Who Are the Kandi Kids?

Due to the massive recent press coverage of the Electric Daisy Carnival and its various satellite gatherings, many people have been re-exposed to rave culture. Though it’s been held every year since 1997, the event has broken through to the mainstream news—not because of its impressive attendance records, incredible light shows and decorations, or superstar lineups of electronic artists—but because of an overdose in Dallas.

The event itself used to take place in Los Angeles, but split off into Colorado in 2008, Puerto Rico in 2009, and Dallas in 2010. One 15-year-old at the L.A. 2010 event died of a drug overdose, causing the city to ban future Electric Daisy Carnival events, so for the 2011 season, the main event took place in Las Vegas, with other events in Colorado, Puerto Rico, Dallas, and Orlando in the week leading up to the Vegas event.

During that week, at the Dallas event, the news reported that numerous attendees sought drug-related medical attention, with two people dying as a result of drug use (though the second didn’t die from an overdose; after panicking for several hours, he purportedly shouted, “This should end it,” and ran in front of a speeding semi.) The attention brought to the festival in the week leading up the massive main event in Las Vegas has led to an unprecedented amount of coverage to a party and culture that have been around for a long, long time.

The general public has specifically become interested in the subculture of the attendees of these events, the so-called Kandi Kids. With their outrageous brightly-colored outfits which often include crazy makeup, novelty t-shirts, bikini tops (or no bikini tops, traded in for pasties), costume items, and dozens of necklaces or bracelets (the eponymous candy), these types of people make excellent subjects for news stories and photo journals, and their stories of excess and marathons of partying and drug binging are extreme gossip fodder. Though to some, this may seem exciting and new, it’s really just an evolution of a long-existing subculture; nonetheless, many want to know:

Who exactly are these “Kandi Kids”?

This is a subculture that comes and goes in waves of popularity largely due to current musical trends. When pop music is highly dance-oriented—generally meaning that it uses synthesizers as the primary instrument—other forms of electronic music experience a rapid surge in listeners as well. The fans then seek out events, parties which are often called “raves,” mostly by the media and not as commonly by the actual members of the subculture. For this reason, kandi kids are sometimes referred to as “kara,” a shortened version of “kandy ravers.”

"Kandi Kids" at Electric Daisy Carnival 2010

There was another similar burst of activity within the rave scene a little over ten years ago when dance music and these types of parties were very popular. In that era, there was a near-identical subculture of partygoers who dressed in much the same fashion. Both men and women would wear angel or butterfly wings, neon wigs, and gigantic pant legs to these parties. The women all pulled their thongs way up out of the back of their pants, much to their parents’ chagrin.

"Candy Ravers" in 2001

And then ten years before that, the New York City party scene was brought to mainstream attention by the Club Kids, most famously dramatized in the 2003 film Party Monster. This was one of the first club scenes to feature thoroughly outrageous outfits, and many of the trends that currently exist within rave culture were founded during this period. If you want to read an exceptional first-person account of this era, I recommend Disco Bloodbath by James St. James. Or just watch that movie with a bit of skepticism.

"Club Kids" in 1990

However, this still wasn’t the first era to feature excessive drug use in a dance environment. We can look back yet another ten years to the disco era to find the basic origins of that aspect of the music. You can follow this logical progression, from disco, to club kids, to candy ravers, to kara by watching the trend over time. And not surprisingly, house music is the genre that seems to have survived every era. From Studio 54 through the Electric Daisy Carnival, it’s all the same scene.

I was actually a part of this scene in the early 2000s, though it was my interest in electronic music that brought me there. I was part of an electronic music group call The Alpha Particle Projext, and it was my mission to seek out contacts, get booked to play parties, and just generally have a good time. As it turned out, I had much more success as a DJ, but also playing noise sets as half of Aemma-O (later called NARC.)

I went to a crapload of these parties. I never once attended one while intoxicated; no drugs, no alcohol, nothing. It wasn’t my thing, but I didn’t condemn those that did it. I know that ecstacy enhances appreciation of music, but I would never be able to tell you what was in one of those pills, and my appreciation of music was already about as high as it could get. As I networked and played shows, the scene grew to incredible notoriety, and the parties became much more about making money for the promoters rather than fostering a scene. I can still vividly remember the last party I went to.

