Screenwriter John August recently blogged about the Bechdel test, a (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek way to determine a film’s level of feminism.  It consists of three questions you can ask about any film:

1. Are there two or more female characters with names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. If they talk to each other, do they talk about something other than a man?

Obviously, the test itself isn’t the point.  It’s intended to start a conversation about our media, our culture and, ultimately, why certain POVs (namely, that of straight white males) are so dominant compared to everyone else’s.

Nonetheless, as this video illustrates, you’d be surprised how many hit films fail the test.

As one of August’s commenters noted, it’s not just films that fail the Bechdel test, but novels and plays as well:

The same oversight exists in our nation’s public and independent high school English classes. Last year the most taught books in America were: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Huckleberry Finn, Julius Caeser, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, and The Odyssey… All of these texts fail the Bechdel test, too. Except for The Odyssey. Go figure.

So, it seems male-focused media has dominated our culture for centuries, and film is just the latest example of a classical bias reasserting itself.

(Un)fair enough.

What’s interesting to me is that film might also be the hardest medium to equalize.

Dudes in Motion

In Robert McKee’s screenwriting guide Story, he explains the differences in our popular media formats:

• Novels are tales of internal conflict, expressed through monologues
• Plays are tales of interpersonal conflict, expressed through dialogue
• Films are tales of external conflict, expressed through action

Again, as with the Bechdel test, there are exclusions, exceptions and overlaps.  But generally (and financially) speaking, McKee’s right: history’s most profitable films have been blockbusters built on spectacle.

Film is motion.  Film is action.  Films must be dynamic in order to justify paying $12 to sit in a dark room filled with strangers, all sharing the same communal experience of being driven to emotion by a series moving images.

Which is why I’m not so sure the Bechdel test, which hinges on two female characters talking, is an appropriate litmus test for film.

For a film to “work,” the action must solve the problem.  Thus, a better question might be whether a film’s female characters are able to solve their own problems without relying on the aid of the male characters.

(Of course, that still doesn’t excuse the Bechdelian failures of Shakespeare, but it’s worth mentioning that his plays were written in an era when all female roles would have been played by male actors anyway, so it’s something of a moot point.)

All of which also leads me to think, inevitably about the Internet.

Blog a Mile in My Shoes

If novels are the story of “s/he,” plays are the story of “them,” and film is the story of “it” (aka “the event”), then blogs, podcasts and videoblogs are the story of “I.”  And since the world is basically divided down the middle between males and females, that should mean that the web would be the most diverse pool of stories on the planet, right?

So why can I personally name so many more straight white male bloggers than I can any other social media demographic?

Simple: I’m a straight white male.  As such, I seek out the stories I can most easily identify with.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t also read blogs written by writers of different genders, ethnicities, ages and sexual orientations.  In fact, that’s why I believe the Internet can equalize the arguments created by the Bechdel test.

It’s Easier to Feel You When You’re Cheap

Films are expensive to make, which means they must appeal to the widest possible demographic in order to earn their money back.  And because they’re primarily made by white males, they’re primarily made for white males by default.  That’s the residual self-identification of the film industry, which was founded by white males and is only now evolving into a truly multicultural talent pool.

And yet, when’s the last time you watched a film about a culture other than your own, or a character you couldn’t immediately identify with?  (I know, I know: Slumdog Millionaire, the “Hey, we elected a black guy so we can stop talking about racism now” equivalent of the Academy Awards.)

Meanwhile, when’s the last time you read a blog (or a tweet) by someone who didn’t resemble you in a lineup?  Probably five minutes ago.

Now that it’s so easy for individuals to express themselves online, the inner thoughts of “others” are more accessible today than they’ve ever been before.  We don’t need bloated Hollywood productions, marketing armadas and bankable stars to convince us that someone else’s POV is worth our time and money to explore; we just need two minutes and YouTube.

Will this proximity to (and seeming acceptance of) “the other” online eventually lead us to be more tolerant of “other” POVs in more traditional media?  I think that’s inevitable, though it won’t happen completely until diversity is proven to be reliably profitable.

Until then, we’ll be stuck with more recreations of the same stories we’ve all seen for decades:

The ones that sell.

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I just finished the first book I’ve devoured in more than a decade.

Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution details the making of the 5 Best Picture nominees at the 1968 Academy Awards, from their initial concepts through their critical and public reception.  Two of those films, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, centered on race relations during the year when Sidney Poitier became the country’s most bankable star and Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.  Another of those films, Doctor Dolittle, was a money pit that bought its Oscar nominations through old-fashioned studio graft and bribery.  And then there were Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the two films no one in Hollywood wanted to make and the ones that wound up redefining Hollywood, filmmaking and America itself.

Not since Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls in 1999 have I inhaled a book so quickly.  Not coincidentally, both books detail the seismic shift between the vintage Hollywood studio system and the “new Hollywood” influenced by New York, television and theater.

The films made during this era — Chinatown, Shampoo, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver, etc. — relied on unconventional actors, complex narratives, location shoots, sexual freedom and moral ambiguity.  They reshaped the way films are made, judged, consumed and remembered.  And perhaps more than anything else, they expanded the world’s expectations of what an American film could be.

In short, an entire generation got excited about movies.

All of which makes me wonder…

What Could Web Content Be?

Whenever I think about our evolving media forms, I’m reminded of something John Herman told me (and everyone else in the room) in 2006.

