Archive for the 'Media' Category

21
Mar

Bombshell McGee’s Facebook Fail

Tiger Woods is likely breathing sigh of relief as Sandra Bullock’s failing marriage quickly overtakes his own drama in the hyperactive imaginations of star-chasers. Bullock was (in)famously married to reality TV star and biker icon Jesse James who was recently caught cheating on her with fetish model / tattoo aficionado / stripper Michelle “Bombshell” McGee.

The media circus, led by the paparazzi-as-journalists at TMZ, naturally combed through Bombshell McGee’s life and found that the model had recently posed in a Nazi-themed photo shoot. McGee also has the tattooed letter W and P on the back of her legs – letters which typically stand for “white power” in tattoo / prison circles.

Possibly sensing the long term business risks of the direction taken by her 15 minutes of fame, McGee quickly fired out a second-hand statement claiming that she is no white supremacist and that the photo shoot in question was merely meant to be provocative.

To McGee’s credit, Nazi-themed photography is not exactly uncommon in the “shocking” world of fetish. To McGee’s discredit, she wears her heart on her Facebook page as vividly as she wears it on her body.

Screen shot: Michelle "Bombshell" McGee's Facebook Page

Look closely at the favourite books section. Many people have read Mein Kampf but very few would list it among their favourite books (if not for the content then surely for the fact that Hitler’s diatribe was mostly rambling). Even more interesting was the second book in her list – The Turner Diaries is a 1978 war novel, written by former National Alliance leader William Pierce, depicting violent overthrow of the United States government and eventual “cleansing” of all Jews and non-whites. Referred to by the FBI as “The Bible of the racist right”, the book has sold over 500,000 copies, mostly via mail order and gun shows. Several high profile hate crimes were committed by extremists who openly cited the book as an inspiration, mostly notably Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. For one to not only read but commend the book is a blinking light signaling far right sympathies.

Michelle McGee defeated her own argument and provided a fine example of yet another Facebook security threat – user stupidity. Whatever security measures are put in place, Facebook is still a website viewable by virtually anyone so long as one person has access to the information. A Facebook “friend” can easily take a screen shot of or “Save as …” any page on the website, instantly creating the opportunity to make private content very, very public. Incidentally, Bombshell made all the information in the above screen shot completely public so even that level of “wizardry” wasn’t necessary.

There are entire websites dedicated to foolish Facebook behavior by less famous users. Facebook Fails posts reader submissions of awkward survey responses, bullying and general purpose drama by Facebook users who type before thinking. For your pleasure, some noteworthy entries from the Facebook Fails website -

Facebook Fail: Fake Tan

Facebook Fail: Salmonella

Facebook Fails: Avoiding Socialism

Facebook Fail: Back on the Market

Facebook Fail: Divorce

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03
Mar

Lethal Lucia – The Facebook Spammers are Here

There I was minding my own business on Facebook when a friend request popped up.  Now how nice is that? Someone wants to be my friend.  After 2 years of social networking the requests start to slow down and navigating the site becomes a test of navigating through melodramatic status updates and covert invitations to Mafia Wars / Mobwars / Youville / Happy Aquarium / etc.

Lucia is not a bad looking gal...

Lucia Pahmeier … nope, doesn’t ring a bell.  She seems to be a good decade younger than me to boot, so it can’t be school or co-op.   Sometimes it’s good to take a chance, and being a male, my brain isn’t the only organ weighing in on the pros and cons.  Still, Lucia only has 2 friends?  I’m one the first people she thought to contact on the web?  Seems unlikely.  A few warning bells go off.

Lucia got something pierced … what, I wonder?  The alarm bells are very loud now.  The clincher is that Lucia is unable to put up any more pictures in facebook (what else do young ladies do on Facebook apart from spread sappy memes and play Farmville?)  but she leaves a link to pictures.  Riiiiiigggght.  Good chance that obvious link forwarding URL is heading to a porn site.  Part of what made MSN Messenger unusable was having to deal with 20+ friend requests per week from what amounted to she-bots promising hours of online sexual self-gratification if only you’d come visit an external website.  Facebook seemed to be somewhat resistant to such sly advertising though obviously someone could just create a profile and try to snag males seeking another “hot chick” for their Facebook stable.

