Phil Teer

90's Revival and 20 year style cycles

2012-02-13T09:37:00.002Z

20 years is a significant period of time in term of style. We noted below that fashion went through significant changes every 20 years, or did so until recently. The same time period seems to be significant in terms of revivals. In the 70's there was a 50's revival, as evidenced by Teddy Boys, Grease and Happy Days. The 60's were rediscovered by 80's youth as The Doors and the Velvet Underground had a massive influence on alternative music while Lenny Bruce was a hero in the fledging alternative comedy scene. The 90's drew heavily on 70's fashion influences and there has been a long 80's revival - most recently electronica - through the Noughties. Now, according to this article in the Observer, we seem to be in the midst of a 90's revival. The Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays and Inspiral carpets have all reformed, Irvine Welsh is publishing a prequel to Trainspotting called Skagboys and baggy seems to be back on the catwalk.

Maybe it all has something to do with twentysomethings trying to work out who they are and where they came from and getting into the fashion and music of their most formative years.

no hope left: Resident Evil 6

2012-01-20T10:35:00.000Z

first we did this:

Then this happened:

Then this happened:

Style Stagnation

2012-01-16T19:20:00.002Z

Throughout the last century, styles changed every 20 years. Male fashion in 1972 was very different to 1952 which in turn bore no resemblance to 1932. That sequence of big leaps in taste ended in 1992. Why? Maybe because there was so much change coming from technology that we couldn't cope with fashion shifts at the same time. Maybe because fashion business went global and big enterprises can't cope with sudden changes in taste. This article by Kurt Anderson in Vanity Fair is well worth reading. Thanks to Candice DeVille for pointing it out to me on Quora

Mini skirts and skyscrapers

2012-01-12T09:41:00.002Z

Higher hemlines apparently coincide with economic booms while skyscraper construction signals impending recession and depression. Maybe the same confidence that inspires bold fashion trends also spurs developers to take risks and build upwards. Or maybe there is something altogether more Freudian going on.

The ecstatic shoplifter

2012-01-10T19:02:00.000Z

Antony Worral Thomson is right to say that he isn't the first person to shoplift. Shoplifting, by people who can afford not to, goes back way before even the Peaches or Winona's of this world, if fact its almost as old as consumerism itself. Certainly, when the first department stores opened in Paris and New York, stories of wealthy folk, usually women, with nimble fingers were soon lighting up the gossip pages. Unnecessary shoplifting was a thrill, an ecstatic joy that one frenchwoman in the 1900's described as being better than any pleasure she could get from her husband. The authorities back then identified this kleptomania as some kind of diseased reaction to the temptations of luxury goods.

why there are so many protesters

2012-01-04T10:50:00.001Z

"The boom years of globalisation created a mass, transnational culture of being young and educated; now there is a mass transnational culture of disillusionment."

Paul Mason's insight gets to the heart of the sociology behind the global protest movement. Around the world there are masses of educated and unemployed young people. Many of them working class. All of them went into education expecting a better quality of life than their parents when they came out. They've been disappointed. As he points out, similar conditions fuelled the Paris Commune, only then it was impoverished lawyers and doctors.

Global unrest: how the revolution went viral | World news | The Guardian

2012-01-04T09:38:00.000Z

Global unrest: how the revolution went viral | World news | The Guardian:

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Lost Bowie footage

2011-12-26T12:56:00.004Z

Raw, tight, just popped in from another planet; Bowie does Gene Genie in this footage, thought lost but recently rediscovered by the cameraman. Superb,

The Great British Property Scandal

2011-12-06T21:15:00.001Z

A roof over ones head is pretty far down in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In fact shelter is practically at the bottom. We have a national housing shortage, yet there are 1 million empty homes in Britain and 350,000 have been empty for more than 6 months. This Channel 4 series draws attention to the scandal of empty homes in the face of homelessness and people living in poor quality housing. This, like Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's campaigns over the last couple of years, is focussed on the appalling neglect of basic needs in an advanced society. Shelter and a decent meal are a long way from the self-actualisation which so obsessed us just a few years ago.

Consumerism: born fully formed

2011-12-04T14:50:00.001Z

Obsession, theft, debt, PR stunts, trend studies, seductivepricing, fads and compulsions were all present at the birth of consumerism.

When consumerism entered the scene in the 18^thcentury, it came complete with characteristics we think of as being moderninnovations.

Shopkeepers designed enticing window displays and createdthe idea of the highly discounted loss leader product to get customers intotheir shops. Proto RichardBranson’s cycled around Glasgow dressed in women’s clothes to publicise theirbrand while newspaper advertising proliferated. By gathering information from his salesforce on changes intaste, Josiah Wedgewood became maybe the first marketer to use a trends studyto inform NPD.

Fashion was the driving force of consumerism from thebeginning. People bought watchesand learned to tell the time afterwards.

For some, the thirst to keep up with the latest styles meantspending ever more of their income on consumer goods. Others were driven to steal. As acquiring goods became partof a person’s identity, darker psychological traits and obsessions, like theftand debt, were channelled.

According to Peter N. Stearns, “the same raging compulsionsthat drove some people to thirst for the latest style, drove others, unable toindulge their needs to steal.”

Shoplifting became a problem almost as soon as the firstdepartment stores opened their doors. In particular, the wealthy female shoplifter became a regular source ofscandal stories for the press.

Studies of wills reveal that women also seemed to attach alot of emotional value to consumer goods. While men tended to be quite general in their wills: “I leave everythingto John”; women were more specific: “I leave my best long scarf to Jane who wasmy closest friend.”

Boredom was there too. Of course people had been bored before but they didn’t have a word forit, at least not in English, until the 18^th century. The more people came to value noveltyand acquisition, the more they found a lack of stimulation difficult tobear. Boredom was the antithesisof consumerism. The comedown. The craving for another fix.

We are all zombies

2011-10-29T16:12:00.001+01:00

Why arezombies everywhere, in the movies, on TV, in games and parading on the streets as zombie walks?

Arifa Akbarrecently surveyed the zombie phenomenon in an article in the Indy. Over the last couple of yearswe’ve had Zombie Survival Horror from 28 Days Later (2002), 28 Weeks Later(2007) and Slither (2006), black-comedy zombie from Zombieland (2009) and thezombie-horror-comedy-survival of Shaun of the Dead (2004). The Walking Dead is massive on TV andBrad Pitt is filming World War Z. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a mash-up novel, has sold more than700,00 copies, comic book shops are rife with zombie stories while zombie gameslike the Resident Evil series shift millions of units with every release.

Zombies area cultural trend, but what are they all about?

PhilosopherDavid Chalmers, who has used the idea of the zombie to help explainconsciousness, defines zombies as being physically identical to a human beingbut completely lacking conscious experience.

Somethingabout these people without conscious experience resonates strongly with us right now.

It could berelated to the sense that we are living with the threat of our annihilation through somebiological disaster. Every other year another threat of a global epidemic comesalong - swine flu,bird flu, SARS etc. Zombiesare contagious, one bite and you become one and they multiply quickly.

It could beabout the threat of environmental meltdown. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road doesn’thave zombies per se, but it does have murderous gangs of pitiless humans whoindulge in cannibalism.

We fearanarchy. Not the cool anarchy ofcommunes and sharing, but the nasty anarchy of no laws and no order. Professor Arnold Bloomberg, author ofZombiemania, tells Akbar that zombies represent our anxieties over the breakdownof social order. We can seeevidence of this breakdown in places like Greece where people where economiccatastrophe has led to riots and, in Paul Mason’s view, anomie or the absence of law. When there are no laws, people become zombies.

I thinkanother reason why we are so obsessed by zombies is psychological rather thansociological. In zombie movies, our friends and family are bitten and becomeinfected. Everyone around usbecomes one. Like a young person’sfear of growing up and becoming boring, it seems inevitable that eventually wewill all succumb and everyone will be a zombie.

In a way,the zombie is our self-loathing personified. It is the uncivilized, unintelligent and uncultured side ofour personality; the lout who emerges after too much drink. Maybe this is why we enjoy killingzombies and we like the fact that they are so easy to kill – just make sure youhave your shovel with you at all times.

This fearof the inner zombie explains the popularity of zombie walks. It’s cathartic to dress up and paradethrough town as a zombie. Being azombie is fun. They are simple,mindless creatures, us without any expectation of intelligence. Zombies don’t have to be politeor sit exams or go to work. Zombies are stupid but free and infantile.

Zombiesrepresent dumb, mindless consumerism. They are sub-human (nobody is only a consumer and nothing else) interestedonly in consumption - in their case fresh flesh rather than iPhones.

We seezombies everywhere because suddenly we can see consumerism clearly. When it was working we never noticed it so much. Now it’s broken, we see its effectseverywhere. When we walk down thestreet passed boarded up shops and closed business we see the social breakdownbrought about by the consumer crash.

Weassociate zombies with the end of humanity because that is what we now believerampant consumerism has done.

We knowthat we all have the potential to be a zombie. It’s easy, just stop thinking and seeking out experiencesfor ourselves and slump on the sofa or slouch around the shops and its instantzombification.

The spectre of the poor

2011-10-25T15:05:00.000+01:00

from The Independent

In 19th Century London, the Victorianbourgeoisie lived in fear of the spectre of organised gangs of the poor arising from the cesspit of the east endand ransacking their Piccadilly mansions before hoisting the flags of communismand anarchy over London. Accordingto Alex Butterworth’s wonderful book The World That Never Was, they were afraidbecause they knew the discrepancies between their own living standards andthose of the poor were a disgrace. Their fear was rooted in guilt.

