MURKETING

Flickr Interlude

ties for sale, originally uploaded by Samm Bennett.

Ikebukuro station, Tokyo

Linkpile

• Flea markets, swap meets draw crowds: “Flea markets have seen a 10% to 15% increase in attendance during the recession.”
• Atoms For Bits: “With more and more of our artifacts being replaced by digital files, when do physical objects matter, and why?” Very interesting essay by friend of Murketing Carla Diana on creating (in essence) meaningful physical containers for our immaterial (digital) possessions. Consumed on immaterialism here.
• On the Street and On Facebook: “In America today, even people without street addresses feel compelled to have Internet addresses.”
• When women hide behind their children on Facebook: “A larger and more ominous self-effacement, a narrowing of our worlds.”

Links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious.

In The New York Times Magazine: Plinky

SAY WHAT?
Adding to the structure of online expression, but giving you something to express.

It has never been easier to express yourself in public. Whatever you might want to say, the online tools to let you say it to a (theoretically) worldwide audience are innumerable. Say it long, say it short, say what you want, when you want and how often you want. As the title of a forthcoming book about blog culture puts it: “Say Everything.” You have the technology. The only thing the technology cannot do is solve this problem: What if you don’t really have anything to express?

Ah, but technology can solve that problem for you….

Read the column in the May 31, 2009, New York Times Magazine, or here.

Discuss, make fun of, or praise this column to the skies at the Consumed Facebook page.

Linkpile

• ephemeratopia: “Antique trade cards, postcards and other old paper scraps.”
• Celeb tweets help push Anvil to success: I’m not sure about this. The New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane gave this movie a rave, pretty much out of nowhere. How often does that happen for this kind of film? Is that irrelevant? Did it happen because of Twitter? Does it perhaps suggest that the quality of the actual movie might have something to do with its relative success? And why isn’t that success defined — why isn’t there a number of some kind in this story to help us understand how successful the doc actually is, relative to other docs?
• Most-Popular Lists Breed More Popularity: “Frequently, popularity rankings speak less to the merits of what’s being observed and more to the fact that crowds are observing it.”

Links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious.

Linkpile

• Kickstarter: “Aims to let creative people of all kinds raise money for their projects from fans, who receive access and rewards in exchange for their patronage.”
• Weezer’s Snuggie: “Band is — no joke — planning their own line of sleeved blankets called Wuggies. Rivers Cuomo told Rolling Stone, ‘A Wuggie is basically exactly like a Snuggie, except it says Weezer on it. The people at Snuggie are doing it with us and promoting it with us. It’s a totally legit Snuggie.’” Via Listenerd.
• McDonald’s / Night at the Museum tie-in adds “virtual” element: “The Happy Meal toy collection features eight characters from the movie. Each U.S. toy will come with a special code that ‘unlocks more fun’ at McD’s virtual world, McWorld (located at happymeal.com). McWorld lets kids create their own avatars and play games.”
• Are Humans Genetically Programmed To Care About Long-term Future And Climate Change?: Study: “Humans, like all creatures, generally value a reward today more highly than a reward tomorrow – in other words they discount future benefits. But the model shows that the discount rate is lower for social, rather than individual, benefits.” I didn’t find this particularly convincing. See for context: Why Isn’t the Brain Green?

Links compiled via delicious, and repurposed here with plug-in Postalicious.

“Shape your tools, or you will be shaped by them.”

A 10-minute Youtube video about “the hardware hacking community” in Montreal is now making the rounds on some of the big blogs, so maybe you’ve seen it (though if not, check out here via the Unconsumption blog, where Tom Hosford posted it several days ago). It’s worth a look.

Plus: I have a question:

Toward the end a guy remarks: “I forget who said it, but the philosophy behind it is: Shape your tools, or you will be shaped by them.”

I’m very interested in that, but my Google-fu is evidently not up to the task of figuring out the source. So does anybody know: Who did say it? What’s the reference to?

UPDATE: The answer (see comments) seems to be Marshall McLuhan — sort of. Apparently McLuhan said: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.” That’s a different sentiment than what I took the hacker/maker to be expressing. But it seems likely that this is more or less what he was thinking of (and he hacked it?). Still accepting counter-evidence or theories if you have them, of course.

