Social-Creature

…to thine own self be true.” – William Shakespeare as Polonius YOU MUST READ THIS STORY FROM THE NEW YORKER: Something in me had snapped, was broken beyond repair. My taste had been central to my identity. I’d cultivated it, kept it fed and watered like an exotic flowering plant. Now I realized that what [...]

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“You’re just perpetuating the stereotype by acting all stereotypical.” – deleted line from tony scott’s domino i have no idea about the racial background of the individual(s) that publish stuff white people like, but does it even matter? as lenny bruce said, it’s not the word itself, but the censorship of the word that gives [...]

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“Is The Tipping Point Toast?” asks the recent FastCompany article in which researcher duncan watts talks about his findings (and their less than exuberant reception) that expose the billion dollars a year marketers spend targeting “influentials” as a waste of money. i am constantly repeating the phrase that “we buy the brands and products that [...]

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“We read to know we are not alone.” – C.S. Lewis in retrospect, it’s not so surprising that while i was studying film in college i was also producing art and music events as an extra-curricular activity. i joke that producing a movie and producing an event are pretty much exactly the same process, except [...]

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following up on the smash success of its award-winning “evolution” ad, dove unleashes “onslaught“: much like the evolution ad, which shows the intense makeup and photoshop augmentation of an image of an average woman and at the end offers, “no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted,” while directing viewers to take part in dove’s [...]

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in her essay “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace” a few months ago, danah boyd offered her observations on the dichotomy she was seeing emerge in user-demographic trends on myspace/facebook. a dichotomy that involves such ethnographic aspects as lifestyle, heritage, even aesthetics, for instance. MySpace became popular through the bands and fans dynamic [...]

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“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.” – e.e. cummings which is all quite noble and good, but the thing of it is, e.e., [...]

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even funnier on the heels of the post about the nature of subconscious cultural aesthetic values, is this bit from ikea perfectly exemplifying what i like to call a “lifestyle slur“: “Brightens up your grad’s dorm. Unlike a creepy gothic roommate, who can be a bad influence.” ….. all it takes to ward off the [...]

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just yanked this bit of rad from jeremiah owyang: my favorite part is where she goes, “you don’t know anything about me.” and he says, “i know everything about you sweetheart!” and starts spouting off all sorts of demographic statistics. perfect case in point about the difference between knowing your demo (defined by the market), [...]

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