It was held in a warehouse in one of Atlanta’s many industrial parts of town. I had three DJ friends who were playing records that night, so I was interested in going, though my involvement in the scene had waned significantly. I arrived to an hour-long entry line which featured a full airport-style pat-down and security checkpoint—not to keep people from bringing in weapons, but to stop them from bringing in water and drugs to compete with the promoter’s employees inside.

When I got inside, I noticed that it was at least 100 degrees in there, and the ceiling fans hanging above were turned off. Everyone was sweating and suffering. Seven-ounce bottles of water were selling for $3. Drug dealers and undercover officers paced the place asking everyone if they were looking for “disco biscuits.” As I stood watching a random collection of images being projected on a wall, I felt a splash of liquid on the back of my legs. “Great, someone spilled their drink on me,” I thought as I turned around. In actuality, a tiny teenage girl, completely decked-out in raver gear including angel wings, glitter all over her face, and something like a hundred bracelets, was puking on the floor. Her friends held her up by her armpits as her eyes rolled around in her head.

A friend of mine who I had arrived with was supposed to meet up with a raver girl that he had met a few times before, and when he found her, he found an entourage of gullible young men following her around, all hoping to get her attention. She had invited all of them there to hang out with her. “Did you bring those Yellow Jackets?” she would ask one of them, who would anxiously whip them out of his pocket. Later that night she was throwing up over a wall from too many of the legal gas station stimulants.

I left. the scene wasn’t so much about music as it was about an idealistic “good time to be had” that involved promoters unfairly preying on their patrons while the crowd looked for drugs, took way too many, and got sick. There were others in that scene who didn’t take it to excess; my friend Jeff, who was playing records that night, was a moderate drug user but was completely sober that night. I spoke to him briefly about the direction the scene was headed in.

“Man, this is the way it’s always been,” he said, “and it’s the way it’ll always be. We just have to let the idiots make their mistakes so that they ditch out. Then it’ll be pure again.”

As I made my way back to the parking lot, I passed an ambulance, and paramedics were loading up a guy on a stretcher who was freaking out, screaming some of the most bizarre stuff I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m pretty sure he’d taken way, way too much LSD.

The scene collapsed on itself shortly after that event. The venue, less than a month old, was closed due to a high rate of overdoses reported that night. Other venues around the city saw a steadily declining attendance, partially due to the re-emerging metal scene in the city. It was just another moment in the cycle.

The candy ravers, meanwhile, stayed underground, remaining very close to their normal routine. The term evolved slowly from “club kid” in the 80s to “kandi kid” in 2011, but let’s face it, nothing’s really changed. Follow @torqtorq

What's a Used CRT TV Worth in 2011?

The reign of the cathode ray tube is over. It was the original mechanical masterpiece of the television era and was the technology behind each and every TV and computer monitor we used up until a ten years ago when flat-panel technology began to become affordable. Now that you can get a 42” LCD TV for $400, no one bothers to buy CRT anymore.

Diagram by Søren Peo Pedersen

So what exactly is CRT? Well, you know those televisions and computer monitors with the ridiculously long backs that drop down at an angle? They hold a massive electron gun. I know that sounds really cool, but it can kill you if you mess with it. The gun fires a beam of electrons at the back of a phosphorous screen, selectively exciting tiny points on that screen at an unfathomably quick rate to form images. The result of this is a watchable, but low resolution image.

Not only do they have sub-par picture quality compared to the flat panels we all love, they’re ridiculously bulky, often being longer than they are wide. And if you need to move one, good luck, because those things—even the smaller computer monitors—are stupidly heavy.

You might own one. Lots of people still have these things. A couple years ago when mine broke, I went to go buy a new TV, but all the flat-panels were still close to $1000, so I settled for yet another CRT at the entirely reasonable price of $180. Then, for my birthday this year, my brother finally bought me a nice LCD TV, so it was time to sell the giant boob tube.

TV for sale; dog not included

So, what’s a CRT worth in 2011? This was something I was excited to find out. I knew it wouldn’t be a lot. I figured I’d get $20 for it, but I’d settle for $10. I anxiously posted an ad on Craigslist and waited for someone to bite.

Now I’ve sold tons of things on Craigslist, some of it entirely useless: Pyrex cookware, a kitchen knife, old mysterious power amps, a broken subwoofer (fully disclosed damage), eight-year-old computer motherboards, and a drum machine from 1986 among other things, and most of those items were in the $30-50 range, so I expected this TV to be picked up by somebody. Nope. The ad expired without a single inquiry, not even from a scammer who would want to know if “my frend can pick up it.”

