Zap zap bang bang
By now four thousand people have told me about
the shooting at the Playstation 3 launch.
Well, all right, it wasn’t four thousand.
It was sixteen. Fifteen, if you don’t count the guy who thought it was over
an XBox. (I love it when people remember everything about a marketing
promotion except the product. Just knowing that some marketing executive
signed off on a million-dollar campaign only to boost his competition
gives me a warm feeling inside.)
Not that I’m saying Sony deliberately engineered a stock shortage and then hired an assassin to shoot someone in the stampede in order to build up the hype. That would be unspeakably immoral. To rip off the opening of Jennifer Government so blatantly, I mean.
I’m thinking about creating a special section on this site: “Stuff that happened in real life that’s kind of like one of Max’s books.” That way I won’t feel the need to salute each individual event: I can just add it to the list. Then on cold, quiet nights when I’m feeling insecure, I can browse that list and feel good about myself again. The best part is there need never be a list of “Things that were predicted in one of Max’s books and, boy, was he off-base.” Those things just haven’t come true yet.
Of course, it’s not that hard to predict advances in marketing. You just imagine what you’d do if you wanted to sell something and had absolutely no morals, self-respect, or dignity. Wait six months, and bing! There it is.
22 commentsThe Intelligent Customer
A
reader named Richard e-mailed me about the new energy
drink “Cocaine.” He did this when it was still quite topical, but I’ve been
falling behind on my e-mail again, so I only just found out. In a few weeks
time I’m planning to find out how those mid-term elections are shaping up.
Anyway, my thought today isn’t about Cocaine specifically, because everything about that product turns out to be exactly as you’d expect:
- The inventor came up with the name at 1 a.m.
- The name offended a bunch of people, who complained, which generated a lot of publicity, which helped sales
- It’s anyone’s guess what it tastes like, because the articles about it and even the product’s own website consider that an irrelevant side detail
The complaints, of course, were that the product glamorizes and legitimizes the illegal drug cocaine. Just as obviously, the manufacturers were shocked that anyone could imply there was some kind of connection between the drug cocaine and their product, Cocaine. They wrote:
Well, we think that kids today are neither ignorant, nor uninformed. As a matter of fact, we think that you are the brightest and most informed generation in the history of the world. How else would you be able to navigate your way to our MySpace?
I was intrigued by how impressed these guys are with their customers. I mean, they really think they’re clever. That seemed like an odd conclusion to reach about people who buy sodas just because they have a funny name. And it occurred to me that whenever I hear a company telling their customers how smart they are, it seems they’re selling a stupid product.
Take cigarettes. I’m not saying you have to be stupid to smoke. But it certainly helps if you have a poorly developed ability to anticipate logical consequences. Yet it’s hard to find an industry more deeply moved by their customers’ intellectual powers than tobacco. If you ask Altria,* smokers aren’t just customers, they’re proud warriors for freedom of choice, fighting against nanny-government interference in our personal lives. In fact, you probably don’t realize it, but many people smoke even though they hate it, just to express their refusal to bow to the military-industrial complex.
Similar, sometimes companies implore you to “make up your own mind.” Their argument seems to be that if you’re smart, you’ll ignore the overwhelming body of evidence that says their product is dangerous, and instead reach an independent conclusion based on their promotional web site.
To test the apparent correlation between how smart companies tell you they think you are and how stupid their product is, I plugged the phrase “our customers are intelligent” into Google and noted the top product categories to come up. If companies tended to say that because they really did have smart customers, you might expect to see telescopes and pocket protectors. If, on the other hand, companies tended to tell their customers they were smart as a piece of transparent marketing, you might see:
- Shoes
- Diamond engagement rings
- Domain name hosting
- Web site design
…which is what came up. That seems about right to me: two products that are sold for an order of magnitude more than they cost to manufacture, a service that offers the exact same thing as two thousand other companies, and a web site design company that claims, “When Microsoft begged us to help them with their website we were far too busy with other projects and had to turn them down.” Although, to be fair, companies offering domain name hosting and web site design come up no matter what you put into Google. They’re just part of the landscape, like insects, or Paris Hilton.
