Well, I am getting down to the end of Gonzo Marketing (book by Chris Locke, aka rageboy), and I must say this has been an eye opening experience when it comes to looking at blogs (and some of the other things I am working on). It is a bit of a tale, but let me tell you what I got out of all of this.

First and foremost, Locke tries to paint the picture of the internet as a sort of great social commune of people sharing interests, creating geocities websites filled with dancing hamsters and talking about organic gardening. He touched just barely on the new at the time idea of weblogs, which we all know now as blogs. He correctly did predict that we would all spend out time talking to each other in little personal interest sites. Everyone is a writer, and editor, and a researcher. We all bring our personal experiences and knowledge to the table, and away we go, filling the web with endless amounts of wonderful, insightful personally slaved over and loved information.

That much, my friends, he got right.

He goes on to attempt to sell this concept to industry as a “gonzoâ€? or underground marketing campaign. Basically, unleash your employees to create personalized websites about whatever interests them, and attempt to leverage that into some sort of sneaky personal brand connection concept. It is a stunning abuse of the very trust he seeks to promote in the wide open social commune that he calls the net. It is a bit like sending in undercover spies or some sort of digital trojan horse. Pollute and corrupt the system from the inside.

Thankfully, that sort of bloated neo-corporate blather for the most part has been lost in the sea of the web, because people are not so easily tricked by the bullshit of forced originality. It is a very well known fact that most blogs are abandoned within a few posts of being opened, as most people discover that they really have very little to say. Attempting to force employees to talk about whatever for fun and corporate prodfits is an even bigger non-starter, and as a result, most of what was in Gonzo Marketing regarding personal interest websites has pretty much failed.

In it’s place, we find things like myspace and any number of pathetic dating sites packed full of losers hiding behind fake photos and even faker profiles. In both cases, the goal seems only to score the most “friendsâ€? and not to actually talk about anything. A personal grandstanding and very shallow shout outs, totally transient in nature. For most of these people, the net is just a glorified school dance or pickup bar with smaller drink tabs and no reason to dress up.

Those who do chose to blog come in a couple of groups. The best bloggers tend to be the professionals that you actually want to know more about. I personally love to read Matt Cutt’s blog (he is a higher end Google guy, double meaning intended). It is filled with great information about how Google runs, things going on, and the weird things that Matt really enjoys. It is a real mish-mash, but good fun overall and not at all forced in language or subject.

In the middle area there are hundreds of thousands of people who ruin personal blogs on about every subject in the world, from anthills to zits and everything in between. Some of these are well written by people who have some skill and a real interesting point of view or passion for a subject, and others are just hack jobs from people who can barely string together a sentence. There is a ton of passion in these sites.

There is also the commercial blog. I run some of those ( like The Little Tit site or DDCup Big Booby Blog ) that are aimed to provide a service and inform a group of like minded people about things they might like. My personal preference in breast size doesn’t come into play here, I professionally write from either point of view without issue, as I understand both, and they are darn good information and resource sites that visitors tend to enjoy. Over time I open more sites of the same general concept, reaching out to people with similar desires or pleasures. It is actually one of the most fun parts of my day to work on these sites.

Finally, there are the blog mega sites, like stile project or consumption junction that were bloggy type sites really before blogs existed. They are sort of the all things to all people, and are quite popular for various reasons.

What Locke failed to address in his book was the issue of integrity and truthfulness in blogging. It is very easy to write almost anything in a blog (My sister is an alien) without anything being able to check out the facts (nobody can prove she is an alien, now can they). The web is filled with blogs that lie, steal, cheat, and mislead’ and that what keeps the blog world from being anything more than a poorly organized social experiment.

Let me give you an example. There are any number of “celebâ€? blogs out there, chatting about the latest gossip, often posting nipple slip pictures, embarrassing moments, and shots that are pretty darn funny. These sites get huge numbers of visitors every day, and they tend to try to sell people off to celeb nudity sites like Mr Skin or similar sites.

Every wonder where they get those pics from? Simple: THEY STEAL THEM.

Every wonder where these sites get their funny videos from? Do you think they have film crews all over the world chasing stupid drivers and dumb skateboard riders around? Nope’ THEY STEAL IT.

Now, consider this: If they are willing to steal material to fill their sites, would you consider that they might be a little bit fast and loose with facts too?

Nobody is checking nobody knows.

If you get your news from blogs, then you probably dont have all the truth just be careful, okay?

