We’re serving Huffington Post 2011. (at The Smith) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqKJhuLNxiK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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We’re serving Huffington Post 2011. (at The Smith) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqKJhuLNxiK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
where I am
Here, obvs.
Subscribe to my magazine.
Subscribe to my newsletter.
Mastodon.
Post, however regrettably.
The group chats we’re already in together. (iykyk)
Had a great day at the @dc_punkrockflea, which took in a ton of food donations, and a lovely dinner at @purplepatchdc (at St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church - Washington, DC) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClK5sa-NKUe/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
What if things go to shit?
Haven’t figured out if I’ll go to Mastadon or some similar thing or just get a little bit more offline in general, but when I make up my mind I’ll post it here, here being this tumblr account that I still have.
Today marks 5 years that I’ve been working at The Huffington Post, and, just like my hair color, there have been quite a few changes over the years.
In honor of that, here’s a Photo Booth retrospective of office selfies, my hilarious coworkers (including canine assistant editor Chelsea) and what was apparently a very boozy 2012 election season.
There will be sweaters.
how long has it been since I used this app? so long that Katla’s five year HuffPostversary was still one of the favorites on my side bar (Katla will always be a fave on the sidebar of life)
final words
people mostly know where I come down on this; I’ll just add that Bennet deserved his fate, he treated his position like a no-show job and corruption, error, and most importantly, the lawsuit that came fairly close to changing the complexion of the media industry followed as a predictable result
readers deserve better, and for the most part, they get it. people who ascend to heights on the masthead typically ply their trade responsibly and diligently and rigorously and they deserve credit for their work. James Bennet is not one of us. Sorry.
so, we’re using tumblr again? Feels weird but okay.
Is this thing still on?
checking for a friend
The powerful message behind Gillette’s new ad campaign is: Buy these razors
[originally published at ThinkProgress; reposted here in anticipation of that site’s demise]
Advertising involves a certain amount of misdirection.
In early May of last year, for example, Wells Fargo announced that it was “a new day” for the scammy, scandal-plagued bank. It did so in a widely-promoted ad campaign that made prolific use of the “re-” prefix. The bank was “renewing” and “recommitting” itself to regaining the trust of its customers. “Established 1852, re-established 2018,” read the tagline, as the bank made its sincerest promises to change and do better.
Then, the following August, reports surfaced that a “software glitch” had resulted in “nearly 400 Wells Fargo customers [losing] their homes when they were accidentally foreclosed on,” and that fiduciary advisors in the bank’s wealth management division had systematically steered their high-net worth clients to buy unnecessary financial products with onerous fees. This was all par for the course at Wells Fargo, having already made a habit of launching apologetic ad campaigns attesting to their reformation, only to turn around and breach their customers’ trust anew with some fresh ignominy.
So what went wrong with all those marketing campaigns? Nothing, really.
Institutionally, Wells Fargo doesn’t exist to produce “trust” or “renewal.” It exists to sell financial products — like loans, insurance, and lines of credit. In fact, the bank has dedicated itself to this goal with such a fanatical intensity that it has periodically violated its fiduciary responsibility to its customers and committed galactic errors with other people’s money. The intent of all Wells Fargo ad campaigns is simply to enable the bank to continue to sell these products unimpeded. The fact that some of its ad campaigns reference the bank’s wrongdoing only reflects that it was unlucky enough to get caught — which in turn became an impediment to its revenue-raking.
This is the proper context in which to view Gillette, which recently used a zingy advertising campaign to inject itself into the larger media zeitgeist.
Gillette pulled out all the stops with this ad campaign. Its components include a long-form video commercial, a website full of optimistic messaging about steering the entire concept of masculinity in a new and virtuous direction, and a multi-platform social media spread that allows consumers to participate in a campaign to help redefine what it means to be a man. The company is clearly attempting to catapult what it deems to be an important message into the wider culture.
And that message is definitely “Buy these razors for your face.” It just came dressed up in woke clothing, pleasingly informed by of-the-moment sentiments, summarized like so on the company website (original emphasis preserved):
It’s time we acknowledge that brands, like ours, play a role in influencing culture. And as a company that encourages men to be their best, we have a responsibility to make sure we are promoting positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy versions of what it means to be a man. With that in mind, we have spent the last few months taking a hard look at our past and coming communication and reflecting on the types of men and behaviors we want to celebrate. We’re inviting all men along this journey with us – to strive to be better, to make us better, and to help each other be better.
From today on, we pledge to actively challenge the stereotypes and expectations of what it means to be a man everywhere you see Gillette. In the ads we run, the images we publish to social media, the words we choose, and so much more.
The campaign is engineered to mine as much buzz from as many sources as possible. It’s a heat-seeking missile aimed at the thinkpiece industry. It’s also a kind of political Rorschach test built to twig the amygdalas of anyone at the intersection of outrage-prone and Twitter-adjacent.
The only thing this ad campaign isn’t? A commitment to do anything other than sell razors.
If you scratch beneath the surface of this ad campaign, you’ll realize that the thing that seems novel about it — the way it sparks a wide conversation about how men might improve themselves — isn’t really novel at all. Women’s experience with “advertising based on the premise that you need improvement” is so ubiquitous that, once you start paying attention to this dynamic, it seems like it forms the basis of almost all advertisements in history.
As if to underscore this, Procter & Gamble’s corporate Twitter account, immediately before the company posted about Gillette’s new ad campaign, shared this tweet: “Procter and Gamble erased our freckles with a magic wand at CES 2019,” advertising what the company referred to as a “thermal inkjet printer for your face.”
