The powerful thing about STYLE is that when it’s approached consciously by the style leaders — i.e. with the understanding that it can and will be co-opted by corporatism at any opporunity — it can become a powerful tool for subversion. (In fact that’s how corporations do it, but I’m not going into that specifically.)

Style is not just SEEMING; it is also DOING. Humans have this interesting capacity for deciphering fakes and phonies from doers and believers. Something “feels wrong”, and it’s in that moment — a micromoment that happens all over the world a hundred times a second — that a choice is made: is part of this style an irony that encompasses NOT-doing (and so is fair-game for collection into the vast consumptive morass), or is this style one that must necessarily contain DOING?

The answer to this question comes from exemplars.

Why do we exhort our teenagers to be better examples for their younger siblings? Why do we chide fathers for not practicing what they preach? Why do we consider it the ultimate punk rock betrayal to “sell out” — i.e. to apparently give in to the commercialism that punk-ism alleged to intend to short-circuit?

Because the way you protect a style that incorporates a sort of DOING that you want to encourage is to make sure there are enough enviable persons being visible in that style and incorporating that DOING.

To bring it back to ground level, the point I’m making here is that Punk’s Not Dead, not fully dead, unless you proclaim that it’s dead and there’s no way you can be an exemplar of true punk.

So if punkness is to embody a certain DOING and not simply an ironic sort of SEEMING: take back the style.

In other words: I want to see librarians wearing spikes and sporting mohawks.

…Or flannel and ripped jeans. Or cat-eye glasses and leopard print dresses.

…Or none of the above. Because just saying “fuck off I’m a librarian” is pretty punk too.

Technorati Tags: aesthetics, corporatism, culture, libraries, philosophy, punk rock, style, theory

People have taken to calling me “Ms. Web 2.0″ and “social media maven” and whatnot.  This is hilarious to me because I didn’t set out to become anything of the sort — I’ve just been doing it as a consequence of my promotional activities on behalf of other people (and lately, my own radio show Subversive Science).

And when I talk about the sorts of analytics I do to prove the effectiveness of my actions on Twitter or Facebook or what-have-you, the usual reaction is, where did you learn to do internet marketing?

Well.  On the internet.  Through other internet marketing websites. But most of all, from other people’s email marketing newsletters, which everyone knows are just a way to get you to sign up for more stuff or buy stuff, but I sign up for them anyway.

Hell yes I will sign up for your free email newsletters.  As many as I can get.  Why?

1 – Zero cost. Unlike the average schmoe who (according to my casual glances at other people’s email managers) doesn’t aggressively filter their email, pragmatically I have all the control.  I look at email when I choose to look at it, not in a massive inbox jumble.  So my subscriptions cost me nothing – no money obviously, but also no loss of control or intrusion into my brain.

2 – Internet marketers give away all their secrets without knowing it.

Here’s an excerpt from an email I got from Kevin Gianni of LiveAwesome.com recently, regarding a special workshop he’s going to hold just outside of the Raw Spirit Fest in Santa Barbara on “how to turn your unique passion into financial freedom”:

In this talk, I will explain…
- How to reach new audiences online and offline.
- How to bring floods of traffic to your site without having to pay for it.
- How to build credibility quickly even if you’ve just started in the business.
- How to contact others to get them to promote what you’re doing.
- How to avoid the most common mistakes made as a business owner.

He’s going to charge people $98 to do this workshop.  I believe you’ll get your value from that, sure.

But!  Here’s what you just got in your email: A breakdown, play-by-play list of what Kevin Gianni did to become successful at what he does.

If you have this, you have all you need to emulate him. Because everything he learned, he learned from the internet.  And if you’re even halfway internet savvy — which I hope you are, if you’re considering increasing your web presence in any way — you can use Google and figure out the “how to” of each thing on that list.

Hell, I’ll do one better, I’ll explain each bit.

So here’s the play-by-play — how to get successful as an “internet personality”:

• You need to find more audiences, both online and offline.
• You need to bring floods of traffic to your site — without paying for it — which means NO ADS.
• It’s possible to build credibility quickly, even if you’ve just started in the business.
• Want to promote yourself? Contact others in the same business and have them promote you.
• Start considering yourself a business (not just a website, or a person), and seek out some simple business advice.

Audiences: The answer to the first one is simple.  How do you get people to pay attention to you?  How do you find people who will be interested in what you have to say, do, and offer?

YOU HAVE TO GO WHERE PEOPLE HANG OUT.  Bam. Done. Next.

Floods of traffic: That’s all about search engine optimization and social media interaction.  If you’re a total beginner in this, I recommend The Thirty Day Challenge. 

And if you’re not on Twitter, for gosh sakes get on it.  Your self-education in social media starts there.

Credibility: This third thing isn’t even a thing.  Just a psych-up: don’t worry about being seen as an expert.  If you’re doing anything at all, with any amount of conviction, you immediately have an edge over 99% of everyone else in your niche, because you’ll be the only one who wants to lead, wants to be seen as the expert, and so on.

