Ged Carroll

Search results for: “social”

  • Social decay + more stuff

    Social decay

    This article on social decay in the FT hit close to home literally: Anti-social behaviour in Britain’s towns will take years to fix, experts warn | Financial Times. Go and have a read, I will still be here. The area typifying social decay is New Ferry, it is literally five minutes walk from the model industrial village of Port Sunlight.

    Port Sunlight museum
    Port Sunlight

    Grove Street memories

    The playground behind the interviewee before it was refurbished in the early 2000s used to have a roundabout that I was thrown off at a tangent while it spun around when I was about 3 or maybe 4 years old and landed straight into a puddle. I wore a red hooded anorak made of a red sherpa fleece fabric with an elasticated hood, cuffs and bottom which soaked up half the puddle like a sponge. The photographer had his back turned to Grove Road and what is now an Iceland supermarket. Back when I fell off the roundabout it was a Kwik Save.

    Struggling

    Even back then it had a reputation of being a hard neighbourhood. Local shops such as Griffiths the butchers catered for a customer base struggling to make ends meet.

    To the photographer’s left down the road a bit would have been a social club for (former) members of the Civil Defence. The Civil Defence Corps itself had been stood down in 1968. It was a solid working class area full of unskilled and semi-skilled workers who were employed either locally at the Lever factory next door or on the Mersey from the shipyards of Birkenhead to the chemical industry of the Mersey basin and assorted factories further afield.

    Community spirit doesn’t pay the bills

    By the 1980s, it looked worse for wear. There were few jobs, fewer still that paid well. And that was before unemployment and the heroin epidemic took their toll. As the economy picked up in the 1990s, the benefits didn’t make it to New Ferry. The one bright spot was a pirate radio station ran by community DJs playing house and techno records every night of the week close by to Grove Road playground. I’d held a couple of small (250 people) all night parties (acid house and garage) in the Civil Defence social club, with the blackout curtains keeping the noise and lights away from nosy neighbours and police patrols.

    The people who ran the club put on breakfast for the revellers after the main event. We played ambient music from CDs supplied by a friend’s older brother (Tangerine Dream, The Orb, Vangelis, Kitaro, Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Abba’s Arrival) mixing between two Discmans as the tired revellers drank tea and ate bacon ‘bin lid‘ sandwiches while sprawled out on the floor.

    Tickets were sold in advance and the venue details given out on the night by ringing an answerphone. Everyone involved broke even if they were lucky.

    Despite being really hard scrabble there was a certain amount of community dynamism going on in the village hall. My Mum used to travel down there to go to knitting classes with older women, some of whom were Irish like her. They would knit for charity.

    But all that won’t keep social decay from the door while the community is underemployed and underpaid.

    No easy answer

    The social decay described in the article isn’t something that happened overnight but over decades. There is no quick fix to the social decay of bad behaviour and feral gangs of children. It is not clear whether there is the commitment, investment, government will or the way to resolve this social decay.

    The most individually logical thing to do in a time of social decay is thinking more about personal safety.

    Techno-utopianism of early 2000s

    Looking back the technology adoption of the 1990s and early 2000s was phenomenal. The mainstreaming of the cellphones, the PlayStation, home PC computers and internet access creating immediacy.

    The changes wrought by mobile phones in particular are still rippling through the developing world.

    Driving in Japan

    I am a huge fan of walkabout and driving videos because you can tell so much about the environment looking at retail spaces, brands, clothing and social interactions going on around you. For instance Japan’s apparent rejection of the electric car for now, favouring hybrid vehicles instead. This particular one of a rural Japanese town gives you a good idea of where Studio Ghibli‘s work comes from.

    Fintan O’Toole on Ireland

    Great talk by Fintan O’Toole at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

  • Lamborghini social + more stuff

    Lamborghini rockets onto TikTok with 3 million views in two days – When you are marketing one of the worlds supercars TikTok may not spring to mind. With the entry level models at £150k upwards, Lamborghini may be more expected in the FT. But the Lambo is the car of choice for many influencers. David Dobrik famously gave one to his best friend and a Google search shows many Drop Shipping courses feature a Lamborghini as the badge of success. Although rumour has it that many hire the Lamborghini for the day to film. And bear in mind the market for ostentatious expensive cars skews young. Premiership footballers and pop stars spring to mind. (A recent Miles Davis documentary has him driving a Ferrari in the early 60s). So Lamborghini are big on social and having a TikTok page makes total sense – Simon Andrews on the Lamborghini TikTok channel content. Being bucketed with drop shippers, top flight footballers and influencers as a Lamborghini owner wouldn’t necessarily appeal to me – but each to their own

    What can Silicon Valley expect from Joe Biden? | Financial Times – Hours after the president-elect made his acceptance speech, his head of press, Bill Russo, retweeted a picture sent by Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian and film-maker. The picture showed outgoing president Donald Trump meeting Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and commented: “One down, one to go.” Mr Russo added his own comment: “Hell yes.” It was the clearest sign that Mr Biden’s team share the antipathy towards Mr Zuckerberg and his fellow Silicon Valley titans that has built among Democrats over the past four years. – I wonder how this will play with the Silicon Valley titans who have bankrolled Kamala Harris’ political career?

