Three years and three months ago I started Publicato with dreams of click-jacking, SEO optimization, and AdSense pennies rolling in. I was unemployed, on my own, pretty cognizant of a dim future; my friends were either safely employed, studying, or hustling. I had some crazy and vague ideas about becoming a true internet personality, maybe doing some cross-promotion via Twitter, and getting into the thousands (re: readership) pretty quickly. Guest blogging my way up to a guest feature with a big name, like Vice or Cracked (which was still pretty legit in those days), or something even better (like a magazine website or maybe even print)... incredibly naive stuff, but I had my ambitions and what better way to pursue them than with Google Blogger?
Well, quite obviously, I should've made a hi-concept WordPress or Tumblr setup and done some mind-bending po-mo conceptualist shit. I knew about WordPress, but being a vaporwave blogger versus real Google monies was just too much. I had to make rent, I needed some better shirts and pants, maybe a third tie, something quantifiably adult that only true income or a career can provide. The internet was a different place in 2010 - there was less anxiety about content farming (which peaked and declined), it was less introspective, the 'blogosphere' was less of a joke term. Twitter was still kind of uncertain and it was easy enough to get by calling it a lifestyle service for people with goldfish brains and smartphones.
Times certainly have changed, but enough of that good memory stuff. This article is about Publicato... now you know what I wanted it to be (a $10-100/mo income supplement with good as hell jokes, sharp satire, reviewish articles and a ladder to proper freelance writing) and what it became (pro-bono, introspective, distracted, weary, strident, kind of phoned-in at times [sorry]) but what never changed was the mission, which was detailed in the first ever blog post I made (Canned Soup) on September 20, 2010:
"... if you let me I will create spectacular vistas of invented and existing things ... maybe not, and I will just be a bitter, judgmental internet spectator..."
Very prescient and wise, I'd say. It was the unstable first step, when I didn't know what to do, really, but wanted a bit of everything. Lots of blogs specialize or self-promote (often both in some ratio) and I didn't really have anything worth specializing in. What followed were mostly unremarkable posts, as I sought a voice and some kind of sense of purpose beyond getting a good number of readers and then monetizing the hell out of the blog. Name was chosen, quite obviously, as a piss take of Politico... the brand motto (slogan?) was derived from a line of Juvenalian satire. Satire was and remains quite important to this blog, but the aggregation of the odd sincere article and natural disinclination (not going to compete with the Onion), corroded any sense of purity of purpose. For reference: canned soup is still incredibly bland to me and I haven't found any good brands or varieties, nor does seasoning really solve the problem.
In the first three months I got a grand total of 31 hits, putting my dreams of monetization in jeopardy and essentially sending me directly into a dark place from which I have never emerged, all the while unemployed and pissing money into rent and other things. Reflecting on times gone by, I have to say the original content is actually quite decent. I would encourage any interested reader (assuming I have an actual readership and not just spider/bot/crawler traffic) to check out the older stuff all the way to 2010. 'Midst the hack writing there are a few gems, and the germs of some later fixations. If you're lazy or disinterested, don't despair! I will, before the year 2014, go through myself and post a list and review format blog post about the cream of the crop.
My blogging fortune changed dramatically in December 2010, when my recap of a Conan O'Brien (newly on TBS then) episode drew an unprecedented 200+ visitors, and even the attention of the audience member at the core of that episode. I was extremely excited by how that turned out, and did a sequel post about my stupid excitation, and replied to the comments like an idiot, and possibly established a readership that may or may not still exist. After that post I could expect more hits in a month than the first three months combined, and December 2010's stats eclipsed the next four months combined. Anecdotally, it would take almost a full year before I would get another non-spam comment.
You bet the grand visions returned to me then, and promptly fell away as reality intervened. A number of hardscrabble months followed, in which I realized that 70-100 views a month were fantastic compared to my old numbers but hardly encouraging. I wondered what I was doing wrong (probably everything) and how I could fix it (hoping to have to do nothing). I think I redesigned some font colors, the background, and the spacing in the header title... then kept on plugging away. I hoped that hard work could be substituted for buzz, but if anything this blog stands for the fact that you can do amazing work (hahah – just go with it) and get a minimal amount of interest. That brings me roughly to the end of 2010... please note that I am planning a 'best of Publicato' review (I am told it WILL unearth some gems), as well as at least one more part of reminiscence/retrospective.
Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts
8/7/12
Fast Food versus Sexuality, Orientation
Only in America would a divisive, manufactured 'political issue' come to a head at a fast food chain. I don't use the quotes to say that gay rights aren't an issue, or that marriage equality is jokes bro, but the issue is blown out of all proportion by one or both sides and it's annoying to see what was once a great country turned into a hobbled caricature of itself. Political issues should deal with good governance, any country mouthing anything or pointing fingers about poverty, hate, and human rights should have solved its own problems before sallying forth into other countries. But that's a lost battle, and the USA is far from alone in offending those of us who prefer politics to revolve less around identity, distraction/division, brand; and more around effective, efficient, consistently improving policy. And, oh, I don't know: honesty, transparency, good governance, and other foolish little things that have been largely forgotten and are outsourced to the drudges of bureaucracy.
That digressive aside aside, the whole fried chicken fiasco is about as insane as you'd expect. Dan Cathy openly admitted to having a specific belief in marriage, supposedly Christian, which determines that it can only involve one man and one woman. This has been the de facto form of marriage for something around two thousand years. It has been strictly enforced for maybe one thousand, and it has been a hysterical point of order for the last 40. It's more or less a distraction meant to separate and confuse people. It works really well, as it turns out, at doing that. Dan Cathy isn't the enemy; he's just the enemy's unwitting pawn. He's already purchased a certain existence that he feels is fair to him and those he loves, and how others feel about his overblown comments will not bother him. Was the entire event even heartening to see? Photos and videos suggest there's some kind of super-important event that's worth swarming a franchise restaurant about, like voters in the third world traveling hundreds of miles only to wait in the dust to vote... except:
This mindless wasteful dumb herd is all the satire this divisive issue needs. They have been crafted into satires of themselves. Clearly America is in trouble, and for the smug rest of the world: you're no better and believe in the same fundamental lies. It's in so much trouble that many people can't even walk to a fast food restaurant (priding itself on exceptional quality and service), to make clear how they feel about what other people do, in the privacy of their own lives. This kind of shit causes traffic problems. It will get to the point where the difference between fries, a burger and a shake will mean life or death for thousands. Except, well, it already means financial destitution, factory farming, environmental destruction, and pure unadulterated wastefulness. But those, of course, are small issues compared to the love a homosexual individual may feel towards another homosexual individual.
So burn your gas waiting in line with the AC cranked and your favourite Kid Rock album on the stereo, or sweat in the heat singing hymns with your friends, or stand a few feet from all of that and kiss your sweetheart in protest, or just protest. Wave your flags. Just... don't for a second question your existence and what it's come to, your material or social privilege, and all the myriad things you take for granted in the equation. Never change, America. Never change until it's too late, and the chilling reflection occurs to you that all of that bullshit you thought was so important and worth suffering and fighting and hating for isn't going to mean anything when the cannibals come knocking in the middle of the dark night of hunger. Your leaders will be done pulling you around like puppets, and some of them will even be safe, and don't go asking to join my inclusive non-hate survivalist gang. We were recruiting even when you bought into the fried chicken hysteria of 2012 – you just didn't care. You had bigger chickens to fry.
Fast food politics. Let's not get too afraid of what this means, but let's not forget about this anytime soon. I'll give 5 dollars to the first person willing and able to make a satire about this and I'll pay 50 to the network who broadcasts it.
That digressive aside aside, the whole fried chicken fiasco is about as insane as you'd expect. Dan Cathy openly admitted to having a specific belief in marriage, supposedly Christian, which determines that it can only involve one man and one woman. This has been the de facto form of marriage for something around two thousand years. It has been strictly enforced for maybe one thousand, and it has been a hysterical point of order for the last 40. It's more or less a distraction meant to separate and confuse people. It works really well, as it turns out, at doing that. Dan Cathy isn't the enemy; he's just the enemy's unwitting pawn. He's already purchased a certain existence that he feels is fair to him and those he loves, and how others feel about his overblown comments will not bother him. Was the entire event even heartening to see? Photos and videos suggest there's some kind of super-important event that's worth swarming a franchise restaurant about, like voters in the third world traveling hundreds of miles only to wait in the dust to vote... except:
This mindless wasteful dumb herd is all the satire this divisive issue needs. They have been crafted into satires of themselves. Clearly America is in trouble, and for the smug rest of the world: you're no better and believe in the same fundamental lies. It's in so much trouble that many people can't even walk to a fast food restaurant (priding itself on exceptional quality and service), to make clear how they feel about what other people do, in the privacy of their own lives. This kind of shit causes traffic problems. It will get to the point where the difference between fries, a burger and a shake will mean life or death for thousands. Except, well, it already means financial destitution, factory farming, environmental destruction, and pure unadulterated wastefulness. But those, of course, are small issues compared to the love a homosexual individual may feel towards another homosexual individual.
