I also did it so that I can do things like send emails to The White House and actually get a serious response. You better believe they google anyone who contacts them, not to mention, they probably do a deep scan of that person to make sure they’re not a terrorist, and with my beard looking the way that it does, I didn’t want to take any chances.

With my luck, someone at The White House might still accidentally come across this website, not realize I’m a comedian, and be like, “Holy fuck, we gotta keep this guy away from the president!”

It’s funny, I’ve now reached the point in my life where I can email The White House and get a reply, but still email the guy who represents Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine at Road Runner Records and get nothing.

I guess replying to an email isn’t very metal.

On a related note: I’m also starting up a radio show on WENU 1410 AM here in Glens Falls that’ll also be done under the B.J. Mendelson name. So between the radio show, the book, and anything I do between now and then to promote both, there’s going to be a whole lot of B.J.s going on.

… That sounded dirtier than I thought it would.

The radio show doesn’t have a name yet, but my first guest will be GOP presidential candidate Buddy Roemer. I also wanted to do an interview with Dave Mustaine because I’ve always enjoyed his opinion on politics, and hopefully we can make that happen at some point.

Email might not be very metal, but perhaps the phone is?

I also emailed The White House because, after booking the former governor of Louisiana, I thought I’d try to get all the candidates for president on the show in the run-up to the election, including this guy.

I’ll let you know how that goes. President Obama is a no go … for now, but they promised to keep me in the loop.

If you can’t find much about WENU online, don’t worry, the radio station is undergoing a format change, so it doesn’t have a new website yet.

The new radio show also doesn’t have a website because I’ve been dealing with this. What is most likely going to happen is that I’ll pre-record a bunch of shows and then they’ll go into rotation on the station at the same time you can listen to them online. This way, everybody is happy.

Everybody except maybe the FCC.

In my case, I get hit particularly hard between January and February with the depression. Sometimes, like this year, it’ll kick up just before Christmas.

You know, just so that while decorating the tree, I can think about things like how much garland I’d need to hang myself.

For me, this bullshit lasts until March, when all of a sudden it’s gone. It’s as if I’ve just been given a life time supply of Xanax without any of the side effects like chemical dependency and the inability to achieve an erection.

I might sound fine right now, but I’m not. I didn’t take a shower until 3pm today. I also fought with my wife, which virtually never happens because I do what I’m told.

I also couldn’t decide whether or not I wanted to get out of bed this morning.

I did. But only because we have this motorized water dish for Bender, and when it’s low on water, the noise it makes is almost as annoying as something you’d hear on an American Idol audition.

There’s medication for shit like Seasonal Affective Disorder and Depression, but for years I found compulsively masturbating was just what the doctor ordered.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. So instead, I hoard porn and organize it alphabetically, instead of writing, to keep busy. This consumes most of my day, especially whenever I get to the J folder and find a Jada Fire video.

Then I lose about eight hours of productivity.

Now I’m at a point where “nature’s remedy” doesn’t work, and I’m out of space on my computer for porn, which is kind of sad because I just bought this thing not too long ago.

I’m not really sure what to do with myself while I go through this because it keeps me from writing. In that vacuum, the manic side of the manic-depression has stepped up to the plate like Jackie Robinson, and boy has it delivered.

I’ve applied to a bunch of jobs I don’t want, “Shit Mountain” (our apartment) is cleaner than it’s ever been, and I’m compulsively checking my Twitter feed even though I’m battling a crippling inability to be funny.

By the looks of my feed, so are a lot of you.

You may be thinking, “Well, you wrote this. So how depressed  can you be?” The answer? A lot!

I can always tell how depressed I am based on how hard it is for me to write about something. Not depressed? Fucking essays! Very depressed? Utter crap.

Sometimes I mask it well though, like I’m doing right now with this post. Other times not so much.

So, this blog and any other activities of mine are going to be pretty limited until the beginning of March. Right around the time I need to go into full blown whore mode to drum up pre-orders for my book.

Don’t worry. I’m going to be fine. I’ve been dealing with this shit since high school, and I’m not a danger to anyone or myself. This is just some bullshit that flares up in the Winter because I’m apparently Superman.

The only difference between me and the last son of Krypton though is that instead of getting superpowers from the Sun, I just get really sad when it’s gone.

The University at Albany may not have bears roaming the campus like Baylor, but no other college in America has the Great Dane for a mascot.

Do you know what a Great Dane is? A lumbering, slobbering, aggressive dog of war that towers over midgets. That’s right. Midgets.

Wake Forest’s Demon Deacon was regarded as the most frightening college mascot because he reminds students of the looming ravages of time, but UAlbany can clobber that argument in the face with this: The Great Dane was bred to help Germans, the friendly genocidal people of Europe, kill things!

According to UAlbany’s Athletics brochures, the school selected Scooby as the official mascot in 1965. Before ’65, during the manliest era in American history, UAlbany had an equally manly mascot known as Pierre the Pedguin.

