Saturday, August 16, 2014

deathtokoalas
so, the thing is that you're wrong. if you were right, i'd probably uninstall adblock. for the record, what i'm trying to do right now is figure out why youtube is only counting about 30% of my hits (and i suspect it's the reason why). to me, that's a better argument.

the average adblock user simply isn't going to respond to the ads. they're not going to go buy the iggy azalea cd that's advertised on the radiohead video. they're not going to go watch the awful movie that is being mass marketed with no concept of demographics.

what people like this guy (and is that really his bedroom?) need to realize is that advertisers are going to eventually clue into this and abandon the format. making me watch a 30 second spot for something i'm never going to buy isn't going to resolve the underlying problem, which is that the advertising doesn't work.

if we want this internet thing to work outside of a model of corporate dominance, we need to come up with better ideas than advertising because, adblock or not, it's days are numbered.


see, it's actually pretty ironic.

so much of the internet is built on an advertising model - including google. but, google's search function is precisely what has made advertising obsolete. it doesn't really matter what you're advertising for anymore, you're not going to reach anybody under 40. rather, younger people will use google's search engine to actively research anything and everything they're going to buy, from a $5 pack of guitar picks to a $500,000 house. the advertising is just reduced to noise to work through in the research process. it's entirely worthless.

historically, advertising's primary purpose has been to convince us to act irrationally, but all advertising claims are now subject to immediate verification through internet search. it's basis of coercion through emotional manipulation can no longer be effective because it is too easy to rebut.

it might be more than ten years before this becomes understood, but it's happening, so we'd might as well start adjusting for it now, not when it happens.

the way i see it is that advertisers are going to have to shift from actively pursuing customers to being able to provide information. it's going to no longer be about attracting as much attention through volume and whatnot, and going to shift to being about trying to get sites listed at the top of search engines and then creating content on the company's own website that engages possible buyers. this is a really fundamental shift, as it shifts attention away from coercion and towards the actual product.

that reduces traditional advertising to bandying about search terms as buzzwords to try and get the rankings skewed in their favour. and it completely cuts out this clockwork orange style forced viewing that's been pushed so heavily, and is failing so badly.

simply put, the era of the passive consumer that responds to aggressive advertising is coming to a close with the coming irrelevancy of generation x, whom everybody always knew was going to get squeezed between two much larger demographic bulges and have a relatively shorter period of relevancy than the generations that preceded and followed them. what will follow is an era of the active consumer that independently seeks out information and must be advertised to interactively, in a way that responds to their requests for information.

companies that get on top of this will be successful, while companies that cling to obsolete models will fall apart. 

stockingandblossom1
i agree

SuperkenGaming
You clearly have never been to a school if you think advertisement doesn't work lol.

deathtokoalas
yeah. i think it may have worked some time in the early part of the last century, up til a bit past the middle of it. but, we're so saturated with ads now that we mostly ignore them. i think it might have something to do with an extrapolation of the idea of transmarginal inhibition. i think most of us have hit a sort of an ultra-paradoxical phase, where advertising merely produces a negative response.

it's not just youtube. i know where the billboards around my house are, and i walk by them multiple times in a week, but i don't know what they say because i completely block them out as soon as i realize they're ads.

i would consider the literature on it to be very out-of-date, and i'm not aware of anybody that's doing current research on it. that applies both to pro-advertising and anti-advertising literature.

SuperkenGaming
kids buy brand names to fit in... the brand name isnt on the shirt because its a cool name.. its wearable advertisement lol

deathtokoalas
i'm not convinced that's actually true. i never knew anybody growing up that thought like that.

the only brand names i ever had on my shirts were stuff my parents bought me because it was on sale, and i mostly avoided wearing them because i felt awkwardly conformist in them.

there was a phase in high school where i wore a lot of band shirts, but i was trying to advertise myself to people that may have had like interests because i didn't have a lot of friends. it's a bad comparison.

SuperkenGaming
you mustve not known many people :P

look at the iphone.. IOS is clearly the lesser OS, but the iphone is an accessory made popular by public and celebrity advertisement

deathtokoalas
the iphone's market share was the result of it producing the product first. as android/google and others have caught up, it's market share has actually decreased dramatically.

further, macs are still a novelty item and will almost certainly remain that way, no matter how much they spend on advertising.

now that the market has leveled, the primary factor for people buying a new phone actually seems to be price.

stockingandblossom1
i cam watch an old ad from the 90's like the pentium 3 ads over and over and never get tired of it. but i can't stand todays commercials it's too generic.

deathtokoalas
that's probably more your age talking. i'm not saying "you're old", so much as i'm saying "the advertising isn't directed at you anymore".

i think a bigger factor is the saturation. we're just bombarded, and if it doesn't produce that violently negative reaction almost out of reflex (that's what i tend to get) it just gets lost in the low signal to noise ratio.