So I reposted the ad. Maybe it was a rough time of year, and no one was looking for a TV. It’s in perfect working condition! It’s all black! It’s only $20! Nothing. Meanwhile, it sat collecting dust in my second bedroom.

Finally, I decided it was time for the thing to go. I had been collecting a pile of useless stuff to donate to Goodwill for quite a while, including some broken computer parts that I didn’t want to take to the dump and pay to dispose of. I know this makes me sound like a bad person, but I figure I’ll just take all my crap to Goodwill, and if it works, they’ll sell it, and if it doesn’t they’ll take it to the dump for me. Hooray! Plus, I’ve donated at least $1000 worth of stuff that I was too lazy to sell, so I’ve earned my money, I think.

I put the TV in my car, and as I was carrying it, I remembered thinking, “This is the last time I’ll ever have to move one of these things.” It was a particularly liberating thought, considering that it weighed close to 100 pounds. I also took a bag of clothes, a bag of shoes, a CRT monitor I’d been trying to sell on Craigslist for six months, a broken flat-panel monitor, and two old computer cases which I had crammed full of broken disc drives, video cards, and power supplies, and drove all of it to the donation center. When I pulled in, a young guy came out and looked in the car.

“Are those CPUs?” He asked. Technically, yes, there were CPUs in the computer cases, so I confirmed it. “Okay, I’ma have you leave those in the car and take them over to that dumpster.” Fine with me. That’s easier than driving them to the county dump. He took the TV inside. I waved goodbye.

For some reason, as he was taking the computer monitor inside, I pulled one of the computer cases out of the car. “No, no, leave that in the car! I need you to take it to the dumpster over there,” he said, pointing behind the dry cleaners across the parking lot. I put it back. He took the clothes inside, and I pulled the flat panel monitor out from under the passenger seat.

“Oh man, another monitor?” he said. “Hell yeah, I’ma get that too. I’m gettin' off in about five minutes,” he said to me. “Take that to the dumpster, too.” It had become very clear to me that he was scamming Goodwill. By acting as the gateway to donations, he could pick which items he’d take home with him to sell for personal profit. It didn’t matter to me at all.

“Okay, so you see that dumpster over there? Just put all that stuff on the ground behind it. Thanks a lot, man.” I obliged him by driving all three items over there and leaving them where they belonged: In a pile of garbage. I would have felt bad about aiding him in defrauding a non-profit organization, but everything he asked me to hold onto was completely broken, while everything that went inside was working perfectly fine. He actually helped both myself and Goodwill by taking the burden of electronics disposal off of both of us. I wonder how pissed off he was when he found out that all that stuff was trash. Well, that’s karma!

However, his actions say a lot about the worth of a CRT television. His keen eye for materials worth fencing determined that the totally intact television was worthless, while all that broken crap translated into money. It turns out that a CRT television isn’t even worth someone taking for free.

I’ll check out Goodwill in a few days and see if it’s out on display. Only then will we see what someone else thinks the thing is worth. Follow @torqtorq

Why Do Theaters Project Film Reels Instead of Digitally?

I don’t really like going to the movie theater. They’re not usually playing anything I want to pay $11 for, and $4 for twenty-five cents worth of soda is an unbelievable rip-off. Many people say to me, “But you can’t get the same experience at home!” They’re right. I don’t get an amazing sound system, uncomfortable seating, 40 sick people coughing in the Winter, and idiots clapping at the credits in my living room.

But what I hate most about going to see movies in a public theater is film. It’s a horrible archaic form of media that we still hold on to for some reason. In an era where we could easily project a massive high-quality digital image onto a screen, our projectionists still have to lug around enormous film reels, feed them into the projector, and switch them over at exactly the right moment. By comparison, they could be placing one big disc into a drive and hitting “play.”

Laser discs have been around since 1978! Blu-ray discs can hold up to 128 GB of data and they’re only 4.5 inches in diameter! Why haven’t we made the switch yet?

Well, in actuality, lots of theaters have begun to convert their theaters to digital projectors, but the units often cost $100,000 each. The theater I go to on the rare occasion that my wife convinces me to has 18 screens—considered average in metro Atlanta. That would mean a $1.8 million investment to update each screen just for an average-sized theater! Multiply that by the number of AMC theaters in Atlanta, and you’ve got a fairly massive chunk of money the company would need to burn.

