The Deaths of Flip, and the Consumer Spectrum
The Flip Camcorder is dead. Cisco, the parent company that bought Flip a few years ago is shutting it down and stopping all production. Not selling it off. Not trying to improve it. Killing it. Period.
As a Flip owner, I am quite pissed. It’s one thing when you happen to use a product that goes out of style or becomes unpopular. But this is not what happened to Flip. I am not a market analyst, but all numbers indicate it was still the number one selling medium quality camcorder out there. Popular with bloggers, YouTubers and any number of other middle of the road, casual, home movie loving, budget restrained videographers out there. So easy to use, my mother took home movies with mine without a single problem. (And she by her own admission is not a tech person.) In fact a lot of non-tech people used the Flip. Could that be why it was so popular???
In other words, it was perfect for people like me who are into simplicity. Or people like mom who do not understand a lot of technology. And it would seem that millions of people over the last four years since the Flip was introduced would agree.
And now it is killed off, and many people are wondering why. There may be many other business or money oriented reasons, but already the speculation among those in the know, and consumers alike is that the smartphone is to blame. They are only half right, if you ask me. For it is an attitude behind the dominance of the smartphone that is truly to blame.
Smartphones, (you know, those absurdly priced time wasters in need of bi-weekly updates to function properly) can now contain everything. From that stupid bird game, to your stock portfolio, in real time. They have consolidated about 90% of what human beings do on some kind of computer onto the best smartphones, and the other 10% that is not on a phone now is on its way to one soon.
“There’s on app for that!”
I get it.
The smartphone has been cited as the reason to get rid of mp3 players, GPS devices in your car, snapshot cameras, laptops, and yes, now, the Flip, and other camcorders.
“Why would you buy a camera or an mp3 player, or a GPS, or a wristwatch, or an alarm clock and have something else to deal with, when you can just lay down the few extra hundred and buy an iPhone or a Droid that has all of that and more? It’s common sense.”
And that ladies and gentleman, is what is wrong with popular consumer culture today, and the corporate numbskulls that cater to it. The statement above is a perfect example of why technology and software industries are so irksome to me.
Consider what this attitude illuminates:
1.) That simplicity and laziness are the same thing.
People don’t want to have to actually reach into their back pocket, which is so far away, to pick up a ringing phone while they are shooting the footage of the dog sex they stumbled across in the park. Why waste 3 seconds? With a smart phone you can answer the phone while still taking the video. That is plain lazy.
Having a phone that rings when you call me, and makes your phone ring when I call you, with the ability to text if I prefer. Or a camera that takes video by pressing one button, and puts it on your computer by plugging it directly into one jack with no wires. That is simplicity.(Is there a freaking app for that?)
2) It assumes that everyone everywhere can afford, or even wants, the highest end product out there.
There was a time when the development and availability of products was dictated by the great middle. What the average person needed and wanted, and of course, could afford. But now, styles, models, packages, and bundles go on and off of the market based on the highest end consumer. The Flip was popular. Very popular, because it was fast, easy, and the vast majority of average people, not worried about buying SuperPhone could use it, and create basic quality videos to be enjoyed.
But the market for many products, (not just the smartphone), is now being dictated by those who want and need everything, here and now in one device, and can afford to lay down 500 dollars for the privilege. (Or who are willing to go into debt in order to buy the device on credit to keep up with the Joneses.) Those that insist that they would rather have no footage of their child’s first birthday, if they cannot film it with the same resolution in which Inception was filmed.
What’s worse, people like me are actually looked down upon as rubes because we don’t need our phone to cook our breakfast for us, and we want our cameras to just be our cameras. As though owners of smartphones simply cannot comprehend why a civilized human being would ever want anything else.
Obviously this is all about more than a phone or a camera to me. It is about how good ideas, that work just fine for the satisfied middle, or even the occasionally splurging poor, are shoved aside and dismantled, not when they have proven unmarketable or undesirable, but when they are merely proven less sexy. And not by the masses, but by the elite consumer. There is no spectrum of needs or desires or prices for the average buyer like me anymore.
No company should keep selling a product nobody wants. But when it comes to items like the Flip, or the average non-smart phone, an obvious, specific need of the average consumer is still being met. But because the big spenders and the lazy prefer the all in one 2,000 dollar mega-device, those of us who are more easily satisfied are left with two options. Go into debt to get the big stuff, or have nothing.
That isn’t a choice.
Embracing the Mess
A mess, even a big one, is not a tragedy. Even if something is so screwed up it has long reaching consequences that get worse with each day they are not addressed, they are still just messes, so long as they are not life threatening to someone.
