How to Have Popular Culture No One Actually Likes

From Kaitlyn Tiffany on The Verge:  The last joke is Tide Pods

Seems like a nice summary of how memes can get out-of-hand.  Or maybe I'm just old:

The Tide Pod craze is an example of the internet machine operating exactly as we have built it to. I’m sure you are familiar, but it goes like this: Meme becomes somewhat popular on Twitter or Reddit or a body-builder forum; bloggers talk about the meme because it is their job; national morning shows try to understand the meme because they’ve been told to start treating the internet like a real thing; local businesses participate in the meme because maybe they’ll be on TV for doing so; nightly news programs drive irrational panic about the meme because this is the purpose of the nightly news; bloggers are obligated to comment further, with needlessly detailed explanation, because now the posts will get oodles of search traffic; the subculture from which the meme originally sprung splits into two factions: people willing to debase themselves by making lowest common denominator versions of the joke that will spread quickly and keep them in the spotlight, and people who will double down on encrypting the meme with in-jokes and croissant-intricate layers of irony and sarcasm that make it indecipherable to an outside world that will, nevertheless, attempt to decipher it. All the while, everyone is getting angrier and more boring.

Who in this assembly line is having any fun? Now you have Tide Pod cookies on Instagram and Tide Pod Jell-O shots at the local pub. Now you can’t buy laundry detergent without Wal-Mart’s special “opening the Tide Pod case” guy hovering at your elbow, asking you about your day. (Not that it’s any better to be him. I can’t even imagine the number of times he’s had to smile at some doofus who says, “I swear I’m not going to eat them, haha!”)

Now you have a popular culture founded on something nobody likes. Remember when all the cultural critics were worried about things like “highbrow vs. lowbrow” and “kitsch vs. art”? Bunch of snobs? Now we have to worry about whether everything we look at is something we elevated totally by accident and actively hate. We don’t even have time to debate the notion of “guilty pleasure,” because we no longer find pleasure at all.

My Bizarre Run-In With Content ID

I recently uploaded a Diablo-themed Special effects video to my YouTube channel, continuing the pattern from that earlier Nerf one.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but the story behind it highlights a corner of the copyright-related minefield facing content-creators on the web today.

The video is an original work made by me, starring Bill Lyon, a former-colleague and current-collaborator of mine.  All of the audio in it was either recorded by my own microphone, or came from one of two fully licensed stock libraries:  the included library that comes with Final Cut Pro X, and the "Pro Scores" music collection by Video Copilot.

When I uploaded the video to youtube it was flagged by their Content ID system as matching a track owned by AdRev.  The track they were claiming?  One of the pieces from Pro Scores!

Now it gets crazy, because AdRev isn't even the bad guy in this story...

For anyone unfamiliar with YouTube's Content ID system, it's a fully automated process whereby copyright holders can submit their work (video or audio) to Google, and it is then compared against new videos that are uploaded.  If the software detects a match, it will automatically get flagged.  What happens next depends on what the rights holder has chosen.  They may choose to block the new video entirely, or allow it to remain up.  However the most popular option has been to leave the video, but "monetize" it with advertisements, the revenue from which goes to the original copyright holder.  Naturally, this prevents the uploader of the video from monetizing it themselves.

This system has, for the most part, been an extremely useful and pragmatic Faustian bargain for YouTube and its users.  The ability to monetize infringing works has so far been sufficient to placate rights holders, and prevents the YouTube library from being eviscerated by clamping down on the free-for-all nature that made it popular in the first place. A few of my own videos, like Project Gravity, could not remain on the site without this largesse.

However, every system does have flaws.  As it turns out Video Copilot has been having issues for some time with unscrupulous third parties fraudulantly claiming Pro Scores music as their own, submitting it to Content ID, and monetizing videos that use it.  This doesn't sit well with Video Copilot, since the "infringers" being denied full rights to do what they like with their videos are the company's own customers!  As I learned from their site, Video Copilot was eventually successful in getting YouTube to shut down the fraudulant flags, but without the music "assigned" to someone in the Content ID system, there was currently nothing preventing it from happening again.