At the very first PodCamp in 2006, John — who is a many of many titles, including “video instructor” and “Pac-Man” — intended to lead a session about the do’s and don’ts of web video.  But after sitting through numerous sessions prior to his own, and hearing how everyone else does what they do, John scrapped his original idea and spoke instead about something even more useful:

Not following the rules.

John had recently bought a DVD set of vintage films made during the early days of cinema, and he’d been amazed at how many of the “rules” we take for granted in modern cinema — shooting establishing shots, filming two people in conversation at opposing angles, etc. — were completely absent from these films.

John realized he’d stumbled across media that had been created before we all agreed on how that media should be created, and he was worried that web media was about to enter a period of “rule-making” that might rob us of our creativity.

That Was Four Years Ago.

Since then, we’ve had precious few “breakout” web creations, and what does succeed online remains mostly confined to the web itself.  Those of us who can’t understand why web content hasn’t been embraced by the mainstream should first admit a harsh truth:

In our rush to monetize social media, we forgot to create experiences people want.

If you want to see a movie or a stage play, you buy a ticket.  If you want to read a story, you buy a book.  And if you want to listen to the radio or watch TV, you need to buy the device in question.

But the Internet just comes with your computer.

Yes, you have to subscribe to the web.  And yes, the web costs money to access.  But you’d do that whether people were creating original web content or not.  You’d do it just for email, news, peer communication and streaming media.

You pay for the Internet because you need it, not because you want what’s on it.

Blogs? Podcasts? YouTube?

Those Are Supposed to Be Free, Right?

People don’t pay for what they don’t need or want.  And no one needs or wants web media that’s a cheap approximation of the same stories and experiences they can obtain better elsewhere.

The reason The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde shocked Hollywood is because they spoke to America’s youth.  Sure, these films were groundbreaking on a technical and narrative basis, but that’s film buff talk; what these films did was connect with, represent and empower an entire generation’s point of view.

And people are always willing to pay (repeatedly) for the opportunity to see, share and absorb an experience that excites them.  (Fun fact: By the end of 1968, The Graduate was the third-highest grossing film ever.)

Unless we start creating web-based content that electrifies audiences — content, I should note, that’s specifically designed for the experience of the web, rather than shoehorning old media forms into new media tubes — we’re squandering a golden opportunity to define ourselves through the stories we tell.  It means we’re really just waiting around for someone else to make the rules, because we don’t think we have anything to say.

And maybe we don’t.  Which could explain the whole conundrum.

But there is a bright side.

See, the studio collapse of the 1960s led to the Hollywood upheaval of the 1970s, which in turn spawned the era of blockbusters like The Godfather and Jaws.

So, by that rationale, we’ll all be swimming in money any day now.

We just have to change the world first.

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Last year, Barrett Garese wrote a thought-provoking essay about the future of film, TV and the web.  When I realized my response to his post was longer than a single comment ever should be, I blogged my response on my old blog.  One week later, I relocated from Blogger to WordPress and most of my old thoughts were left behind.

Now, this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about media forms.  And as I started to write today’s post, I realized Barrett’s essay and my response are still as relevant as they were a year ago.  So I’ve republished my old post below, with a new afterword.

********

As a former agent at UTA, Barrett Garese has better insight into the future of media than most of us do, and he’s blogged a fascinating essay about where he thinks film, TV and web content is headed. (In a nutshell, he believes the key is to capitalize on the inherent differences of each platform, rather than insisting on convergence.)

While reading his essay, I realized my own response would be longer than appropriate for his comment column, so I’ve posted it here. My thoughts will make more sense if you’ve read Barrett’s essay as a primer, but I think these points stand on their own as well.

I’ll Stop the World and Converge With You…

The convergence of film, TV and web is happening, but that doesn’t dilute the power of each individual experience.  Film is still film, TV is still TV, web is still web, etc.  But what this does create is a NEW possibility: the convergent format, in which content is specifically designed to either:

A) feel different across all platforms (i.e., the viewing experience is engineered to suit each specific screen size or format.  For example, producers could edit different versions of the same show by using different shots or angles — such as including more motion on TV or film, but more closeups and static shots for web and mobile.)

… or:

B) be different across all platforms (i.e., the web version of a show is completely different, while still complementary in theme, to the film or TV version.  For example, a TV series could unfold in real time, but the show’s website could post weekly 3-minute flashbacks that add context to last week’s conflicts).

Your Home Theater Is Not Actually a Theater.

Audiences anticipate different experiences based on the distribution method.

We expect to immerse ourselves in a film experience (minus the live distractions), while we expect to be distracted from the TV experience (because we’re at home). Thus, we’re already anticipating a different kind of content to be shared across those varied platforms — and when the end result doesn’t match our expectations, our engagement with that content may suffer. (Or, it may surprise us.)

We also expect a difference in on-screen quality relative to the effort it takes to obtain the image.  For example, driving to a theater at 7 PM should reward me with a higher quality experience than watching something on my phone at 3 AM.

And, we expect the content to connect with us on levels that equal our applied (and uninterrupted) attention.  Mindblowing films can’t be processed in 5 minute increments via stolen wi-fi during your lunch break, yet 3 hours in a theater had better provide you with a deeper and more profound experience than 30 consecutive episodes of Tiki Bar TV (which, it should be said, I love).

LOOK AT ME.

