Click here to listen to Jon Ronson’s Radio 4 programme with Robbie Williams. It’s kind of a melancholy programme. One of the reasons I think Jon Ronson is so special is he lets subjects speak for themselves, unadorned. and respects his audience enough to let them make up their own minds. I agree with Brandon.
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The situation with the BBC is not wholly of its own making. The corporation has been pressured to be popular, and, simultaneously, a public service broadcaster. And many people moaned when it was a public service broadcaster, during the patriarchal age of broadcasting. Now people are moaning that things have gone too far the other way. Quite correctly. My argument against popularity at the expense of quality is fairly simple: If the BBC makes programmes in popular formats, that are of the same quality as those available on commercial channels (or worse), there is nothing to distinguish it from the commercial channels. Making questions about the license fee inevitable. That is the situation today.
The assumption about an audience, needed to arrive at a conclusion of inaccessibility, is worrying. Accessibility is totally wrong. The most patriarchal thing since Abraham is that broadcasting needs to be accessible. I don’t necessarily think there’s an assumption people are stupid, but suspect there’s an assumption people are not interested in complexity. So, as a result, controversial issues turn into tabloid, bite size chunks, which alarm people irresponsibly, or presentation heavy documentaries, light on detail and low in accuracy. Maybe people being turned off by politics, science, the arts, and current affairs, is, in part, because they associate it with ‘accessible’ broadcasting. People sense that they’re being spoken down-to.
There should be an assumption that the majority of people are not stupid, and that complex subjects should be presented to inform. That is a different assumption from accessibility, because it assumes the viewers are intelligent and capable of learning. That not everything in a documentary needs to be so dumbed down it is accessible to the majority of viewers. People are capable of looking things up that interest them. The BBC used to produce decent fact sheets. As such there is zero replay value in many BBC current affairs programmes, and documentaries, because the information within them is so light very few people would have a problem with remembering their contents. Unless distracted by the special effects, and music track.
The BBC needs to compete to survive and in order to compete, with the other channels, many of whom are now producing documentaries of acceptable quality, the BBC needs to produce documentaries that are better. They desperately need to take a step-backwards. Until the late nineties BBC documentaries were the envy of the world. The BBC is the broadcaster best placed to attract the next David Attenborough(s) and needs to do that right away if it is to survive.
And the BBC could. Because the talent tucked away in places like BBC 4, a channel that receives a tiny fraction of the license fee and speaks for itself. Likewise Radio 4. Accessibility should be regarded as a failed experiment.
It virtually goes without saying that producing reality television, from talent shows to DIY, when everyone is doing it, makes the BBC less distinguishable from the commercial channels. Sacrificing long-term survival for short-term popularity. BBC 3 is, to my mind, schizophrenic, veering between sub-Channel 4 youth television, and, occasionally, decent drama/comedy. Half of what is on BBC 3 is done on commercial channels, and often better. I don’t think there is a dearth of talent - the talent is out there – the BBC needs to aggressively seek it out.
Someone needs a big brush to sweep away accessability and replace it with talent. Talent should reflect the subjects they’re involved in. There should be no more broadcasters covering subjects that leave them so out of their depth they look stupid.
Much of the above applies to the rest of the media but I don’t care about them as much as the BBC. I would like to be able to mock foreign friends about how much better BBC documentaries are than theirs. I felt smug when I could do that.
The recent stories in the press about high-tech dust that helped grow a severed finger back are nonsense. Furthermore they’re old nonsense. It will make you angry but today’s Bad Science column is essential reading and worth sharing. The stories of the ‘pixie dust’ were bad, in many ways, and on a very simple human level - there’s going to be people who, in desperation, will badger doctors for something that doesn’t work as well as the stories they’d seen in the press implied. When I saw the story this week I took a minute, and did a Google Archive search, it’s a little like LexisNexis (something many journalists have access to), and it turned up the following results:
Click here to lose a little more faith in humanity.
And, was somewhat perplexed that the story didn’t appear to be new, given the widespread coverage it was receiving, and that, furthermore, the finger didn’t appear to be severed in any sense of the word. I think Ben Goldacre is right to draw attention to such risible coverage from people we rely on for news. See also.
It’s worth downloading the silly client to watch this documentary. The political background to the British nuclear program is an interesting glimpse of post-WW-II geopolitics.
