“Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness; close bosom friend of the maturing sun…” – or that’s what Keats said. Personally speaking, I think Keats can do one, as can September and Autumn in general. Everything smells of wet dog and regret, it’s cold and miserable and it’s now just the long, slow trudge towards another season of crass mass-consumerism and endless, interminable, incomprehensible perfume adverts (NB – anyone who works in advertising who reads this, please feel free to explain to me why perfume advertising is so oblique, as I have literally no idea).
Think, then, of this edition of Web Curios as the lightbox to your SAD, the plaster to your axewound (for future reference, an unpleasant conjunction of words to Google), the United Nations to your genocide. I’m here to help. To that end, herearesomerecommendationsforawesomestuffyoucandoin Londonoverthenextfewmonths (NB – that last link is one of the best things I’ve seen in years, very much recommended. Oh, and for an interesting take on Libya, you could do worse than read this). In the real world! NOT ON THE INTERNET! Crazy but true.
But for now it’s still all about the internet. Well, on this particular blog it is, anyway. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do (though I’d prefer it if you didn’t; I’m needy, and low-to-moderate traffic figures are all that’s standing between me and a P45).
Except obviously the past week in London really has felt rather like the end times are coming. Every so slightly hyperbolic, admittedly, but watching Tottenham go off on Saturday night and then the rest of the city (and indeed the country) across the next few days has been a depressing, sobering experience. Here, for your delight and edification, are some thoughts and links and things on what’s been happening over the past week. If you want, you can skip to the bottom where the videos are – I will think you an intellectual lightweight, but so be it.
Not really sure this needs a caption (pic by Lewis Whyld, PA/AP)
Guess who’s back? NO, IT IS NOT EMINEM! IT IS ME! (Though in fairness our level of musical / performing talent is comparable) Stop gawping at the back – I AM NOT DEAD! I wish that there was some sort of exciting reason for Web Curios’ long absence – an enthralling, Willy Fog-esque journey, an unexpected temporary career change, an unforeseen visit to chokey…but no, nothing so thrilling. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Web Curios’ existence was momentarily uncertain – but now I am most definitely here. I think.
Frankly nothing that you’re going to read from hereon in matters one iota compared to the above, but it’s probably going to be marginally more cheering. Read on, and make your Friday afternoon of wageslavery marginally less soul-crushingly worthless than it might otherwise be.
The rest of you, though, for whom it is NOT your month, will simply have to content yourselves with the following collection of webthings. Apart from The Man – for it is alwayshis month.
Alice Was A Lot Less Innocent Than Is Often Presumed
I am in the slightly surreal position of writing this Curios whilst our blog is in fact broken (a fact in no way due to incompetence on the part of anyone, no sirree), meaning that there is NO GUARANTEE that any of you will be able to read this sparkling prose. It’s strangely liberating, much like the fact that I am sitting here clad in nothing but a tshirt and a winning smile. I could say ANYTHING!
I won’t, of course; I need the money that webmonging provides. Instead, I will pause a moment to reflect upon a week in which it turns out that God’s not quite ready for us yet (unless of course the Rapture in fact happened and it simply turned out that He took a good look at us and thought “Actually, hang on, none of this shower is worth saving”. It wouldn’t be that surprising, given, you know, stufflikethis); in which Ryan Giggs realised that you can’t in fact sue the internet (an aside – does anyone else think there’s something STARTLINGLY VULGAR about the incredible speed at which the Imogen Thomas cash-in vehicle is now moving? The full-page Paddy Power ads in this morning’s Metro were a particular highlight; well done, everyone, aren’t we CLEVER!), thus hopefully putting an end to this startlingly tedious superinjunction business (or that’s what Giles Coren hopes, anyway. Out of interest, if I just write Gareth Barry’s name here does that mean that I go to jail too?); in which some of the most powerful men in the world met in London (and they let The Man play too!) to take part in what appears to have been the worst game of table tennis ever played; and in which over 13,000 people LISTENED TO MY VOICE – on that point, in the unlikely event that anyone from Radio 4 is reading this and you fancy mixing up your roster of continuity announcers a bit, I am absolutely open to offers. HIRE ME, RADIO 4.
I have no idea why, but I love this picture very much indeed.
Things About The Internet:
These aren’t new news, so I won’t dwell on them as you’ve doubtless read about them on some other SOCIAL MEDIA GURU’S blog, but Facebook has added the ability to tag Pages in photos (thus giving us all that longed-for ability to link to Coca Cola’s Facebook page from our pictures. Hear that sound? That’s the sound of thousands and thousands of souls, fizzing sadly into nothingness as we take one more step towards being nothing more than dead-eyed marketing shills!), and has also updated the manner in which its ‘Share’ functionality works, allowing users to share links with specific Groups / Friends. There’s nothing evil about that, I don’t think.
