Garaphernalia 7.5

If you’ve not been living under a rock the last few weeks, you’ve probably run across news about LonelyGirl15. LonelyGirld15 is a girl named Bree who is homeschooled and keeps a video diary on YouTube. She belongs to some unspecified religion and is friends with a boy named Daniel. There was a lot of debate as to the reality of the videos when they came out. I sort of figured they were fake because 15 year old girls don’t do lots of video editing and musical montages.

Anyway, the debate about LonelyGirl15 had eventually gotten to the point where it was on major news networks before the creations came forward and said it was indeed fake and it was a film project. The actress who plays Bree got to appear on the Tonight Show and the number of viewers of the LonelyGirl15 clips has only increases. The press attention has been huge.

Of the 30 some clips which have been put on YouTube, they all have between 300,000 and 850,000 views. I’m not sure how they track views, but given stats I’ve seen on other videos I could easily see the numbers being much higher. Easily over 1 million people have watched at least one LonelyGirl15 video clip, with several hundred thousand having watched many or all of them. Those are people to took the time and effort to go and find the videos. Millions more know about it from the news.

To give you an idea what it takes to be successful on TV, at top 20 rated show on broadcast TV will have require about 4-5m viewers. On basic cable, it will require about half that. Many shows are able to be successful with a viewship under 1m people. The Travel Channel can survive on ratings around 0.2 and 0.4, and there are channels much less popular than that out there.

My point? You don’t need a huge audience to make money in television, especially when your production costs are low (like, a web cam). What I don’t get, is why there isn’t a network executive out there somewhere, lets say the new CW network, who wouldn’t take a flier on a LonelyGirl15 program. You got writers, a star, a premise, and most importantly an audience and lots of buzz, all for nothing. At worst, it flops like most other programs which are launched every fall. Even if it flops, you’ve gotten a lot of buzz and media attention for nothing and it makes you look very progressive compared to other networks. At best, it works and you look like a genius.

When Amanda Congdon left Rocketboom, she had become known to millions of people. You’d think she’d get some interest from outside of the video blogging world. As far as I know, she got none.

This inability to convert internet success to mainstream media is pretty much endemic to all major media. A great example is my friend Scott Kurtz who draws the comic strip PVP. Millions of people have read PVP. He has a comic book deal with Image Comics. He sells lots of t-shirts, including some which have become underground hits. He’s not alone in making a successful comic strip online. You’d think that syndicates which distribute comics would use this built in fan base as an easy way to get new talent. It should be a no brainer right? You got millions of readers, why not just reprint what’s already being done into a new medium, newspapers? Surprisingly, I can think of only one webcomic which has been picked up by a syndicate.

Syndicates are also responsible for distributing most of the columnists you read in newspapers. I’d think it would be cheaper and just as successful to go sign up popular bloggers as columnists. They’re already doing it, so it would just be a matter of distributing what’s already being done.

The biggest advantage to traditional media isn’t finding talent, developing talent, or creating talent. Its monetizing talent. Homestarrunner is better than a lot of animation you can find on television. Popular bloggers are better than most syndicated columnists. Cartoonists like Scott are better than most of the crap that pollutes the comics page in most newspapers.

In many cases you can get a following that is larger than what you could get in traditional media, but they can’t make anywhere near as much money. To me, that looks like a huge arbitrage opportunity.

Eventually, someone will get it. Within the next few years, you’re going to see more things created online make the jump to traditional media. I can’t see it not happening. Once you’ve proven you can get a audience of a million people online through only word of mouth, you can easily get that or more with some actual marketing behind you. Its a no brainer really. Your costs are so much lower than taking chances on developing your own talent, I’m only amazed it hasn’t been done more often.

– Here is a blog doing updates from Thailand on the coup. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of indignation or outrage among the general population. The ousted PM doesn’t seem to be that popular either. I don’t think its just the bloggers opinion as I’ve read about the problems with the most recent election before the coup. Despite the fact that I’ve written more about the politics of Thailand in the last 24 hours than I have about US politics on this blog, I know very little about it.

– Great name for a band: The Coup Plotters

– USB Rechargeable batteries. A great idea.

– On the subject of repressive governments…..Zimbabwe’s internet is down. They having gotten five notices, their power will be shut off at the end of the month too. They might want to start putting all their stuff up on craigslist to raise some money.