Here’s how the video is described, by the by:

“A look into the hardware hacking community in Montreal, including the Foulab collective. Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of ‘user generated content’?”

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Somebody hates everything: Next time someone slams your work, visit the Cynical-C Blog to be reminded that everything — everything — gets slammed mercilessly by somebody. The blog catalogs harsh one-star reviews from Amazon: The Godfather, The Odyssey, Anne Frank, Gone With The Wind, they’ve all been trashed by someone, and here’s the proof.
• Cocaine found in Red Bull Cola?: This is good news for Red Bull. Fresh rumors are in-line with its murketed identity.
• Objectified Review: “There aren’t very many movies that leave you wanting to go out and buy some cool new furniture while simultaneously giving you the urge to clean out your garage.”
• ‘Suburban survivalists’ prepare for “The Road”-type scenario: “Top sellers include 55-gallon water jugs, waterproof containers, freeze-dried foods, water filters, water purification tablets, glow sticks, lamp oil, thermal blankets, dust masks, first-aid kits and inexpensive tents.” Don’t these people read the “consumer confidence” numbers? Via Recessionwire.
• Furniture from street debris: “Lost & Found Stools are made from furniture found on the street combined with solid timber. Same goes for their Lost & Found Tables.” Brian W. Jones on the unconsumption tumblr.
• Threadless co. helping filmmaker: “Skinny Corp [Threadless owner] has line called The Storytellers Collection. 100% of the proceeds garnered from the sales of these shirts goes to Patrick O’Brien’s film, ‘Everything Will Be Okay,’ which is very much about a worthy cause. O’Brien is documenting his battle with ALS, the terminal disease which results in the gradual degeneration of the body.”

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Many Consumers Ignore Food Product Recalls: “40 percent of these consumers think that the foods they purchase are less likely to be recalled than those purchased by others, appearing to believe that food recalls just don’t apply to them.”
• Photos of the Kings of Africa: Interesting. Via Coudal.com.
• Send Us Your Polaroids: Times‘s new-ish photo blog asks for them. (Hooked to latest hopes for Polaroid revival. Earlier Consumed on Polaroid demise here.)
• Downturn’s effect on bling: “Hip-hop artists aren’t eager to admit to thrift, and numerous rappers rumored to be trading down declined to talk about the trend.”

If you like the music, maybe you’d like to buy the … knife?

The relevance of the CD as a physical object connected to or expressive of music fandom is, obviously, on the wane.

But: Fans who no longer need to buy an object containing music (since music can be obtained in other ways) might still be willing, even anxious, to buy T-shirts, posters, and assorted object-packages that might or might not include a vinyl record, a book, garments, a compact disc (maybe even a blank one) and/or other collateral materials.

Earlier I noted Of Montreal’s effort to extend this notion to include such lifestyle products as a lamp.

More recently, special adviser to Murketing.com Cousin Lymon drew my attention to this: Khanate, in connection with its new release Clean Hands Go Foul, is selling things like CDs and DVDs and T-shirts and mugs. But also: knives. Here are some details on this $50 item:

8.75″ long hunting knife features a 4.5″ rubber grip handle and 4.25″ engraved stainless steel blade. Each knife comes with a ballistic nylon sheath and is boxed.

Are you Khanate fan? Then perhaps you buy an engraved hunting knife to prove it.

Linkpile (via Delicious)

• Salt&Pepper Cell: S&P shakers that resemble batteries.
• in Bb 2.0 – a collaborative music/spoken word project: Awesome. Via Listenerd. Autoloop version here: http://tikirobot.net/BbBuddha/ (that’s via Marc “Disquiet” Weidenbaum, who wrote about this amazing thingy last week but I missed it.).
• Consumer Anger Pays Off: Strategic Displays May Aid Negotiations: Apparently depends on genuine (as opposed to trumped-up) the anger seems.
• Contact innovation: Interview with Griffin about creating add-on products for Apple stuff. Via Core77.