Television vs. Internet: Effectiveness of Influence

Do even the most technologically inhibited of us ever intentionally click on an advertisement pop up?

We have all found interest enough interest in at least one television commercial to search it online.  I ask, which is more effective and influential modus operandi?  Which shapes minds more easily?

This obviously is simply a qualitative question.  Advertisement campaigns function entirely differently between the two.  Television follows the ancient routines of product placement, and witty commercialization.  What strikes me oddly about the new marriage between the two mediums is that there seems bleed-off only one direction.

Internet genius bleeds only into television.  Whether an ackward attention catching ad stream designed by a popular internet band, or hearing skrillex music on shopko commercials.  I have never witnessed functional advertisement originating in televsion on the internet.  That is not to say I have not borne witness to attempts, as such.  Television ad's on the internet lead to the birth of such things as adblock.

One might call the new generation of internet inspired television advertisements as intervision hybrids.  A seemless blend of social networking, social engineering, and short cuts can be seen at any commercial break.  The internet's integration of advertisements directly into websites allows for seemless surfing without breaks.  The only example of such in television I can recall (for as little television as I watch) is the constant pop-ups on networks of their upcoming show lineups, always there to remind and annoy one away from the program.

This all speaks to me of the oncoming death of television, as some have said.  I do not think for a moment, that television will go quietly.

I envision a blending of the two, as seen my smart televisions.  Hulu and netflix are now producing their own television.  Commericals, hopefully, will the first casualty of the war for attention.  The internet generally has 'ads' which seem to differ from 'commercials' in that they are static, and they are avoidable in many respects thanks to customizable mediums of viewing the internet.

That customization has always been lacking in television, adjustable only by breeding four versions of every network. Just as MTV was one of the first break off into MTV2 so as to retain playing music videos when the regular channel was so overrun with shlock, each network has followed suit. Always behind in meeting consumer needs.  The giants of television networks have shown their lack of adaptability time and time again, unwilling to give up their monopoly hold on their content, while loosing any sense of monopoly in distribution thanks to torrents and streaming.

I welcome the slow death of the ancient giants, stagnant as they are, they have had their time.  I cannot recall seeing a historical educational show on the history channel for many years.

The fundamental means of distribution has been changed to something that requires control and choice on the users end.  The endless stream of mediocre programming and fifty-two minute shows has passed.  Television networks, in their dire attempts to retain viewership in this time of change, have taken to showing intros and credits to both programs at once.  Even having shorter commercial breaks at the begging of an hour show to give way to seven minute breaks near the end when viewership is highest.

But it is all in vain.  None of these things are customization or choice, and so the viewer goes elsewhere.  As Gabe Newell cited many years ago, the distribution model has changed.  If someone is pirating something, it is likely the result of a lacking distribution model.  Steam has become one of the most popular mediums of distribution among PC gaming, by simply asking the community what it wishes.

Television would do wise to follow suit, but it will not.  It still relies on focus groups instead of cloud sourcing, and so will continue to fail in capturing the minds it so direly needs.

Internet was at first an extension of television, and thankfully that has been swapped. 

People do not fall for the same routine models of marketing and induction they once did.  Thought television commercials have gotten shorter, and faster in cuts, their effectiveness has fallen to the wayside.  People are far more likely to be duped into miss clicking a download link to a torrent then they will ever be of buying a Mercedes because the commercial is racy.

At it's core, televisions sole purpose has and will always been the commercial break.

The internet continue it pygmy parade of darts, through open source projects, free alternatives, and new distribution models to kill the ancient beast of television.  All the mediocre Jimmy Fallon jokes uploaded to youtube will not force someone to watch the shows commercials.

Perhaps marketing agencies will take note that they no longer make sales without proving their worth to some degree.  Without brand image in social networks, there will be no mass consumption as there once was.

I, for one, am thankful that customization now regulates the means to which advertising is effective.  Though mental programming may be more effective through this, so too is peoples resistance to that marketing grown.  Like any other negative exposure, those who do not fall for it will be stronger for it.

Wild Wild West a.k.a. WWW

When I am asked by those outside internet culture what exactly the internet is really like, I like to use the metaphor of the wild west. 

Of course, as with all mythos, the reality differs. The wild west is rarely like it's portrayal in the cultural mind.  Like the wild west, the internet is similar in its portrayal in mass culture.

