Virtual Fools

I recently unsubscribed from the 200+ feeds in my Google Reader in an attempt to reduce the time I spent pressing “J”. While the details of that experiment will be saved for another blog entry, it did spark a line of inquiry. Would financial commitments focus my media consumption?

The Problem

I pay for cable TV, I pay for Netflix, I pay $50 a year for Xbox Live Gold. And while I almost never watch TV (that’s the domain of my girlfriend), but I feel beholden to my Netflix and Xbox because I’ve committed money to them. If they were free services, I might not give them as much attention (I’m looking at you, PSN). And that’s precisely what the web is.

We’re used to getting things for free one the Internet because that’s always how it’s been. We put up with ads because we don’t have to reach for our wallets. But I rarely feel a sense of allegiance to websites because I can always go elsewhere for similar information. Granted, there are cases where I read a site specifically for its writers (aka Giant Bomb and Tested), but usually Autoblog is as good as Jalopnik.

This is one reason I still like magazines. Think of having a magazine delivered to your home versus looking at the table of them at the dentist’s office. When I subscribe to Wired or Car and Driver, I’ve made a decision on what to read and have limited my choices. When I’m in the dentist’s office, I stare blankly at the table before a) picking something I already know or b) picking at random. I read an article and get called back to the chair with no sense of satisfaction. Sure, I’ve taken in the information, but it never really sticks with me.

The Experiment

Turning back to the web, what if I used a financial commitment to narrow my consumption? What content would I subscribe to? How much would I be willing to pay? In the case of this thought experiment, I’m assuming that I would be able to enjoy the rest of the Internet, but that I would always start with my subscriptions first and they would take up most of my time.

Content I Would Pay For

TWiT Network, $5/mo

I’ve been listening to This Week in Tech since episode 20 or so. Leo Laporte’s little empire has a broad enough range of content that I don’t even think about subscribing to other podcasts. I listen to TWiT and MacBreak Weekly regularly, and tune into some of the other shows on occasion. But these two shows alone are worth the monthly contribution. In fact, TWiT already has a recurring monthly contribution system setup, making this a natural first example.

The Mike O’Meara Show, $10/mo

I grew up listening to talk radio. Not like political talk radio, and not NPR, but the kind of radio often described as “Guy Talk.” You know, talk radio epitomized by shocks jocks Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony. The kind of talk radio that is basically dead on terrestrial stations. Say what you want about most of the shows, I will defend to the death the Don and Mike Show. They were on the air together over twenty years, and after Don Geronimo left the airwaves, Mike O’Meara picked up the mantle with the rest of the cast to start the Mike O’Meara Show. After a solid year’s run, their station switched formats and they were out of work. But they came back a few months later with a daily podcast and have slowly been gaining momentum on the iTunes charts. The podcast is five hours of good content a week from a group of really talented people. My higher subscription price reflects my desire to support their effort.

Whiskey Media, $5/mo

It probably goes without saying, but between Giant Bomb and Tested, there’s enough content that one could get rid of their television. I’ll admit that I don’t care much for This is Only a Test, but I’m your typical Jeff Gerstmann apostle, following him about and spreading his Word. The Bombcast is my favorite piece of media and I put everything else on hold to listen to it. The Whiskey Media sites are all about depth—the kind of minutae I can really sink my teeth into. While I have no interest in anime, comics, or (upcoming) movies, I’m really looking forward to the Tested wiki. It’s encouraging to know that these sites are run by passionate people with no interest in selling to a megacorp that will control their product coughcnetcough.

Ars Technica, $15/yr

I actually prefer Ars to its sister site Wired. Between tech, games, and science, their tagline might as well be “Stuff Bobby Enjoys.” Unlike other tech blogs, they’re not caught up posting every little cell phone announcement and they don’t earn their pageviews through the rumormill. The writing is good and the coverage has just the right depth. Ars already offers a $5/mo subscription, but I’m not as much interested in their perks (like the PDF library and forum access) as I am their regular content. My ideal subscription price is more like that of a magazine.