It seems a similar bogeyman haunts today'spolitical class.

When Cameron, Clegg, Theresa May, Ian DuncanSmith and Ed Miliband looked at the summer rioters, all they saw were gangmembers. The riots, they argued,were instigated and orchestrated by gangs. Gangs were “at the heart of all the violence” according toCameron. Miliband was onlyslightly more cautious when he asserted that gang members “were not the soleperpetrators of the riots but they played a significant part.”

Now it turns out that the rioters were notpredominantly gang members at all. Instead they were poor and they acted alone.Two thirds of the rioters lived in the country's worst off districts and sameproportion has special educational needs. They also tended to have beenunemployed and three-quarters had a previous conviction. Only 13% of thosearrested were gang members.

The rioters were the disaffected andalienated poor jumping at the opportunity to get something for nothing. However, in the eyes of middle classpoliticians, the poor are a dangerous, armed and organised network set tooverthrow the country at a moment’s notice. Perhaps their fear is also rooted in the guilt of knowinghow disgracefully politicians of all persuasions ignore the poorest and theirestates because they are not a political force. Yet.

Guy Masks

2011-10-21T18:05:00.000+01:00

The Guy Fawkes masks worn by protestors from Anonymous are perfect little branding device. They are unique and odd-looking and lend themselves to attention-grabbing photography, so they get loads of media coverage and create debate. They also have a relevant backstory - not just Guy Fawkes but also the movie and comic book V for Vendetta where the lead character V wore the mask. V was a revolutionary leader and anarchist who succeeds in blowing up parliament. The mask stands out, has edge and is easy to replicate. Finally, its useful. It helps protesters maintain their anonymity in the face of CCTV, police photographers and extensive media coverage.

Something Lost, Something Found

2011-10-14T11:50:00.002+01:00

Tacita Dean:Tate Modern 11 October 2011 – 11 March2012. Power to the PixelBFI, 11-14^th October 2011

Twoevents within a few hundred yards of each other on London’s Southbank seem torepresent the dying of one craft and the birth of another.

Powerto the Pixel is a 4-day, cross-media forum of content creators in the film andmedia industry working in digital technology staged at the BFI. “Film” is an installation in theTurbine Hall of Tate Modern by artist Tacita Dean.

WhilePower to the Pixel celebrates the emergent sector of transmedia storytelling,Dean laments the imminent death of 16mm film production. As analogue retires in one building,digital takes over next door. Ordoes it?

Digitalfilm is heralded everywhere as the future of the film industry and the new digitalfrontier is transmedia storytelling.

Transmediainvolves extending and developing a story over several media – TV, mobile, PCand sometimes physical participation. While much of the funding for transmediaprojects has come from advertisers chasing audiences, Disney,Nickelodeon, Sony Pictures, Fox are all experimenting in the area.

16mmfilm is indeed in dire trouble. The last British processing lab closed last year. It’s more popular analogue variant,35mm film, is also on the way out. By the end of this year all London cinemas are expected to be digitaland by 2013 35mm stock will be phased out around the world.

Whilethe economics of the technology make digital film very attractive, as a craftor an art form, digital is not yet properly established.

Thecleanness of digital is the issue. The musician Neil Young is one of many artists making a case for thevirtues of analogue technology in the programme that accompanies Dean’sinstallation. Young draws acomparison with music where listeners came to feel that something had been lostwith the ubiquitous digitally remastered releases. Part of the art is lost with digital technology. He compares the infinite depth ofanalogue, a universe of possibilities in the smallest section, with the utter “monotone”simplicity of the pixel. Will themovie fan miss film in the way the music buff misses vinyl? Undoubtedly.

Theartist will miss analogue too. While digital technology can replicate what Tacita Dean has done with16mm film, it cannot originate it. An artist working on a computer cannot cut holes in the film then run itback through a camera and record another image over the top. They can run a programme that createsthat effect but that’s it. Thereis nothing tangible to cut the holes in. An art form, not just a craft skill, is dying out.

Andyet, in some form analogue film will survive. As Dean says, it will become artisanal, preserved bydevotees, non-industrial and prohibitively expensive. It will move from the culture industry to the heritageindustry. Like coal mines andother relics of no longer supported industries that we nevertheless don’t wantto see disappear.

Transmediastorytelling has its own set of problems. Those trying to work in transmediastruggle to secure funding from the conventional sources. Instead they rely on advertisers forfunding and when advertising budgets get cut, which is what has been happeningin recent years, it is usually the unproven and experimental that goesfirst.

Whilethe future of filmmaking is undoubtedly digital, it remains to be seen whetherit will ever deliver the levels of artistry and craftsmanship provided by thepractitioners of analogue filmmaking. Beyond CGI effects, digital may turn out to be less acraft than a cheaper way of making movies. Without investment in its more experimental frontiers, wemay be left with movies that are pristine but soulless and in a few years wemay find ourselves in the midst of an analogue film revival among purists.

The Power of Making

2011-09-26T17:38:00.003+01:00

A new industrial revolution is fermenting in the V&A. The Power of Making is a crafts exhibition a long way from the cosy, nostalgic world of the arts and crafts movement. It is "extreme making for a hyper-active world."

In one corner a 3D printer is printing a 3D printer. Across the way, hexapods, spider-like, walking robots with interchangeable tool heads, wait to be sent into dark, tight places to fabricate and mend.

Miracle repair products like Sugru, which mends anything broken and Woolfiller which does what it says, make a virtue out of fixing and mending things we would once have binned. Makerism, says Bruce Sterling in the book of the show, is the dark shadow of consumerism.

It's not all new and some of it is drolly funny. Like the giant bear, a fusion of taxidermy and crochet, called Crotchetdermy Bear. Next to the bear, a wireframe design of a Honda Goldwing motorbike made of wire.

Darkest are the hyper-realist babies, curled up in a curiosity cabinet and created by Reborners, who specialise in that sort of creepy stuff.

This is craft partly as the driver of a new industrial revolution and partly as a dark art.

Marx, the crash and the end of the middle class

2011-09-06T14:16:00.002+01:00

This is an excellent essay by John Gray for the BBC. He picks up on the currently popular view that Marx was right to predict that capitalism would eventually destroy itself by producing ever bigger booms and busts. So, when Gordon Brown thought that he had ended boom and bust, it was just a bigger boom with an even bigger bust to come in 2008. The point Gray makes is that while Marx thought the bourgeoisie woud enjoy wealth and security under capitalism, the opposite has happened. Overt the last couple of decades in the west, job security has disappeared for both the trades and the professions. Capitalism, not communism, has eradicated the middle classes.

In his book The Case for Working with Your Hands or Why Office Work is Bad for US, (Shopcraft as Soulcraft in the US) Matthew Crawford picks up on the same trend. For years, kids were encouraged to go to university and then into white collar jobs while skilled trades jobs were denigrated. Ironically, the white collar jobs have proven to be very vulnerable to either outsourcing or computerisation while the trades haven't. Resulting in a generation stuck in very insecure employment in countries with a dearth of people who can fix things or make things work.

Meanwhile, in the LRB, John Lanchester argues that the current economic insecurity around slow growth is not another crisis but an extended part of the 2008 crash. An example, perhaps of a long bust. Lanchester's view is that we are probably in for another ten years of practically no growth. There is an alternative but that would involve holding back on cuts to public spending and stringently regulating the banks - turning them into the equivalent of utilities - a road he foresees no political will to go down. Funnily enough, the one European country to have a growing economy at the moment is Belgium which also doesn't have a government in place.

Never bored with boredom

2011-08-25T16:25:00.000+01:00

To prove that we cannot get enough of boredom this year, here's another article on the subject. I like the point that we are getting more bored precisely because we have more distractions at hand. Which I interpret as something like - as our engagement levels with distractions like Angry Birds falls, the frequency at which we feel bored rises, creating demand for more distractions and so on.

The only real cure for boredom is to embrace it, stare out the window, empty your mind and hope that your own version of Harry Potter will walk fully clothed into your head.

The Dark Mountain Project

2011-08-24T16:22:00.001+01:00

At first glance this all seems a bit weird but Paul Kingsnorth is a smart guy and I guess if it all does go belly up we'll be glad that some folks have been thinking about what it'll be like.

Independent article

The Dark Mountain Project Manifesto

As the dream of economic growth dies, a new plan awaits testing | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

2011-08-24T10:33:00.001+01:00

As the dream of economic growth dies, a new plan awaits testing | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian:

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Shoplifters of the World Unite

2011-08-19T14:04:00.001+01:00

Slavoj Žižek on the meaning of the riots in LRB

Working Class Hero

2011-08-15T13:48:00.002+01:00

John Lennon nailing the alienating effects of consumerism:

Keep you doped with religion, sex and TV

Until you think your so clever and classless and free

But your still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

Freud, Marx and consumerism

2011-08-15T13:46:00.003+01:00

Herbert Marcuse marries Freud and Marxism. The primary, unconscious drives, sexuality and aggression, develop within a given social framework which in turn regulates the manifestation of these drives. Intense oppression in a society will lead to a mobilisation of surplus aggression. This surplus aggression has to be released.

The Arab Spring uprising are examples of one type of release of surplus energy in the form of a wave of popular movements aimed at toppling dictatorships. The consumer riots in England are a different manifestation. The oppression has been of the isolated poor in council estates but the release was once again a wave, this time of looting across firstly London boroughs and then various other English cities.

