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Internet Culture

posted 03/17/08 by Rick Webb

Lolz OMG. Suxxors. Reading the internet can be like reading esperanto.
When we started this company, we viewed the internet as a population, a culture unto itself. We added value for our clients not just through our awesome production, creative and development skillz, but because we understood this internet culture. Because we were part of it. Because we lived it. As the internet usage has expanded in the last 6 years, the mainstream population has moved onto the internet. We’ve got a wider audience. There are “normal” people on this thing now. But that doesn’t mean the internet culture has disappeared. Think on this: the creators of the Lolcat, I Can Has Cheezburger employs nine people and still, to this day, gets millions of page views a month1. Seriously. Think about that. People have made a serious web business consisting of little more than pictures of cats with captions. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Except on the internet, it does.
Our psyche is comprised of several overlapping subcultures, really. We know this. We have our class identification, our race, our religion, and several others. Our hobbies. Our passions. Our obscure interests. Those forums we frequent. We market based on class, we market based on race. We often think of the Barbarian Group through this prism as a multicultural marketing agency for Internet Culture. The Subservient Chicken was a perfect example of this. It was marketing to a segment of BK’s consumers – the ones who get the munchies, let’s say.
This has interesting ramifications against brands and branding. Branding has always been about speaking to everyone in the same voice. We often reject this at The Barbarian Group. Benjamin often points out that he speaks to his mother differently than he speaks to a client, and he may speak to two friends differently and that this is all totally right and good. it is counterintuitive – though obviously less effort – to speak to everyone in one voice. We recognize this in multicultural marketing, and it should be recognized with the internet culture. As an aside, the internet culture is generally a high-value audience: young, educated and upwardly mobile. In searching to be respectful and understanding of our customers, we almost have a duty to speak their language. And if that means we need to shoot beer out of a cannon for no good or apparent reason, well, that’s not such a terrible thing, is it?

1 http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1157418/i_can_has_cheezburger_founder_and_ceo/

Here are some recent posts from our employees about Internet Culture:

Quell and the Qualification of the term "Photographer".

posted by Ryan McManus
Ryan McManus
Ryan McManus

Art Director : New York

topics: Social Networking and Community, Fashion, Internet Culture, Creativity, and Strategy

 on June 29, 2009 at 05:14 PM
filed under: Internet Culture
Ages ago, I went to see the photographer Nikki S. Lee give a lecture about her newest project, The Hispanic Project. For those not familiar with Ms. Lee, she’s an artist who immerses herself into a subculture (whether it be Lesbians, Lindy Hoppers or Punks) and when she feels she’s become completely assimilated into that particular culture, she has photos taken of her with her newfound community. She then quits the scene for her next project.
Artistic criticisms aside, one of the most interesting points of discussion to come up in the follow-up Q&A did not revolve around Ms. Lee’s assumptions about the mutability of identity, but the fact that she chose to label herself a “photographer”. While the end result of her projects were indeed photographic evidence of her participation, she was not behind, but in front of, the lens.
This debate is far from contained or resolved: what, exactly, qualifies one as a photographer? Is it technical skill, like Ansel Adams, or is it simply using the photograph as a medium for the way you see the world (like Terry Richardson, for example)?
Such questions arise with Quell, a new photo series from Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, the creative duo behind Pigeon Projects (editorial disclaimer: Brian is my cousin). Quell is a series of low-resolution, noisy images of people (teenagers, mostly) undergoing a sort of voluntary asphyxiation. But the catch is this – Mr. Cassidy and Ms. Shatzky did not take these photos or witness these events. They are screen-captured stills from videos freely posted to YouTube.
“Within the countless hours of crudely captured and degraded self-documentation, we have selected moments in which violence, grace, eroticism and tenderness converge into solitary and painterly images.”
But the question Quell brings up, along with a beautiful, hollow window into the bored and risky lives of it’s subjects, is this: Is this Photography? Are Mr. Cassidy and Ms. Shatzky, in this role, photographers? Or is this something else, some new breed of artistic curation that simply uses the still image as its conduit?
Perhaps the thing I like most about this new series is that it defies that easy codification, not just in style, but where it fits into an entire history and continuum.
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Information Saturation

