Category: Culture

Dear Financial Services Company

You suck.

No, you REALLY suck. Your website sucks. Your phone service sucks. The fact that I have a problem with your website and your “customer service” is automated and keeps telling me to go back to it sucks. Why on earth would I ever give you another dime of my money?

I could tell you which company this was, but honestly I’ve had problems like this with several of them.

More on Continous Partial Attention

Even more on why this is bogus

In my earlier post, I mentioned why I disagreed with this, but today I came across the Trendwatchers site and not only do they disagree with this, but they predict the exact opposite. Then again, they make their living watching trends and doing actual research, so they are probably wrong. (yes, I’m being sarcastic here)

MTV is the future Republican’s channel

The transition is complete.

I remember when MTV started. It was an little sort of DIY channel with cheap sets and a sense of promise. I think while everyone understood that they were a corporation with profit as a motive, we all enjoyed it when they would play punk and alternative videos. MTV actually was the conduit for a lot of teenage rebellion during the Reagan/Bush 80s and 90s. At least a few people felt some credit for Bill Clinton’s win should go to MTV.

Yeah, that has all changed. With shows like Laguna Beach, Sweet Sixteen, Road Rules and The Real World; MTV is now promoting consumerism and a sickening shallowness of character. The personalities that this channel chooses to promote are the saddest people I have ever seen. Do-It-Yourself has been replaced with Have-Your-Parents-Pay-To-Have-Someone-Do-It-For-You. MTV has gone from the channel that parents didn’t want their kids to watch because they were worried that they would start wearing funny clothes and listen to devil music to the channel that parents don’t want to have their kids watch because they don’t want to be continuously hassled for expensive parties, clothes and cars.

Maybe they are just going with the flow and this is what kids are like now. I don’t think so. MTV used to be the channel that was exposing urban youth culture out there to the burbs. Now it seems to be just showing the burbs to themselves.

If this is how far MTV has fallen, it might just be time to take it out back and put a bullet through its head and let the kids find something less lame to do with their time.

Geek test answers

no peeking

West Wing Geek Test: College Kids

Music Geek Test: They’re Canadian! Proudly Canadian! From Toronto Canadian! They’re standing right behind Allison Janey on the stage when she says it. Don’t you think one of them might have said something to the producer or writers? I don’t even own any of their albums and I knew that!

I started wondering if I’d misheard Allison Janey on the show and close captioning hadn’t helped when I watched it. So I did a little web search and found no one else complaining about this. Maybe I did mis-hear it, or am I the first person in the world to have noticed this? I really doubt it. I would imagine some Barenaked Ladies fan site would have freaked out about this. I’m sure I’ll hear from some BNL (as the kids call it) freak who’ll put me right if it was my hearing that was wrong and not the writers of the WW (as the kids may call it, I’m to lazy to see).

When will this trend end?

yeah, ok, I’m getting old

It’s like a freakin uniform and I’m getting pretty fed up with it. Backwards baseball cap, flip flops, cargo shorts (or cut off cargo pants) and a stupid t-shirt. It is the uniform from the teens until the 20s and it is pissing me off. Forget the fact that it is impractical: I see it most in the city, where I live, where flip flops are the stupidest thing to wear as you step over broken glass. It is the fact that this uniform combines two of my least favorite stereotypes: flip-flops, which is straight out of the hippy surfer aesthetic; and the backwards baseball cap which was made cool by Chuck D and lame by Fred Durst and now is more frat guy than hip hop.

Today I saw a small crowd of these identically dressed automatons walking down the street, oblivious to how sad they looked.

Please lets move on to the next stupid fashion trend. This one is way over.

And before you think that it is only the young uniform that pisses me off… My second favorite lame uniform is the dockers and polo shirt combination that passes for casual wear on most of the people my age and older.

Continuous partial attention

since Supernova, everyone is all excited about this: ho hum

I’m with Nick Carr on this one. Continuous Partial Attention is a hip way of talking about something that people have been calling attention to for decades. Remember the articles about multitasking when the Walkman or Cellphone came out? This is nothing new, but the 20-year cycle idea is kind of ridiculous. Also, the thought that we’re moving towards a new cycle where people don’t multitask is just a joke. “The next aphrodisiac is committed full-attention focus” is a statement that says nothing, but is designed to provoke argument. Since when was it not? How has partially paying attention to a person every been considered ok?

All evidence points to the contrary. People are multi-tasking more than ever. Gen Y are more adept at IM’ing while doing their homework and watching TV and talking on a cell phone than GenX (my generation) ever was. I don’t see anyone under 40 unplugging from their on-line social networks in a desire for more direct human connection. The on-line networks are moving more and more onto mobile devices so that you can spend that time in the presence of others while maintaining your virtual connections. I see that increasing rather than decreasing.

I guess the thing that kind of bugs me about the whole discussion is that the “inventor” of the continuous partial attention “idea” has only talked about it from behind a podium during keynote presentations. How ’bout writing an article or publishing a paper or starting a blog? You know… entering the world of debate: where you can defend your ideas?