Mystery Solved.  I shall not sign up.

And there you have it.

Facebook is now officially a spam target.

Lucia acquired about 50 friends before her friend request and profile disappeared.  This was no doubt due to complaints from real users but she won’t be the last of her kind.  Facebook’s social network is too rich for Porn / Viagra / etc sites not to try penetrating its secure layers.

The important part of this story is that I did not let Lucia become my friend and in turn have access to my personal details.  As mentioned in an earlier Facebook tutorial, advertisers are very eager to get get access to user demographics, which tend to be cleaner and more appropriate for marketing purposes than most other sources (and are of course free).  Think twice before you accept a friend request unless you absolutely know the person.   Also, don’t be afraid to send a private message for confirmation before accepting.

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12
Jan

Affirmative action needed in Canada’s Parliament?

According to a Globe and Mail editorial yesterday, affirmative action is needed to make the Canadian Parliament reflect “inclusivity and diversity.” Why? Because there are fewer women than men. See also Janet McFarlane’s column today: “Where are the female politicians?”

I can’t help wonder: Did it never occur to the Globe’s editorial board that perhaps the majority of women really don’t want to enter public life, that maybe men and women really are “different” in terms of life “choices?” And, isn’t that what feminism is supposed to be about? Choice!

As the National Post editorial says today, notions of affirmative action are far more undemocratic than prorogation:

“The Globe cares deeply about the state of Canada’s democracy. We know this because it recently ran a front-page editorial denouncing Stephen Harper for performing an ‘underhanded manoeuvre to avoid being accountable to Parliament.’ But when it comes to the MPs who actually populate that Parliament, Globe editorialists have no problem gerrymandering the place to suit their feminist veiwpoint. To hell with the people Canadian voters actually want to elect.”

Look, I consider myself a feminist in the sense that I believe both men and women should have equal opportunities and choices in life no matter what their gender, their sexual preference, their colour, race, religion or culture. But, at the end of the day, running for political office is a personal choice — a choice that is either accepted or rejected by the voters.

No appointments. No slam dunks. No gerrymandering. Being elected by the people should be the only type of affirmative action we need.

C/P at Jack’s Newswatch & Just Politics.

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08
Nov

Top Ten of Top Tens: How the List Format has Conquered Journalism

With the financial woes of The Independent, News International’s bizarre plan to charge for their hitherto underwhelming websites and rumours flying that the Guardian Media Group is plotting to slam the doors on The Observer, it would appear that the corn-dappled log of broadsheet journalism is sliding ever faster down the cracked porcelain toilet of history, leaving just a hardened smear of unemployed op-ed hacks for future generations to furtively scrape at with a borrowed breadknife. I’m going to hold my hands up here: whilst I’m well aware that the Obs is the world’s oldest-surviving quality paper and love it like an ill-tempered grandfather, I haven’t gone as far as actually purchasing a copy in months. No, I’ve joined the legions of educated traitors who do most of their weekend reading either on websites or via the Saturday Guardian, and it’s not like I can even excuse myself by claiming to read the Review or News sections first. Instead, I pamper my reptilian Saturday brain by overbrewing a cup of sugary tea and reaching for either the Weekend or, more often, the Guide: a newspaper section that gradually reads more like an especially comprehensive blog than an actual newspaper.

Judging by an utterly unscientific straw-poll of friends and family, many people do the same. This probably bears at least some relation to a trend that shows the ongoing reduction in the average size of news items from across the media spectrum.

Neither of these men had a beard when they started reading

Neither of these men had a beard when they started reading

Editorials have diminished to mere 800 word pamphlets when compared to the Tolstoyan epics of the Victorian era; major news feature wordcounts loll flaccidly in the low thousands and only glorious throwbacks like the London Review Of Books seem content to regularly publish anything long enough to justify forking out for a decent sub-editor. On telly, even science documentaries are frequently guilty of cramming decades of theory into pre-packaged pub anecdotes, and may often shit the bed completely by employing a bad comedian or one of the presenters from Top Gear to fling spurious factoids at the audience like an angry zoo gorilla with a fistful of dried shit.

Die.

Die.