Okay, so I am not done re-reading this book, but I have just gotten to the point where I put it down the last time… and now I remember why.

Chapter 7: The Gonzo Model

Okay, I was following along no problem. Chistropher Locke is certainly a motivated and strong speaker, and believes very much in what he writes. He is a, umm, how can I say this, real born again evanglist when it comes to this idea of Gonzo Marketing. Religeous in approach, even. He prays at the alter of the little guy, lighting a candle for the micro interests that all of us apparently have. Left handed red head football lovers from WallaWalla, short people with big chips on their shoulders about global warming and the effects on the one eyed slugs of bimini island… everyone has a candle lit at the alter of Locke.

I was good with that. Blogs and free blog space and myspace and 100 other sites have given the public a space to post whatever the heck is they want, regardless of the truth, skill, or intelligence of the people using it – the only barrier being smart enough to figure out the interface and type your name (and if you have ever spent time around places like blogger, you will know that many, many people just don’t past that test). There are literally thousands if not millions of totally useless, undeveloped, abandoned blogs and personal web pages crowding up the net universe. Heck, you can’t blame people for trying, I am proud of anyone willing to give it a shot.

Locke prays every day that another blog will appear, that another micromarket will be born, and that the world will be all right.

I start reading this magic chapter 7, and it all goes to shit.

All of sudden, the book takes a sharp turn and we are back inside stuff cubicle packed offices, instructing bosses to set up personal websites inside the company and let the employees play… and then pick the best and put them REALLY on the web and use them as a sneaky, back ass way to get your company exposed, all while tricking employees into being secret sales droids… never realizing that their posts and articles on back yard gardening are in fact a covert way of sneaking your company into the very micromarkets that your employees have spawned for you.

There you have it: The high priest of do it yourself web teaching companies how to corrupt the system and turn it into, well… shit.

Gonzo Marketing is in fact the first step down the road not of blogs, but of micromarket splogs generated not by computer and keywords lists, but carefully created and maintained by the ignorant employees who think that they are putting one over on the company by spending their time working on a blog instead of answering customer phone calls or actually doing work.

He calls it “winning through worst practices” but in the end, after 6 chapters of spewing off how important the new non-broadcast media would be in people’s lives, he turns around and tells companies exactly how to corrupt it and turn it back into a form of broadcast medium… instead of 100 people working to produce a TV show, just give each one of them a couple of blogs to run and you suddenly have access to 200 new micromarkets…

I guess I am just a little disgusted – and all of this from a guy who’s website looks like the very worst of myspace and yahoo groups tossed in a blender, fed to an incontenant monkey, and given 12 hours to filter through.

Anyway, I am going to plug on through and try to get to the end of this book, all the while trying not to laugh at the quaint 5 year old information that it spews.

Okay, let me start off with the link to the story: College guys go wild

There are two trends growing, and honestly, I don’t know which one is worse. This story brings both of them out.

Reality porn started a few years back with sites like bangbus and Mike’s Apartment showed girls getting picked up and “talked into” being on a porn video. In the case of Bangbus, the real trick was at the end they never actually paid the girl the money they promised, and often tricked them into getting out of the van and then driving away. Think of it as a simpistic version of male dominance, on tape and sent out to millions of other potential knuckle dragging cavemen to enjoy.

From my point of view, taken as a humorous aside in life, they are actually really a bunch of fun and play to a harmless fantasy that most people would never even consider thinking about. It sort of plays off the older “pick up a hitchiker”thing, a pretty normal fantasy that has been around since the start of my life, anyway. I will tell you that you probably would enjoy checking out the bangbus trailers because some of them are truly classic pieces of porn humor. Taken in a light hearted manner, some of them are truly side splitting.

Mike’s Apartment is a twist. Guy puts ad in newspaper for temporary room mates for his flat in Amsterdam. A parade of poor students, cheap travellers, and confused locals come through looking for a space to stay, and when they findout that the price of admission is getting naked on camera (and often fucking the mythical “mike”) some run and some strip down and get busy. Again, sort of the stranger fantasy played out well.

The downside of these reality sites is that some people have taken them a little too far, pushing the border of subjects like non-consentual sex and even rape. One of the weirder and less enjoyable sites included ideas like “attacked while sleeping” and “she’ll never know” type sites. This delves into an area that starts to work on matters of judgement and good taste. There are thing, example, that a married couple might do for fun (I will even admit to waking my ex-wife up with some nice munching, which lead to amazing sex) but most of these sites play on “neighbors”, “room mates”, or “sister’s friends”. It is the idea of having sex without waking someone up… and it is, without a doubt in my mind, the portrayal of non-consentual sex, which is rape.

