Nine Inch Nails and the Mad Pulp Bastard

FROM THE DEAD THINGS MAILBAG:

Bill Cunningham writes:

Since this whole Story2Oh Facebook debacle, the whole argument made by the "new media" types was that "people want transparency so they don't feel like they are being used to sell things."

To that, I have to point every last stinking one of them to this:

http://www.42entertainment.com/yearzero/

This is 20 tons of cool that is wrapped in both the digital and real worlds. Interactive, intriguing and oh yeah, calls "bullshit" on the whole transparency argument. I am going to have to study this further. It could take my espionage series to a whole new level of "story."

Absolutely, spot on, Bill. I remember bumping up against some Year Zero stuff in the last little while, and not knowing exactly what it was, but knowing it was really cool. It works on a level beyond. Kind of like that weird spate of Val Kilmer face graffiti that appeared on walls around Toronto last year.

The convergence of art and new media is going to happen. It's just probably not going to happen anywhere near Toronto, or with many who attend CaseCamp.

The cautionary tale remains, creatives: before you get into bed with some marketing type, be sure to kick the tires. You don't want to wind up having 2003 arguments in 2009/10...

F*%%tardery, and the Creative Gap

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Brave New World (Not Fully Distributed Yet)

OR...THE PRECISE MOMENT FACEBOOK STARTED TO SUCK. (FOR ME.)

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.

They Call Me Mister Tube

I'LL BE ON CBC radio's Q again Thursday, talking about, among other things, the latest on the WGA strike, and the future of TV on the internet, including experiments like story2oh, Sanctuary and quarterlife.

You can listen in at 2pm local time on CBC.Ca I'm on in the third block, whenever that is. Radio jargon is so sexy.

EDIT: And the podcast is now available here.

So, Then.

TWO WEEKS GONE in 2008. Anyone else sick? I've been sick. It's a lot of fun.

Let's ease into the week with a few links, shall we?

It looks like Story2oh is up and running, with a rather all-too-revealing post from Simon Beals. The many Facebook friends of Simon and Ali were shocked yesterday to see her relationship status go from "in a relationship" to "single." Simon didn't waste any time. But maybe he should have checked his equipment first...

Story2oh is fun and diverting in ten minute increments, just like the Internet. There are those who don't get it, but I gotta say it's kind of fun to get email from imaginary people. I mean, let's face it, some of my Facebook friends feel a little imaginary already. Diane deconstructs the user experience here.

Striking writers, becoming impatient, might just go the Mary Pickford route....Mashable has an interesting article here.

The group of disaffected WGA members, led by Aaron Mendelsohn, are now pushing for an independent, writer-owned venture, called “Virtual Artists,” to be launched sometime later this year. The NewTeeVee blog reports that the new coalition is currently seek startup capital of $30+ million to begin the development of film features and television programming.

If anyone needs any reminder that the locus of creativity has shifted away from the networks, get a load of the downsized Golden Globes results. Mad Men, Damages, Extras, Longford....Jesus, when a bunch of whores like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are hipper than the Emmys, you know you got some strange mojo going on.

Finally, Jon Robin Baitz, who I gushed over here, has got the third part of his "Leaving L.A." series up at Huffington Post here, wherein ABC cancels his deal and fires him off the show he created. This is a fun business, chickens. If you're gonna suit up, wear a cup.

Who Is Simon Beals?

OUR ESTEEMED CANADIAN pilotologist, Jill Golick, is dipping her toes into the realm of alternative storytelling, along with a number of other Canadian creatives.

They've come up with Story2oh, which you can read about on the linked site.

Simon Beals has video podcast about his adventures in dating. Ali Barrett blogs called about knitting, relationships and sex. Their lives are about to collide. Is it the beginning of a great romance or a disaster in the making?

The story really gets underway this Monday, but already people on Facebook are getting to know some of the characters through their profiles and wall posts. It's neat -- kind of like you're hanging out with the characters before the lights go down and the movie begins.

As Golick explains it:

Story2Oh! is an experimental form of narrative. While it negotiates all kinds of new terrain, it also draws on skills the creative team has honed over the years in our work in television, film and other media.

The Web’s social networking sites have a wealth of media potential. It’s easy to add video, sound, photos, art, text. But using these sites and their capabilities for storytelling is uncharted territory.

Story2Oh! isn’t just a multimedia project, it’s multiplatform. We’re inviting participants to leapfrog through the Internet with us, following a trail of links, RSS feeds and twitters. This gives Story2Oh! an anarchistic quality because it doesn’t belong to any one web site. The story exists across them.

It is also a project that is demanding of the audience. They are participating, clicking ever deeper to uncover the story, searching for more parts of it. Getting your story fix from books, TV and movies is a more passive experience. But social network users like to move around. In a month, Facebook users look at more than 500 pages and MySpacers look at about 650.

Story2Oh! participants will be able to enter the story at many different points and experience as much or as little of it as they choose. They can move through the narrative in a multiplicity of ways, skipping big chunks, seeing it through a single characters eyes, focusing on what they like best or mining the Web for every last drop they can find.

We will try to make every Facebook wall-to-wall and FlickR album rich with drama and character so that every click will be a fulfilling story experience that propels you deeper and deeper. You’d call it a real page-turner if it were a paperback, in Internet terms we’re aiming for twitchiness. Using the same techniques that keep viewers addicted to shows like 24, Lost, Heroes and daytime soap operas, we will keep the story twisting, turning and hanging from cliffs, so that our audience keeps running back to the computer to check if anything new is up.

Check out the Story2oh page here. There, you can find out how to follow the narrative via Facebook and other venues.

What's interesting about this to me is that it's storytellers who are already professional, already successful, translating what they know about storytelling from old media to new. I can't wait to take the trip.