A Pedguin was an imaginary creature meant to represent UAlbany’s status as a teachers college. Penguin and the word “pedagogy” were merged into a lingual failure that gave birth to the Pedguin and the school’s athletic teams, The Pedagogues.

It’s nice to think the Pedguin is an extinct, handicapped fourth cousin of the Penguin, vindicating Darwin for totally calling natural selection; but sadly, the Pedguin met a more boring demise.

In 1965, according to back issues of the stunningly handsome Albany Student Press, UAlbany changed mascots from Pierre the Pedguin to the nameless Great Dane. In a shocking turn of events, the state of Pennsylvania also named the Great Dane its official state dog that year.

Whether or not Pennsylvania was trying to be cool like their German ancestors, whom if you remember bred these dogs for war, we’ll never know.

According to StateSymbolUSA.org, “When the Speaker of the House called for a voice vote to designate the Great Dane, yips, growls and barks assaulted his ears from every part of the chamber! With a rap of his gavel, the Speaker confirmed that the ‘arfs have it’ and the ‘Barking Dog Vote’ entered the annals of legislative history.

Can’t you feel the rush of excitement that must fill the legislative halls of Pennsylvania on a daily basis?

Why change from Pedguin and Pedagogues to Great Danes? Like other American colleges at the time, UAlbany’s campus population grew to include more men while the university’s priorities shifted from teaching to research. A contest was held on campus and Kathy Earle won a $25 savings bond for her winning contest entry of the Great Dane. Whether UAlbany shares the Great Danes licensing profits with Mrs. Earle today is unclear, but it’s safe to assume they do … right?

Mrs. Earle picked Great Danes because of their, ‘Size, weight, strength, character, courage, speed, and stamina, according to the sports brochure, but here are some alleged facts from Wikipedia that shaped her entry assuming Mrs. Earle had access to a DeLorean, the Internet, and Doc Brown, if only to say “Great Scott” when appropriate:

● When the Great Dane becomes bored, it becomes destructive.
● The Great Dane has a complex and mysterious origin much like the popular X-Man, Wolverine
● The tallest dog ever, a Great Dane, was recorded at 41 inches and weighed 238 pounds.
● Great Danes have six different coats, none of which are purple and gold.
● Notable Great Danes include: Scooby Doo, Astro, Marmaduke, Fang (from Harry Potter), and Ace the Bat-Hound.

Dog of war? Check. Connection to Batman? Confirmed. The only mascot of its kind? That’s more than enough to qualify as America’s greatest college mascot.

Until next time, you’ll find me taking a dirt nap in the archives after angry Pedguin-loving alumni incinerate my apartment. Those alumni may be old, but if GWU’s Colonial taught us anything, it’s that old feisty people will fuck you up if you mess with them.

For some regrettable reason, I was exposed to the modern travesty that is Lights Camera Jackson. If it wasn’t due to my own browsing, I’d kill the person responsible.

In the following video, which CBS wisely disabled embedding in fear that Lights Camera Jackson would encourage a national celibacy campaign, we witnessed the horror that is an eleven-year-old child doing movie reviews.

His first review? Inception. And if you need me to detail the hilarity that is a travel-size Gilbert Gottfried reviewing a movie too complex for his feeble child brain, you are dead inside.

Seriously. Watch that video and then come back here and tell me it wasn’t funny.

And if you’re still not convinced Lights Camera Jackson’s existence is a criminal act against humanity, I present to you his review of Step Up 3D, complete with annotations from a surly, unemployed twenty-seven-year-old comedian.

“The first two “Step Up” films (’06, ’08) were surprisingly popular with movie goers, grossing a combined worldwide total of $262 million dollars. This third edition takes the series to a whole new dimension. But will it pay off?”

 

Oh. I see what you did there. 3D. “Whole new dimension”. I’ll give you one thing- Reporters and critics are notorious for lame jokes and cliches, so in terms of their mental capacity, you’re probably already on par with most of them.

 “Step Up 3″ (which I saw in 3D and therefore is called “Step Up 3D”) is a combination of “Fame”, “High School Musical” and “The Karate Kid”, with a little “Glee” thrown in. Just take away the singing and Kung-Fu and replace it with dancing.”

 

Actually, the name of the film is Step Up 3D. Since there wasn’t an option to see the film in 2-D (as far as I know) there’s no difference in the name. But you know, whatever, you’re the expert.

And since you are the expert, I really want to know how The Karate Kid got lobbed in there with Fame and High School Musical. It’s the only non-musical on your little list here. And if you take the Kung fu out of The Karate Kid, you know what you would have? Nothing. It would be a movie about a silly white boy getting his teeth kicked in and crying about it.

Is that what you want? Because I don’t know anyone who is going to want to see that movie.

[Editor's Note: I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any other film with the name The Karate Kid.]

