This Should Be Fun

As Obama accuses McCain of running for Bush's 3rd term and McCain accuses Obama of running for Carter's 2nd term, the Republicans are getting all User Generated Content on us and sponsoring a contest where you can create a video of someone in your neighborhood who serves "a cause greater" than themselves. Hopefully, your video will be of a registered Republican.

And if you win...you're going to St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention! This will be a pretend celebration, a funeral disguised as a wedding, where everyone ignores the giant elephant (OH!) in the room known as the King of Anti-Charisma, John McCain. They will also request that the networks avoid the guy in the VIP box known as the current President of the United States.

Not that charisma wins elections (it does) or that Bush will be a drag on McCain (he will) but it surely won't be fun to see the entries to this contest.

As I predicted and is already occurring, McCain's only hope is Smear in the First Degree. McCain will continue to pretend to distance himself from this tactic while allowing the damage to be inflicted by others. But what can you do? Politics is War. War is Hell. And sometimes people get shot down. Then when they return home they dump their wives who got in car wrecks and start courting rich heiresses who look like Cruella DeVille.

Director Gets Lazy, Needs Your Help

Zack Snyder, Director of the upcoming film WATCHMEN is offering you the opportunity to create "Veidt Enterprises" TV commercials that COULD end up in the feature film scheduled to be released in theaters on March 6, 2009.

Veidt is a fictitious company that is part of the storyline of the movie which is based on a comic book series. Veidt is involved in everything from shoes to cologne to airlines. Here's a "sample" commercial that sucks out loud.



Here's Zack to tell you all about it.



And here is the mini-site with rules and other such info.

Unless I missed something, there's no promise of cash or prizes. Just a chance for your lame effort to be in a movie. You're about to be used for your user generated content.

Yeah, I Got a Question for You, Mick

Those lines weren't that difficult, yet you still required cue cards? How shot is your memory? Also, here's one for Keith: Did we have to see you on the toilet? That was gross. Maybe you saw it as "rebellious." You're so cool.

It's YouTube's new "Living Legends" series, where you, the clueless video uploader, get to "have an open dialog" with "luminaries from across the globe."

Hey, Mick and Keith: You're a couple of old clowns and no one wants to see you trying to play all young and edgy with the YouTube crowd. Poor execution. Half-hearted, weak and smelling of "don't give a shit." But I guess that's your coolness coming through again. You were so much better when you were really struggling, writing jingles for Rice Krispies.

Mick and Keith, you silly little whores. You Tube, you shameless pimp.

Tart Art

This image is titled "Hope" by camera phone artist "Jetpacks"

"I wanted to capture the sparseness of being in a cubicle for 8 hours a day. The isolation. The cold metal drawers housing the bare essentials of scissors, stapler and the crude tools of the modern office worker. But rather than a composition of utter bleakness, I wanted a symbol within the image that stood for hope and possibility, something to convey the dreams and aspirations of so many imprisoned souls."

Asked if he was attempting some sort of User Generated Art for Kellogg's, the artist responded, "My art is not about the sale. It's about the experience. And for this particular piece, I envisioned a tribute to the life-giving properties of the humble PopTart®. But if Kellogg's is interested in retaining me for future endeavors or perhaps wants to license this image or adopt this concept for packaging or promotion, let's start talking cash. I can imagine an entire microsite filled with photographs of PopTarts, PopTart sculptures and paintings, even videos of PopTarts, created by people from all walks of life and from every country. The PopTart is universal. It can unite us."

Through a Glass Darkly

"In the past, we would only let specially trained janitors and housekeeping staffs use this highly Powerized cleaning product, but we have decided to start allowing you, the untrained amateur, to experience the streak-free shine of our Commercial Line™ of cleaning products on your glass surfaces. Please use responsibly."

I might've known...they even have a website. And people actually write to them with real life stories. I am a little disappointed that they don't include AIM icons, desktops or screensavers, and they aren't sponsoring a user generated video contest. Also, no Windex blog. Wow. So behind the times. But they were forward-thinking enough to include a game called Shine Time.

The sad drawback is Shine Time works only with the Windows 95 and Windows 98 operating systems.

Cutting off the Conversation

Here’s the formula for the new New Media website.

Create an idea surrounding user generated content. Cite YouTube as your proof that this will work. Make a logo. Put the word “beta” under the logo. Get together an experienced management team. Gather venture capital and a board of advisors. Launch with as much press as you can garner, “seed” comments on forums and blogs, monitor buzz and make comments on blogs where people are badmouthing you.

Bill posted about ExpoTV, which I had to see. ExpoTV contains what it calls "short, unbiased, consumer-generated videos of products and services." Here we see Hunted339 talking about Axe Bodyspray. Hunted339 tells us, “This smells soooooo good.” Awesome testimonial, Hunted339. I'm on my way to CVS now for a case of it.

