Funny is funny.

And sincerity never goes out of style.

I’m freaked out. Every day I read three newspapers from cover to cover, I refresh their apps, comb news sites, trying to get a handle on what is going on.

I can’t.

I see Rupert Murdoch is sacrificing his Fox News empire to control Sky, which makes me wonder how much influence Rupert has anyway. It’s positively frightening when the media consults with the elected officials and tells them what’s going on, read Jim Rutenberg’s column, that’s exactly what Murdoch’s apparatchiks did.

And then we’ve got a President who ricochets like a pinball from one opinion to another. If I acted this way in college, I’d have flunked out. It was all about preparation and staying the course, knowing the consequences. What are the consequences to the shenanigans in D.C? I don’t know!

And then you have the “New York Times,” which in an effort to appear unbiased, even though the right wing has completely neutralized the news outlet and believe it is, hires a right wing columnist who says the problem with climate scientists is they’re just too strident, they’re just too convinced.

Hmm… We grew up in a nation where free speech was a mantra. But at what point do you channel Howard Beale and say I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore?

Turns out that Middlebury professor apologized to protesting students for not keeping them in the loop. We all want to be in the loop, we all want to know what’s going on, we all want to be considered.

And then there was that column re Ann Coulter and Berkeley… It’s not like she’s gone unheard, that she doesn’t get a platform.

And my point is when are the libtards, as my inane uneducated readers label the left wing, gonna grow a pair?

Last night Stephen Colbert did. He ravaged Donald Trump. A complete no-no, Karl Rove still has his knickers in a twist.

But I thank god someone stood up. Furthermore, he was funny. They’re trying to play gotcha politics, saying he made a homophobic comment, but the truth is money talks and Colbert is killing it in the ratings and CBS ain’t gonna do nothing to upset the juggernaut.

You see, taking a stand is good business.

Those of us who lived through the sixties know this, but those who didn’t, who came of age in the Ronald Reagan get mine before you can get yours MTV era, don’t.

So we’ve got a false equivalency in promotion. We believe the number one rule is not to offend anybody. But this is plain wrong, especially in a world where it’s nearly impossible to get attention anyway.

The world runs on buzz. How are you gonna get it?

By excelling at your job, by being sincere.

I know they are making new records, I know there’s a business there, but it’s peopled by self-centered wimps who are seemingly too dumb to take a stand. Don’t tell me it’s hard to write a hit protest song, Colbert’s writers come up with new material every night. You mean you can’t write a hit song if you try? Even with Max Martin and his team?

OF COURSE YOU CAN!

But you don’t want to take the risk.

The Dixies were chicked nearly a decade ago. We no longer live in that world. We live in a world of tribes, where everybody gets their own news from their own source, and your only hope is to energize your tribe so they spread the word elsewhere. PR doesn’t work, none of the usual marketing angles work. God, just open the paper, they’re always hyping somebody, and then the record disappears, just like that.

Artists take a stand, that’s what they do.

And then we come to the strange case of Jimmy Kimmel. Who built his career on irreverence and last night spent the better part of fifteen minutes telling the story of his newborn’s heart disease, at the end coming down hard against the right wing’s plan to eviscerate health care coverage and preexisting condition exclusion. Hell, his kid was BORN with a preexisting condition, what kind of chance did he have?

It’s hard to argue with personal experience.

But that’s what an artist does, channel personal experience.

For twenty five years, late night has been repeating the David Letterman hijinks formula. Until Agent Orange became President and Colbert decided to flip the script. And Jimmy Fallon, everybody’s darling, became like Frankie Avalon after the advent of the Beatles. And Fallon can’t change, he can’t catch up, because it’s not in his DNA.

But it is in Colbert’s.

And maybe it’s not in the DNA of today’s musical artists, but like Mr. Avalon and Mr. Fallon that just means they’re out of step with the times.

Taking a stand is good business. Controversy is good business. When it’s sincere, when it’s not fake.

