Ready For Prime Time?
From today’s Gawker:
Have you seen the insane video of a woman yelling “Heil Hitler” at an Israeli-Jew who supports health care reform at a recent town hall meeting in Vegas? Well, her name is Pam Pilger. She’s on Facebook.
Not only is she on Facebook, but there’s a pair of YouTube videos of her delivering the offending exclamation and being interviewed just prior to the meeting.
Now, honestly, I couldn’t care less about what she said. Unless she’s doing it during the first half of the 20th century, a woman shouting about Hitler is the definition of a wingnut. And a wingnut is the rhetorical equivalent of roadkill: against your better judgment, you’re compelled to sneak a glance at it, and you wind up seeing something that can’t be unseen and makes you feel a little bit worse about the world you live in.
What interests me is the reaction to what she did. Ten or fifteen years ago, this would have been nothing more than a local news story. There’s a chance that it might have made the CBS Evening News, if it was a slow news day and the broadcast needed some sensational B-roll footage.
But now, thanks to YouTube and a legion of bloggers, it took Pamela Pilger less than four days to become a bona fide worldwide Internet Celebrity. Google News has about 15 articles for “pamela pilger” right now, and the first one went up only 20 hours ago. There are over 1200 hits for “pamela pilger hitler” on Google.
I have to wonder if she ever imagined her outburst would attract that kind of attention? She at least had the sense to lock down her Facebook account, but is that something she had the foresight to do when she first signed up, or did she do it after the hate mail started pouring in? And does the attention scare her, or is she thrilled that her soapbox is larger than she ever dreamed possible?
Convergence
When things come at me in threes, I pay attention. I know that it’s nothing more than a trick of patterning, seeing a gestalt image where there really isn’t any deeper meaning, but it happens rarely enough that it’s usually worth mentioning.
The latest one started with the news that Radiohead is allowing fans to pay what they want to download and own their latest album (which comes out tomorrow, or very, very late today if they’re releasing it at midnight GMT). I sort of lost interest in Radiohead a few albums ago, but this is an incredible thing. Considering that the vast majority of artists make only a dollar or two from each CD sale, the five dollars that I plan to spend on my download of In Rainbows represents at least a 150% increase in profit for them. I like the idea of bands making a name for themselves and ditching their record companies–who are, to a one, lying, thieving, parasitic whores. Cutting out the middleman appeals to the Lutheran in me. The Sex Pistols need to record an album called “The 99 Feces” and nail it to the front door of EMI’s office building.
Related to this was today’s announcement that, for the first time in 18 years, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails are not contractually bound or beholden to any record company and are officially free agents at this point. NIN fans know that, over the course of his career, Trent has signed some of the worst possible recording contracts in history, and the business side of his career has never done him a single favor. Interscope never knew how to promote The Fragile, they pushed With Teeth to be poppier than it probably would have been otherwise (not that I think that’s necessarily a bad thing), and they were so out of touch with Year Zero that Trent footed the bill for the viral marketing campaign himself. And not only that, he had to personally intercede to keep Interscope’s lawyers from going after the fans who uploaded “leaked” songs to file sharing services…when that was the whole point of leaking them in the first place!
The third item in this trifecta of “fuck the record companies” came in the form of today’s Diesel Sweeties, which you should all read on a regular basis. I think that the idea of a “certified indie” label is a great idea whose time has come. The big four record companies and their pitbulls, the RIAA, have done a great job of separating consumers from their money and keeping it from flowing into the hands of their artists. CDs don’t cost $18.99, not when the artists are seeing less than 10% of that. I can’t wait to see them die a slow death in a ditch, trading in their brand new Beemers for 12-year old Civics and realizing that they have no place in the new order of things.
Well, a man can dream, anyway. Here’s that Diesel Sweeties comic:
Something I Posted On SuicideGirls.com
I warmed up my writing synapses this morning by wading into a discussion about Joe Francis, the Girls Gone Wild douchebag, on SuicideGirls.com (not at all safe for work). I’m reposting what I wrote here, because if the past is any indication, I’ll probably have my SG account canceled by the end of the week.
- – - – -
Not that I’m trying to say that this is an apples-to-apples situation, but…
I have several friends who shot sets for this site and other reputable “female empowering” alt-porn sites when they were in their late teens or very early 20′s. They were paid a pittance and signed away all rights to the photos, because it was a scene that they wanted to be a part of, and because when you’re 19, $100 can make the difference between coming up with your part of the rent or not. (Or it can buy you a fairly substantial bag of weed or a tiny amount of coke. I’m not saying all these girls leapt off of the pages of Les Miserables. Although I do have a great story about a dancer I knew who stripped to save her farm…)
After these friends of mine did a little growing up and wanted to pursue more mainstream careers, they tried to get the sites to remove their photos. Despite the fact that the sites had gotten much, much more than their money’s worth from the sets, the sites refused to comply. One even sold their archives in bulk to other, less reputable sites, with the only condition being that they had to change the screen names of the girls. The sites did nothing illegal, and they were well within their contractual rights to do these things, but it definitely ran contrary to their mission statements.
Now, $100 isn’t a t-shirt and a trucker cap. And creating a scene that people want to be a part of isn’t plying them with liquor and coercing them into taking their clothes off. And even if you’re only 19, you should be smart enough to realize that maybe in 10 years, you might want to run for the local school board and not want pictures of your boobies floating around on the internets.
