Tag: YouTube
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Brands As People, People As Brands
People strive to be brands creating a loss of self, and often a loss of any potential brand. Brands try to be people, in programmatic and contrived ways. Both are organic as a Twinkie asking how the fellow kids are doing. On a call for a long-dead startup building its empire on Google+, someone, a…
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A Blue Check On A Pike Warns Us Not To Give Up The Web
Today is my seventh day of Twitter limbo. On March 31st, I became Elon Musk’s mother for several hours. But the account was put into a type of quarantine. My username replaced by a dot, my photo removed, I cannot log in. But my profile, with the years-old blue check still stands like a head…
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TikTok, Drugs, Congress, and Monopoly
Very few accusations are unique to TikTok. But, to the extent that members of congress know about data brokers, I assume they feel the U.S. data brokers’ selling lists of all the closeted gay people, with cancer, taking anti depressants in Kentucky are good and clean. But first party data collection by the Chinese Communist…
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Advertising Scams With MrBeast and Cory Doctorow
Every digital advertising platform wants more revenue and less expense. Policing ad quality is an expense, whereas advertising, whether the purpose is legitimate or not, generates revenue. Only when the economic incentives shift due to public outrage, demands from large advertisers or investor pressure will the companies in a position to stop advertisements of scams…
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How Gawker Media Once Kept Silicon Valley In Check
At one time, Valleywag part of Gawker served as a tattletale hall monitor for the startup community. But since Peter Thiel sued the publication out of existence, the startup world has run amok without media coverage until hundreds of millions of dollars are involved. That’s a problem for the entire ecosystem.
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Is Online Ads Management A ‘High Demand’ Skill?’
Every “learn that high demand skill [online ads]” course is bull shit. How do I know? Because I’ve run an absolutely obscene amount of digital ads, and I just had to explain to a VP of marketing that advertising online is actually still relevant. I’ve been managing client ads since 2013, and I’ve run well…
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Looking At Conspiracy Theories From Inside Someone Else’s Foil Hat
Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, they say, is the best way to understand them. Last week, I donned a foil hat and took to Twitter. I wasn’t out to understand conspiracy theorists – I was sarcastically mocking them. But now I do better understand how the fringes are drawn to conspiracy theories. In…
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Snake Oil Sales Dominant Social Media
Snake oil sales dominate social media to the extent that burns my eyes. Instagram booty models want me to buy a useless detox tea, and if you call out a guru selling the word salad to success, they will flag your YouTube video for copyright infringement. All while the MD’s of Twitter, are either cringing…
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Online Gurus Are Beyond Parody
I used to make videos mocking the folks you see in ads on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. selling you some form of info product. I had to stop, because, while standing in front of a U-Haul place and talking about the haters who will claim I the great, “Dutch Ovens” don’t own all these trucks,…
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Why I Stopped Calling Myself A Consultant
When someone asked what my job was, I used to tell them I was a “Consultant”. This was an accurate title. I worked with companies, largely on digital marketing, video, and product planning. I’ve stopped using the title, however, and should have given it up sooner. A few years ago, a client told me I…
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The Chaotic Language of Art
A friend asked for help promoting an “amazing and underrated artist” on display at a Dallas museum. Over coffee, we crafted a press release for Igor Samsonov‘s exhibit. I’d never met or heard of Samsonov before, but his work was indeed amazing. The visual depth of every painting is striking. Scenes and subjects have an…
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The Four, Book Review
Written by Scott Galloway, “The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google” reads like the highest aspiration of the edgy business book genre. Flipping to any page, and putting a finger on any sentence gives you about a 70% chance of reading an (at least semi) meaningful insight, wrapped in a warm…