It’s not easy to separate messes and screw ups from tragedies and dangers. I speak from personal experience. When I find myself in a mess, especially one that I contributed to myself, my first reaction is to run hither and yon and pound on every door, ask every question, research every aspect of it, in order to clean up the mess 100% as soon as possible. My default position is, “No messes. No trouble. Ever.”
The problem with that, as I have learned, is that you can whip yourself into a frenzy. Which causes you to miss things. Makes you more anxious about your problem. Which makes the problem seem worse, which increases your need to fix it right away, which leads to more frenzy and so on. Being constantly worried about how to get out of a mess is not productive. It has taken me years to realize this, and I still don’t put it into practice as often as I should. But I am working on it.
Without going into detail, I have had, and continue to have, a larger than normal mess in regards to my student loans. Mistakes. Financial difficulty. Misunderstandings. All of these things led me to be in quite a state in regards to my student loans. And the worry, fear, confusion, and lack of progress in fixing these unusual difficulties was beginning to affect other aspects of my life. So obsessed was I with solving each and every single solitary issue with my loans, right away, that I couldn’t seem to get a perspective on any of it, or even on things that were outside of the loan situation. I became convinced that if I did not get everything 100% right, and do so yesterday, I was going to be unable to move forward with anything in my life at all.
How far do you think that got me? If you are inclined to think it was like having a car stuck in the mud, and flooring the gas in order to get out, you are very perceptive. That is exactly what it was like. The more I pushed, and the faster I tried to get out of the mess, the deeper I dug myself into the mud. And the more mud I caused to fly all over anything that was near by.
Finally, at one point, I basically said, “fuck it”, and embraced the mess I was in. I did not ignore the mess. But I embraced it. I took several steps back, and admitted to myself, “I’m in one hell of a fix with all of these student loan errors. It’s a huge screw up, and my own ignorance is partly to blame. So are circumstances beyond my control. It’s a mess.”
Sound obvious? Surely I already knew that from the start of the troubles. And of course I did. But the difference is, I was trying to run as fast as I could to catch up with a snowballing problem. I was going bat shit crazy trying to make it all go away. But I had never really just accepted that I had a problem. I just wanted it gone, but in my zeal to get it gone, I neglected to just own the problem itself.
There was a stigma attached to having a financial problem. People would find out. I would look stupid. I would never be taken seriously as a writer, as an artist, or even as an adult, if I had student loan issues. People would find out, and I would have no value or worth in their eyes. The only way to ever be worth a damn in any facet of my life was to instantly fix every single mistake I had made in regards to the student loans. Worse yet, I even tied my self worth into the notion of my student loan screw ups. And I began to hate myself.
Things began to not only feel better, but actually get a little better the day I finally said, “Yep. Big mess. All kinds of issues need to be ironed out here. I made a mistake or two or seven. I have no idea how to fix any of it at all. But there it is.”
The simple act of admitting there was a mess in front of me, and especially the acknowledgment for the moment I had no damn clue what to do about it freed me up to first accept my predicament. Accept my ignorance. And extricate the loan debacle from my self worth as a human being. To define it for what it was: an unfortunate set of financial issues that had acted, and would continue to act as a set back in certain parts of my life, but did not have to dominate the other parts.
Not long after that, I was able to find the correct paper work I needed to begin addressing the problem. And though it is still a mess, I now see the nature of the mess, and what has to happen next to begin the next stage of clean up.
So, I say, embrace the messes in your life. If someone’s life, health, or safety is not at stake, you need to just calm down for a few days. When something is so big or so sloppy that you can’t fix it with a step or two, it’s probably big enough for you to step back from, and let the giant snow ball stop rolling before you approach it again. Yes, the mess may grow a bit before it shrinks. But if you are going to have to deal with a mess anyway, it might as well be a stationary one, instead of a nebulous moving blob.
How do you effectively deal with the large messes that crop up?
Extreme Moderation and How to Avoid It
One of my good friends had a birthday this week. The following day on her Facebook status, she mentioned that there were so many baked goods laying around the house from the celebration, and that she was very tempted to have many of them. Her status ended with, “Moderation!”
I responded by saying that moderation was relative, and that if she considered the span of her entire life on Earth, and how the vast majority of that time she would not be eating cake, she could make the argument that having several today would not counteract her desire to be moderate.
This response received several “likes” from people, including the birthday girl herself. (Whether or not she actually had more of the baked goods that day, I don’t know. I didn’t ask.)
My response was a joke, but only partially. Because I have come to determine a very interesting, and perhaps mind-bending irony; everything should be pursued in moderation, including moderation itself.