The biggest expense for online content should be promotions. You can create an amazing show for $5, but you’re still releasing it into a medium that A) not enough people are paying attention to, yet which is B) paradoxically flooded with crap (which may explain A).

If I were to produce a new web series (after concluding Something to Be Desired), I’d be sure that the promotional plan was in place before the first episode ever hit the web.  The days of “throwing it out there and seeing what happens” are best left to people experimenting in their own free time, not people who expect to gain the traction that validates (both artistically AND financially) their investment of time, money and effort.

Whither the Studios?

Eventually, existing corporate studio behemoths will become distribution companies that happen to have (exclusive?) contracts with production houses. Instead of producing AND distributing their own in-house content, they’ll profit from their primary assets (reach and volume) and leave the creative aspects to contracted producers — who will in turn be grateful to not have to worry about being both creative and ubiquitous at the same time.

That said, there will always be exceptions. In the long run, it’s still cheaper for Verizon to produce its own web shows than it is for them to subcontract with a production company, and it’s still more profitable for an indie prodco to bootstrap their way into self-distribution than it is for them to produce their own content but only keep a percentage of eventual revenues.

A Soap Opera Without the Soap Had Better Be a Damn Good Opera

Content producers need to rely less on advertising and more on the inherent value of the content itself. Gone are the days when content is produced as a lure to hook viewers into sitting through commercials — nor can content *be* produced under a presumed business model that eyeballs = advertising opportunities = profit.

If you cut out the middleman of advertising, what are you left with?

You’re left with an audience who’ll pay you directly for what you create — or for the experience it creates in them — rather than a vessel with holes waiting to be plugged by commercials.

This also impacts media that’s produced for traditional, large-scale distribution. Just because a show isn’t pulling in the millions of eyeballs it needs to validate its TV time slot, it doesn’t mean that show couldn’t be profitable at a lower operating cost with web-based distribution.

If I were the producers of a canceled darling like Pushing Daisies (and if I still owned the rights to that property), I would shrink the budget, post 15-20 minute episodes (or segments) online, and invite the fans to pre-pay for next season’s DVD in advance.  That initial influx of cash could be used to fund part of the upcoming season, which means the prodco isn’t scrambling to line up sponsors now and then waiting for a year-end DVD windfall to break even.

Afterword

Since Barrett and I forecast the future of web media one year ago, services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have come to my attention.

As “crowdfunding” sources, these sites enable aspiring artists, authors, filmmakers and designers to obtain the funds necessary to launch their ideas without begging for traditional sponsorship, investors or distribution deals.  For example, filmmaker Gregory Bayne raised more than $25,000 to fuel one documentary, while author Robin Sloan nearly quadrupled his initial funding request of $3,500.

So… if we can free ourselves from the need for advertising, and if crowdfunding now makes it easier to get more complicated projects off the ground… what might the future of easily-funded, “owe-nothing” media-driven business models look like?

And, how will the media created by these new artrepreneurs change our future predictions?

Image by perreira.

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Do yourself a favor: stop reading Copyblogger.  If you really want to learn how to blog, read Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs; it’s the only writing guide you’ll ever need, because it has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with making ultra-personal, compulsively readable arguments about anything.

Why This Book Matters

Despite being published in 2003, Puffs reads like a hyper-modern guidebook for our currently self-obsessive culture.  Yes, it preceded the explosion of MySpace, YouTube and Twitter, but the absence of web-related case studies in Puffs* actually reinforces my point:

In 2003, Chuck Klosterman created the blueprint for writing the kind of blog you’d kill to be known for today, and all before anybody knew what a blog was.

But there’s a problem: intent.

Chuck Klosterman is a career hybrid of journalist, essayist and memoirist.  He’s a best-selling author and pop culture deconstructionist.

You write about SEO.

So where’s the overlap?  Easy: it’s all in the way you make your argument.

Listen to Me, and I’ll Say Something That You’ll Think Is Amazing

Simply put, Chuck Klosterman may be the best contextualizer of pop culture writing today.

His explanations of how and why our culture shapes our reality is the kind of writing that makes you think, “Of course; that’s so obvious!” AND “I never would have thought of that!” at the same time.

This makes Chuck Klosterman the kind of expert you want to be: a highly-opinionated amateur whose articulate assertions about “the way things are” have elevated him to cult-like status in the minds of people who believe Chuck Klosterman is “just like me.”

How does he do it?  By employing the same literary devices that have been adopted by the very bloggers you quote endlessly:

• Start with an authoritative argument that seeks to define something anew.
• Cite a vast array of facts that imply your encyclopedic knowledge of the subject.
• Use indefensible phrases like “this is perhaps the most ___ aspect of ___”
• Seemingly concede others may be right… “but.”  Then, disembowel their POV.
• Embed your subjective experience into your otherwise objective dissertation.
• Conclude your argument on an ambiguous note that betrays the entire venture as your own personal attempt to better understand your own consciousness, rather than the generalized education the reader had initially presumed it was meant to be.

In the end, you’ll have said something that may or may not mean anything to anyone but you, but you’ll have provided your audience with ample opportunity to draw their own conclusions.

What Billy Joel’s Worst-Selling Albums Can Teach You About Social Media

You may not think pop culture and social media necessarily overlap, but here’s the kicker: the unifying themes among the 18 essays published in Puffs are the exact same themes that fuel our social media-driven culture.