posted by Sabih Mir
Sabih Mir
Sabih Mir

User Experience Designer : Boston

topics: User Interface, The Internet, HTML, Games, and Architecture

 on June 25, 2009 at 03:32 PM
filed under: Internet Culture
There’s simply too much stuff in the world.
Basically, that’s what I’ve surmised. Even before The Internet became the most convenient and preferred method of information delivery I remember realizing, as a young boy, the amount of information that existed in the world. And I was scared then.
Now with every passing second the tubes that connect The Internet grow ever longer. You can pretty much get some kind of information about anything you can imagine. This is obvious. And with this incredible access comes an easy way to seek out anything that is of interest to you. Where before you had to go to the music store to find out which cool new band had debuted (or read the liner notes of your favorite album to get all the bands that were thanked), now you just search. And search. Newest games? Check. Obscure limited edition books? Check. Sneakers? Check.
The Internet has basically made me a Jack of All Interests. I like a bunch of things and can try and keep track of them but because I can so easily find out about new things I rarely dive really deep into any single one of them.
And with all the interests I have comes the problem of tracking all this stuff. What an ordeal. There are lots of webapps that help you keep track of your life, but then you have to keep track of those!
But now I feel like I’m complaining, and this is sounding like some spoiled 1st world problem post so I’ll stop.
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Impossible Ebay

posted by Nick Bonadies
Nick Bonadies
Nick Bonadies

IT Specialist : Boston

topics: Alcoholic Beverages, Barbarian Labs, Technology Industry, Internet Culture, and Rock and Roll

 on June 23, 2009 at 04:34 PM
filed under: Internet Culture
eBay is busted, and its not because some code went bad or because a server somewhere failed. Its because eBay is overrun with people trying to scam other people.
Even the unstoppable Bruce Schneier isn’t immune. He almost got scammed twice while trying to sell his laptop on eBay.
Consumerist has a nice write up about the problem:
The cool thing about eBay’s support system is it will always answer your question; unfortunately, that answer will always be a form letter on how to reset your password, as Timothy discovered when he tried to figure out how to sell his laptop to someone who wasn’t a Nigerian scammer. Timothy has learned the awful truth behind today’s eBay—something many readers here already know—which is that it’s become virtually impossible to sell any sort of medium-to-high end electronics there anymore.
Pretty lame. But I never really trusted spending a lot of money on anything via eBay. Its just too bad that everything on the internet sort of turns into this. Too bad or crazy awesome. I can’t decide.
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The Past's Future: Internet Enslavement

posted by Justin Pierce
Justin Pierce
Justin Pierce

Interactive Designer : New York

topics: The Internet, Design, and Internet Culture

 on June 19, 2009 at 01:16 PM
filed under: Internet Culture
I recently caught a clip from 1994 where Tom Brokaw reports from a Las Vegas convention on technology. “It’s called The Internet,” Brokaw proclaims as the story goes on to cover the hilariously rudimentary internet of the mid-90s. Some of the predictions include a dude from Sun Microsystems that says every company large and small will have a website by the year 2000 and Bill Gates himself says we have plenty of time before computers and flat displays shrink down to the size of books.
Watching that clip reminded me of an awesome episode of the revisited Outer Limits that aired just three years later in 1997. It was actually one of my favorite episodes from that series only because it was so ridiculous. Here’s why:
(Original Airdate: February 7, 1997)
In a world where neural implants allow everyone instant access to information, Ryan Unger (Adventures in Babysitting) is a throwback, a moron. Because of a brain injury he suffered as a child, Ryan cannot tap into the Stream — an electronic collection of all human knowledge. Instead he struggles to keep up by reading books, a primitive and forgotten art.
But then a virus in the Stream starts killing people by overloading their brains with data. Only Ryan has the skills and independence to stop it. Can a primitive human, relying only on books and his own brain, save a world of machine-made geniuses from self-destruction? Or will the Stream wash away all of humanity?