“The plot is nothing new: There’s the college freshman who’s parents want him to be an engineer, but he wants to dance. His name is Moose and he joins-up with Luke, who owns a studio where his team of dancers practice and live.”

Sure there’s something new. The movie is essentially about an orphaned rich kid who wastes the last of his inheritance operating a shit-hole where homeless people can dance. He then forces an impressionable well-to-do member of Generation Y to flush a promising career as an engineer down the drain for entirely selfish reasons: He wants to save his hobo house.

THAT’S SOMETHING NEW!

“The Pirates, which they call themselves, need to win the big dance competition to pay-off the bank or they’ll lose the studio. And there’s the mysterious girl who joins the group and becomes Luke’s girlfriend. But is she who she says she is?”

Of course they call themselves The Pirates. Do you know anyone who is seriously going to call a multi-ethnic group of dancing homeless people “The Pirates” with a straight face?

I also like your little plot spoiler here. “Is she who she says she is?” If you ask the reader that question, the reader is automatically going to assume she is not who she says she is (spoiler alert!).

What kind of fucking question is that?

Why don’t you just tell people in your first paragraph that the impressionable youth pissing his life away for dance saves the day thanks to a laser light suit and homoerotic gyrations?

That would have at least kept the reader interested, because right now? I’m not interested. I just feel the overwhelming urge to strangle you with piano wire and dump your body in the Hudson.

“The biggest problem with “Step Up 3D” is the 3D.”

I just want you all to take a moment here and think about what Lights Camera Jackson just said.

“The dance scenes (which make up most of the film) are extremely in your face, to the point where it gets very creepy. And there are way too many cheap 3D gimmicks, having objects flying at the screen just to show off the 3D.”

You mean to tell me that dance is the center-piece of this film and not the complicated, “borrowed from every romance since 1597″ plot?

“We hardly ever have things flying directly at us in real-life 3D so why do filmmakers do it in movies?”

I want this shit on my headstone. Do you hear me? ON MY HEADSTONE!

“I’m more convinced than ever that 3D was made for animated and fantasy films, not for live-action films.”

You’re more convinced? Or are you just parroting what every professional film critic has said since Avatar? And how would you know? Alice In Wonderland and Clash Of The Titans are both fantasy films and the 3D in those films looked like shit. Think about that.

“There’s nothing new or original in “SU3D”.”

What part of multi-ethnic dancing homeless people didn’t you get?

“The script is pretty corny and most of the performances are weak.”

Compared to … ? You’re eleven. What the fuck do you know about anything other than your rudimentary understanding of math and masturbation?

“Stoner (who I met a few years ago) gives the best performance because she’s an actor playing a dancer while the rest of the cast is made up of dancers trying to be actors.”

No one cares that you met her. How is that relevant? If anything, you saying you met her, and then saying the girl with the least amount of screen time had the best performance in the film tells me you have a bias. That’s not very professional of you Lights Camera Jackson, not very professional at all!

“However, the dancers are very good at what they do and most of the dance scenes are great to watch. And I’m sure I would have enjoyed them even more in 2D.”

Since there was pretty much no 3D to speak of, you did enjoy them in 2D. This sentence is redundant. You are redundant.

“On “The Official Kid Critic Report Card, “Step Up 3D” gets a C. It’s rated PG-13 for some brief language, but there’s really nothing for parents to worry about.”

Nothing for parents to worry about? You mean your girl dressing up like a known drug abuser and the homeless people breaking laws because that’s what made them happy was ok?

How about the message of the film that you should give up a promising career in favor of being marginally talented and homeless? If I had kids like that, I’d be offended.

If I had kids like you, I’d kill them.

“If there’s another “Step Up” film in two years it can’t be made in 4D, so maybe it’ll just be a regular film. And maybe the writers will step-it-up with a better script.”

Oh sweet death, if this is the future of movie criticism, I plead for you to take me now and grant me the protection I seek from this hideous abomination.

Somebody put this thing back in the womb before it’s too late.

The way I see it? If I were to get two thousand of you to pre-order Social Media Is Bullshit, then that would make my publisher, St. Martin’s Press, very happy.

It means they’ll have made their money back, which for me, means I get to write another book.

Maybe.

And if I do get to write another book? Hopefully this time it’ll be one that doesn’t make me want to go on a killing spree after researching it.

I know this will shock you, but the amount of research I did for Social Media Is Bullshit was disgusting.

I promise you that if you look in the business / marketing section, where the book will make its home in September, you won’t find another book in that section that can touch it in terms of sources, interviews, and research.

(Doris Kearns Goodwin, my favorite historian, ain’t got shit on me.)

By the end of the research for my book, I wanted to get an axe and take out as many of the marketers, Cyber Hipsters, and their other asshole friends as I could.

At the time, I thought it was the only way to gurantee that I’d never have to read their bullshit again.

Luckily, for them, my wife explained to me that I use an RSS reader, and unsubscribing from helpful aggregators like Techmeme and Mediagazer is really, really easy.