So burn your gas waiting in line with the AC cranked and your favourite Kid Rock album on the stereo, or sweat in the heat singing hymns with your friends, or stand a few feet from all of that and kiss your sweetheart in protest, or just protest. Wave your flags. Just... don't for a second question your existence and what it's come to, your material or social privilege, and all the myriad things you take for granted in the equation. Never change, America. Never change until it's too late, and the chilling reflection occurs to you that all of that bullshit you thought was so important and worth suffering and fighting and hating for isn't going to mean anything when the cannibals come knocking in the middle of the dark night of hunger. Your leaders will be done pulling you around like puppets, and some of them will even be safe, and don't go asking to join my inclusive non-hate survivalist gang. We were recruiting even when you bought into the fried chicken hysteria of 2012 – you just didn't care. You had bigger chickens to fry.
Fast food politics. Let's not get too afraid of what this means, but let's not forget about this anytime soon. I'll give 5 dollars to the first person willing and able to make a satire about this and I'll pay 50 to the network who broadcasts it.
9/3/11
Revelations of an Aging Young Man
Radiohead totally ripped off Nick Drake. John Cale might've. Lots of music ultimately rips off other music. At least a little bit, and often very obviously. Life is grossly miscategorized and caricaturized for simplicty's sake. There is no way to succeed, just a way to infinite struggle. Making up words is easier than research. Web-browser spell-checks are woefully inadequate and irrational.
I've wanted to post a farce for the longest time. I just can't think up a really good one. A farce is just a light-hearted satire with no serious accusations. Or, rather, it's when a satire is beaten so severely that it loses its teeth, and learns how to tell mushmouthed stories for underwhelming profits and impact.
And as time goes on I discover various logical conclusions I have no faith in them. I'm pretty cynical when I come to the point. And that's disheartening. I trust none of my impressions anymore. There is basically nothing from which a human takes faith anymore, outside of those varied populations everyone knows about.
I've wanted to post a farce for the longest time. I just can't think up a really good one. A farce is just a light-hearted satire with no serious accusations. Or, rather, it's when a satire is beaten so severely that it loses its teeth, and learns how to tell mushmouthed stories for underwhelming profits and impact.
And as time goes on I discover various logical conclusions I have no faith in them. I'm pretty cynical when I come to the point. And that's disheartening. I trust none of my impressions anymore. There is basically nothing from which a human takes faith anymore, outside of those varied populations everyone knows about.
4/15/11
YouTube Hates....
...any attempt at a serious erection. I'm not going to write a disclaimer. Let's get to this article. Do you like to laugh and cry uncontrollably when you masturbate? Are there not enough low points in your life? YouTube's got your back, son.
I've been lulled into watching a video playlist that has included incomprehensible low points of male fixation. By this I mean video game females, the unparalleled nadir of modern sexualization. There are enough points of contention for research, and if anything the inventiveness of cyber hussies is something... impressive. And I mean impressive in the way that any delusion, nurtured enough, becomes impressive - the sort of impressed where you feel happy to merely be an onlooker, but there's that knowledge that will never be erased from your mind or anybody else's.
In other words, if you spend enough time looking into the smut abyss... you will see lowest points. The nadirs. This is no byssus moment (internet high-five!) but this is the moment where you have to accept without going mad the fact that the human race is so goddamn weak and dissipated that lonely men don't drown themselves in alcohol and self-loathing and outrageous one-liners and hopeless chases or gun clubs anymore, and instead form constructive sexual fantasies including (but not limited to) inanimate objects, cartoon characters, animals, humans posing as animals, video game 'babes', stuffed animals, and probably at least four hundred other paraphilias. Leave it to YouTube to know what's up. Let's leave downright criminal things out of this and still be depressed. I feel I had to post this analysis. I know it'll be incoherent.
Now I was just looking casually for some smut, and the playlist started out innocently enough. French commercials for dreamcasts featuring models spraying water on each other. Brasilian butt-model videos, and generally just videos of very beautiful women in very artificial scenarios. Things involving real, paid, adults, nothing particularly schlocky except for a 'lesbian kiss' or two for the deluded, credulous homophobes with the stunted minds.
The video playlist goes downhill right around the time it uses models from the Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Beach Volleyball videos are only just being understood by scientists, and this sport is still being played by actual women, so it's not like anybody really needed a video game about it. Well that's Japan, right?
Reality check. Japan has several thousand words for 'uncanny depressing adolescent fantasy' and about three hundred for 'creepy pitiful fixation'. Japan knows the dice are loaded. Just ask the octopus and the fisherman's wife. Is it a parable? Is it prophetic? What.