Promotion: The guy’s just flat-out telling you what to do.  Don’t be shy.  Are you interested in hyping your obscure Japanese punk pirate radio stream or podcast?  Go to Pirate Cat Radio and contact one of the DJs. I guarantee you’ll at least make some contacts if not get some great cross-pollination going.

Business: How do you avoid common business mistakes? Alright, that’s beyond the scope of my article here.  Suffice it to say, though, that the basics of running a business are well-established all over the web.  You could start with The US Small Business Administration, a government website that helps small businesses, especially new ones, plan out their approach. 

Really, when in doubt… Google it! 

And don’t be afraid to sign up for a dozen email lists and glance at them from time to time.  I guarantee you’ll get a lot more out of that gradual learning-by-absorption than by spending $100 or more on some tunnel-visioned courseware developed by people who basically just Googled it all in the first place.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, promotion, social media, subversive science, the web

Accordingly, we are all invited to post some bit of writing about a woman in technology whom we admire.  Says tech-savvy feminist writer Suw Charman-Anderson:

I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.

— Suw Charman-Anderson

MMmmkay.

Well I signed up.  Sometimes it’s nice to have an arbitrary deadline to do a piece of writing you wouldn’t have done otherwise.  Also, Sterling’s doing it.

It’s kind of a no-brainer for me as to who I need to write about.  No reward needed. 

There’s a Facebook event page, #ALD09 is the Twitter hashtag, and AdaLovelaceDay09 is the tag for other services such as Delicious, Technorati, and so on.

i’ll Follow U Tuesday for a Twitter post today…

Technorati Tags: ada lovelace, adalovelaceday09, blogging, bruce sterling, kathleen mauchly, pledge, women

(10:07:09 AM) illiteratecoho Do you think that formal fighting systems like Karate are applicable in real fights? Is there any particular martial art that comes to mind as especially effective?
(10:07:31 AM) nthmost hi there
(10:07:50 AM) illiteratecoho Who are you xD

…And it just gets better from there.

(10:08:26 AM) nthmost you sent me a message asking about karate…
(10:08:33 AM) nthmost you must have some idea who I am?
(10:09:47 AM) nthmost Well, if not, then I’m just as perplexed as you are. I’m pretty well-versed in martial arts though…
(10:10:05 AM) illiteratecoho I don’t even like karate lmao

(10:10:20 AM) nthmost here’s the message I just got from you:
(10:10:22 AM) nthmost “Do you think that formal fighting systems like Karate are applicable in real fights? Is there any particular martial art that comes to mind as especially effective?”
(10:12:11 AM) illiteratecoho Um okay xD!
(10:12:18 AM) illiteratecoho But who are you?
(10:13:40 AM) nthmost haha okay. my name’s Naomi…
(10:14:43 AM) nthmost i have a blog here: http://venixflytrap.net
(10:14:53 AM) nthmost maybe something on there will ring a bell?
(10:16:39 AM) nthmost so who might you be?
(10:17:03 AM) illiteratecoho Caitlin you Imed my cousin Roxii24lovee
(10:17:20 AM) nthmost hahaha fat chance of htat
(10:17:23 AM) illiteratecoho You creeped her out xD
(10:18:42 AM) nthmost i can assure you there’s no one on my IM list with anything remotely approaching that sort of username.

(10:19:10 AM) nthmost well, this has been silly. i have work to do. l8r
(10:21:55 AM) illiteratecoho But what about SoWrongItsEVA
(10:23:17 AM) nthmost what are you, a spam-bot?
(10:23:43 AM) illiteratecoho Are you?
(10:23:59 AM) nthmost of course. why do you think i’m so successful at wasting your time?

(10:27:53 AM) illiteratecoho So you really are another person?
(10:28:02 AM) illiteratecoho I’m just really confused xD
(10:28:40 AM) nthmost just 1 person.
(10:29:38 AM) illiteratecoho But where did you get that I sent you stuff about Karate
(10:29:41 AM) illiteratecoho ?
(10:30:10 AM) nthmost just a normal instant message. i replied to it as soon as it came to me.
(10:30:44 AM) nthmost did you send a message like that to somebody else?
(10:30:54 AM) illiteratecoho I didn’t say anything about Karate
(10:31:31 AM) nthmost mmmkay. then apparently we have nothing to talk about.
(10:32:17 AM) illiteratecoho Kay bye >.<
(10:32:23 AM) nthmost bye!

It’s not every day you meet an illiterate fish you can chat with online.

Technorati Tags: chat, coho, spam

I found an article in Itai News [in Japanese] that I spent the past week translating, just for fun.  It’s a bit of fluff that lists Japanese women’s list of the worst “unmanly qualities” they hate about Japanese men.