Rape ain’t good, guys.

Anyway, these dumbasses in the article happened to find a buddies’ almost conquest passed out in the living room of their shared flat, and decided after watching some porn that it would be a good idea to blow their load all over her while she slept. Not cool at all.

Guys, if the girl can’t say yes or no, the answer should always be NO.

Anyway, the other trend in all of this is the current run of the press to blame porn for every ill in society. When that Entwhistle dude that killed his wife and kid was caught, they checked his computer and foudn that he was checking out porn and hanging around adult dating / sex exchange sites. Some of the media tried to suggest this as some sort of trigger for what happened. The truth of the matter is that more than 50% of all americans check out porn and enjoy it at one time or another, and that visiting an adult site isn’t exactly unusual or out of place. Only the taboos and morals of the current society keep us from standing around the water cooler at work talking about the fuck movie we watched last night. Porn star girls and guys are well known, most people know who is who. It isn’t a big deal, we don’t talk about it.

So my advice to the media is that you start looking somewhere else for a scapegoat… and guys, keep your dick in your pants when the girls don’t want it. That will keep us from having too many more articles that make the porn business look bad, okay?

I am not sure if this qualifies as a “funny” story, but it sure does make it up to annoying.

I am in Canada. We have two sat-tv companies, Starchoice and Expressvu. When I first went to a Canadian system (I use to grey market a US provider), I used Starchoice. They were not bad, but the set top boxes were slow to open new channels, which made channel surfing impossible. When the set top box took a powder and they tried to charge me for a replacement, I jumped ship and went with Bell Expressvu.

Everything with expressvu has been reasonable but not great. The packages are a little wonky, the reception at times is a little wierd, and my outside disk has all the paint peeling off of it. Not a really big deal, because I guess I will be heading to HD pretty soon anway, so no big deal, right? That is what I thought.

I have been watching the ads closely. The price of the HD receiver finally dropped down under $300, and the price of good HD TVs is coming down fast too. I can see myself probably going to HD pretty darn soon. I figured, heck, I could just get the receiver now (with the new dish) and buy the TV when I get a chance, no big deal. I am a big customer, I have pretty much every channel you can get without going to the premium foreign channels and stuff. I figured I would give them a call, I was sure that there would be some sort of deal for a semi-loyal client who is paying them premium money.

Wrong-o Bongo.

It turns out that existing customers get NOTHING extra. Not a thing. Nada. Actually, new clients get more (10 free months of the HD channels) and existing customers get it in the ass. Nothing, nada, no nothing for paying $300 to move up.

Anyway, Expressvu, you are on notice. I am calling the cable company to check out their digital offerings next week, and you may be OUT THE DOOR.

Suckers!

Well, actually, I think he has been fairly offensive all along… but today (Veteran’s Day) he stepped it up, using the background of the memories of war to slam opponents who question the reasons for going to war in Iraq.

With his approval ratings sinking faster than Scooter Libby’s social schedule, Bush has to take some drastic steps to pick things up. Mid term elections are now 12 months away, and unless the republicans as a whole start to look better, there might be a swing in the house and senate. Bush’s plan? Don’t fix anything, just lash out at all the other people and hope nobody notices your misdirection.

GWB, let me give you a suggestion: Try the words “mea culpa”. Accept that the buck really does stop at your desk (because in your world, the only guy more powerful than you is god… and your father). Accept that you are in the end responsible for taking the US (and the world) to war in Iraq without real justification, or that the justifications were either made up or “cherry picked” from the intelligence available. I don’t think very many people are saying outright that you lied, but they are saying that you used only the truths and information that supported your desired result, rather than balancing the informaiton out.

The whole reason Scooter has some time on his hands goes back to your administration apparently being willing to do anything to shut up dissenting voices.

There was no nuclear weapons – and there was no proof to start with.

There were no chemical weapons – and the UN inspectors hadn’t found any before the war either

There were no weapons of mass destruction – and the UN inspectors didn’t find them either.

Saddam Hussein wasn’t friends with Bin Ladin – in fact, they apparently hate each other.

Al-quida wasn’t much of a force in Iraq before the war.

