THE BEST WAY I've heard all the head-scratching over "how do we approach storytelling in a digital medium" described was in this quote from William Gibson: "the future's already here. It just isn't fully distributed yet."
The music business sucked for years -- offering a warmed over product at too high a price point -- before Shawn Fanning came along and blew it all to hell.
And the person who is going to make the first jillion on the killer storytelling ap on the 'Net is already out there, right now. Maybe they're only four or five. Or maybe they're rounding out their angry teenager phase. But I'm pretty sure they're out there.
One of the obstacles to change, though, is always going to be those who simply don't get it. I kind of completely despise these people. No, let me remove the qualifier. It hate these people.
They're the same people who sniff at any change like removing Classical music from a public radio service barely anyone listens to. They're the people who whine whenever a handheld camera shot graces the TeeVee, whether the shot is motivated or not. They're the ones who immediately dismiss any music they aren't immediately familiar with as 'noise.' They're the people who reacted violently when they made Starbuck a girl.
And apparently they got shirty with Jill Golick last night.
If you've been following Jill's storytelling experiment, story2oh, you might have known about the two experiments she conducted earlier this year -- a combination of social networking profiles and wall posts on Facebook, and video podcasts, twitters, and other methods used to move a story along that wasn't quite performance, and wasn't quite narrative. It melded real and unreal. It was pretty neat.
Last night, Jill presented her findings at Casecamp. And a few people were...well, upset to learn that -- omigod -- some of the people who "friended" them as part of Story2oh were fictional constructs.
That was kind of the point.
Most people got it.
But a few didn't. And in classic fucktard, "I don't get it" fashion, they waded in and got all the story2oh characters deleted from Facebook this morning.
Game over.
Jill has a very evenhanded and philosophical take on the thing over at the story2oh site.
It’s sad because it was fun having them on Facebook and using Facebook for storytelling way back in January was a really effective way to communicate with the audience. But even by early March when we ran the second experiment, Facebook was already too crowded an environment and we did very little storytelling in that venue.
It seems to me that early this year, Facebook took a strong cultural shift. Instead of being an underground play space it turned into a business must-have. People are serious about and on Facebook.
I made a rather large boo-boo in not taking this cultural shift into account. Some of the attendees had gotten friendship requests from Simon and Ali and were upset to learn that imaginary people were rubbing shoulders with them. I did apologize to them, from stage and again in person — rather profusely in fact. But too little too late apparently.
If any of them are reading this, I do apologize once again and especially the woman with dark hair who questioned me from the audience. I would have sent flowers this morning if I knew who you are.
Jill is, I guess, simply a better person than I am. Because I'm not as sanguine about the whole thing. A culture defined by the uptight is no culture at all.
The future is already here. But luckily, we've got plenty of fucktards ready to keep us from fully distributing it.
Idiots.
or should I say...Idiots 1.0.
33 comments:
You are a valiant prince, Sir Denis.
Well don't let people friend you if you've never met them, or spoken to them, in real life! Hello? Facebook isn't supposed to be Myspace. It's supposed to be where you keep track of your actual friends.
The killjoys deserve to be embarrassed.
I for one have never friended someone I don't know. Only family and friends and people I went to school with growing up are on my facebook, and I rarely friend someone who doesn't have a photo in their profile.
I agree completely. If you don't want to friend someone, then don't.
I've denied requests from companies, super happy lucky cat and some friends' pets. i didn't notify facebook to have them removed.
well, not until today at least. i had to get my frustration somehow, and facebook will be a better place without Hi-Tech Marketing Solutions. super happy lucky cat i don't want to mess with though.
I told Jill this, and I'll post it here:
She shouldn't apologize.
If any of those people who attended Casecamp and raised a fuss worked for me - they would be unemployed right now.
Jill gave them a case study of how something like this could work, and if they had pulled their head out of their collective ass, they could see there is entertainment potential in it.
Bill you will learn as you interact with Canadians that there is a fundamental cross section of them that are just proud fussbudgets. Unlike in the U.S., where most of this kind of fucktardery is restricted to lefty PC busybodies, and rightist fundie churchie types, in Canada there is actually a whole secular propriety squad who lives to take umbrage.