Some erudite and learned commentators might wag a finger at the Ritalinian attention spans of the Twitter generation, nod towards a woeful decline in adult literacy, or stare witheringly at the multi-channel offal spewed forth from the flatscreen idiot lantern that does most of the educating in modern Britain.

I, on the other hand, can’t be bothered with all that because I have an easier target: the lazy desire of the modern audience to consume everything in a bloody list-format.

Behold: A Brief History of the Top Ten

The stealthy domination of human culture by the list-format has been a slow and subtle process that has been with us ever since Moses thrilled the Semitic blogosphere with his stone-based rundown of guaranteed Jehovah-irritators. Its most current form has evolved through unit-shifting successes in serious music magazines like Q and Mojo (‘Top One Hundred Albums That You’ll Buy From This List And Never Play’), vapid gender-specific glossies (“Ninety Nine Ways To Make Him/Her Come Loud Enough To Wake The Neighbours”) and bafflingly daft supermarket lady tabloids (‘Seven Most Harrowing Soap Opera Rape Scenes!”). Outside print, there seemed to be a long period when no Saturday night was complete without a seven hour televisual marathon contractually obliged to feature dull northern mannequin Vernon Kaye reminiscing stupidly about a film/snack food/invasive surgical procedure, his cheery mug superimposed atop a low-budget graphical countdown and the type of overplayed clips that would go on to clog up Youtube like matted fur in a cat’s stomach.

Shamon.

Shamon.

Whilst each of these formats can still be relied on as a cheap failsafe to boost circulation/viewing figures to appease the advertisers, the concept of the list-format has exploded like a devastating informational daisy cutter over the woody landscape of online media, mowing down ancient groves of lengthier articles (themselves often artefacts of print media) in favour of the fast-growing verbal shrubbery that suits the habits of the average web grazer. The unfortunate truth for the lumbering sauropods of print media is that most people find it simpler and more pleasurable to consume information

Heee-heee

Heee-heee

in tiny bite-sized morsels. It’s just easier to skim a chain email touting ‘Fifteen Potential Sperm Donors For Dead MJ’ at work than it is to unfold Saturday’s paper and struggle through Germaine Greer’s mind-numbingly pretentious obit piece about the number-one-in-a-list-of-one awesome, chimp-owning kiddy fiddler. The list is short, sweet and handily signposts any boring bits that you might like to skip; it renders well in pretty much any browser and can be safely consumed in-between other tasks. It’s the Milky Way of media, and hopefully you don’t need four minutes of simian mugging from Justin Lee Collins to work out that I’m referring to a chocolate bar rather than an astral formation there.

Seven reasons why even writers prefer to make lists

The other catalyst for the ubiquity of this fizzing beaker of quasi-random fact elements is that lists aren’t just easier to read, they’re also staggeringly quick and simple for people to write. Like most creative procrastinators, I’ve been churning out lists ever since I could type, for the simple reason that they often constitute the bare bones of an idea that could later be refined, edited and structured into some kind of plausibly coherent argument.

"Yes. Tom Baker is indisputably the best Dr Who. I will email Pravda directly."

“Yes. Tom Baker is indisputably the best Dr Who. I will email Pravda directly.”

Pools of examples might be drawn, shuffled around and reformulated to buttress a logical flow of ideas, and may pupate from the caterpillar of idle speculation into the elegant butterfly of convincing argument. Back in the real world, I habitually squander hours doodling stupid lists of ideas that never get out of my notebook because I lack the organisation for the time-intensive editing phase that would create anything I’d consider submitting to a magazine, newspaper or academic journal. Moreso, I ditch most of them because it’s obvious that they won’t really progress beyond the intellectual equivalent of unanswered letters to my creative Santa. Until recently, I never dreamed there would be any reason to lavish much concentration on my abandoned draft of “Nine Least Convincing Kung Fu Beards” or ‘Twelve Closeted Villains of Eighties Kids Shows”, but now I’ve got even less free time and a blog to work on, I totally plan to milk my shallow attention span and piles of old notebooks for all they’re worth. Any editor who thinks their readers wants to know which ten murderous dictators wore the sharpest suits can shoot me an email; my rates are very reasonable.

<continue reading article>

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25
Jun

Michael Jackson Dead?