Prediction for ExpoTV: You will all be looking for jobs soon and your investors will wonder where they went wrong. I can tell you. With the promise of paying your video uploaders “up to $10,” you are encouraging less than honest reviews of products. What kind of money can I make if I get on your site and say, “This Ford has been nothing but hassles from day one, and I’ll never buy another Ford again.”? My guess is not much. Why am I going to believe some paid amateur reviewing a product? (And reviewing it very poorly.) I know, I know. It's still in "beta." You've got some "issues" to work through "going forward," but you are "confident" that "this model" will succeed as you help "empower" consumers.

Here's the only part you got right: people love to see themselves on TV. They will upload videos of themselves. And they will scramble like hungry squirrels if you hang a dollar in front of them for that video.

This is not where advertising is heading – and if it is, we’re closer to Idiocracy than I thought.

Prediction: A defender of ExpoTV will make a comment on this post. That’s part of the new New Media. If they don’t, expect that venture capital to dry up even faster.

What is WRONG with this Country?

So I'm doing my morning coffee drop-in on a few blogs and cruise Google News thing when I scroll down the page to find these life-changing stories from the Entertainment section of Google News: American Idol, Dancing With the Stars and American Idol's Paula Abdul Trips Over Her Dog and Breaks Her Nose. Wow.

I'm saddened, alarmed and thinking of becoming an expatriate. Nothing has polluted our culture more in recent years than reality TV. And now it's everywhere. Everything's a contest. Who wants to become a film director? Who wants to create a commercial for the Super Bowl? Who wants their mom to get a makeover? Who wants to be told on national TV that whatever they brought to the table really, REALLY sucked and they didn't make the cut? Who is so desperate for their 15 minutes of Shame and/or Fame that they will take either, as long as it means they're on TV?

As for American Idol, I've never watched it and never will. It is based solely on singing - and singing of a particular Atlantic City Vegas Branson Celine Dion Mariah Carey Cher Sinatra style that I hate. (Oh yes, I really DID just say something disparaging about "ol Blue Eyes." Never thought he had an ounce of talent. He talked his way through lyrics he didn't even write.) These contestants do cover songs, they don't play instruments, and they turn out by the hundreds of thousands when auditions open up for the next season.

I'm not sure who to blame for all of this. I think the fault may lie with Bob Saggett and his old show, America's Funniest Home Videos. It was the predecessor to YouTube, where alarming numbers of ordinary people created fake situations for the camera and then sent them to Bob in the hopes that he'd show their stupid clip on his stupid show. Just how many dresses and pairs of pants actually fall off at wedding receptions in this country in a year? Why would you cut down a tree right next to a parked car? And why did you have a video camera rolling when you were cutting down said tree? Everyone is so desperate.

There really are Two Americas, but not the two that John Edwards talks about.

Brother, Can You Spare a Quarter Mil?

The sponsored video on the homepage of YouTube (in the right panel) is a 24-hour placement. Asking price: $250,000. (Negotiable, I'm told.)

H&R Block chose to hype its TaxCut software using this space today. They are trying desperately to compete with what has been robbing them of revenue, namely the superior TurboTax software.

H&R Block is featuring the winners of their "Me and My SuperSweet Refund Video Contest," taking "user generated content" to an all time low. Each video even has a preview title screen with some sort of wreath-like thing, as if it won some prestigious film festival award. The idea of the contest was to share what you would do with your "super sweet refund." (Yeah - if we use the words "super sweet", that'll guarantee the kids will be all over this, 'cause kids say "sweet" all the time....dude.)

Grand Prize goes to Wacktube, one of the worst actresses in the history of acting, with a failed "makeover" premise in a barely watchable, nearly two minutes of pure idiocy.

2nd Prize goes to Nandrews, of My Hands are Bananas fame, who gives us what is in my opinion the best of these three lame comedic efforts with a Kids in the Hall-like, seemingly half-scripted sort of improv bit.

3rd Prize goes to TheBigBadWolf, who's got the best cinematic eye, even if his faked Jamaican accent and silly premise kept him down in the rankings. Also, he failed to write an ending. Or maybe it was because he's black.

It's nice, I guess, that young filmmakers are being encouraged to share their talents, but at least come to the table with an idea that might work. If this sort of stuff keeps up, we'll be smelling the death of user generated content soon. I see $250,000 wasted by H&R Block. If these three were the best, they clearly didn't get enough entries to justify the contest.

He is handling the money
He's serving the food
He knows about your party
He is calling you "DUDE!"

He was Born Robert Matthew Van Winkle

Shame on TurboTax and Intuit for this atrocity.

I'm not sure which is sadder; the shameless, endless calls for consumer generated content disguised as "contests" or the cheapening of everyone's allotted 15 minutes, which is now down to about 10 seconds. And Robert Van Winkle gets a second shot? Something is wrong.

Alerted to this horror by AdFreak.

You! Gee! See?