My favorite example when I was working for a show called "media television" was a story we did on a new commercial for some minivan. The whole thing was narrated by a dog, from the dog's point of view. He commented about how roomy the minivan was and how much room to roam he had, and then driving down the street, a cat runs across the road and he says, "get that cat! get that cat!" and then is disappointed by the mightiness of the anti-lock brakes of the minivan.
Well the ad ran three weeks, and then -- because of two complaints -- the ad was changed so that the dog now said, watch that cat! Because, you know, in the real world, Dogs show such personal concern and tenderness toward the feline world.
It was a dog.
Anyway, I'm fairly sure that innovation or the inability to recognize it isn't the only problem here. If The Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons were made here, I'm fairly sure that somebody would have formed an ad hoc group to write and complain about the cruel treatment of ravenous coyotes.
Unless the Coyote was French. But you know, that's a whole other deal.
Re: Secular Propriety Squad --
Sounds like an internet series to me.
Huh. I have the same impression of Facebook as Alex and LadyCanuck, but after a discussion the other day (among Chicago actors, if that makes any difference) I've been wondering if that's because I'm a latecomer to the service, and it didn't start out that way. One person said he had avoided Facebook in favor of MySpace because his impression was that it was "more superficial."
The quote here aboutsome sort of cultural shift there goes a long towrad explaning that. And yeah, it's something it would have been wise in retrospect for the story2oh team to have noticed and adjusted for, but missing it is sure as hell not something they should be expected to apologize for!
That said, I don't know that we're ever going to be without people uncomfortable with any blurring of the line between entertainment and reality. We can count Jill Golick in good company with Orson Welles on that score. This one didn't even incite panic, FCOL.
Interesting name for the post.
"I agree completely. If you don't want to friend someone, then don't."
this sounds like it misses the point. it's not that they didn't want to friend these people - it's the opposite. they wanted to and then discovered they weren't real.
"It's supposed to be where you keep track of your actual friends."
not quite. it's not like it's designed for you *not* to make any new friends. all it takes is one of your friends recommending this one and you can be suckered into friending someone who doesn't exist.
since i haven't heard it expressed yet i'll give this point of view: as an artist i'm all for blurring the lines and challenges, but my personal experience with facebook is that i was originally attracted to using it (after ignoring it as yet another social app that i couldn't be bothered with), precisely because it was touted to me as a more professional and better organized version of myspace. a social space that where the organizers themselves strongly encouraged users to only friend those they knew and could vouch for. it's literally against the tos of facebook to create non-real profiles.
so im not surprised this isn't an environment that would welcome a violation of that principle. there's been more than one storm on facebook about false profiles.
i don't know the details of how these profiles were presented, and perhaps these complainers are just idiots with loud mouths, but let me ask this: if you had friended someone on a social site and then discovered they not only weren't real, but were part of a clever marketing ploy for a product, how would you feel?
sure, these people sound like idiots because they're complaining about "entertainment" and perhaps even "art," but these new forms of media not only blur the line between life and entertainment, but between entertainment and advertising. and that's a lot hotter line to cross.
for us, jill's project might be cool and innovative, but i can see how for others it might be something entirely different.
Actually, I think you're missing the point.
First of all, the fictional provenance of these characters was not in any way concealed.
But second, and more importantly, clearly, thanks to the sequence of events we can surmise that the person who complained and instigated the deletion was not simply a member of the public. They were someone who came out to Casecamp -- an event whose ENTIRE POINT was pushing the boundaries of how this new media was being used.
It's also cowardly and hypocritical, and sadly, very Canadian that rather than registering their displeasure with Jill directly, and stepping up, they complained to Daddy.
I take your point about why they might have felt the way they did. But no one should validate their actions. That's what makes it odious, and cowardly, and is the height of fucktardery.
