WWE wrestler The Miz
Killed by the public, the press gave it a free pass…
That’s right, for years we were subjected to fawning stories about this idiotic product in the mainstream press. There were numerous pictures of Google cofounders Sergey and Larry at parties, looking like the dorks that they are, until suddenly barroom backlash surfaced in San Francisco and the media woke up to the fact that Google Glass might be an undesired product.
And there you have the modern media paradigm in a nutshell.
The nitwit organizations trumpet everything made by people with money and the truth comes from the public. The inane writers tell us every movie and album is good until someone checks the sales charts thereafter and finds out that they’re stiffs.
How did this happen? How did reporters seeking out truth miss it?
Because they saw themselves as reporters and not analysts, just getting the facts, giving credence to every contrary opinion. Just like on TV all the anchors employ happy talk, all writers believe if you don’t contain the opposite viewpoint in your article you’re not doing your job. And that opinion should be left…on the opinion page.
So therefore, newspapers have turned into sales catalogs, no wonder the younger generation ignores them.
And if someone is rich or powerful, they get a compete pass.
As if being rich makes you smart or infallible. Oh, that’s right, the rich are “job creators” who must pay less taxes in order to keep our country humming. Without private equity, the rank and file would be able to keep their jobs, companies not being merged and sent overseas… Wait, that’s right, these guys are in it for themselves, and the stockholders, corporations are people you know… Makes me puke.
But this has been the story of the 21st century. How the rich and powerful and their complacent media think the world is headed one way and it turns out the public is going somewhere else.
Why would anyone want a file when they could buy a CD?
Why would anyone not want to see a movie in a theatre?
Why would anyone want to read the reporting of nobodies when we’ve got authorities who are members of a cabal beholden to and enthralled by those who pay them…the advertisers and the rich and powerful?
And now this same press has gone on record that the Apple Watch will fail.
Probably because they don’t know what to do with the Cartiers and Rolexes they wear to the Metropolitan Costume Ball. But at least there’s rationale for a connected watch, eliminating the endless removal of your phone from your pocket to learn what’s going on.
What was the rationale for Google Glass?
None. Just that some techies could make it. But in this case some rich and powerful techies who owned desktop search, as if that were forever.
Notice Google’s stock lately? Realize that the company’s ads for search model is challenged on the handset?
Nothing is forever in tech.
And the mainstream media is doing a good job of driving itself off a cliff.
The New York Times, the doyenne of paperdom, keeps laying people off, not realizing, like every experienced businessman, that in times of trouble you DOUBLE DOWN! You employ a scorched earth policy and take market share.
TV has turned its news into an entertainment profit center, not realizing that people go online for news the same way they go online for music videos, and that if you lose the audience’s trust via the evisceration of your credibility, you’re toast.
And then the mainstream press pooh-poohs Occupy Wall Street and Ferguson and chokehold protest coverage because those people are poor and it’s not sexy. They’d rather speak to the head of the police union or Bill de Blasio, who is in charge of the people?
No one. We have no spokesperson. And we used to rely on the media to get the story out. And it’s not doing a terrible job, but it could do such a better one.
How about listing hype as such?
How about looking at the world in a critical way.
I love tech, I love gadgets, but never did I have a desire for Google Glass.
Forget that it had no functions useful to me, IT LOOKED DORKY! Didn’t anybody in media realize this? With all those fashion reporters?
But that’s the other story of modern life. You’re building your own personal brand, and the best way to do this is to piss off nobody, fawn over the rich, build your network, hell, LinkedIn is a raging success.
Just give me some truth.
Bob Lefsetz is an irascible truth teller, music analyst, critic and entertainment lawyer.