Just as the wild west movies and series turned what was essentially a genocide into battle for good, while even managing to reverse the attackers to the Native Americans, the wild west is idealized in the cultural mind with many repeating themes of savagery and civility. A masterful piece of propaganda to be sure.  The internet has a similar aspect.  The most reputed hackers are evil to the consumer masses, and messiahs to the internet masses.  Youtube personalities as reviled by the internet masses, and glorified by the consumer masses.

This is not intended as a diatribe about the 'evils' of mass culture.

It is a slippery slope when one starts demonizing mass consumer culture, it usually ends with a kick in the nostalgia.  Conspiracy culture is another niche system for people to construct their own specialness, and will not be included here.  Both provide a purpose of luxury.  Like a brick, they hold no inherent good or evil, only if one smashes a window or builds a school is the brick's morality evaluated.

This is simply an evaluation of how propaganda functions, or has diminished function on the internet currently.  That is not to say it is without impact, or that it will not increase it's grasp of peoples minds (as seen by any political website), only that propaganda will always need to be accounted for, no matter the methods of moral determinism.

Just as in the wild west, new sums of money came about as the result of burgeoning frontiers, so too with the birth of crypto currencies of the internet like Bitcoin.

Just as in the wild west, anonymity is valued and permitted for a rise in privacy and criminal activity, as with digital warfare and cyber crimes.

Just as the wild west brought about new standards in regulation, so to do SOPA variants keep appearing in U.S. courts.

Through both WWW's, propaganda is and was used through two fundamental methods, one more effective than the other.  The first is to adjust perceptions of perceived threats through ignorance of the topic. The second is the adjustment through understanding of the topic.  People fear that which they do not understand far more than those those things they do understand.  Understanding frees one from rejecting a whole, and instead, choosing specific points of contention.  Ignorance breeds the rejection of the whole, and is far more memorable.  It also is far more effective a means of influence until the ignorance is understood.

Now, before one points to the ignorance of the people during the days of the wild west, I would point out that the literacy rate among (white) males and a majority of females was 96% to 99% nationwide.  After the creation and adoption of television the literacy rates slipped into the high 80's percentile, and with the internet the literacy rate has returned to 99%.

When one ventures into the unknown, it's best to be prepared.

Preparation may be in part a physical process, but majorly a mental process.  When one enters a frontier of any kind, risk and reward are increased.  Often rewards seen beyond the boundary are unlike those within.  Risk assessment is a comparison of data between potential loss and probability of that loss.

The possible losses are often, one's life, image, or wealth, what some would consider finite resources to begin with.  The probability of loss relies on the manipulation of propaganda through ignorance. As more is known, vague arguments against the given subject become specific.  As Lincoln said,

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."


As more come to the internet by facebook, or reddit, or whichever such place first hooks their attention in a digital medium, ignorance is lifted and propaganda of yore ceases to work.  Demonizing is, for instance 'online bullying', the result of a misconception, a vague, blanket approximation in which mass culture becomes hyper vigilant to perceived wrongs.  Anything that 'seems' or 'feels' like 'online bullying' should be punished to the full extent of the law.

The demonizing process of ignorant propaganda ensures that even if the woman seems like a witch, she probably should be burned anyway.

The Oroboros of Memetics

meme

mēm/

noun

noun: meme; plural noun: memes

1.

an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.

Many discount memes as the scourge of the internet; a happenstance regression of online culture.  In the concept of memes I find something more.  Bold as it may be, I find memes to be form of regression of thought, but it also represents something that previously in history did not embody the same meanings it contains today.

Some have noted that the further back in mass culture that one goes, the more shared experience there is.  This certainly can be quantified by asking an old timer what movies were their favorites.  They will most likely list off common names, and few names.  Ask anyone today their favorite movies and you will be bombarded with a diverse history of just the past decade.  Not only has the production quantity of mass culture grown exponentially, so too has the division among it's consumers in finding their niche.

As the masses follow their ever more diverse and specialized interest, thanks to the digital revolution, so to does the difficulty in finding shared territory of which to embody those interests. 

So follows the meme.

The modern meme construction represents a method of shared experience.  Even language is a meme by the above definition.  For instance, the certain dialects specific to geographical areas are memetic.

Language differs on a fundamental level, however.  Memes capture a specific shared experience and to some degree encode that experience into a concise simulacrum.  Those that have no point of reference for the meme will not garnish the meaning of it (try showing your grandma a meme).  To them it would appear just an odd picture and a text caption.  To those who construct or use memes, they are sharing a personal internal experience.