This IS New – Google Correlate – New cleverness from Google, allowing you to map search terms against each other to find patterns. It’s appallingly hard to explain, or at least it is for me; they do it rather better on the site, so I suggest that you go there.
Social Search and Filter Bubbles and Stuff: Both Google and Bing hace recently been wanging on about their increased commitment to integrating social into search; that is, factoring in data from your Facebook and Twitter profiles when compiling search results. WHY IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? Ok, so I’m possibly being a luddite about this, but my friends are not necessarily experts on stuff I am searching for. Just because 8 morons who I used to go to school with and haven’t spoken to in 16 years happen to ‘like’ a story from the Mail Online doesn’t mean I want it appearing at the top of my search rankings. Ok, so obviously it’s more sophisticated than this, but this is a prime example of the growing problem of filter bubbles, as brilliantly explained in this recent TED talk by Eli Pariser (it really is interesting, I promise) – that is, information filtering based on existing tastes / preferences, and the problem of sourcing that this can and does create; when the web can learn our tastes, can provide us with prioritised information based on what our friends – who are likely to be like us – are consuming, what are the long-term consequences? This isn’t a new concept – after all, people have been reading the newspaper that best reinforces their existing worldview for years – but one that will become increasingly relevant as automated curation becomes ’smarter’ (or, at the very least, more ubiquitous). Perhaps we should all make an effort to take our news from a different source each week? Just a thought.
Ana Somnia – I’ve never been a little girl, and it’s unlikely this state of affairs will change in this lifetime; nonetheless, had I been one this is what I like to imagine my dreams would have been like. An awesomely trippy website which is halfwaybetween storybook and art project, and which has one of the most captivatingly creepy and odd soundtracks I’ve heard in a while. Click and play – a lot of it’s procedurally generated, it would seem, which means each of you will experience it in a different manner.
Vorsong Iceberg Energy Water Feng Shui Brand! – I’m reasonably sure that this is some sort of spoof, but I’m buggered if I can work out of what / why. If it’s not, there are some very, very strange people marketing this water.
Er, Horseracing? – I don’t read Japanese, therefore my ability to understand what in the name of sweet Baby Jesus this is about is pretty much 0. It’s…just mental, really. Just click stuff until the race starts and watch, mouth agape, at the ensuing oddness.
Dumb Tweets At Brands – Sometimes the quality of ‘engagement’ brands can achieve through social media is of questionable value.
Alan Sailer takes amazing pictures. Click the image for more.
The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – This Wednesday was Towel Day, and reminded me not only of the sheer amazingness of Douglas Adams’ work but also how good the original Hitchhiker’s game was. I say ‘game’; it’s more an interactive novel, the whole thing written by Adams’ himself and containing some brilliant gags and some of the most impressive / frustrating (depending on your mood) examples of lateral thinking you will ever find. Take the afternoon off and play it. You too, The Man!
Some Wordy Stuff:
Ulysses, On Twitter – Literary experimentation in 140 characters isn’t new (I covered this in a VERY early web curios, for example), but this is a really interesting experience. The idea is to recruit a bunch of James Joyce aficionados to take sections of the legendarily ‘challenging’ novel and submit them to a central account, from which they will be tweeted on 16th June as part of Bloomsday (an annual celebration of Joyce’s life and work) – as the novel unfolded over the course of a single day, so the Tweets will reflect the narrative. Will be interesting to see how it works.
Live Writing Projection – This might be my favourite thing on here this week. As part of the promotion for New Zealand’s BNZ literary awards, the opening lines of short stories were projected onto public spaces in Aotea Square, Auckland. And then passers-by started to realise that the story being written might be about them…
Motion Poems – Poetry set to animation. Some really beautiful work on here; recommended.
Katie Alves paints scenes from films on people's eyelids. This is The Nightmare Before Christmas.
VideoStuff! Enjoy – and given the fact that it’s our last bank holiday for AGES, I ORDER you to slack off for the rest of the day and watch all of them.
