I've never really
quite gotten a handle on what postmodernism
is, being far too busy watching a "TV show about nothing" to
keep up with my readings of Lacan and Foucault. One thing I've heard about
"pomo" is that it's self-referential. And what allows for more shameless
self-referentiality than the Internet?
The biggest fallout from the incestuous
"online is all about being online" vortex we sunk into following 1998 was
probably felt by ordinary stock market investors. Suddenly freed from their
regular brokers, and educated by the fun-loving tutors at the Motley Fool
(
http://www.fool.com -- shouldn't the name have been a clue?) they began
trading stocks online. So what stocks did they buy? The ones that represented
the online experience, of course! AOL [NYSE: AOL], Yahoo!
[NASDAQ: YHOO] and yes, even
the stocks of their beloved online stock brokerages, such as E*Trade
[NASDAQ: EGRP]. The Internet
created its own momentum by constantly referring to itself, creating an infinite
regress of good vibes, at least while the party lasted. We should have known it
would all turn out as predicted by this cynical
web site, however. There is an upside to the
current dust bowl atmosphere, for those who enjoy analysing and
overanalysing each company bankruptcy. Downside.com, once a simple
one-page prophecy with a plunging stock chart and the slogan "we're
gonna party like it's 1929," is now a full-service portal of dot com
doom.
How does an industry create an infinite
regress of good vibes that doesn't go away? I mean, just look at the Emmys and
the Oscars. TV is full of talk shows, entertainment news, and breathless
biography about, well, itself... and the major networks and movie studios seem
to be doing just fine thanks.
The Internet gang is trying to get the
hang of this, but we're just not there yet. The first thing we must do -
immediately - is to stamp out all dissenting viewpoints. Surely there are
persons with authority over domain names or libel laws or just the simple laws
of mathematical probability as it relates to incestuous industry commentary who
have the authority to shut that nasty
F***ed
Company down.
Michael Tchong, publisher of internet
marketing zine Iconocast, has got it right. Reportedly, at a recent Internet
World conference in Toronto, he announced an initiative called IconoMap, a kind of fact-filled snappy comeback to the obloquys against the Internet advertising business. Don't go rushing for your dictionary. Obloquy means roughly "travesty," "abusively detractive
language," or "a gross distortion and cheapening of a widely-held
doctrine or faith." If the economic viability of online advertising models
doesn't require faith, then we don't know what it needs! When Michael
Eisner recently defended Disney's decision to close very unprofitable
Go.com by saying that "the advertising community has all but abandoned the
Internet," Eisner was telling something like an $8 billion lie to justify his
own company's screwup. Tchong says the faithful need to stand up to
the detractors, armed with stats and charts about the effectiveness of
online advertising. Keep the faith, baby. If you don't, no one else
will.
Now you're probably saying: "the Internet
has plenty of awards - the First Annual Search Engine Awards, the Webbys,
and... and... well, those two anyway." Exactly. But the point is: we need
to have many, many more. Would Britney Spears' insidious rise to fame have been
possible if she wasn't on your TV screen every other week, at a podium
flanked by two formally-attired semi-stars, clutching a tall, shiny
award?
Far be it from Traffick's small but
loyal clutch of freelance journalists to abdicate its responsibility to
remind the world of the Internet's vital importance In the Grand Scheme of
Things. In the true spirit of postmodern logrolling, we present:
The First Annual Infinite Regression
Awards!!!
brought to you by Traffick.com - The
Portal Portal
Best search engine about search engines:
Search Engine
Guide -
http://www.searchengineguide.com
Best marketer of marketing products:
Aesop Marketing
Corporation -
http://www.aesop.com
Honorable mentions - too numerous to mention.
Best mailing lists about mailing lists:
Sparky's List Tips -
http://www.list-tips.com
Best content about content:
InternetContent.net - http://www.internetcontent.net
Best portal portal:
Traffick - http://www.traffick.com
Most underused offline utterance:
"Hyperlink
this!"
Best news about news:
Yahoo! Full Coverage Topic:
Media Watch - http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/World/Media_Watch
Best weblog about weblogs:
They all seem
pretty incestuous.
Best directory of directories:
Hardin
Meta-Directory - http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/
Best forum about forums:
We don't know.
Please apply for next year's award.
New economy embodiment of a "people
person":
Terence Pua, CEO, Project Napa - http://www.projectnapa.com
Bonus offline award: Best TV show about a TV
show:
After all these years, it's still Mary Tyler Moore.
Most diabolically-constructed feedback
loop:
You're reading it, buddy.
We hope you enjoyed the First Annual Infinite Regression Awards,
and will soon begin soliciting suggestions for next year's awards. Tread with
caution. As this award is perfected, it may cause Google's algorithm to
self-destruct, leading to a chain reaction that will permanently disable
the Internet as we know it today, paving the way for AOL's rise to new heights
of world domination, and a return to its roots as a proprietary, non-Internet
dialup service.
And that's the story of how postmodernism
took us back to the dark ages. The End.