Far easier than getting an axe, tracking every movement of my victims, and coming up with several hundred alibis.

So, you might be wondering how I’m going to get those two thousand pre-orders.

If you guessed I’m just going to go down the list of people following me on Twitter and DM them asking to retweet a link to the book’s Amazon page, which will drive it up the Amazon rankings, and for them to buy the book, you’re God damn right I am.

But. I’m also going to offer something special.

A little extra incentive that I hope will make all this interesting to the rubberneckers who are going to follow what happens with this book, not to mention the idiots who are going to look to shoot the thing down.

As it turns out, the douchebags selling their bullshit don’t take kindly to someone pissing all over their merchandise, fucking their wife, and lighting their house on fire. That’s pretty much what this book does for “social media”.

I Can Have A Stranger Shit In My House For Free, So What’s The Incentive?

I don’t yet know what form the book tour will take. I want to do a 150 date tour which does the traditional thing you’re supposed to do when promoting a book: Do some speaking dates, appear at book stores, and do pretty much anything you can to get the local media outlet to pay attention to you and plug your book.

Doing things in the traditional sense is very important to me. It’s a big deal that I have a book coming out in stores from a major publisher. I worked for over ten years to achieve that goal, and I want to do all the things traditional authors (re: non-ebook authors) do.

One of those things is something that’s not too high on my list, although I’ll do it in order to promote the book: Public speaking.

I have zero interest in being a public speaker, and if there’s a way to swing it without totally fucking myself financially, I’m going to charge as little as I can for any of those dates.

(And if the book does well enough, stop charging entirely for them.)

Public speaking is not a career I want to find myself in. I wrote the book because it’s the truth and people need to hear it, not to better position myself as a “brand”.

Fuck that.

I want to be on stage telling dick and fart jokes in front of twenty winos at a biker bar in Wisconsin. Everything else to me is bullshit.

But. It’s bullshit I’m happy to do because getting a book published is a lot like taking on a new job, and in that job you do everything you can to make all the parties happy. Even if it’s not something you want to do, you bust your ass for your boss.

It took me ten years to get to this point. Why fuck it up by half-assing it now?

So, the incentive to get all those pre-orders works like this: At this time, I have no idea what the tour will look like. Worse case scenario, I do the 150 dates on my own. Either way, I’ll be on the road a lot in late 2012 and 2013.

If you are one of the first two thousand people to pre-order the book when it pops up on Amazon this Spring, I will come to your house and sign the book for you when I pass through your area.

I may even take a dump in your toilet.

Scratch that … I will take a dump in your toilet.

What can I say? I just don’t like using rest area bathrooms. I don’t trust them.

You know why? Because while it may be impossible to get AIDS from sitting on a toilet seat, I’m the kind of guy it would happen too.

So, that’s the deal: Buy the book, get a personal visit and book signing. And if you’re fucking crazy, a souvenir from my asshole that you can leave floating in your toilet bowl. Forever.

Oh! One last thing:

I have no idea how this is actually going to work, but it’s important to me that I’m doing what I love during these book tours, and that’s stand-up comedy.

I haven’t been able to do it for years, and I’m working on new material for the first time since 2007.

After I do all the traditional tour stuff, I’m going to be looking for people willing to volunteer their backyard and invite some of their friends. I’d like to do a show at your house. I’ll bring the PA.

But … be warned: I make absolutely no promises that the set will be funny. If it bombs, it won’t be the only turd I leave behind for you from my visit.

-”Although C.K. has gone on the record against social media in the past, it’s difficult to imagine this venture would have been a success without it.” -Lauren Indvik, Mashable

-”The comedian now joins the alternative rock group Radiohead and DJ mashup artist Girl Talk (both of whom have released “pay what you want” downloads”) as an example of how successful a direct-to-fans approach can be. And Louis CK’s experiment shows that this approach can have the same kind of disruptive effect on television and movies as it has had in music.” – Matthew Ingram, GigaOm

-”Some will say that Louis can do this because he is a star. That is true. And I sure hope other stars will follow his lead and go direct to their fans. [...] But this can also work for emerging artists. They won’t make as much money as Louis CK, but they also don’t need to make as large of an investment either. And over time, if their work is good, their audience will grow and the investments they can make and the profits they can make will increase.- Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson

So … That’s A Lot Of Bullshit. Is Any Of It True?

Let’s just throw the Mashable quote out. I only included it here because it’s so ridiculous it borders on self-parody.

That take us right to GigaOm‘s Matthew Ingram:

“The comedian now joins the alternative rock group Radiohead and DJ mashup artist Girl Talk (both of whom have released “pay what you want” downloads”) as an example of how successful a direct-to-fans approach can be.”

How successful are we talking about here? Louie said he made back his money, but he also said he made less than he would have if he had done the special for HBO or Showtime. So is it a success in that he made his money back or a failure in that he didn’t make as much as he would have?

That’s very subjective.

