Someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to this Wired article. As I read the piece, more and more I started to see a lot of similarity to the Internet environment of the Dot.Com bubble burst we all enjoyed so much at the turn of the Milennium.
Whereas the Dot.Com era was awash with everyone and their cousins establishing Web sites designed to sell things, and then investors suddenly asking "where's the value in this," and the whole thing falling apart like toys made in China, now we're seeing something similar with crappy Web ads and junk content being uploaded to YouTube by the buttload. I just don't think it's a viable financial model in the long run.
I mean, with a lot of Internet ads, the basic premise seems to be to try to trick people to click them. There are pop-up ads, pop-under ads, expandable ads, roll-over ads, and they're all basically designed to A) Annoy the living hell out of you and B) Get you to click them, intentionally or not. It's the click that counts, although I've read there's some effort to track activity after a click to determine whether a click originated from an actual, interested person.
Regardless, it all seems like an advertising strategy that's largely built on a ridiculously shaky house of cards. At some point, someone is going to figure it out, too.
Say what you will about print advertising, when it comes right down to it, people aren't going to "accidentally" or "unintentionally" call a company after seeing a hardcopy advertisement. When someone calls a business after seeing a hardcopy ad, you can be reasonably sure they're an interested potential customer.
While I don't doubt there are some online ads that get clicked out of genuine interest for the product or service being touted, I don't think that percentage is very high. In fact, I imagine that percentage is so small, you need a scientific calculator to determine exactly what that tiny percentage is.
When you have a company devoted to creating buttloads of crappy video and content so as to run that content alongside similarly crappy and annoying online advertising, you've reached the point where something's gotta give.
2010 could be an interesting year for Web 2.0. Excuse me while I take cover now.
My wife and I packed up the three-month old this week and took him to Best Buy, and afterwards we went to eat at Carlos O'Kelly's.
Watching the boy absorb all this noise, color, lights, people, smells and motions each and every day is just plain fascinating. He looks like he's taking in everything and none of it at the same time. It simply has to be mentally exhausting to try and process all the crap he's subjected to on a daily basis.
If you were to equate his little brain with a computer operating system, each day must be the equivalent of clicking "Update All." The Daddy App. The Mommy App. The House App. The TV App. Every single little app that's been installed since the day he was born has to be updated, and a boatload of new apps have to be installed, all without virus protection.
It's no evolutionary mistake that babies can't move around on their own for the first seven months or more. If your brain was inundated every day with eight gazillion new things to absorb, consider and file away, AND you had the ability to walk, you'd be an incredible danger to yourself and others. There's a reason natural selection dictates we have to spend the first six months of life lying on our backs, considering the stars.
And filling up a disturbing number of diapers.
Anyway, as the wife drove home from Carlos O'Kelly's that night, I was sitting in the back seat next to the boy, and he was looking intently out at the night sky, with the street lights whipping by overhead, and then all the houses decked out with Christmas decorations and lights. And it occurred to me why kids are so quick to believe in Santa, and the Easter Bunny and all the other fantastic, fictitious characters that live in a child's mind.
I mean, after all, if a simple trip to Best Buy can deliver that kind of magic and wonder, it can't be much of a stretch to imagine a fat man dressed in red, doling out toys and commuting via flying deer.
One thing that's become glaringly obvious over the last three months of my unfolding fatherhood is that babies can basically do nothing wrong. In fact, not only can they do nothing wrong, they get ladled with adoring praise for doing things that are often, quite frankly, monumentally disgusting.
Don't get me wrong. I understand the need to encourage children, and particularly babies. For babies, after all, every day is dedicated to the tasks of eating, breathing, digesting, sleeping and growing, which are all activities we in the adult world tend to take for granted. So, you might as well encourage and praise their little ongoing efforts to stay amongst us.
However, I've recently begun to question some of the praise and encouragement my wife has been showering upon our son. I suppose I can chalk some of it up to a slight delirium on her part stemming from a lack of sleep, but I can't help but question the value of singing an encouraging song that goes "Push, push, push out the poopies!" Believe me, he doesn't need a song to help jumpstart that process. He does just fine on his own. Nevertheless, the refrain "Push, push, push out the poopies!" has become extremely popular in our little household. I expect a video of the song to go viral on YouTube any day now.
On a related note, my wife also doles out hefty praise after pretty much every single bowel movement our son embarks upon. No sooner do we hear the sound of a squishy expulsion slam against a diaper, my wife is proclaiming "Good job! Such a good boy!" I can't help but imagine praise like that leading to certain problems in the future. The boy will be 15-years-old and expect to hear wild applause every time he finishes using the bathroom, for example. I just wonder if we may be setting the accomplishment bar a bit low here.
The boy also garners whoops of appreciative glee whenever he burps, spits up, drools, grabs on to something, makes a sound, opens his eyes, yawns, kicks his legs or basically performs any other mundane feat. I mean, let's face it, all these are pretty naturally occurring acts; it's not like the boy is scrawling Einstein's theory of relativity on the floor with a crayon.
I have to admit, now that I really think about it, all this complaining about baby encouragement and praise is an attempt to disguise the fact I'm actually quite jealous.
I mean, you know how awesome it would be if I were in the bathroom, and I heard someone singing "Push, push, push out the poopies!" to me? As it is now, the only thing I hear is "GAH! Close the door and open the window if you're going to do that!" That kind of thing just doesn't instill much in the way of confidence.
Also, I burp loudly and proudly almost every day, and I never hear one word of praise. NOT ONE. No, the only thing I hear is "Yuck, that stinks. Lay off the garlic. Is that really necessary?" Yet when the baby burps loud enough to shake the rafters and the smell of old milk fills the room, you'd think he won Olympic gold or something. It's just not fair, dang it.
I guess it's just tough to admit a three-month-old baby gets far more praise and adoration for accomplishing things I've honed to absolute perfection over the last 34 years.
A little shout out from time to time would be nice, is all I'm saying.
Caroline: http://www.juliansmith.tv/2009/07/hot-kool-aid/
Ryan: Is that a video link?
Caroline: It's a link to a Web site that has a video on it.
Ryan: OK, first off. It's pretty funny. Second. When I first read "hot kool aid," I thought it was going to be a video of a bunch of people unwittingly drinking hot Kool-Aid, which would have been monumentally funnier.
Caroline: Now that you mention it, yes.
Ryan: Which tells you I'm pretty much awesome.
Caroline: That tells me nothing of the sort.
Ryan: The online version of TotalTard Magazine should totally include a YouTube video of people unwittingly drinking hot Kool-Aid.
DISCLAIMER: "TotalTard Magazine" is the mental creation of my geode twin, Caroline, and myself. Any attempt to print an actual hardcopy or digital version of TotalTard Magazine will be viewed as an act of intellectual theft, which is saying something, since Caroline and I are about as intellectual as dust mites.