The solution?  Video Copilot partnered with AdRev, a company that handles this sort of copyright enforcement on an outsourced basis, and registered the music themselves.  Now, videos that included Pro Scores music would still get immediately flagged, but contacting Video Copilot's customer support would let you put your channel on a whitelist to be excluded from the process.

So, after a confused weekend of sending emails to both Video Copliot and AdRev (just to be safe...) my video is now up for the world to see, with full rights retained by myself.  I wish I could end this post with a grand proposal for how to avoid the headaches I went through, but everyone involved seems to be doing the best they can given the odd constraints of the situation.  (Except of course for the people who claimed the Pro Scores audio as their own.  Not cool.)  Regardless, it remains a great example of just how strange the intellectual property landscape has become.

And if you'd like to see the video in question, here it is!

Evening Edition

Bouncing around a few of the blogs I follow semi-regularly, (starting with Gruber, in this case) I discovered this:

http://evening-edition.com

It's designed as a concise summary of major news stories of the day, with a sober approach that avoids the list of linkbait that a lot of online aggregators can turn into.

As a bona-fide graduate from a "Journalism" school, the most striking thing about it to me was that although the site is gaining some cred among thoughtful techies for being so refreshingly "well written and concise", its "voice" seemed very old-school to me;  Read it aloud, and it seems to follow all the usual rules for writing good on-air copy...

Hacked!

Oh well isn't that cute... someone hacked my webcomic!

Of course, I'm not exactly clueless when it comes to these things, so after verifying the extent of the damage, I did some digging through the logs.

Ready for a laugh?

"K4Rel," the Iranian "L337 H4x0r!" who defaced my site is a complete poseur!

The actual break-in was done on Monday by someone in Jakarta, Indonesia.  They found a way in, uploaded a backdoor for themselves (the quite useful "b374k" php script), and changed the (hashed) passwords for the admin section. Once finished, it appears this individual passed off (or let's be honest, probably sold) the admin passwords to a second person.

The second guy actually was from Iran.  But he was only able to add a new "comic" to the database, as you can see above, and wasn't able to touch anything else on the site.  Heck, he barely even did that - the internal page id had incremented by two, which means he effed it up the first time and had to try again!  Laaame.

For the technically curious:  the original Indonesian hacker used classic SQL injection.  SomeryC, the extremely lightweight comic-oriented CMS I use for Directionless, was doing nothing to sanitize the page number in the URLs.  This allowed him to edit the hashed passwords for the admin section.  From there, he used the comic uploader to install the backdoor script, and after that appears to have left the server alone, after passing it off to the Iranian "hacker" (and for him, I use the term very loosely indeed...)

Over the last few hours, I've restored Directionless to normal.  Will helped me with some of the PHP, so the site should no longer respond to bogus input.  Additionally, I have put the entire admin section between an additional level of security with htaccess, and of course, changed all the passwords. DirectionlessComic.com should be secure now, at least from this type of attack.

Inside Facebook "Like" Spam

Update 6-1-10:  Looks like Download Squad caught the story now too.  They're calling it "likejacking." Cute. According to them, security experts have confirmed that this is simply an annoyance, and there appears to be no real security threat at this time.
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Be careful what you "Like" on Facebook - there's a new exploit someone out there has discovered, and it seems like people are falling for it in droves!

A couple hours ago, I was taking a look at my Facebook news feed, when I noticed some of the usual silliness:

[So-and-so] likes "LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE."

Eh, seemed like it could be funny, and I was bored.  So I clicked on it.  This brought me to an external website, with an empty white page with black text reading "Click here to continue".

Hovering over the text didn't show any destination URL in the address bar.  Naturally, I was suspicious, but since Macs are immune to most viruses, I clicked to see what would happen.

Nothing happened.  Or so it seemed, until my brother informed me that I now liked this page...

At this point, I felt a little silly, but also curious as to what was going on here...  how had the site made me Like something without clicking on a Facebook "Like" button?  And who was running these things anyway?

Well, I did some digging...

From the HTML of the "Continue" pages, it was fairly clear how the trick was working.  The words were just plain text - not even a link.  However, the pages also contained an HTML "IFRAME" which was used to embed the on-Facebook page that is used to confirm a "Like".  This page element was rendered invisible, and positioned underneath the page's text.  Any clicks on the words would pass though them, and into the actual "yes, I want to like this" button on Facebook.  Clever.