AOL / Weblogs, Inc., $5/mo

Say what you want, it’s hard to deny that Weblogs, Inc. has a good slate of blogs. While Gawker is intolerably bad (save for some posts on Lifehacker), I enjoy Engadget, Joystiq, Autoblog, and TUAW.Like Ars, it has a slew of categories that appeal directly to my interests. The writing isn’t always the best, but these blogs certainly have good coverage as a group. I’d feel better about supporting them if I knew that writers got paid more to contribute, but this hypothetical discussion is about the selfish task of reducing my media consumption.

So, then, now that that’s covered, which websites’ content would you pay for?

To preface: this is neither an ad hominem critique of the sprawling San Diego Comic-Con, nor a definitive history. Rather, what I am interested in with “The Roots of Comic-Con” are the antecedent events, types of gatherings, and commercial showcases that gave rise to America’s biggest yearly showcase for all things fantastic, glittery, and full of explosions.

From roughly July 22-26, the city of San Diego—already a pretty large place by any standards—swells with a specific sort of person, the type more at home in the air-conditioned space of the dark room than the sunny vistas of SoCal. It would be easy say that nerds, geeks, obsessives, and the like all flock to events like Comic-Con, but this is not true. All sorts of people find solace in the vast San Diego Convention Center, whether as casual/curious fans, exhibitors, or press agents.

Even in a world with such entertainment showcases as E3 and CES, Comic-Con looks like the lumbering behemoth of the group, quickly swelling in size and hoovering up any and all showcase-able media. In some senses, what began as an actual comic book convention would be the ideal repository for all sorts of new and exciting entertainment experiences. After all, people who read comic books tend to have an uncanny, almost instinctual literacy for mixed media. Since comics and graphic narratives are primarily an intersection of the image (and its framing, spatial orientation, variable sizes, etc..) and the word (though a “visual” word, as important for WHERE and HOW it is used as for WHY it is used at all), it follows that Comic-Con would be the perfect place to showcase the fluidity of media, the triumphs of popular creativity, and the masters of marketing. For all of their supposed vices—and there are some, even for a popularizer and egalitarian like myself—comics are a compact form of cultural literacy, 32 solid pages (or more) to aid in the decoding of Western civilization.

That said, while Comic-Con is certainly unique in its vast promotion of both small/independent efforts and the corporate juggernauts, it is not wholly without precedent as a cultural showcase, as an event that teaches a people about itself. What I’d like to do is briefly sketch the sources of this event, which is as much comic book convention as it is flea market, technological exhibition, job fair, audience focus group (writ large), Utopian (in all senses of the world) vacation spot, subcultural rite of passage, and industry trade show.

The Crystal Palace, via WikiMedia

The two precedents that immediately come to mind are the nationalistic technological exhibition and its near ally (or evolved self), the World’s Fair. In the 19^th century, industrialized advances in production, consumption, and distribution meant that a large part of American and European nationalistic pride was tied up in the technologies pioneered by the great minds and hard-working people of a given place. In Britain, where industrialized practices dated to the 18^th century, these showcases for technology (such as the Great Exhibition of 1851, known for its building of the still-amazing but long-ago-destroyed Crystal Palace) tempted ambling audiences with the wonders of progress, of the new, of imaginative science and its realities. In America, a similar impulse paints the Colombian Exposition of 1893, where the glory of the American 19^th century—its railroads, imperialism, miracle cures, celebrities, etc—were placed next to the riches of the rest of the world. Bear in mind that a key factor in the history of these events is the sense of cultural imperialism, the notion that what the Nation produces is of visible interest to the wide world. Comic-Con suddenly does not feel so far-off.