They don’t stand to recover their money, either. The savings from distribution of optical discs is attributed to the movie studio who would previously have to dump a significant portion of a film’s budget—on average $5 million or more—to have a bunch of reels printed up. Pouring and stamping out discs saves them a lot of money, but it doesn’t save the theaters any money at all, so there’s hardly any incentive to do so. They wouldn’t need to hire less projectionists, because usually there’s only one or two people running all the rooms anyway.

Theaters are slowly updating, though, under pressure from studios who are getting sick of printing film reels and sending them out, but they’re finding it hard to convince people to head into the theaters to see movies in “all-digital” format. After all, even the highest resolution digital image has a hard time competing with the “infinite resolution” of film.

Here’s some reasons why we should all embrace digital projection at our local movie theaters, even if it doesn’t result in a reduced ticket price.

The picture quality is ultimately better. Sure, film enthusiasts will claim that nothing beats the intense colors and clarity of film, but you’ve got to go on opening night to see it. Why? Because every time that film is run through the projector, it runs the risk of getting damaged. By the time a reel gets shipped off to the dollar theater, it’s a horrific mess of scratches, dust, and artifacts. The fact is, the longer you wait to see a movie projected from film, the worse the picture quality will be. However, a digital disc never loses its picture quality, no matter how many times it’s viewed.

The entire movie can run off of one disc. In order to accommodate thirty frames per second for a minimum of 5,400 seconds, a film reel needs to hold a lot of still images, but each image needs to be big enough that it looks flawless on a forty foot wide screen. If every frame was put on a single reel, the thing would need to be impractically large, so most movies use four or five reels which a projectionist has to switch between at the exact right moment. Ever seen the black dot that shows up in the upper right corner of a movie sometimes? The first dot is a warning; the second dot is the cue to flip the switch. Watch, and you’ll notice that the picture and sound quality are briefly interrupted when the switch is made. I find it distracting, but then I’m a nerd that pays attention to that stuff. The projectionist is doing a delicate dance of running around the room flipping the reels at the correct moment as if maintaining a bunch of plates spinning on poles. There’s such a huge amount of human error that’s possible here that it makes a lot more sense to feed a giant, half-terabyte disc into a digital projector and hit “play.”

A wider variety of movies can come to each theater. Theaters don’t usually take a chance on an artsy low-budget film because they’ve got to make money off of it somehow. If no one knows what it is because the studio didn’t have a huge ad campaign to raise public awareness, it’s less likely that someone will go see it. Therefore, if a theater gets their hands on a copy of something like Rachel Getting Married, they’ve got to put it in the smallest theater and try to run it exactly enough times to maximize profitability. They don’t usually share films even within their own chain because it’s too difficult, dangerous, and expensive to send the stack of reels around the city. But if they each had their own optical disc of the low-budget flick—at a production cost of only a few dollars each—the studio could make back their cost with just a few ticket sales. (This would also benefit low-budget films who would no longer need to set aside a significant chunk of money to produce the reels.)

If this all sounds good to you, then there’s good news! In 2007, Variety magazine predicted that half of theater screens would be using digital projection by 2013, and adoption statistics seem to be supporting these numbers. And with the number of movies being shot on digital cameras these days, these display methods make more sense than ever. I’ll be looking forward to the day when I can go see a movie three weeks into its release when it’s just me, my wife, and a few other people quietly enjoying a scratch-and-dust-free film. Too bad ticket prices will be $15 by then. Follow @torqtorq

Where Exactly Was Ryan Dunn's Accident?

It always sucks when someone succumbs to a horrific circumstance when it clearly could have been avoided, even if that person hadn’t made millions of people laugh in his or her lifetime. And regardless of my personal feelings about drunken driving, dangerous behavior, or anything else that may have been involved in Ryan Dunn’s fatal car wreck earlier this week, the idea of someone experiencing something as violent as what he endured is something I’d rather not think about.

If you don’t know, Ryan Dunn was part of the Jackass cast, a TV show notorious for dangerous, painful, ridiculous, and often outright stupid stunts. It was something the world was bound to see sooner or later, and it evolved out of the CKY home video footage Dunn and his friends shot in the 90s. Though they were basically extending the America’s Funniest Home Videos format into psychotic territory, the troupe was ahead of their time, producing the kind of content we’d all search for on Youtube years later.