Some might ask if this sharing of personal experience through memes, rather than words, is a product of a failing education system.  Grammar has always fallen short in the regard of spoken word.  One can write in ways that a person would never speak.  And previously there were no ways in which a writer could capture feelings with simple expressions, only vague stanzas to express a single thought.  The invention of the smiley face, for instance, is an example of such.  Someone saying 'smiley face' is not the same as :) both carry varying meanings. 

The meme harkens upon multiple systems of phenomenological  input.  It uses words and pictures both, and depending on who the particular meme may be of (do note that most memes are a 'character' if even through anthropomorphic) it can queue audio hallucinations. 

The primary aspect of memes seems to revolve around the character within the meme.  Each specific type of meme embodies a particular phenomenological experience that could, indeed, be written out in just words, but in abstaining, it conjures more impact, and is far more elegant in its simplicity.  The question then arises, by confining experiences to specific memes, is the transfer of cultural genomes doomed to siphoning upon itself?

Memes are in a way a form of oroboros, of the snake eating its own tail.  Many people dislike memes, but cannot quantify why. They can only qualitatively infer that memes degrade culture.  There is in some sense, a quality of how memes are sublimated into their simulacra form.  I would be the first to point out that there is a marked truncation of experience in meme transfer between cultural data, but would also be hard pressed to find a similar means achieve such shared experience.

Culture feeds upon itself.  As counter culture moves further to the extreme outside of mass culture, mass culture is there to sublimate counter culture and sell it back to the masses.  This system of production has pushed mass culture far into the realm of counter culture, as seen by sites like knowyourmeme.  One could even say such websites are 'content free', in that they only track memes but do not produce them, except perhaps, in that they are as 'worthless'  as memes themselves.  Worthless perhaps, but meaningless?

Certainly not.

If we are living in the age of the global village, does that mean too there will be an infancy in global language?  I do not mean by this which exact language is being spoken, but instead I point to the 'worthless' babble of a child learning to speak.  Learning to sublimate their needs into words.  Perhaps memes are the global village's first words, and as the vernacular increases so does the specificity and clarity of the cultural messages. 

Myths are Based in Fact

One will note I stated 'in fact' not 'on fact'. 

On fact implies topicality in my view.  "It's just on the surface" vs "it's in the deep".

More often than not, it appears to me in text based online contact, people do not observe the specificity of a statement.  Perhaps it is simply a linguistic advantage of a naturally spoken language (one you spoke originally, or think in), but I quite enjoy the subtlety of conveyance within my native language of english.

I find that when debating with, for instance, Russians (one in particular, you know who you are) that the meaning within my statements are lost.  I am fond of the old saying that "Russian and French are for lyricism, English and German are for specificity".

Not that I speak Russian or English.  This is vague semblance of a premise that thanks to the subtlety of English, allows me to make light of the generalization without necissarily believing it an absolute.

This inherent flexibility of meaning could be considered an informal fallacy; a misrepresentation of definition, but alas I would have to part with my beloved sarcasm.  Let alone would it emasculate humor.  Even in the last sentence I chose 'emasculate' instead of 'defeminize' soley on Christopher Hitchen's argument that humor is a byproduct of male evolutional mating (that is not to say anything of the hubris of that assumption).

To return to point, mythos is constructed between the words used to explain an event and the actuality of the event itself.  In part, imagination used in text interpretation allows for a greater flexibility. 

Where with spoken language, there is a large sum of information transfered through body language, tone, pitch, speed and the like, with text these subtleties are left to the mind to reconstruct.

Rarely is a story considered poor in its execution because it does not align with what was expected.  It fails in execution through syntax and form, in not being comprehensible.

I can think of many examples in the medium of videos or movies that do not align well to what my mind imagined in reading the page. 

What does this tell us of the medium of text versus the medium of video (we will leave music out for the time being)?

If I were to communicate my internal thoughts and feelings, what medium of the two would best represent those ideas and why?

Literature has been long hailed as greatest medium for such.  I believe the reason is the inherent flexibility and adaption the reading process compels of the reader.  The movie watcher is a bystander to the imaginative musings of the director and producer.  The reader recalls books as though they had been experienced by one's self.

This fundamental difference in medium type leaves one with a valuable insight into the fact within myth.

Myths originate and are conveyed through the absence of certain things.  Those absences allow the person experiencing the myth to 'fill in' and 'imagine', and in other respects role play for themselves the experience of the characters of that myth.  One will also note, that the movies and videos that have had the greatest impact on culture as a form of myth, are those that leave the absence within the medium.