But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that SG and similar sites exist solely to empower women and create great erotic art any more than Joe Francis produces Girls Gone Wild to promote women’s freedom of expression. At the end of the day, despite the gulf of differences that separates them, both rely on horny guys paying to see young women’s naked bits to pay the bills.
And if this is the last post anyone sees from me, it’s because my account got suspended right after I posted this.
Spam Roundup
A breakdown of the weekend’s spam, by category:
TOTAL MESSAGES: 39
PENIS ENLARGEMENT: 7. Four of them begin bluntly with the line, “You need a bigger dick.” I always thought I was doing okay, but jeez, seven messages in one weekend? Statistically speaking, I think that at least some of those have to be from ex-girlfriends.
ONLINE PHARMACY: 11. Three of them were specifically for anti-impotence drugs. The rest just sort of implied that I could buy Viagra online for cheap without really needing a prescription. But seriously, who cares if my tiny cock is also limp? That’s like complaining that your Kia doesn’t have a turbo boost button.
GAMBLING SITES: 7. I guess they figure that if I’m dumb enough to drop the cash at online pharmacies to try and salvage my worthless penis, then I’m also the moron with disposable income that they’ve been looking for.
INTERNET DATING: 10. For the record, the only online gambling I do is on dating sites, so they actually pegged me pretty well here. But until I get my pecker working, I’m not going to subject myself to that kind of humiliation.
CHEAP SOFTWARE: 2. How did they know I owned a computer???!?
FAKE ROLEX: 1. I’m glad to see that the counterfeit jewelry business is still out there, but judging from their lack of spam, I’m concerned that they may have fallen on hard times.
And I’m just going to post the last message in its entirety, which I’m pretty sure was sent from Pat Robertson’s Regent University:
- – - – -
From: Percy Dickens
Subject: Hate Study?
Good News!
Interested to obtain Bachelors’, Masters’, MBA’s, Doctorate & Ph.D. degrees
available in your field in 2 weeks time?
It’s available now…
Call Us and get yours today
1-413-280-6792
Our Education office has someone available 24 hours a day, 7 Days a week
Why waiting?
1-413-280-6792
Year Zero, Part 3
(Note from the future: These links haven’t been double-checked; some may be dead.)
A dozen USB pen drives were found at the NIN show last night in Brixton, each containing the “Survivalism” video. Hidden in the video are two new websites.
The first is http://www.judsonogram.net, a webpage for a mental institution.
The second is http://www.thewaterturnedtoblood.net, which is a site created by an inmate at Judson Ogram.
A drug company called Cedocore is mentioned on the first site. http://cedocore.com takes you to the company’s corporate website.
There are all sorts of hidden things to do and see. http://www.ninwiki.com/Year_Zero_Research#Proven_Related_Web_Sites is an excellent resource for this, as is http://www.echoingthesound.org/phpbbx/viewtopic.php?t=20265.
Year Zero, Part 2
(Note from the future: I haven’t double-checked all of the links in this post. Some of them may no longer work.)
I’m creeping myself out more and more as I follow this stuff. Here’s what I’ve found so far:
The official website is http://yearzero.nin.com/. Watch the preview trailer for a glimpse of The Presence. The road sign that flashes by quickly says “I Am Trying To Believe.” Which leads us to:
(Click on “What is parepin’s purpose?” on the upper left corner of the screen and use the link on the next page to send an email to water@iamtryingtobelieve.com. You’ll get an automatically-generated reply sent to your inbox.)
www.anotherversionofthetruth.com
www.anotherversionofthetruth.com/audio/nohurry.mp3
www.anotherversionofthetruth.com/audio/ballgameOver.mp3
www.anotherversionofthetruth.com/audio/opalo.mp3
(Click and drag across the image to erase it. Click on the middle of the image to find hidden messageboards. Most of the topic threads have a link you can click on that takes you to an MP3 that fills in more backstory.)
105thairbornecrusaders.com/default.htm
www.consolidatedmailsystems.com
www.consolidatedmailsystems.com/nooneimportant/
(Click on any of the links and see what happens.)
http://www.securebroadcastinformatics.com/
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/sympathetic.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/workarounds.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/tangent.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/usage.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/upgrade.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/malletrings.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/subsystem.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/power.htm
http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/comm.htm
(There’s a hard-to-solve puzzle that takes you to other pages, which I’ve listed because I didn’t have the patience to solve the puzzle. You can also email Francisco@securebroadcastinformatics.com for another auto-generated email.)
http://uswiretap.com/case_number_required/
http://www.uswiretap.com/71839J/
(You can call 216-333-1810, the phone number listed on the page.)
http://www.artisresistance.com
http://www.hollywoodinmemoriam.org/
Also, check out the Wikipedia page on the story/campaign:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_%28album%29
I love this shit!
Year Zero
Noah clued me into the fact that there’s a lot more going on with the marketing for Nine Inch Nails’ new album, Year Zero. Which you should all rush out and buy on April 17th, by the way.
Yeah, the concept is lifted from Lost and a thousand other underground/viral marketing tactics, but unlike Lost, I still have hope that this will pay off with some sort of satisfying conclusion.
My Alma Mater
The History department of my alma mater, Middlebury College, has banned the use of Wikipedia by students as a source for academic work. I take a dim view of this action, as the site has always proven itself to be utterly reliable in my own experience.
I Have Some Pictures to Take
Stuff On My Cat dot-com. A site for lonely spinster secretaries in the making. Click it, view it, love it.
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