Then, on June 20, 2011, at about 2:30 AM, Dunn and a passenger were riding in his 2007 Porsche 911 away from a bar where he had been partying, raising his blood-alcohol level to 0.19—significantly impairing his ability to drive a car, much less at the estimated 130 MPH the vehicle was traveling as it jumped a guard rail and slammed into a tree. Though it might seem appropriate to some that his ultimate fate would be in the manner of the lifestyle in which he lived, no one wanted this for him. However, many people want to know:

Where did Ryan Dunn crash?

Not to be morbid, but there don’t seem to be any highly accurate suggestions for the location where his car crashed. I don’t necessarily have an interest in his death, or visiting the site, but I’d like to take a few moments to do some research into the precise location of his accident using news reports, on-scene photographs, and video.

We know for certain that the accident happened near West Chester, PA. CBS Philadelphia reports that the wreck occurred on Route 322 near Pottstown Pike—the road which leads to Barnaby’s, the bar he had been drinking at. Here’s an aerial view of this area:

This view from a helicopter shows a police car, tire marks on the street, and a double-yellow gore in the middle of the road, which means that we can narrow the possible area down to everything near the overpass of Pottstown Pike:

The gore shown in the image only appears on Route 322 for a 1500 foot stretch near this overpass. Then there’s this image of a police car next to an overpass and a torn-out guard rail covered by a police line:

Comparing that image and the street signs in the area, we can clearly see in Google Street View that this is exactly where it happened:

So looking from above, we can see the guard rail his car struck:

You can take put these coordinates into Google Maps to go straight to the accident scene:

39° 58′ 24.38″ N, 75° 36′ 51.27″ W

  

Or simply click here.

[UPDATE 6.24]: There has been some discussion about whether the accident site is on the east or west side of the overpass. Though both sides have a guard rail, clearance height sign, and merge warning sign, we can see that he definitely crashed on the northeast side of the bridge. Take a look at this view looking east which indicates the merge warning sign in the distance:

A closer view of this sign shows that it says "LANE ENDS, MERGE RIGHT" instead of the "RIGHT LANE ENDS" shown in the image of the torn-out guard rail shown above:

Then there's this view of another police car with more skid marks showing the exit from 322 to S. Pottstown Pike:

This should clear up any confusion about where the accident occurred.

[UPDATE 12/23/11]: Google Earth updated their imagery of this section of highway since the accident occurred. You can now see that warning poles have been installed in exactly the location that Dunn skidded through (seen in the image above).

Follow @torqtorq

Cameras are Everywhere, So Don't Stop Me from Using Them

I’m standing in the pit at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Roswell, Georgia, watching Arcade Fire, less than 50 feet from the stage. I’ve got my tiny video camera, an Aiptek HD, pointed directly at Win Butler as he croons “No Cars Go” with the help of 7,000 fans. I keep the camera low and the LCD pointed down so it doesn’t get in the way of anyone standing behind me. Suddenly I feel a tap on my left shoulder.

“You need to come with me,” a security guard yells over the roar of the sound system. I look at my wife.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, “They want my camera.”

As I slip out of the crowd, he leads me up to the will call booth. “You can’t use a video camera here,” he informs me, “But you can pick it up after the show.” I ask him why I can’t use my crappy home video camera as I discreetly slip the SD card out of the bottom of the device.

“It’s against venue policy. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.” He takes me to a woman who is in charge of snapping on wristbands for alcohol-age concertgoers, and asks her to escort me to the will call booth.

“Quickly!” I yell, “This is my favorite song, and I’m missing it.” She jogs alongside me as we head to the beginning of this massive complex of concrete.

“He needs to check his camera here,” she informs the people at the booth.

“Sorry you guys, I didn’t think there’d be a problem considering that there’s hundreds of people down there using their camera phones,” I say as I fill out a form with my contact information on it. They then release me back into the venue. They're all nice about it, and I don’t put up a fight. I just head back down into the crowd, stand next to my wife, take the GoPro camera out of my pocket which has been recording the entire time, and shoot the rest of the show.

This actually happened to me last August. The whole time (and you can see them clearly on the video) there were at least three or four people within arm’s reach that were taking pictures and video with their phones. I can hardly see what the venue’s got against this, except that they want to have complete control over the patrons of their establishment. They probably think that money might be lost due to the video showing online. When I got home, I checked the FAQ on their website to see what it says about cameras:

Cameras are allowed subject to event. Please check the event-specific voice recording by calling (404) 733-5010. If cameras are allowed by the artist, you may bring in a non-professional (point-and-shoot) style camera with no removable lenses.

