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The Plug-And-Play Trend Piece Template
"Previously this trend did not exist or was not recognized, until now. Early forms of the trend have evolved and perhaps been identified as something, though not yet as a trend, for this piece shall serve as the official recognition of the trend in full flower." [Gawker alum Chris Mohney]
"Previously this trend did not exist or was not recognized, until now. Early forms of the trend have evolved and perhaps been identified as something, though not yet as a trend, for this piece shall serve as the official recognition of the trend in full flower." [Gawker alum Chris Mohney]
Sad quote of the day
"'Facebook!' is the new 'Cheese!'" — 19-year-old Dean White, who will now be unfairly blamed for this slang "trend" when it gets mentioned in a Times trend piece. [Aaron White]
"'Facebook!' is the new 'Cheese!'" — 19-year-old Dean White, who will now be unfairly blamed for this slang "trend" when it gets mentioned in a Times trend piece. [Aaron White]
trendsquatting
trendsquatting
Rickrolling Is The Plague That's Killing The Internet
The Rickroll prank (you know, you show a link pretending it's something else but it's really the music video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up") is just "made you look!" for the web. Worse: It's "sure thing...not!" for the web. That's why it caught on so damn well, because every idiot can enjoy a good laugh ("ha ha fooled you that was not the web page you intended to see"). Here's how it began (as a kind of funny joke), how it took over, and why using it makes you a moron who should be strapped down in front of a loop of "2 Girls 1 Cup." More »
trendsquatting
Newsweek Can't Decide If Web 2.0 Is Over
"Is user-generated content out?" Newsweek recently asked (four days before profiling a user-generated magazine as a "brave new magazine model"). The trend piece lists a few companies that pay writers and editors, then call them a trend, ignoring that user-generated sites like Wikipedia and YouTube still have climbing traffic. I'm gonna go Twitter about this, but here's a quick outline of Newsweek's double-talk about the "trend." More »
nosplice:34
Why TED Sucks
TED is the Bono of conferences. (Except Bono wasn't even on this year's guest list.) The Technology Entertainment Design conference is so bold-name, so visionary that you have to like it, which is why you can so easily hate it. But in 2006, the conference awarded its annual $100,000 prize to a man named Larry Brilliant who's heading up Google's non-profit arm, and how do you top that? This year, B-list tech press have rejected the conference they were never invited to. But they really do have a point: More »
trendsquatting
In Case You Thought About Growing A Beard, Watch This
To celebrate the return of the beard (I know), the Chicago Tribune interviewed the sketchiest bearded men they could find. "Meeting people and rubbing your fuzzies on them is an extra hello," according to one guy with a half-grown-in beard who'd just finished plucking phone numbers from a Help Wanted board. During the entire interview, the cameras center on the beards, presumably to protect the men's identities while the child molestation charges blow over. That cinematography choice takes this two-minute clip (shown below) from dumb to priceless. More »
trendsquatting
Okay, Which Second Life Employee Is Sleeping With The Entire NYT Tech Section?
Jesus, it feels like every week the New York Times finds a new "trend" involving Second Life, the virtual world that lets people interact with avatars to blah blah blah ugh. In the 65th Times story about SL, it's virtual job interviews, which even the Times knows are nearly non-existent, admitting that Second Life owner Linden Labs "doesn't keep statistics" but "says the number has grown exponentially" in the world's five-year history. Which could mean, since we're given no parameters, that there are all of thirty-two employers using a technology half as useful as AIM and a webcam. Also, the Wall Street Journal did this story, but better, last June. Bad enough, but here's what makes the Times's coverage of Second Life such an epic failure. More »
trendsquatting
Porn Is Coming To Phones! Again! For Serious This Time!
Actually no. Reuters' story today, "Porn to spice up cell phones," is just a rehash of a trend story that was never fulfilled, despite plenty of publicists planting the story to promote clients' phone-porn ventures. Take, for instance, the 2004 Cox News story, "Can you see me now? Porn coming to U.S. cell phones," a result of Playboy expanding into mobile phones. Of course Playboy was late, as there was already a story about the struggling phone-porn industry in 1992, when cell phones were actually larger than a naked woman. Click through for the full-size screencap from the Lexis Nexis archives &mdash and the real reason Reuters ran this story. More »
trendsquatting