For example, Klosterman covers such diverse territory as:

• How breakfast cereal mascots train kids to become hipsters.
• Why pornorgaphy made the Internet acceptable, and vice versa.
• How The Empire Strikes Back created Generation X.
• Why the otherwise forgettable tween “comedy” Saved by the Bell succeeds as a litmus test for your own understanding of how “the real world” works.
• What it means to have known a serial killer — and what that says about fluidity of our individual morality.

The pattern?  Like social media, pop culture creates your own reality.

When Klosterman explains how Billy Joel has written some of the most universally-relatable pop songs ever, but we rarely notice how relevant Billy Joel actually is because he consciously rejects any attempts to “brand” himself, you realize that same lesson applies to your brand — or lack thereof.

And when Klosterman declares that MTV’s “The Real World” ceased to document “reality” after its first season and has been creating reality ever since, it blows your mind a little.  Then you realize his central thesis — that a generation has grown up realizing that the only way they’ll ever get to be on a “reality show” is by being a “reality show type” — is undeniably true, and you can’t help but take his side.

Debunking the Deconstructionist

Make no mistake: you could easily debunk every assertion Klosterman makes.  But this in no way devalues his skills as a writer; if anything, it makes him even more readable, because you find yourself forming your own arguments as you’re reading his.

For example, he claims best-selling “Wal-Mart country” artists like Toby Keith  and Trisha Yearwood deserve their success because they document the human condition more simply — and, therefore, more relatably for the masses — than Bob Dylan or Liz Phair.

Obviously, the flip side of that argument (which Klosterman glosses over) involves cultural isolationism, geographic limitations and flaws in our educational and media distribution systems.  But Klosterman doesn’t explore that side of the big picture.

Why not?

Probably due to one huge stumbling block created by his preferred format: length.  If he writes too much, he knows his essays will become too dense for us to read in a single sitting.  And shouldn’t pop culture analysis be as digestible as pop culture itself?

Besides, there’s also the matter of being prolific.  Every spoke on the argument wheel is an opportunity for another article, another essay…

… or, if you prefer, another blog post.

* NOTE: I’ve only read the original 2003 hardcover printing of Puffs; the recent reprint evidently contains new essays, which may be more web-centric.  Klosterman has also written in Esquire, The Believer and beyond; his latest collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, is now at the top of my to-read list.

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As you may have heard, the Mid-Atlantic US (in which I currently live) got hammered by a massive snowstorm this weekend.  Weather reports had been sensationalizing the potentially apocalyptic effects of the storm for days, warning that we could see a record snowfall and complete paralysis of city functions.  And if you doubt that people still take the media seriously, you should have been in any east coast grocery store on Thursday night: everything was wiped out.

Saturday morning, Ann and I awoke to the full brunt of the destruction.

Rufus needed his morning walk, and there was no way around it: we had to go outside.  Armed with a shotgun, a lantern and a blowtorch, we opened our front door with a mix of soul-rending trepidation and a sudden resurgence in our childhood beliefs in God — because when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arrive wearing ski masks, you can never be too careful.

Amazingly, all the buildings on our block were still standing.  The cars had not caved in beneath the mountains of precipitation.  There were no sirens, no wailing children trapped beneath the rubble, and no marauding gangs of anarchists raping and pillaging the survivors.

So we dug a little walkway midway down the block so Rufus would have a place to poop.

Then we went back inside, and we turned on the news, and IT WAS INSANE.  Somehow, the same morning news anchors who are on TV every week had managed to get to the station!  Neither of them looked like they’d had to cannibalize their loved ones in order to get out of the house. In fact, one of them was laughing at a picture someone had sent in of a dog in a snowsuit.

HOW WAS MASS COMMUNICATION STILL WORKING??? WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE PARALYZED!!!

Too confused to function, we went back to bed, mostly to conserve our strength in case we needed to light flares on the rooftop later and help guide the evacuation planes.

But by noon, we once again ventured outside (this time with only a pistol and a hatchet, in case we needed to run) and discovered that our neighbors were not only not dead or eating their own young, but they were shoveling out their stairways, sidewalks and cars.  They were even talking to each other, which never happens.

By this afternoon, a full 24 hours after we were supposed to have borne witness to the final sub-arctic battle between good and evil, Ann and I were digging our car out from its snow tomb and romping in the park with our dog.  Other neighbors were sharing shovels and helping one another chip away at their icy vehicles or sidewalks.  Our next-door neighbors, who never speak to us, even managed to find the time to blatantly ignore us while walking past us!

If they have time to be petty and vindictive over perceived slights, how much of can Armageddon could this possibly be?

And that’s when it hit me:

We got through it.

The world was supposed to have ended (at least by modern meteorological standards), but it didn’t.  Somehow, despite all advertised odds, we were all still functional.  One guy was even going to work, which is as American as you can get during a crisis of biblical proportions.

And that got me thinking…

The country was supposed to have collapsed during eight years of Bush tyranny.  But we got through it.

The country could have collapsed during our current financial meltdown.  But we’re getting through it.

And Obama could still turn this nation into a socialist collective, unless the GOP outwits him and turns it into a fascist dictatorship first.  But we’ll probably get through that too.

In fact, there’s never been anything that’s happened in this country — and, in broader terms, on this planet — that the bulk of us haven’t gotten through.