What the hell am I talking about? It’s not quite as bizarre as it sounds.
The entire point of adopting a moderate lifestyle, whether it be the “Nothing in Excess” model of the ancient Greeks, or The Middle Way of the Buddhists, is to avoid extremes. In thought, word, and deed.
But suppose one becomes ultra-committed to moderation? So preoccupied with the idea of falling right in the middle of every spectrum, that they obsess over it? Every drink they grab, every party they attend, every item they purchase, every lover they take, their first thought is, “is this extreme?” They are in a constant state of examining every thing they say, think, do, or own, to make sure it does not fall into any of the extremes of life. And should they feel tempted to, or heaven forbid actually engage in one of the extremes? Well, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but a good second place is how obsessive moderates treat themselves when they go off the wagon of something.
Doesn’t all of that sound a bit, well, extreme?
So, as crazy as it sounds, we have to moderate our moderation, just as much as we moderate everything else.
If we moderate our alcohol intake, we don’t get drunk and puke every time it is served. If we moderate our eating habits, we do not eat only kale 24/7. And if we moderate our moderation, what does that mean? It means that moderation is a standard we apply over the course of an entire lifetime, and not to every moment of every day.
To be “middle of the road moderates”, we need to splurge. Sometimes. Break our diets. Get a little tipsy. Laugh too loud at the restaurant. By letting ourselves be somewhat extreme in any given circumstance, we maintain the value of moderation as a way of life in general.
Maintaining the balance is still a tricky endeavor for us. Both because it can be tempting to just say “to hell with it” and go nuts, but also because the middle of any spectrum isn’t often easy to identify. But we get a step closer to clarity on such things, when we take a step away and don’t crucify ourselves for our innocent moments of extremity.
Do you allow yourself to be extreme sometimes?
Charlie Sheen in Detroit: Did He Bomb, or Did We?
Charlie Sheen’s opening stop for his “Torpedo of Truth” tour in Detroit on Saturday has been almost universally declared a disaster. Late start time, terrible opening act. Incoherent meanderings, pointless video clips. Booing, walk-outs, demands for refunds.
He even reminded the increasingly hostile audience at one point that they had agreed to pay money for tickets to a show before they knew anything about it. Indeed they had. I’ll get into that point in a moment.
In response, during the the second stop on the tour in Chicago the following night, the “show” was revamped completely. The entire show was now Sheen being interviewed by a DJ. And so, it would seem, the audience, (some of whom showed up with the hopes of seeing a Detroit style train wreck) was far more accepting. Though it seems Sheen himself was a bit unhappy with the change of format at times.
I don’t know what Sheen’s deal is. Drugs. Mental illness. Or a genius for marketing by use of a grand hoax ala Joaquin Phoenix. I think there is ample evidence for any of the above options, frankly. But based on the nature of the Detroit show at least, I don’t consider the evidence for lunacy to be overwhelming yet. Frankly, I don’t even think, as many seem to, that Detroit proves he has no idea how to put on a show. We can easily read about what happened and throw what we consider some truth right back at the “Torpedo of Truth”, assured in our knowledge that what he did was bound to fail. But was it?
I think the whole thing really is an excellent field study on the entertainment consumption habits of our society.
To begin with, I think Sheen, in whatever state of mental health he is in, honestly had every right to assume that people who paid all that money to see “Torpedo” would love what he was doing. Even if it was half-assed and thrown together at last minute. It was after all basically the same sort of thing he has been doing since this alleged meltdown began. Weird rambling monologues. Women making out. YouTube videos. It seems that the stage show was in fact a visual, live reproduction of the frantic stream of consciousness of Sheen’s mind that caused so many people to watch his internet streams, and follow him on Twitter. The very same sort of thing that led people to buy a ticket to “Torpedo” in the first place. Why shouldn’t people have loved it? If Sheen is asking this question now, I can’t say as I blame him much.
Let’s face it; people enjoy paying money for some weird and lame, and even hostile garbage. Andy Kaufman made a career of pulling antagonistic, at times rambling and certainly nonsensical stunts on stage and people booed and yet loved him for it. Snooki’s book is a best seller. There are the inexplicable cult followings of trash like The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension, a movie so obviously inept, unprofessional and void of story, purpose, theme, structure, coherence, and at times even proper lighting, that it does not in the strictest definition even qualify as a movie.