(* “Altria” used to be called Phillip Morris. According to its web site, the company changed its name “to better clarify its identity as the owner of food and tobacco companies that manage some of the world’s most successful brands.” That’s good to know. I’d thought they did it just so people wouldn’t realize they were the same pack of lying, murderous bastards.)
Company in Hollywood and Oz
If you were wondering what that strange feeling you had recently
was—a sensation like some great evil in the world had suddenly
been put to rights—then I’m happy to explain: Company has
got itself an Australian publication date.
About time, I know. It’s very weird to be published overseas but not at home. I wouldn’t mind if my book was completely ignored or flayed by critics, so long as people could at least find it in a bookshop. Well, I’d mind a little. No, you’re right, that would suck. But having Company unavailable in my home country really niggled at me this year. I’m very happy to be getting that fixed.
The details: it’ll be a A$29.95 paperback out March 2007 from Scribe Publications, available in Australia and New Zealand.
In film news, I spoke to Steve Pink recently—he’s the guy writing the Company screenplay. I gotta say, when the film rights sold to this book, I had no idea how it could be a movie. I mean, it was barely a novel. For me, it was more like colonic irrigation: by the end, I felt like I’d flushed out everything I had left to say about corporate life. But Steve described some scenes to me, and they sounded very funny. So now I’m intrigued.
Apparently if this film gets made, Jen and I get to fly first class to the premiere. Jen thinks this is the most exciting thing ever. Not the movie. The chance to fly first class.
Astonishing Acts Involving Sleeves
Last
night I sat down with Fin to read her a bedtime story, and she
did the most amazing thing. She reached for the book, but two of
her fingers were caught in her sleeve, so first she stretched her
arm straight out, popping her hand free, then took the book.
Maybe that doesn’t sound so amazing. But I was flabergasted. It was so grown up. When I first saw Fin, she was seven cells. I saw her on a TV monitor, while Fin herself floated around inside an IVF doctor’s syringe. For the month prior to that, she was in frozen storage (and for this reason was called “Popsicle” during most of the pregnancy). She was seven cells. And now she can free her hand from her sleeve and climb stairs and wave at trains and moo at pictures of cows.
She’s 14 months old today. I know they grow up fast. But: wow.
It begins
Now you know I hate blowing my own trumpet every time something happens
in the real world that’s straight out of one of my books. Well, maybe
“hate” is too strong a word. I mean, “enjoy on a deep, almost
sexual level.” Yeah. That’s more like it.
Anyway, I think this one is worth mentioning because it’s at the more extreme end: it’s that thing in Jennifer Government where everyone takes their surname from their employer. John Nike. Billy NRA. Violet ExxonMobil. And so on.
There’s a historical precedent for this: in centuries past, John Smith was the town blacksmith, Tim Baker really was a baker, and Geoff Wang was… well, let’s not think. In the Jennifer Government world, where a person’s job is the most important thing about them, returning to that concept made sense to me. Also, when I worked in sales, I’d get a call from “Michael Jamieson” or whoever, and frantically think, “Jamieson, Jamieson… who the hell is that?” It would have been so much simpler if he was “Michael McDonald’s.”
Now, we’ve already seen people selling their surnames to corporations, and even a particularly disturbing case of parents auctioning naming rights to their baby. But does it really count as a fulfilled prophesy when the people doing the fulfilling are missing some essential part of their brain? I dunno. I think that’s a little like saying, “I foresee a day when people will smack themselves in the face with hammers for fun,” and then claiming it came true because of my cousin Donny. Poor Donny. Well, you pity his parents, mostly. But back to the issue. For me to feel like I really nailed this one, it has to be done in all seriousness. Nobody should even see anything wrong with it.
So here we are. Lately companies have been stampeding into Second Life, a virtual reality of the kind that everyone thought the internet would be, before discovering it was just typing and clicking on links. In Second Life, you create an avatar—a little person to be—and run around… um, doing stuff. You know, like walking around… or going shopping… or building a house. But without having to stand up.
So. The news agency Reuters just opened an office there and assigned reporter Adam Pasick to the beat. So now there’s an avatar that looks like Adam in Second Life, reporting on news. Only what’s his name? Adam Reuters.
Oh yes. Innocuous. That’s how it starts.