6:10pm

TMZ is claiming so …

We’ve just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived.

Here is a screen-shot of what TMZ has written:

TMZ Reporting Michael Jackson Has Died

Continue reading ‘Michael Jackson Dead?’

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26
May

Movie Review – Manufacturing Dissent

Title: Manufacturing Dissent
Release: 2007
Genre: Documentary
Run Time: 97 Minutes
Publisher: Liberation Entertainment
Rating: 70%

Few filmmakers can claim to have a greater impact on American political culture than Michael Moore. His initial release, Roger & Me, revolutionized the modern documentary by casting the filmmaker as truth-seeking protagonist. Moore’s relentless pursuit of then GM CEO Roger Smith about his company’s decision to move manufacturing jobs to Mexico (and thus decimating the economy of Flint, Michigan) provided the perfect mix of comedy and social commentary. Moore’s quirky yet infectious approach would be further refined in several subsequent documentaries, including Bowling for Columbine and the anti-war Fahrenheit 9/11.

Michael Moore took his role as left-wing agitator to the extreme, creating a cottage industry for counter documentaries that question his political intentions, dishonest editing of footage and truthfulness of his factual claims. Most of these films, among them Fahrenhype 9/11, Celsius 41.11 and Michael Moore Hates America, are also American and decidedly right wing in nature. However one documentary stands alone in the group. It is Canadian both in origin and presentation, created by Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine (previously known for their work on Citizen Black). While not counter-partisan, their film raised as many or more disturbing questions about the intentions of Michael Moore as its more fervent brethren.

Filmmaker Michael Moore

Manufacturing Dissent is a Michael Moore style documentary, only casting Melnyk as the truth-seeking protagonist and Moore as the evasive object of interest. Along her ill-fated journey, Melnyk interviews a plethora of Moore’s current and former friends. Most are in the former category and portray Moore as an egomaniac not so concerned with finding justice for the little guy as he is with making money and a name for himself. The interviewees pull few punches in their assessment of the award-winning filmmaker:

  • A former writer for the publication Rock n Roll confidential alleges a young publisher Michael Moore used some articles for his own local paper without paying the proper royalties. Moore is also accused of not paying his staff
  • The infamous Mother Jones controversy is covered in moderate detail, with former employees of the magazine describing Moore as a tyrant who demoralized his employees and sanitized the image of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas – a revolutionary group often seen as too extreme even for the American anti-Reagan left.
  • Producers and others involved with Roger & Me allege timeline manipulations, staged events and most startlingly that Michael Moore actually received two interviews with Roger Smith (both ended up on the cutting room floor, so to boost the dramatic effect of GM’s depravity)
  • In stark contradiction to the anti-war sentiment contained the documentary Fahrenheit 911, Moore’s private foundation was discovered to have owned and sold stocks in defense contractors that profited from the Iraq invasion – most notably Honeywell and Halliburton (the latter being publicly associated with none other than George W. Bush’s VP, Dick Cheney)

The intended and well-demonstrated irony in Manufacturing Dissent is that Michael Moore reacts very badly when confronted with Michael Moore style gotcha journalism – much worse than, say, Roger Smith. The unintended irony of the film is that it can be discounted for the same reason as most of Moore’s documentaries. On several occasions, Melnyk swoops in on Moore during public appearances, demanding his undivided attention to tough questions even though other cameras are rolling, before getting silenced by Moore’s omnipresent security. Very seldom do targets put on the spot in this manner answer gracefully and thoughtfully, suggesting that the viewer is not getting both sides of the story.

Michael Moore probed for Roger & Me

More importantly, Melnyk misses the opportunity to explain in detail how Michael Moore actually manufactures dissent. For instance, it’s not enough to chase around the CEO of GM and indirectly present his supposed evasion as a reason to rebel against GM’s decision to move manufacturing jobs to Mexico – the economic incentives for moving jobs to Mexico (despite immediate relocation/retraining costs and reputation risk) must also be explored. What role did American unions and labour costs play? Is Mexico exploiting its own people to secure manufacturing jobs? Is GM merely a symptom of a much larger problem concerning US trade with third world countries? In terms of shaping opinion, it could be argued that ignoring the economic mechanics behind unpopular decisions like relocating GM jobs is just as critical as superimposing distraught civilians over clips of aloof political figures. Unfortunately, Manufacturing Dissent ignores these possibilities in favour of merely trying to make Moore sweat the same way he enjoys making other sweat.