The particular bit of spam I fell for was hosted on a Blogspot blog, but there were quite a few other popular ones, such as The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School!  That one was hosted on thedatesafe.com/promdress.  When I went to the top-level, I found folders for several other similarly-set-up scams...  as well as a running tally page, at thedatesafe.com/stats.htm

Whoever runs this server has since locked it down, so you can't see these pages anymore.  But I was sure to take screenshots...

Cute.  This particular shot was taken around 11:50 pm on Sunday May 30th.  The one with over 130,000 "likers" is the prom dress one.  Six minutes later, the number had grown by another 6,000.  Facebook admins finally got wise and started blocking the page shortly after midnight.

I found similar scams spread across a number of domains:

• Several Blogspot blogs, including girlownedbypolicelike.blogspot.com
• thedatesafe.com - probably the main site, since that's where the stats page was located.  WHOIS information (a public registry of who owns what websites) was anonymized on this one.
• mprosperstats.info - this one did have valid WHOIS info, but I won't post it here, since it's unclear whether the owner of this site is involved, or just an innocent victim who had their website taken over by spammers.  It would hardly be the first time.

I suppose it's possible that these are separate spammers, unrelated except in the method they use.  But I think they're all connected.  Facebook recently gained a feature that lets you "hover" the mouse over a link on the site to get some brief info on it - for example, if you hover over someone's name, you get their picture, and a list of some friends you have in common.

Hovering over these spam links also gives some info, including a picture... the same picture, across pretty much every one I have seen...

So uh.... anyone know this face?

ConFICK!

The Enemy Within - Magazine - The Atlantic

Utterly fascinating (albeit long...) article on the history of the infamous "Conficker" worm. I had never realized just how sophisticated - and let's be honest, clever - it was/is.

Spoiler:  The worm is still out there, lying dormant in a massive botnet estimated at over 6.5 million computers in size.  And security researchers aren't entirely sure they can ever truly eradicate or contain it...

Beautiful Google Ad

I actually spotted a Flash ad for this video on my webcomic several days ago, and word is that Google is going to be playing it during the Superbowl.

Simple, honest, emotional...  now that is how you do advertising.

What Was I Saying About Twitter?

A little bit ago.  And now, from a friend of mine from Syracuse...

My count...

Responses from people who want to follow him:  2.

Responses that are sarcastic or dismissive about Twitter itself:  4.

And one of the people who wants to follow him is slightly snarky about it as well.

Re: Social Media Revolution

My father is the General Manager of WDUQ-FM, the NPR-affiliate public radio station at Duquesne University. Over the last few years, he's been bombarded by people in his business worried about "what's happening" with social media, and where traditional media fits in. A few minutes ago, he e-mailed me a link to this video, noting that he'd "love your reaction to this."

Here's my reaction (posted on my blog, for that extra kick of "meta"-ness!):

Personal computers have been used to improve communication almost from the beginning. Even a lowly, non-networked IBM PC with a word processor and a spreadsheet improves the efficiency of crafting office memos and accounting reports drastically over that of a typewriter and a ledger. Networks made computerized communication faster, and spread it farther. The internet kicked things into high gear.

The biggest mistake people make when talking about digital communications, is in calling things "revolutionary." Technology as a whole is the poster-child for evolutionary thinking. Unfortunately, to the uninitiated, there appears to be more going on than that, because the rate of evolutionary advancements taking place also increases.

Perhaps the biggest advantage held by people my age, who grew up with all of this well into full swing, is our ability to take it in stride. Sure, we use facebook on a many-times-a-day basis, but we don't fawn over it. Already, we usually give it little more thought than previous generations did to how many times a day they used the telephone. (Though, like them, we do still retain the ability to, once and a while, marvel at how ridiculous it is that you can actually do this. Tech is cool.) We don't analyze how each new innovation is going to change the entire world and the nature of humanity - we just use it. If it works for us, we keep using it. If we get bored, or it doesn't seem interesting to begin with, we move on. Are there downsides to this approach? Certainly. But I do think we have a more level-headed appraisal of things.

