Viral As Hell
Elena and I returned yesterday from a great trip to France for her sister’s wedding. (We had a fantastic time and pictures and commentary are just around the corner.) Coming home we narrowly beat the airport chaos that started up this morning in the UK and prompted the raising of the alert level in the U.S. to red, once more. The BBC has a pretty good thread of stories from the day’s coverage about a foiled plan to destroy several aircraft en route from Heathrow to the U.S. At the moment it seems that nobody was hurt; many have been hopelessly delayed; and our intrepid sisters (Sari and Natalie), both quite unfazed by these geopolitical tremors, are off on their respective next jaunts to destinations exotic as soon as they can get on a plane. Sacré bleu.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a new book that helped me though a nearly biblical seven days of Internet cold turkey: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine. I’m going to review the book in a day or two (when I finish reading it), but for now, a quick story on a new must-see viral video — viral media being one of the themes of this very enlightening read. Okay, so I’m navigating the many unread blog posts in my feed-reader — through the straights of world news, wading the sunny shoals of friends’ blogs, and carefully piloting the reefs of WWDC reportage presently criss-crossing the ocean of Mac — when I arrive at the 30gms Digest and I’m delighted: get a load of Dances With Elephants. I know there’s a lot of detritus out there on the web, and I can barely stand to hang-out at You Tube for more than a few minutes unless I’ve arrived with a specific recommendation, but this is not one of those cases. It is a very telling glimpse of how we can expect mass marketing to adapt to a world in which point-to-point (rather than broadcast) media consumption is the norm. While not a direct advertisement, it was sponsored by a chewing gum company. Warmly funny though. Enjoy the hot stepping.