1) I’m opening with what is by far and away the most rubbish song I’ve featured on Curios for AGES. It’s worth it, though, for the video is all kinds of supervideogamegeekery. See how many retrogame references you can spot – there are HUNDREDS in there. I’m thinking that the audience for this is going to be primarily male. Oh, and if you do like this song then you are a cloth-eared dunce. Sorry, but it’s true. Goldfish, with “When We Come Together”:
2) This, on the other hand, is a great song by a band called Bad Lamps. The video, made by some random off the internet, features what I think is a whole host of clips from porn movies, strung together to accompany the song. There’s no nudity whatsoever, and there’s something weirdly poignant about seeing the nonsex elements of bongo movies:
3) This song about smoking has a fair bit of Johnny Cash’s ‘Boy Named Sue’ about it, which is no bad thing, and the video is very Terry Gilliam / Monty Python-esque, which is also good. Made me really want a tab:
4) Loom is a jaw-dropping piece of animation. Probably not great if you’re an arachnophobe, mind:
5) God, OFWGKTA are SO LAST MONTH. If you never found any of their output upsetting or abrasive enough then you’ll very much like Full Moon by current internet obsession Death Grips:
6) PHEW, THAT WAS A BIT MUCH WASN’T IT? Let’s come down with this, by Black Light Dinner Party. It will make you want to be a New York hipster, just a little bit. Older Together:
7) I have no idea who this girl is, but her endearingly inept (and very, very sweary) cover of ODB’s “Got Your Money” has made her my new favourite internet person. I bet she’d be THRILLED to know that:
It’s a remote control plane, THAT LOOKS LIKE A SUPERHERO. Amazing. Want one:
9) To close, this week’s eyemeltingly strange video of the week – there’s a point in this that genuinely makes me shudder each time I watch it. ENJOY!!!!
Blah blah blah really busy blah blah blah. Basically I’ve got a lot on and I’ve been whinging about it to all my colleagues, so if I did a full Curios they’d probably raise an eyebrow.
As such, this week we’re going straight to the ‘good’ stuff – ie the videos – with minimal tortured prose to dampen your enjoyment. Er, enjoy. Oh, and here’s hoping you’re one of the lucky ones tomorrow – to all those left behind with me after The Rapture, SOLIDARITY! Erm, this post contains literally NOTHING connected to my job. Sorry about that, paymasters!
1) I featured French people Yelle a few weeks back in a video double bill, and ordinarily I wouldn’t bother again, but they’ve made another awesome promo to accompany their single “Que Veux Tu”. Watch:
2) Have you ever seen Swan Lake being performed by whimsical, animated Sumo wrestlers? If not, then this will be a NEW EXPERIENCE:
3) I really don’t know why this hasn’t had more views, seeing as it’s about ZOMBIES and the internet seems to love those. Anyway, this is a technically brilliant piece of claymation (sorry) about…er…zombies. WARNING: CONTAINS PLASTICINE BRAINS:
4) Metermaids are a (probably hideously hipster-ish) Brooklyn hiphop group; this is their song ‘Matchbooks’. The video features people throwing stuff at them, which is always a winner. Fans of Sage Francis, Atmosphere, etc, should like this I think:
5) I think Little Red might be Australian, but don’t let that put you off (sorry, my one Australian reader) – I really like the (simple) concept for this video for the single ‘All Mine’:
6) Are you having a stressful day? Is The Man on your back? Watch this short clip of origami gently unfolding itself on water and relaaaaaaaaax:
7) Continuing the trend of ‘bands I’ve never heard of but who must be quite famous given the production values of their videos’, Hooray For Earth (Hmmm) have produced this beauty for their single True Loves. No idea what it’s about, mind. Er, cupid?
I’m sure there’s a name for this genre of music (er, Favelastep? Sorry), but, whatever it is, this vid for BURAKA SOM SISTEMA’s ‘Hangover’ is pretty good at conveying Brazilian mentalness:
9) I’ve never really understood what ‘Witch House’ is meant to be, but apparently this is it. Creepy, weird, wtf-ish video to close for Mater Suspiria Vision’s ‘Holy Beast Of Bethlehem’. Moderately NSFW due to some nipples (not many, though, so don’t be scared):
I really shouldn’t be writing this, you know. I should, instead, be continuing to whore my brain out for The Man – but instead I defy him in order to…er…waste a couple of hours knocking this rubbish out JUST FOR YOU! I expect you all to contribute to the ‘feed and clothe Matt’ fund once the near-inevitable P45 finds its way to my desk.
HELLO! This Friday marks what, as far as I’m concerned, is the end of the last working week in April. Next weekend we have death, resurrection and ceremonial chocolate sweats; the weekend afterwards we have a nation descending into drunken, vomitous chaos in the name of a patriotic spirit long-forgotten (oh, and there’s a wedding happening too). As a result of people indulging in this sort of behaviour, it’s unlikely any of us will have got over the jaundice before May at the earliest (NB – Web Curios does not condone excessive drinking unless it’s as an expression of royalist fervour, in which case go for your lives webmongs).
As a result of the imminent HOLIDAY, this week’s Curios is going to be relatively light on work-related stuff. Obviously, though, it’s all still GOLD. ENJOY, DAMN YOU.
Contrary to what you may have feared, I AM NOT DEAD! Put away your wreaths, unveil your faces and break out the bunting, for Web Curios is BACK (I just tried doing a Google Image search for Web Curios – beautifully, several of the initial results are pictures of The Man. Hello, The Man!). Admittedly it’s only back for a week, as I am on HOLIDAY next Friday, but frankly you should be grateful for whatever you’re given at this stage.