"They were someone who came out to Casecamp -- an event whose ENTIRE POINT was pushing the boundaries of how this new media was being used."
people who are interested in new media aren't always enthused with every way it's being implemented. i don't see how being a member of the event contradicts their response.
i agree they should have additionally brought their concerns directly to jill, although they would still need to talk to facebook if they believed the profiles shouldn't be there.
i actually think this is a fascinating example of how complex all these considerations are. the very fact that these were people from casecamp is significant. and simply writing them off as fucktards may feel emotionally satisfying but is hardly a complete response.
as i said before, i don't know the details of how all this happened, and nor apparently does anyone else, since even jill only says the profiles were coincidentally deleted the day after the unconference.
there's more going on here than some folks just being assholes. it would be very interesting to know from all the other members on facebook who were friends with these profiles, if they were aware they weren't real people and how they felt about that.
Sorry. No.
You go to an event like that you make a compact.
You see something you don't like -- you in fact, take in a presentation by someone who has put tremendous effort into presenting their project to you, you are agreeing to become part of a dialogue. If you are not willing to have that dialogue, then your feelings, whatever they might be, are irrelevant.
There was a forum. A woman puts herself out there publicly, and someone chooses not to engage, but to demand censorship?
And this on a service which has hundreds of fictional personnages: Hermione Granger. A Donut. Countless Cats. Babies.
What the complaintant did was shameful. And what Facebook did was cowardly.
You want to give benefit of the doubt to someone who didn't extend the same courtesy to Jill Golick, or anybody who worked so hard on the project.
There's no way to archive those elements now. They're gone. They're lost -- destroyed.
You are of course free to take whatever stand you wish.
But you're defending something that at its root, is censorious. And cowardly. And from where I stand -- indefensible.
I would not work with such a person in a hundred lifetimes. Period.
I just want to wade in here and raise a couple of points. People are all different and motivated by different experiences. If we all thought and acted the same, the world would be pretty boring. I might have been offended if I thought I was talking to a real person and found out I wasn't. But, yes, I'd see if I could follow up with what was going on and try to sort things out amicably. I think the important factor is that people might feel like they were being made to look a fool or feel manipulated. No one likes that, no matter who they are.
Facebook is not the first internet site that supports individuals becoming something they are not. All one has to do is explore Second Life to discover that there are lots of unusual and "abnormal" people in the world.
Finally, I've discovered that there is lots of underhanded behaviour out there, even in the entertainment industry (NO! You don't say!). I often post messages on Gateworld, a Stargate fan site I am fond of. When SG-Atlantis was up for a People's Choice award, I posted on several threads to encourage people to vote for the show. Within a few hours of my posting, I received a private message from two separate moderators telling me I was being reported for spamming, no less. So, I had to stop. Fortunately, Atlantis won anyway. A month later I found out that the complaint had come from a rival show up for the same award. They had noticed my posts and, pretending to be an ordinary Stargate fan, had complained to the moderators to shut me up.
This, my dear people, may be why there are snippy people in the world who don't like to feel like they've been manipulated and fooled.
Yes, there are weird people in the world. What does that have to do with this, though?
My opinion that is, since we know this is apparently illegal to do on facebook or whatnot, simply ask for their permission or create a disclaimer. We need to take the measures in order to make sure facebook knows why these profiles were created and that they should let them stay active.
If nobody talked to facebook about why they're making a bunch of fake profiles, there's no reason for facebook to keep them up. For all they know, someone is just fooling around.
This is the point - WE are discussing the issues. Those cowardly backward fucktards (gee, that rolled off the tongue rather easily)couldn't be bothered to voice an opinion and risk having their viewpoint challenged in an open forum. They didn't like it SO THEY HAD TO SPOIL IT FOR EVERYBODY.
They could have easily deleted the friend from their files and moved on, leaving the rest of us to read and interact in this digital role play scenario.
Yeah, no doubt it's a shitty situation.
I guess that my point is, I can't change the way people behave or think whether I agree with them or not. We all have back story that makes us who we are. I might be a bit more suspicious of other people who post on sites I am fond of because what I thought was a good deed (informing other people about a nomination for the People's Choice award)was thwarted by someone with another agenda. I could turn that experience into a negative opinion of people who want to have things their way. But I chose not to. I have met far too many nice people who either work in the entertainment industry or are consumers of it, to permit a few nasties to ruin my world view.
Railing against people who piss you off only creates more animosity. And doesn't it. in a way, bring you down to their level? This is just a question, not a criticism.
Um...it's still okay for us to have imaginary friends, right?
