Category Archives: Consumerism

Sep 17 1 comments
Consumerism, Economics, Emerson College, Labor, Social Media, Thesis

She Works Hard for the Whuffie: Free Labor in the Age of Peer Production

It’s a title possibility for my thesis. Maybe I’ll change my mind. If I do I’ll simply come back and delete the entry altogether. How very 1984.

Thankfully the title, according to the Emerson College Department Handbook for the Master of Arts in Media Arts Program, 2004-2005 (my official catalog year), is open for redevelopment during the writing of my thesis.

I have decided that for my thesis I absolutely want to look at the economics of peer production. Almost everyone who knows me has heard my tirade on Amazon reviews (Short Version: On the whole, reviews increase sales (otherwise Amazon wouldn’t allow the system) people who take the time to write reviews are doing free promotions for Amazon products “to help educate others,” while increasing Amazon’s bottom line without compensation, etc…). Peer review systems, contests with consumer winning prizes for designing ad campaigns, corporate-sponsored play… these are topics that I’d wondered about in the abstract for but started being able to articulate after reading a Wired article by Long Tail author and longtime Wired editor, Chris Anderson, who writes:

Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy. The currency is reputation, expression, karma, “wuffie [sic*],” or simply whim.

On the whole, the article presents a far more idealistic view of peer production than I generally embrace. His line “It’s a mistake to equate peer production with anticapitalism,” left me with a riddle to solve. I’ve been in the process of temporarily moving out of my house (long story, happy ending) and, as I was packing and unpacking my library I took inventory of the number of books I’ve accumulated trying to answer this question, ‘with what, then, should I be equating peer production?’ (One hopes the answer will be less grammatically awkward than the question.) Anderson writes, “This isn’t amateurs versus professionals; it’s each benefiting the other,” but I have a hard time swallowing such a Utopian notion.

So, that’s what I’d like to drown in, I mean, dive into, in the next 9 months. The water is a choppy as it ever is with me, but it’s my last two semesters at Emerson. To keep with an already painful metaphor, it’s time to sink or swim. I invite anyone out there who has similar questions, or insights they’d like to share… or even just a good cookie recipe, to jump on in. I swear, the water’s fine. Join the Coast Guard and help me be the best that I can be! (As if the metaphor wasn’t bad enough, now I’ve gone and mixed it. ::sigh::)

My jump-start of a reading list is on the Works Cited tab above. Thanks for reading.

(ok, ok, that was more like 6 hours than 15 minutes of writing. 15 is a minimum, 24 the max in any given day. Deal?)

*The spelling of the word has it’s own “the day Aubree edited Wikipedia” story that ends in my wuffie entry being redirected to the “h”-bearing “whuffie“.

Sep 08 1 comments
Consumerism, Economics, Social Media, Thesis

Particitainment. Not a Typo.

The most powerful hybrid of communications and entertainment is “particitainment”—entertaining communications that connects us with some larger purpose or enterprise. - Futurist Paul Saffo, Consumers and Interactive New Media: A Hierarchy of Desires, 1993

I like this term “particitainment.” I can already hear my peers groaning at the introduction of another term to describe participatory culture, convergence culture, participation as the new consumption, and so on. But it’s clear from the getgo, Participation as entertainment. It’s not a new concept on the whole - for instance, one must participate in a roller coaster ride to get the entertainment or thrill. But in this era of user-generated content particitainment takes on a more specific tone of production and, from where I’m heading with this, labor, as a means of entertainment.

Saffo ties this notion of participation as entertainment to an even larger concept, defining particitainment as “entertaining communications that connect us with some larger purpose or enterprise.” Here it is the word enterprise that stands out to me. Written in 1993, Saffo could have meant anything by this (a prerequisite talent of Futurists), but looking at it now I jump to the bungling oft-maligned enterprises of Corporate America* and consider particitainment as those participatory acts of cultural production, largely enabled by the digital revolution, that entertain the user/consumer while producing a product of direct value to an enterprise. This leads me to my questions about labor/economy/user-generated content, wondering if there is a free labor market, slaving, under the delusion of entertainment, to the financial gain of those smart corporations that have begun to embrace the new participation as consumption model.

15 minutes up.

*must concede that Corporate America, in the all-initial-caps-sense is a diminishing notion in our ever advancing global economy.

Jan 21 1 comments
Consumerism, Digital Natives, Social Media

PBS/Frontline: Growing Up Online

Sounds fascinating, though I’m very curious to see if Frontline can balance its attention-getting (fear-instilling) trailer by presenting the significant advantages today’s digital natives enjoy thanks to the tubes. Has the potential to be the next “Merchants of Cool,” or show the sinking of another organization (please no - you’re PBS) to the sex-sells philosophy of television production by neglecting a balanced presentation of what it really means to be “Growing Up Online”

Nov 23 0 comments
Consumerism, Urban Life

Let the Resolution(s) Begin

The Holiday Season has begun and I am once again looking forward to my favorite one: New Year’s Eve. I love it not just because it signals all the rest of the stuff is (finally) over, but because of it’s cultural and economic significance. Leave it to me to make it about more than champagne hangovers.

Here’s the vision I forsee… “Today is January 1, 2008″

I am not the only one posting to their website today, millions are online right now. Some are posting resolutions, some are (regrettably) posting to Facebook/MySpace about the crazy antics of last night. Some are on Match.com making that new love a reality (or at least trying to), some are on boston.com in the jobs section, or maybe the personals. Still more are visiting Bally’s signing up for gym memberships, street searching local yoga studios, or on amazon.com buying (into) self-help books like, Body Clutter: Love your body, love yourself. One or two are surfing the Phillip Morris website for hints on quitting smoking, just like they did last year.

It can’t be denied that the internet plays some role in the modern day execution of New Years Resolutions (for brevity, NYR). Once upon a time NYRs were abstract rhetoric, followed quickly with vague notions of follow-up, “tomorrow, when I have the paper,” “next weekend I’ll get to the gym,” “I swear I’ll call a hypnotist as soon as I get a good referral.” This was a practiced routine, predictable in its diminishing returns on talk.

But now the excuses are over. Whether its 12:01am and you’re really inspired, or 5am and the buzz is gone but you’re oddly wired, or 11am and you’re just glancing at something you wrote on a napkin you found in your pocket, there isn’t anything, save champagne-blurred vision, to excuse a person from not executing the classic set of NYRs.

What a boon for the economy! Take Bally’s. They don’t have to be on your way to work, near your doughnut shop or in your office building to have a flying chance of catching you in your moment of determination. They don’t even have to be open—just online. They don’t have to worry that a customer will walk in the door, smell the sweat, see the tears and run out the door before they get a chance to get your money. They don’t have to pretend that they can help your lazy ass, they don’t have to pretend they care if you show up; in fact, they’d sort of prefer if you didn’t, esp since you were so inspired you took the 1 year membership with the $500 cancellation fee.

Abstract rhetoric becomes concrete idealism, as you enter your credit card number(s)—only to become expensive abstract rhetoric. So much for talk is cheap.

Happy New Years everyone. I’m off to the gym…

“We now return to our regularly scheduled black Friday.”