Yes, this is Monday. I was diverted on Friday doing things other than blogging. I like this video (Did you say blogging?), I can relate! There are people who say that you should only spend 15 mins on your posts but whole afternoons and mornings can be eaten up… There should be a health warning on blogging software… “may take over your life”.
Before the whitest guy on earth bore its tuneful way deep into my brain, there was Peter, Bjorn and John with their addictive Young Folks song. I’d managed to forget about it until that post but now I think of one and I immediately think of the other, so basically, the two songs have been on constant replay in my head for the good part of the past two weeks. Enough to drive me crazy, or move to Sweden. Instead, I’ll inflict them on you! (here’s a live in Glasgow version courtesy of youTube)
This is a great video from Dove on our perceptions of beauty. At a time when even young children have growing rates of eating disorders, we should be looking at the responsibility that advertising and the media should take for the growing dissatisfaction in our physical self-perception much in the way advertising of obesity causing foods is now being criticised. It’s great to see an ad like this that highlights how the images that we are supposed to aspire to are often figments of illusion. Actresses get in body models, lenses are vaselined, cellulite is airbrushed out, legs are stretched, pimples disappear… but the end result perfect images are all presented as the norm and any deviations are faults. At the very least, there should be a disclaimer that a particular image has been Photoshop-ed*.
Though you have to remember, Dove is not a standalone company, it is housed by Unilever which includes brands like Lynx that feature impossibly good looking women who probably do get Photoshop-ed (but I do find their ads hilarious, even if it’s just the thought that a naff deoderant can suddenly make some guy irresistable). And Unilever, like most big companies, is far from squeaky clean. So it does make you think how much of it really is just their brand differentiation as opposed to any real desire for ethical good. Like with the amazing success of pink branding to help breast cancer fundraising, social conscience can be a very profitable brand. I did find it a little ironic that substances that research has suggested possible carcinogenic links like artificial pink strawberry fillings (Tim Tams) and PET packaging (bottled water) were included in the list of fundraising products. Back to Dove though, despite questions to their motives, it is great to see people of different weights, ages and looks being represented because there is so little variety in advertising and ads. Hopefully, this will make commercial sense and other companies will be tempted to try out “real” people as models.
*both photoshoped and photoshopped look really weird to me. Maybe it should be “Photoshop’ed”? Argghhhhhh!!!
Penny Arcade’s Gabe has posted a video of his screen while he’s doing a Boba Fett sketch on a Tablet with a mashup of 50 cent and Queen in the background. It’s pretty cool.
The University of California, Berkeley has made a number of lectures freely available online through a partnership with Google: UC Berkeley on Google Video A number of courses are available, but perhaps more interesting are videos from guest lecturers in Global and Public Affairs: Graduate School of Journalism Presents Distinguished guests discuss their role in global affairs and the media. Goldman School of Public Policy Presents Prominent speakers discuss vital policy issues.
Was found at Jarvis’ My Space, which he does actually write instead of palming it off to a PR underling like many of the bigger stars. Here’s a snippet of his latest post…
Forgive me Cyber-sisters & Binary-brothers - I haven’t been in touch for ages, I know. Truth is, I’ve been proper poorly - I would like to think it was due to working so hard on bringing you the album of the Millennium (so far) but it’s more likely to do with licking too much loose change (see my last communication).
His argument is simple - a business strategy which turns the majority of web users into criminals (39 out of 40 music downloaders according to the FT [Financial Times]) isn’t sustainable…. Beyond the activism part, is the issue about forming conversations between suppliers and consumers, about the democratisation of the media and how artists need to be successful in this context - which again comes right back to Cluetrain [also interesting reading, one article link, link to the cluetrain manifesto].
New Yorkers David Hindman and Evan Drummond have created a new form of gaming, and the guitar- a real one- is the controller. Conceived and developed while Hindman was a student at New York University, “Modal Kombat” is an extension of the classic game Mortal Kombat. Instead of battling with buttons, however, characters fight by responding to notes, chords, and melodies played live by participants on guitar. The resulting performance is “a modern-day ‘dueling banjos,’” says Hindman.