Matthew also didn’t link to anything that provided any sort of numbers about how those bands did with their direct-to-fans releases, and based on my experience trying to get information from record labels about this stuff, they don’t reveal that kind of information. So anything said in his post is then pure speculation, not fact.

Now, part of what Louie did that was so interesting was that he actually gave out some numbers. So for the first time, we have something to work with.

Based on those numbers? I would have to agree that Louie was very successful. If he’s happy about it, which he appears to be based on that post, then I am too.

But … does that mean the direct-to-fans model works? We can dispute the claim using the bands Ingram mentioned.

Girl Talk, Radiohead, and Nine Inch Nails (who also self-released an album under the “Pay What You Want” model) never released sales figures for those albums.

In Girl Talk’s case, I’m going to come clean: I had no idea who he was. I went and downloaded his album, “Feed The Animals“, for free, just so I can listen to it in order to write this post.

But, and this is important, all because I downloaded this album doesn’t mean I’m going to become a fan of his and run out to see his next show. In fact, I can honestly say his stuff isn’t for me.

I’m more of a metal guy.

Cyber Hipsters don’t often acknowledge that this is a possibility.

Instead, they push the idea that free music (or free anything) means better results elsewhere. The idea being that by giving your stuff away for free, it’ll translate into a net positive somewhere down the road.

When is never specified.

(There’s also an assumption that if you don’t cooperate, people will pirate your shit, so you better give in to their asinine world view or some magic teenager** is going to come and steal your shit.

The truth behind pirating is that most people don’t pirate for the sake of it, or to make a statement. They do it because of cost, availability, or DRM issues. If you address those, you don’t have to worry about piracy.

Anyone still pirating your stuff if you’ve addressed these concerns is an asshole, and there’s always going to be plenty of those. The good news is that the asshole and their friends aren’t likely to buy your stuff anyway, according to most piracy studies. Visit my friend Ernesto at TorrentFreak for more on that.)

The Cyber Hipsters could be right. I don’t dispute that. The problem is, it’s extremely hard to figure out if they are, and if it’s worth the risk of freely distributing something in exchange for some potential payoff that may never come.

Nobody is going to have an answer for that one. You’re going to have to figure out what you’re comfortable with and go from there.

If it was me? I wouldn’t give something away that I thought had any value. My tweets don’t have any value, which is why they’re usually just topical jokes. These blog posts don’t have any real value, since I mostly use it as a rough draft for shit I may do later.

But. I wouldn’t put out a book for free. There’s too much time and effort that goes into a 60,000 word manuscript. Unless I was already financially set, I just couldn’t justify it.

That said, I’d like the price to be as low as it can be, but that’s just good business. If you’re priced lower than your competitors and you’re still able to turn a profit with a quality product, you win. Giving something away for free in exchange for a potential payoff later though? That’s risky, and in an economy like this, it’s just not a smart bet. If you can’t make money doing what you’re doing, you can’t keep doing it at a level you’ll be happy about.

So, the idea that the direct-to-fans approach can work isn’t entirely true. I’m still convinced that Louie’s first special did as well as it did because:

1. He released it at the height of his popularity. Right now, Louie is at the same level of fame Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld, and George Carlin had.

2. The tech media, and then the media who just recycles their stuff, latched onto it because they (think) it proves their asinine theory of the Internet disrupting the entertainment business.

You want to pinpoint the real agent of disruption over the past twenty years? How about the corporatization of everything, those companies inability to manage themselves and their greed, and the recessions we had between 2001 and 2004 and 2008 to the present?

Did you ever notice that these things are rarely, if ever mentioned by the Cyber Hispsters?

Although I don’t doubt the concept works, it clearly worked for Louie, there’s little proof that this direct-to-fans approach is something that could be replicated by non-celebrities, and it’s telling that the Cyber Hipsters seem to only use celebrities to back up their dubious claims.

This is like what went on with The Long Tail theory years ago. It works, sort of, if you’re a media outlet. Cyber Hipsters then took that to mean it can work for anyone, which wasn’t the case. (Yet somehow you can’t seem to go anywhere without some idiot mentioning The Long Tail like it’s a viable thing. It’s not. It never was.)

“And Louis CK’s experiment shows that this approach can have the same kind of disruptive effect on television and movies as it has had in music”

 

What disruptive effect? Seriously. I want to know.

Do you know? I don’t. The only thing that’s disrupted television and music, aside from the stuff I just mentioned, are ridiculously high movie prices and bad movies (made by dumb corporations), and the DVR. Anything else that tries to get lobbed in there is bullshit.

If anything, TV is having a revival since the Recession started. Just look at the ratings for the past few Super Bowls. There’s an upswing that’s been going on with live events and sports since the bottom fell out, which also started just before the marketers and Cyber Hipsters started to throw around the term “social media”.

The sad thing is that all you ever hear from the Cyber Hipsters though is talk. Not reality. There’s a whole lot of assuming going on but very little to ever back it up.