I liked this comment on YouTube:

archdeaconj

Marx and Marcuse railed against the banality and emptiness of existence in a society where, as the beats put it, 'dreams are traded for gold on the floor of lifes stock exchange'. Modern man is not only alienated in the workplace, where he spends most of his life; he is alienated from his authentic self even when free of the workplace. His life-affirming energies are_ deadened - all except one: voracious greed for commodities which, at first a compensation, becomes a curse.

So, consumerism, initially a “compensation” for alienation, becomes alienating in its own right.

We are what we loot

2011-08-14T15:39:00.001+01:00

Pat Kane was asking people who worked in advertising if their industry felt any responsibility for the riots. It's my industry too and I suspect few see any connection between advertising brands and the looting and rioting. It got me thinking though about how consumerism has become entangled into our psychological make-up.

The riots were consumer riots, or shopping riots as Zoe Williams had it. The main target were shops, not parliament. There was no obvious purpose beyond stealing and fighting “the feds”.

Is there is any deeper connection between this mass outburst of violence and aggression and the nature of consumerism?

An answer might start back at the roots of consumer marketing, on Madison Avenue, from the 1920’s on, where Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays explored ways of channelling our basic drives of aggression and sexuality through advertising and branding.

Bernays wasn’t alone, as the book Freud on Madison Avenue makes clear, and to this day language like desire, image, identity and personality are deeply rooted in the way we talk about brands. In the consumer society, it is through brands that we compete with each other and asserts our status; that we signal which tribe we belong to and which ones we don’t; that we measure attractiveness and desirability. We are the labels we wear.

The social psychologist Erich Fromm argued that people shop to escape feelings of anxiety and depression. He believed that we faced a stark choice in our lives – between having and being, with the two being mutually incompatible.

In the Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord predicts a world where “having” has won and all of life is channelled through hyper-consumption and “all that was once directly lived has become mere representation.”

Richard Klein in the superb Cigarettes are Sublime, equates desire for that particular product to the Kantian idea of sublime pleasure – things we are attracted to because they are bad for us, and ultimately kill us. So, cigarette marketing, with its images of iconic cowboys, purple slits, urbane Camels and nourish French movies, appeals to our death drive. (Ironically enough, anti-smoking messages like cigarettes will kill you only reinforce our very reason for smoking.)

In Crash, JG Ballard equated our fetishisation of the automobile with the death drive.

Carrying on the death theme, the anthropologist Mary Douglas used the example of her aunt shopping for a new hat and rejecting everything she “wouldn’t be seen dead in” to make the point that shopping is not just simple desire, it is a form of protest. Our choices, and all the things we reject along the way, paint a picture of the psycho-drama involved in constructing an identity through symbolic objects.

In her book Choice, Renata Salecl argues that when we make a choice we never simply choose what we want. Instead, we choose what other people are choosing, because we are obsessed by what we think other people will think of the choices we make. Other people, and what we imagine their perception of us will be, the Big Other in Lacanian psychoanalysis, affects every decision we make.

So maybe it is too simple to say that consumerism has infected human behaviour. A more accurate analysis would be that human drives and desires are played out through consumerism.

So, looters don’t loot because of advertising. They loot because their aggressive and sexual drives have always been channelled through consumption and, when they have no money and they think they will get away with it and they are being egged on by their mates, they will loot.

Feral Capitalism

2011-08-14T13:58:00.000+01:00

(image details here)

David Harvey writing on his blog, was pulled up short by the use of "feral" to describe looters. Remembering how the same word was used to describe, and justify the execution of, the communards during the Paris Commune, he turns it on its head and applies feral to capitalism itself:

But the problem is that we live in a society where capitalism itself has become rampantly feral. Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone’s bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world.

At the end of the day, is all this just about a credit rating?

2011-08-14T13:39:00.002+01:00

Will Hutton makes some good points in his Comment piece in today's Observer but he keeps the best to last. He traces a line from the "abysmal new social low" that were the apparently apolitical riots. The thread goes back to Bristol in May when squatters occupied a shop designated to be a Tesco Express...

..through the Clockwork Orange-esque language of the looters on BBM - no snitches, bring a bad man, have some evil fun, get the feds...
...back to a UNICEF report in 1997 that put Britain 21st out of 21 industrial nations in terms of how we treat our young...

...forward to youth clubs shutting down and private shopping centres that won't allow the young to gather and routine police orders to disperse...
...to a "triumphant conservative right who dominate our national discourse...
...to the now 100,000 strong e-petition calling on looters to lose their benefits...
...to the "vast people lockers" that are our estates...
...because once in, very few move out." A third of the bottom 10% of wage earners in 2001/2 were still there in 2008/9. Once unemployed you are twice as likely to stay unemployed...
...to middle class "opportunity hoarders" who secure the best of everything for themselves and their kids...
...to "Britain's credit rating - which the spending cuts are aimed to preserve."

Hutton ends by saying that the credit rating should be a means, not an end in itself. But its interesting to think about why the credit rating is relevant.

Our credit rating is under threat because we bailed out the banks with public money. All of this mess begins with the banks poisoning the economy with toxic debts. Most of that debt was lent to people too poor to afford it. But debt was the only way they could afford to consume because their wages were not going up.

As David Harvey says in The Enigma of Capital: "the underlying problem (behind the current economic crisis) is wage repression, leading to problems of effective demand papered over by a credit-fueled consumerism of excess in one part of the world and a too rapid expansion of production in new product lines in another"(p118)

According to Harvey, US household income has more or less stagnated since the 1970's, while real income has declined versus GDP. "For the first time in US history, working people have failed to share in any of the gains from rising productivity." (p12)

Ronald Reagan, like Thatcher in the UK, simultaneously smashed the unions and liberalised the financial markets allowing credit to become freely available. I can clearly remember, in the late-80's, being offered a credit card by my bank despite the fact my current account had been almost constantly overdrawn for four years.

Nearly 70% of the US economy is dependent on consumption. The situation will not be dissimilar in the UK.

In the UK, the trend in real average earnings (right) has been down since the late nineties and has plummeted since 2006.

Consumer spending over the last few decades has not paid for by increased wages, it was paid for by credit. When that credit dried up, the hardest hit were those who were most dependent on credit - the poorest in society.

How to mend a sick society

2011-08-13T16:36:00.001+01:00

After the economic crisis of 2008 there was a major shift of money from the public to the private sector in order to save the banks. This money had to come from cuts in public sector spending.

Before the 2010 UK election, Nick Clegg predicted that a Conservative government, with a slim majority, trying to force through massive cuts would lead to rioting on the streets. He was right about the rioting; the only difference was that the draconian cuts would be implemented by the coalition, with Clegg leading the way.

The cuts in public spending hit the poorest in society hardest. The rioters and looters were from the poorest estates. The only excuse offered by one rioter was that he had no money that day.

When the banks’ dodgy investment practices, mainly involving loans to the poorest in society, crashed the world market, nations rushed to their aid.

Despite strong calls from the public and the media to punish the bankers, little happened beyond a temporary suspension of bonuses for some. In the aftermath of the riots, looters are being handed out arbitrary justice – in one case a 6-month sentence for pilfering a £3.95 case of bottled water.

While the Prime Minister has seemingly chosen to support an e-petition calling for looters to lose their benefits, local councils are starting eviction proceedings against families. In one instance a mother has been told she has effectively made herself homeless because her son was caught looting.

There has been no rush to help the poor and no correspondingly massive shift of money from the private sector to the public sector. Instead people are being jailed, made homeless and having their benefits stopped.

Many will say this is fair enough, that while bankers broke no laws, looters knew what they were doing was wrong and must be punished. But, being homeless and penniless will only push people further away from society while prison doesn’t tend to rehabilitate. In fact, 75% of first time offenders reoffend.

A better approach would be to root out the causes of extreme poverty in the first place. In his excellent book, The Enigma of Capital, David Harvey (This RSA animate vid is good) points to long-term wage repression coupled with credit-fuelled consumerism of excess as two factors behind the crisis of consumption the global economy currently faces. In other words, unhealthy suppression of wages over decades has meant that the only way people can fund consumption is through credit. When the source of that credit dries up, they have no money to consume. A healthy economy pays a healthy wage.

The nature of the punishment being doled out will surely only deepen divides in a society which for the last week has seemed to be at war with itself. In the same way that bailing out the banks was a necessary step to save a sick economy, providing support for those who live in the poorest estates is the only way to mend a sick society.

A glimpse through the cracks

2011-08-13T11:25:00.005+01:00

Some of the writing around the riots over the last week has been exceptionally insightful.
Such reporting gives us glimpses behind the mask of society. I think it was Walter Benjamin who said that a culture is best understood through the cracks and fractures that appear when it is in conflict with itself.

Here’s some of the best glimpses through the cracks that I came across:

Reported on the BBC news website a Hackney resident called Catherine Holmes did something that few proper journalists seem to have done, and spoke to some of the rioters:

"We spoke to looters trying to get home, the only explanation they gave for their behaviour was that they had no money today.
"It is sad to think that these people are thinking of only the next moment, and the moment they have created is a nightmare."

Another Hackney resident, Pauline Pearce, was caught on film, out on the street bravely berating the rioters, telling them that far from being united in fighting a cause, they were just “running down Foot Locker.”

Journalist and writer Laurie Penny was blogging as the riots were unfolding:

“The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it. Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart.”

The next day, writing in the Guardian, Zoe Williams coined the term Shopping Riots:

“These are shopping riots, characterised by their consumer choices: that's the bit we've never seen before. A violent act by the authorities, triggering a howl of protest – that bit is as old as time. But crowds moving from shopping centre to shopping centre? Actively trying to avoid a confrontation with police, trying to get in and out of JD Sports before the "feds" arrive? That bit is new.”