And it’s been about fake marketing in the music business for oh-so-long.

Something’s gotta give. And chances are it won’t come from the usual suspects. Someone from left field is gonna stand up and the media is gonna fan the flames of the conflagration and it’s going to get ever bigger.

The only question is when.

Colbert-short version:

Colbert Blasts ‘Presi-dunce’ Trump in Scathing Late Show Monologue

Colbert-long version:

This Monologue Goes Out To You, Mr. President

Kimmel:

Jimmy Kimmel Reveals Details of His Son’s Birth & Heart Disease

Jim Rutenberg:

“Murdochs’ TV Deal in Britain Hinges on 3 Words ‘Fit and Proper'”

Bert Johnson – The Middlebury Campus:

“An Apology from PoliSci Chair to the Community”

Will Bunch – Daily News

“The Problem with NY Times and climate change isn’t what you think”

Why did everybody GO?

The more I think about it, the longer this story stays in the news, the more I think the promoters were geniuses. I mean how in the hell did they get everybody to pay so much, to travel, to go to an untested event put on by nobodies?

Influencers.

By now you’ve probably read Nick Bilton’s “Vanity Fair” piece on the Fyre pitch deck. No, I did not watch the video. Why does everybody who can write think that they can talk? Why does everybody who publishes want their writers to become talking heads? The worst are the ones on the “New York Times,” who sound like they’re giving a presentation in high school social studies class. But that’s all a disclaimer, as in if anything I say below was covered by Bilton in his clip, I didn’t see it, so don’t accuse me of plagiarizing him.

But I do give Bilton credit for amplifying the key to Fyre’s success. The 400 “Fyre Starters” who spread the word.

Think about that, major corporations, Fortune 500 entities, can’t get the word out.

Talk to a traditional concert promoter, they’ll tell you the number one problem is awareness, making people know the show is happening.

And then this wanker from nowhere, a veritable crook, sees the obvious and capitalizes on it. Call it a Napster moment. Where the ignorant turn tradition on its head. Who would want lousy sounding MP3s? Who would listen to nobody influencers?

THE PEOPLE WHO PAID TO GO TO THIS SHOW!

There’s a shadow economy. A shadow mainstream. And it’s not in the newspaper and it’s not on the news sites, but on Instagram, all the social networks pooh-poohed by the mainstream. That’s where the people hang out.

You wonder why people still believe all the fees go to Ticketmaster? Because they live in an echo chamber where reality never intrudes.

Kinda like going to a newbie festival. They know the new tech device works right out of the box, why shouldn’t the festival? It’s only the oldsters who’ve been burned before who know otherwise.

And the oldsters believe the draw is the talent.

It hasn’t been that way for a long long time. Quick, scan the acts at Coachella, if you know more than half of them you work for Goldenvoice. But nobody cares, as long as there are a few well-known headliners and I can go and shoot selfies and say I was there.

This is contrary to everything we’ve always known. Shows have been sold on talent. People will show up in a barn to be treated like cattle if the right act is on stage. And that still might be true, but even more true is if you treat people with respect, deliver luxury, make them feel like they belong, they’ll spend a whole hell of a lot more than the nobodies showing up in the cattle car.

We’ve got it upside down. We keep listening to people bitch that they cannot get a ticket at face value, they want to sit right up front for fifty bucks. But that is the vocal minority. Turns out most people have no problem shelling out dough for a good seat and a good experience, that’s why StubHub, the entire secondary market, has triumphed!

Instead of castigating Fyre, we should be looking for lessons.

One, the barrier to entry is not that high. The acts all agreed to appear, it’s only when the checks were not forthcoming that they balked. If you’re expecting talent to take a stand, you’re wrong. This is the same talent that salivates for privates, will show up to play for third world dictators.

So if Fyre just had deeper pockets and had hired someone who’d done it before…

It would have been genius.

Kinda like Burning Man in the beginning.

They call this disruption.