Where do women learn that their freckles are so unsightly that they need to deploy a “thermal inkjet printer for your face” to “erase” them? They learn it from advertising.
As Gawker once reminded us, “Brands are not your friends” — a truism that holds today. Friends make commitments to one another that are outside the boundaries of what is exclusively self-serving. Brands don’t because brands can’t.
It may look like Gillette has made a deep investment in the idea that it can help elevate society by helping to redefine masculinity, but it hasn’t. The company is not going to author studies on the impact its work is having on society’s notion of manliness. There’s never going to be a boardroom meeting where junior executives, responsible for delivering these changes, deliver PowerPoint presentations quantifying the progress the company has made in this area of social progress. You’re not going to see Gillette’s top brass resign amid their failure to make men better; shareholders are never going to make this part of their calculus.
There’s never going to be any sort of accounting for whether or not Gilette was successful at combating toxic masculinity, which means the company is not sincerely taking responsibility for it.
Of course, it’s possible to feel powerfully affirmed by watching Gillette’s ad and the way it insists that humanity is perfectible, that decrepit notions of masculinity aren’t fixed in place, and that we’re capable of raising a better generation of boys. If that was your experience with this advertisement, it’s probably demonstrative of the fact that you were already leading a life of just values. Take whatever energy and inspiration you need to keep it up, and do so without regret.
Just remember that this is all a reflection of your own commitments, not Gillette’s. This ad campaign is nothing more than a shiny, clattering object tossed into a crowded room — the shine of the object and the arc of the toss having been ruthlessly engineered by brand marketers to move the maximum number of units. Having been thrown, Gillette is going to simply walk away, on to the next big thing that might possibly convince you to buy a razor. For all anyone knows, the next time Gillette comes to us with a revolutionary idea that will change the world, it could just be a sixth blade.
This will probably be a top seller.
"Single tracking" sounds bad, but "una sola via" is downright romantic and wistful, a sort of universal statement of our collective loneliness that knits us all together in melancholy #branding
Very excited about the "Cinnabon aromatics" which I assume means that this coffee will smell like morning at the Molly Pitcher Rest Area on the New Jersey Turnpike.
This week on So That Happened we bid farewell to 2015 and hope for the best in the year ahead with special guest Ana Marie Cox! Click here!
You guys made good music in 2016, thanks a lot.
(in alphabetical order)
Adele - 25 Autre Ne Veut - Age Of Transparency Bad Bad Hats - Psychic Reader Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit Beach Slang - The Things We Do To Fine People Who Feel Like Us Belle And Sebastian - Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance Best Coast - California Nights Bully - Feels Like Brandi Carlisle - The Firewatcher's Daughter Chastity Belt - Time To Go Home Christine And The Queens - Christine And The Queens CHVRCHES - Every Open Eye The Damnwells - The Damnwells Death Cab For Cutie - Kintsugi Desaparecidos - Payola Destroyer - Poison Season El Vy - Return To The Moon Father John Misty - I Love You Honeybear Future - DS2 Girls Names - Arms Around A Vision Goodbye Tomorrow - A Journey Through The Mind Of A Non-Believer Grimes - Art Angels Hop Along - Painted Shut Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free Jamie xx - In Colour Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly Lucero - All A Man Should Do Malportado Kids - Total Cultura Metric - Pagans In Vegas The Mynabirds - Lovers Know Purity Ring - Another Eternity Refused - Freedom The Roadside Graves - Acne/Ears Say Lou Lou - Lucid Dreaming Sleater-Kinney - No Cities To Love Speedy Ortiz - Foil Deer Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell Susanne Sundfør - Ten Love Songs Tame Impala - Currents Telekinesis - Ad Infinitum Timeshares - Already Dead Titus Andronicus - The Most Lamentable Tragedy Frank Turner - Positive Songs For Negative People The Twilight Sad - Oran Mor Session Veruca Salt - Ghost Notes Rocky Votolato - Hospital Handshakes Wavves - V Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp The Weeknd - Beauty Behind The Madness
and the hawt trax:
Best Coast, "Jealousy" Belle And Sebatian, "The Party Line" Kopecky, "Drug For The Modern Age" Muse, "Mercy" Brutalism, "Friday Night (Home Invasion)” Courtney Barnett, "Elevator Operator" Father John Misty, "The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apt." Sleater-Kinney, "Fangless" Brandi Carlisle, "Mainstream Kid" Rocky Votolato, "The Hereafter"
Try harder next time, everyone not on these lists, I know you can do it.
Merry Christmas from the So That Happened podcast! This week: Katla McGlynn joins us to talk about the War On Christmas, we discuss our favorite Christmas movies, explain the gift that is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with Alexis Goldstein, and unwrap a gift from Janet Yellen. Plus: a special Christmas visit from "John Boehner!" Merry happy y'all! Click here for the true meaning of Christmas!
On this week's So That Happened: It was a real privilege to speak with a bona fide heroine, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Flint, Michigan pediatrician who banged the drum about the lead in her city's drinking water until officials recognized the crisis. Plus we have updates on the omnibus budget bill, get insight into Trump's appeal from an admirer, and debate news galore. Click here to listen!
This week on So That Happened, Ana Marie Cox is in the studio with us! We talk about how we are all living on a political garbage planet. Plus we dissect Hillary Clinton's Wall Street Plan, give you more bad omnibus budget news, and Congressman Reid Ribble has some harsh words for a certain Muslim-bashing front runner. You'll laugh you'll cry et cetera! Click here to listen!