I haven't browsed TechDirt in a while due to some onerous workload, but I recently returned to find this article and wonder aloud whether I should bother reading any more.
I'm not sure why I thought I would read here an interesting take on the balance between free speech protection, balanced against the need to protect children from unexpected exposure to mature content. You know, like the issue of whether stores should be criminally penalized if they sell M-rated games to children.
Instead, the author here scarcely mentions some Supreme Court cases while engaging in a cavalcade of insults and ad-hominem attacks. "Do-gooders on one side, real people on the other." (People who do good aren't real, and people who are real aren't good? What the fuck kind of cynical world do you want to live in?) "Prudish busybodies"? And a hearty helping of "I was a foul-mouthed kid, therefore [yours is/yours should be/what's wrong with you]?"
Nothing but a brush-off of the concerns that a kid watching his baseball idol or other celebrity use profanity might actually indeed, inspire the kid to use it? And what consequences s/he might face? Not just from his own "prudish busybody" parents, but moreso from his schoolteachers, or future employers? No point in going to see if there's any, you know, scientific research on the subject, or other expert opinions? Just a bunch of smart-mouthed insults?
Top-notch editorial journalism right there, yup...
What bothers me about the KFC ad isn't that it teaches bad manners (pleeeaaase) or makes fun of people with speech impediments, unless perhaps you're talking about the very small percentage of the population who is ONLY able to speak when they have food in their mouths. Curious how KFC thinks they all work at the same call center...
Anyway, what bothers me about the ad is that it's stupid and ineffective. The hook (people singing with food in their mouths) is somewhat memorable, but the message they want you to take away requires too big a leap in logic. The food is so good that I won't want to stop singing a ridiculous song about it with my co-workers, so I'll stuff my mouth completely full of the food? Is that really what I, Joe Consumer, am supposed to remember?
The pacing is terrible, too, with a painfully long (5 seconds is VERY long in a commercial) sequence right near the beginning with one of the women humming (no information conveyed) while we watch a chip getting dipped.
And doing the voice-over at the end in stuffed-mouth talk as well? That's just wasting your VO and your time. And it, and the whole commercial, violates one of the most important rules of advertising: never leave your audience feeling the OPPOSITE of what they should feel. In the case of a food commercial, you want to leave them hungry, or excited, or tempted. You do NOT want them to feel revolted, thinking about all of the disgusting people they know who cram their mouths FULL and then try to talk or SING. Honestly, who takes bites that big in the first place?
In my Negotiations class as an MBA student, we did an interesting case study called Luna Pen. I believe it's entirely fictional, but the long and short of it is that a German company acquired the Luna brand (premium fountain pens) and eventually discontinued the brand. Years later, they are made aware of someone selling new Luna pens in Southeast Asia. The young protagonist assigned to deal with the situation tracks the counterfeiter down as a Chinese businessman who has apparently reverse-engineered a few models and is making excellent copies and selling them in Thailand and thereabouts.
The first part of the case study asks you which of four options you would pursue as your first contact to the counterfeiter, which I believe go something like this:
1) A letter indicating that you are interested in doing business with him.
2) A letter that you would like him to contact you about his Luna Pen operations.
3) A cease-and-desist and that as the rightful holder of the Luna Pen trademark you are preparing legal action against him.
There was one other that was maybe halfway between my options 2 and 3. Most of the American students in the class went for option 2. A few went for option 1.
The two Chinese students in the class were the only ones who went for option 3, and were adamant that were they in the counterfeiter's shoes, they would be unlikely to even bother responding in any way whatsoever to a letter such as option 1 or 2.
Now, that doesn't mean that's what the end result has to be, and that doesn't mean that it's the fastest/best/ethical/most profitable thing to do, but in their minds it was the ONLY way to successfully start the dialog in that cultural context.
Having worked as a software engineer, and now as a technical marketer for a consumer electronics company, I have seen both sides of the argument that the originally-referenced blog post discusses. I have learned that there are four things that escape the brains of many armchair-engineers-who-post-dismissive-comments-on-tech-blogs:
1) You can be assured that there is at least one person in the world more clever or informed on a particular topic than you, and
2) There is a non-zero, and often quite large, probability that one or more of the aforementioned persons are working for the company you are dismissing, and
3) She/He/They have already thought of everything you're about to post, and several things that you didn't think of (many of them completely orthogonal to the engineering challenges), and have come up with the best solution they can given any reasonable constraints, and
4) They are going to laugh at how ignorant you sound, acting all snarky and authoritative, if they ever read your post.
As I try to remind myself of the above 4 things, I find myself posting much less and laughing much more.
I just took a close look at the abstract and, not surprisingly, the study claims none of the things that the press (including TechDirt here) are claiming it says.
It sought only to explore correlations, and pretends no causality at this point. If I still had access to journal databases, I'd like to take a closer look. But I suspect that the only bias I'd find is that of the tech press (and many commenters here) against any and all things which might possibly disagree with what they hold precious.
That and the rabid anti-Mormon bias, of course. But it's okay to hate Mormons nowadays, right? Did we already change from hating black people, Jews, and gays to hating Mormons, Latinos, and Muslims?
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by diadmer.
What the fuck happened to TechDirt?
I haven't browsed TechDirt in a while due to some onerous workload, but I recently returned to find this article and wonder aloud whether I should bother reading any more.