Yes, millennials like experiences. But they like to be INVOLVED in the experience. That was the selling point of Fyre, you were INCLUDED! And the music business has been based on exclusion from day one. And although the acts may be too big to deign to hang, turns out these social-influencer nobodies are not. But the truth is they are not nobodies, they might have no talent, but they’re stars to the fans. They post more and are more accessible than real talent. And you believe you too can make it, just like them, get free gear from Old Navy, drive a Ford Fusion for a week, nothing makes you feel like a star more than getting free stuff.

And the advertisers love it. That’s Bilton’s point and I’m with him on that. Regular ads don’t work, no matter how much money is spent. But if you can get real live human beings to use your product… We’re all complicit, we love brands more than bands. Hell, if I write negative stuff about Apple my inbox goes berserk, with vitriol from fans who know more about the company than they do of any band. But if I excoriate an act, I’ll just hear from a couple of people. The acts are not universal, the brands are, they’re the ones with the power. And if you can find one social-influencer, one successful “artist” who will say no to the brands…

That’s their income right there. That’s who they’re working for.

And, of course, under the law the social influencers should say they’re getting paid to promote Fyre. But why don’t they do that after they declare the perks as income on their taxes, worried that an IRS hobbled by the Republicans is gonna catch them, are you kidding me?

He who colors inside the lines is now a chump. We’ve got an uneducated nitwit for a President who does nothing but lie yet the rank and file should play by the rules?

You’re dreaming if you think that’s gonna happen.

Now there are some promoters making bank doing events featuring influencers/YouTube stars.

But the truly savvy oldsters will now utilize influencers to sell their shows. And those shows will be less band on stage and more events for the attendees to participate and feel good about themselves. It’s kind of like the EDM ethos. WE’RE THE PARTY! The guy on stage is literally only the deejay.

And the oldsters can’t understand that either.

Exclusive: The Leaked Fyre Festival Pitch Deck Is Beyond Parody

There is no pent-up demand.

Tech is all about utility, not fashion. And there’s no breakthrough coming, other than a curved screen.

You needed a new phone when they went from 3G to LTE.

You needed a new phone when they increased the screen size.

You no longer need a new phone, especially since the carriers have stopped subsidizing the purchase, now that the true cost is evident.

People drive their cars ever-longer, but analysts believe consumers are all gonna fork over a thousand bucks for a fashion statement?

Not gonna happen. Otherwise, 3-D TV would have been a juggernaut and you’d be throwing away your present flat screen for one with 4k.

Not that Apple isn’t powerful.

While the fanboys cheered on ever more expensive and less unique products, all power was consolidated in the four horsemen, Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook. That’s the story here, not the iPhone. With a beachhead in tech you can get ever-bigger. Hell, Facebook bought Instagram, never mind WhatsApp, and it looks like Snapchat is gonna struggle. Maybe not, but going it alone is nearly impossible these days, because of deep pockets and network effects.

Apple is a giant network. With people inured to their ecosystem. That’s the power of the company, not some me-too, gussied-up new phone. How much does it cost to switch? Hell, a friend of mine just got a new 7 Plus. Transferring photos was a nightmare, because he’s on WINDOWS! Yup, you want to be an all Mac all the time person, all Apple or all Android, not because one device is superior to another, but because you don’t want to waste your life trying to make your devices work, especially in a world where they all speak to each other and one in which there’s very little tech help.

So Apple will report its numbers tomorrow. They won’t be terrible and they won’t be great. It’s like a new Air Supply album, only that band can still tour decades on with the same songs and no one will want anything Apple sells today that far in the future.

And the stock went up and if you read the newspaper you’ll learn that the Cupertino company is a juggernaut.

But it’s not.

Let’s not focus on the stock split and what the increase in share price really is, let’s just say that that the only thing Apple has got going for it is its ecosystem. I just paid four grand for a laptop that’s good, with a ridiculous touch bar that no one who knows how to touch-type, who could afford a machine like this, would ever use. They admitted the Mac Pro was a failure and the Watch is about as important as Apple TV, which was overrun by also-rans.

So if you believe in Apple you’re sheerly looking at the numbers. That giant cash hoard. And if you were looking to the future you wouldn’t be worrying about that blip on the radar screen known as the iPhone 8, but what breakthrough is coming down the line, what will cement people’s loyalty to the Apple ecosystem and get them to spend more bucks on hardware in a world where you lay down ever less frequently. Your computer is good enough, your phone is good enough, your tablet is good enough, which is why iPad sales have tanked. Where’s the runway?

The internet is all about monopolies. When Apple was niche, even after Jobs came back, it was an interesting little company. It wasn’t until the iPod that revenue soared.

Amazon has got a monopoly on retail.

Google has got a monopoly on search.

Facebook has a near-monopoly on social networks.

What is Apple’s monopoly again?

P.S. It’s been five years, as David Bowie once sang, since Jobs’s death, name the breakthrough under Tim Cook.

P.P.S. Good is good enough, that’s why the world is on Android, this is Clayton Christensen 101, it’s why Windows 95 almost killed the Mac. Apple needs a great leap forward.

P.P.P.S. People will overspend for breakthrough items. Exhibit A, Tesla. Proving that people will buy a product from a company with no track record in that sphere.

P.P.P.P.S. Juggernauts are about belonging, can you say Beats headphones? A mediocre product Jimmy Iovine willed cool?

P.P.P.P.P.S. Services, schmervices. You’ll hear talk about this tomorrow, Apple Music, storage, but the number isn’t big enough to matter.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. The cash hoard. They’re afraid to spend it, they don’t know what to buy, they’re afraid of the stock stalling. Really, Apple is little different from AT&T and Verizon, forces of nature that hit a wall when the market became saturated.

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. All of the above is long term. In the short term Apple is okay, but history tells us tech companies crater overnight. When will that be? In order to avoid this fate Apple must spend its cash hoard, to compete with Amazon, Facebook and Google. They must buy market share/influence, because based on Ping they sure don’t know how to invent anymore.

Finally… Of course the iPhone 8 will sell well at first, there are always early adopters who want to parade the latest device, but then what? Remember the Mac? Launched in 1984 to great fanfare, then it sold well for about a minute. Even the record business has learned it’s not about first week sales, but sustained listening.

It’s not that you can’t reach us, it’s that we don’t CARE!

Even worse, if you overload us, we go on backlash.

Kinda like Mac DeMarco… I knew the name, but there was an exquisite article on him in yesterday’s “Times,” saying how he gave out his address so his fans could stop by, and it made me wonder, who was his publicity agent? Getting into the “Times” is so hard.

It’s Jessica Linker at Pitch Perfect PR. But if you use her beware. Now I HATE MAC DEMARCO!

How did this happen? How did he go from hero to zero so fast in my book?

It was the plethora of stories based around his new release that I immediately saw as I started to Google.

That’s right, marketing is still old school in a new school environment. No one is as bad a spammer as a marketer. Who believes if they keep telling us again and again we’ll care. Or if they try to be hip we’ll embrace them, like Pepsi. Or that they are our friend and will give us money to keep us in business

I recommend the story #VANLIFE in the April 24th edition of the “New Yorker.” You’ve read about this couple, these wankers traveling around in their VW getting rich posting to Instagram.

Only it’s not true. In 2016 they made $18,000, which won’t even pay for a semester at school, and they’re beholden to these sponsors who want it a certain way when they want it.

But it even gets worse…

The audience is only interested in sex.

The more they say it’s different, the more it stays the same.

If they post a pic of Emily half-naked, they get a lot of likes. A sunset? That’s a stiff and the sponsors are pissed.

But you keep reading in today’s world you can go your own way, use the new tools to sustain your dream. Yeah, that’s right, if your dream is driving all night for bupkes on Uber.