I mean, the facebook overlords isn't going to stop me from telling all my real facebook friends about my good friend "Jesus" is he?
And quite honestly, I can't prove any of those stories about "Jesus" or "Mohammed" or "Buddha" or "Zenu" that get shared on facebook actually happened.
Some of those cool things I also said I got up to on the weekend, like drinking 27 beers and telling a Georgia State Trooper to go f*** himself. That never happened either even though it made me a lot of new facebook friends and musta been up on a thousand funwalls.
And I can still post a picture of myself that's a little old so I can hit on cheerleaders. They're not going to stop that are they?
Cause if everything on facebook has to be real, I don't think there's going to be much of it left.
Jim, I just finished watching American Beauty, and it added an extra flair to your comment. Lol
I just befriended the CN Tower yesterday- not exactly in my graduating class...
I agree with the others about having the choice whether or not you want to add people you don't know. What I used to appreciate about facebook was the fact that the friend requests I had were from people I knew- at least marginally or through a friend. In the last couple months, I've had an increasing number of requests from complete strangers. It's *dare I say* becoming Myspace. I closed my Myspace account over a year ago because there are only so many anonymous male torso pictures one needs.
That said, I do think occasionally there is an overstated expectation on the promotional abilites of facebook. As an under-30 I'm already seeing an increasing amount of facebook malaise. Even young people raised with the internet are still more likely to come out to an event or support a creative endeavour if they hear about it through a friend or trusted source. Of the 200 people that "accepted" an invitation- the actual number that show up is going to be considerably smaller.
There's potential in it yes, and it has been a boon for democratic and free promotion, but I'm not convinced it's some sort of cultural saviour on its own.
i.e. "Dude I'm going to try and make your play thing."
"It's stand up comedy."
"Oh I just kinda skimmed it."
At the end of it, real promotional legwork and word of mouth still have to be part of the equation.
In this case maybe the word of mouth from the contraversy will get people talking about a project they may have ignored otherwise?
"it would be very interesting to know from all the other members on facebook who were friends with these profiles, if they were aware they weren't real people and how they felt about that."
I am one such member, who was befriended early on in the process. At NO time did I think any of the characters were "real people"; it was clearly stated in several places that the characters were fictional works of art for the Story2Oh! project.
In fact, I sent recommendations to a couple of friends I thought might be interested in the project. One in particular came back to me, enraged, that I would refer a 'fake person' to her to befriend. She knew without me having to say a word, and we had a lovely discussion about it. In the end she denied the befriending, and that was that.
Thank you, entrepreneurial. I found your post the most informative and helpful of the posts I have read thus far. It provides me with a much clearer picture of this whole fiasco.
You know the one question I'm wondering about this whole thing is who was this woman? What kind of experience did she have with the project that made her act out in such a way?
I mean, did she spend hours talking avidly to this supposed person, sharing personal details, only to find out that she had been duped? Or was she simply enraged at the very concept that she could be duped?
There is certainly lots of room for fucktardery here but, in a sense, I feel that Jill's experiment worked quite well in the end. Maybe not how she intended, but in the wake of her character's deletion she created the potential for a pretty healthy discussion over censorship and expectations of the consumer.
In the end, there's a measure of pride to be taken in this: She pushed the medium in a way that not many dared and something about those characters, their concept or their very existence, raised some very real hackles. Whatever their reasons, something about her concept scared someone enough to go out of their way to have a whole section of her story destroyed.
Maybe I'm getting too philosophical here but that says to me she hit upon something quite important - maybe something deserving of a new kind of experiement?
For all its worth, the effort was grand - and hey, to go out like this, it sucks, but in its stead I think lies the potential for something greater. Hopefully Jill and company will not be deterred from trying again.
"You know the one question I'm wondering about this whole thing is who was this woman? What kind of experience did she have with the project that made her act out in such a way?"
I could be wrong (and it's entirely possible, because the woman was across a crowded room), but I think she said that she had received a friend request from Simon, had denied it, and had heard about the fake character and Story2Oh from someone else.
In any case, I think the profiles being deleted was inevitable, and I think Jill realized that. It's just disappointing that someone could be so bitter and humorless - and so precious - as to take offense from this, and to ruin the fun for the others.