    Tim Wu, who worked on technology issues in the Obama White House, said: “There has been a shift since the Obama administration, even among the people working in that administration, in the way they think about power in the tech world.

    China Academy of Art teaches students to ‘reinvent its heritage’ | Financial Times – interesting how this approach fits into Xi Jingping thought

    Interesting video that goes into using TikTok to convey serious media stories from the World Economic Forum

    Interesting adaption of materials – South Korean ‘sparrows’ try to cap surge of throwaway plastic 

    Alibaba’s Investment In Farfetch Cements Its Luxury Credentials | Jing Daily – this is interesting given Tmall’s luxury boutiques

    What To Expect On Singles’ Day 2020 | Forrester Research – Alibaba has officially announced that 2020’s Double 11 shopping festival will have two phases: The first one began on November 1, and the second will begin on November 11. The first stage focuses on new brands, new products, and global exclusive items. The second stage will resemble that of the regular Double 11 promotions of past years. This makes the first stage an additional growth driver to ensure a grander Double 11 event. JD.com also upped its game and planned a four-stage Double 11 promotion, lasting from October 21 to November 13. Promotion schemes have become more varied and complex, too, including time- or category-limited red packets, preorder (with a deposit) exclusive offerings, member-exclusive promotions, and installment payments – complex value proposition that probably wouldn’t work in a market like the UK

    Tokyo clinic mends stuffed toys and owners’ broken hearts | South China Morning Post – more Japan related posts here

    RISC-V core out-clocks Apple, SiFive; available as IP | EE News – ideal time to take the lead over ARM

    Deskilled and out of touch: the uncomfortable truth for creative strategy | WARC 

  • Social cryptomnesia

    Historically, social cryptomnesia has been used as a term to talk about the way movements don’t get credit for societal change. For instance, activists such feminism or the green movement don’t get credit for widespread acceptance of women’s rights or climate change. Instead politicians like Al Gore got the credit. Instead feminist groups and environmental groups are still stigmatised.

    Hong Kong Protests 2019
    Jonathan van Smit – Hong Kong Protests 2019

    The BBC think that ideas espoused by groups like Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion maybe incorporated into mainstream thinking. Even as these organisations are demonised.

    Although most of the discussion about social cryptomnesia revolves around activist groups, I think it’s bigger than that. We can see social cryptomnesia in wider cultural shifts. Hippies were thought of as soap dodgers and weed heads. Yet the values of free love and existentialism defined much of the behaviour change in mainstream society through the 1970s and into the 1980s.

    Long after most punk rockers had shaved out their mohawk and put away their Vivienne Westwood bondage outfits; the DIY entrepreneur ethos lived on in media and publishing. You wouldn’t have had independent record labels, football fanzines or Vice magazine without punk.

    Cryptomnesia is a term for when a forgotten memory is repackaged as one’s own. Think a lot of new age concepts like past lives, memory regression or alien abduction.

    It also happens in more prosaic environments, where a memory is mistaken for an original thought. So when a colleague repeats something you said as their idea, they might genuinely believe its their idea rather than yours.

    There has been a whole body of academic research done into the link between cryptomnesia and inadvertent plagiarism.

    More posts in ‘Jargon Watch‘.

    More information

    Majority and Minority Influence: Societal Meaning and Cognitive Elaboration edited by Stamos Papastamou and Antonis Gardikiotis

    Influence without credit: How successful minorities respond to social cryptomnesia. APA PsycNet

    Cryptomnesia and Plagiarism – The British Journal of Psychiatry

    Cryptomnesia: Delineating inadvertent plagiarism. By Brown, Alan S.,Murphy, Dana R. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Vol 15(3), May 1989, 432-442

    ‘Social cryptomnesia’: How societies steal ideas – BBC Future

  • Flickr best social network experience + more

    Flickr best social network experience going / Boing Boing – I believe that flickr best social network experience at present, but I am not blind to the communities flaws

    An Oral History of Oakleys, the Most Badass Sunglasses of the 1990s | MEL Magazine – or how Luxottica made a great brand merely good. More related content here.

    The Ad Contrarian: The Stupidity Of Ignoring Older People | Ad Contrarian – interesting, it used to be that half the lifetime spend was done before the age of 35. Given that most marketing is short term programmes marketing to older people as well makes sense

    China Counterfeiters’ Hot Product in 2019? Peppa Pig Couture | Jing Daily – interesting China’s fake clothing people have been cranking out snide Peppa Pig wear; including dreaming up Burberry, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Off-White and Givenchy collaborations that haven’t happened! It’s wonderful and subversive at the same time

    They welcomed a robot into their family, now they’re mourning its death – The Verge – Williams understands that companies have bottom lines and that gadgets come and go, but Jibo was also designed to appeal to children, and those kids are now learning what it means to own a robot and have no control over its fate – pretty dark stuff. It sounds like the product succeeded with customers but was too pricey for what was required – A couple of things here; it wasn’t that long ago that we thought Japanese people were odd for having Shinto funeral ceremonies for their dead Aibos. Now we see similar behaviour playing out for Jibo. Secondly, unlike the first Aibo, Jibo is essentially a cloud personality, which begs the question when’s the move towards device based AI etc coming back as seeing your kids cry is too much?