Reality television, and derivatives, are mostly crap because they attract attention whores and drama-enhancing producers. It rarely documents.
I think I’m on safe ground saying shows about people with ugly and/or embarrassing medical conditions, are a modern freak-show. Especially reality television that deals with disfigurement. Such programmes often have fuck-all to do with the people they purport to document – I’m not being callous - it’s just that disfigured people are cheaper than actors and the make-up is better. Quite often they get paid peanuts in the process. The documenting comes second to the sights and sounds. But…
If people can be desensitised to disfigurement, is it a good thing for disfigured people? If viewers become desensitised to disfigurement, in real-life they will stare less, and, maybe, be less afraid. Which would be a good thing. However, given the tenuous and complex links between violent television and violent behaviour, it’s probably difficult to say that desentisation will lead to better treatment of disfigured people. In the same way that it can’t be said violent television is ever the primary factor contributing to violence. I don’t think freak-shows, aside from supplying an income to the performers, improved the lot of disfigured people. Still, I’m an optimist, I hope that there are positive side-effects to the modern freak-show.
A seriously negative side-effect of this, could be that in order to maintain viewers, medical reality TV will perpetually search for more extreme medical conditions. In order to maintain shock value. Like soap operas adding an explosion or violence. Reality TV will have to go to poor countries to find people shocking enough. Poor people with extreme medical conditions, on our screen, for titillation. Which, if it generates awareness of medical conditions in poor countries, isn’t such a bad thing. The next thing is people may empathise. Tourist destinations may be shamed into action. But..
It could still just be about titillation. I don’t, for a second, think that the majority of medical reality television is made for any altruistic reason at all. I don’t think it’s immoral and I’m not even sure it’s all that harmful, but I do think it amoral, in that it boils-down to viewing figures, and best commercial practice. Change will be in response to a changing audience. I hope people become so desensitised to disfigurement John Merrick could walk down the street naked and people would be more shocked by his penis than his elephantiasis.
At the start of the popularisation of the Internet there were a lot of people with dubious Tank-Girl haircuts, William Gibson novel in hand, making wild predictions about Virtual Reality and the like. Even William Shatner got in on the act with TekWar. The days of the two Williams. With the abundance of Internet mania it’s gotten a bit clichéd to go on about how the Internet is going to change things.
Adam Hart-Davis, if you can get over being spoken to like a 5 year old nephew, and his avuncular mien, made quite good documentary called “The Thinkynge Revolution” as part of his “What the Tudors Did For Us” series. You can watch it here. Although, of course, future historians may refer to the Internet Revolution as the Pornography Revolution and say things like “imagine if Caxton had done smut”.
I’ve gotten into quite a few arguments about Scientology. Because, with a few caveats, I think adults should be able to spend their money on whatever they like and I think Scientology is a religion. As I outlined here. But now Scientology (or people acting in their name) have plumbed new depths of stupidity.
Do you remember the video of Tom Cruise (since hosted by Gawker here) that was removed from YouTube? The one that prompted global protests against Scientology?
A key point to remember here, the salient point, is that the removal of a newsworthy video sparked protest.
Well. The same thing has just happened to Mark Bunker of XenuTV fame (the guy that released the Jason Beghe video):
I didn’t photograph the last anonymous protests in London because I had bad guts and third demonstrations are less interesting than first and second demonstrations. People are usually bored by the third demonstration (see second London demonstration pics by me here).
Removing Mark Bunker’s videos is an almost guaranteed way to reinvigorate the protests and bring in even more protestors.
Heck, even I feel like protesting (rather than just taking pictures) and I don’t even feel that strongly about Scientology. As for YouTube: This is yet another example of how they’ll cave in at the first opportunity rather than give their users the respect they deserve.
Web 2.0 is about making money from the talent of your users and showing them little or no respect over profits.
If this sort of thing is tolerated it could happen to you next. Send Mark Bunker’s video, as linked above, to people. They should know.
Whitest Kids U Know on conspiracy theories and eating a burger through a straw.
Tom Green getting horrendously drunk in the name of comedy and doing some kind of obscure dance.
Simon Amstell appropriately interviews people. A man that makes Never Mind The Buzzcocks bridge the gap between shit and and funny.
would mean that I would wake up earlier on Sundays.*
* Realistically speaking, being honest with myself, I misspoke when I typed that. I’d almost certainly record it on Sky Plus or download it. Or watch the repeat.