Let me share with you something a commenter on GigaOm said to me when I asked for proof to back up this and other asinine statements being made there about places like Kickstarter:

“@Brandon you are naive for believing that. I bet 60% of kickstarter campaigns fail because the artist/comic launch it premature (they don’t have enough loyal fans yet) and want to take the easy way out and rush the campaign without putting in the work to build their following.”

 

See? Another big assumption. This theory may be true for some, but good luck trying to prove it. The more likely scenario is that people don’t want to give money to something unless it’s a sure thing, and most stuff on Kickstarter isn’t.

That’s why people with finished movies get the funding (see: Dying To Do Lettermen), while people who want to create a movie get nothing.

“There are hundreds of comedians solely using youtube with hundreds of thousands if not millions of subscribers making an incredibly comfortable living off of their material. Most don’t go on tours, but should they decide to they will for sure sell tickets.”

 

Proof? I want names and numbers. If you don’t have that, you’ve got nothing. (Saying “Proof?” by the way is the equivalent of saying “U Mad?” on a place like Reddit. Any time you ask a Cyber Hipster to back something up they lose their shit.)

This is what I like to call “Snakes On A Plane Syndrome”. It’s when there’s an assumption that just because something or someone is huge on the Internet that it’s going to translate into success offline.

Yet here we are, six years after “Snakes On A Plane” came out in theaters and bombed, and we’re still hearing this shit about there being a correlation between Internet popularity and popularity in real life.

There isn’t one. It’s time we acknowledged that and moved on.

Girl Talk, as reported by The New York Times, saw only a modest boost in places where he was already pulling people in from after releasing a “Pay What You Want” album. So, how was he drawing people to his shows? It wasn’t from the Internet, it was from YEARS OF TOURING.

Those years of touring? They got no mention in the GigaOm post.

“The problem is you have too many comedians or content creators that really aren’t talented enough and saturate the space creating this false perception that yourself has seem to bought into that things can’t be done this way. You also have the talented content creators that just don’t know how to leverage the right tools properly to build their presence.”

I don’t think that’s true. If you’ve got 1% of people doing the content creation on any given online platform (which is what the 1% Rule states, and that shit has been backed up going as far back as 1997), then there aren’t thousands of talentless people gumming up the works.

It’s way less than that.

I even have a theory that there’s probably no more than a thousand non-celebrities and non-brands, per country, per platform, making enough money where they’re able to pay their bills and save money solely through the activities on those platforms.

I haven’t tested it, but I’ve found people have a real hard time making a list of more than a few before they start reaching for the celebrities, big brands, and media personalities.

Also: Assuming that someone is talentless is a pretty shitty thing to do. Louis CK said it to ESPN’s Bill Simmons, it took him 25 years to figure out stand-up comedy. So, I don’t think there are talentless people. There’s lazy people, and there are people who for whatever reason can’t put the work in, but there’s no such thing as a “talentless” person.

You’ve just gotta put the work in.

That’s not to say there isn’t a fuck ton of bad content though. There’s plenty of bad content put out by EVERYBODY (professionals included).

As far as leveraging the right tools go,  well …see below.

“If you are talented and know what you are doing you can accomplish everything you wish to solely leveraging the internet.”

 

This is exactly the statement my book addresses. It’s fucking bullshit, but that’s what we’re dealing with here: Bullshit.

Bullshit created by a group of people who (usually) don’t create stuff themselves, walking around and telling people who do create stuff, that 1% I mentioned, all sorts of bad shit that is factually inaccurate and irreparably harmful to their progress.

“And to answer your questions in regards to examples: Jenna Marble, Dom Mazzetti, Timothy DeLaGhetto, Kain carter, Kev Jumba and the list goes on and on and on….”

 

Ok. So you’ve named people with … what? Big YouTube numbers? Big Twitter followers? Hey, I got 800,000 Twitter followers. That shit is meaningless. (In the book, I break down how useless YouTube’s numbers are too.)

Are any of these people making enough to pay their bills and save something too? How did they get their big break anyway? You’ll find there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than someone simply putting something on YouTube and growing an audience.

Unfortunately, most Web Celebs run away when you ask them tough questions, so good luck getting any of them to say, on the record, that they’re paying their bills doing what they’re doing, and that they’re satisfied with where they are in life.

Hey, I’ll start: I can’t and I’m not.

Speaking Of Dangerous

That brings us to Fred Wilson’s quote:

“But this can also work for emerging artists. They won’t make as much money as Louis CK, but they also don’t need to make as large of an investment either.”

 

There is always an investment, and depending on what you want to do, it can be pretty significant regardless of how the thing is going to be released and what stage you’re at in your career.

(A good movie is going to cost, at least, $200,000 no matter who you are.)

If you’re a band that’s touring, you need good equipment, a ride that isn’t going to break down on you, CDs (or more commonly, jump drives), and merch.

Lots and lots of merch.