Yes, we’ve had disasters and war and terror and plagues and homicides and genocides and secessions and depressions.  Yes, we’ve been inconvenienced and had to sacrifice.  Yes, we’ve abused and taken advantage of.  And yes, we’ve been trained to believe that things can only ever get worse.

And yet, regardless of what life throws at us, we’ve always gotten through it.

Which, finally, makes me wonder one last thing…

What If We Didn’t Spend Our Entire Lives Worrying About “What Might Happen?”

If we weren’t always petrified about rain, snow and murder, our local news would have to find something else to report.

If we weren’t entirely convinced that one of our political parties was going to drive our 200-years-young nation to ruin, our national news (and, perhaps, our politicians) would have to find something more useful to do.

And if we weren’t perpetually preoccupied with our immediate concerns about our own health, wealth, relationships and social standing, we might actually find the energy to move forward in the direction we’re so certain someone or something “out there” is preventing us from reaching.

In the end, what prevents us from being amazed at our own resiliency is just how commonplace the act of survival really is.  The world isn’t perfect, and neither are we, but we always manage to find a way to scrape by — and sometimes, we even make the future better than the past we grew up in.

Just ask your parents, or your grandparents, or anyone who’s fled to where you’re living now from a homeland they simply couldn’t bear to live in anymore; they’ll tell you that tomorrow has at least a 50% chance of being better than today, and unlike we modern cynics, they’ll believe it.

And if tomorrow happens to be worse than today?  Trust me:

We’ll get through it.

Lately, I’ve been arguing against the perpetual “us vs. them” method of storytelling because I think it’s ruining our ability (and desire) to understand each other.  Opposing groups have always been quick to condemn “the other,” but the degree to (and zest with) which we do it these days borders on alarming.

A few days ago, Michael Hasko tweeted something that sums up our increasingly polarized world:

Apparently any sort of dissenting comment on a message board is trolling. -sigh-

And he’s right.  While you might think “social” media should involve an exchange of mutually-respected POVs, that’s rarely the case.  Instead, like-minded tribes flock together and hurl stones at one another with such zeal that anyone offering even a mildly disagreeable opinion is immediately branded as The Enemy.  With “discourse” like this, is it any wonder we all cling so desperately to our own fishbowls and echo chambers?

Since when did we become so convinced of our own infallibility that we’re now completely unwilling to consider the opinions of others?  Shouldn’t global access to information make us more skeptical of absolutes, and therefore more accommodating of our individual differences?  Or maybe it’s just the opposite: when we’re presented with so many opposing viewpoints, perhaps we cling to our own ever more fiercely because admitting we might be wrong would undermine one of the only “truisms” we don’t feel compelled to question on a daily basis.

Whatever the reason for our social decay, things have gotten out of hand.  From the Senate to the cubicles, we’ve lost our willingness to listen to, learn from and discuss any assertions other than our own.  And as this erosion of civility continues across all walks of life, we run the risk of handing future generations tracts of dogma instead of the ability to reason.

But it doesn’t have to go on like this.  We just need to take incremental steps away from our own intellectual isolation.  As such, here are 11 ways you can stop perpetuating the cycle of exclusion.

1. Stop preaching to the choir.

Everyone loves being told how smart they are — or, more importantly, how right they are.  The assurance of being correct is a drug like no other.  And the “connectivity” of the Internet provides you with an endless supply of listeners who’ll fall all over themselves to agree with you, no matter what you believe.

Avoid that.

If you really believe something, try selling it to someone who thinks you’re wrong.  If you’ve ever tried pitching social media to a hostile boardroom, debated the existence of God with an atheist or argued with a child who refused to buy into your set of rules, you quickly realized that “just because” is never the right answer.  Defending your beliefs helps remind you why you do believe them in the first place — and, occasionally, it reveals the gaps in your own logic that might lead you to question your own certainty.

2. Stop letting yourself be preached to.

If you only consume streams of information that reinforce your own presumptions, two things happen: you’ll never learn anything you didn’t already suspect was true, and you’ll never be surprised.  The people who sell you the information you’re imbibing already know that you’re naturally opposed to philosophical conflict, so they have no reason to rock your mental boat.  And the more candy they feed you, the less likely you are to stray.

You wouldn’t consent to eat the same three meals every day for the rest of your life, so why sign up for the informational equivalent?  Start sampling.

3. I agree with you, but…

A good friend of mine once noticed that I always got extremely aggravated whenever I’d argue with a certain ideologically opposed family friend.  His point of view made as little sense to me as mine did to him, and each of us refused to concede any points because we were both dead sure we were correct on all counts.

After hearing us debate our polarized philosophies on several occasions, my friend suggested I employ the concession above.  By doing so, he explained that two things would happen:

• I’d establish a common ground, thereby dissolving the brutal tone of the debate, and
• I’d clarify the specifics of what we were actually disagreeing about, rather than allowing the discussion to roam unbounded.

So I tried it.  And it worked.  And no, even today that family friend and I still don’t see eye to eye on the vast majority of the world’s problems.  But we can also drink a beer and talk about football without every conversation dissolving into an indictment of our belief systems.  Sometimes a truce is a two-sided victory.

4. Ignore national politics.

As someone who’s spent the past decade getting irate over American politics, only to look back and realize I could have been doing something useful with all that energy, I say this with all sincerity: we care way too much about what Washington is doing.

