Geeky Chic

It really irks me when I can tell that a reporter entirely bases
his/her story on a Myspace or Friendster profile.  For instance,
the reporter who drafted this piece on a young man who died in a surfing accident this weekend relied a little too much on his myspace page. 
With the exception of how he died, it appears that the reporter looked
up the dead guy’s name on myspace, called up the current employer that
he listed on his page,  and asked the company’s VP a few questions
based on the profile.  For instance, the dead surfer mentioned on
his page that he lives in “in Mission Bay (south of SOMA), so how does
this article conclude?  With the all important fact, “In October, he moved
from Dolores
Street
to a loft he bought in a brand-new condominium building on Bluxome Street in the South of Market neighborhood.” 
Information about the length of his employment at time of death and the
photo that accompanied the article also came from his profile. 
So, I’m not sure what this reporter did, other than run the search, and
make a couple of phone calls.

The other sad thing about this is the distorted view the world would
get of any of us based on our web trails if we were to vanish
today.  I can imagine a reporter reading my profile, then emailing
one of my law school friends to ask, “She really liked foie gras, huh?”
and then punching out a few lines about me being a foodie.

A while back, TK blogged about a widely successful Unicef ad campaign
in Belgium that used the bombing of le village des Schtroumpfs to
illustrate the horrors of war.  It came up during dinner, so of
course, I had to search for it, and this is what would happen
if the little blue men were trying to build weapons of mass destruction
(actually the ad was meant to educate Belgians about the use of child
soldiers in Africa).

**

I am probably going to nuke this entire site soon, but until I find a
new home, it shall stay up (subject to intermittant disruptions).

The most emailed article
on the Times website right now is about Japanese youth who completely
withdraw from society by retreating into their rooms, in some cases,
for years at a time.  The anecdote about Takeshi, a man who
isolated himself into his room at age 15, harks back to Murakami’s novel, Kafka on the Shore:

In Murakami’s novel, a 15-year-old runaway, Kafka, subsists on a media
diet of  history books on Napoleon’s futile march to Moscow and German
war criminals, and Radiohead and Prince CDs.  The juxtaposition of
these two stories and the role that Radiohead has in each reminds me
that perhaps their music has greatest resonance among Japan’s
disaffected, post-modern, hyper-consumeristic youth.

In Arizona, a pregnant women tried to fight a traffic ticket
for driving solo in the the carpool lane by claiming that the fetus in
her womb counted as a second passenger (she advanced the theory that
since Arizona follows the Scott Peterson rule, where a fetus counts as
a separate victim of a violent crime, then her fetus should be counted
as a separate person for the purposes of enforcing the carpool
law).  Arizona Right to Life supported her, but the judge rejected
her argument because carpool laws were designed increase the amount of
space used in a vehicle, thus, it required a separate and distinct
passenger.

**

Oh, and as follow up to this post, here’s the answer (link to mp3) to the question, “Who is Ted Leo?”

There have a been a few stories about authors who invent the truth or
who are inventions of others this week.  The Freakonomics duo reports this week that one of the heroes featured in their book, Stetson Kennedy, a man who claimed in The Klan Unmasked
to have infiltrated the Klan in the 1940s as an undercover agent, had
gathered this information through standard reporting techniques
instead. One of Kennedy’s publishers described him as an
“entrepreneurial folklorist,” and another historian who uncovered the
fabrications in his writing over 10 years ago, remained mum because “It
would be like killing Santa Claus.”  Kennedy is the least bad of
the three fabricators/fabrications because at least he actually
gathered the KKK’s secret info, and diseminated it in novel ways (i.e.
he gave it to the writers for the Superman radio show, who wrote it
into their plot) to reduce some of the Klan’s power.

That lovely publication, the Smoking Gun, is running a long expose
detailing how the literati’s current “I was once an addict” darling,
James Frey, embellished a good portion of his own rap sheet and memoir.

And finally, the piece de resistance, the Times finally “uncovers” the truth
behind JT Leroy, another “I used to be an addict (and prostitute)”
author.  Surprise, he doesn’t exist, but is really an invention of
Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, the couple that “saved” him.  I
find it funny that part of the NYT’s investigative reporting included
JT Leroy’s expense report that he submitted to the NYT for a trip to
his entourage took to EuroDisney. (New York Magazine ran a piece questioning his existence back in October, so the NYT is a little behind in coming forward with this story).

**

Also, I came across this post on young activist burnout by one of SSRD’s associates. 
It’s interesting how coping with burnout doesn’t significantly differ
based on whether one is working for the man, or out saving the world.

Reasons one and two to engage in self-loathing.  I think that I satisfied both named
when I told someone in my Asian clubbing set, “They’re like my version
of Kelly Clarkson,” in response to the query, “Who are the Arcade Fire?”

**

Latest contribution to SSRD’s blog.

Guestblogging for SSRD has left me too tired to post here, but here’s my latest post on human trafficking on her site.

I’ve got a trashtastic weekend in Elvisland lined up, but TK just sent me this delicious link that makes me wish that I could become a hermit for the weekend instead.

**

Happy 2006, folks!

SSRD is visiting her motherland, so along with a motley crew of her friends, I’m guestblogging on her site for the next three weeks.  So, I’ll be over there defending her turf and watering the plants.

Funny, I was listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah when I came across this optimistic article on indie music labels and their ability to harness the power of the Internet.