When I called the recording, I was basically told the same thing: Cameras are ok unless they’re professional-level devices. Okay, I can see their point there. The band and venue don’t want people to be making money from the sale of professional-grade photos or video of their likeness. They own their image, and tend to have the ability to restrict others from capturing it while they’re performing. At least, that’s the way it was in the past.

In case you haven’t noticed, everyone’s carrying a camera everywhere they go. There’s no way to stop it. It’s extremely useful, and actually acts as a safety device, requiring those in public to accept responsibility for their actions. Having cameras everywhere—in the hands of average citizens—is actually a really good thing for the benefit of us all. At the same time, it presents an impossible task for those who wish to restrict their use. The Verizon Wireless Amphitheater has accepted this, saying that use of your camera phone is acceptable, but professional-level cameras are asking a bit much.

And when it comes to video, there’s really no difference. They don’t want a shoulder-mounted camera going in with a high-quality microphone to make superb bootlegs, but they understand that it’s pretty much impossible to stop you from used your phone camera to record a low-quality video of the performance which will end up being for the benefit of yourself and your friends, and maybe a few people who come across the video on Youtube.

I’ve lamented the mass use of phone cameras in concert venues before, as I proposed that the use of Color in one of these situations would result in the user ending up with hundreds of terrible photos, and there’s more than enough grainy, blurry videos with distorted and over-driven sound hanging out on the web. But this content isn’t stopping me from purchasing concert tickets; if anything, it’s advertising the show for me.

In fact, three days before Arcade Fire played in Atlanta, they live-broadcasted their New York City performance on Youtube, directed by Terry Gilliam. I watched the entire thing and was excited about the show. It most definitely didn’t make me less likely to see them play in my home town.

I don’t exactly know why my video camera was confiscated, considering the venue’s policy, but I’m not that upset about it. It doesn’t really benefit me or anyone to have that video, but their confiscation really just turned me off from heading back to the venue for another $125 dump of money. Business owners, take note: Harassing your patrons is bad for profits.

But just when I thought we had all accepted that the world is different these days, and ever-changing, and privacy, copyright, and distribution need to be approached from a different angle due to existing and ubiquitous technology, Apple decided to throw a roadblock in front of logical progress. The company has patented technology that tells iPhones to disable its cameras when the owner is in a “no-camera” zone, which generally applies to venues specifically. The idea is that the venue would somehow be broadcasting a signal that would tell your phone to shut down the camera’s functions.

However, this isn’t going to change anything, it’s just going to slow progress. Not everyone uses iPhones, and those that do and are highly inclined will find a way around it. Plus, there are hundreds of pocket-sized point-and-shoot cameras that people will use instead. This sounds more like a way for Apple to alienate its own users by actually providing for circumstances in which their phones become less useful.

Not only is this futile, it’s a bit disturbing. If venues have the authority and technology to shut off your camera, what’s stopping anyone else from doing it? What if riot police broadcast a similar signal so they could enjoy beating you? What if I intend to use my phone to capture a crime in progress, like a person being severely beaten in the crowd of the concert? Apple doesn’t have any personal motivation that I can see to restrict the use of their phones, so this is clearly a business decision that works with the record companies that they partner with for iTunes.

Venue owners need to give up the fight and accept that they can’t control the actions of thousands of people who are all armed with cameras. It’s never going to stop, and it’s just going to incense them. By the way, here's nearly the entire concert I attended, pieced together with videos from the crowd (none of which are mine):

Ready to Start
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
No Cars Go
Haiti
Half Light II (No Celebration)
Empty Room
The Suburbs
Ocean of Noise 
Keep the Car Running
We Used to Wait
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)
Month of May
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) 

Intervention
Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Wake Up

Follow @torqtorq

Kill the Like Button

I’ve been lamenting the choice of the “Like” verbiage within social networking for quite some time now, but the problem’s not going away.  It’s becoming more adopted by various websites across the web, and continuing to gain momentum within our culture.

Most of us primarily associate it with Facebook, but the truth is that they don’t own it. Other websites, such as Youtube, carry their own “Like” button to be used for a similar purpose. The button is all over the place, especially being used on websites that want you to share their content via Facebook, or in commercials that say “Like us on Facebook!”