In my absence, webmongs, I have seen things of which you can only dream. I have seen Slough and a Tesco’s so large that approaching it is like that opening bit in the first Star Wars film with the massive spaceship that goes on and on and on and (Slough FACT: there’s a pun in Slough town centre called the Wernham Hogg, named after the fictional company in The Office (which was of course set in Slough); I can’t work out whether this is a brilliant piece of self-satirisation or actually one of the saddest things ever, though I know which way I intuitively lean). I have been to Barcelona on a stag party, accompanied (amongst others) by a charming man known as ‘Big Sam’ who was recently cleared of common assault after breaking a man’s jaw on the fotball pitch (needless to say Big Sam and I didn’t really have much in common), where I danced to techno like a teenager and was thrown out of a nightclub (I came back in again 5 minutes later though). Oh, and I’ve done work as well, some of it actually not that bad.
Oh, and one last thing before I wang on about the internet and cats and stuff. I was reminded this week about the way in which Facebook is used as a tribute site when people die, particularly in the case of the young. This is, of course, perfectly fine. As someone who relatively recently had to administer the page of someone young who died, though, can I please point out that WHAT YOU WRITE MATTERS. I don’t mean to come across as stuffy (HEAVEN FORFEND) but I’m not entirely convinced that the term ‘RIP’ benefits from an exclamation mark (hey, kids, punctuation changes emphasis. You idiots) or indeed that a sad smiley is an adequate response to death. Just saying, like.
Ahem. Oh, and one last thing – Web Curios this week contains no Rebecca Black whatsoever. You can thank me in the comments.
One of a series of posters designed to commemorate the Fukushima earthquake. Click for more.
It has been a week of RAGE on the internet. Rage and hate, webmongs. Not, though, coming from me (well, no more than is usual) – this time it’s been everyone else getting all unnecessary about things. And then, and is the wont of the internet, behaving like a toddler with ADHD and completetely forgetting about the thing that made them so angry in the first place and moving on to the next shiny new toy. I don’t necessarily agree with the whole ‘the internet is making you stupid’ movement – you know what? we were doing just fine at being stupid before this stuff turned up – but it’s certainly helping us regress, behaviourally, like few other things.
Anyway, so Tuesday saw everyone (well, every single media tool in London, at least) getting REALLY REALLY IRATE at a video made by PHD Worldwide in what would appear to be an attempt at self-promotion. If you’re reading this then you are probably one of the London media tools who’s already seen said video, but on the offchance you haven’t, you can watch it here. It’s undeniably cringey – stage-school kids spouting a whole load of mediaguff about THE FUTURE and how brands will need to market to them in NEW and EXCITING and DYNAMIC ways if they are to capture the attention of the POWER CONSUMERS of the future – and certainly deserves a bit of ribbing. It probably didn’t, though, merit the frightening level of vitriol directed at it online. Just a thought – was some of the anger directed at PHD (who, it must be said, dealt with the whole thing very graciously and with a sense of humour) possibly borne of self-recognition? Ask yourselves, media tools of London, have you never used terms like that when trying to shill your services? Was the reason that so many people were moved to such staggering levels of bile that they saw themselves in it? It’s one thing to come the big social media guru in a client meeting when you’re met by the blank-eyed, slack-jawed stares of incomprehension that immediately precede the opening of chequebooks by the terminally confused; it’s quite another to be confronted by the horror of the words you regularly use when they’re coming from the mouths of children. Just saying, like.
BUT! We all swiftly forgot about that on Wednesday, when we met Binkie. The original Telegraph article’s been removed, presumably to spare the poor girl any further humiliation, but the damage has been done. By Wednesday afternoon she was trending in London, people were full of IRE at her privilege and background and nickname and wealth, and kind-hearted people on Twitter had dug out her Facebook profile, found out where the wedding was happening and were talking about how ‘fun’ it would be to gatecrash it with White Lightning (an aside: I have just discovered they no longer make White Lightning. Teenage Matt is saddened by this) and how they wanted various calamities to befall her.
Look, I know this is all ‘harmless fun & games‘, and heaven forfend that I be puritanical and preachy about this sort of thing, but it does make me sort-of-agree with Milo Yiannopoulos and this article he wrote in the very same Telegraph earlier this week (aside from the ‘lefty’ rubbish). Remember the Two Laws of the Internet? Well this is all about the second one. Never forget Wheaton’s Law. It should be easy; if it’s not, perhaps you might want to consider sterilising yourself.
It’s a remote control plane, THAT LOOKS LIKE A SUPERHERO. Amazing. Want one:
