lovehate: Consumers Ring The Death Knell For Old Media

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big content guy. 

What I mean is that I believe content is king, but I'm starting to parse out a fine line that exists between content and concept in consuming information.

I've always been a firm believer in the idea of style over substance IF one can start to see the style as substance in itself. I'm also a firm believer that both are borne on a dual-purposed concept of creator and consumer.

I know. I'm talking in circles. Give me an paragraph or two to explain myself.

There are relatively few basic themes in literature as compared to the plots, characters, and settings that inhabit them. I always taught my English students that at the very root, a literary theme had to have two things: subject and slant.

It's not enough to say that "love" is a theme. By combining that subject with the creator's bias on it, however, a simple theme can be derived. For the J. Geils Band Love Stinks. And based on this simple syntax we can develop themes from the obvious to the arcane in arts and media. There have been countless writers, artists, musicians and thinkers who have all ruminated on the simple idea that love stinks. No matter how high the numbers creep, we still keep coming back for more.

Many Shakespearean characters have inhabited the love stinks theme, and without fail I find their stories more interesting than the one told by the J. Geils Band, although admittedly not as rockin'. And here's where the worm starts to turn. We often think of style v. substance and form v. function, but both of those equations miss the mark in terms of the importance of pre-existing concept.

You may watch Ophelia ass up in an Elsinore pond and ruminate "well, it sucks to be her", or you may find it to be a tragedy of frailty undone by all-consuming spurned devotion. Your choice will NOT depend on the words of Hamlet, as most folio versions are relatively the same, but instead on the direction, acting, execution of those performing, and the mindset you bring to the scene.

Regardless of which feeling you choose to embody after viewing the unfortunate non-swim, a curious venn has erupted from your sensibilities that you are probably unaware of: 1) Shakespeare understood how love can stink, 2) he also had to pen the words to fuel the character on how love could stink, 3) the actor must embody the belief that love stinks, 4) the director must set the scene to persuade you that love stinks, and 5) if you had a slice of luncheon meat on the verge of turning for lunch, steps 1-4 won't mean shit to you as much as how to find the nearest restroom.

Concept, content, and consumption bleed into each other with compunction. There is no real separation of the three. So when I say I don't care what you say, but I love the way you say it, I'm really not trying to be two dimensional or glib. There are simply very few times I'm looking for raw data in everyday life. I want the story, the interpretation, and the presentation.

Why do people care which newscaster they listen to when 90% of the stories are the same after being pumped out by a wire service? Why do people care which podcasts they listen to for daily tech or entertainment news when 90% of the stories will be the same. Why do people read 1000 poems about the trials of love or 1000 novels about horrors of war or listen to 1000 songs about the righteousness of the oppressed? It's all about the presentation.

If one stands up in a drunken bellow on Speaker's Corner and decries oppression through burps, belches, and bromides, any concept and content will be lost. But if I sit back after 40 years and watch Richie Havens repetitively sing "Freedom" over an acoustic guitar and congas on YouTube, my heart reaches for the sky.

When I hear people actively engaged in conversation, when I see musicians smiling at each other and having fun on stage through the miscues and wrong notes, when I listen to or read someone who can use words to make content triumphant over concept and careless of consumption, I concede. I want connection over perfection and my substance will be redefined by a meshing of style and interpretation.

I would rather read T.S. Eliot waxing poetic about a used Kleenex or listen to Tom Waits reminisce about the "piss yellow gypsy cab" that went by than read 99% of journalists blather about world affairs. In this distinction, old media will continue its death spiral. 

The concepts at the root of both sides are always universal. Old media used to have authority over content, but the venn has bled. Consumers beckon for style, originality and voice... not simply bias, but voice. Such is the domain of a thinker, an entertainer, an artist, but rarely, and decreasingly so, a reporter. And while old media has tens of thousands of reporters worldwide, the web has hundreds of millions of thinkers, entertainers, and artists.

Move over J. Geils; you've lost your byline.

lovehate: Tiger Woods

Tiger,

I don't hate you.
I don't love you.
I'm not a fan of yours.
I don't golf.
I don't watch golf.

I do care that golf is perhaps a more boring television sport than NASCAR and that most weekends I can find 12 hours of golf tournaments on television while most worthwhile television dies a quick death.

I don't care that you screwed around on your wife any more or less than I'd care about some guy across town doing the same thing with his wife.
I don't care that your SUV took out a couple of telephone poles and trees.
I don't care that Nike pays you millions of dollars a year.
I don't care that you're an icon.
I don't care that you're better at a game any more than a Rubik's Cube champ or the winner of the Nathan's hot dog eating competition.

I do care that so many other people care.
I do care that as the world goes on without the soma-induced couch potatoes watching re-enactments of your driving lesson failures, people are actually suffering, starving and dying while your cell phone messages have somehow become more interesting than ALL of the following headlines over the past couple of days:

  • Three major stances in Copenhagen climate change negotiations
  • Indian PM heads to Russia seeking closer ties
  • House fire kills five in Russia's Urals
  • Tehran criticizes Swiss minaret ban
  • Philippine troops arrest dozens under martial law
  • Philippines seizes more ammo in the south
  • Surge puts Pakistan in a tough spot
  • Prepare for the long haul in Afghanistan
  • Several killed in Pakistan blast
  • Pakistan buries victims of Rawalpindi mosque attack
  • Guinea leader's accused assassin in hiding
  • Netanyahu makes final push to foil Swedish plan to divide Jerusalem
  • Ailing Thai king calls for unity on 82nd birthday
  • Morales Seeks to Continue Bolivia 'Revolution' After Vote Today
  • US envoy due in Seoul on N. Korea nuclear mission
  • US Marines press southern Afghan offensive

I understand that people sometimes need distraction and so they watch you enact a skill that you do better than anyone else in the world.
I would not dismiss your talent or your dedication to your craft.
I just wish you'd had as much dedication to your wife.

Not that I care.

But when you clog up the already congested arteries of my television with the spewing crap that is your life, it annoys me.
And I do care about my television.
As sad as it sounds.
Drive into all the telephone poles you like.
Just stop driving into my living room.

P.S.

I don't know your wife.
I don't care enough to even look up her name.
But I've seen pictures.
You idiot.
Dude, she's hot.
I've got about a dozen variations on golf puns right now.
But I'm missing my favorite fishing show.

thinglets: Real v. Weird News

Call me weird if you want, but when I look at the "Weird" News section of a "news" website these days, things really aren't that different from the "real" news. In fact I sometimes wonder if perhaps the only difference between the two is that the "real" news is about weird people doing mildly out of character things, while the "weird" news is about "real" people doing things that are often completely "in character".

I'm not in the UK, but I do love telegraph.co.uk's "Weird News" page.