Early Sunday morning I was listening to Russell Brand’s radio show and he mentioned one of his and Matt Morgan’s YouTube videos (The Weatherclerks) and how it’d only gotten a thousand hits. That is quite a pathetic amount of hits for a video that had been on YouTube six months. The problem is the way the videos were released. The first set of his unseen old-school (sort of old-school, post drugs) videos were disseminated via ‘Warren Kelp’ (an obvious sockpuppet) with some bullshit about the videos being found in a skip. That was all well and good, but the only people that would come across the videos were people specifically searching for Russell Brand. The largest proportion of his fans are ordinary people and are not going to do that. I saw the videos soon after their internet debut and featured them on this blog, but I, and people that come here (hello!) are elite internet ninjas. Many of whom have seen or heard of Russell Brand prior to the last couple of years (like me; he was funny out of his head on smack, back in the day in dingy Islington pubs, and he’s still funny minus the smack in front of audiences of hundreds. That’s a hell of a transition). Releasing the videos to the baying hordes, even with a celebrity name attached, is no good without doing internet basics like building up an internet audience (which is totally different from a telly/stand-up audience, and will become increasingly important in the next few years).
I think YouTube is proof that people will watch things that aren’t normally featured on television or the screen. Every celebrity should own a basic HD camera, such as the Canon HV30 (see note, it’s important), which produces good quality video without much technical complexity, or cost, or barriers to just switching on and filming. Buying a more expensive camera means more fucking around than is necessary, and nobody busy wants to fuck around. Buy a camera that doesn’t require training to use (the HV30 is excellent and produces excellent video). Film mundane stuff (people are interested in the mundane of any celebrity), stick it up on YouTube, build up some e-fame (which is like real fame, but with significantly less money) and profit. Videos a minute or two long. Below ten minutes of your life a week. Stick to basic editing, using the software that came with the camera, upload it to YouTube. It’s not difficult. Why more celebrities don’t do this is beyond me. Especially if they realise what the Internet is going to do to TV – like Tay Zonday does here. The time and money invested is minimal for hedging your bets on the Internet vs. TV question.
Then, the next time something like The Weatherclerks is released, far more people will watch it.
Note:
Canon: this is technically a plug I will sell my soul for a EOS 1Ds and a few professional lenses. I’ll even take the Nikon D3 off my shopping list for this year. In fact every photo I’ll produce this year with the EOS 1Ds will have “this was not produced by a Nikon D3” as an unobtrusive watermark. If, on the other-hand Nikon are reading this – quick - send me a Nikon D3 with several pro lenses – get there before the competition. It’s the first rule of business. There’s not many things I’d whore myself for, but for either one of those cameras I would cave in, contrary to the advice in this Bobby Conn video.
See also: My views on Scientology.
And more pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Jack.Toerson
I’ve been watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, the UK and US formats, and they’re funny. The funniness increases proportionally with the foibles and madness of the people running the restaurants. The formula is that Gordon Ramsay goes to a restaurant that is in financial trouble, and after much drama recommends that they:
- Find a niche
- Use local products
- Keep it simple
- Think about portion size
- Keep management efficient
- Fire or remedy incompetent staff
Which is every episode in a nutshell. With swearing and idents with whooshing knives. Mental people are well funny.
My favourite episode is apparently available here. Because it all works out well. Aaahh.
Jon Ronson raises important free-speech issues in Tottenham Ayatollah Revisited. Watch it here. And, if you’ve got the time, get Jon Ronson’s books. They’re good, if you can read, and you can read, because you’re reading this.
All you have to lose is time. Click here.
I have been mostly thinking about:
- Suicides In Bridgend, and
- Broken Britain, and
- Obese Britain, and
- Illegal Immigration, and
- Hospital Deep Cleaning, and
Other Such Problems; regularly capitalised by distasteful people wont of a conscience or brain. Cunts the lot of them. Basically, in a nutshell and to summarise, all of the above things are bollocks. As are Other Such Problems. People who believe in such things as big issues are ill-informed. People who don’t believe in such things, people that should know better, are turds. I have decided, as Lord High Ruler of this fiefdom of bollocks of a blog, that I know the answer to all of modern society’s woes. The problem with society is, in its simplest paraphrased form, a chain of thought that begins with:
- It may be bollocks, but …
Because what follows “but …” is:
- it suits us/me because, and/or
- it’s what people believe and I will make no attempt to correct them, and/or
- it’s always been like that, and/or
- there are multiple truths;
When
“it suits us/me because” - is basically saying there’s a lot of fucktards out there and we’re going to make use of them. Nasty.
