Social Media Revolution
Great video. Nice animation too. It’s a hard argument to dispute really.
[Via NewWork. View the stats on Socialnomics.net]
Add comment 15th August 2009 Simon
Posts filed under 'social'
Old Four-Eyes
Only two types of people wear dark-rimmed spectacles: trendy corporate types and inner-city hipsters. The first usually work “in finance” and team their specs with charcoal suits and cashmere scarves.
The second are a more complex breed. Males are identified by their beards, vintage T-shirts and khaki canvas knapsacks. Often, they can be seen reading dog-eared paperbacks in bars where all the furniture is second-hand and upholstered in green vinyl. Many claim to be musicians, even though they’ve never sought or received any formal musical training (“because it would ruin my creativity”).
Read on at The Age.
1 comment 2nd June 2009 Charles
Not a club guy, more of a pub guy.
Let’s face it, I’m very pensive. In fact, sometimes I catch myself with my head tilted on a 45-degree angle, staring blanking into space (ala JD from Scrubs) while someone is mid-conversation with me. But I’m not the sort of guy who learns life’s lessons after being punched in the face or told to get stuffed by someone. I’m more likely to find the meaning of it all after watching Spike Jonze videos and Fatlip at 12.30 on a Sunday.
That’s right kids, it’s time once again for Simon’s Self-indulgent Cynical Sunday… with your host, Sim Diddy Kane Jr aka Alvin Nathaniel Joiner IV. So get ready and don’t say I didn’t warn you because I’m doing it right now…
I love pubs. And I’m not a fan of smoking. So as you can guess (if you even remember) that I’m pretty excited about the new anti-smirking er, smoking laws that came in today. The thing about pubs is you can go up to anyone and start talking to them — and in my old age I think I’m rather akin to this notion. So, you can just start chewing the fat with any old chum — you don’t even have to be into cars or footy — get to know them, learn a bit about them and yourself and then feel a little better for trying to be human. Then you can give yourself a pat on the back. But don’t do it too obviously or people might stare. And this doesn’t have to be like the ridiculous idle small-talk that you have with the grocery lady or with the PR person at work whose name you can’t remember. It’s just a few beers between “mates”. The other great thing about pubs is you can do this with people of all ages (well, obviously not younger than the 16-year-old kid with the fake ID) and either gender.
Here’s the problem: Whenever I’m dragged into a club by one of my friends, I take with me the ethos of the pub. So I’ll attempt to spark up a conversation with someone over the noise that inundates the place. The thing is that if you’re trying to pick up that cute young lass in a pub and she’s taken, at least you’ve met someone, learned a thing or two and maybe even publicly patted your own back. Try and do the same thing at a club and if you’re lucky you might get a polite “fuck-off!”.
Last night — after a few — I sat down and gave up being social. But then I started speaking to some young ladies next to me, who were very nice and polite, and managed to find out from them that they came to this shit-hole of a decadent club every week because their boyfriends worked behind the bar. I guess they loved dancing, which is fair enough, and just wanted to chill with their friends. I stopped pitying myself for a few minutes and started to pity them. Over the course of the night I noticed how the bar staff behaved and were treated. One girl behind the bar had a bandage around her hand and despite not being able to carry the trays of glasses without pain, was continuing to work. One of the guys behind the bar poured Jager in her mouth, I guess either to help her with the pain or because they’re both just so fucking stupid. Then there was a dude who thought he’d try a bar-trick and toss the glass behind his back. The retard was clearly not trained and it’s a miracle the thing didn’t shatter everywhere.
On top of all this I was charged when picking up my jacket to go home. You’d think after paying to come to this place, paying for expensive drinks, asking a security guy where the cloak room is, following his directions and going down five flights of stairs, following the directions of the lady downstairs and going back upstairs, finding that the cloakroom was on the left and not the right like she’d said, leaving my jacket (and my name and phone number on a clipboard!) at the cloakroom, and not being told that it cost initially — that they might just let you walk free for christsake.
Alongside seeing how the bar staff were treated, how this place — like so many others — was run and speaking to some of the regulars, I decided that the club scene isn’t for me. Not that this is really a revelation to anyone but me, who didn’t realise it all until watching Fatlip interviewed by Spike Jonze on a hungover Sunday afternoon.
3 comments 1st July 2007 Simon
So called “Democracy” in Australia
I would like to bring to the attention of my fellow Simanticeans a worrying situation in Australia concerning so called ‘whistle blowing’ and the repercussions. I’m not sure if this has been in the media much in Australia, but it deserves to be.
Basically, former customs officer Allan Robert Kessing wrote a report in 2002 about the very poor state of security at the Sydney airport. After being ignored by the airport and not handed onto the government or any senior bodies outside the airport, the report was eventually leaked by an unnamed individual 30 months later. Mr. Kessing has therefore been charged and faces sentencing on the 14th of this month (June) for leaking a classified document. Although the problems he identified were later verified by a later report and led to radical changes in airport security in Australia, he faces a potential prison sentence rather than being thanked by Australia for making air travel safer.
For more info:
Listen to an interview with Allan Robert Kessing regarding this issue.
Add comment 10th June 2007 Tristan
It’s 1:14 am. Listening to Mezzanine.
Whilst writing an essay on ethics in documentary filmmaking I came across some pretty interesting information, dare I say it, blog-worthy material. Anyway, filmmaker Eric Steel amassed 10,000 hours worth of footage filming the Golden Gate Bridge, what he was able to record by doing this was most of the 24 suicides off the bridge that year. Apparently, in 1995 when the number of suicides off the bridge reached 1000 they stopped the official count.
After looking into this it turns out a Melbourne based company The Beureau of Inverse Technology have installed a number of motion detecting cameras on the bridge that record, and correlate in real-time the number of jumpers with the Dow Jones Industrial Index – thus creating the Despondency Index. I thought this stuff only happened on Futurama. The cameras are programmed to ignore seagulls that fly past the motion sensors.
As with Steel’s documentary, it goes without saying it attracted its fair share of criticism. A barrier preventing suicide off the bridge has been put off for years, due to Bay Area residents complaining that it would destroy the bridge’s beauty. A result of this documentary coming out is that the bridge authority has voted to proceed with a $2 million study of a suicide barrier, as Steel says: “We could have taken the position that, as filmmakers, were just there to watch… But we tried to deal with it as compassionate human beings first. And in the end, I suspect it’s less my ethics that are really troubling to people than their profound discomfort with this taboo”.
6 comments 17th May 2007 chris
Affluenza
Very interesting radio programme on ‘affluenza’ and our modern society. I was having a discussion about these things with a friend from Japan the other day, it’s a global phenomenon the solution to which I’m not sure. Robyn William’s closing comment is very poignant.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/inconversation/stories/2007/1870422.htm
4 comments 30th March 2007 Tristan