Drawing in social theory to explain a connection between anomie and consumption, Williams quoted Alex Hiller, a marketing and consumer expert at Nottingham Business School:

"If you look at Baudrillard and other people writing in sociology about consumption, it's a falsification of social life. Adverts promote a fantasy land. Consumerism relies upon people feeling disconnected from the world."

This disconnection was brilliantly evoked by Camila Batmanghelidjh the day before in The Independent:

"Walk on the estate stairwells with your baby in a buggy manoeuvring past the condoms, the needles, into the lift where the best outcome is that you will survive the urine stench and the worst is that you will be raped . . . It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped."

Back to Hiller:

"Consumer society relies on your ability to participate in it. So what we recognise as a consumer now was born out of shorter hours, higher wages and the availability of credit. If you're dealing with a lot of people who don't have the last two, that contract doesn't work. They seem to be targeting the stores selling goods they would normally consume. So perhaps they're rebelling against the system that denies its bounty to them because they can't afford it."

And then Laurie Penny:

“The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news."

Penny goes on to describe a young Tottenham man, interviewed by NBC, who said:

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Anarchists from the North London Solidarity Federation interviewed by the Artists against Cuts blog, elaborated on the type of action that needs to occur to stimulate media interest:

“For all the talk of the “peaceful protest” that preceded events in Tottenham, the media wouldn’t have touched the story if all that happened was a vigil outside a police station. Police violence and protests against it happen all the time. It’s only when the other side responds with violence (on legitimate targets or not) that the media feels the need to give it any sort of coverage.”

In The Telegraph, Peter Osborne took the rich and the political elite to task for double standards:

“Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.

“Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society.”

In a description of how he first came across the riots in Tottenham on the Saturday evening, Paul Lewis in The Guardian takes us back to how it all began:

“I rounded the corner onto the High Road, and found a police car ablaze, and teenagers, some who looked as young as 10, ransacking a music shop. Inside the next store, a travel agent, a desk was on fire.

“It had taken 48 hours and a host of unanswered questions for the ripples of anger from the fatal shooting of Duggan, 29, to lead to civil unrest in Tottenham.

From that point on the contagion would spread with breathtaking speed, igniting riots and disorder in towns and cities across England.”

Looting and the right to shop

2011-08-12T15:20:00.005+01:00

This is a longer version of a piece I got published here.

As Londoners came to terms with rioting, the general reaction seemed to be anger at the mindlessness of it all. This was clearly nothing like the Arab Spring and nobody was occupying Trafalgar Square. The prevailing view was that it is all an excuse for looting and that the rioters’ main motivation was only greed.

Which is absolutely right, except there was no ‘only’ about it.

These were consumer riots and consumerism explains just about everything about what is happening.

We live in a consumer economy where our fortune is more dependent on what we consume more than what we make.

We live in consumer society where status to a great extent comes from the things we own.

We live in a consumer culture where we grow up believing that individuality and personality can come from brands and these brands are ideas to live by, more relevant than politics or religion.

The looters grew up immersed in consumption.

In 2008, when the global markets crashed, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged people to keep shopping. Our spending, we were told, could save the world economy and if we stopped shopping, we would destroy that economy. We were told we had a duty to consume.

Unfortunately, after the economy crashed, many people lost their jobs and thus the right to shop.

During the riots, people from the poorest and hardest estates in London took to the streets and went straight to the very places they had recently found themselves excluded from, shops like Curry's, Argos and JD Sports and cleaned them out. They didn’t go to Harrods’s or Selfridges, they went to their own high streets, to the shops they knew and stole the brands they recognised.

Reported on the BBC news website a Hackney resident called Catherine Holmes did something that few proper journalists seem to have done, and spoke to some of the rioters:

"We spoke to looters trying to get home, the only explanation they gave for their behaviour was that they had no money today.

"It is sad to think that these people are thinking of only the next moment, and the moment they have created is a nightmare."

Another Hackney resident, Pauline Pearce, was caught on film, out on the street bravely berating the rioters, telling them that far from being united in fighting a cause, they were just “running down Foot Locker.”

Back at the start of the twentieth century, in the early days of the advertising industry, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, worked on Madison Avenue working out ways of connecting unconscious drives like aggression and sexuality to brands. His legacy is a way of thinking deeply embedded in marketing and expressed in everyday concepts like brand image and personality. Perhaps what we are seeing on the streets of London is the consequence of all that aggression no longer being channeled through consumption.

Clegg Predicts a Riot

2011-08-12T10:07:00.001+01:00

The most surprising thing about the riots has been how surprised so many politicians seem to be. Not to mention the Met, who were caught flat-footed (sorry). Here's Nick Clegg a year or so ago, before the election, predicting riots if the Conservative's won on a thin majority and pushed through draconian cuts. He was commenting in the wake of riots in Greece over austerity measures imposed by a weak government. Yes, indeed.

The real anarchists

2011-08-12T09:51:00.001+01:00

Here's a good article on the use and abuse of the word "anarchy" from the Independent by Boff Whalley of Chumbawumba from the Indy. Well, I liked it anyway.

I can't help feeling that there something emerging culturally around anarchy. Maybe its because I've been reading What's Mine is Yours, the Collaborative Consumption book mentioned below together with The World That Never Was, by Alex Butterworth which is about the rise of anarchism in the years between the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution. Then there's all the surrealist and situationist stuff that's been popping up the the margins recently. Maybe its a symptom of economic breakdown and a lack of leadership.

Why shutting twitter down won't work

2011-08-12T09:27:00.000+01:00

Here's a good piece by Gizmodo on the idiocy and sheer hypocrisy of Cameron's proposal to try to cut rioters off of social media.

Levi's do Bukowski

2011-08-10T17:07:00.001+01:00

I'm liking this Bukowski-inspired Levis ad. Here's Tom Waits' reading of the "beat death in life" poem from this very blog just a few months ago.

I've been pontificating about this over here.

Hiut Denim 2

2011-08-10T15:56:00.002+01:00

On the way out of recession many good ideas are born. One of them may well be Hiut Denim. The people (a couple, I think) originally behind Howies and the Do Lectures are bringing jeans making back to Cardigan Bay. Cardigan Bay once made a lot of jeans and was the home of the last jeans factory in Britain to close. I love Hiut's Do One Thing Well mantra and I think they may be right in their belief that people are now interested in things that are both quality and British made. If "local produce" can work for food, then why not for jeans? Their site is now up and running. You can't buy anything yet but you can pre-order a yearbook.

Hackney resident puts the looters straight

2011-08-09T12:28:00.000+01:00

Her point of view is clear and precise and she is fearless. (cheers Ivan for the link)

Exquisite Corpse Experiment from IDEO

2011-08-03T18:02:00.001+01:00

Exquisite Corpse Experiment - Chapter One from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

I love this surreal, absurd, random and hypnotic little film. There is no narrative, just random crowdsourced words tagged to pictures from Flickr.

Exquisite Corpse is a surrealist technique where a group of people assemble sentences according to some pre-agreed rules - maybe they only know what the last person wrote.

It's from IDEO Labs and the link is worth looking at for a full explanation of what they are trying to do.

Social Proofing

2011-08-03T12:46:00.003+01:00

If people think that others are doing something then they are more likely to do it themselves. Early adopters of an idea, say Boris Bikes, a new fashion trend or the use of household recycling boxes, give the rest of us confidence that this is something we should try.

The idea of Social Proofing was identified thirty years ago by a psychologist called Robert Cialdini. (I came across it in the book What's Mine is Yours). In 2007, Cialdini tested reactions to the message in hotel bathrooms appealing to guests to reuse towels. He reworded the message in various ways - do it for the environment, do it for future generations, help the hotel save energy and to 'join fellow guests in helping save the environment' including the claim that 'almost 75% of guests use their towel more than once'. The last message was the most effective, increasing towel usage by about 34%.

People do what other people do - perhaps to fit in, perhaps not to be left behind.

This is similar to what Marks Earls talks about in Herd and also Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point.

It helps explain how trends and adoption curves work - when people become aware of the trend then the trend is more likely to grow, it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Collaborative Consumption

2011-07-26T12:49:00.007+01:00

Rachel Botsman Author and Social Innovator from theme media on Vimeo.
I've just got a copy of What's Mine is Yours, a book about the rise of collaborative consumption.

Collaborative Consumption describes all the new services that are emerging that help people share and swap things, rather than owning them.

In the video above, the author Rachel Botsman argues that “for the last 50 years we’ve been treated as passive, stupid consumers. The idea of being a consumer first and a citizen second is a really new idea that only kicked in around post-war, the nineteen fifties.”

The things that were once produced were generally dumb but, as objects become smart and social, we become smart and social again too.

Examples of Collaborative Consumption include SnapGoods which helps people rent goods via the internet; Airbnb allows people to rent their house out to holidaymakers; TaskRabbit is about finding people locally who will do a task for you, for a fee; Parkatmyhouse which is self-explanatory and Zimride helps you get a lift to work.

Sharing and swapping means making less stuff, which means less waste and therefore the environment benefits. But critically, it is also social; Collaborative Consumption is great way to get to know your neighbours.

There is a sense of getting back to something essential that was lost with consumerism. So many of the examples of collaborative consumption seem to be old practices, forgotten for a while but now being revived with help from the internet and because people are interested in environmentalism, worried about austerity, tired with owning too much and craving community. People have long borrowed their neighbour’s lawn mower, now it has become cool to do so.