“it’s what people believe and I will make no attempt to correct them” - is reasonable for religious belief or anything else that can’t be easily measured (provided it stays within its own domain). It is a piss-poor excuse for misleading statistics, blatantly untrue headlines, and politically motivated red herrings. It’s saying “hey, I know they’re wrong, but I’m not going to take any responsibility for correcting them”. Don’t stick your fingers in the plug socket dear.
“it’s always been like that” - an excellent excuse for sexism, domestic violence, racism, homophobia, and other shitiness. Which is exactly why it’s no fucking excuse. Anyone who uses that excuse is as bigger threat to Britain as a hooded teenager swigging cider and shouting at girls. I.e. Not that much, but quite annoying, and not that much use either.
“there are multiple truths” - but not when things can be measured, you fucking idiot. That is why we measure and quantify things. If something can be measured and you disagree with the results find a problem with the methodology or fuck off. Seriously. Fuck off.
See how many times you can spot “it may be bollocks, but…”, in any of its guises, today. Every time someone says something stupid, and we don’t correct them, we’re guilty of it. I was talking to a very wrong cab driver last week who began saying “prisons are holiday camps”. I just looked out of the window. His views are in-part a product of the newspapers he reads and the politics that he follows. How do you tell someone they’re wrong without getting thrown out of the cab? There’s an important philosophical point there.
But I could be lying and I may not of been in a cab. I could, in fact, have talked to a twee city gent about the price of black tea and how to clean marble kitchen tiles. A gent who knows a great deal about the prison system, having been incarcerated for stealing sixty diamond encrusted mouse-mats from a particularly tacky Swiss furniture shop (which is tackier and more expensive than anywhere else in the world). Although I could have made that up too. However, I was in a cab, and that one way conversation about prison as Butlins did actually happen.
Unless I dreamt it.
Do they have Toblerone in Swiss jails? And skiing?
No doubt there will exist, or has existed, a Swiss cab driver telling someone all about prisons full of skiers eating Toblerone. And their passenger may be looking out the window towards the Alps by night.
Fuck it. The end.
For hosting the Quackometer after Netcetera (Quackometer’s webhost that I won’t promote by linking) took a shit on it by caving in to spurious litigation. In my opinion, of course. Read all about it here. Positive Internet came to the rescue.
Thought of the day
Would your webhost fuck you over?
I went to this, primarily to take photos, because I had a feeling it may be historic or some such, here’s the Flickr gallery of some of the pictures I took:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23636618@N05/sets/72157603884045128/
It was entirely peaceful. In real life Anonymous are all good eggs and I think they more than achieved their aims in London.
There were a couple of celebs there too, a couple of whom are tucked away in the photos I took. So download the large versions if you want to play where’s wally.
Imagine a world before science: a world of the supernatural - hunches dictating belief, of sun blotting fallacy. For some seriously lolworthy quackery and pseudoscience watch UFO uHnters. For fuck’s sake.
Thought of the day
28 gun crimes committed in UK every day
and
The paradox of cracking down on certain crimes is that they rise - it’s a bit obvious that one. If you crack down on drugs, recorded drug crimes rise, if you crack down on guns, gun crime rises. Note - deaths from gun crime are down and injuries were up so insignificantly the Telegraph doesn’t quote them. Even as a context free percentage. I wonder sometimes whether people are thick or whether they want to scare people into conforming to whatever politics of the day they follow (see also the Independent re: recession (not going to be catastrophic in Europe or Asia) or catastrophic global warming (yes, global warming is a major problem, but no it’s not like the movies)). Maybe they’re just desperately trying to conform to whichever readership they chase. It’s all very 20th Century. The Independent is right in this case though. And people being scared of crime is scary. It diverts public money irrationally, it creates fear, it demonises people (see The Daily Mail/The Daily Express on Romanians today) and it creates a situation where people cannot debate based on evidence. Only beliefs and feelings. Not good.