    Dolce & Gabbana’s Expanded Sizing “Proves They’re Really about Selling Clothing,” Not Just Leveraging it — The Fashion Law – Dolce & Gabbana has announced that it will increase its sizing to include garments that will range up to size 54 in Italy, the approximate equivalent of a stateside size 18? You bet it is. The move by the Milan-based brand to extend its sizing – which went into force with its currently available pre-fall collection – “makes it one of the most inclusive designer brands for women,” according to The Independent’s Olivia Petter, a far cry from most high fashion brands, which Fashionista’s deputy editor Tyler McCall says “stop much closer to a size 10 [or] below that even.” – I think its a smart move given their problems in China

    The crisis in creative effectiveness | WARC – There has been a serious declining trend in the effectiveness of creatively awarded campaigns over the last ten years. The most recent IPA/WARC Rankings data, explored in the new Crisis of Creative Effectiveness report, confirms this continuing decline; creatively awarded campaigns are now less effective than they have ever been in the entire 24-year run of data and are now no more effective than non-awarded campaigns. We have arrived in an era where award-winning creativity typically brings little or no effectiveness advantage.

    Top 1000 Brands | Intelligence | Campaign Asia – for China

    Study Shows Big Rise in Teen Vaping This Year – The New York Times and Juul faces House investigation over teen e-cigarette use – this is going to get regulated sooner rather than later and the whole Philip Morris International ‘dialogue’ campaign is going to leave some creative agencies holding the reputation equivalent of a live hand grenade

  • Loose networks & social connections

    I went to a family funeral and got to think about loose networks and social connections.

    In Ireland the tradition for a funeral is:

    • As soon as possible after death, the body goes to the funeral home. A coroner will have had to sign off on it
    • The body is put on exhibition in the coffin at the funeral home and family greet visitors from the deceased close and loose network who come and pay tribute to the deceased. The coffin is then closed and taken to the church in a procession, which slows as it passes the deceased’s home
    • The following day a funeral mass is held, followed by a procession to the cemetery and then the burial

    This all happens really fast; usually three days from time of death to grave. Those of the family that can make it home try to, but there isn’t much time. So those who are a long haul flight away generally are excused from coming back home.

    In the rural west of Ireland word goes out through a number of channels

    • Local radio – Galway Bay FM lists deaths and funeral information at regular times throughout the day
    • Local newspapers – the deaths feature on their web sites and in their print editiions (depending on publications and the timings of the death). The print edition of the Connacht Tribune comes out on a Thursday; which means that you might miss a mid-week funeral. When I was a kid it would be picked up from the local general store on a Thursday afternoon for the Connacht Tribune
    • RIP.ie – a web service that people can consult to see what funerals are going on in their vicinity
    • Word of mouth then does the rest. Whether its gossip between neighbours, across the counter at a local shop or announced from the pulpit at mass. We would be back in the local general store would on Sunday on the way home from mass for the national Sunday newspaper and a copy of The Irish Farmer’s Journal. But a secondary reason for that visit was to hear of any local deaths in case you’d have to go to pay your respects. Shop owners were perennial gossips and this was a vital role for the community

    Local media and traditions have carved out a distinctive niche that doesn’t involve Facebook or other social media platform

    The people that come along include a mix of closely connected contacts and threads of loose networks including:

    • Family
    • Relatives (second and third cousins, families who are connected via marriage)
    • Close friends
    • People who you knew but may have lost touch with like school friends
    • People you’ve done business with. In my relatives case it was agricultural  contractors and the local hardware store – which has a much wider range of stock than your average ToolStation or Home Depot to deal with the requirements of farms
    • Business relatives and friends of the bereaved

    For the bereaved, the process does as good a job as you can helping the family deal with grief. In the case of my relative who had a sudden heart attack and died it provided closure. The person was eulogised and then sent on the next part of their journey onward.

    For a rural community, made up of small towns and farms it presents an opportunity to reinforce loose networks and business connections. In our family’s case the farm as a business is passed down from generation-to-generation.

    It becomes important for for business people to attend these events to cement business relationships. In our family’s case some of the visitors were business connections of one of my Uncle’s (who is still living) rather than the deceased.

    Attending these events requires commitment. You had attendees travelling over an hour to pay their respects.

    I was a bit surprised by how robust these loose connections were with relatively little reinforcement. It seems the habit of the funeral process plays its part.

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