Category Archives: Thinking

Thinking

Overlooked Culture

Maybe I’m fol­low­ing the wrong peo­ple on social media, but has the word “over­looked” lost all mean­ing as it per­tains to cul­ture? It seems to me that when we’re still print­ing spoiler alerts for ten-year-old TV shows that “over­looked” has lost all explana­tory power. Now when I see that word in a review, I roll my eyes. Chances are the reviews are just as over­looked as the cul­ture they describe, if not moreso.

Sure, within your niche the new records from Vam­pire Week­end or the National may be on everyone’s lips, but it’s a safe bet that the word of mouth out­paces actual con­sump­tion of that par­tic­u­lar cul­tural arti­fact. You may per­ceive that those records have gone main­stream, but the real­ity is your neigh­bor has never heard either band.

There’s def­i­nitely a bright side to this; with this shift, it appears to me at least that snob­bery loses in the bar­gain. The on demand nature of cul­ture now enables any­one curi­ous enough to book­mark those things men­tally and nar­rows the gap between the expert and the novice. More­over, we’ve done away with the cul­tural mono­liths that once dom­i­nated the pop cul­tural land­scape that allow us to gather around real and imag­ined water cool­ers for dis­cus­sion and debate.

But how do crit­ics describe this shift as the pace of cul­tural cre­ation plows under what came before? Blink and you could miss the next cul­tural epicy­cle. Has cul­ture been mar­gin­al­ized or per­son­al­ized? Can any­thing be described as ephemeral, or were we just always talk­ing to our­selves, the myth of mono­cul­ture just another imag­ined com­mu­nity peo­pled exclu­sively by elites?

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Thinking

Saying Goodbye to Port Fishington

When Helen and I first set­tled in Port Fish­ing­ton six years ago, we thought we’d made a bad deci­sion. We’d moved from a vibrant, bustling street in Pennsport to a des­o­late block above York Street. We found lots of vacant houses and even less to eat. It wasn’t scary; the neigh­bors were friendly and wel­com­ing. They planted the tree in front of our house for a few bucks and a case of beer! But we still felt like we’d left the place we loved for a place we could afford. That feel­ing of buyer’s remorse was hard to ignore.

Now that we’re get­ting ready to say good­bye to Philadel­phia, we know we made the right choice mov­ing here. This neigh­bor­hood flour­ished since we moved here, with fan­tas­tic new restau­rants to go along with the music scene. We’ve been spoiled by hav­ing Greens­grow Farm around the cor­ner. If you’d told me then that Stephen Starr would have not one, but two restau­rants here, I would’ve laughed in your face. And then it hap­pened. Heck, I intro­duced the #toomany­gas­trop­ubs hash­tag as a tongue-in-cheek com­plaint about our restau­rant bounty.

We loved it so much, we started a fam­ily here. Char­lie loves it, too! We’ve played count­less games on the side­walk in front of our house, say­ing hello to every­one who smiles at him as they pass. We made Mem­phis Tap­room our liv­ing room away from home. We con­vinced our friends to move here, too! We’ve made great mem­o­ries here. Port Fishington’s been good to us. We’re going to miss this place when we go.

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Thinking

Renewing My iPhone Vows

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve had an iPhone for nearly 5 years. I’ve lately noticed more of my friends are switch­ing to Android, and I’ve read a num­ber of arti­cles about blog­gers cut­ting ties with Apple. Would I join them in 2013? Could I break free from famil­iar iOS apps and move to Android?

Turns out I won’t be mak­ing the switch. I’d dialed in on the Droid DNA. I’ve been research­ing it for weeks, watch­ing YouTube videos, read­ing reviews and talk­ing to friends who’ve been try­ing to get me to move to Android for a while. I was con­vinced this was the phone for me. More­over, I’ve recom­mit­ted to Google on iOS in a big way. Throw in Google Now and I was sure I’d switch.

And yet I won’t. Why?

I had no idea how much I’d grown to love the iPhone form fac­tor. I’ve seen the “feels good in the hand” meme, but there’s some­thing to it. I just couldn’t switch to some­thing that felt like a lesser prod­uct, know­ing full well the specs are off the chart.

Instead I’m choos­ing to stick with the iPhone when I upgrade and switch to Ver­i­zon. With that in mind, what are the apps you can’t live with­out? I’m com­mit­ting to Ever­note, blog­ging with Poster (it’s great!), lov­ing YouTube and I can’t say enough good things about Zee­box, a great app Com­cast invested in last year. Rec­om­mend your favorites and sug­gest good blogs, Twit­ter accounts, YouTube chan­nels and pod­casts that you fol­low to stay up with the lat­est and greatest.

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Thinking

The Realtime Gratification Gap

I wrote my last post about a per­sonal con­tent strat­egy months ago. I don’t even know how many times I’ve tweeted over that time. Giz­modo asked its read­ers if they still main­tain per­sonal blogs, acknowl­edg­ing all the ways other ser­vices have filled the space blogs once monop­o­lized. It’s a ques­tion that fills me with dread.

I mourn the loss of a vibrant per­sonal blog­ging com­mu­nity, but then again, every­one I used to fol­low got jobs blog­ging. And while I find real­time com­mu­ni­ca­tion fun, there’s a grat­i­fi­ca­tion gap between tweet­ing and long­form per­sonal writ­ing for me. I find writ­ing to be a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence and I used to draw inspi­ra­tion from my favorite blog­gers that drove me to write in a way that was dif­fer­ent than read­ing the news­pa­per or a mag­a­zine. I bet I’m not alone in that, but most of my peers quit their per­sonal blogs, too.