So today’s attacks on John Kerry, and misrepresenting how he voted against funding your personal war on Saddam. You attack anyone who doesn’t support your views, and you stand up and get creative with the truth.

Presidental of you, sir.

Top story today out of the US: 130,000 illiegal immigrants disappear into US every year.

The reaction in congress is to consider a new law tightening immigration laws.

This is typical of the current state of affairs in the US. There are plenty of good and vaild laws on the books currently to deal with the immigration issues, but rather than working to enforce existing laws, the people in Washington feel the need to write new and more complex legislation, quite possibly to show they are “doin’ sump’tin” about the problem. That “doin'” is going to take more than a year to happen, if it happens at all. I suspect some of them are just hoping that things go away.

The adult industy faces the same problem. There is a law on the books (USC 18 section 2256 and 2257) that regulates the industry, requiring proof of age for models, documentation, and such. These rules were put in place as much because of one Traci Lords than anything else. It’s a good law, it requires that the people who actually take the images get all the model IDs and everything, and keep them on file with the custodian of records that the police and feds can consult as needed if anything ever comes up.

The problem? Not a single conviction has been made in the 10+ years that this law has been on the books. When summoned in front of Congress, the FBI admitted as much.

So, the Department of Justice is attempting to use “executive clarifications” (a process normally used to clarify HOW a law is enforced) to re-write the rules to require huge amounts of new paperwork by adult content producers and distributors, all under the guise of “stopping child porn”.

What these dumbasses don’t understand is that the legit adult industry doesn’t intentionally produce or distribute child porn, and that every case that I am aware of where an underage performer has been found, they have been using false government issued documention to show their age as over 18. Again, in almost every case I am aware of (and there are very few) the girls and boys involved are typically within months of the age of majority. We are not talking about 12 year old girls getting fucked by perverts or 6 month old babies being molested, but over eager “near adults” purposefully misleading people to participate in the adult indsutry of their own free wills.

Not a single child porn “producer” (I think that using producer is an insult to people in the legit adult industry) would bother with paperwork, with model records, or with ID checks. They are not even going to attempt to mislead anyone. They film pre-teen, pre-pubescent children engaged in disgusting sex acts. They are not borderline or almost… they are way out there, clear and obvious as the nose on the end of my face. But alas, the US government feels that new laws, new regulations, and new burdonsome paperwork on the LEGIT industry will somehow stop the production of child porn in it’s tracks.

Sort of like making the Whiskey producers track every bottom they make and recycle the emptry bottles and follow the drunks home, hoping to stop the moonshiners from plying their trade. They two are only related by achohol content, not business model or regulation.

Sort of like creating whole new sections of law to control illegal immigration at the US southern border, rather then just sending in the national guard, more border guards, and setting up processing to get the illegals directly out of the country. Instead, they will come up with even more complex laws to punish people who hire or pay illegals to work for them – which is funny because many a politico has been caught with an undocumented nanny or gardener working for them. It’s BULLSHIT buck passing, putting more burdens on people already following the law, and doing nothing to resolve the real issues that are out there.

Nothing happens because nobody appears to want to make it happen. The members of congress and the house in the US should be ashamed by the waste of time and taxpayer money that goes into keeping their worthless butts in washington.

Fox News Channel came to Canada’s cable and DBS systems about a month ago (just in time for the hurricanes). Watching this channel has taught me more about the total brainwashing of a large portion of the US population than anything else I have seen.

My personal favorite is Bill O’Rielly (oh really?). The guy runs a show called “the no spin zone”, and his first topic every night is “talking points”. Now, I don’t know about you, but talking points usually are a partisan list of topics to be used when addressing the media to put the right message out there. That anyone can (with a straight face) accept “no spin” and “talking points” at the same time boggles my mind (where is that smilie?).

Middle of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and Brown were having a nap, the President headed to California to get a guitar, and O’Reilly is on the air blaming the governor and the mayor of New Orleans for FEMA not showing up.

No spin, indeed.

FOXNC and it’s “presenters” for the most part pick a very conservative / republican line to almost any story that comes up, only being critical of of Bush or others around him as a last resort, when they see that they are alone on the “pro-bush all the time” stand. Then they will make very weak and sanitized “Bush didn’t do enough” statements, and try to find a scapegoat to explain it (see Brown).

