Death & Habit

The death of the click, as such, sounds dramatic:

For the past 10 years, we’ve operated on the premise that the most important digital metric is the click that refers a person to a website. That click usually comes from a social distribution channel, like Facebook or Twitter, or a search engine, like Google or Bing. But according to industry experts, the click referral is becoming an idea of the past, soon to be replaced by content exposure.

It would behoove us to pay attention. To the one, it is already happening. To the other … er … ah … well, yeah, there is, in fact, a point to wondering what the big deal is. But that’s the thing. As the Axios report explains:

Clicks look like a high-performing tactic, but a lot of work is done to get you to type something into a search bar to begin with,” AdRoll President Adam Berke tells Axios. Marketers are starting to attribute marketing success towards content exposure that drives you to click something, instead of the click itself. Two key formats increase content exposure: video and passive scrolling. Google and Facebook are investing heavily in products that embody these formats: YouTube and Instagram.

The bottom line is that your daily habit isn’t going to change for evolving necessity; rather, how you interact with the world will become more and more bound to theses of behavioral economics applied within a marketing context intended to backfill its justification post hoc―that is to say, your behavior will change to suit someone else’s business model.

And, yeah, that might sound a bit dramatic, but most people probably won’t notice, except to grumble a bit, like they did with Apple and … I don’t know, that dating app.

Meanwhile, for the business community the definition of success becomes even hazier. Good enough for government work, is better redefined as, Good enough for the tech sector. Then again, the definition of government work might well be unsettled for the momemt, as well, so … you know.

Whatever.

____________________

Fischer, Sara. “The death of the click”. Axios. 20 February 2017.

It Almost Seems Deliberate

MEMORANDUM

To: YouTube

re: Really? I thought this part was obvious

So … you know that little thing you have where we click for the option to say we don’t want you promoting this or that kind of video? Why does it not work? No, really, when I tell you to not show me this, don’t turn around and promote the same damn video again.

Is This Thing On, and Why Would You Care?

It occurs to wonder what actually happens when the written word is dismissed from duty and argumentation is carried out via social media with links to other people’s YouTube rants.

No, really, I just don’t get that bit about how someone wants their voice to be heard so they send you a link to an hour-long YouTube rant. Honestly, they’re like really unskilled salesmen; getting you to sit through an hour of their favorite bigot is the point. Seriously; they know they’re not going to convince you. They just want to demand that you waste a bunch of your time in order that they might feel special, and then despise you for accommodating.

Sometimes it feels stupid to post these notes, but then we might recall the godawful narration explaining poker to a James Bond audience; and something goes here about the simpleminded moralist explanations in Hunter x Hunter mixed in with the sexual molestation scene and the nostalgic bit with the guy standing there in the middle of an emergency sniffing the scent of a woman from his fingers.

No, seriously, at first it’s a combination of Dragonball and Boobah―(“Look what I can do!”)―with infantile moral lessons describing character motivations, and then ....

Which actually might prove useful, for once. Perhaps the proper response to, “Here is a long-assed video in lieu of me actually doing any work to post a proper argument,” would be to simply post episodes of Hunter x Hunter and One Piece, the latter of which actually has the courage to denounce sexual harassment by its name.

Commodes and fish sammiches

Watch the video, then make the jump. Oh, right: Send the kids out of the room first. They might appreciate the ducky curtains, but ….

Democracy, hope, parody … oh, yeah, and infomercials

Irony. Just yesterday I was contemplating whether to write a post denouncing fake advertisements posted on YouTube. It’s a point-counterpoint thing. To the one, YouTube is part of the great democratization forced by the internet, whatever the hell that means. To the other, that democratization also means a flood of really crappy art, scholarship, and commentary.

And I have thankfully repressed the memory of whatever crappy fake advert I was watching at the time, but I think it was for a non-existent product, as compared to the following, necessary commentary on a real product that is making the rounds:

And, no, that doesn’t mean there’s hope for us yet. I’ll try to let you know when evidence for that turns up somewhere.

(Hat tip: Thank you, Humpy.)

Transcript: “Anonymous” threatens Scientology

Transcript of the Project Chanology threat by Anonymous against the Church of Scientology, Inc.:

Hello, leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous.

Over the years, we have been watching you: your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature; all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment, we shall proceed to expel you from the internet, and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form.

We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to be completed in a short time frame. However, you will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your choice of methods, your hypocrisy, and the general lawlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell. You have nowhere to hide, because we are everywhere. You have no recourse in attack, because for each of us that falls, ten more will take his place.

We are cognizant of the many who may decry our methods as parallel to those of the Church of Scientology, those who espouse the obvious truth that your organization will use the actions of Anonymous as an example of the persecution of which you have, for so long, warned your followers—this is acceptable to Anonymous. In fact, it is encouraged. We are your SPs.

Over time, as we begin to merge our pulse with that of your church, the suppression of your followers will become increasingly difficult to maintain. Believers will become aware that salvation needn’t come at the expense of their livelihood. They will become aware that the stress and the frustration that they feel is not due to us, but a source much closer to them. Yes, we are SPs, but the sum of suppression we could ever muster is eclipsed by that of your own RTC.

Knowledge is free.

We are Anonymous.

We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

The not so obvious question

I have to admit this one had not yet occurred to me:

Thanks those who found it first. (What? It’s not like I’m a good, faithful YouTube beachcomber.)

Jesus and the right-wing evangelical

A new twist on an aging joke. I recall there was a David Horsey cartoon published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in advance of the 1996 election that ran along these lines. The Emerald City’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist aimed at gubernatorial candidate Ellen Creswell and her evangelical support bloc at the time.

A tip of the hat and my thanks to anyone who can come up with that panel. I found this latest twist via Savage at Slog via Andrew Sullivan. Enjoy. (Or not.)