crouching tiger, hidden blog

This article about p2p file sharing by Tim O’Reilly is awesome. It’s really good to hear that at least someone in the publishing industry has their head screwed on right.

After spending a day digesting the article (most of my readers will have already read the thing, as it was sent to a group of us), I’m left with the thought that this blog is suffering from Lesson #1. “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”

It’s true, I don’t promote this blog (or any of my websites, really,) and therefore, it sits in the vast void that is obscurity on the internet.

Generally speaking, I’m opposed to self-promotion. I want someone else to get excited about stuff without my pushing them to do so. Hell, now that I think about it, I don’t want anyone pushing them to do so. I’m opposed to promotion in general.

An article in the recent adbusters had something in it about a growing dissatisfaction with the concept of advertising. I’ll have to read it again when I get home, but it was basically saying we’re going to begin to see people consciously curbing the influence of advertising on their own behavior. I think that happens already for many of us, but is it really on the rise? And if this does happen, will it be just like the 90s, when “alternative” music becomes popular because it wasn’t popular in the first place? Are we that similarly wired, that if everyone had free reign to choose anything, we would end up with all pretty much the same stuff… whether it’s musical selection, food options, or clothing style?

I think it’s impossible to answer these questions, and I’ve rambled enough about this. This blog is obscure like indie electronica. It’s my garage band. It’s the movie that Nate and I will someday make to show the world our genius. Thanks for reading it, both of you.

2 Replies to “crouching tiger, hidden blog”

  1. hahah… true enough. Hell, marketing is far worse than promotion, in my book. And I was just ranting about promotion, not even getting into the marketing factor. Especially the use of statistical data to convince majorities of specific populations… that kind of stuff makes my skin crawl. (Not that we do any research before making anything… it’s all about what the client wants, not about what will sell products, generally speaking. Maybe that makes us a horrible marketing agency, but I think we all suspected that before I went into this, didn’t we.)

    Actually, it’s funny, because now that I think about it… I don’t actually have quite the opposition to what I do (what the web-specific portion of my company does) as I have to the kind of marketing I’m talking about. Basically, web-based marketing is a non-intrusive marketing. You have to go searching for a product to find it on the internet. Of course, once you find our pages, we’re trying to convince you to buy this or that, or the other thing, but in general, you’ve already expressed an interest, at least tangentially, or via clicking a link. There are aspects of what I do (forcing popups, that kind of thing) that I hate, but it’s just a job. And I try to subvert those kinds of decisions when I can.

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