See also:
Picture a derelict store with a glass front. Sitting in the window is a tripoded digital SLR camera, with a 50mm f/1.4 lens, powered by an AC adapter, set to continuous focus, on aperture priority mode, and linked to motion detection software running on a laptop (probably a Mac - artists are wankers). Every time someone peers in the window to look at it the camera takes a shot. The funniest looking people are then put on the internets for all to see.
David Icke appeared on Russell Brand’s radio show on Saturday. It was a broadly uncritical interview – less critical than his Richard Dawkins interview, somewhat exposing his personal biases. To be fair, it makes entertaining listening. Unlike many media outlets Russell’s show does have a wide variety of views represented so Icke is one voice among many. The interview is very funny. Particularly the bit where David Icke accuses Father George Bush of being (a presumably reptilian) paedophile. Pedolizard. I think Russell Brand, in common with youth today, is deeply sceptical of the media and political establishment. Obvious ironies aside. My father remarked, over Christmas, that things, the cultural mien, remind him of the 1960s. He thinks there’s a generation gap and that the media and politicians are totally out of touch. As a result of disillusionment caused by foreign policy, the internet, and stubbornness of the traditional media.
Listen to David Icke and Russell Brand here.
I think one of the great downsides to generation gaps, real or perceived, is that they can lead to indiscriminate scepticism. The broad scepticism towards politics and ‘the system’ during the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to many good things. It also gave rise to much irrationalism and muddy thinking. I believe a similar situation exists today. There is a generation gap forming under the nose of a political and media establishment that is still firmly rooted in the 20th Century. Among many young people there is a broad scepticism towards government, politics, and the media. Much of this is positive. Many young people seem willing and able to Google and get information from multiple sources. And savagely mock the absurd.
Scepticism without critical thinking can be dangerous. Because in those circumstances a rejection of the mainstream can lead to unqualified acceptance of any ideas regardless of their logical consistency or evidence. Conspiracy theories - for instance. People accept them because they do not have critical thinking skills. They don’t have critical thinking skills because our society does not encourage critical thinking outside of fields where it is required. They’re not stupid people. There is a paradoxical situation in which people can be deeply sceptical and lack the critical thinking skills to distinguish the things they should be sceptical about. It’s a real shame. People that believe in conspiracy theories are seeking answers, which is something that should be applauded, but unfortunately they’re barking up the wrong tree.
An example of this is the rise of David Icke. He is more popular than ever. I quite like David Icke. Really. I don’t think he’s a bad person, but I think his theories are wrong. Even a cursory examination of what constitutes evidence for many of his theories, parsing his arguments, leads to rejection of them on the grounds of consistency and lack of evidence. But there exists a situation today whereby those with undeveloped ideas of what constitutes evidence, and lacking critical thinking skills, are led to David Icke and his kind. Many young people with legitimate scepticism of government post-Iraq/post-Blair/post-Bush are ambling into the hands of 9/11 conspiracy theories, people like David Icke. Much in the same way many hippies were led down blind alleys by religion, drug culture, and ill thought out ideologies.
In an ideal world books like Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World and Darrell Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics would be mandatory secondary school reading material. If I had the free cash I would by a few thousand copies of each and give them away. A basic understanding of statistics and basic critical thinking skills are essential for understanding the modern world and essential for positive changes. Otherwise people act with scant regard to evidence which, as has been proven time and time again, leads to very bad things indeed. In an ideal world the revolution would be everyone being able to think critically. Scepticism minus critical thinking equals wasted energy.
I don’t get people who upload copyrighted clips to YouTube by pointing a video camera at their television and re-recording the material. The legal position is similar to someone who covertly records a film in a cinema. The law is stupid, however, attempting to circumvent it by recording from a camera pointing at a television is also stupid.
Thought of the day
Celebrity news is thought to attract viewers. Does it represent a net gain in viewers, or temporary gains? How loyal is an audience attracted by the saga of Britney Spears? Can main-stream news channels compete with dedicated celebrity news outlets? Has diversification in the name of popularity increased or decreased viewing figures for all channels that have gone down that route? Is there an niche for news channels that provide quality analysis of important news? Is it possible to diversify to the point that what distinguishes a news channel is gone? Do Perez Hilton and TMZ do a better job at covering the minutiae of celebrity news than CNN or the BBC? What happens when they, and entities like Heat Magazine, get their own digital television channels?