I think growing up in the nineties has tended to create a perspective that is difficult to impress anymore, when it comes to the internet. "Things are suddenly happening twice as fast and in twice as many ways as before? Ok... this is supposed to shock me? It's been that way for most of my life."

The internet, like people of my generation, is a product of the nineties, and in many ways still operates like it. On a recommendation from my girlfriend, I recently read Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. It was lauded as a portrait of a cultural microcosm specific to its time and place, but honestly, I didn't find the world all that different from the one we live in today. "Dot-Com" start-ups have been replaced by "Web 2.0" start-ups, but the tale is largely the same.

One more thing about my generation - having lived through the "Dot-Com Era," we have grown to truly loathe transparent buzzwords. Seriously. "Socialnomics (tm)" actually made me cringe.

I'm not sure where exactly I'm going with this, (commentary on the stream-of-consciousness web I find so little unnerving about?) but I've already ranted for much longer than I intended to, so I'll leave it at that.

Also: I've always liked that Fatboy Slim track. (also a product of the 90's...)

Twitter Isn't Cool (at least not traditionally)

It's something of a truism in technology: teens and other "Young People" discover a new technology, embrace it, weave it into their lives... and then the over-35 crowd eventually comes late to the party, desperately trying to "monetize" a phenomenon they don't even understand. This basic fact is so well known, so undisputed, that many companies now actively seek out the next big thing, not just to cash in, but because they're desperately afraid of becoming "irrelevant" if they don't get hip with all that jazz the kids are talkin' about these days. Nobody wants to be a square!

But there's a problem with this new mentality - the "real world" is now so hell-bent on calling out the next internet fad, that they keep jumping the shark before it even learns to swim! Tortured metaphors aside, the bandying about of the term "Web 2.0" to describe anything and everything is endemic of this trend, and it's latest casualty is Twitter.

To hear some tell it, Twitter is the communications medium that's going to change the world. Everyone needs to get on it right now, or they will lose all connection to the younger generation and, as naturally follows, the world.

Funny thing about that; As Ars Technica reports, there are more Twitter users over the age of 55 than under 25. If you're shocked right now, then you've bought into the hype.

It really shouldn't come as much of a surprise that my generation hasn't really latched on to Twitter. I mean let's face it; I just graduated from college. I've been using Facebook for 4 years now, and AOL Instant Messenger for the better part of a decade. Most of my friends are in the same boat. Do we really need another status message to update?

Now, I'm not knocking Twitter. It's intended purpose is pretty limited in scope, but it does it well, and simplicity is often a good reason to use a tool. And I know I'm going to end up getting an account myself at some point, if only to keep in touch with a far-flung friend who's embraced it wholeheartedly. (Of note: There is only one such friend. Most of them use Facebook.) But I'm not excited about Twitter, the way I initially was about, say, Facebook. And I know very few people my age who are. In fact, I know many more who are openly disdainful about it, including my girlfriend, as well as a few friends from college jokingly threatening to disown each other for getting accounts. (Naturally, these threats were made on Facebook...)

I guess my point is... stop trying to make grandiose statements about technology that "Is The Future". The evolution of internet culture has plainly taught us two things: It makes little sense, and it does what it wants.

Twitter!

I finally did it. I know some of you have made fun of the Twitter service in the past, but come on, it really is the future. Plus, ever since I saw how Jeph Jaques uses a flash embed to show his tweets, I realized how easily I could tie Twitter in to my existing website.

Thus, behold!

Once I figure out how, I'll probably be incorporating this box into the sidebars of both this blog, and Directionless. Heck, given my poor history in actually updating the blog itself, this can probably stand in for times when I'm not otherwise posting!

Are you as excited about all this as I am? Then Follow Me on Twitter!

When "Targeted" Ads Fail

I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about Google's decision to start using AdSense to deliver ads that are targeted not only based on a web page's content, but also on each user's history and interests. The tactic isn't new, only the pervasive, widespread reach of Google is.

The privacy concerns of this have been talked about endlessly, and I'm not writing to add to that discussion. My question is: privacy aside, how many companies actually have the intelligence to even use such a system effectively? Theoretically, the more information you have on someone, the better your targeting should be. Given this logic, a service like Facebook, which knows a lot about me, should have very-well-targeted ads.

