Shall we treat each other like humans?

I love technology. I love social networking. I love people. Before you read on I want you to remember this preface and these three facts.

The world in which I find myself sometimes remind me of a zombie movie. I can go through days where all I receive are the guttural affirmations of people doing biddings of the machines. Doing the bleeping and scanning for the corporate overlord whilst being the minimum wage skivvy sentenced to a life of servitude cursed to forever repeat the phrase “you need help packing your bags!?” “you need help packing your bags!?”

I imagine when someone inevitably goes postal and runs through a store with an AK-47 tearing down the customers. They’re screaming “DO YOU NEED HELP PACKING YOUR FUCKING BAGS NOW!!!???” I bet there’s a marketing guy sat in the corner saying “we are all over the Ten O’Clock News, free advertising, sha-ting!”

I used to work in the service industry and I know how soul destroying it can be. I always try to engage with people, ask them questions, to get them off the script, to have a real conversation. Sometimes, you just meet genuine hostility and you wish a bloody script was to hand.

I needed my car fixed, so I pulled up at Jon’s Auto Repairs. I went to the garage, no one was there. On the street outside, someone waves me over to his car. Was I being picked up for sex? Figures, when you’re dealing with a garage you usually get screwed. But this was especially brazen.

I walk over to this car and then, nothing happens. He was frowning and shaking his head, in what world did he expect something else to happen? He is wearing overalls the same colour as the sodding building. Did he wake up that day thinking “today someone will come in and ask me about Nietzsche! I can feel it!”

He eventually opens his car door and asks “whatchawan?” I replied “Do you do body repairs?” His guffaw would indicate that this was not the case. I’m sorry sunshine, but if you buy a garage and put a sign saying you are garage don’t be surprised people arrive at your garage asking if you do sodding garage things!

What still confuses me is the frown and the air of distrust he was giving me. Like he was saying in his head “I can’t trust a guy who turns Jon’s Auto Repairs and expects a vehicular relationship with me. I’m not really into this. This is way too much.”

But to my shock that was it, it was over, no more words, he shut his car door, iPhone in hand, checking out his Facebook. So I’m now left alone outside a garage; the owner of which is so ambivalent about his company he chooses to sit in a car on the street; he’s inches away from me, the other side of the glass; flashing me the stink eye intermittently before he will probably start sexting his genitals to all and sundry.

I am so confused right now I feel like I’m having a stroke, all I could think to say was “you need help packing your bags!?”

Draw Something wants you to Draw Brands

 

AdAge is reporting that Draw Something has decided to monetize it’s game not through advertisements, but, by getting people to draw brands.

I seem to play Draw Something with people who connect via Facebook, the vast majority of whom I have not seen in the flesh for years. I feel compelled to play these games in case people feel slighted as if I’m holding a grudge from when we last spoke, which was so long ago it was roughly when I learnt to speak.

So not only am I trying to keep these tenuous connections going, but now I’m going to be articulating myself via pictorial representations of corporations.

Me: Hey mate, we ain’t spoken for years, how are you?

Friend: KFC

Me: That’s cool.

Friend: You?

Me: Viagra.

Friend: Sweet.

I think it’s really great that brands and corporations are weaving themselves into our lives more and more. Wired has picked up that Sega has invented and installed ‘Toylets,’ these are branded games to entertain and inform you as relieve yourself. They award points for targeting, pressure and I imagine flair and jauntiness. Let’s combine these ideas, soon you’ll be able to ‘piss-draw’ a logo into a urinal, upload it to Facebook and share with your friends.

‘Hey, John has piss-drawn a McDonalds logo, I’m loving it! LOL’

It looks like Christian Bale’s audition tape for American Psycho, but this guy is real.

The way in which it’s edited doesn’t show the questions he is being asked, but he seems annoyed as hell. The camera person is trying so hard to keep him in frame, but he is getting so angry about paper in a sit down interview his body has decided to leave the video.

One day I hope to get a business card like this guy, “this business card doesn’t fit in a Rolodex because it DOESN’T BELONG IN A ROLODEX!”

I don’t think this a joke, it just goes on and on and it ends.

“Oh my goodness there’s a whole another room back there!” We’ll when this video gets out it’ll be full of people of people looking for modern American dining with a hint of the Mediterranean, sprinkled with strange pieces to camera, fragranced with shoddy dialogue, an over stretched premise and coiffured with a lack of humour.

Can’t wait!

Holy Communion: Wine and a Pizza. I think the Facebook algorithm attests to my very diverse group of friends. I saw a suggest page to ‘Like’ the other day, Napping! How does napping have it’s own page, which narcoleptic got the job to be the administrator on that page? I also saw a page recommendation for ‘Happiness.’ What other abstract nouns are represented, whimsy? dread? fear? Imagine coming across a page recommended for you, ‘Ambivalence’ and I bet you’d think straight away “Where’s that bloody ‘Like’ button? I need to press it now!”
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Holy Communion: Wine and a Pizza.

I think the Facebook algorithm attests to my very diverse group of friends. I saw a suggest page to ‘Like’ the other day, Napping! How does napping have it’s own page, which narcoleptic got the job to be the administrator on that page?

I also saw a page recommendation for ‘Happiness.’ What other abstract nouns are represented, whimsy? dread? fear? Imagine coming across a page recommended for you, ‘Ambivalence’ and I bet you’d think straight away “Where’s that bloody ‘Like’ button? I need to press it now!”

This machine wants you to touch him, weirdo!

Coca Cola has created a vending machine that will dispense drinks if you give the machine a hug.

The machine has been placed at a university in a city state which has popularised both a famous cocktail and SARS, Singapore. Imagine being sent away to university, the first time you’ve been away from home, you’re young and naive. Lurking in a dimly lit corridor is a vending machine promising good times and fast sugar if you just give him a little something something.

It does seem like we are only weeks away from having to fellate a beer tap to get a drink at the bar now, what would it be like when you want to get a round in?