I came across Story 2.0 in the blogs a few months ago and found it amusing. When I started following one of the characters on twitter, she invited me to "do coffee sometime." I wasn't sure what to do with that since I knew she was fictional.
But apparently the Facebook accounts early on did not have the disclaimer in them, which Jill admitted to to the woman in question.
I think we are confusing a few things. The people who questioned the lack of transparency of some aspects were just interested in engaging Jill in this part of the discussion. I was present for the discussions and know they did not do any "reporting" to Facebook.
Quite simply, she shouldn't have talked about breaking the TOS of service in front of a very large group of people she didn't know (there were hundreds of people there). How does she know there was not a Facebook representative in the audience? My belief is that it was Facebook directly who decided to close down the accounts.
As Carlo Conda mentioned, it is too bad she didn't seek permission from Facebook in advance.
It is fantastic how this has brought up some great discussion, even if it was ground already covered with LonelyGirl15. In this case the context is Canadian, which may have some differences.
Denis, I encourage you to rethink your quick assumptions about the people who expressed a negative reaction to Story 2.0. They are not close-minded people, but are instead given to critical thinking about social media spaces. By saying "fuck you" to all of them, you are closing yourself to some possibly interesting, envelope-pushing discussions. And,it turns you into a narrow-minded person I'm afraid to say. I am not a marketer and this is my first time on your blog, so it distresses me you are so quick to shut down the conversation. You can't just jump to conclusions about the people you don't know. These were, after all, people engaged in social media spaces at that session, not luddites hiding under the covers in their beds. But they do come at it from a different perspective.
We are all still trying to sort out the rules of engagement in these spaces. Like you, I have been in web discussion spaces for over 20 years and am amazed we are just now talking about some of these things. I hope you will continue to engage in the discussion.
Best,
Connie Crosby
well said connie. nice to get the perspective of someone who was there.
Connie,
Thanks for your perspective. Truly. I appreciate your post.
But the reality of the situation is that as a creative person, I've kind of had this skeevy feeling for a while now that the people that were truly pushing all this stuff weren't "my people."
I wander NextMedia or Banff and I hear almost the same boasts I heard 15 years ago from the new media types. The people who go to these conferences might be doing great things with marketing partnerships. But there is a language breakdown. And I really don't feel it's coming from my side of the divide.
I don't see a lot of ze Franks or rocketbooms or lonelygirls when I go to the events of this type in Canada.
I see marketing types. Ad types. A whole lot o them.
And to a one, the dialogue seems to be about how the creatives need to adjust.
The problem being that the number of people I've run into at these things that understand storytelling, really understand it -- I can probably count on one hand.
I'm busy enough working up the stuff for the big box.
You guys can figure out the little one. And good luck to you. Because you sure as heck don't seem to know how to talk to the people who are doing the creative stuff right now.
And as I pump out another four, five, ten hours of TV this year -- the last thing I'm in the mood to listen to is close mindedness from somebody who's been saying what I see as the same things about what's coming...for a long long time.
I've got just enough of an open mind still to be convinced. But I'm done going searching. It's "thanks but no thanks" from me.
But hey, I hope the banks and the marketing guys and the ad shops -- seriously -- I hope you guys have fun. Go create something great and groundbreaking.
When you do, I'll be the first to click.
Yes, it is true a lot of people are saying "this is my space" and not realizing it is all our space. I've had the same concern about conversations I have seen by marketers working in the social media space, too.
As a librarian, I'm coming at it as someone who is interested in all communities. How are children, students, parents, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, charities, etc. using this space? It belongs to all of us and we are all coming at it from different perspectives; most of us in Canada are coming at it from more than one perspective.
It is these conflicts of opinion and intersections that most interest me. Frequently I have conflicts within my own various viewpoints depending on what hat I am wearing, and have to figure a way to reconcile them.
You've got to do what you feel is right for you, but just don't paint everyone with the same brush.
I appreciate your pushing the discussion further.
Cheers,
Connie
I wasn't there, but I know Eden and Connie and run in the PR circle of the social media world.
I've had my philosophical battles with the advertising people in this space over stealth marketing. I really believe that corporate involvement in social media is best approached as "talking with" vs. "telling and selling."