Manufacturing Dissent is vindictive, somewhat disjointed and plays more like a lengthy episode of W5 than a documentary film. Conversely, it excels at probing the intentions of the man behind the Michael Moore myth without coming off as a right wing hit job, occupying that rare space in the documentary spectrum where politicized figures can be dissected without necessarily making a political statement. Given the cultural prominence of Moore’s films and the dogmatic zeal of his supporters, Manufacturing Dissent becomes nearly essential in understanding what drives this polarizing cultural icon.

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28
Feb

The Toronto Star vs Dissenting Opinion

Second to the loss of revenue, nothing about the internet seems to irritate the old media establishment more than the public’s expectation to participate in discussions about the merits of published work. Thanks to free services like WordPress.com and free publishing packages like Movable Type, open commenting and debate has been a de-facto standard in blogs for many years. Only recently have traditional media sources like the New York Post and the Globe and Mail expanded their online editions to include interactive comment sections with only minimal editing. Traditional columnists, perhaps more used to the lecture format than the open mic, are having trouble getting used to this. The Toronto Star’s Kathy English recently wrote a piece called “Online Comments Lose Civility” that attacks the boorishness found in the Star’s comment section:

In accord with the values set forth by long-time Star publisher Joseph Atkinson, this newspaper has consistently fought for social and economic justice and better lives for those less advantaged.
As a long-time activist for the poor and marginalized of our community, Pat Capponi well understands the Star’s values. So why, she asked me in an email this week, does the Star allow online comments that degrade, stigmatize and add to the burden of the poor?

I agree that it’s time to re-evaluate the Star’s online comments function, launched last July with the worthy goal of “promoting freedom of expression in a respectful and constructive atmosphere.”
Capponi’s question speaks to the heart of a matter I’ve given much thought to since the Star began allowing online comments. How far should the Star go in allowing ill-informed, mean-spirited, uncivil, anonymous “conversation” to be published in the name of “freedom of expression”?

It would be fairly easy to concur that some discussion board participants on the Star and elsewhere need to improve their communication skills and show a little more respect for their fellow readers. However, English goes beyond to suggest that mere dissention of opinion should also be censored:

What impact does publishing commentary that is so misaligned with the Star’s values have on the Star’s mission to be a progressive voice in our country?

One can almost see the lot of prim Star columnists, assured by their professors and cultured latte buddies that their overt concern for the disadvantaged and unyielding desire to force a redistribution of the wealth away from the middle class is beyond reproach, going into simultaneous cardiac arrest. People actually don’t place welfare cases on a pedestal! Even worse, they don’t want to unquestioningly surrender their earnings to the lady with 4 children by 4 men and no job that still manages to fill her subsidized home with an HDTV and leather sofas.

As usual, the well-entrenched and entitled in the media are missing an opportunity to connect with their audience. So-called ignorant and extremist comments can be very useful in gauging how the crowd feels about opposing or fringe ideas. On the Toronto Star website, one would expect a negative comment about single mothers to inspire angry responses tenfold (the Toronto Star also has an anonymous agree/disagree counter which should indicate how dissatisfied other readers are with the offending comment). Frequently this doesn’t happen– the occasional comment assailing single mothers for being irresponsible or declaring that Ontario’s problems aren’t ALL due to Mike Harris gets more agrees than disagrees. Sometimes the Star is to the left of its own readers and they should treat this as occurrence as market research. I’ve found all kinds of interesting implied group opinions by attacking supposed extremists on some of the sites I host.

The bottom line is that once a news organization has committed to pushing an agenda along with reporting basic news, they have committed to pushing people’s buttons and evoking reaction. The rise of the internet has given the public an avenue to express their approval or disapproval with any agenda, no matter how lofty or well-intentioned. Any opinion that can be produced will find dissention and any “holy cow” of politics will be attacked. If journalists in the mainstream media feel they need to be shielded from any criticism of their ideas, then perhaps they have truly lost touch with the people they wish to help.

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