The data stream, now simply known as The Stream, was developed 50 years ago so that the Earth’s population could have immediate access to the newly built World Information Network. Data relays, known as Eddies, transmit information directly to an individuals cranial implant??

OMG. LOOK AT THE STREAM. IT IS AMAZING.

Stanley: “You know there was a time when reading was a sign of intelligence.”
Mark: “Oh yeah? Thank god those days are gone.”

This is Ryan Unger. The first half of the episode basically points out how inadequate he is at everything because he cannot access the Stream.

Example: “Oh. You need to hear the menu then.”

Another example:
Cheryl: “Stanley says you can even do arithmetic in your head.”
Ryan: “I wouldn’t be too impressed. I don’t have a choice.”
Cheryl: “Well, I wouldn’t mind learning myself one day.”
Ryan: “That’s like telling a cripple you’d like to learn how to use his crutches.”

AHHHHHHHHHH IT’S THE STREAM AGAIN

Unfortunately, the Stream isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. It starts enslaving people to acquire useless data to the point where they go crazy…

And die.

Fear not though, Ryan, who can’t access the Stream stays crazy-free and tries to get to the bottom of the problem using none other than… Yup. Trusty old books.

As the Stream affects more and more people, the doctors and scientists determine that it’s a virus. Ryan attempts tell them they need to shut it down at the source, AKA shut down the Stream. This freaks people out because they can’t shut down their one source of knowledge.

Ryan then freaks out because no one will listen to him so he takes Cheryl to some abandoned building in the old part of town. (Hint: it’s a library)Here Ryan finds the one book that has the answer to the problem.

Then, the Stream people start shooting lasers at Ryan and Cheryl. Pew pew pew.

Ryan takes Cheryl and the book and hides in a nearby bank’s safe. Ryan, being the clever that he is, tries to get Cheryl to read said book.

See, the special thing about this book is that it contains the code to shut down the Stream. Since Cheryl is still hooked on Stream, the very act of her reading it will supposedly shut down the Stream.

OMG IT WORKS. NO MORE STREAM.

And everyone lives happily ever after. Especially Ryan who now gets to teach everyone the alphabet and how to spell cat.

The End.

To sum it up, we should be concerned for the following things:
- Soon we won’t be able to write, do math without calculators, and even read.
- The gap between those who have access to instant information and those who don’t will get to be so large it becomes a physical disability to those without access.
- We’ll eventually become so dependent on our instant information technology that we won’t be able to give it up… even if it kills us.
- The internet will eventually be beamed straight into our brains, but it will still have sweet trippy visuals we can watch as it does.
While the last two are still pretty absurd at this point in time, but the first two are happening as we speak.
This post is dedicated to Cursive Handwriting and Long Division.
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Credit Where Credit is Due

posted by Kristen Hengst
Kristen Hengst
Kristen Hengst

Art Director : New York

topics: Creativity, Viral Marketing, HTML, Art Direction, and Design

 on June 18, 2009 at 01:33 PM
filed under: Internet Culture
This morning I was passed a link to a blog dedicated to the full-time mocking of Pete Hoekstra and his dramatic tweet.
While perusing its offerings and enjoying yet another MEME it hit me. There is an unsung hero at work here. A behind-the-scenes contributor offering everything it has to the thankless job of delivering declarative humor to monitors everywhere. It is the heart and soul of the MEME genre. It is you, Impact…
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Internet Week NY 2009 Wrapup

posted by Rick Webb
Rick Webb
Rick Webb

Co-founder, COO : Boston

topics: Installations, User Experience, Internet Video, Automotive, and Viral Marketing