Some of the nationalistic zeal of these Exhibitions is alive and well at Comic-Con. An obviously huge component of the convention is the superhero, a peculiar figure that has survived and flourished across media from nearly 100 years. Since the central prerogative of most superheros is the maintenance of law & order (or the restitution of a kind of static past, untroubled by the various ills of the contemporary world), they are often aligned with nationalistic sentiments. On this national level, Superman is evidently a standard-bearer for truth, justice, and the American way, while the obvious Captain America was an emblem of WWII-era fortitude, depicted as an ideal soldier who could fight the nation’s enemies wherever he found them. The formula holds even for superheroes more concerned with local, personal vendettas. Despite his supposedly international education, and his outward life as a Europeanized playboy, Bruce Wayne/Batman is all about restoring glory to Gotham city. In fact, his reliance on intelligence, education, and technology is the kind of end-result of the liberal-progressive attitude of 19^th century industrialization. These scientists, inventors, and industrialists (Wayne is all three) are the nation’s super-men, the secular saints who will deliver the people from evil and want.

But beyond this building of national identity—where else in the world (aside from, well, Japan) could something like Comic-Con happen with such girth, such zeal?—this yearly event also promotes the commercial spectacle of the American free market. While an exhibition or World’s Fair or Expo is more concerned with showcasing things that only large corporations or millionaires can actually own, such as experimental apartment buildings (see Montreal’s Expo ’67 and its famous Habitat) or Westinghouse dynamos (the above 1893 Colombian Exposition), the flea market promotes the proper ethos of personal ownership. It’s no good tracing the history of the marketplace, as a full account would cover Billingsgate, the medieval covered markets, the Paris arcades, the American shopping mall, and the church swap-meet. Instead, take my word for it: yard sales, flea markets, swap-meets, and concentrated places of shopping continue to thrive. State and church fairs have always been places for hucksters to promote new wares—miracle tonics, shirts that need never be ironed, shoe soles that never wear down, etc—and mutual ingenuity tends to form a nice circuit. As such, new consumer goods do well when showcased together. Comic-Con totally understands this. Even when crap rubs shoulders with what appears to be genuine innovation, the lure of the new benefits from a general atmosphere of commerce and (apparent) invention. Twilight may be awful, but its co-presence with James Cameron’s Avatar promotes a general sense of American hegemony on the world’s entertainment.

But fans, consumers, and vacationers don’t just go to Comic-Con to stir their inner-nationalist or to assure themselves that an American stranglehold on the technological arts remains in plain view. Hell, people go because it’s fun! Thus, Comic-Con takes as much from the flea market as it does from the amusement park, from the Coney Island ethos of enjoyment, relaxation, and the consumer dream-world set to bright lights and HD TVs. The Coney Island of the early 1900s was truly amazing, a constant media spectacle that perhaps has still yet to be surpassed. Where else could an average Joe from New York go on rides, see pseudo-anthropological exhibits, play carnival games, and witness the liveness of death? That’s right: one famous Coney Island spectacle of yore was the live electrocution of elephants, who would be zapped to death before the eyes of a paying public. Comic-Con does not kill people, but the enculturated sense of violence remains. As much as the event gives life—new things to see, do, read, and love—it gives death. Violent entertainment, showcased in public, lives on.

The relationship of corporations and consumers is in a delicate balance at Comic-Con. Some attendees want to see the big stars, hear the big announcements from the studios, in short participate in the mainstream thrill as much as possible. Others go for the independent showcases, the self-published and/or smaller tables that hope to find a kindly audience amidst the thousands of men dressed as Stormtroopers. On a personal level, I wish the best to the smaller outfits at Comic-Con, as it is the biggest live audience they’ll ever potentially encounter. Given the size of the event, it is likely that all tastes can be accommodated. But the flip-side is true. One of the other functions of Comic-Con is as an extremely volatile product-focus-group. The super fans are in attendance, and Warner Bros. can show its latest properties, fully aware that part of the process is the airing of grievances demanded by the die-hards. As such, Comic-Con gives the mainstream outfits a sense of the fringe. While they still want the mainstream audiences, the mainstream money, they can also engage with the vocal minority in hopes of taming the beast of internet complaints. But, as previously mentioned, as Comic-Con grows, so to do the mainstream audiences. While the event’s audiences of 30+ years ago were built more specifically around a common subculture, the scene today is much more fractured. With 125,000 hearts and minds, the corporations and fans begin a mutually beneficial—though sometimes lopsided—battle for favor.