Time magazine rated Collaborative Consumption one of ten ideas that could change the world. If the 20^th century was about hyper consumption, the 21^st could be about collaborative consumption. The movements mission is to encourage people is to share things rather than own them. This is like disowning ownership.

The Time article suggests that the end of ownership began with Napster before spreading across media and then beyond. Who would have believed even a few years ago that people would be giving up on the idea of owning a car or that home ownership would seem to be a pipe dream to the young.

It is the young who are driving the success of brands like Netflix in the states and LoveFilm in Europe; it the younger driver who has been the first to get into Zipcar and its competitors and it is the young in the UK who are giving up on ever becoming a first time buyer and starting to get their head around a life of home renting.

Steve Coogan on Newsnight

2011-07-13T14:42:00.002+01:00

Coogan rips into the News of the World deputy editor.

NewsCorp drops Sky bid

2011-07-13T14:39:00.000+01:00

This is the BSkyB Group share price over the last week, courtesy of Sky News I suspect they may well be relieved News Corp have just dropped their bid for the rest of Sky.

Crumbling Consent

2011-07-13T14:33:00.001+01:00

The illicit bond between police, media and politicians which has shaped politics in modern Britain is crumbling. In this article, Paul Mason analyses it from the perspective of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. Well worth a read.

Sabotage Times article

2011-07-05T11:58:00.000+01:00

Read my Sabotage Times article on conflict in advertising here

Savings versus Consumerism

2011-07-05T10:24:00.002+01:00

There must be something deeply flawed about a system where what is good for people, is bad for the market.

Immediately prior to the credit crunch homeowners withdrew a record amount of equity against against the value of their homes. Since the credit crunch they have been paying down mortgage debt. Which suggests many have seen the folly of borrowing to fund shopping sprees.

In this Indy article about homeowners continuing to pay off their mortgages at record rates, representatives of the financial sector argue that this is bad news for the High St and the economy.

Is their no alternative to this lose-lose situation? Is the choice between personal debt and recession the only one available? Evan Davis in his BBC2 series Made in Britain didn't think so. He argued that we should be investing our savings in British industry instead and helping reduce the deficit between our imports and exports.

The Art of Participation

2011-06-21T10:20:00.005+01:00

There’s a good essay by Ekow Eshun in today’s Indy on the rise of what he calls a participatory art movement. This involves artists working with the public to create political movements or experiences. Rather than painting or installations, art you look at, this is art you get involved in or the art of encounter. Eshun describes the, now imprisoned, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s response to his government’s refusal to properly investigate the corruption that led to the schools that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake being shoddily built in the first place. Weiwei created a blog that documented the details of 5000 of the children who died. "This investigation will be remembered for generations as the first civil rights activity in China,” the artist said. “It directly affects people's feelings and their living conditions, their freedom and how they look at the world. To me, that is art."

Eshun identifies participation as a trend by teasing out connections with other artists including Jeremy Deller, who recently towed a bombed out car from Baghdad across America, provoking conversations with locals about US involvement in Iraq as he moved from town to town.

If this is a movement, it seems to be partly about protest and growing politicization in the west, and also anti-consumerism - its quite hard to flog participatory art, given there is no tangible thing to sell. This is art as conscience, not commerce, to paraphrase Eshun. On this basis, the role of the public is changed too from a consumer of art, to a participant, part of a broader shift away from passive consumption to active participation in culture.

All choice is social

2011-06-17T17:10:00.001+01:00

There's a great insight at the heart of this RSA Animate film of Renata Salecl's theory of choice. When we make a choice, we never simply choose what we want. Instead, we choose what other people are choosing or we are obsessed by what other people will think of the choice we are making. Other people and our perception of what other people think, the Big Other in Lacanian psychoanalysis, affects every decision we make. Decision-making is not purely rational, neither is it just emotional - or non-cognitive as David Brooks argues in The Social Animal - ultimately it is social. Thinking about getting a new phone? Then you are maybe thinking that everyone else is getting an iPhone so maybe you should too. At the same time you might be worrying that if you don't get an iPhone people will think you are a laggard. Perhaps you'd rather that than people thought you were someone who just follows the crowd. So you won't get an iPhone, because you want other people to think you can think for yourself. At every turn, your decision is affected by others, it is social.

Slutidarity

2011-06-15T12:18:00.000+01:00

Some excellent slogans and characters from the London Slutwalk courtesy of the LRB blog

My favourite is Slutidarity

From Absolute Beginners to Primark

2011-06-06T11:54:00.001+01:00

At the start of every year, the hero of Colin MacInnes' novel Absolute Beginners sets aside the ten best singles he has bought during the previous twelve months and then chucks the rest in the bin. Pure pop consumerism, disposable, superficial and a long way from the obsessive hoarding of a completist. Primark brought such disposability to fashion and now women across the country regularly thin their wardrobes with the same brutal sense of purpose.

the difference between products and people or why the world of liking is a lie.

2011-06-06T11:32:00.003+01:00

Here's Jonathan Franzen in an essay in the New York Times on the dangers of being obsessed with being liked:

"The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie."

how digital sucks the soul out of art

2011-06-06T10:57:00.002+01:00

"Bennie knew that everything he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust!"

Find an excellent review of Goon Squad here.

Engagement DB report

2011-05-26T11:17:00.002+01:00

ENGAGEMENTdb: Social Media Engagement Study of the Top 100 Global Brands

View more documents from Ping Elizabeth

Koch Brothers and Tea Party Satire

2011-05-18T18:40:00.000+01:00

This is a great little satirical jab at the Koch Brothers, who are behind the Tea Party, using an ad parody. Came across this on Billy Bragg's Facebook.

Hiut Denim

2011-05-09T17:15:00.000+01:00

So, the bloke behind Howies has launched a new business, a jeans brand. "Quality jeans made in Cardigan Bay". I like his motto: do one thing well. He doesn't even have a website yet but the pic shows his first 5 tweets. I don't actually know him but it feels kind of exciting. Can't wait to see his product.

UK Uncut protests

2011-05-09T13:31:00.002+01:00

Interesting piece in today's Indy on the treatment of UK Uncut supporters by the police and media. Ironically, UK Uncut seem to be among the tamest, most moderate of government critics. Their methods tend to involve peaceful occupations and gluing themselves to the inside of shop windows, yet they are being singled-out for tough treatment. Couldn't be because their demands that corporations pay their taxes and their methods, which close shops for a few hours, are hurting businesses, could it?

Immersion and not the end of the book

2011-05-09T11:20:00.001+01:00

There's some good quotes on the future of books in the light of the internet and digital technology in this article by Robert McCrum in The Observer.

Umberto Eco in Not The End of the Book: "The computer returns us to Guttenberg's galaxy; from now on everyone has to read."

Frank Rose in The Art of Immersion: "a new type of narrative is emerging – one that's told through many media at once in a way that's nonlinear, that's participatory and often game-like, and that's designed above all to be immersive. This is 'deep media'."

David Shields in Reality Hunger: A Manifesto: "An artistic movement is forming." What are its key components?" His answer is randomness, spontaneity, reader participation, a fascination with artifice and authenticity, "a blurring to the point of invisibility of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction: the lure and blur of the real".

Pom wonderful presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

2011-05-03T17:39:00.000+01:00

Trail for new Morgan Spurlock doc, this time on product placement - a film about product placement, marketing and advertising to be entirely funded by product placement, marketing and advertising. Looks great

Spoof signs on the Central Line

2011-05-03T16:53:00.001+01:00

Someone else has been getting busy with the sign rewriting, this time on the Central Line.

Spoof Signs

2011-05-03T16:49:00.000+01:00

Sitting in the same seat day after day on a Brighton to London commute inspired David Askwith to get creative. He and a mate started devising spoof corporate signs. Then they published them as a book.

You can't beat death but you can beat death in life

2011-04-28T12:36:00.002+01:00

This is great and worth saving. Thanks Rob.

Protest is Good

2011-04-26T12:42:00.001+01:00

Jean Baudrillard once said that the only way to resist consumerism was not to consume, but to forage and live off society's discard. I wonder what he would make of the current swathe of protests against corporations, from UK Uncut protesting what they argue is corporate tax-dodging to anti-Tesco protests like this one in Bristol. Whether it's students or squatters, the people at the heart of the dispute are, however temporarily, living on the edge of consumer society. The film The Corporation argued that big companies, compelled as they are to always try to maximise their profit, act in a psychotic manner. They are compelled to exploit tax-loopholes and to expand relentlessly and they will do whatever they think they can get away with legally. If they don't, they are not maximising shareholder profit. Protests are therefore a check-and-balance on the corporations. We only need to look at the behaviour of the banks to see what havoc capitalism will wreak on itself in the absence of any proper regulation. On that basis, those who protest against the corporations should be thanked, and supported, not attacked. Maybe its because they are not so worried about careers and paying mortgages that they can take the risk of protesting. Society needs its protesters.

Are you angry or are you just shopping?

2011-04-26T12:14:00.000+01:00

We shop to alleviate boredom and we get bored when we shop. This film beautifully captures the blankness on shoppers faces, more dead-eyed consumers than inspired humans. Imagine no shopping. Imagine how dangerous all us billions of people would be if we weren't doped by mall muzak and half-price sales.

Brand Lines

2011-04-21T14:23:00.000+01:00

I think the queue outside Abercrombie and Fitch on Savile Row is hilarious. Whether it's there by necessity or is just a clever way of creating the impression of high demand, I'm not sure. But, it makes me think of bread lines in the old USSR...

or post-war Britain...

To recreate a regular occurrence from malfunctioning economic systems in order to signal the success of a modern brand is quite an irony.