I don't even care. It's too tragic. I'm sorry, Japan. Moving on, there are videos about teen models. So obviously the video playlist is depressing here, because, hey, immaturity. I'm not kidding myself, reader. This is an obscure blog post about what gets wanked to on about the last place a mature discerning adult human being would look for smut, and this blog post isn't even even half as depressing as the innocent video playlist it critiques. I'm not going to talk about the inherent sexism in all of the videos. Some of the videos actually celebra–
This entry in the field of depressingly amateur, terrible music, insane costume design, weird postures and facial expression smut is noteworthy, because it sees you and just laughs. Try to get hard to this? That one girl knows your dirty business and thinks you are lower than a worm. Look at her face – she isn't pretending to be overly serious, she just thinks you're a dork. Didn't you know YouTube hates you? It's got your back when you look for soft-core smut, but it is not playing the game seriously at all.
You better just find somebody, even if she's bigger than society tells you she should be, has bad skin and a shitty attitude and a decrepit materialist's soul. Then you learn your lessons from her and never, never allow yourself to fall this low again. You hear me? You work your way up. We can all be better, but you are making so many people feel better about themselves that you have to improve yourself before they feel any shame. Depressing man-children of the world, you have three years to get your shit together or nobody will ever take you seriously again.
First step. Do what the Italian woman in the video is telling you with her facial contortions to do, and delete your weak, tepid, depressing store of soft-core YouTube internet smut.
Here's a final link to the playlist, so you can witness the witless for yourself. Women, if you're going to watch this.... I know this rejoinder is weak, but you do some stupid god damn things too.
I've been lulled into watching a video playlist that has included incomprehensible low points of male fixation. By this I mean video game females, the unparalleled nadir of modern sexualization. There are enough points of contention for research, and if anything the inventiveness of cyber hussies is something... impressive. And I mean impressive in the way that any delusion, nurtured enough, becomes impressive - the sort of impressed where you feel happy to merely be an onlooker, but there's that knowledge that will never be erased from your mind or anybody else's.
In other words, if you spend enough time looking into the smut abyss... you will see lowest points. The nadirs. This is no byssus moment (internet high-five!) but this is the moment where you have to accept without going mad the fact that the human race is so goddamn weak and dissipated that lonely men don't drown themselves in alcohol and self-loathing and outrageous one-liners and hopeless chases or gun clubs anymore, and instead form constructive sexual fantasies including (but not limited to) inanimate objects, cartoon characters, animals, humans posing as animals, video game 'babes', stuffed animals, and probably at least four hundred other paraphilias. Leave it to YouTube to know what's up. Let's leave downright criminal things out of this and still be depressed. I feel I had to post this analysis. I know it'll be incoherent.
Now I was just looking casually for some smut, and the playlist started out innocently enough. French commercials for dreamcasts featuring models spraying water on each other. Brasilian butt-model videos, and generally just videos of very beautiful women in very artificial scenarios. Things involving real, paid, adults, nothing particularly schlocky except for a 'lesbian kiss' or two for the deluded, credulous homophobes with the stunted minds.
The video playlist goes downhill right around the time it uses models from the Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Beach Volleyball videos are only just being understood by scientists, and this sport is still being played by actual women, so it's not like anybody really needed a video game about it. Well that's Japan, right?
Reality check. Japan has several thousand words for 'uncanny depressing adolescent fantasy' and about three hundred for 'creepy pitiful fixation'. Japan knows the dice are loaded. Just ask the octopus and the fisherman's wife. Is it a parable? Is it prophetic? What.
I don't even care. It's too tragic. I'm sorry, Japan. Moving on, there are videos about teen models. So obviously the video playlist is depressing here, because, hey, immaturity. I'm not kidding myself, reader. This is an obscure blog post about what gets wanked to on about the last place a mature discerning adult human being would look for smut, and this blog post isn't even even half as depressing as the innocent video playlist it critiques. I'm not going to talk about the inherent sexism in all of the videos. Some of the videos actually celebra–
This entry in the field of depressingly amateur, terrible music, insane costume design, weird postures and facial expression smut is noteworthy, because it sees you and just laughs. Try to get hard to this? That one girl knows your dirty business and thinks you are lower than a worm. Look at her face – she isn't pretending to be overly serious, she just thinks you're a dork. Didn't you know YouTube hates you? It's got your back when you look for soft-core smut, but it is not playing the game seriously at all.
You better just find somebody, even if she's bigger than society tells you she should be, has bad skin and a shitty attitude and a decrepit materialist's soul. Then you learn your lessons from her and never, never allow yourself to fall this low again. You hear me? You work your way up. We can all be better, but you are making so many people feel better about themselves that you have to improve yourself before they feel any shame. Depressing man-children of the world, you have three years to get your shit together or nobody will ever take you seriously again.
First step. Do what the Italian woman in the video is telling you with her facial contortions to do, and delete your weak, tepid, depressing store of soft-core YouTube internet smut.
Here's a final link to the playlist, so you can witness the witless for yourself. Women, if you're going to watch this.... I know this rejoinder is weak, but you do some stupid god damn things too.
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