Here's what I wrote on Eden's post on One Degree as a way of trying to make some sense of the conflict here.
We've come to the intersection of media, art and commerce with this episode.
The medium here is Web 2.0/social media/social networks. It may be pollyanna and in conflict with McLuhan, but I like to think of media as agnostic. Empty vessels. Delivery mechanisms for content. The users of this medium determine what's appropriate. They decide to consume or not. The "rules" will evolve with the users' preferences.
Art = content. Some of it is information, some of it is entertainment. It all deserves to live, be seen, be discussed and judged on its own merits by the medium's users/content consumers. I expect real artists to challenge conventions, usurp authority, break rules and hold a mirror up to society and force people to look. In this case, they have created a conversation around story-telling, fiction and creativity within a world populated by many who are trying to set some standards about content sharing online. Hard rules about presenting information as fact should be established. I support that. Should the same rules apply to trying to perform art and entertain within the Web 2.0 space? We'll never get agreement on that.
And, of course, that brings us to commerce. Trying to entertain me secretly to sell me a product i.e. "Bridezilla Wigout" sets my teeth on edge. If I'm seeing an ad, I'd like to know. You aren't really artists if your ultimate goal is to sell me shampoo.
So where does that leave us? It's the same place every commercial medium eventually gets to. There will be an uneasy, ever-evolving relationship between the champions of the medium, the artists and the commercial interests, but ultimately the greater community will decide what experience they want to have.
quite the harsh post and visceral comments. I'm not certain where all this is coming from considering the art is being consistently praised, but as I left the comment on Story2Oh! Here it is for your benefit:
For the record, I have no issue with the use of art, or the story, it’s an interesting concept, akin to an ARG, and does push the boundary’s somewhat. Good for you. My response last night was more strident in tone because no one likes to be attacked and called names as some of the original comments did and the other blog post that Mathew Ingram references in his post.
But, this is where I have a serious problem, you’ve admitted you hope to make money on this, and were presenting to a group of advertisers, or ad agencies; somehow that doesn’t strike me as being more towards the art side than the business side. There is nothing wrong inherently in any of these goals and its an interesting medium. No one is saying “fuck you to the creative community”, but it’s amazing to see the temper tantrums and name calling on display here.
What we *are* saying, is that, as business people, and responsible to consumers *and* shareholders when we represent a company that may be interested in “purchasing” your stories as you reference above, we have a responsibility to *our* community to ensure every aspect of it is above board… and that includes not violating a social network’s terms of services, it includes not deceptively friending people and pretending to be real before the story even began (because to be honest, until case camp I had no idea there even *was* as story going on since I tend not to pay attention to the status updates of people I don’t know well, but may have met at a conference or event, or perhaps we’ve interacted on Twitter. These are the “rules” of the space your experiment is taking place in… your story would have been just as effective if you were upfront and followed the rules of “opt-in” and “transparency”.
It’s about trust and about following the rules of the ‘net. That should be a business concern to you because it will be to any companies you eventually work with. We aren’t the devils here, we’ve just been working online for a while now and helping to “sell” that creative and to push innovation to various brands.
Tamera,
Please don't presume to lecture me on the rules of the net.
I'm going to assume now that you're going to take it in hand to make sure that you don't make the mistake of trying to actually entice anyone who works in old, money-paying media to play in your sandbox?
Because, with apologies to Matthew, I'm still waiting for a single one of you...wait for it....fucktards to in any way acknowledge and understand why, in fact, creatives are upset.
Don't quote your arcane and capricious rules...actually stop talking for a second about your glorious new media space and listen to what the creative people you're supposedly trying to attract are telling you.
No?
Too much?
Great.
Matthew, there you go. Fucktardery, pure and simple.
Enjoy your terms of service, and TACT, and whatever else you've got in place to make whoring banking to teenagers easier.
And for good measure, just because I'm an emotional, creative, non-marketing driven person?
Fuck off.
It's hard to tell a fictional character from a real person. Anyone you ask will say that they're real, and they'll believe they're real cuz you can know for sure, right? You could be fictional, or I could, or anyone else at all!!!
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