Unobtrusive ads are creepy

2011-04-06T12:41:00.002+01:00

Nice little mood film from Howard Gossage on Facebook (oh yes) on the insidiousness of unobtrusive ads. "Most advertising," a woman in a focus group told me years ago, "creeps and crawls all over you." The good stuff doesn't. It stands out bold and proud and challenges you to deal with it.

http://vimeo.com/14550072

The Boredom Epidemic

2011-04-05T16:13:00.005+01:00

Perhaps it's all this austerity, maybe the distractions of consumerism no longer consume and distract us, but boredom is cropping up everywhere. An outbreak of interest in ennui is spreading from academia into popular psychology, literature and TV.

At the end of last year I came across an essay in Restless Cities by Chris Petit where he argued that the bored compensate for anxiety and depression by compulsive consumption. Petit cited A Philosophy of Boredom as a reference, which I’ve been reading and blogging about, but its also quite academic and heavy. It got me thinking someone should write a more accessible book on boredom and wandering through Foyles bookshop last week I come across Boredom, a Lively History by Peter Toohey, which attempts to deliver exactly what it's says on the tin. Today there's two references in the Indy to the just published novel The Pale King which takes boredom as it's subject and whose author, David Foster Wallace "was himself so bored while working on it that he committed suicide". Which reminds me that last year's latest addition to the growing number of Ideas conferences was Boring 2010 which set out to demonstrate that it was possible to find something interesting to say about even most dull and banal subjects. And finally tonight when I get home I plan to watch the second episode of Bored to Death, an excellent comedy written by Jonathan Ames and starring Jason Schwartzman as a writer called Jonathan Ames. Ames’s life is in the doldrums following the breakdown of his relationship and he decides on an impulse to reinvent himself as a private eye.

Why, at a time where we have instant access to so many distractions, is boredom so salient a topic? Perhaps we are developing distraction fatigue and maybe we’re becoming aware that a lot of so-called choice is illusionary. Like the supermarkets that claim to offer choice but only actually stock two brands plus their own label in any product line, popular culture offers little in the way of real diversity. We might have access to a lot of entertainment but much of that is formulaic and same-ish.

Hollywood is repetitive. The movie business seems to be increasingly driven by uninspired big budget remakes like The A-Team, reworks of old formulas like Hot Tub Time Machine or pillaging of classics like Bladerunner to create new franchises to be milked to oblivion.

Music is boring. Bennie, the record producer character in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad “knew that everything he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust!”

The web is shrinking. As more people spend more time online, a few sites get bigger and bigger. In terms of the number of sites visited by the average user, the web is getting smaller. For many people Facebook is the Internet.

Social media is atomising. While they may have connection to 1000 friends, the average Facebook user is only actively in contact with 6 or 7 of those people. All those pictures of babies, pets and drunken nights out that only 6 people will ever look at.

Politics is boring. All that middle-ground interchangeability between the British parties blands the life out of politics. Obama with that enormous tailwind of hope and optimism has delivered so little.

But being bored is not necessarily a bad thing. Once we get fed-up with all the little distractions and get enough of staring blandly at the wallpaper, we engage our creative drive and our anger and impatience and kick on through to the other side of boredom…(more to come)

Boredom

2011-04-01T13:13:00.000+01:00

A life spent running away from boredom is a life not worth living. Many of us live in terror of being bored. We surround ourselves with entertaining distractions. Why are we so scared of something that is so essential to the experience of modern life and can be a great source of creativity? Here's Lars Svendsen, author of A Philosophy of Boredom:

Maniacal Business Attack

2011-03-31T10:39:00.001+01:00

Common is about getting stuff done rather than talking about getting it done. Their first Maniacal Business Attack (MBA). (http://common.is/mba/index.html) is a three-day event where a small group of creative individuals come together to build and launch a new a social venture.

Everything that is popular is boring

2011-03-29T14:33:00.003+01:00

good article by Robert Hughes in Port magazine

Visualising Public Transport Networks

2011-03-25T10:46:00.003Z

Public Transport flows, UK from Joan Serras on Vimeo.

Beautiful film from UCL via LRB

Theft or Promotion?

2011-03-23T12:38:00.000Z

13 record companies in the US are trying to sue Lime Wire for $75 trillion or 5 times the US national debt. This is because they are pursuing damages for each instance of infringement and Lime Wire, which had thousands of users and millions of downloads had a lot of infringements. A judge has called it absurd, partly because $75 trillion is more than "the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877."

I reckon the record companies should be thanking Lime Wire for an absolutely enormous product sampling exercise. Surely $75 trillion is the value of free marketing Lime Wire created for the music industry. Even subtracting a few million in lost sales makes them quids in.

(From this article, via Matt Mason's Twitter)

How deep is your Jamie?

2011-03-21T15:40:00.003Z

How deep into the world of Jamie Oliver do you want to dive?

You could simply enjoy one or two of the 18 TV shows, 12 books and 11 DVD’s.

Or there are the official online videos, the monthly magazine, the chart-topping iPhone app and the Nintendo DS game?

Not deep enough? Well, there’s a range of food products, from fresh salads to oil and sauces, the oft-plugged-on-TV Flavour Shaker and the Home and Bath & Body products.

Maybe you fancy yourself as a bit of a Jamie style entrepreneur? If you do, you can sign up to host Tupperware style parties selling his products at a commission.

When the commission comes through why not sign up to Naked Wine and order some celebratory plonk.

Feeling lonely? Join his online community, subscribe to his blog, talk to fellow Jamie fans in forum discussions or share your cookery ideas on Foodwise, Jamie’s attempt at a Wikipedia for food.

Actually, why not go the whole hog and find a food loving soul mate on his dating tie-up with Match.com.

If that’s still not enough you could grab you coat and go eat at one of eight “Jamie” Italian restaurants. Perhaps you would prefer to try Fifteen, made famous in the TV series where he helped disadvantaged young people get into the catering business. Fifteen is now a global chain, offering apprenticeships in catering to young people in London, Cornwall, Amsterdam and Melbourne.

If you like the spirit behind Fifteen, you could make a donation to the Fifteen Foundation and help young kids get into catering or you could apply to set up a Fifteen in your own town.

After setting up Fifteen, Jamie took on School Dinners and rallied an army of supporters; then he set up the Ministry of Food to teach people in Rotherham how to cook properly at home. From Rotherham, he went to The US and launched the Food Revolution. Then he came back home to sort out schools themselves.

Jamie Oliver is much more than just a heavily merchandised celebrity. This is merchandising with a cause, offering people the chance to change their own lives or to help him change others. Check out his TED talk.

Jamie Oliver is a great example of an Immersive Brand. You can be a Jamie consumer; you can dive deeper and become a follower or you can go really deep and become a Jamie activist. How deep you want to go is up to you but the option is always there.

Technology helps make Jamie possible. Interconnecting layers of books, TV shows, online content, iPhone apps, web campaigns, ecommerce and social network connections make it easy for fans to engage and interact with the brand.

Jamie Oliver is a one-man brand with a big ambition, creating awareness around important issues, rallying support to causes and trying to instigate real change.

In his TED lecture, Jamie rallies against the influence of big brands, fast food and labelling. He is also famously the spokesperson for Sainsbury’s, one of those big brands. I’d guess he reconciles this by arguing that people rely on supermarkets and that it is possible to eat healthily while shopping in the places. Which is true. It is also true that in low-income areas it is hard to get good fresh veg, for example, from supermarkets. They will cite lack of demand for their refusal to stock it - only a minority want it and so its not worth our while offering it. This is hardly revolutionary. However, that is a gripe and I have a lot of sympathy with Julie Burchill’s view that the hard-up need supermarkets more than anyone.

Right now there are two Jamie Oliver shows on TV: Dream School and 30-Minute Meals. The former is an attempt to prove that inspiring teachers can help the most difficult kids; the other is an attempt to persuade the time-squeezed that it is possible to cook good food quickly. 30-Minute Meals may put him back in his TV chef heartland, but it is still TV with a mission: to start a food revolution. It’s essence seems to be: “C’mon, with a splash of the old confidence and a dash of self-belief, you can sort yourself out.”

If Everyone Looked the Same

2011-03-16T16:26:00.001Z

Brands in Hands Inspiration

2011-03-15T15:03:00.000Z

A journalist contacted the agency asking about the inspiration behind brands in hands. Here's what I wrote:

Firstly there has been a bit of a power shift demonstrated by the way in which people use the web and social media to make an impact on the world. From the Iran election campaign to recent events in Egypt, once seemingly invincible dictators are exposed to protest organised online. The web gives power to people who previously had none. That changes the game to a certain extent. Only to a certain extent, mind you. In Libya right now, Twitter is no match for guns and tanks, although it can at least keep attention focussed on the issue.

The game seems to have changed for brands as well as Middle Eastern dictators. Just as in politics, there has been a power shift in relations between brands and their customers. The BBC backed down in the face of a listener campaign to save 6Music from closure and Gap changed its mind about changing its logo. Brands in Hands is about embracing that shift.

Thirdly, advertising is changing. I plan ad campaigns and over the last few years a lot of the ideas we’ve developed have not been simply broadcast ads but ideas that people can interact with. Ideas you can do. For example, to launch a new season of football on Sky Sports we created Your Team, Your Dream, a personalised film. We are not specifically a digital agency, the biggest thing we did last year was a TV and poster campaign for Sky featuring Eric Cantona, but, interaction has become a big part of what we do.

