options and attempts

an excerpt from the most recent thing I wrote for ISSUE Magazine:

Enough people are now aware of the quick-trigger nature of the bigger sites and have started to create options for cutting through the noise.
It was in this vein that here in our own part of the world a website was set up to focus on Southeast Asian short films.
Viddsee, a video-sharing site, founded by Derek Tan and Ho Jia Jian in Singapore, offers an outlet for filmmakers within the region to showcase their content to an audience interested in stories from around the region, in the different languages that are spoken in these areas.
Recounting the site’s origins, Derek explained that it all began with a short film.
“The pain that we saw as filmmakers was that we had a film that was going round festivals, and right after the festival we were thinking, how can we distribute it out to a larger audience apart from just the festival circuits?”
“What we realised is if we put it on Youtube or Vimeo, there are billions of videos out there, so how does a film stand out among the rest? We were put alongside cat videos and Harlem Shakes, which are entertaining in itself but ultimately a different type of content altogether.”

fans bleed too

The view that fans are ‘inadequate’ or ‘other’ has the negative consequence of making them lesser people.

It implicates that they are weak human beings latching on to the successes and interesting lives of celebrities as crutches to make their mundane lives bearable.

This is an unreasonable and simplistic opinion, derived from descriptions and exploits of a small fringe of deranged fanatics (i.e. Mark Chapman, Charles Manson).

Talent and skill may not always be the foundation of fandom, but personal and shared experiences inspired through the celebrity of a popular figure do not make a fan ‘inadequate’.

Rather, they become routes for fans’ personal development when they identify and belong, then experiment and learn from their fan activities.

part of another paper for my popular music class, which turned out to be more a study of modern society than Jimi Hendrix.

there's good strange, then there's bad strange

a good friend keeps reminding me I'm weird
not that I'm bothered by it, though I wish he didn't have to point it out so frequently.
hmm

self-deprecation aside, 'normal' is boring, tired and plain lazy
here I mean the culture of consumption that is the 'norm', the way of life for many people

fun fact: did you know that Superdry in Australia is a brand carried by the Pacific Brands conglomerate, the same company behind Bonds underwear and Razzamatazz hosiery?

bet you felt all smug buying that cool pair of skinny jeans, differentiating you from the masses

too bad they're mass-produced

if 'cool' comes manufactured by large multi-national companies, that's not really going (in this case buying) outside the box
it's not bold, it's not your statement to the world, its a marketing campaign to make you feel good

you've been duped, bamboozled, given the run around, to think that piece of expensive mass-produced fabric gives you status

which it can have, given enough people believe in the idea

Question is, do you really want to be reduced into the purchasing masses?