There was a military coup in Thailand today. You don’t see them as much anymore as you used to several decades ago, so I think it’s appropriate to take the opportunity to address several things:

1) This is the 18th coup that has taken place in Thailand since the end of WWII. That’s about once every 3 years. Thailand is not alone is suffering from multiple coups in the last 60 years. Many Asian, African, South American, and even European countries have had military leaders take control of the country in the second half of the 20th century. During that same time period, military conflicts between states have become quite rare. Most post-WWII military conflicts have been low-intensity conflicts involving separatist movements, civil wars, and terrorism.

Its sort of begs the question, why is a standing military necessary for most countries? By far, the primary use of standing armies in most countries around the world have been to fight with their own population, not to defend themselves from foreign invaders.

Costa Rica has no standing army. They’ve not had any military coups. Panama abolished their military in the early ’90s. (Hard to justify having one when your neighbor doesn’t I guess) Most island nations also lack standing armies. The only Pacific nation I can think of with a standing army is also the only one who has had a military coup: Fiji. I’m sure Canada could eliminate their military altogether and no one would notice.

At this point in history, unless there is a very explicit and obvious external threat (South Korea), having a standing army is a greater threat to democracy and freedom than being defenseless. (Even in the case of South Korea, they’ve spent more time since the end of WWII under military rule than under democratically elected governments)

2) The majority of military conflicts since the end of WWII could be resolved if we recognized a general right to secession. Most conflicts arise from the way the maps are drawn. I’m sure the world would be better off if Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, and Sudan ceased to exist and devolved power down to its ethnic/tribal units. This is frowned upon by most nations because the power structure in every country would be in danger if every ethnic group could split away. Russia (especially in the Caucuses) would split into a dozen countries. China would probably break into 4-5 countries. The US would probably lose Hawaii. Quebec would probably become independent.

3) Will anyone in Thailand notice or care? As a rule, military juntas are not good things. If Thailand goes the way of Burma (I refuse to call it Myanmar) it would not be good. However, if day to day actives in Thailand continue as they did last week, would a change in the leader really matter? The fact that the leadership of a country is elected is I think secondary to how they behave. Many countries have installed dictators via elections. African nations are especially prone to having an election and then never having a second one. It probably won’t stop anyone from backpacking through Southeast Asia.

We’ll see how this plays out over the next few weeks I guess. The coup plotters are promising a return to civilian rule in 2 weeks and a new constitution. Any constitution which can be thrown out and replaced so easily isn’t much of a constitution and doesn’t provide much of a barrier to the military taking power again.

Last night I wrote a post on Last.fm and I had put in the line feedburner sucks BTW.

This morning I woke up and had an email from Don Loeb, VP of Business Development for Feedburner asking what problems I had with Feedburner.

I wrote out a pretty lengthy reply and was about to send it when I realized that I was wrong in complaining about Feedburner. My complaint was with Feeddigest, the site who lets you put HTML versions of RSS feeds on your website. Feedburner is totally different. I made the correction in the post. (Feeddigest sucks BTW).

Anyway, I was pretty impressed with the fact that he was 1) searching blogs for mentions of Feedburner, 2) Bothered to write me and ask me why I was upset, and 3) did it late on a Saturday night.

I’m not even a Feedburner user, but I was pretty damn impressed with how they handled things. It’s a simple thing, but the small stuff matters. I’m probably going to be more apt to check them out when I start my trip website.

What a better way to spend a Sunday morning than writing about religion….

I’m a big believer that there is more to most news stories than what we are told. Its usually a lot more complex than what we are offered and sometimes the reality is totally different.

A good example is the recent hubbub about the Pope.

The Pope is accused of offending Muslims in a speech he made saying that they were violent and wanted to convert people by the sword. (The reaction of some Muslims was to kill people and burn things, but that’s another topic)

After the initial news hit, the headlines were that the Pope was sorry for how Muslims reacted, but didn’t apologies for what he said.

So, what did he say?

Here is the entire text of the speech he made at the University of Regensburg. The speech was titled “Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections”.

He does indeed quote Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.

That is in the context of a much longer quote which is:

“God is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”.

emphasis mine

The entire point of the quotation is to start a discussion of rationality and Christianity, and in doing so he discusses the differences in the Christian and Islamic nature of God. In the Christian view, God is rational. Hence, God would not want people to act unreasonably (spilling blood). Islam holds that God is above even human concepts of rationality and isn’t bound by anything.

I think the Pope is right on this one. He has nothing to apologize for other than not picking a better quote. Given how the media as presented this, it seems as if he was giving a speech on the evils of Islam. He wasn’t. In fact, he ended his speech with the following:

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

emphasis mine