I am not naive enough to assume that video transmission of stories are somehow less than those of reading.  I am inclined to believe however, that the fundamental 'absence' found within spoken, written, and visual language are the fundamental elements defining the difference of a story and a myth.

Facts are 'the story'.
Myth is the 'absence of absolutism', and the 'flexibility of interpretation'.

Very few good myths tell of the colors of someones clothing, or the details of their hair.  They leave these things to vaguety, until a visual storyteller happens upon on that myth and is moved by it.

One such example I enjoy to use is the movie Alien.

At only four or five junctures does one actually see the xenomorph.  The myth and the suspense that carries that myth are rarely exposed to direct observation, just as the facts of a myth are.

The vital ingredient of cultural myths lie in the inability to directly verify or measure the facts.  The myth may contain some form of fact, but the fact is never absolutist.

Trolling or Polemics?

"Trolling" gets a bad rap.

The popular, hated, psuedo-Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Dramatica states the following definition of a "Fact":

A fact is a piece of text pasted from a Wikipedia article.^{[citation needed]} In the past a fact was something that could be objectively verified as real, according to the standards of proof demanded by logical positivism and scientific realism. The invention of The Internet made the external justification of facts using peer-reviewed research and education irrelevant, replacing them with a plethora of reliable, electronic means of verification. For a list of facts, see the article on common knowledge.

In it's polemicistic style, Encyclopedia Dramatica has a very robust point with this definition, though some may scoff at my choosing to use such an 'unreliable' source for my definition.

Though this definition was written years before, when Wikipedia was not considered as reliable source of information as it is today, for the most part, it holds glaring actuality about it.

And now the definition of a polemic:

A polemic is a contentious argument that is intended to establish the truth of a specific understanding and the falsity of the contrary position. Polemics are mostly seen in arguments about very controversial topics.

I believe that this may be considered the same methodology used by Socrates and Diogenes in ancient Greece, that of 'trolling'.  I also believe that the reason the polemic methodology is resorted to in what in modern times is called 'trolling', is because of the a fore listed definition of a fact.

Firstly, to be clear, 'trolling' and bullying are very different things.  To the talking heads on news programs doing interviews with alleged 'internet culture sociologists' they are indistinguishable.  To me, the lowly rogue scholar, they represent a fundamental difference in purpose, even if their forms bear similarity at times.

Bullying's sole intention is that of causing harm, of bolstering the bullies self esteem by degrading the self esteem of another.

The troll's purpose is far wider in scope.

If we take the definition above of 'fact' and extrapolate, one observes that in the modern era of internet cultural segregation, facts bear little meaning.  Most cultures in online strata arise out of a shared morality or emotional belief, verifiable facts do not negate one belief or another.

In the era when scientific 'data' or 'facts' can be purchased by the highest bidder, where only emotions pretend to appear as logic, the only way in which to disprove an argument is through the polemic.

That is to say, through 'trolling'.

If someone says, they believe in the bible, the troll says they completely agree, and that is why they stone their disrespectful children to death as they are told to in the old testament.

This is extreme example, but I believe it serves as evidence that trolling is modern incantation used by for instance Diogenes.

Diogenes would stand outside a brothel screaming at the sins contained within it. That is until someone would pay him to shut the fuck up.  To which he would use the money given to him for his silence, and enter the brothel to spend it.

Dale Carnegie believed that one could never win an argument through disagreement.  The facts will never be agreed on.  The troll uses the flexibility within the extrapolation of the emotionally driven mythos to accept the system in totality.  That acceptance of totality, or extremism proves the point without psuedo-facts and emotional-logic.

They accept the model entirely, and then 'poison the well'.

The purpose of which is the same anytime there is disagreement, to allow the truth of the matter to rise to the surface.  Though the troll may not compromise in his totality, he forces the other to compromise by existential absurdity.

When facts mean nothing, the only way to prove something is not to convince another of your belief, but to rebuke belief in theirs.

The Purpose of Online Archetyping

When first I meet new people in online social spheres, I follow a regimented method of constructing an archetype in their view of me, based on what I perceive to be their expectations. 

Some may find this dishonest.  I attempt to be truthful in explaining what I am attempting to do.  Some may even label the behavior manipulation.

But it is with purpose.

After two decades of internet use, I have surmised that no matter what direction one follows to explain and expose themselves to another in anonymous regions of cyberspace, the other will almost always project what they expect upon another. 

