4 Fuks Saké

"Do Me A Favour Instagram. Oh, You Have."

5 times a week I'll use the phrase 'Oh for fuck's sake." It's been eight months since I've done that and then felt compelled to write something on my blog with the same name. It's Instagram again.

I refer you to my April post, about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs' ingenuity at duping people who wear expensive trainers for their own commercial gain. This week, they've said they're going to sell photos of your kids to McDonalds, who'll in turn advertise Big Macs. That's what I've understood it to be anyway. 

Four things.

1. This bloke nails it, citing this collective sense of self-delusion. Search #coffee and look: there's your shot of a latte, filtered in Hudson, alongside 450,000 others. 

2. Your photo was rubbish. Instagram made it look nicer, so much so, that you felt compelled to share it with others. As far as I'm aware, you haven't paid them since you opened your account.

3. Instagram have been stupid. The more avid a user of social media you are, the greater your propensity to attention seek. So attention seekers (their core audience) pour through social T&Cs with the meticulousness of a Manhattan lawyer. They do it for their own benefit, not the crowd. I don't believe Facebook and Instagram want to sell pictures of my kids to Exxon, nor do I think lawyers will allow them to. If they can, who's the bell end for putting them there in the first place? Howevere, if they want to sell pictures of my uncooked ribeyes or empty espresso cups, that's a fair deal for me.

4. If you don't like it, vote with your feet. Go to Flickr's new app or the next photo sharing network you've yet to hear of. They'll end up doing the same thing to you.

Democracy. Rubbish Commercially.

Ever so slightly nauseated this week by The Guardian's decision to publish its newslist. "You can help us make the news." "Have your say." All that bullshit. It's the sort of move that grants some swooning at a Haymarket conference with words like "progressive," "open" and "bold experiment," bandied around.

I love The Guardian and its variety of digital and paper products. I'm 38 years old, work in something media related and crucially, know who Korn are. On that basis, it's the only paper I'm allowed to buy. The only downside to The Guardian unfortunately is that for all its cleverness - the bastard hemorrhages money.

If you want to make money one day (retain readership, properly monetise that large global audience etc) don't cheapen the product. Handing the editorship of the paper over to bored people in train carriages with smartphones seems counter to what you ought to be paying for. I'd like to hand my money over to an editor, who selects some great writing and presents it to me in a nice typeface on a couple of screens and on paper. I'm not giving it to the bloke sat next to me.

Walkman, b. February 2, 1983. d. today, 2010.

February 2, 1983. My 10th birthday and arguably the greatest birthday present of my life. My parents - still freshly divorced - knew they had to make Christmas and birthday count. The early to mid 80s boom in consumer spending allied to a messy separation was the perfect storm. 

And so it was, I unwrapped the paper, genuinely oblivious to what lay beneath. The paper peeled back and a silver and blue box marked Panasonic winked at me. Inside, the main body of the product was hugged by a pair of headphones with blue foam. I hadn't asked for it - but my parents had second guessed me. I opened it up and inserted the Ever Ready batteries. We had a student lodger - Nick Carter, 9 years my senior. He handed me a TDK - C90 of Duran Duran's 'Rio,' nodded sagely, and said, "try this."

I put the headphones on, pressed the play button in hard, and the opening swooshing sounds of the title track kicked in. In stereo. I'd never heard anything like it in my life. The future had arrived. 

The Sony Walkman. What a brand. What a monumental fuck up. 

World Cup Fever: Symptom #3

Guardian World Cup TV from Wieden + Kennedy London on Vimeo.

This is lovely. From W + K who look like worthy winners of the World Cup before it's even kicked off. 

Just really need one of those wallcharts. (For my son obviously). 

A Quality Newspaper.

An endearing Sun promo celebrating 40 years of the 'UK's favourite handheld,' with respect to Apple.

Social Media Guru

Courtesy of @FinchFactor and @matt_creamer (whoever they are). And why can't they spell their names properly?

Save Time & Money.

Here's an opportunity to give yourself a break filling your "packed" schedule of procrastination at conferences and seminars. Just watch this, and then go and do some real client work in social media for 6 months. It's all you need. They'll be another one in the spring.

Big Business

Big Brother "axed" says The Sun. Before you take the piss, was it your idea to knock up a portakabin and then make £25million a year? The format deserves to go down as one of the great business achievements in television history.

Channel 4 and Endemol deserve nothing but respect for devising a format that is commercially stupendous, and still looks ahead of its time, (even if the content it produces has become just a little predictable). Its simplicity is everything. Stick some people in a box, peer at them via your TV, mobile, computer or tabloid newspaper and then persuade people to spend more money sending texts, making calls, buying the sponsor's products. People do.

Endemol CEO Tim Hincks says Big Brother "is the only really convincing multiplatform idea and format in the UK". He could add the world - the format has been exported to over 70 countries. In reality, there are shit loads of them - but Hincks' people showed them the path to gold.

Can't wait to see the back of it myself. And that's nothing but pure jealousy.

Who Killed Summer?

People sat at desks near me have worked very hard to make something very cool.

Completely Irresponsible. Indignant With Rage.

One universal truth about UK kids  is that, by and large, they don't have much respect for their elders. At school, kids develop a canny ability to spot vulnerability in people who should have authority. A successful lesson meant driving a failing teacher to explode in rage, or erupt in tears of frustration via quality goading. They were supposed to be in charge. We brought them down. Result. Perhaps that behaviour explains why our English ancestors led the world in the establishment of liberal democracy. Who knows, and who cares? This blog is about how people sell shit.

Anyway, it's a link into a quality bit of work from EA today in the UK, who have used the same trick to sell a video game to kids. The authority this time, appears to be an "indignant with rage" MP, and a load more "angry residents," queuing to use words like "completely irresponsible." Mercenaries 2: World In Flames available now on Amazon for £24.99 on PS2 features "Venezuelan-style fuel riots." EA offered free fuel to people. It was over-subscribed massively. A "Venezuelan-style fuel riot" then takes place in Hornsey, North London - just like it was in the picture above. Except it wasn't really - it was a bit of a traffic jam. Coverage appears for the game on the front page of BBC Online. It'll be elsewhere too. Outstanding.