stockingandblossom1
that could be true, also if i have to watch ads and risk getting a virus i would like to be paid to do it. google should pay both sides of the coin if they want people to disable adblock.

deathtokoalas
i just want to clarify that he probably means companies tracking him, and it's not a trivial concern.

you can see the price determinant everywhere if you drop the idea of brand recognition, which is probably not accidentally pushed through various literature. there's two commodities i consume a large amount of: mayonnaise and soy milk (not blended together).

with the mayonnaise, the brand name is always stacked to it's highest point on the shelf, until they have to put it on sale. then it starts moving. it follows that the brand name mayonnaise is not marketable unless it's price is reduced to that of the no name mayonnaise. and, it often ends up hitting the store doubly, because they have to reduce the brand name to below the no name to get it to move (because consumers just automatically pick the no name, because they know it's cheaper), which causes the no name to back up, and then have to be reduced even further. they only seem to be able to resolve this by reducing orders.

the soy milk is even worse. the grocery store i go to has simply stopped stocking the no name chocolate soy, which is generally about a dollar cheaper than the brand name stuff. i actually went and tracked down the manager of the store, because i didn't want to pay the extra dollar. he explained to me that the brand name has actually put pressure on the chain (food basics) to stop stocking the no name, because the sales for the brand name were so low.

those are just two examples i can see and understand through direct experience. there's no doubt many others.

Eave
I'm not going to argue, you're selfish and inconsiderate. What if you got less money at your job? It would MASSIVELY cause your life to go on the decline. (provided you don't switch jobs in said situation) This would force the fun things which you pay a subscription to to be no longer available. You'd have no internet, TV, and barely any food. Having nothing but the necessities is a terrible life.

stockingandblossom1
i don't see as a job, and don'y try that guilt trip bs because it won't work.

deathtokoalas
that's a market society, buddy. i don't like markets, either, but the solution isn't to sit around and complain that it isn't fair that nobody's propping up a failing business model.

one solution to try and get around the inequalities and anti-art biases that are inherent in market capitalism is to argue for a guaranteed minimum income.

stockingandblossom1
i agree.

jeff darnell
So true, I honestly don't think I have ever bought something I saw advertised on the internet that I already wasn't going to buy. In fact I don't think I have ever bought something advertised on the internet at all. Internet ads make me have ill will towards the company as if they know their product is shitty so let's advertise the shit out of it. Advertising is convincing, a good product shouldn't need convincing.

---

Eyyaz Chishty
Three weeks since i've turned it off and im not even considering to turn it back on (for youtube).  Seriously guys it's only 5-30 seconds of your time, hell you can just go on another tab and read a short news artical whilst it runs.

regret
For some people it's too much time. I don't see how

Darth Grumpy
No, simply because I have been on the internet longer than 99% of you and I know what the internet was like before it go so fucking greedy and commercialized. The internet did JUST FINE WITHOUT ADS FOR YEARS, then all of a sudden it became ad heaven because everyone is greedy. I am fighting back the only way I can and that is blocking the ads. If they get adblock removed, someone will just write another one, and another and another. It's time for the greed to stop. Simple as that. It's called GET A JOB. Sitting on your ass all day making videos doesn't count as work, sorry but it doesn't. Time to wake up and live in the real world, life sucks, deal with it.

Lolatmyaccounts .Lol
Because it benefits me, and that's all that matters. Selfish? Sure, but this guy wants all his viewers to spend small portions of their time just so he can gather more cheeseburger funds.

deathtokoalas
"you should run the ads, and ignore them."

that's likely to keep advertisers keen about paying out, right?

and herein lies the problem. it's the model itself that's obsolete. if half the internet is blocking the ads, and the half that doesn't is mostly older people and/or people that are ignoring the ads to pay the content providers, what it suggests is that this form of advertising is not successful in marketing products and that the model consequently needs to be adjusted.

you're delusional if you think it can carry on like this. it's time to come to terms with the reality that we built this all up on an unsustainable premise, and that it's eventually going to come crashing down. if you adjust to it, you can get out in front of it. if you stick to it, you're going to be washed away along with it.
deathtokoalas
corgan is often attacked for his oversized ego, but he actually strikes me as fairly humble - if startling and slightly painfully pretentious. iha, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be able to get over himself, and that's what strikes me as the root of the problem.


jeb tweebance
again

deathtokoalas
i told you....

but, wait.... ...are you paul mccartney?

Susie G
Billy Corgan can be quite the musical genius but he's also a control freak and I think that eventually drove the band insane. The fact that Corgan has had rocky relationships with MANY people besides James Iha is more a testament to his lack of character than anybody else's. Ive always been fond of James and Darcy and it stopped being the Pumpkins without them.