Thanks to our jingoistic American news cycle, people are more aware of what the President is doing on a daily basis than what their neighbors across the street or around the globe are ever doing.  Our priorities and sense of scope are broken, with our own government being portrayed as having a disproportionately large impact on our daily lives and well-being, compared with the larger and smaller influences that actually mean more to us in the long and short term.

Yes, we elected them.  And yes, they’re going to rape and pillage us as their way of saying thank you.  But obsessing over lofty claims, party rhetoric and things that may or may not happen only distracts us from the real news that we could have an impact on, if we only knew it was happening.

5. Focus on what matters directly.

You have bills to pay.  You have mouths to feed.  You have love to find, and some to give.  You have goals, hobbies, passions and concerns.  And you have a nagging sense that things could be better in your life, “if only I could ___.”

So does everyone else.  Get those basics squared away and you’ll have time to spend on filling in that blank, rather than alleviating your frustrations by obstructing someone else’s attempts to do the same.

6. Focus on what matters globally.

Every time I watch the TV news from another country, I find myself quietly astounded that there is another country besides America.  In the US, we only talk about world news when there’s a war, a disaster or a missing blond girl in a hard-to-spell place.  But if you venture beyond our borders, you’ll find there’s a swath of other people with other cultures, values, beliefs and problems that need to be solved.

You don’t need to solve them yourself, although that is a pretty American thing to want to do.  But just being aware of those problems so you can not contribute toward making them worse would certainly be a good start toward making things better.

And, as a bonus, you might not be so afraid of people with different skin colors, wardrobes or last names.

7. Take direct action in your locality.

Hating either national political party doesn’t get you very far.  Neither does making sweeping generalizations about systemic national problems like failing education, absent health care, abused ecology or a corrupt economy, and ending with a proclamation that these problems are “too big to change,” or that “someone should do something about it,” is just an excuse to keep whinging.

Surprise: you’re someone.  And no, you can’t wake up tomorrow and fix nationwide problems with a wink and a smile.  But you can probably make a difference in your neighborhood.  You can probably call your city council representative and ask for help.  And you can probably conduct yourself the way you wish your elected officials and other people of influence would, and lead others by your example.

It’s not as folksy as bitching about Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow over wing night with your buds.  But it might make everyone’s life a bit more palatable.

8. Hold people accountable.

When your friend, lover, coworker or boss doesn’t do something he said he would, point it out.  Don’t be a dick about it, but don’t let it go uncorrected either.  Because the more lax you are in your accounting of others, the more lax everyone — including you — allows themselves to become.  We’re only ever good people when there’s a reward for it, or when there’s a penalty for being bad.  Don’t wait for someone else to enforce acceptable standards; that’s how mediocrity takes control in a lazy culture.

Oh, and when it comes to politics, forget party affiliations: if your elected official didn’t do what he said he’d do, or if she did things you find reprehensible, vote ‘em out.  Fear that “the other party would only be worse” is irrational; focus less on how bad it could get and focus more on holding your representatives accountable for doing the job you paid them to do with your tax dollars.

9. Be unafraid of change.

As mentioned above, fear of change is irrational.  We’re always petrified of “how bad it could get,” but we forget two things:

• Whatever “it” is, it’s probably already pretty bad now, and
• No matter how bad “it” gets, we’ll live through it.

Look at the vast amounts of shit people have lived through for centuries.  For every enlightenment, there’s a dark age.  For every scientific advance, there’s a worldwide cataclysm.  Your parents always had it better and had it worse, depending on the topic of conversation.  And the past always looks more romantic than the future, because the past is something we’ve proven we could get through while the future just might involve that one insurmountable challenge we just can’t overcome.

Don’t bet on it.  We’ve come this far without destroying the planet, so one more bad piece of legislation or ill-timed hurricane won’t do us in either.  Worry less about the unknown obstacles and fear more the possibility that if we don’t move toward change, this might be as good as it gets.

10. Refuse stereotypes.

The problem with stereotypes is that they’re usually accurate.  Clichés don’t happen based on once-in-a-lifetime irregularities; they happen because the same kinds of people repeatedly do the same kinds of things, and those things tend to be irredeemably stupid.

But instead of seeing those aggravations as uncorrectable offenses, ask the larger question: why does this happen? What cultural, sociological, geographic or political influences cause certain people to act in certain ways, or to believe certain things?  How do those habits get started, and why do they perpetuate despite their impractical disadvantages?  Are they even considered disadvantages by the people who do them?

Once you understand that everything has a root cause (or multiple causes), you can understand our differences rather than writing them off as cultural deficiencies.  And that brings us one degree closer to not hating each other.

11. Question certainties.

If you do nothing else, doubt everything.  Doubt what you’ve always believed.  Doubt what everyone else believes, too.  Refuse to say with certainty that any one thing is irrevocably true.  See the world as a massive grey area, rather than pillars of black and white.

The world is full of conflicts and riddles, and we have the capacity to quell some of them and solve others.  And yes, by doing so, we just might create more problems in the process.  Such is life.  But whatever worldviews we form, and whatever actions we take, we should be making our decisions based on data, not ideologies.

And if that means you spend a little less time watching TV news, a little more time talking to those neighbors you’ve never actually introduced yourself to, and a lot less time posting anonymous hate screed to your social network of choice, then maybe 2011 won’t seem like the festering shithole 2010 seems poised to become.

And that’s a start.