So I think the line between Charlie Sheen’s opening of “Torpedo” in Detroit, which was vilified, and the examples I give above which are lauded by considerable numbers of people, is a very thin one. Obviously “Torpedo” was torpedoed. Yet I have to think that in an alternate universe not too far from our own, (as in perhaps just one universe over) Sheen’s opening in Detroit would have been a smash hit. If he hadn’t been late, they might have loved it. If he had opened in say, Austin instead of Detroit, they may have loved it. If any one single random thing had been different, the entire affair may have caught the very same invisible wave of mass audience adoration that carries people like Dane Cook into inexplicable stardom.
In other words, it is easy to say the show was absurd, now that it has failed. But we, the American public have foisted similar or even worse fare into our collective greatest hits album. And just when we think we can define what is and is not likely to be a blockbuster, something comes along and changes the game again. Either because it failed, or because it succeeded.
The truth is, we really have no idea why the media/arts/entertainment consuming masses propel one book, act, scandal, celebrity or stage show into oblivion, and another into immortality. We haven’t the slightest clue what we want. At times I think the best anyone can do is watch what people follow, and then either follow the pack, or run fast enough to get to the head of same. And even once there, you may get trampled.
I am no fan of the crap Charlie Sheen has been doing the last few months, whatever its cause. I wouldn’t have paid money for his live show. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. However I am withholding the tiniest amount of judgment about the show’s flopping, because society has proven over and over again that there was every reason to believe the show could have worked without the slightest alteration.
Sheen is reported to have yelled back at a heckler in Detroit,
“I’ve already got your money, dude!”
That may be the most significant and telling observation of the entire thing.
FiND iT FREDERiCK Launch Party…My Perspective
As I mentioned on Thursday, I was invited to attend a launch party for the brand new FiND iT FREDERiCK Magazine website this last Friday. I did indeed attend, and here is my overall view of the experience, as promised.
It’s significant because I don’t go to many of these sort of things. Not simply because I am not often invited, but also because, as you know, I am Too XYZ to work the room as many would. I don’t mingle or schmooze. Small talk really eats it in my world. I prefer substantive conversation right away. I know in this, I am in the minority, but that is what makes all of this so interesting.
What also makes it interesting is that this was the first such affair I have attended since the dawn of my intentional foray into social media “relevance.” (I laughed, so it’s okay if you did too.) So I wanted to reflect here on how the last year and a half or so of direct exposure to online networking, tips, and “social media ninjas” may have played into my enjoyment of the party. The short answer is, I am no more likely to do what networking and social gurus suggest than I would have been four years ago. But I am more comfortable with my own style and approach to such things, (is that my “personal brand”??). And for the first time I didn’t beat myself up for not being something else at a party.
I was also amused at how often my social media friends entered my mind in the lead up to and attendance of this event. More on that in a bit.
Awkward I am not. Nor do I suffer social anxiety. I am not particularly shy, and I don’t lack self-esteem any more than the average person at any given moment. I like parties, music, food and revelry as much as the next fellow, (though I prefer to have more friends than strangers in a group) But whereas at one point in my life I would have tried to deduce what it was about me that prevented me from tearing the roof off the sucker at an event like Friday, I am now more willing to experience the semi-detached amusement that results in such activities, and the subtle bewilderment with what it all means, or what others say it should mean. In this, I confess to feeling a tad like my friend J. Maureen Henderson. She shares that social bemusement and CW skepticism. At least based on some of her Tweets and blogs about similar events she has authored.
Anyway, at long last, the night itself. I consider it a success for both the magazine overall as well as me on a personal level.
To begin with it was quite the affair. Actually, it was a “bash”. I haven’t often been to anything that could truly be called a “bash”, but this was certainly an example. Food, drink, music, even a dance troop to entertain. 200 or so people including city council people, local entertainment movers, restaurateurs, writers, and other entrepreneurs of the area. I did in fact recognize several people from local news events and other such things.
I didn’t talk to any of them.
Because this was still, after all a huge party full of mostly strangers. And I am still me, and I do not enjoy schmoozing. Even with important people. If all I have to say is how great the party is, or that I saw them in the newspaper recently, I have in fact nothing to say. And nothing bugs me more than being approached by someone who clearly has nothing to say. So I thought to myself, “yet another party I won’t be long for leaving.” There is only so much standing around looking at the art on the walls while trying to look approachable that one can do.
I recognize that if I did have something to say, or didn’t mind walking around spewing mindless extroverted jabber, I’d make more connections. In theory at least. But as most of you know, that is not me. So it didn’t happen.
Thankfully it was less than ten minutes later when a friend of mine, whom I knew would attend, arrived. And though I was back and forth throughout the evening, at least giving the illusion that I was a mover, (without actually talking to anybody), I spent most of the party at a table with him and his girlfriend. And had a nice time.
This is how I operate. Contrary to how many would do it, I try to be a calm presence. Some would say a boring one. But one that can be approached should anyone desire to do so. As in I move about a lot, I face the crowd. I look about and smile at nothing. All so those that desire can feel safe in coming up to me.
Name tags are a wonderful thing, too. And indeed it was because of my name tag that the editor of the magazine, with whom I have communicated for over a year but have never met, located me.
As did several fellow writers for the magazine. In each case I had read their work, and they mine, but we had not met until that moment. (Again, my props to brightly colored name tags.) We spoke of our writing goals, how we started and other such things. And this will make many of you smile, but I did come prepared with my business cards, which I did hand out to each of those people. (Okay, three people. But they were there!) I had hoped to have my new business cards ready by that night, but I had to settle for the still accurate but older ones. The new ones will have my virtual business card address on them. These did not. But I digress.
During these conversations with fellow writers, I had a lot more to say, and a lot more to ask than I would have had with random people. Why? Because they understood the introvert’s paradise of starting a conversation with a specific topic in mind right after the introductions. We talked about how and why we wrote. The party and the setting and other such things did come into play later, but there was no small talk as most people define it. I was approached because of something I wrote, and spoke about writing. And it didn’t bother me a bit. And now I know three more people.
(See, extroverts? It can work that way.)
At one point a seemingly impromptu, (but in fact planned) dance number broke out. Yes, you read that properly. A local dance troupe, known as the Equinox Dance Company was in attendance, and at one point began a dance in the middle of the ballroom.
Now let me risk tomatoes here by saying that I find most modern dance to be ever so slightly pretentious. I don’t doubt the skill required to perform dance well, but much of the modern dance I have encountered just seems to have an aura of being more important than I could ever hope to be. But not this time. I still don’t know anything about dance, but for a change I could enjoy what I was watching, because it didn’t seem out of place with the event. I don’t know if “accessible” is the word, but their routine didn’t put me off, or put me out with an over the head blow with a wrench marked “Art!”. It was just people dancing, and dancing well. At least that night they appeared to approach dance in the same minimalist, visceral way I approach theatre.
I almost complimented them in person. But I did not. Impressed as I was, I wasn’t about to chase them down to say anything. Not that I never go out of my way to approach such people. Indeed some of the few times I go against the grain and introduce myself to strangers are when they have performed something I enjoyed. And had they been on stage, and come down to talk to people later, I might have done just that. May have even used our mutual connection to the arts to make a few new friends. Yet what can I say? That’s not what happened.
Yet some people would have taken that social opportunity. The whole aftermath of the dance group reminded me of yet another friend of mine from online, Laryssa Wirstiuk. Not that she is in a dance troupe, and she may be amused by the mental connection. But the evening seemed very much like a Laryssa sort of event.
From what I have gathered about her, she is one of those that tends to thrive socially at such events. I can enjoy such events, but she can use them to enhance her own presence. I am thinking Laryssa would have nine times out of ten sought out the members of the dance group and with her brand of contagious enthusiasm mentioned how much she enjoyed the performance. And come away with five new friends. She probably would have tried to get me to do the same. But social butterfly, I am not.
Later, I saw a guy I interviewed for my most recent piece. I did go out of my way to talk to him for a moment. Unlike one or two other people in the room, I only talked to him a few weeks ago, and had it would have been rude to not speak. I am glad to report he is pleased with the piece, and that it captured exactly what he wanted about the subject of motocross. Being an introverted writer, that was one of the highlights of the evening for me, to be honest. (Though free beer was a close second.)
In the end, I am glad that I went. Despite the fact that I hate small talk, do not often introduce myself to strangers without a specific agenda, and usually prefer music that is not quite so loud, I would go to this event again. Ten years ago I would not have gone at all. Five years ago I would have gone, and not enjoyed it as much. And I think the key to that evolution is the same key to all of my sometimes glacial and hard to detect but nonetheless real progress in my career and presence; I did it the way I chose to do it.
I didn’t follow the gurus of elbow rubbing and back scratching that infest the internet, and as a result I will not get as far and as fast as some. But I get somewhere. I don’t have the kind of exuberant blast that many people do at such parties, but I do find modest enjoyment. I cruise where others my soar. But that’s only because I am Too XYZ to try to soar like everyone else does. I am really good at soaring in other circumstances. And that knowledge made the launch party a good time for me.
The excellent crab dip alone, however, would have been worth the trip.
Ty Unglebower 