Gordon Mccracken
drug issues are well known, could see her functioning, touring, recording with any professional band?

deathtokoalas
afaik, her horrible drug problem is that she likes pot and the reason she's not making music is that she's grown out of it and was never really that into it in the first place. heroin is a tour problem. marijuana is not a tour problem.

not to be rude, but the reality is that nobody really cares about d'arcy, anyways. i think iha at the least provided a sort of creative foil. outside of the odd vocal part, i really don't think d'arcy contributed anything.

when i saw 'em in ottawa back in '96, i wasn't even convinced she was playing.

people move on and blah blah blah. it's probably too late now to reconstruct what's been lost. but, i think billy needed james on a certain level. d'arcy? they honestly probably would have been better off with a better bassist....

Gordon Mccracken
I am pretty sure she was arrested for crack possession 

evenflowjimbo
Eh. I can see why he doesn't want to talk to him anymore. Billy is super Republican and just seems like a total asshole.

deathtokoalas
i get more of a libertarian vibe from him, but you have to put it in the context of the american political spectrum. you get the same kind of thing from krist novoselic and a lot of other people that came out of the period. they're out there working with these kind of right-wing groups and stuff, but if you listen to what they have to say they're obviously not really aligned with their politics.

where billy and krist (and jello and chomsky and countless others) are absolutely right is in looking at the democratic party and understanding that it's a hopeless vehicle - there's not a significant difference between it and the republican party. supporting the democrats is worse than a waste of time, it's making things worse. so, when you understand that the united states is a one-party state - and there's a lot of rhetoric, but i mean really come to terms with it and grasp it - then the obvious next step is to look at third parties.

in the united states, there is not a third party on the left. what you have are people like jesse ventura or ron paul that have some good policies and some horrific policies. if you're serious about breaking the two-party system, the reality is that that kind of right-libertarianism is the only option at the moment. you can hope for wealthy artists to support more egalitarian movements, but you can't expect them to go out and build them - that's something that has to be done from the ground up.

i'm about as left-wing as you can get, but if you were to take me back to 2008 and make me vote for obama or paul, i would have picked paul. that would not have been an endorsement of paul's social darwinism, it would have been a rejection of obama's imperialist rhetoric. they're both evil in their own ways, but the libertarian right is considerably less evil than the interventionist left.

i agree that it would often be best if billy just shut up when it comes to certain things, but it's hard to blame him for being realistic about what our options are in terms of actual political shifts.

Gordon Mccracken
I concur, I was raised in a Democratic leaning house hold but have seen the hypocrisy within it and lean Libertarian myself.

metal134
According to Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, she wasn't playing, some of the time.

Leo B
D'Arcy could definitely play the bass. If you are a seasoned guitar and/or bass player you can clearly see and hear that on the live clips. With the high standards Billy has he would surely have fired her if she couldn't play.

You could say she lacked a bit of energy and inspiration in her playing though, but I think Billy also wanted the bass to be a bit more discrete in their music. It does seem to me however, that D'Arcy didn't share the same passion for music as the other three in the band, she always seemed a bit distant

deathtokoalas
i'm not really arguing that she couldn't play. i'm suggesting that she probably didn't.

there were relationships involved, it must have been messy and confusing...

the argument corgan generally used was "i can do it faster" - and it might have even been true at the time.

but that sounds like an excuse to me. what that really means is "it's my song, and i want the bass to sound the way i want the bass to sound so i'm playing the bass and if you don't like it then go home."

Leo B
oh you meant in the studio. I thought you meant live lol

deathtokoalas
i'd be surprised if she played on anything in the studio at all after gish.

and i did say that it didn't seem like she was playing when i saw them in '96 (with a big budget) on the mellon collie tour.

there were actually a few points (notably the rocket stage show) where i wasn't entirely sure that billy was playing either, while there were points where it was pretty obvious that he was.

it's hard to speculate further.

metal134
I didn't say she couldn't play.  But Billy was quoted as saying (and I wish I could remember the exact quote) that he ended up recording most of James' and D'arcy's parts himself on the albums, which was later corroborated by Butch Vig.

ZeroGravitySubstance
You are correct about Billy recording all the bass and guitar parts on the first two albums but that was not the case on Mellon Collie. James said for all the lead parts it was divided up about fifty/fifty and who knows how the rhythm parts were divided up. And yes, D'arcy is not the greatest bassist haha.

rlos duarte
well said

VTK XTO
Lack of character? Maybe he's got a tough personality, but Corgan can never be accused of lacking character. 

OD138
You know for a fact she's only into pot? I bet you're wrong about that.  

deathtokoalas
i do appear to have been wrong; she has a problem with crack cocaine, as others pointed out.

Mattydigs
Which is fair. A true artist sacrifices everything for the good of the song.

Creat Swartz
Are you serious? Billy humble. That is a good one!

deathtokoalas
in twenty-whatever years, the truth is that i don't think i've ever read or seen him say anything positive about himself. he only deprecates himself.

it's an imaginary media construct.