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Seth Godin on Driveby Culture and the Search for Wow
Seth Godin, my guru of social analysis and social web analysis has a great post this morning about Driveby Culture and our waning attention spans. The fight for brand attention on the TV, on the web and in print has become staggeringly competitive of late, a mix of niche communities and large-scale flash promotions, all targeted to increase a fanbase, engage a demographic or increase brand awareness. A glorified net thrown from an airplane as he sees it. Seth brings the old fight between quantity and quality back to the floor, citing the “demise of thoughtful inquiry and deep experience,” and begging marketers to forget the masses that will race on, unchanged by shallow attempts to engage. Check it out.
Driveby culture and the endless search for wow
The net has spawned two new ways to create and consume culture.
The first is the wide-open door for amateurs to create. This is blogging and online art, wikipedia and the maker movement. These guys get a lot of press, and deservedly so, because they’re changing everything.
The second, though, is distracting and ultimately a waste. We’re creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate (or not).
Imagine if people went to the theatre or the movies and stood up and walked out after the first six seconds. Imagine if people went to the senior prom and bailed on their date three seconds after the car pulled away from the curb.
The majority of people who sign up for a new online service rarely or never use it. The majority of YouTube videos are watched for just a few seconds. Chatroulette institutionalizes the glance and click mentality. I’m guessing that more than half the people who started reading this post never finished it.
This is all easy to measure. And it drives people with something to accomplish crazy, because they want visits to go up, clicks to go up, eyeballs to go up.
Should I write blog posts that increase my traffic or that help change the way (a few) people think? Continue Reading →
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Powder, Raw Fish, and Cherry Blossoms
I was lucky enough to get to spend the past week in Japan representing Black Diamond on a photo shoot and telemark festival. Before I left, I had vague visions of myself posing for pictures with Japanese skiers whose default picture pose was throwing up a peace sign. Turns out that was an unfounded Asian stereotype—the number one most preferred picture pose among Japanese skiers seems to be throwing a fist in the air, Claim-style.
I was told by several people that the popularity of skiing was on long-term decline in Japan after enjoying it’s heyday in the 1980s due to the economic recession, as well as the fact that skiing is no longer seen as cool among younger generations. I was also told that was the kiss of death in a culture that is more concerned than average with keeping up with the latest trends.
These things are probably true, but last week I had trouble believing in the decline of skiing and the inherent hip nature of Japanese culture as: a) around 400 freeheelers showed to a small, three-lift mountain in a torrential downpour to participate in the Telemakuri festival and b) the second most common picture pose turned out to be a thumbs-up.
Joking aside, what I did find true among the locals that I skied with is that they were not just welcoming, they were incredibly excited to show me their country and admirably persistent in trying to communicate me in English and include me in all of the festival’s activities. This meant a lot to me as I felt pretty pathetic only being able to speak a few phrases of Japanese. What kind of activities did a Japanese telemark festival include? There were the usual ski and boots demo, instructional clinics, and fun races.
The Black Diamond/Smartwool booth was by far the busiest of all. There was also a syncronized skiing competition, which I got to be a guest judge for:
Unfortunately the rain and fog were too dense to actually see the skiers until they were very close, but still people’s enthusiasm did not wane. The afterparty was like no other I had ever been to. This performance kicked off the event:
I’ll bet you five bucks that the girl on the right eventually does a national tour, gets ringtones of her songs, and inspires a manga character.
All in all after two days of shooting in Hokkaido, a day on a ferry down to the main island, two days of Telemakuri, and two days of being a camera-toting Tokyo tourist, it was one of the best trips of my life. I will end with a shot of the terrain in Asahidake, the tallest mountain in Hokkaido, where we got our one perfect weather day:
