“India.Arie Shares Clips Of Joe Rogan Calling Black People ‘Apes’ And Using N-Word”: https://bit.ly/3seXhWx

Morgan Wallen is caught drunk, surreptitiously, uttering the n-word and he becomes a cultural pariah. To the point where a year later, many people still believe he should continue to pay a price and be banned. Furthermore, Spotify removed his music from its playlists, they DE-EMPHASIZED IT! But Joe Rogan utters the n-word on camera, refers to black neighborhoods as PLANET OF THE APES, yet he’s defended and gets a pass?

Well, 1/6 was legitimate political discourse.

HUH?

If India.Arie was Doja Cat, Joe Rogan would be paying a price. But since Arie is not at the top of the commercial game right now, her story gets no traction and is paid no attention.

But let’s go back to Neil Young, et al. The Rogan supporters are laughing, seeing Neil as out on a limb, out of touch, they believe the joke is on him. But if they’d lived through the sixties, when Mr. Young’s thoughts were formed, they’d see a quite different picture.

Most people were FOR the Vietnam War. We were the United States, we never lost. (Although now we’ve lost in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. Why were we in those wars again?) But there was a coterie of antiwar protesters in the EARLY sixties who spoke up. They too were derided and marginalized, but as time wore on and the war escalated, more and more Americans started to reevaluate their position. And the antiwar protests got traction. Nixon went to speak with protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. The national viewpoint on the war changed, it needed to end, which it ultimately did, however slowly. Hell, Nixon won in ’72 by falsely claiming that PEACE IS AT HAND. Yeah, right.

Leaders. Pushing the envelope. That’s what it’s about.

But by the end of the sixties, all young people were questioning authority and beliefs. Not questioning science, (everybody believed in science, it put men on the moon and brought us LSD, never mind Tang), but mores.

I learned that term as a freshman in college, in anthropology. According to the Oxford dictionary, “mores” means:

“the essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a community”

But then we were all in it together. Hell, one of the biggest, most sustained hits of the era was the Youngbloods’ “Get Together.” Now we’re all torn apart, and it’s all about what’s good for me, screw you. And we play to the dumb, not the educated, the educated are scorned. Meanwhile, most of the so-called educated are not, they take business courses, STEM, English and art majors are laughed at, but without a well-rounded background you’re myopic, you can’t see the forest for the trees, you can’t make educated decisions, you question as opposed to running on instinct, or following the herd.

And now we’ve got a cultural division. And I feel for those on the wrong end of the stick, the uneducated poor. The truth is they were not looked out for in NAFTA and the computerization of America. But that does not make the educated elite dumb, that does not mean you should take all their opinions off the table.

And, unfortunately, the elite have had enough. When people tell you not to believe your eyes, there’s always gonna be trouble. 1/6 was “legitimate political discourse.” Yeah, right.

So the truth is Neil Young is on the bleeding edge, he’s a beacon, it’s just that the ignorant and uninformed don’t know it. One person takes a stand, and then others learn the lesson and they do so in the future. One guy, Neil Young, brought this whole question into focus, which is multifarious to begin with. How do we fight misinformation? Is Spotify just a distributor or a publisher? What exactly are censorship and free speech in the online world? What responsibility do all these platforms have?

Yes, it’s all up for grabs. And what do Spotify and the rest of the platforms have to say? TRUST US! We’ve got it HANDLED!

I ain’t trusting Mark Zuckerberg, a myopic techie who can’t get along with people. Just because you’re powerful and rich that does not mean you are smart.

And Morgan Wallen is different from Joe Rogan. Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous” was just another record, no different from the rest of the millions of titles. But Joe Rogan has a direct relationship with Spotify, they paid him $100 million. And Spotify is MORE LENIENT with Rogan??

Every day people e-mail me that boomers are out of touch because they’re too old. But the truth is, when you get older, you’ll realize older people are wiser, because they’ve had more EXPERIENCE! Do we really want all our social issues decided by thirtysomething techies?

Once again, Morgan Wallen has the right to say whatever he wants, but we don’t have to AMPLIFY IT! Why wasn’t his excision from radio playlists seen as censorship of free speech? Oh, that’s right, radio stations can do whatever they want, and they’re regulated by the FCC!

False equivalencies, jammed down our throats. Everybody’s opinion is equal. There are two sides to every story. No, most times that’s not true, and certainly not with science.

Do I think Joe Rogan should be shut up permanently? No. Just like I think Morgan Wallen is entitled to get out of persecutory jail. But why does Wallen pay such a significant price while Rogan pays NONE, not even from the same company!

But Rogan says he’s just an overworked comedian, he didn’t mean it, he’ll try harder. But Wallen is caught drunk and says one bad thing and he’s blasted away?

Come on.

Bottom line, if you get Covid and you’re not vaxxed the odds of hospitalization are double digit times higher. And in many places, Covid deaths now exceed what they were two years ago. And there’s math involved, Omicron might not be as deadly as previous variants, but it’s plenty dangerous. And if you get it… Hell, Karl Rove’s sister died of Covid! You see Covid doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. Go unvaxxed at your peril.

But we’ve got Joe Rogan proffering falsehoods again and again, just saying he’s trying to illuminate the other side. But sometimes, the other side should not be illuminated, it’s bogus. One lying doctor says vaccines cause autism and the entire world changes. Do you see the power of misinformation? Hell, that’s what the right is BUILT UPON!

Spotify has a responsibility. Joe Rogan needs to pay a penalty. Because they’re letting him skate, and then everybody else is encouraged to do the same damn thing. Which is how we got into this mess. Politicians and business people lied on the stand and now the hoi polloi have no problem telling lies in court, none whatsoever, they BOAST ABOUT IT! Civic responsibility? WHAT’S THAT?

The truth always outs. Like with Zucker at CNN. It may take a while, but you can’t hide it. The truth is Joe Rogan has a history of false and racist statements. Unlike too many in society, I think he can be rehabilitated, but just pledging to do better is NOT ENOUGH!

Trailer: https://bit.ly/3slXasx

It’s on Hulu.

Unlike music, you can’t get all visual content in a single place for one low price. Instead, you have to subscribe to umpteen services, which nobody does. In truth streaming is a better model than cable, because subscribers don’t have to subsidize marginal channels with their money, and can pay just for what they want, but the end result has been Balkanization, to the detriment of creators and viewers.

That’s right. Tell a TV producer they can be paid if they don’t make the show and that is almost never satisfying, they want to see their project on the screen. But what if it’s made and most people don’t even have the opportunity to see it, never mind choose to.

Which is why things are so much better in music. It’s all there, you can get the history of music for one low price, and what do the creators do…BITCH! They want a controlled system like the old one, based on overpriced CDs made by very few people. Now they’ve been let in the door and want to make the old money, even though in the new model it comes down to how many people are listening. And there’s the thought that a million plays should be equal to x amount of money which makes no sense whatsoever, that’s like judging the energy efficiency of an internal combustion engine by comparing it to the motor in an electric car. The paradigm has changed, it’s impossible for a gasoline engine to have the efficiency/MPG of an electric one. Which is why the entire industry is moving to electric. You’re screwed if your business model is based on the internal combustion engine. The public wants better mileage. Should Ford and GM be allowed to live in the past? So far, Tesla has been eating their lunch with a clean slate emphasizing software, you don’t see traditional car companies complaining that we must go back to the old model.

Which is all to say most people will never watch “In My Skin,” because most people don’t have access to Hulu.

So a person needs access, and then there must be desire. With a cornucopia of programming, the individual must CHOOSE to watch “In My Skin.” What are the odds this English program can compete with the ballyhooed “Mandalorian” or “Tiger King” or “Squid Game”? Very low.

It’s even worse in indie film. Every week tons of new pictures arrive, and go unseen. You mean I have to troop out to the theatre and waste all that time and money to see ONE FILM? Indie film belongs on streaming services. Day and date. Then it could regain some impact, but the makers refuse to do this. ALSO, streaming platforms cannot digest all this material, unlike in streaming music, so certain indies will be left out completely, will go unseen, irrelevant of their merits, unless people are willing to overpay, even on on demand streaming. No, you must be on one of the big streaming platforms or you might as well not exist.

So “In My Skin” is a BBC program, consisting of two five episode seasons, released in 2018 and 2021. It’s shot in Wales, so the accents can be hard to decipher, especially that of the main character, Bethan, so I advise keeping the subtitles on.

And “In My Skin” is not a theme park ride. Unless you consider everyday adolescent experience to be one.

You see Bethan’s father is an alcoholic, her mother is mentally ill, and Bethan oftentimes has to act like the adult of the family, all while trying to navigate her regular school and friend life. For those of us who grew up in a stable two parent family it’s quite an eye-opener, we read about this stuff but rarely experience it.

Not that “In My Skin” is a documentary, anything but. What you’ve got is a high school. How do you navigate high school? And what is the number one criterion of secondary school navigation? POPULARITY! Popularity trumps everything. Any smart kid will trade grades for popularity. And Bethan has friends, but they’re outsiders, and live up to the image, they don’t want to be part of the mainstream…but secretly Bethan does. And when she gets the chance… You’ve been there, you’re PINCHING yourself. Smiling on the inside as you do your best not to screw up, savoring the moment, hoping it will last.

And what is your future path when your parents are out to lunch?

You’re rooting for Bethan to go to college, but she’s influenced by a friend, friends have so much power when you’re a teenager.

And there’s anger, and revenge. And issues of friendship, what do you owe your friends, does it trump your own desires?

“In My Skin” is not “The Sopranos,” riveting from the very first moment, you’re not always on the edge of your seat. But life is not like that either. Not that “In My Skin” is ever slow. Yet there are moments of gravitas that will bring tears to your eyes, and you will not feel manipulated.

Are you skinny enough? After popularity comes appearance. And Bethan isn’t stick thin and internalizes this, even though she looks fine to most people. But the standards of high school are unforgiving.

Gabrielle Creevy as Bethan is a ten, you think she’s really the character.

As for her mother…Jo Hartley is stupendous. In America, this is a plum role for a slumming Nicole Kidman or Charlize Theron, you know, beauties who are looking for serious roles to win awards and burnish their image. But Hartley is not a model, she’s just normal. But she emerges to become three dimensional. You see people on screen and you think you want to be with them, but you’ve got no idea who they really are. And in truth beauty is one small factor in the overall mix, and becomes less important once you’re in a relationship.

As for Di Botcher, the grandmother… That generation is always portrayed as warm and fuzzy, sans edges, but in reality they’re just grown up people, and based on class and education they might be little more than adolescents. Botcher is warm, but her language is so base, so unfettered, that it’s refreshing and revelatory, this is a real person!

“In My Skin” is a private experience. It’s not a tentpole picture you want to see in a full theatre. It’s personal. You watch it and get caught up, identify, it’s like the best art, it reflects humanity, makes you feel more human yourself.

I heartily recommend it.

Turns out buying your way into the future is a bad strategy.

The biggest story this week for me was Facebook (I refuse to call it “Meta,” I’m on the fence with calling Google “Alphabet”) dropping out of the crypto game.

Facebook wasn’t first. Facebook had infrastructure. But when confronted with the concept of Facebook moving into the crypto sphere, seemingly everybody said NO WAY! This is what happens when you have a scorched earth policy towards competitors. When people have seen your trick and are now gun-shy.

We saw this with Apple and TV. The producers and distributors saw how Apple revolutionized the portable music player and smartphone markets and they decided to freeze Apple out. Just before he died Steve Jobs said he had TV figured out, could he have executed? One thing is for sure, Tim Cook could not. And trying to maintain its margins Apple has hobbled its market share. They’re giving Rokus and Firesticks away. Which is why when competitors came on the market Jobs dropped prices on iPods dramatically. He wanted to own the market, and he did.

Until he destroyed the market with the iPhone. That’s right, Steve Jobs disrupted HIMSELF! (Well, Apple.) This is exactly what Clayton Christensen preached, because if you don’t, someone else eventually will. And then you’re screwed.

This is what happened with Facebook.

Social media went to images, it purchased Instagram. Knowing the landscape of digital communication, Facebook also bought WhatsApp, which U.S. residents still don’t know the power of, it RULES the rest of the world. Forget iMessage. There are a couple of territories where other platforms are dominant, but really, the footprint of WhatsApp is stupendous.

And then comes Musical.ly. It was seen as for kids. Thought was it was a fad with limited appeal. It didn’t offer the smorgasbord of services that Facebook did. It was a sideshow. But then Musical.ly was sold to ByteDance and it became the MAIN SHOW!

Let’s be clear, Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook when he was in college. He had his feet planted firmly on the ground, he knew the college vibe. Furthermore, the analog blueprint had been established, just move the print facebook online. The programming was the hard part.

And with help from savvy Silicon Valley players Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard and built Facebook into a monolith, all while maintaining control.

Now you’ve seen Zuckerberg on TV. Smug and self-satisfied. But in truth he’s no longer on the street, he didn’t see young kids using Musical.ly, it was in plain sight, but he MISSED IT!

What did Zuckerberg actually start? He got the idea for Facebook from the Winklevosses… In reality, his rep as a seer is not too good. This is not Steve Jobs looking into a future no one else could see and pulling a rabbit out of a hat. And, in truth, a lot of Jobs’s ideas were refinements of already existing products, but the makers of those didn’t have the knowledge, money or savvy to blow them up into worldwide phenomena.

The tech trail is littered with broken down companies, either out of business or sold to others. Compaq, never mind Gateway, Sun…and too many social media platforms to mention here. They were one trick ponies, they couldn’t navigate the future. In tech legacy is irrelevant, there is no catalog, you can’t go on the road and play your greatest hits, no one is concerned with the past in tech, there’s no demand.

That’s right, Zuckerberg could have seen the potential of Musical.ly, but he didn’t. The same way MySpace didn’t see the key was to standardize the interface and get rid of anonymity.

And once something gains traction online, it can’t be beat, unless the enterprise stumbles significantly. There’s a first mover advantage in tech, keep stoking the fire and you continue to win.

And TikTok is a standalone product, but to compete Zuckerberg made Reels part of Instagram, a crappy integration and a messing of the mind of the user. What is Instagram? Pictures or short videos? At some point you can’t cobble the past into the future, you need to start over. Which is akin to Steve Jobs getting rid of legacy ports. Maybe if Reels was a separate platform…

But ByteDance was savvy in other ways. It nurtured its creators, and made it so a nobody could become a somebody overnight. Zuckerberg is hands-off when it comes to his users, as for paying them? He’s notably reluctant.

And then Facebook ran out of new customers.

Maturity, it’s a bitch. Not that you can’t see it coming. There’s a limit to how many people on Earth will subscribe to a music streaming service. You can raise the cost, there will always be new subscribers, but not in healthy numbers. Apple and Amazon are protected, their music streaming services are a zit on the tush of these companies. Whereas Spotify…music is all it has got, that’s why they went into podcasts. You either grow or you die, and if you’re not moving forward, Wall Street goes thumbs-down and your stock crashes, like Facebook’s today.

Not that the stock price accurately reflects the present value of the company. Wall Street, especially with most of these tech companies, is legalized gambling. The stock price frequently has nothing to do with the value of the company. Then again, how stupid were investors that they couldn’t see that Zuck would hit a new user wall?

And then we’ve got Apple.

Why do people hate Facebook? The lack of privacy, you’re the product. You post all your data and pay for the privilege. Without you and your content, there is no company.

But not at Apple. It’s not an advertising model. It’s a product model. And now Apple has also gone into services, but once again, the key driver is not data and ads.

So Apple allows iPhone owners to block tracking and it’s…HEAVEN!

Zuckerberg decried this, Apple delayed its no-tracking introduction, and then launched and the inevitable happened, Facebook has a $10 billion loss because ads can no longer be targeted as specifically. Hallelujah for the consumer, rats for Facebook.

And the iPhone has 50% market share in the U.S., but much less in the rest of the world. It’s an exotic item, the margins are huge. And in truth, the iPhone has many advantages, including its vetted app store, but it never competed on price, so how long until the iPhone fades away? It’s gonna happen. It’s VHS vs. Betamax all over again. Cost is a key factor, it frequently supersedes better.

And then there are companies that can’t see the future, like RIM/BlackBerry. It could not foresee smartphones that used a hell of a lot more bandwidth and in some ways were not as secure. But Steve Jobs bet on offloading a lot of web surfing to Wi-Fi. And, every single year they improve the iPhone, otherwise it would become stagnant and die.’

As for Sony and its Betamax?

Sony threw the long ball and became a gaming company. The PlayStation revolutionized gaming, it’s just that console gaming is now having a hard time competing with internet gaming. That’s a battle that is still in the air, a victor has not been declared, it’s the reason why Microsoft wants to buy Activision. But this time, the government has seen the trick, and they may not let it happen. These tech companies are a step ahead of Washington, D.C., maybe two or three, but the blueprint in many cases is now obvious, they all want to become monopolies. Which some administrations are concerned with and others are not, which is why Zuckerberg got so close to Trump, he wanted the government hands-off.

So, this saturation of customers shows that the go-go internet we’ve been privy to for twenty five years is now mature. And when a business is mature, prices go down. And you do your best to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

You need a different kind of CEO. We first learned this with Apple and John Sculley. These tech companies don’t need managers, they need FUTURISTS! Tim Cook can run the supply chain better than anybody else in tech, but can he come up with new ideas and refine them and make them so desirable the public eats them up? Hasn’t happened yet.

Also, the future is software, not hardware. How do you compete?

And how do you compete with the youngsters on the street.

Shawn Fanning, a teenager, disrupted the entire music business. Ditto with Daniel Ek. The established players wanted nothing to do with the future, and they thought they had enough power to make sure people went their way.

But they forgot about the customer. The customer will switch on a whim. Think about what the customer wants, because that is where the world is going. When Spotify launched most customers couldn’t see they wanted streaming music. But then they experienced it and loved it!

Ditto with Netflix’s streaming offerings. Although Netflix has got the same maturity problem as Facebook, they’ve run out of new people, at least in big numbers. The market is saturated.

But at least Netflix was there first, and continues to innovate and stick to its guns. Netflix drops all episodes of a show at once, BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT THE CONSUMER WANTS! HBO, Apple and Disney do not. They think they can control the customer. They use old models. Well, we drip it out week by week and we create water cooler moments and… Huh? People don’t even go to the office anymore, never mind drink from a water cooler.

And the studios refined the movie business for profits and killed it in the process. Make fewer pictures, spend a lot to make a lot, tentpoles, with sequels… But most people didn’t want those movies. So they stopped going to the movies all together. As for moving new pictures to streaming platforms during Covid, as HBO and Disney did…the creative community complained, they wanted what was good for THEM, they had no idea of the future.

I wouldn’t bet on Meta owning the metaverse. Because the history of the internet tells us again and again that new ideas are hatched by nimble nobodies tapped into the zeitgeist, often delivering what most people had no idea they wanted. Zuckerberg keeps telling us he’s going to rule the metaverse while he burns cash… Maybe the metaverse develops in a different way. Maybe through gaming first. Maybe it launches in a simple version with many fewer bells and whistles. Zuckerberg building for the metaverse is akin to Detroit pivoting to electric cars. It keeps saying it is and it continues to be much too slow. And Detroit think cars are all about hardware, whereas Tesla has proven the secret sauce is software. Did you read about that Tesla recall, for cars rolling through stop signs? THEY DELIVERED AN OVERNIGHT SOFTWARE UPDATE! Owners didn’t have to bring their cars to the shop. And during the chip shortage, Tesla’s engineers rewrote the software so they could use more generic and available chips. I don’t think this is in Mary Barra’s wheelhouse!

When you’re in control of a lumbering giant, eager to protect margins, you’re on your way to extinction. You must sacrifice now to even exist tomorrow. Like Adobe going from a sales to a subscription model. You get those free software updates over the air, your product was not immediately dated when you bought it, it’s a win-win. Except for maybe those employing legacy software. But can you even open your programs on your new computer? Tech moves forward, you may be in love with your 3G phone, but momentarily it will become completely unusable.

So Mark Zuckerberg has proven he has feet of clay. At most he was a two trick pony. Facebook, and then buying WhatsApp and Instagram. And everybody hates him, so they’re not playing nicely with him and they’re rooting for him to lose. And he probably will.

We admire those who can do it more than once. Elon Musk with PayPal and Tesla and SpaceX. Anybody can get lucky once, but can you do it multiple times? Take multiple hit acts to the top of the chart? This is why Steve Jobs was revered, he did it over and over and over again.

Mark Zuckerberg is no Steve Jobs.

Kevin Godley was 1/4 of 10cc, then he and Lol Creme left the band to explore their musical invention the Gizmo and then after that the two became cutting edge video directors at the advent of MTV. Kevin and Lol directed the video for Duran Duran’s “Girls On Film,” the Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” and many more. Since parting ways with Lol, Kevin has directed videos for U2, Phil Collins, Alabama 3, Paul McCartney…

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kevin-godley/id1316200737?i=1000549882838

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/d0e6face-203d-4eed-b658-63b3449e9c40/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-kevin-godley