When I say grat­i­fi­ca­tion gap, I’m talk­ing about how blog com­ments showed more appre­ci­a­tion for the work than a fave or retweet. Granted, reach has exploded with those real­time social expe­ri­ences, but it’s also divorced the work from painstak­ingly build­ing an audi­ence that looks for­ward to a piece of writ­ing. I used to be so encour­aged by those expe­ri­ences. In fact, I still find myself thank­ing friends who take the time to write. I miss root­ing for my writ­ing friends as much as I miss them root­ing for me.

Do you still write your per­sonal blog? Where do you draw inspi­ra­tion? If not, do you miss blog­ging, or is this just nos­tal­gia for, um, 2003?

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Thinking

Why You Need a Personal Content Strategy

Scoble’s post on scal­able liv­ing offers some inter­est­ing insight into how peo­ple use social plat­forms to com­mu­ni­cate with audi­ences. What I find most inter­est­ing are his views on the role of Face­book in how he shares con­tent. Here’s a key pas­sage from what he wrote:

So, what role does a blog have in this new world. It cer­tainly is NOT cen­tral­iz­ing my life. Face­book is — by far — the best place to do that. This morn­ing alone I lis­tened to sev­eral songs in the car. Do you really want me to post every time that hap­pens here? No way. But on Face­book that’s eas­ily dealt with. Even bet­ter Face­book usu­ally fil­ters that stuff out and Face­book gets bet­ter over time at fig­ur­ing out what you want to engage with and what you don’t. If you saw every­thing I did on my pro­file come through on your home feed you would unfol­low within an hour. Instead 330,000 new peo­ple in the past year alone have sub­scribed to me on Face­book. Why? It’s scal­able liv­ing and hav­ing great inbound makes life more interesting.

Now, Scoble is an edge case, to put it mildly. Few of us com­mu­ni­cate on social plat­forms with even a frac­tion of the peo­ple who fol­low him. But how many of us would even con­sider using Face­book to share con­tent that’s related to our work as social media pro­fes­sion­als? Would your friends be inter­ested in your views on Google+? I doubt it. I know mine wouldn’t.

Most of what Scoble dis­cusses is how we share and con­sume infor­ma­tion. He notes that Facebook’s algo­rithm helps you make choices about what you see and what you don’t. That’s not true of other plat­forms and if you’re like me, you don’t mind infor­ma­tion over­load. But have you given much thought to how you share content?

Con­tinue read­ing →

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Thinking

How I Share Links

I rarely share links. When I do it hap­pens in spurts while I’m rac­ing through Google Reader or Flip­board. I gen­er­ally don’t share much. I don’t really retweet that much either, and I think I know why.

I don’t like “viral” content.

There. I’ve said it. In my years as a music critic and edi­tor I was frus­trated when I the same sto­ries and angles every­where. But that was just a func­tion of the news cycle and part of the mat­u­ra­tion of the news out­lets we came to know as blogs. Viral con­tent does the same thing, but fric­tion­less shar­ing enables an alto­gether dif­fer­ent kind of expo­sure to the iden­ti­cal piece of con­tent, mostly with­out com­ment. There’s no avoid­ing it. It infil­trates every chan­nel, social or oth­er­wise. If you spend any time on the Inter­net, you’re haunted by meme after meme. It’s awe­some and fun the first time, but then it quickly becomes that pop song you can’t escape all summer.

Yet those pieces of con­tent are what you’re expected to share because as much as any­thing else, when you share a link you’re let­ting peo­ple know you’re in on the joke. It’s the lat­est end­point in the ongo­ing Inter­net phe­nom­e­non of “firsties,” which is dif­fer­ent from, say, a “scoop” because there’s no report­ing involved.

See, to me, link shar­ing is noth­ing more than con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion. Ele­vat­ing it to “cura­tion” is just a joke. When you share a link, all you’re really com­mu­ni­cat­ing is “look what I’ve seen.” To me, this is like invit­ing peo­ple to your dorm room to wow them with your music or books. Chances are, plenty of peo­ple have those albums or books, just like lots of peo­ple will see a link to a par­tic­u­lar piece of con­tent. There’s noth­ing espe­cially cura­to­r­ial to it. “Cura­tion” is sim­ply a func­tion of reach or author­ity and the leisure time to read and share. It doesn’t mat­ter if you cre­ated the piece of con­tent, or if you were even the first to share it. What mat­ters is that peo­ple per­ceive you as the first per­son to share it, thereby cement­ing your sta­tus as a curator.

But that’s not even the worst part of cura­tion. The worst is when you find your­self being tricked into read­ing arti­cles in famil­iar sources. Sure, some of it is a piece of clever copy with a good call-to-action. No shame in that; it’s a lost art. But when most of what’s being shared is in obscure pub­li­ca­tions like the New York Times, well, then, how exactly are you curat­ing one of the best edited pub­li­ca­tions in the world?

Increas­ingly though that skill, namely, get­ting peo­ple to click on links, is online cur­rency, mea­sured by ser­vices like Klout and Kred. Pub­lish­ers and con­tent cre­ators should rejoice; never before in the his­tory of the web have peo­ple been so incen­tivized to share con­tent online. But the prob­lem is we’re gam­i­fy­ing a prac­tice that reduces us all to click­bots cir­cu­lat­ing the same con­tent in 24 hour shifts.

When I read the web, I want to read and look at things that were shared thought­fully and mean­ing­fully about a vari­ety of top­ics, not just some­one opti­miz­ing their social pro­file by shar­ing the most pop­u­lar item of the day. To me the vari­ety of con­tent is what makes read­ing the web spe­cial. I’d hate to see that sort of con­tent dec­i­mated by the push for pageviews.

Now I’ll share a link that expresses very clearly how I feel about cura­tion. I LOVED this arti­cle over at The Awl, espe­cially the part about “‘peo­ple who are really picky with what they share on Facebook.’”

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