 on June 09, 2009 at 06:31 PM
filed under: Internet Culture
Oh man. Internet week. It’s taken its toll on me, no doubt.
Eight days of intense internet conferences, parties, networking, awards. And, it being in New York, where, you know, we have an office, that means that unlike SXSW, it’s eight weeks where I try and do it all while going in to work.
We have a deep relationship with Internet Week NY. I’m on the Executive Council, which is pretty sweet. It means exciting meetings with the mayor and whatnot, though I always seem to be out of town for those. Still, it’s the one organizational body I can claim to be on that also features John Wren, so that’s something. We also built the Internet Week NY Website, as well as the websites for the sister organizations The Webby Awards and The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. (It is, for this reason, in case you’re wondering, why we don’t enter or win any Webbys. We’ve also built their judging app, and manage their People’s Voice app, so we’ve always felt it would be inappropriate to enter. On top of that, then, we’re a sponsor of the Webby Awards, and no less than three of our clients were having parties this week. All of this meant for a pretty intense week.
Internet Week started off for me last Monday, at the Youtube Internet Week Kickoff party. I had just gotten back into New York from my SF sojurn, so this was a nice homecoming. Good to see people that would become stalwarts of the week like DMD, executive director of the Webbys, and Neil and Roger, the executive producers and owners of the parent company Recognition Media. Also ran into my buddy Tom Clifton from Animoto, Caroline Waxler, Liane Mullin from Modelinia, Rachel Sklar and good old Dennis Crowley of Foursquare fame. Lots others, but it was a super good time, and a bunch of us ended the night over at Tom and Jerry’s, where I think the last people standing after Dens took a bunch of people off to Karaoke were me, Tom, Felicia Williams from NextNewNetworks and Caroline.
Tuesday started with some liesurely drinks with Beth and Aubrey from Digg over at their hotel, and they ran off just as Trammell from Digg showed up, and then Soraya Darabi from the New York Times showed up with Jack Dorsey from Twitter, who it was obviously very exciting to meet, and a few more friends. Then it pretty much did what it does, and the early evening went into the night and the party grew until there were a good hundred or two hundred people there. I was excited to finally meet Elizabeth Spiers, and super duper excited to meet Cecily Von Ziegesar, the author of the Gossip Girl series of books. Man, that was exciting. Liane asked her how well she thought the books translated into a show, and we got to hear her opinions on that which was SUPER INTERESTING, and it was fun to introduce her to THE INTERNET. The night slowly degenerated into a migration over to the original Coyote Ugly bar Hogs and Heiffers, but I left early because I was a responsible adult and I had to get up early to…
Judge the Effie Awards! Bright and early, 8:45, uptown, with some really awesome people to participate in the Grand Jury for the Grand Effie. It was super interesting insightful, and I think we made a good panel of judges: myself, Greg Anderson, Managing Director BBH NY, Minda Grainek, VP/CD Target, Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence for Coca Cola, Gerry Graf, CCO Saatchi NY, Rob Master, North American Media Director for Unilver (who I previously had the pleasure of moderating a panel for at the first Webby Connect), and Scott Nesland. In the end the Grand Effie went to Crispin’s work on Whopper Freakout, and I feel good about our decision.
Home and work and a change of clothes and then off to the Effie Awards show, which was super awesome and a good time. Got to catch up with Brian Collins, who was seated at our table and chat about his new consultancy and also Paul Schmidt, who’s now out on his own as Operator. The show was at Cipriani’s midtown, and it was gorgeous and really well done. I’ve been spending so much time over there in internet land that it was good to see ad people again – good long talk with Greg from BBH, caught up with some friends over at TBWA’s Media Arts Lab, Charles Rosen from Amalgamated and Paul Lavoie from Taxi. Yeah! I’d make some comment about the amount of money flowing through traditional advertising compared to internet, blah, blah, but considering that just five days later I’d be at yet another Cipriani’s for an ad awards show, I’d probably be barking up the wrong tree.