Let’s break down this word for a minute. The traditional use of this word is pretty complicated, and carries many possible meanings as an adjective, adverb, conjunction, idiom, interjection, noun, and verb. Specifically, it’s that interjection that has aggravated people so much over the years. Though the word goes way back, the origin of this use of the word is in the 1980s. Here’s the definition from Dictionary.com:

Informal. (used especially in speech, often non-volitionally or habitually, to preface a sentence, to fill a pause, to express uncertainty, or to intensify or neutralize a following adjective): Like, why didn't you write to me? The music was, like, really great, you know?

Associated with the valley girls of the 80s, it pushed its way into widespread use by the youth of the 90s and held firm with the young and middle-aged alike into the 2000s. Sometimes the use of the word is so strong that a person’s speech is pretty much impossible to follow. There have even been some guerilla campaigns to try to stop or slow the overuse of the word as an interjection:

So why would social networking websites begin to use this already-overused word on their pages? Well, in Facebook’s case, the button used to be the Awesome button, which would be used as a generic positive comment on someone’s status updates, basically affirming that the declared content was of good quality. Clicking the button would basically say, “I think this is awesome!”

They then changed it to the “Like” button, which I presume was seen as more professional or accurate. “I like this,” you would say instead while clicking the button. This use of the word as a verb slowly morphed into a more bizarre use of the word as a verb. Now, people will say—with complete confidence—such bizarre things as “Like us on Facebook!”

However, this button doesn’t necessarily mean that you like something. People use it to approve content; to give it credibility. It’s a way for people to authorize and recommend content to others, but also to give feedback to the author that the content was highly rated. What the button actually means is “I approve this content.” This gives people mixed feelings when they go to “Like” something that may not be the most positive comment on Facebook. Here’s an example of a status update:

My cat died today. He lived a great long life of 17 years, and will be dearly missed. Chubby, you were the best cat ever.

Would you “Like” that? It’s a tough decision, right? You may not want anyone to think that you like that their cat died, but you may want to lend support for them and tell them that you like their eulogy. In this case, the problem can be side-stepped by actually posting a comment that supports the person posting it. However, this message could be “approved” without worry that the person would take it the wrong way.

The problem with this verbiage goes in a different direction when somebody posts something negative:

I fell in a mud puddle on the side of the road today and chipped my tooth on the curb! What a crappy day!

A total ass would intentionally “like” this, but it happens unintentionally as well. The person “liking” it may have thought that the comment was intended to be a shared bit of comedic unfortunate circumstance for the entertainment of the fellow friends, when in reality it was a tragic and disturbing experience. The person that “liked” it now looks like an ass.

As a result, people have started lobbying for a “dislike” button, but Facebook continues to insist that they don’t wish to add negative social tools to their network and encourage people to dislike things. What they need is a neutral “approval” button, but “like” is equivalent to Internet currency now, so that won’t be changing any time soon.

In the case of Youtube, “Like” exists alongside “Dislike,” but they’re used to indicate the rating of a video. In this case, the use of these two buttons seems like it would be pretty straight-forward, right? You either like or dislike a video, and you click the appropriate button. But wait, it’s not quite that simple.

Youtube used to have a five-star ratings system for videos to allow the viewing community to differentiate between good and bad content, but more importantly, to isolate extremely good and extremely bad content. To simplify this situation, Youtube went all-or-nothing on their ratings and removed the grey area. Now you either like it or dislike it, but many people don’t understand which component of the video they’re rating.

For example, you might be watching a video of something tragic, like a horrific live performance by Amy Winehouse in Belgrade. Because it’s widely talked about in the news, you want to witness it for yourself, so you search for a video of this unspeakably bad performance. You find it; it’s up close to the stage, shows the massive train wreck in reasonable quality, and the length of the video is good. It’s an excellent capture of a horrible moment.

“Wow, this is bad!” you say, while laughing uncontrollably and highly entertained. Dislike! Now the owner of this content wonders why they’ve shared good content with a 1:5 ratio of like:dislike.

There are some people who have legitimately disliked this video. “I don’t want to watch this stupid idiot be drunk and moronic on stage,” they say. Still others, who are pleased with the results of their search, who found the video they were looking for and were entertained, have “Disliked” the video despite approving of its quality. This video, which probably deserves to be highly rated, is rated low even though people like it, because of the word “Like.” “Well, I don’t really like that she’s hammered beyond belief, and her singing doesn’t sound good,” they rationalize, while clicking the “dislike” button.