1.   He has no opinion, is just carried along by others.
2.   He always has someone to blame.
3.   He can never be decisive at the moment of truth.
4.   He’s always giving up (never puts in the work).
5.   He’s always relying on his parents somehow.
6.   He keeps quiet on the train even when he’s bunched up against some weirdo.
7.   Though he’s timid around other people, he only acts firm in front of me.
8.   He flip-flops around with what foods he likes and dislikes.
9.   He splits the cost of meals (with me) exactly, even in increments of ¥10.
10. He asks for favors.
11. He always whines about his work.
12. His nails are too long.
13. He does nothing but complain.
14. He checks his appearance in front of the mirror too much.
15. He uses toiletries (products) too much.
16. His body is frail and weak.

Want to know what Japanese men are like?  Imagine someone who embodies at least 10 out of 16 things in this list, and you have the typical Japanese guy.

I’m not going to go line-by-line, but I’ll give a few examples of what I observed based on advertisements, sitcoms, and train behavior.

Appearance expectations seem to be roughly equivalent when it comes to the business standard in Japan.  Men are expected to have flawless complexions and healthy flowing black hair just like the women, except that women are allowed to talk about it and possess big conspicuous boxes of products and makeup; men doing the same are “un-manly”.  (Source: TOYAMA Masao, Black Diamond in Monavie)

Train Behavior: I have never witnessed, not one single time in my 2 months there where I spent a good 2 hours on trains almost every single day including a few Tokyo rush hours, a single Japanese man or woman ever speaking up against “some weirdo”.   As if you can tell the “weirdos” apart from your typical late-40s salariman reading tentacle-porn anime ANYWAY.  NEXT!!!

Dependence on Parents: Something like 60% of Japanese men between the ages of 18 and 34 still live with their parents; about 80% of Japanese women in that age range fit that description.  Double-standard much?   (Source: Wikipedia article on “Parasite single” phenomenon in Japan)

Culture: Japanese men are not supposed to be decisive, or speak up, or have an opinion.  Guys who start having opinions rapidly find they don’t have a job.  (Source: anecdotal evidence, stories collected from pubs.)

Given all of this mental mindscrewing inflicted by Japanese culture on its own inhabitants, it’s no wonder they have problems with people jumping onto the tracks.  And it’s both telling and amusing that when these events get reported, they say things like “man jumps in front of train, inconveniences 90,000 commuters”.

The question on my mind is this:  do these suicidals pre-meditate their jumps so as to leave this world committing one final, massively heinous social crime in Japanese culture — Causing Inconvenience?  If so, that’s hilarious.

I feel an Alan Watts marathon coming on.

Technorati Tags: alan watts, fluff, japan, japanese, monavie, subways, tokyo

Me: [cheery, using fun new Japanese veggie tool] I CAN haz grated yam!

Chick: huh?

Me: Oh.  I can haz cheezburger?  lolcats?

Chick: uhh

Me: Oh man!  Ok, if you need instant funny and you’re on the web, you gotta–

Chick: Yeah I can’t spend all day on the internet like you.

[Yeah, you are SO not my friend.  What are you waiting here for, again??]

Me: [nonplussed]  Hah.  You want to see “all day on the internet”?

[I pull up CHRIS.PIRILLO.com/live/ ]

Chick: [confused but awed] Wowwww, I wonder when his birthday is?

Me: (aside) oh boy, I know where this is going.

Chick: I bet he’s a Taurus.

Me: uh huh.

Chick: Hey when’s your birthday?

Me: *headdesk*

Technorati Tags: lolcats, net culture, superstition, vulcan

Kissaten-de, resuturan-de, nandemonai.  It’s all gross, and never not gross, and never in the same way twice.  I hated the coffee in Puerto Rico, but they consistently made it a certain super-strong way that had to be served with milk and sugar, and I could chalk that up to the taste preference of a different culture.

No, the “consistently the worst coffee” designation belongs to a country that stabs around wildly at coffee and espresso-brewing, having no concept whatsoever of how to produce a drinkable cup.  I had a few lattes around Shibuya that were mostly burnt in their espresso content and unbelievably hot — in one case leaving the [soy] milk utterly flat, it was so over-steamed.

In an upscale-seeming mall cafe, I was served a “cappucino” that was probably the same swill they pump out at Tim Horton’s — a powdered milk-based coffee-extract concoction jam packed with sugar.

To make something good, you have to know what good is, or at least have some idea — an ideal to uphold.  The Japanese have NO IDEA about coffee.

The ideal of coffee in Japan is simply to HAVE coffee, and to present it in a certain way.  The actual content seems, to the Japanese, completely irrelevant.

Now, TEA in this city, on the other hand… that’s another story.

Basically, if you want to give up coffee, come to Japan for a week.  If the crapfully crapful cuppa you keep getting served doesn’t get you, the $5 to $7 price tag will.

Technorati Tags: coffee, image, japan, rhetoric, tea, tokyo