Comic-Con has likewise up’ed the ante for seemingly egalitarian, yet still divided public events. As countless online galleries attest, Comic-Con is a platform for celebrities, actors, writers, and directors to stand behind their latest creations. As scenes from Comic Book: The Movie (2004) and countless YouTube clips suggest, the fantasy of brushing against your personal pantheon of geniuses is fairly high. You will see people you recognize. But, there remain differences. Some of the promotional sessions are uni-vocal. The corporation showcases it’s film, the stars speak canned questions and answers, the audience remains an audience. This is not always the case. Some events are better at including other voices and concerns. But is is worth restating that, as with many things at Comic-Con, appearances can deceive. Some laugh all the way to the bank. Others cry as the ATM receipt shows them to be in the red.

In short, I will readily admit that my demystification of Comic-Con does take a bit of the fun out of it. While the whole media event can still be enjoyed on that very obvious promotional level—where new products make the heart race, where G.I. Joe begins looking even more atrocious than before—it should also be understood as an event that is an exception in some ways, and wholly historical in others. It is a refined showcase for fantastic narratives across media. Its success is a testament to its selective cannibalization of past events, carefully tailored to the current world of entertainment media. It is a fan-friendly convention, but it is also a con.

I don’t remember how I first came across it, but I have become a big fan of the Mac OS X application GrabUp. The premise is smiple: whenever you take a screenshot, GrabUp automatically uploads it to a server and provides you with a URL to view the image. It installs to the System Preferences panel and runs in the menubar. It’s a simple concept and not the only of its kind (see Skitch and Jing) but I’ve found it to be the most appropriate for my needs as it focuses purely on image uploads.

It’s great for capturing things you’d otherwise be unable to link to. For example, a few weeks ago I was reading something on Time.com, got to the end, and it brought up some suggested reaidng material using the previous article’s headline. I learned that money can buy you Bob Dylan and the Louvre:

It’s also great for me as a web designer because I can take quick screenshots of a site in action to get feedback. If someone says that something looks weird in their browser, they can use GrabUp to quickly freeze-frame exactly what they’re looking at and show you how you messed up.

We have a lot of visual information that’s difficult to convey on the computer. For example, recently I was trying to set up a meeting time and needed to give my friend my schedule. Instead of typing it all out, I opened up iCal, took a screenshot, and sent it over. It helped save me time and maintained the visual organization of my day.

Recently the people behind GrabUp have updated their software to improve it and create two different versions. The free version uses the software to upload it to the GrabUp servers and hosts it on a webpage with an ad. It’s not intrusive and the convenience of using the software is worth it. There is also a paid version (which I was lucky enough to receive a free copy of thanks to the I Bought a Mac blog and Jon Wheatley of GrabUp) which allows you to host images on your own server without ads and even add a watermark if you so desire.

In Conclusion:
Everybody should download the free version for sure. It’s easy to use, convenient, and helpful. It’s a awesome little piece of software and I have faith that they wil do nothing but improve it. However, being totally honest and appreciative of the free license I received for the pro version, the $20 price tag is a little steep. It’s definitely a $10 program, but when you start thinking of the other things like cost $20 (a month of Netflix, a Greatest Hits video game, 75 songs on eMusic) $20 is just too much. Two people paying $10 is the same amount as convincing one person to pay $20. Irregardless, grab up a free version of GrabUp and let it save time in your computing life.