Why? Because merch is how bands make their money. You can’t cheap out on it (which sometimes requires hiring an expensive designer to make sure you have an awesome look), and you need a lot of it.

Yes. The investment may be smaller, but there’s an implication here from Fred that, since the investment is smaller, it’s doable, and I don’t think that’s true in this economy.

We’re in a Recession, maybe even a Depression depending on which economist you want to talk too. The idea that you can just get that kind of money together is bullshit.

Maybe it’s true in the tech sector right now, but that bubble is going to burst real soon. You watch.

Hypothetically, let’s say you can get the funds together: It’ll probably take years of performing locally and saving, and even then, that assumes you’re in a place that is going to pay you decently (not likely the further you get from a major city), that you’re saving that money, and that you’ve put the time in to perfect your product, which is a considerable investment itself.

I’m not saying you can’t get a good chunk of money together, what I’m saying is that it’s not as easy as (I think) it’s being portrayed here.

You can’t just go to a place like Kickstarter and get that money in minutes. As I pointed out above, most of the stuff on Kickstarter that tends to get funded has already been made. Not to mention, they have that 60% failure rate and “the ick factor” of asking your friends for money.

I like KickStarter, but it’s no financial savior.

And on top of that, there’s also no guarantee that you’ll make your money back either from whatever you (or other people) are investing in.

“And over time, if their work is good, their audience will grow and the investments they can make and the profits they can make will increase.”

Even if you are good at what you do, there is no guarantee you’re ever going to get your audience, that this audience will grow, and that you’ll become rich. It’s just another assumption.

That’s why Louie’s success is incredibly hard to replicate, and could have easily been a perfect storm that he might not be able to accomplish again either.

We don’t know.

As a fan of his, I hope that he does meet similar success in the future, but there’s a lot to be said about timing, and I don’t think we can overlook the roll the Cyber Hipsters and their friends played in passing on the word about his direct-to-fans release.

The direct-to-fans model only works for known commodities not because of their size, but because they’re known commodities.

Becoming a known commodiy that someone is going to put money into is virtually impossible, regardless of talent and worth ethic, unless you have the money, time, and resources to pull it off. Many talented people don’t, and in this economy, getting the funding you need is tough.

On top of that, there’s many talented people and too few opportunities for them.

The Internet was supposed to fix that problem, but it really hasn’t. Instead  we seem to see the Internet rewarding the same set of people, celebrities and big brands, and even then, those rewards may not be as spectacular as the Cyber Hipsters may want you to think.

The “if you build it they will come” thing you keep hearing to cover this fact up is a lie.

That’s not to say that it can’t or won’t happen for you. I hope it does, but it probably won’t.

And you know what? That’s totally fine. It’s better to be aware of what you’re up against, say “Fuck it”, and do it anyway, instead of buying the false mythology these guys are selling.

This way if you do “make it”, it’s a pleasant surprise and not a horrible disappointment.

 Footnotes:

*Cyber Hipster: I don’t like the phrase “Cyber Utopian”.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking about what the Internet can do for the world.

I do find something wrong with a subset of those people who try to push this world view to further their own financial interests. GigaOm, for example, is really a giant advertisement for their pro services and conferences. So it’s in their interest to say outlandish things in order to create confusion, which can then be cleared up by purchasing the pro service.

This is the same tactic most marketers use to sell their services to people. They create confusion, and then try to cash in on that by pretending to have the answers.

*Magic Teenager: Cyber Hipsters like to talk about this mythical teenager who is out there stealing your shit and building companies that’ll make millions of dollars out of their Mom’s bathroom. They think all you need is the Internet to become that teenager.

These kids do exist, but they are exceedingly rare, and often, there’s a lot more to the story than just their success or skill by virtue of being a teenager.

