage by 25%, switching to alternative products. Arnotts also say they use 0.05% of all palm oil produced globally, annually. So where was the deception if this was freely available information?
Choice Magazine has not investigated such a claim which lead me to believe that Ms. Smith had not done her homework, at the very least. On Saturday, I got a call from the very chatty and knowledgeable Charlotte "Charlie" Richardson, coordinator of the Palm Oil Action Group.
Arnotts have admitted to using palm oil in their foods yet do not label it as such explicitly, rather as "vegetable oil." So were they lying? No - there is no reason why they "they shouldn’t list palm oil" apart from internally driven policy. So we should be upset at Cargill? Wrong again: They have switched to 60% certified sustainable crops and that "more was to follow." Ms. Richardson says there’s “room to improve” but it was "not realistic to call for a total moratorium."
Surprisingly, when I pressed Ms. Richardson if people should stop eating Shapes to punish Arnott's for their past sins, she replied:
So apart from the economic devastation it would cause to over two million people over Asia, Latin America and Africa if palm oil production was suddenly halted, Arnott's, providing it was sourcing its palm oil unsustainably and contributing to environmental damage was only a very very minor player in the overall scheme of things. Even so, the boycott is redundant; they already have achieved what they campaigned for a month before they started.
So was Ms. Smith committing a crime of omission or passion? Either way, she has mislead over 13,000 people (at the time of writing) and libeled Arnotts Biscuits as taking part in something they are in no way involved with in the process.
In sum, the raison d'etre of her group is based on a lie.
I implore Ms. Smith to dismantle her group, apologize to all of those she has lied to and retract her call for a boycott of Arnott's Shapes biscuits. For all the potential damage she has already caused, it's the least she can do.
UPDATE: Amy Smith has updated the event to reflect the new facts that I and others have presented. She now intends to raise awareness of the unsustainable palm oil industry.
You probably don’t know this but Arnotts have snuck palm oil into their shapes and have called it vegetable oil. Palm oil is a major cause of deforestation at the moment which is threatening the existance of countless species. I’m hoping if enough people join in we can change what a company puts into their products one product at a time. So please don’t buy or eat shapes for a month and tell everyone you know… because nothing tastes so good that it is worth distroying a whole eco-system for. And remember it worked for Cadbury chocloate and kitkat.
(All typographical errors have been left intact.) Being a journalist I expected proof to be shown that any of these contentions had even a modicum of truth to them. So, I began to investigate.
I probed the main thrust of the claim: that Arnotts have “snuck” palm oil into their products. So I called Arnotts, Choice Magazine, The Borneo Orangutan Survival (Australia) Group and the Rainforest Information Center (Palm Oil Action Group) to find out. Arnotts, Choice and The Palm Oil Action Group all responded to my queries.
The short answer?: No, they weren't.
Arnott's supplied me with a fact sheet that informed me that the company is making efforts to ensure their palm oil is being sourced sustainably. They work with its palm oil supplier, Cargill who is an active member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Arnotts will have switched to sustainable palm oil completely by 2015 (Prior to August 2010, it was not) and will have decreased their total palm oil usage by 25%, switching to alternative products. Arnotts also say they use 0.05% of all palm oil produced globally, annually. So where was the deception if this was freely available information?
Choice Magazine has not investigated such a claim which lead me to believe that Ms. Smith had not done her homework, at the very least. On Saturday, I got a call from the very chatty and knowledgeable Charlotte "Charlie" Richardson, coordinator of the Palm Oil Action Group.
Arnotts have admitted to using palm oil in their foods yet do not label it as such explicitly, rather as "vegetable oil." So were they lying? No - there is no reason why they "they shouldn’t list palm oil" apart from internally driven policy. So we should be upset at Cargill? Wrong again: They have switched to 60% certified sustainable crops and that "more was to follow." Ms. Richardson says there’s “room to improve” but it was "not realistic to call for a total moratorium."
Surprisingly, when I pressed Ms. Richardson if people should stop eating Shapes to punish Arnott's for their past sins, she replied:
"I don’t think they should be punished for anything; they should be rewarded for heading in the right direction."
So apart from the economic devastation it would cause to over two million people over Asia, Latin America and Africa if palm oil production was suddenly halted, Arnott's, providing it was sourcing its palm oil unsustainably and contributing to environmental damage was only a very very minor player in the overall scheme of things. Even so, the boycott is redundant; they already have achieved what they campaigned for a month before they started.
So was Ms. Smith committing a crime of omission or passion? Either way, she has mislead over 13,000 people (at the time of writing) and libeled Arnotts Biscuits as taking part in something they are in no way involved with in the process.
In sum, the raison d'etre of her group is based on a lie.
I implore Ms. Smith to dismantle her group, apologize to all of those she has lied to and retract her call for a boycott of Arnott's Shapes biscuits. For all the potential damage she has already caused, it's the least she can do.
UPDATE: Amy Smith has updated the event to reflect the new facts that I and others have presented. She now intends to raise awareness of the unsustainable palm oil industry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)