Theoretically.


I mean, come on. This isn't rocket science, people.

Now I Can Track My... Pizza?

Earlier this afternoon I decided to pre-order some pizza for the Superbowl later (Go Steelers!).  I wanted to make sure my order was in early so I'd get my pizza despite the inevitable madness that will ensue around 5-7ish tonight.

I placed my order through the Dominos web site, and after it was submitted, I saw this:

Wha-  I can even get tracking info on my pizza now?  I did some Googling, and it seems like most of the reporting on this new feature is relatively negative.  The verdict in a nutshell:  Their pizza sucks anyway, and the only people who will use this are antisocial web-addicts with no life and nothing better to do for 30 minutes.

Obviously, I can't speak to the taste issue - to each their own.  But to throw my two cents in, I'd say this is a nice reassuring feature to have in a case like mine, where you place your order several hours before you want to see your food.

Media and Technology: An Interests Showdown for Obama

Last tuesday, like most people at Syracuse, I watched elatedly as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  It was a historic moment any way you slice it, and all eyes are on Obama now as he attempts to live up to the hope over 66 million of us placed in him last November.

There's been no shortage of news speculation as to how he will handle one pressing issue or another.  However, being me, I've been wondering about another angle.  Perhaps not the most important or pressing, but one which greatly interests me.

Aside from the pomp of the ceremony itself, two things about President Obama's inauguration day struck me. First:  the new website at WhiteHouse.gov, which went live before he had even finished taking the Oath of Office.  Second:  The star-studded "Neighborhood Ball," hosted by ABC, which kicked off the string of events he and Michelle danced at.  These two events stood out to me because they highlight two "interest groups" among which Obama has strong support;  the wired world of the internet, and the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

Barack Obama ran what is widely hailed as the most technology-savvy campaign in history.  With the small but passionate exception of Ron Paul supporters, the "internets" as a whole loved him for it, and looked forward to a presidency that understands and embraces new technology.  So far, signs that Change has come to the members of the executive branch are good.  The new White House website is every bit as fancy as the Obama team's previous online works, and having a weekly video podcast of sorts sounds like a great way to engage the populace.  Later in the week, we heard about the complaints staffers have been voicing over the archaic I.T. infrastructure in the White House - a lament all to familiar to any geek who has found themselves thrust into the bureaucratic technology morass that typifies most established institutions (50 meg mailbox quota for Syracuse students' e-mail, anyone?).  Heck, even the fact that the president fought to keep his Blackberry shows that he's a new breed of president - one who "gets" technology.  Let the Tubes rejoice!

However, the "Neighborhood Ball" I saw tuesday night on ABC demonstrates Obama's clout with another group: the entertainment industry.  During the campaign, one of the first widely-talked-about attack ads from McCain was directed at Obamas "celebrity" appeal.  His life up to this point reads like an Oscar-winning screenplay, and like most Democratic candidates, he had his fair share of supporters among the Hollywood elite.  That ABC would get together with chart-topping recording artists to throw the first of his presidential balls further proves Obama's appeal among the entertainment industry,

Clearly, both groups are looking forward to a plethora of wonderful changes our new President will bring.

One problem though:  These two groups are currently at war.

Media piracy is one of, if not the biggest issue facing the content creators in the film, television, and music businesses.  It is also at the forefront of the freedom-loving culture of the Internet.  Media companies view tech-savvy consumers as criminal scum, and brilliant programmers worldwide take pride in cracking every new protection scheme the entertainment industry can come up with, either out of belief, necessity, or (I suspect most of the time now) out of sheer spite.

In the last decade, this issue has become the defining conflict for both sides, and both no doubt would like to look to Obama as their savior.  I'm very curious as to how he will navigate these waters, not least of which because I often find myself straddling the same fence.

MSNBC's Countdown - For Free on iTunes

These days, I get most of my actual news from the front page of NYTimes.com, or sometimes Reuters (mostly for Oddly Enough).  For television news and political commentary, I generally fall to the Stewart-Colbert dream team, or Countdown, Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC.  (Hey, if republicans can sit while their eyes glaze over from Fox News, I think I'm entitled to a little of my own preaching-to-the-choir punditry!  Besides... Keith's wittier than Bill O'Reilly.)