Between the crew of FOXNC (many of whom also do ultra conservative syndicated radio shows) and people like Rush Limbaugh, it is surprising that most Americans can go to the bathroom without help. These guys pile the crap on so thick that it is beyond understanding… Limbaugh still blames Clinton weekly for the economic mess in America today. “Dittoheads”… a nice way of saying don’t think, just agree with me.

The massive divide between reality and what a large part of the radio, press, and TV medias are putting out there only helps to encourage this mentality, and teaches people to pat themselves on the back for a job well done even if the job wasn’t well done.

It has been a very sad last 10 years watching much of America slip into a self righteous abiss.

Alex

Okay, it’s the Friday as Rita is coming to the LA / Texas border. The Levees in New Orleans are leaking again, and the 9th ward and st bernard’s parish are getting flooded out again, and this before the main part of the storm hits town. This proves, conclusively, that Mayor Ray Nagin’s plan to put 180,000 people back in New Orleans was a little bit pre-mature.

Ray, here is a hint: Unless the levees are completely repaired and secure, you can’t put people back in harm’s way. You can’t even really let them start to rebuild or anything, because, well, you can’t keep anything they do secure.

I have a suggestion for you (and not a popular one, I am sorry).

Except for the areas of New Orleans that have stayed dry, you need to plow the rest of it down, and allow the water to come in full time into those areas. Remove the levees from that side, let it flood out, and just let the lake be bigger. Use the dirt that you dig up from those areas to raise the overall land level of other areas of the city that are marginal, and raise them up before you rebuild them. Basically save the french quarter, the business district, the port area, and so on. Give up on the rest, the costs for keeping it dry in the long term is not a very good business investment.

You will end up with a smaller city, but one that is much more secure and much more willing to work for the future. This will also renew your city, and hopefully bring new investment and new money to your city, which will help all the people who come to live there.

Good luck to everyone in the path of the storm. Stay dry!

Alex

Nice! bush accepts responsibility for the slow federal response. He doesn’t seem to be going all the way to say “the federal government should have taken charge regardless”, but it’s getting cl0ser.

It has been a good week for Bush-boy. Michael Brown ressigns from FEMA after being recalled like a lost little schoolboy. Dick Cheney finally decided to end his vacation and visited the disaster zone, using empty platitudes and vapid political comments to explain the situation in simple terms to the collected (and likely very bored) press. Then, on top of it, it turns out that Bush / Cheney cronies are getting all the cleanup contracts without bids. It truly has been an amazing week.

The funniest story of it all? When the levees broke, you would be surprised where POTUS was “working”. “Bush, in San Diego for celebrations of end of World War II, is photographed smiling and playing a guitar given to him by a popular singer. Cheney remains on vacation in Wyoming.” timeline here of the fuckups

Yes, Dubya, now is the time to accept responsibility. Now is the time to admit your failures, and admit your VERY poor judgement.

All of this has brought to my mind a very clear picture of GW Bush as a leader, and as a man. I don’t like what I see.

The inaction of the President, who now suddenly is the New Orleans frequent flier of the month, is stunning to see. The areas were declared federal disaster areas before the hurricane even hit, but still he stayed on vacation. The hurricane hit and just about wiped out biloxi and other coastal towns and cities, and still he stayed on vacation. The levees broke, New Orleans filled with water, and Bush went to pick up a guitar at a public event on the west coast.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Bush strummed while New Orleans flooded.

The length and frequency of vacation to Texas, and the seeming desire to stay in Texas no matter what happens in the rest of the world is sort of stunning. Normally we get a couple of weeks off a year from work. Bush has spent a ton of time in Texas on the ranch, with 11 long term visits in the past 6 years (the current vacation was more than a month). He is the “commander in absence”, the guy in your office who is never at his desk. He doesn’t work late, he doesn’t get to work early, he exercises during the day, and basically limits his work time dramatically. This is the POTUS you see on TV on the West Wing, handling things day and night. This is the “Bank Manager” president, 10am to 3PM Monday to Friday, with long vacations twice a year to keep things in balance.

Everyone knows now that the war in Iraq was a crock. The proof was made up wholesale, the “reason” for the attack has slipped, and the US has moved from thwarting terrorism to nation building. There were no weapons, and even Colin Powell is embarrassed for having given that horrible misleading speech to the UN and to the world.

Bush has been the president of deception, misrepresentation, and inaction. As a Canadian, I can tell you that I feel less secure today, knowing that our big neighbor to the south has painted a target on it’s head. Nuclear fallout goes a long way, and I am just in the right place to get some. I am not impressed.

*sigh*