Anyway, after the Effies it was back to internet land and we attempted to go to College Humor’s Yacht Rock party, but ran into DMD and Neil and Sklar on their way out, so I decided to hit my local bar, Local 138, and wage what I call “foursquare warfare” and just keep insisting everyone come to where I am. In short order, it worked miraculously. It’s pretty amazing. At first it’s people you know – Mark from Flavorpill, Tessa Horehled of the Atlanta advertising scene, Liane from Modelinia, Lidsay from Ralph Lauren, Danielle from Getty Images. Eventually, though, my pal Aubrey came by with her boss Kevin Rose, of Digg Fame, and then things got crowded and rockin’. Things get blurry, but I remember meeting an awesome interactive producer named Rob and eventually running out to another nearby bar with Eva, Rob, Danielle and some nice dudes we met who made Flash animations.
Thursday brought The Bigg Digg Shindigg with a live Diggnation filming. Mad props to Aubrey Sabala for the VIP Hookup, and it was good to see some peeps – Michael Galpert from Aviary, Tom, Eva, Emma, Caroline, Rex and a whole host of good Digg people – Marshall, Beth, Trammell, Michael, etc. The party was super fun, the band Wallpaper kicked ass, and the live taping of DiggNation was hilarious in that it featured that To Catch a Predator Guy.
Friday saw Aubrey and Eva’s birthday party at 10 Degrees, a bar in the village. We rented out the place and turned it into a good wrap-up-the-week internet party. Had a whole host of good people – a good 20, 30 Barbarians, 10-12 Diggers, some of our favorite journalists like Brian Morrissey, Nick Parish, Caroline McCarthey and Bret Petersel, other ad people from around town and a bunch of the NY internet peeps. It lasted late into the night, things were done, champagne was drunk, suits and lovely gowns were worn and our bar minimum was met. Whew. Thank you! And happy birthday Eva and Aubrey!
Saturday was pretty low key – did get to meet Graham Hill from Treehugger, though, and that was good, as well as getting to see former Barbarian Annie Zags, which was super awesome. After dinner and drinks, Me, Aubrey, Emma and Marshall hit the Social Media Karaoke in the village at Tracy J’s, which was hilarious and drunken. Social media peeeps – karaoke lovers one and all, I swear.
Sunday saw a whole new host of people in town at the Webby Awards Sunset Cocktails for sponsors, judges and winners over at the Thompson LES. Simon and Ian from Poke arrived, and I met the people behind that Beeker video that won. That was funny. Found Mike and Ozzie from Lolz LLC (also props to them for just saying they are an agency. NO FEAR). They are always a wonderfully good time. Talked to Rori from Ascentium for a long time and generally enjoyed the nice vibe. Then on to the NextNewNetworks party where I ran into some good peeps from Wieden + Kennedy as well as said hi to April, Michelle, Felicia and Tim from NNN. It was awesome to see a bunch of their $99 music videos, especially the one by Neil Halstead, who I love love love.
And, finally, yesterday brought the Webby Awards and the following after party. Wow. Sarah Silverman, Lisa Kudrow, Trent Reznor. Saw Harvey Weinstein in the audience, and Rachel Zoe and some victoria secret models and Cameron Diaz and Jimmy Fallon and inventor of the world wide web Tim Berners Lee. Ridiculous. Oh and Alan Cumming! And Martha Stewart! And Charlie Rose! Holy Moly! Took the train over to Hiro with Jeben from YouTube and the Boards Mag crew and Bret from Mashable and a bunch of Barbarians and rocked out through the night to some awesome hip hop band and ?estlove DJing, who was really great. Oh and someone introduced me to Biz Stone and I pretended to not know who he was, but he seemed super nice.
It’s hard to imagine all this is work, of course. And having a company to run during the day meant that I couldn’t participate in many of the daytime activities – Benjamin had that covered with something like 3 panels and 2 presentations (one about GE seemed to go particularly well). But it’s good to get out there – especially when you’re a technology company that everyone thinks is just an ad agency. Advertising people and internet people really do need to hang out more, I think. They don’t really talk too much except through sales people and media people and whatnot. There’s a pretty big gulf of understanding. I’ve learned a lot about this being out in the Bay Area the last few months, and I’m sure I’ll ramble on and on about it more as the weeks go by. I love Internet Week precisely because it affords these sorts of conversations, and because it gets these groups talking in new ways.
Anyway, thank you Internet Week people for a lovely week, and to everyone I met, it was awesome to meet you.
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Collective Buying Power from GROUPON™

