We're "reaching out" to you ... like tentacles groping in the night ... so you can "grow your followers" ... like pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
general
dark patterns
Worth a look: the Dark Patterns website analyzes various tricks of UI (user interfaces) to optimize revenue. The most obvious is small print telling you that you have to opt out of an added fee, such as flight insurance purchased with an airline ticket. A surprising number of "legit" companies use these design-aided scams. Dark Patterns has cute names for the archetypal cons: "Roach Motel," "Sneak into Basket," "Privacy Zuckering," and so forth. There is an approx. 25 min slide lecture on the main page that is very entertaining.
After looking through a few examples and hearing the lecturer talk about the need for ethics in UI, I thought about the Verizon announcement last November of a website overhaul that turned out to be an extended, time-wasting ad for a future overhaul. I called it unethical because it lied but after looking at some "dark patterns" I wondered: what was the economic angle of that promotion? Was it just to prepare consumers for changes that would ultimately involve the same or greater level of obfuscation as what's on the current website?
Probably that's it. If you are a landline customer and need, say, repairs made, the purpose of the site is to lose you in a time-wasting maze of click options which ultimately end with a page telling you to use your telephone to call the main repair number (where you will be lost in a maze of voice prompts). The economic benefit is to reduce their repair costs because the customer just gives up and, say, endures a scratchy phone signal. Unlike some of the "dark patterns," likely this wasn't focus-tested for high-pressure nickel-squeezing. Verizon probably just hired the dumbest designers they could find and said "make us a customer website."
Richard III: The Short Modern Version
A newspaper editor and a young journalist meet at the water cooler.
E: What are you working on?
YJ: I have to do a "Richard III bones uncovered" story.
E: You better hurry, that one's already all over the web.
YJ: This isn't a breaking story, it's more of a think piece.
E: Ah, the parking lot.
YJ: What?
E: His bones were uncovered in a parking lot. Or as the more Anglophile writers said, a "car park." Or better yet, "a Midlands car park" or "Leicester car park."
YJ: I don't care about any of that rubbish. So what? Old church graveyards get rezoned over the centuries.
E: You're going to have a short career in journalism, my man.
YJ: Why (and please don't call me that)?
E: The story hook, the viral angle, is "the once mighty brought low," or "evilest of villains has ignominious afterlife," however you want to say it. You don't get that if you don't mention the bloody CAR PARK.
YJ: Your "angle" strikes me as ignominiously mediocre.
E: That's the world we live in, my man.
Exeunt.
the fate of long form blog writing
Corrente notes the end of the Bush-era political blog The Agonist and wonders what is happening to the once-dynamic, left-leaning blogosphere.
But I'm baffled. The original project of the blogosphere was to replace the media -- and not, pace the odoriferous Ezra Klein and the fragrant Matt Yglesias, become it, nor to mutate and devolve into a front organization for either of the two legacy parties, like Kos, Digby, et al.
And if anything, the media needs replacing more than ever. So WTF? Has FaceBorg sucked everything up? The Twitter? Neither can handle the long form, so is the long form dead? Naked Capitalism lives by the long form, so I'd say the long form is alive. Is political blogging dead? Has a younger generation moved on? WTF?
The election(s) of Obama divided progressives horribly and the long form blog is hard to sustain without some incentive, such as bone-numbing fear of large numbers of Neocon fools directing foreign policy. If twitter is the replacement that's really sad because it's soundbite city and a lousy place to have back-and-forth discussion (plus, disgusting ads in your timeline). Ditto Facecrack, where Big Bro Mark looms over your shoulder at all times, nudging you to buy and watch what you say (or so we hear). Any serious political network at this point is probably going to be some encrypted version of a ListServ, which is not to say that such a thing exists. But that's not the open, unregulated digital commons that briefly flourished from 2001-2007. (Caveat that "unregulated" didn't mean protocologically, as Alex Galloway noted.) I've been accused of nostalgia for that era by people who never experienced it and I suppose I am -- this blog is still keeping true to the old model, despite never really being all that gregarious even when I had comments enabled.
monster fashion fanfic
The first matter transporter making it possible to cross stellar distances brought humans into contact with a species called the Chromoites. Via subspace radio, an exchange was proposed where a Chromoite would be teleported to Earth and a human sent to Chromo. The extraterrestrials tricked us, however. The Chromoite transmitted in the initial phase of the exchange was a homicidal prisoner who the aliens had badly wanted to ship off-planet.
The unsuspecting Earth scientists gave the rogue Chromoite the run of their laboratory but he was not allowed outside the research facility. The alien killer quickly realized that humans regarded his gelatinous, tentacled shape as hideous. Formulating plans to dominate and plunder his new home world, the interstellar exile knew his most urgent need was somehow to pass for human.
Working at night in the lab, he duplicated some of the matter-transporting circuits and turned them on himself in an attempt to change his shape from pure horror into something more pleasantly anthropomorphic. Part of the switch involved gender reassignment, as the alien had decided that masquerading as a human female might make him appear less threatening. Amazingly, he succeeded in morphing himself into an attractive Earth woman, but with one problem: parts of his torso had a tendency to deliquesce into something like his original form.
He rummaged through the lab and found a bulky jumpsuit that would hide this deformity and escaped that same night. He eventually made his way to New York City and hired a designer to fabricate clothing that would keep his "secret" safely covered up -- explained to the designer as a rare form of Elephantiasis. A suite of shapeless (but stylish) caftans or muu-muus were created that swathed most of his body.
Gradually, through a combination of brains, beauty, and sociopathic wiles, the alien became prominent in New York society as a hostess of large and lavish parties. He began to gain the confidence of powerful movers and shakers, and to subtly influence public policy to benefit his nefarious plans.
After several years he had become so confident in his shadowy, behind-the-scenes power that he mingled at one of his soirees with his true form exposed. With his fashion designer co-conspirator standing proudly at his side, he revealed to the assembled grandees his "new biomorphic dress." It was a hit, and he even allowed himself to be photographed for a glossy magazine, with part of his face contractually cropped out of the image.