Tynan's Anger

Last week there was excellent discussion on the increasingly essential On the Media last week about the Internet's tendency to promote homophily.

A lot of issues got swirled about (Moldova, Iran, swine flu, etc.), but the one that struck me most was about music:

People feel extremely tribal and passionate about their music. And once they've figured out what they like, they don't go very far outside it. The music industry is worried about this form of homophily because they'd sell more music if they can expose people to a slightly larger array of music than they would listen to. And so they've worked really hard on collaborative filtering technologies which basically look at bouquets of people and say, well, you know, Clive, you are like this and you listen to these 10 things.

This is the theory behind iTunes Genius, Pandora, and last.fm. The only problem? The lack of broad thinking:

They're all based around a model called collaborative filtering, and collaborative filtering essentially says if I enjoy listening to these five punk bands, it’s going to find 10 other people out there who like these five punk bands and it’s going to recommend some other musicians I've never heard of. So even though I say I really like the Ramones, someone in there likes John Coltrane, and I'm going to get a John Coltrane recommendation.
[...]
But we're not thinking nearly broad enough. When we think about this problem, we tend to think about, how do I bridge the huge gap between punk and jazz or the huge gap between left and right in U.S. politics? There’s much, much bigger gaps we need to be thinking about.

Say for instance, you're a big fan of the song "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" by X-Ray Spex.


Musically, you may like it because it's a great first wave British punk song, with sing-shouty vocals and a brilliant use of a saxophone and nontraditional punk instruments. In that case, recommendations like the Damned, Wire, and the Stranglers are excellent recommendations. Or you may like it because you're a radical militant feminist. In which case, you may not appreciate Genius picking out songs like "Peaches," "Orgasm Addict," or 25 other punk songs that probably don't feature another female vocalist.

If music is not the driving force in your life, your tastes will be dominated by what political, economic, and cultural pressures tell you to like. It also tells you what movies to buy tickets to, what TV shows to watch, and what politician to vote for.

That's not fun to think of as a fan of any art form, and especially for music, when today there's a virtually unlimited supply of choices on the internet. Still, you have to be really vigilant to avoid homophily on the internet for music; that means reading more than just one music website, looking beyond the ratings on metafilter, and finding entire universes of other types of music that are not as frequently found on the internet. Even Google doesn't work; better websites with more traffic and more resources are going to rank higher on most music searches, whether or not they actually have the most valuable input to the individual searcher. And that assumes that a searcher knows what he or she wants to search for.

There may be no other place on the internet where race, age, class, and politics have been so cleverly applied, intentionally or not, to aesthetic taste as the indie rock music blogosphere. I discovered Pitchfork in high school froma  Google search for The Darkness when I was in a serious Queen listening phase. I was interested in musically generally, and had enough of a bullshit detector to take what I was reading with a grain of salt. Other 17-year-olds may not be so lucky.

Labels: blogs, echo chamber, homphily, indie rock, internet comments, pitchfork media

Terry Teachout, describing a night in Cleveland with his wife:

As I mentioned the other day, Mrs. T and I are spending the week in Cleveland, seeing shows and hitting museums. We are, amazingly enough, quartered in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, about which much more later. Unfortunately--or not--the house in question is Web-unfriendly, so any blogging I do this week beyond the routine and regular almanac entries, weekly video, and theater-related postings will be catch as catch can.

I say "or not" because Mrs. T and I are greatly looking forward to having a bit of time to ourselves. We were married a year ago tomorrow, and we'll be celebrating our first anniversary by seeing Noises Off, the funniest play ever written, at the Cleveland Play House, having what I hope will be a very nice dinner, and reveling in the always-special experience of spending the night with Frank Lloyd Wright. We'd just as soon not invite anyone else over, if you know what I mean.

I guess that's what you do in Cleveland while waiting for the Ikea to arrive. Brings a whole new meeting to his blog's title.

Labels: blogs, privacy, terry teachout, tmi

At least we're not blogging in Malaysia:

One of Malaysia's most prominent bloggers and a high-profile critic of the government has gone on trial for sedition.

Raja Petra Kamarudin, who is already being held under Malaysia's Internal Security Act (ISA), could be sentenced to three years in jail if he is convicted.

In an entry on his Web site - Malaysia Today - he allegedly implied that Malaysia's deputy prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, was involved in the high-profile murder of a young Mongolian woman.

Raja Petra denies the allegation and supporters have criticised what they say is a government attempt to gag critics and suppress freedom of speech[...]

Malaysian officials have already said Raja Petra will be detained for at least two years without trial under the ISA – a colonial-era law that allows for indefinite detention at the discretion of the country's home minister.

He was arrested last month after allegedly publishing articles that the government said insulted Islam, inflamed racial tensions and tarnished the country's leadership.

Critics have called for the ISA to be scrapped, saying a law that was introduced when communist fighters threatened national security is now being used to suppress legitimate political opposition.

This actually isn't all that far from what the dearly departed New York Sun would have wanted in the good 'ol U.S. and A.

Labels: blogs, freedom of press, freedom of speech, malaysia, new york sun

When I interviewed Diablo Cody back in November, she was still new to fame. The real rush from Juno hadn't hit yet. Her name was still only known to film geeks critics like me, and she was still starry-eyed from the prospect of being interviewed by awkward college students in the penthouse of a 5-star Chicago hotel. Now that Cody is a near-household name, she's faced the inevitable backlash from the very medium that made her famous. Surprisingly to me, she's proven to be rather thin-skinned:

I am not Charlie Kaufman or Sofia Coppola (much as I supplicate at their Cannes-weary feet.) I'm not Paul Thomas Anderson. I'm not even Paul W.S. Anderson. I am middle-class trash from the Midwest. I'm a competent nonfiction writer, an admittedly green screenwriter, and a product of Hollywood, USA. I am "Diablo Cody" and if you're not a fan, go rent Prospero's Books again and leave me the fuck alone.

I may have won 19 awards that you don't feel I earned, but it's neither original nor relevant to slag on Juno. Really. And you're not some bold, singular voice of dissent, You are exactly like everyone else in your zeitgeisty-demo-lifestyle pod. You are even like me. (I, too, loved Arrested Development! Aren't we a pretty pair of cultural mavericks? Hey, let's go bitch about how Black Kids are overrated!)

I'm sorry that while you were shooting your failed opus at Tisch, I was jamming toxic silicon toys up my ass for money. I get why you're bitter. I took exactly one film class in college and-- with the curious exception of the Douglas Sirk unit—it bored the shit out of me. I also once got busted for loudly crinkling a bag of Jujubes during a classroom screening of Vivre Sa Vie. I don't deserve to be here. We've established that. But I'm here. Five million 12-year-olds think I'm Buck Henry. Accept it.

(Incidentally, if you were me for one day you'd crumble like fucking Stilton. I am better at this than you. You're not strong enough, Film_Fan78. Trust me.)

I'm sorry to all those violent, semi-literate fanboys who hate me for befriending their heroes. I can't help it if your favorite writer, actor, director, or talk show host likes me. Maybe you would too, if we actually met.

I know my name is fake and that it annoys you. What, do you hate Queen Latifah and Rip Torn, too? Writers and entertainers have been using pseudonyms for years. Chances are, you're spewing bile under an assumed screen name yourself. I'm sorry if you think I'm like some inked-up quasi-Suicide Girl derby cunt from 2002, but I like my fake name. It's engraved on an Oscar. Yours isn't.

Listen: I've been telling stories my whole life. Even when I was a phone sex operator, I was the Mark Twain of extemporaneous jerk-off fiction. I took every perspiring creep on a fucking journey. I don't know how to do anything else.

I'm going to make more movies and shows. I doubt they'll all be good, but that's the nature of this life. Even though the public only knows me from one book, one movie, and several aborted blogs, I've spent the last few years hustling like Iceberg Slim out here to prove myself professionally. The people I currently work for, and with, are more than pleased with my post-Juno output. My pilot was so good (thanks, Toni Colette!) that it got picked up for series. That is rare, children. That is blue-rare.

In summation: you try it.

I'm not going to say Diablo Cody is righteous or a traitor to the blogosphere; if anything, she's one of the blogosphere's biggest success stories, and she's more than earned her right to say her piece. The blogosphere is certainly not perfect, either. I'm not even all that upset about the obvious ego and sense of elitism Cody has developed since her breakthrough.

What bothers me more is that Cody seems to be folding under the pressure of what seems to be relatively benign criticism on the Internet. Film_fan78 may crumble after one day as Diablo Cody, but I'm not sure Cody could survive for much longer as Lindsay Lohan or Mary-Kate Olsen. In terms of vehicles for snark on the blogosphere, Cody is pretty low on the totem pole. She should count her blessings for that.

Yet, it seems childish that she can't take the things people say about her on the Internet. What gets says there is probably what gets said by as many people (or more) in their living rooms. If you are in the public sphere, this comes with the territory. Cody was never a pure blogger—she only meant it as a launching point to her career. But you would think she'd develop an understanding for nature of the medium after a significant enough time on it. At least she's a good enough writer to not make any major spelling or grammar mistakes.

Diablo Cody - Hello Again! (Starring Shelly Long) [MySpace]

Labels: blogs, diablo cody, elitism, fame, hollywood, juno

Going off the deep end on bloggers is one thing. Being misogynistic while doing so? Stay classy, Houston Chronicle.

Labels: bad sports journalism, blogs, houston chronicle, misogyny, msm, richard justice

Mark Cuban's been attracting a lot of controversy in the blogosphere for his recent explanation for why he doesn't allow bloggers into the Dallas Mavericks locker room. The main thrust of his argument is that if he were to be fair to all bloggers, he'd have to let in the working in their mother's basement bloggers as well as the more mainstream ones. He is also fiercely critical of newspapers starting blogs of their own, saying it's killing their brand. Of course there have been dozens of rants on bloggers by prominent media members in the past. The main reason his argument has been so divisive, in my mind, is that it's an anti-blog column in the form of a blog post, and it's by one of the more prominent thinkers of new media in America, for better or for worse. Kim Voyner at Cinematical (full disclosure: I use to work for AOL) has an excellent if ambivalent response.

Cuban is something of a mystery to me, both as a sports fan, a movie fan, and a thinker about new media in general. At times, he can be one of the most brilliant prognosticators on media around; he saw the Viacom lawsuit against YouTube coming before anyone else did. At other times, he can be a five year old, as his reaction to Will Leitch's interview with him was straight out of grade school. In my mind, new media is increasingly gaining a more prominent role in our society, and that eventually, everyone's going to have to deal with it. At the same time, old media is still more dominant than it gets credit for, and there are legitimately a ton of exceedingly idiotic bloggers out there. The main problem is that the whole idea of community, reader-created media has never really existed to the current extent, and no one, no matter how smart, really knows how to deal with it. I'm reserving judgment on whether Cuban's argument here is right or wrong until 10 years from now, though my instinct is bloggers will have to be reckoned with at least in some capacity.

Labels: blogs, mark cuban, new media