Dear Editor,
What is humor? The Oxford English Dictionary defines humor as, “That quality of action, speech, or writing, which excites amusement, oddity, jocularity, facetiousness, comicality, or fun,” yet weekly, as I peruse the contents of The Racquette, learning of the unremitting excitement of Potsdam, my easily-diverted attention is oft coaxed into reading a particular column you run. One need not look hard to notice a certain printed logo, contrasting terribly with the rest of the page, as though it were a pox upon the noble white of newsprint, followed immediately below by that week’s thoughts from its writer. Environmentalists might ask, “why the overuse of dark inks?” for a simple text header would do the job. This I cannot answer, for my ego fails to command anything greater than 12-point fonts.
However, to avoid an unneeded environmental digression, I will depurate what it is I hint at, that being none other than The Brandon Show, written by fellow undergraduate Brandon J. Mendelson. You might also know him from his TV show that, if I am not mistaken, is run on public access television as well as a webcast, and his website, TheBrandonShow.com. While I cannot speak for the entirety of our campus community, for lack of both sufficient lung capacity and frontal speaking orifices, I feel that the content contained within this man’s weekly contribution to our newspaper is both drab and doltish, possibly even irksome. For those of you who have been recently conceived into this harsh world, it can be likened to your doctor’s impetuous slap to your newborn behind. While there may be a score of readers that understand his, at best, achingly unfunny jokes, and embrace his particular use of bon mot (read: wit), I have yet to meet an such individuals throughout my four years on campus.
Yet, in true (yet completely parodistic) Rogerian form, I will endeavor to examine his side of my beef with his comedic writing.
It could be that the man writes on a higher plane than my state-taught education can ever possible comprehend. Or, possibly, that there is a greater denotation to his words of wit, and the reader must read around his column, possibly even skipping his column entirely, to imbue oneself with its true enlightenment. Or, and I don’t mean to indulge myself too great in fantasy in this space, it has all been a joke played on us, and we will all laugh heartily at the occasion of its great unmasking, enjoying a cold ale at the local pub that evening… amongst friends and comrades of course. If that is the case, than I retract all of my above words and thank you graciously Mr. Brandon J. Mendelson. If not, however, then I ask you these following questions:
Have you heard of humor Brandon? Studied it? Dabbled in it in your college years? Smoked but never inhaled it? I’d be happy to distill it for you, but I fear my skill in wordcraft pales in comparison to your daunting command of our prestigious language. However, the English people, conveniently naming their lexicon after themselves, have done it quite well; it can be found defined for you in the first sentence of this letter. I ask this not as your enemy, but only as one who wishes to chuckle. Bring our campus to laughter Brandon, this is all I ask, nay, all we ask. Take my words not as criticism, but encouragement, for as the Cheetos mascot once said, “It’s not easy being cheesy,” and I feel some truth is to be gleaned from his wise, cheetah-like mouth.
-Nick Middlebrook Class of ‘06

The Reply:

Dear Rick Meat Hook,
Thank you for writing to The Racquette about my column. Mr. Meat Hook, I want to let you know we take your comments very seriously here at The Brandon Show. After I asked my SUNY Potsdam interns to read your letter (I don’t read anything over 100 words anymore), the cast members and I have established a quality assurance program to make sure everyone finds my material funny and appealing to all college students, regardless of where they were educated. Mr. Meat Hook, I want to assure you from the bottom of my heart that the tremendous amount of time you took to craft such a fine piece of work such as “The Parameters of Humor and Its Deficiency in The Brandon Show” has not gone unnoticed. Truly you are an Einstein-level genius with a saint-like disposition to share with the readers of this fine paper your lofty opinion. As thefreedictionary.com tells us, humility is defined as “the quality or condition of being
humble.”

As I’m sure your mother constantly reassures you, you have no shortage of humility, Rick. Thank you for writing to us, Rick Meat hook. You have surely changed the way I will craft my work. God Bless You, Rick Meat hook. And God Bless America.
Sincerely,

Brandon J. Mendelson

[This is not the original "Universal Break-up Card" that first appeared in February 2003. The original had a bunch of typos and spelling errors I'm really embarrassed about. So, I made some tweaks and edited out jokes I thought didn't work.]

Dear ______________________________,

I’m breaking up with you because:

____ 1. You’re not into “Surprise Consensual Sex” like I am.

____ 2. I want to explore new people.

____ 3. Professional wrestlers are more sensitive than you are.

____ 4. I slept with your best friend / dog / sister / neighbor.

____ 5. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m a double agent and have to rescue the President.

____ 6. I’m actually not straight / gay. Fooled you!

____ 7. I keep thinking about your mother / father / best friend / cow / next door neighbor when we’re doing it.

____ 8. You refuse to flush the toilet / shave / masturbate / shower / clip your toe nails.

____ 9. I’m prejudiced against ____________________, so this isn’t going to work.

____ 10. You’re  so awful in bed that I’m taking a vow of celibacy. Thanks to you, I know I’m not going to be missing much.

____ 11. You told my parents we “fuck like monkeys” and now they won’t let me see you.

____12. You’re cheap. I don’t want much, but c’mon!

____13. I pissed off the mob / government / terrorists / rap musicians and have to run for my life.

____14. You’re leaving for college / the military / prison, and I don’t feel like waiting.

____15. I’ve been indicted for War Crimes.

____16. He / She is much better looking than you.

____17. This sleazy guy / girl convinced me you’re a waste of my time and I’m going to hook up with them instead. They also convinced me to smoke pot.

____18. I’ve seen fourth graders smarter than your friends, at least the fourth graders can spell “college” correctly.

____19. You’re from New Jersey / Canada / The South

____20. I love my cat / dog / sex slave more than you.

____21. I was blind when we started dating but now that my sight is back? I’m out.

____22. I’m shallow and want a guy / girl with lots of money. Like, Richie Rich kind of money.

____23. I rather make out with an electrical socket.

____24. You’re standing in the way of my dream job: Professional Whore.

____25. I got into your porn folder and now feel like my life is in danger.

Sincerely,

__________________________________