Google’s tried to reinvent the concept by introducing their “+1” button, but it doesn’t seem to be picking up steam just yet. Their hearts are in the right place, though; the idea is that you are recommending the content to your friends. However, this still doesn’t cover all concepts at once. You might recommend that someone watch an Amy Winehouse train wreck, but would you recommend a feline eulogy? Probably not.

What it comes down to is that we need a way to rate or approve content without expressing support for the content. Do we need a third button? The grey-area button that says, “I don’t like the subject, but I appreciate the content as a whole”? Do we need a “Like—under certain circumstances” button? Follow @torqtorq

The First American Mass Planking is Just Around the Corner

Image from michaelcampa.com

I’m going to go ahead and get this one out of the way before the media really takes it too far.

See, there’s this thing called planking that people do. It’s kind of like performance art, but it’s really an opportunity to have your friend take pictures of you doing it in an interesting location, or to have people stare at you in a public place because you like confusing people.

It originated as the Lying Down Game, developed in the late 90s. In order to play the Lying Down Game, a player must:

• Lay face down
• Have their hands straight out at the sides of their body
• Legs straight out with the toes pointed
• Have someone photograph them and post it on the Internet.

The idea is to mimic, as closely as possible, the shape and mannerisms of a wooden plank. Sound exciting? It’s not! And that’s likely part of the appeal.

The world became fully aware of the fad after rugby player David Williams planked after scoring on March 27, 2011.

Since then, there have been an unfathomable number of planking pictures taken, each trying to be in a more creative location than the last. You see, since the actual act itself is so stupid and pointless, the excitement comes from the environment: The object being planked upon, and the optional reactions of passersby.

As with all super cool fads, eventually someone had to die while doing it. On May 13th, the first planking-related death was confirmed after 20-year-old Acton Beale tried to plank on the seventh floor of an apartment building. Other plankers have dodged death by laying down on train tracks in front of oncoming trains and taunting police by laying on their cars—an apparently illegal act.

The fad is popular in countries around the world, originating in Australia, catching on in New Zealand, and being common in the UK and Iceland. In fact, both Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand have directly addressed the fad, with Julia Gillard of the former warning plankers to focus on “keeping yourself safe first,” while the latter’s John Key posed in a photo of his son doing it.

These kind of things generally get picked up in the United States and strangled for all they’re worth until they die a cold, over-exposed death, so it’s no surprise that it’s picking up steam here. Yesterday, CNN ran a news story entitled “Facedowns: New craze you’ve never heard of.” Of course, no one’s ever heard of it because no one calls it “facedowns.” The video segment’s tagline, “A Seattle-spawned lack of movement is inspiring a rather strange movement of its own all over the world,” isn’t exactly accurate, but then neither are the positions that the facedowners are doing in the segment:

Legs not straight? Arms out in front? Poor form!

I’m not sure if this is CNN’s fault or if Americans think they invented this hobby, but they didn’t, and “facedowns” is actually a much stupider term than “planking” anyway. But, given the American spirit of doing everything bigger and greater than everyone else, I have a prediction to make.

I am suggesting that we’re probably only days away from the first American mass planking. I haven’t seen anything about it online yet, but given that school is out for the summer and it’s a rising trend, it’s only a matter of time before someone organizes a huge, widely publicized flash mob planking. (There’s already a Facebook Group dedicated to this but it doesn’t seem to be catching on quite yet, as it only has 21 members.) Actually, this happened just a few days ago in Brighton, UK, so I just barely missed my mark. But the video's only got 300 views. That's roughly one per person in the video!

Here’s what will happen: Several hundred people will all meet in a public space in an urban area somewhere in a major U.S. city. Likely candidates include New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, and Atlanta. It might even be a massive beach planking, occurring somewhere in Florida. Everyone will lay around, arranging themselves on top of statues, benches, fountains, and just the bare sidewalk or lawn. After a brief period of this, and once an accurate head count is taken, everyone will part ways. Someone will try to contact a representative from the Guinness Book of World Records to attend the mass planking. Hopefully no one will die.

It’s coming, I’d say, in as little as a week to as far out as three months. And then once it’s over, planking won’t be cool anymore. By this time next year, we won’t even talk about it. Follow @torqtorq