Fourthly, our experience of the world is changing. Augmented Reality brings the virtual into the real world and melds the two together. Four years ago I was reading about AR in William Gibson’s Spook Country and last year my agency created an AR app called Streetmuseum to launch the Museum of London’s new galleries.

Finally, we may be changing, or at least the way our brains work is changing. There are a lot of quotes in the film – from people like Jay Rosen, Harry Jenkins, Clay Shirkey and Stephen Johnson – who are all generally enthusiastic about digital culture – but there is input from sceptics like Nicholas Carr too. Both Johnson and Carr argue that our constant interaction with digital media is changing the way our brains operate. Johnson thinks it is making us smarter, Carr thinks the opposite. Personally, I don’t think its black and white. The Internet can be a force for good and it can be a constant distraction. We have the power to choose how we use it and that’s what matters.

True Localisation

2011-03-14T18:42:00.000Z

Here is a proper local bookshop, a proper local pub and, just in case HMV do try it on, a proper local record shop. Don't fake it, baby. Lay the real thing on me.

Re-Localisation

2011-03-14T18:25:00.000Z

Waterstone's are giving a select 11 branches the autonomy to choose their own stock according to this article. This decentralisation is perhaps part of a trend, alongside the Pubco Enterprise Inns' decision to allow pubs to stock local ales. See below. So, what next? Will HMV try to reinvent itself as a local independent record shop?

bored with Le Francais

2011-03-14T16:10:00.001Z

Punk and Situationism in France

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yz3h8/Liberty_Fraternity_Anarchy_Le_Punk_Francais/

Out of Sight, out of mind for cigarettes

2011-03-09T19:12:00.001Z

A researcher from Newsnight asked me to give an opinion on the legislation announced today to ban tobacco displays in stores and. I thought it was a good idea. There seems to be a direct correlation between the reduced prevalence of images of smoking in society and smoking itself. The less we see of cigarettes, the less we smoke. The banning of tobacco advertising and sponsorship combined with the smoking ban have created an environment where it no longer seems to be socially acceptable to smoke. Some smokers may feel like a social pariah but surely fewer people smoking makes that an acceptable price. The problem is that the long term decline in smoking has levelled out since 2001. A hardcore 21% of adults smoke, people from poorer backgrounds are significantly more likely to smoke and a worryingly high proportion of young people smoke. The young are more brand conscious than any other age group. They want the edgiest brands and they avoid naff products like the plague which is why you will find an awful lot more people smoking Marlboro Lights and Silk Cut in clubs than Lambert and Butler Superkings. Marlboro and Silk Cut are brands invested with enormous resonance through decades of advertising and marketing. It will be interesting to see whether a plain pack, with only the name as a differentiator, will still resonate.

Brands in Hands

2011-03-04T15:17:00.004Z

My moment of fame on cardboard tube is here

http://www.brothersandsisters.co.uk/brandsinhands/

Immersive Streets

2011-03-02T13:05:00.000Z

Built in the first half of the 19th century, the Arcades in Paris were the world's first covered shopping streets. The Burlington Arcades in Piccadilly were England's first and The Argyle Arcade in Glasgow was Scotland's.

Liverpool One (originally known as the Paradise Project) has taken over 172,000 square metres, 34 streets and a park. Those streets are "policed" by it's own private security force who monitor everything through extensive CCTV.

Like the various arcades, and unlike developments like Bluewater or Westfield, Liverpool One has taken over public streets and immersed them in a technologically advanced, air-conditioned, secure environment. Paul Kingsnorth tells in Real England how Liverpool City Council traded an expensive renovation of a run-down area funded by private investment for the rights to those streets. Kingsnorth points out that "these are the streets of one of our major cities . But they no longer belong to the people."

The Crystal Island Project in Moscow proposed to cover "2.5 million square metres of the city under a "single envelope designed to enhance natural ventilation and daylight."" according to Slavov Zizek in Living in the End Times.

According to wikipedia Crystal Island was postponed due to the global economic crisis.

Hypocrisy is exposed by the wind of change - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent

2011-02-10T11:49:00.000Z

Another good piece on Egypt by Robert Fisk. The Intelligentsia of Silence indeed.

Hypocrisy is exposed by the wind of change - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent

Learning to enjoy conflict

2011-02-08T14:50:00.002Z

"Sanity," writes Adam Phillips in Going Sane, "involves learning to enjoy conflict and giving up on all myths of harmony, consistency and redemption." There's a decent interview with Phillips here.

The Mad Men Account by Daniel Mendelsohn | The New York Review of Books

2011-02-07T15:59:00.000Z

The Mad Men Account by Daniel Mendelsohn | The New York Review of Books

Why it's all kicking off

2011-02-07T15:54:00.004Z

Among Paul Mason's 20 reasons why it's all kicking off piece on current wave of protests around the world he points to the centrality of graduates with no future. Each generation expects a better standard of living than its parents and graduates expect a reward for deferred gratification. Instead, they are told to face a decade of indebtedness on a personal and a national level. The "prosperity story" has been replaced by the "doom story." These graduates are connected to a previously unheard of degree. They can get involved instantly in struggles of all kinds, from Egypt to the UK, from small to large. They can take a holiday from struggle when ever they want. As Mason points out, you could not dip in and out of the Miners Strike if you lived in a mining village. So, the doom story is becoming a fightback story.

2011-02-07T15:48:00.002Z

Why it's all kicking off

2011-02-07T15:19:00.004Z

Good piece by Paul Mason of the BBC on recent protests and underlying sociological factors. In particular, the combination of a graduate with no future, social media, memes and the ability pick and choose when to protest and when to take a day off.

the beginning of the end for pubco's?

2011-01-21T12:31:00.003Z

Interesting piece in the Indie about how some pubs are thriving by selling good local ales. Most pubs are tied to a Pub Co and are forced to buy their beer from them at an inflated price. Meanwhile, local ales are doing well. So one Pubco - Enterprise Inns - has relaxed its "beer tie"

and now allows it's pubs to buy in local ales, with excellent results.

more to follow

Invisible Graffiti

2011-01-19T12:31:00.004Z

"Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - its wet."
- Banksy

I found the quote on ARstreets

The other day at brothers and sisters we were discussing the potential of Augmented Reality for guerilla marketing. Imagine an Olympic hi-jack where we get into a stadium before the event and tag it for an AR app that allows smart phone users to see a piece of film, say a cheetah running in the 100m or maybe just a big logo from a brand who aren’t official sponsors.

This got me thinking about the mischief making potential of AR. The beauty of AR is that anything can be tagged – we have tagged streets for Streetmuseum and clothes for Brights and Stripes. Just about anything can be displayed including static images, animation and video. A whole street can be turned into an art gallery, the Houses of Parliament could be adorned with political messages, corporate HQ’s could be lampooned, Shrek could take Kate down the aisle at the royal wedding and nothing much could be done about it because there is nothing there. AR images only appear to exist in reality - they are always on the viewing device, never there on the street. And only those who know to look can see them. So what is there to prosecute? Nobody would be accidentally exposed to something they didn't want to see. No street or building would be vandalised there is nothing there. AR is invisible graffiti, art which isn't there, an imaginary gallery with messages only the chosen can see.

The potential for fun, mischief or downright sedition is huge.

Danny MacAskill takes Scotland

2011-01-18T15:37:00.001Z

Danny MacAskill takes Edinburgh

2011-01-18T15:35:00.001Z

Danny MacAskill of Inspired Bicycles. Film by Dave Sowerby

Technology is the new paint

2011-01-12T11:49:00.002Z

Google review of creativity in 2010

Life in a Day

2011-01-12T11:27:00.003Z

Life in a Day's idea is to record a single day on earth using video contributions from thousands of folk around the world.

It's premiere is at Sundance on 29th January.

Facebook is not quite the internet yet

2011-01-12T09:51:00.006Z

Infographic by Vincenzo Cosenza

Brazil and Japan are bastions of resistance to Facebook's plans to "connect the world" according to Rhodri Marsden in the Indie. Privacy is the key point of difference for the three big Japanese social networking sites that collectively keep Facebook's share down to 2%. Mixi, Gree and Mobage-Town all offer anonymity and half of their users know none of their connections. This could be a Japanese thing but, with worries about the long term consequences of Facebook embarrassment high, it might just be its Achilles heel.

Ted Hughes on thinking

2011-01-10T17:29:00.001Z

I found this on Russell Davies. Thanks Russell.

More evidence that Facebook is the Internet

2010-12-15T13:46:00.002Z

Lovely graphic found on the BBC showing the world mapped by Facebook connections. Each line runs between cities which have pairs of Facebook friends. The brighter the line, the more connections there are. As the article points out, the dark spaces in Africa and China show where Facebook has little presence at the moment.

The Influencers

2010-11-24T12:38:00.001Z

INFLUENCERS TRAILER from R+I creative on Vimeo.

A trend flickers into life

2010-11-19T12:43:00.007Z

Photo by utterlyutter

I'm reading an essay collection called Restless Cities. Recurring themes across the pieces are daydreaming and boredom, wandering and the discovery of the extraordinary in the everyday, Flaneurs and the derive, or drift, Baudelaire and Benjamin, Guy Debord and the Situationists and through it all, surrealism.

I flicked through a copy of a Sheffield freesheet called Article. This month’s theme is Drifting. Advice on how to drift through life. An introduction to the 'radical crackpots' the Situationists and Guy Debord. The psychogeographic drift or walking with no objective.

In Oh Comely magazine - keep you curiosity sacred - Beth Blom quotes Baudelaire's poem A Carrion.