A Few Good Books
I’m reading a succession of crappy books. Not deliberately. That would
be weird. It just turned out this way: dud after dud. Every time I
crack open a new one, I hope that I’m about to get that feeling:
that moment when I realize, “Ooh, this is good.” But: nope. Nothing.
I’ve even started abandoning books before the end,
which I never used to do no matter how bad they were. (Instead, I
would complain to Jen every night until I finished, stopping to point
out particularly egregious passages. She prefers the new method.)
So it’s a good time to remember that I have read some good books recently. Of course, when I say “recently,” I mean “since I last updated my list of favorite reads,” i.e. in the last three years. But if I can assume that you care about my opinion, and aren’t here just because you googled for lonelygirl15, then maybe you’re interested in my recommendations.
Here are some books that, if you stopped by my house and said, “Got anything good to read?”, I would loan to you. I mean, once we had gotten past the screaming and “how did you get in here” stage.
Corpsing (Toby Litt): This was the first book of Toby’s I ever read, and I loved it so much that I keep buying more of his, even though all of those have turned out to be terrible. For me, Toby is that guy you know is trouble but can’t keep away from, because maybe this time it will be different; maybe he’ll treat you right. He never does. He’s a bad, bad man.
The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World (Neal Stephenson): I adored these. Almost everybody I’ve recommended them to has given up about 150 pages into the first book, saying, “Why the hell did you think I’d like that?” It’s inexplicable. I think all three books are amazing. If I had tried to write something like this, it would have taken me about 40 years. In fact, it would have taken me that long just to type them out, because they’re about 900 pages each.
Apathy and Other Small Victories (Paul Neilan): Obviously.
A Certain Chemistry (Mil Millington): The British do excruciating better than anybody. Reading this was like having my fingernails pulled out, only with more laughing. When I’d finished I felt like I had been beaten around the head, but with love. Because of this I’m putting it ahead of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, which is also very good and possibly funnier.
The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger): This one is a rough ride, too. Some of it is astonishingly beautiful, some is unbearably tragic. I thought it dragged a little in the middle, but still loved it.
Astonishing X-Men (Joss Whedon): I’ve been reading some comics lately, and this one is gorgeous. Book 3 (“Torn”) is especially juicy. Joss Whedon is, of course, one of the greatest human beings to ever walk the Earth, and he’s in great form here. I obsessively read X-Men comics in high school and college, and it’s very cool to return to these characters and see them handled so well.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon): I have never heard anyone say anything bad about this book, ever. So there’s no need for me to praise it. I’ll just say: they’re right.
The Men Who Stare At Goats (Jon Ronson) [non-fiction]: This book started out as a light, ridiculous, funny read, then turned dark and disturbing. I love that.
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (Robert Rankin): It’s funny and it’s clever, but more than that it has a surprising and truly wonderful dynamic between the two main characters. Warm, snuggly, and gooey (in a good way).
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell (Susanna Clarke): I don’t usually read the backs of books until I’ve finished them, but I snuck a look at this one early and discovered that it was Time Magazine’s Book of the Year (2004). I wish I hadn’t done that, because from that point onward all I could think was, “Well, it’s good, but is it Book of the Year good?” So try not to do that. It is an absorbing read: simultaneously rich and dry.
Watching Racehorses: A Guide to Betting on Behaviour (Geoffrey Hutson) [non-fiction]: I don’t care about racehorses. I have no interest in betting on them. I only read this book because Geoff is a neighbor. But it was genuinely fascinating, very funny, and worth it for the section on clitoral winking alone. (I know. Intriguing.)
Haunted (Chuck Palahniuk): This is a bunch of short stories with a novel wrapped around it. As with any short story collection, the quality varies, but some of the ones in here scared the absolute crap out of me. So even though I wouldn’t rate this as Chuck’s best, it was a good read. Incidentally, I read a review of this in The Washington Post that was more like a drive-by shooting, with several bullets aimed below the belt, and noticed that Amazon.com chose that one, that one, to put on their site. It was nice to see that that doesn’t just happen to me.
The Beach (Alex Garland): Yeah, it’s already on my old list. But I re-read it, and ohhh, it’s so good.