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Trust me: when it comes to social media, debating whether or not someone “gets it” is the kind of empty argument that makes me want to punch people in the throat.  But phrases don’t get overused unless they’re accurate, and in the case of the Sunday morning TV political roundtables, there’s more than enough throat punching to go around.

One of the most astute observers of the intersection between new media + journalism, NYU’s Jay Rosen, recently lamented the stale format of those Sunday morning shows and offered one simple tip for improvement: why don’t the shows fact-check the statements made by their Sunday guests and then run their investigative results online later in the week?  It’s admittedly a small step toward addressing the shows’ perceived partisan “truthiness,” but it’s a logical one.  (The other much-discussed flaws in the Sunday shows’ format include their failure to ask the tough questions and their appalling lack of diversity.)

Now Politico reports that Rosen’s suggestion is being discussed by David Gregory‘s team at “Meet the Press”.  That’s an encouraging sign.  But to hear most of the personnel from these venerable programs tell the story, there’s nothing wrong with any of what they’re doing.  In fact, not only do they not see any reason to change, but they doubt things can get any better than they are now.

What really blew my mind was a series of quotes from Syracuse professor Robert Thompson, whose point of view seems to encapsulate everything wrong with the current state of Sunday morning affairs.  His quotes from Politico, emphasis mine (as pertains to my list of objections immediately following):

Syracuse professor Robert Thompson admits that Sunday shows are “terribly old-fashioned,” but notes the irony that debates over their relevance are popping up on Twitter.

“I get a kick out of people online talking about how outdated “Face the Nation” and “Meet the Press” are,” said Thompson, who directs the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “Here are people using the new technology and they’re talking about “Face the Nation” and “Meet the Press.”

Since Sunday shows never really appealed to 20-year-olds, Thompson thinks that trying to skew younger or add new technology and graphics isn’t likely to work. “Even before cable and the Internet, you wouldn’t have gotten younger viewers,” Thompson said.

Given all the bells, whistles and holograms — hello CNN! — now employed on cable news, Thompson thinks that because of the simple Sunday show format, what’s old may actually be new again.

“Some of these really stodgy old shows,” he said, “are looking kind of avant-garde.”

And, in rebuttal…

3 Reasons Why Robert Thompson Makes No Goddamn Sense

1.  Irony deficiency.

Strictly speaking, using the Internet to talk about pre-Internet media is not ironic.  Stating this not only displays a misunderstanding of the concept of irony on Mr. Thompson’s part, but it posits an insane theory: that new media forms automatically disregard the relevance of the forms that existed before them.  This is the “Why would people write a book about computers?” argument, as made by a man who’s paid to be an expert in media and pop culture?  Ridiculous.

Related: using new media to discuss the flaws in old media’s presentation in no way invalidates the notion that the old media being discussed is “outdated.”  Acknowledging that something exists doesn’t condone it.

2.  You say “potato,” I say “avant-garde.”

TV shows resoundingly recognized as being outdated and increasingly irrelevant to their desired audience are, by definition, the opposite of avant-garde.  I know he’s being glib, but he’s doing so at the expense of coherent meaning, which is a distressingly escalating trend among modern communicators.  Have we now reached the point where media professors probed for sound bites simply draw adjectives from a hat?

But for me, the real blood-boiler from Thompson’s pull quotes is this:

3.  Let’s pretend 2008 never happened.

Politico’s Michael Calderone notes, “Sunday shows never really appealed to 20-year-olds,” effectively absolving them of the need to try.  Thompson is there to shore up the argument: “Even before cable and the Internet, you wouldn’t have gotten younger viewers,” he insists.

Of course not; THEY’RE ALL ONLINE, DESTROYING YOUR ANTIQUATED BUSINESS MODEL.

Thompson seems to believe that because 20 year-olds weren’t watching “Meet the Press” in droves back in 1990, they sure as hell won’t watch it now that they have Facebook and YouTube to keep them occupied.  Thus, the mere existence of competition for young people’s attention means that the Sunday shows can publicly declare themselves “not for those people,” and then deflect any criticism leveled at them for not attempting to appeal to any audience other than the one they’ve always had.

And that might be a sound business strategy, if not for the part where BARACK OBAMA JUST RAN THE MOST EFFECTIVE INTERNET CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY, ELECTRIFYING YOUNG VOTERS IN A WAY THAT FRIGHTENED THE OPPOSING PARTY INTO EMBRACING THE SAME TOOLS.

From Daily Kos to the Tea Parties, engaged Americans are scouring the web in search of information they can (at best) absorb and (at worst) deride.  People are hungry for content, and the most venerable sources of that content are refusing to make themselves more relevant to an audience that’s actively seeking an excuse to embrace them.

Well played, old media.  Tell me again about the newspaper industry’s financial crisis, or the importance of traditional journalism, or the “avant-garde” approach of having four old white guys debate the nation’s key issues at a roundtable every Sunday morning.

I promise I’ll listen.  And I promise I won’t care.  (Until I’m 50.)

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You’ve probably seen the U. S. Postal Service’s ads* proclaiming “If it fits, it ships.”  The actor entrusted with that tagline is former Second City comedian Mike Bradecich, whose boyish charm combines with his unflappable postal efficiency, soothing the jangled nerves of every worried customer he encounters.

Which is ironic, because you’ve probably also seen Bradecich in his other breakout commercial role — as the gallingly desperate yet pathologically untrustworthy Verizon FiOS guy in a series of anti-FiOS commercials created by Comcast.