At a conference talk a colleague described virtual creativity as a dream layer. A dream layer is a great and very surreal concept, evoking the subconscious, dreams and hallucinations. Apps like my agency's Streetmuseum cast a dream layer over a street while personalised films, like our own Sky Sports viral, are digital daydreams.

Meanwhile, Peter York has declared Bling dead and he's probably right. Excess seems wrong in the face of austerity. Recession needs to become a fully-fledged depression before we get misty-eyed over unattainable wealth again. The regular, every few years, shift from the outer-directed to inner directed has come along again. Rather than racking up debts buying the dream, we just dream. We wander aimlessly, flirt with our subconscious, stare out of cafe windows at the rain and see the extraordinary in the everyday. Which is surrealism.

And then Tim Burton announces that he wants fans to help him write a story by posting a line on Twitter. The technique is called Cadavre Exquis or Exquisite Corpse and was created by ...the surrealists.

The Culture Show, Dec 2nd, has Michael Smith do a piece on shopping malls where he talks about the arcades, Baudelaire and The Flaneur.

Millenials

2010-11-16T14:15:00.002Z

We All Want to Be Young from box1824 on Vimeo.

good film on how youth culture has evolved and what drives Millenials or Global Youth

The Mad Hatter

2010-11-14T14:48:00.009Z

Mad Hatter Cafe, Brighton
Photographed by Bill Maskell 24-03-03

This is what a cafe should be. High ceilinged, a mix of two, four and six seater tables, stools along a long window facing out, two leather sofas on an L- shape around a solid wooden coffee table and plenty of outside tables. Good coffee, a falafel my wife goes out of her way for and eccentric smoothies - Aloa Vera tastes exactly as you would imagine and has the texture of slime.

Music is folky-indie and recessive. One corner is a shrine to local groups and classes: Thai massage school, Bombay Jazz Cafe; the Poundance Night at Digital - entry £1 and drinks £1. There are flyers for Bonny Baby Clothing and invitations to take control of your life with hypnosis; pain management sessions are advertised alongside low cost acupuncture and a Hare Krishna festival. This is Brighton in all of it's colourful, dippy glory; Brighton for those who not only live here but spend most of their days in the town. This is the Brighton that happens while the likes of myself work in London. But on sunny Saturdays I sit outside, side by side with a mate, shooting the breeze like we're French or Italian and on wet Sundays like today I sit behind the window and dream through the raindrops while parents park their twin buggy and catch-up over breakfast, friends trade gossip and the fragile hope hangovers away with Camu Camu smoothies.

The Boredom Alleviation Business

2010-11-11T10:47:00.008Z

I've been reading Restless Cities and Chris Petit's essay, Bombing which has a great riff on consumerism and boredom. Petit: "shopping malls are boredom's cathedral: boredom underpins consumerism; defines leisure (and desire) which collapses into shopping; boredom invites terror (as its only cure)" He references Erich Fromm: the bored compensate for anxiety and depression by compulsive consumption.

This is the lot of the consumer: low attention span, over-entertained and in a constant state of distraction. Addicted to complex TV shows, brains rewired by too much hyperlinking. They are the most powerful force in the world. They are more powerful than the people who run either Gap or the BBC. They are willing to take on governments. And everything they do is driven by an insatiable need to alleviate boredom.

If you work in marketing or media you are in the boredom alleviation business.

Reality Hunger a manifesto by David Shields

2010-10-21T13:17:00.004+01:00

I've just finished reading this and I'm going to be reading it again and again. It is a passionate tirade against the limitations of traditional fiction, a rallying cry for format innovation and is crammed full of inspiration. It is basically a series of quotations mixed up with the authors own aphorisms.

It sweeps through reality TV, Hip Hop and the origons of writing, trial by google, the rise of misery memoir and the reality-based art which is Facebook among many other topics.

Shields originally wanted to leave all the quotes unreferenced. His lawyers persuaded him to put a reference list at the end which he encourages the reader to ignore. He should have ignored his lawyers.

All art is theft, after all.

Is Facebook becoming the Internet?

2010-10-06T10:34:00.003+01:00

According to the data above, Facebook is now the site with the second largest number of online video views. It has been the biggest picture sharing service for a couple of years now. In a focus group last week teenage girls told me that they checked Facebook every 20 minutes. They also said they couldn't see the point of Twitter which was "for celebrities".

For its fans Facebook is becoming email, YouTube, Instant Messenger, Twitter and Flickr rolled into one.

For many brands, a Facebook Connect page has replaced the microsite as the best way to engage and entertain their online audience.

For a while now Internet behaviour has been increasingly focussed around a few big players: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, Windows Live and, in terms of fame, Twitter. Each of those is trying in some way to do what all of the others do. Like supermarkets, or like banks in the 1990's and become the one stop shop for all activity in their sector.

Facebook looks like the Tesco or RBS of social media. Now, if they got together with Amazon they would have the web sewn up.

where ideas come from by Steven Johnson

2010-09-30T13:49:00.001+01:00

Glastonbury Explains Everything

2010-09-30T12:13:00.005+01:00

Sunday is Glastonbury ticket deposit day. Here's a homage in recognition of this venerable institution.

Intense, rewarding and safe, Glastonbury is a modern rite of passage.

The Glastonbury Festival is 40 years old, attracts up to 180,000 people and is at the centre of a music festival trend that includes hundreds of events in the UK alone, many modelled on the Glastonbury approach.

10 years ago it was possible to turn up on the Friday afternoon and get a decent pitch but now the site opens on Wednesday and is practically full by the end of the day. 5 days is long enough away from home comforts like a proper bed and shower to count as a lifestyle adventure.

The teenage festival virgin arriving for her first Glastonbury will soon come to realise that this temporary encampment somehow has its own culture handed down from festival to festival. She’ll hear the Glastonbury Roar, a sort of vocal Mexican Wave that sweeps around the site. Someone will tell her how an angel appeared in the sky behind the pyramid stage at the very first festival, she’ll wonder how long the standing stones have stood there (not that long at all) and hear talk of Glastonbury Moments, while wondering if she’ll have one her own.

During her stay she’ll see some of the biggest acts around alongside new and old bands. Between bands she’ll spend time in the Green Fields, chat with Buddhists, take a turn cycling at the pedal powered cinema, learn something about Greenpeace or Palestine, try her hand at some pre-industrial craft skills, hear a Tony Benn speech and some Attila the Stockbroker poetry, find out what steam punk is all about and stumble upon an unbilled hip hop gig at 2am in some corner of the site she’ll never be able to find again. Over the course of her festival she’ll maybe go Vegan, get a piercing, have her hair braided and her first drug experience, try tightrope walking and see at least one performance that will go down in history as a legendary Glastonbury gig.

Whether this will be her last festival or the first of many, she will have a mind-opening experience. Her parents will probably be glad to know that she had that experience not halfway around the world or amongst some heavy subculture scene, but in a fairly safe environment.

Ten years ago a wall was built around Glastonbury taking away forever the opportunity to jump the fence or, more usually, bung a dodgy security guard £20 to let you crawl through a hole. Around the same time the Travellers were refused their customary free entry. Instantly the festival was safer. Fewer tents were stolen, there was less overcrowding and the toilets coped better. At the same time, there were also fewer blokes selling Stella, cigarettes and dodgy weed on every crossroads all night long. It lost some edge but continued to grow in popularity.

Soon after the fence, Orange installed a mobile phone mast and it was possible to keep in contact with home at least for as long as your battery lasted. A couple of years later the Orange charging tent appeared, doubling up as a performance venue in its own right. Our teenage first-timer has been saved from what was once everybody’s Glastonbury nightmare – getting lost and separated from your friends.

Before mobiles, masts and charging tents, everybody had heard ‘lost at Glastonbury” stories about the horror of spending the weekend searching for a friendly face in a state of great anxiety. Of course, the converse could also be true. While few get lost in a bad way, few also have experience the positive side of unexpectedly being ‘freed’ from a social group and having a completely unexpected festival, meeting people and making new friends.

Mobile phones make getting lost at Glastonbury a rarer experience. Technology is the great enabler it makes the adventure possible, accessible, immediate or, in this instance, safer.

Glastonbury had become a safe place to be and it wasn’t just the parents of the teenagers who were happy; the festival crowd got older and more middle class. Parents with young kids and buggies became more predominant. New festivals, like Latitude, appeared catering specifically to this demographic. The Eavis family, organisers of the Glastonbury, worried about the crowd getting too old and booked rapper Jay-Z in 2008 to bring in a younger crowd. The festival immersion had gone mainstream.

The secret to understanding why Glastonbury works and why Burning Man works or any number of festivals around the world, lies not in scale or its duration, but in its brevity. The fact that it lasts only 5 days tells us everything about the festival.

Festivals are a brief, low commitment alternative to a Gap Year travelling or a few years of your 20’s spent living in a squat or a lifetime of dropping out and joining a counterculture. Glastonbury is tune in, turn on, drop out for a long weekend and then get back to normality. The most authentic festival in the world is some ways a plastic replica of an alternative lifestyle. Like a shopping mall is a replica of a genuine market.

That is not to take anything away from the cultural impact of the festival. Over its 40-year existence, several million people will have experienced Glastonbury and had their view of the world affected to some extent. That’s a lot of people who have encountered a counter culture and saw what people can be like when they are away from home and work and feeling unconstrained and free.

Understanding Glastonbury is key to understanding Immersion Culture because it is a low risk lifestyle adventures; rebellion light in a world of consensus and uniformity. They can be a battle against the bland that doesn’t involve a career sacrifice and they can be technology-aided escapes from office boredom.