I'm not sure why I thought I would read here an interesting take on the balance between free speech protection, balanced against the need to protect children from unexpected exposure to mature content. You know, like the issue of whether stores should be criminally penalized if they sell M-rated games to children.
Instead, the author here scarcely mentions some Supreme Court cases while engaging in a cavalcade of insults and ad-hominem attacks. "Do-gooders on one side, real people on the other." (People who do good aren't real, and people who are real aren't good? What the fuck kind of cynical world do you want to live in?) "Prudish busybodies"? And a hearty helping of "I was a foul-mouthed kid, therefore [yours is/yours should be/what's wrong with you]?"
Nothing but a brush-off of the concerns that a kid watching his baseball idol or other celebrity use profanity might actually indeed, inspire the kid to use it? And what consequences s/he might face? Not just from his own "prudish busybody" parents, but moreso from his schoolteachers, or future employers? No point in going to see if there's any, you know, scientific research on the subject, or other expert opinions? Just a bunch of smart-mouthed insults?
Top-notch editorial journalism right there, yup...
KFC ad is stupid, not offensive
What bothers me about the KFC ad isn't that it teaches bad manners (pleeeaaase) or makes fun of people with speech impediments, unless perhaps you're talking about the very small percentage of the population who is ONLY able to speak when they have food in their mouths. Curious how KFC thinks they all work at the same call center...
Anyway, what bothers me about the ad is that it's stupid and ineffective. The hook (people singing with food in their mouths) is somewhat memorable, but the message they want you to take away requires too big a leap in logic. The food is so good that I won't want to stop singing a ridiculous song about it with my co-workers, so I'll stuff my mouth completely full of the food? Is that really what I, Joe Consumer, am supposed to remember?
The pacing is terrible, too, with a painfully long (5 seconds is VERY long in a commercial) sequence right near the beginning with one of the women humming (no information conveyed) while we watch a chip getting dipped.
And doing the voice-over at the end in stuffed-mouth talk as well? That's just wasting your VO and your time. And it, and the whole commercial, violates one of the most important rules of advertising: never leave your audience feeling the OPPOSITE of what they should feel. In the case of a food commercial, you want to leave them hungry, or excited, or tempted. You do NOT want them to feel revolted, thinking about all of the disgusting people they know who cram their mouths FULL and then try to talk or SING. Honestly, who takes bites that big in the first place?
Awful, stupid, terrible commercial. D-, try again.
Sometimes the threat is expected.
In my Negotiations class as an MBA student, we did an interesting case study called Luna Pen. I believe it's entirely fictional, but the long and short of it is that a German company acquired the Luna brand (premium fountain pens) and eventually discontinued the brand. Years later, they are made aware of someone selling new Luna pens in Southeast Asia. The young protagonist assigned to deal with the situation tracks the counterfeiter down as a Chinese businessman who has apparently reverse-engineered a few models and is making excellent copies and selling them in Thailand and thereabouts.
The first part of the case study asks you which of four options you would pursue as your first contact to the counterfeiter, which I believe go something like this:
1) A letter indicating that you are interested in doing business with him.
2) A letter that you would like him to contact you about his Luna Pen operations.
3) A cease-and-desist and that as the rightful holder of the Luna Pen trademark you are preparing legal action against him.
There was one other that was maybe halfway between my options 2 and 3. Most of the American students in the class went for option 2. A few went for option 1.
The two Chinese students in the class were the only ones who went for option 3, and were adamant that were they in the counterfeiter's shoes, they would be unlikely to even bother responding in any way whatsoever to a letter such as option 1 or 2.
Now, that doesn't mean that's what the end result has to be, and that doesn't mean that it's the fastest/best/ethical/most profitable thing to do, but in their minds it was the ONLY way to successfully start the dialog in that cultural context.
The 4 things every tech blog commenter should remember.
Having worked as a software engineer, and now as a technical marketer for a consumer electronics company, I have seen both sides of the argument that the originally-referenced blog post discusses. I have learned that there are four things that escape the brains of many armchair-engineers-who-post-dismissive-comments-on-tech-blogs:
1) You can be assured that there is at least one person in the world more clever or informed on a particular topic than you, and
2) There is a non-zero, and often quite large, probability that one or more of the aforementioned persons are working for the company you are dismissing, and
3) She/He/They have already thought of everything you're about to post, and several things that you didn't think of (many of them completely orthogonal to the engineering challenges), and have come up with the best solution they can given any reasonable constraints, and
4) They are going to laugh at how ignorant you sound, acting all snarky and authoritative, if they ever read your post.
As I try to remind myself of the above 4 things, I find myself posting much less and laughing much more.
Better reporting, please.
You would think a tech website would put forth at least a smidgen of effort to figure out what's wrong with this statement in the linked article:
"The 70 year old homeowner was angry that he had lost his cable, and was unable to get his new DTV converter to work properly."
As it turns out, the dude's cable just got shut off.
Original story: http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/local_story_049234843.html
The study didn't not seek to establish causality.
I just took a close look at the abstract and, not surprisingly, the study claims none of the things that the press (including TechDirt here) are claiming it says.
It sought only to explore correlations, and pretends no causality at this point. If I still had access to journal databases, I'd like to take a closer look. But I suspect that the only bias I'd find is that of the tech press (and many commenters here) against any and all things which might possibly disagree with what they hold precious.
That and the rabid anti-Mormon bias, of course. But it's okay to hate Mormons nowadays, right? Did we already change from hating black people, Jews, and gays to hating Mormons, Latinos, and Muslims?