But there was an interesting tidbit in that VANLIFE story. Micro-influencers tend to have higher engagement rates, their followers are more active, therefore sponsors who want to sell something very specific to those people are interested. In other words, mass can work against you.

But we keep hearing of the mass with the Kardashians and PewDiePie but this is less about the distraction of an ignorant audience, which believes it too can get rich in our pyramid scheme world, than an indictment of the purveyors, the marketers, who just can’t fathom that the world has changed, never mind adjust to it.

Google wins because it’s all pull. You Google what you want and you find it there and the advertiser pays for that view/real estate.

Then there’s the canard that we must all turn off our ad-blockers so we can be followed around the web by companies we checked out once, as if being reminded over and over again will soften us up. Never worked for me, I just hate these companies, feel proud I use an ad-blocker. Because it’s a scam wherein those with space sell it to those with dollars under the illusion it works. But it doesn’t. So many of the dollars spent on Facebook and YouTube are a complete waste.

So we need a new way.

Then again, if we had that new way we all wouldn’t have spam in our inbox, never mind our mobile phones. But if you follow the spam, you find out an infinitesimal number of people have to respond for the hackers to get rich. And you hate the detritus.

But that’s what’s going on in the aboveboard world too. You’re telling me again and again and again and I’m just not interested. And now, with so many more places to tell me, I’m hearing it to the point of extreme frustration.

How many people read more than the local newspaper in the pre-internet era?

Very few. But now we all see multiple stories online. And they’re all the same. Revealing that most are not news at all, but publicity, and that it’s all about selling, selling, selling.

It just doesn’t work. Marketers have to come up with new techniques to sell their wares. Tech firms must lead the way. Then again, these tech firms, led by lauded Zuck and Sheryl, are lying, cheating, scumbags too. They’re busted every few months for heinous activities. As for Sheryl Sandberg, I’m sorry her husband passed, but who woke up and made her the queen of coping and recovery? Her message has been blasted all through the media for the past two weeks, to the point I abhor her, she’s a national joke, AND SHE DOESN’T REALIZE IT!

Isn’t she making enough money over there at Facebook?

What makes her an expert?

But the old school media believes it’s a feel good story and they’ve got to make somebody a star.

But most of today’s stars last minutes, can you say Milo Whatshisname? If you get bumped up to first class you become ridiculed and ejected. The second decade of the twenty first century is about putting your head down and doing the work. Otherwise, you’re a target, just like Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly and the rest of Fox became, to their detriment. When you’re flying high, you shut up. Be thankful we’re paying attention and listening at all.

We need a giant reset. We’ve got a modern communications system run by old school rules. We’ve amped up to 11 what we used to know and do. Yes, in the days of three networks overloading us with Colgate commercials worked. But in a wired world where we’re bombarded with messages 24/7 it does not. It’d be like saying no to a date and then getting asked twenty times a day for the rest of your life. Do you think you wouldn’t hate that person at this point?

Forget the offense, it’s just not working. No matter how many times you ask I’m still saying no, despite the tropes about being persistent.

If you’ve got something to sell, make it really damn good and let its fans sell it. Isn’t that the point with micro-influencers above? People become passionate and spread the word. Is there anybody passionate about Sheryl Sandberg other than the media hawking her? I’ve never heard anybody anywhere say anything positive about this woman in my presence. They’ve talked about her status and her books, but true believers are nowhere to be found.

We’re looking for true believers. Who resonate and spread the word because of this belief, not because they were paid, but because it makes them feel good, they want others to experience what they have.

We can see all the machinery. This is not the 1970’s. We know how the world works. Everybody knows how the world works. And they hate marketers the same way they hate politicians. Trump’s election was a middle finger to the elites doing business as usual. There’s a middle finger to the marketers too, they just refuse to see it.

But it’s standing tall.

“#VANLIFE, THE BOHEMIAN SOCIAL-MEDIA MOVEMENT, What began as an attempt at a simpler life quickly became a life-style brand”