Kudos to Bradecich for being able to make a name for himself by playing two characters with polar opposite personalities.  But I can’t be the only person who’s noticed him in both campaigns, and I also can’t be the only person who’s wondered this:

What happens when your company hinges its campaign on an actor’s qualities, which are then immediately subverted by that actor’s work in a different campaign running at the exact same time?

Or, in layman’s terms: are casual TV viewers confused about why that nice mailman is patronizing people while gleefully lying to them about FiOS?

Side note: while Googling, I came across Bradecich’s acting reel and personal blog (which happens to be called EgoCock, a fact that’s amazing all by itself).  If you just can’t get enough of the world’s most affable mailman / least scrupulous FiOS guy, enjoy.

* If you’re wondering why I didn’t also embed a Post Office ad, it’s because I couldn’t find one online.  You’d think that a keyphrase like “If it fits, it ships” would be Google paradise, but alas, the Post Office either hasn’t seen fit to release any of their ads on the intertubes, or else they’re in serious need of SEO asisstance.

I’m not big on reviewing TV shows.  (Not the way these folks are.)  But there was a moment in the season three finale of Mad Men that’s still resonating with me several days later, and I think it’s worth discussing.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t yet watched this episode and you still intend to, bookmark this post and read it later.

In the episode, the principals at ad agency Sterling Cooper discover that their company is about to be sold.  The trio then conspires to buy their agency back, despite the fact that each of them stands to earn a substantial payday in the pending deal.  So why not just go along for the ride?  Don Draper sums it up in one sentence:

“I want to work.”

With Sterling Cooper having already been sold and restructured a year ago, Draper explains that he’s not in this for the paycheck, and definitely not for the office politics.  He simply wants to do work that means something (to him, at least).

Remember What It Means to Have a Purpose?

In our modern era, fiscal tragedy dominates the headlines.  People are hyper-aware of dollar signs, and what an absence of available money denies us.  But what’s often lost in the discussion about our need for work is that work is about more than just the paycheck it brings.  Work is about purpose.

Not a title, or a job description, or a winning answer to all those cocktail party icebreakers.  A purpose in the sense of waking up in the morning and knowing that what you’re about to devote the next 8 to 12 hours of your life to actually matters.  Maybe not to everyone, and maybe not to anyone other than you personally.

But especially to you personally.

It’s Never Too Late for Accountability

On Mad Men, Don Draper seems to have it all, except that he actually has nothing.  His family, his friendships, even his identity is entirely an illusion — and one that he works tirelessly to sustain.  With his personal and professional lives collapsing, he finally clarifies what actually matters to him: creating something that didn’t exist before, and judging himself according to his own actions.

That a character as tragically flawed as Don Draper should still demand to be judged ultimately by his actions says a lot about what the rest of us say too rarely.

In a purposely provocative blog post, MCM argues that all content is essentially worthless.  The crux of the argument is the variation in price that different distributors attach to content — for example, a hardcover book is sold for $25, but a paperback for $10.  Is the content within that paperback book really worth $15 less than the exact same content in the hardcover volume?  And, if so, how much less (or more) is a digital version worth?

But before we can tackle price, we need to know: who decides *how* value is determined?

Everyone’s a Critic — and an Appraiser

Is value based on quality?  Or scarcity?  Or on difficulty of production, or of distribution?  There’s never been a collective agreement about *how* quality is determined, and now each of those spokes (and others) are being disrupted yet again.

If Stephen King can blog a novel in chapters, thereby cutting out the publisher… what should he charge?  What’s his actual work worth?  And does he charge according to the time he’s invested, or the difficulty of creation, or according to his own subjective estimation of his own talent?

If Radiohead allows fans to pay them whatever they’d like for an album, how do the fans decide what that album is worth?  How does that estimation differ if the listener has to pay in advance vs. paying a week after downloading (and forming a more educated opinion)?  Is there anything karmically wrong with considering a free album a gift from the band?

All Things in Their Own Time (and Place)

If I paid $20 for a hardcover novel, at least I physically owned it; an eBook or an MP3 might not be on my hard drive tomorrow if its publisher so decrees.  Is the value in content linked to my ability to possess it?  Or to the relative quality of its packaging?  Should content that “lasts” (like a CD) automatically become more valuable than content that doesn’t (like a live performance)?

Does content become more or less valuable over time, based upon the relative quality of other content?  Or based on fluctuations in its own relevance?  Jane Austen was underappreciated in her own time, but she’s a literary giant in ours.  Does that mean her stories have somehow become better over time, or that our reaction to her as an audience has simply become more amenable?  And, either way, how does this more recent fashionability impact the perceived value of her work?  (What if she falls out of vogue again next century?)

I happen to think Mad Men is one of the better shows on television these days.  Does it mean I think Mad Men is one of the best shows of all time?  Or, compared to what I might think the best possible TV show could be, what if Mad Men only rates a C+?  Does that mean the show is somehow worse than I thought?  And what criteria should I use when comparing it to TV shows from decades past?  Quality of acting?  Writing?  Set design?  Pacing?  Morality?  How does Mad Men stack up against American Bandstand or The Simpsons?  Or a book, film or album?  Can it even be compared?

Content may be worthless, but before we can even make that argument, we should come to some general understanding of what worth is.  Without it, we’re doomed to sell our own great works for pennies on the dollar while overpaying for what *they* say is “worth it.”