posted by Jayna Moloney
Jayna Moloney
Jayna Moloney

Designer : Boston

topics: Illustration, Art, and Design

 on May 19, 2009 at 03:17 PM
filed under: Internet Culture
Times are tough. Things are expensive. Consumers want to save and businesses want business.
Enter GROUPON. They offer up a deal-a-day email on various city-specific buys/eats/activities/events. The only catch is that enough people have to commit to the offer before it can be distributed. Groupon is an awesome way for individuals to get group discounts.
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Distracted

posted by Ryan McManus
Ryan McManus
Ryan McManus

Art Director : New York

topics: Design, Apparel and Footwear, Rock and Roll, Boston, and Strategy

 on May 13, 2009 at 10:50 AM
filed under: Internet Culture
In the course of writing this blog post, I will change the song playing on my iTunes, check Twitter (probably at least twice), search for “credenza” on Craigslist, get up to put on socks, look at 3 websites for a project I’m starting, search Craigslist for “sideboard”, respond to a text message about plans for later, and read (but not answer) 6 emails.
This is par for the course these days.
Recently I found myself having a hard time focusing on the words I was typing. I was transposing letters, having a difficult time completing thoughts or sentences. I originally thought I must be hungry, then instantly followed that train of thought to it’s logical conclusion: I had a brain tumor.
So I stopped writing, and went to look up symptoms on WebMD. Then I remembered I hadn’t paid my cable bill. Then Facebook. Then emails…you see where this is headed.
I wasn’t always this way. WE weren’t always this way. I used to be able to read a book, or sit and listen to a 2 hour lecture without taking notes. Now I can’t make it through 15 minutes of a meeting without feeling listless and anxious. Anxious that I’m missing something – that somewhere, somehow, there is something exciting and/or terrible happening that I am supposed to be paying attention to.
It got so bad that I started having to keep my necessary items in the same pockets, day after day, so I could pat myself down to make sure I could get on the subway, or not lock myself out (Wallet, rear right; Phone, front right; Keys, front left; Metrocard, rear left.)
I know what the problem is. So do you. But it’s an impossible habit to break, ever since AOL invented the “you’ve got mail!” chime, I have been locked into this pavlovian (and apparently primitive) cycle of constantly needing to see what the unknown stimuli is on the horizon.
Like right now, RIGHT NOW my iChat icon is bouncing in it’s dock, and I can see that little red star with an ever increasing number, and I know, I KNOW that is more important than writing this.
BRB.
So a few weeks ago, I did something almost unimaginable to my modern self: I took a day off from the Internet. It was the first nice Friday of the year, and I took the day off of work. My rules were simple: i could use the internet to access information (what time a restaurant closed, or a map, or the weather report) but not for any sort of interaction. And the times I did use the Internet had to be brief, necessary, and socially acceptable (i.e. not while someone was talking, or at a dinner table)
And at first, it was a struggle. But by the end of the day, as I played catch in the park and thought about watching a movie, a whole movie, I felt relieved. I felt like I had a full day. I felt, well, tired actually. By eliminating the possibilities (what I’ve come to refer to as the Tyranny of Choice™ – the same reason you forget what book you were going to buy when you’re at the bookstore) and simply choosing to do something, I was able to enjoy it.
So, starting this month, once a month, I am going to have a Day Without Internet. Sounds hokey and forced, but I need the discipline. I’d suggest you try it to, and let me know how it works out for you. Because all the Facebook updates in the world really don’t amount to much.
(this blog post was inspired by a nice article entitled Why We Can’t Concentrate. Take 15 minutes and read it, without doing anything else.)
photo by thomas christensen
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