At times later on in contact with them, this projection is brought into question by the other person's need to see something similar in me.  When they find that I am not exactly what their projection assumed, they have often felt betrayed or that somehow I was being willingly deceptive.

The purpose of constructing an archetype in another's view of me is not a matter of control, hero worship, or ego bolstering.   It is to allow them to get from me that which they think they need.

Archetypes play a much larger role without the visual stimulus of the real world.   One has a much harder time projecting outside the limits of their projected assumptions.  By my outright assuming of the archetype of a 'blank person', others are allowed to project into that empty vessel that which they desire.  Rather then labeling me within expected assumptions, their sub conscious projects onto me it's needs.

In essence, they indirectly tell me what they expect me to be by telling me what their sub conscious idealizes about themselves.

Years ago, a friend made such an archetype in an online game.  He became one of the best players, without ever revealing any information about himself.  He would watch as his story became more absurd, eventually leading to his in-game friends believing he was in the witness protection program living in Alaska.  I was even offered $500 for a real world picture of him, in that I knew him. 

I of course refused, and added more absurdity to the mythos. 

This taught me a valuable lesson about online contact with others, but not the lesson I first assumed.

At first I assumed it meant that best way to construct an archetype was to leave your real information out of online spheres, and allow the others to pick absurd archetypes from their own imaginations.

This is only half true in my opnion.

It is far more advantageous fill in select pieces of one's own history in line with where the other person pulls the conversations and meanings.   Rather than having nothing which leads to absurdity,  it is always better to hand pick what parts of yourself to share.  

Emptiness in truth leads to distrust.  Careful selection of truth leads to deeper intimacy. 

None of this of course was with malicious intention.  Surely everyone who might run across this blog has 'online only' friends.  Some they may have stronger relationships with than real life friends, only in that they needn't bother with the venier of social constructs in the real world. 

One is permitted to capture an idealized form of themselves, and exist within it. 

What one does not expect, is that eventually that idealized self bleeds back into the real world.

What Is Internet 'Culture'?

Being of an older crowd, I bore witness to the birth of online strata as a new means of mediating the ego drive. 

Even when first I came to view the early BBS boards, I noticed the propensity of most to build caricatures of themselves.  Petty in their motive, many would try to develop their communities through their own (self constructed) online mythos, and I was intrigued. 

Culture is a fascinating aspect of human living.  It's definition is as broad as human interests.  Boundaries within online cultures are just as diverse, melding in some places, repelling in others.

Yet, everyone flies a flag in online spheres.  Every person who makes a post, does so out of their own agenda, morals, or idealizations.  Lurkers are another strata all together, but each lurker eventually becomes a speaker to plant their flag. 

In the land where anonymity reigns supreme (or as least is believed to be), the internet, networking people into social communities and cultures is the purpose and product.  I am not writing of 'social networking' however.

Pintrest gives selected likes, just as facebook allows for passing feigned care into other's affairs.  Some even still use myspace.  I consider these to be mediums only.  McLuhan was correct in predicting that the medium can define the message.  These mediums certainly can be measured into ways they truncate human contact, just as twitter allows 140 characters.  Almost enough for an actual feeling, and almost enough for a complete thought. 

These mediums do not define means to higher social contact, only means to their summary. 

Where in the past one's interests and friends were geographically determined at birth, modifiable only with uprooting to new areas; Online strata brings about a new form of friendship and intimacy. 

Harsher critics will certainly point to the methods of the medium being the sole root of social decay.  They mistake the Facebook for replacing human contact, and they mistake the truncation of human contact as the new definition of human contact.

I pragmatically believe in something greater, wishful as it may be.

Just as the internet releases culture from being confined to geographical areas, I would like to believe that the internet also relays a deeper intimacy between users, because of the assumed anonymity.

No one worries that their neighbors will find out their porn preferences by snooping in their mail, yet everyone in the user environment of the internet is in some sense a neighbor. 

No longer do users concern themselves with privacy, but instead willingly share their lives and their own special breed of culture without reservation or remorse. 

The internet will always be for porn.  However, that does not exclude it from playing a larger cultural relevance, and meaning, than the printing press.

It appears to me, that the ignorance of the seeming magical effect of the percieved anonymity has on people's willingness to share, only serves to stifle the burgeoning market of purer emotional exchange. 

The global community has awoken to the metaphorical cramped legs of growing pains.