I defended that kiss video last week. By the end of that day I’d seen loads of other discussion/argument/parody about it. Here’s the essentials:
All the parodies
NYT tells the story of the video – and it just reinforces my belief that people who thought they were being lied to have the wrong end of the stick.
Vice made its own strangers kissing video, using ordinary men & women off the street. Literally.
Speaking of kissing that guy, a fascinating article about how, when you get song lyrics wrong in your head, it often doesn’t matter too much. Via the NextDraft email, sign up to NextDraft!
Speaking of music with fuzzy lyrics, GQ has a neat, tight oral history of Nirvana’s Nevermind.
Westboro Baptist Church, they of the picketing military funerals, do a weird cover of Royals.
The Garry lab & its alumni continue to make science awesome. This (free to read) paper shows if your name is easy to pronounce, people find it easier to believe you. It cites that legendary “Clinton deploys vowels to Bosnia” Onion article.
Via Damon – a fascinating sliding logic puzzle. There’s an intuitive rhythm you get into quite quickly, but some cleverness would be needed to finish this!
“Second-generation internet language plays with grammar instead of spelling.” a linguist explains doge. Via Michael U, or someone on Facebook who tagged him and the tag made it show up in my feed but not on any search I can come up with Facebook UX continues to be a joke but anyway thanks mysterious person who tagged Michael.
Via Stephen Fox: a one-woman cover of Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box. Fun.
All-time top 5 best uses of punctuation in literature! (via svend)
Also via Svend: a twitter feed of actual TV network notes. When people working in US TV swear about the instructions they receive from stupid bosses, this is the kinda thing they mean.
Two minutes of very scary. I’m liking this trend for micro-length horror films. (via Brian Marshall)
Get a free (digital) copy of the first issue of Ms. Marvel, the great new comic about a teen girl Muslim superhero mixing it up in the Marvel universe! Also three other comics that are probably also good!
And finally, Sarah-Michelle Gellar gives the last word on that lingering question from Buffy: Spike or Angel?
I didn’t feel people were being “lied to” re: the kissing video. I just got really tired of it being spun by people in my Facebook feed as “real” people doing something beautiful, when it was models and actors in a fashion video. Of course it was pretty! They are people who are pretty for a living being dressed and filmed by people who are paid to make things pretty!
So actors and models aren’t “real”? There was a higher proportion of pretty there than normal, and a higher measure of comfort before a camera, sure. But so what?
And only half the people were actors and models anyway. Just checked the Slate article, they identify 11 of the 20 in that category.
They’re not “real” in that the way they behave in front of a camera is studied, practised and trained. But people on Facebook were spinning it as if it was normal people reacting naturally. We don’t know that only half of them were actors and models just because Slate only able to identify 11 our of 20.
I’m not annoyed at the video. It’s a fashion company doing their job well. I’m annoyed at the way people spun it as being some kind of life-affirming spontaneous loveliness. I’m not really sure what you’re defending.
Thanks Bilbo for tagging me on Facebook. 😉 I was going to send you a link too, because I thought it might well be your kind of thing. The bit about “feels” etc and link back to the previous post was actually the bit that got me thinking most.
Vice’s vid is pretty amusing.