Of course, I don't exactly mark my calendar to make sure I catch Countdown on TV.  To be honest, I don't even know its timeslot off the top of my head.  Which I was pleasantly astonished to find it in the podcast section of the iTunes Store.

Not just clips, or sound bites.  Video.  Of the whole show.

It's not perfect of course.  Mainly because each episode eats up about 220 meg on my hard drive.  My laptop hard drive with 20 gig free.  So, uh... don't think I'll exactly be archiving these things.  But it is impressive that they did this, if not entirely surprising.  Olbermann has long tried to stay on top of the "internets."

Of course, as always with these things, while I'm impressed and grateful to get this so conveniently (and so free!) I'm still a little confused as to the long-term business model of giving non-ad-laden stuff away on the internet for free.  Nice publicity stunt, but how far can you go with it?  Hmm.

As a side note:  MSNBC didn't exactly pick the most flattering picture of Keith there, did they?

Google Experimenting With Customizable Search Results?

Today I noticed some new icons next to my Google search results...


Seems they're part of a trial "Edit Results" program Google is testing on a random selection of people with Google Accounts over a few weeks. They set up an informational page to explain it more.  This feature only applies to people who are logged in to their account when searching, and it only affects the result list of that particular user.

You can click on the Up arrow to promote good results to the top, delete bad ones altogether, and add notes about different results.

This seems like an interesting way to approach user-feedback-driven search, without actually making Google search results user-feedback-driven.  However, if they could figure out a more configurable way to do this (split into different "Search Sessions," perhaps?) I think it could actually be very useful when trying to do research online, especially with the note-taking feature.

"The Internet Party" - Funny Video

What would happen if Google's parents left home for the weekend?

Pretty spot-on parody of a lot of the major forces on the internet today.  (Unnecessary warning:  It occasionally gets a tad off-color.  But then, so does the internet.)

Update: Yes! Looks like this video (and the sequel) are up on a different site (I assume the comedy group's?). This one does allow embedding!

On another note, what's up with Cracked.com not allowing this video to be embedded on other sites, and getting it taken down from YouTube when it goes up? Seems kind of counter-productive.

This Strikes Me As Funny

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's how being in a relationship is a simple blue button. Maybe it's that they capitalize Girlfriend, then as Your Girlfriend. Whatever it is, I thought the set-up of this page was funny.

In other news, I'm kind of in a good mood right now...

WGA Strike: Delicious Daily Show and Colbert Report Snarkiness

Classic biting sarcasm, used here to illustrate the inanity of some of the studios' positions in the ongoing Writer's Guild of America strike.  (You know, that whole "We can't pay you residuals on digitally-distributed content, cause we don't know if there's any money in it!" line.)

If you're not up-to-date on the WGA strike, here's a helpful introduction.  (Wow, lots of YouTube links tonight...  Clearly, there's no future in online media.)

First, the Daily Show writers explaining things from the picket lines:

And now, the writers of the Colbert Report helpfully provide the other side of the story...

Moral of the story: Come on. Pay yer freakin' writers!

I Have... Another Blog?

This semester I'm taking a class - IST 195. It's an "introduction to information technology" class. Yes, as anyone who knows me can tell you, the vast majority of information in this class is way below my level. But hey, it fulfills a requirement for Newhouse, one that would otherwise require me to take another math class, or a third semester's worth of a foreign language. Not exactly my idea of a grand old time. Besides, in a 19-credit semester, it's good to have one easy class.

Well, just because a class is easy doesn't mean you don't have to do anything, and for the second of 3 large projects in IST195, I have to create a blog and maintain it for three weeks. And that's exactly what I've done over at the un-creatively named "IST 195 Project 2" Blog. I could have tried to just put all my required posts in my existing blog, but separating them will probably help me keep focused on the 195 one. If the posts over there are interesting at all, I'll likely merge them back into this blog once the assignment is all said and done.

As a sidenote, the default theme I picked for the IST195 blog is pretty nice-looking. Perhaps another facelift is in the future for Dev/Null42?