Skip to main content

Ordinary thieves

MTV illegal music download poster
Over on BrandDNA Stan has posted this poster produced by MTV to discourage illegal downloading of music. Aside from the fact that it is slightly absurd and ineffectual as a message I find it rather kinky. This is no ordinary thief this is one not only downloads music but also pinches his mum's silk stockings and cuts eye holes in them. Maybe the meaning of ordinary criminal is the kind that does do the full-on nose bent to the left menace of a pair of unaltered L'Eggs (none of your sheer La Perla rubbish).

Stan mused on the use of the term ordinary criminal. I suppose the music industry, quite familiar with the kind of criminality that would qualify them as uber criminals - the kind that would make them a worthy nemesis to Spiderman or Bob Parr himself. You must have heard the stories of stolen royalties, payola and gifts of Cadillacs to black artists (which were them repossessed by the rental companies) - if you haven't then read Hit Men. 'Ordinary criminal' smacks of the language of a Dickensian magistrate sentencing a member of the oi polloi to be transported to the colonies as a punishment for failing to comb their hair or pull their socks up or some such offence to polite society that didn't quite warrant paying for a hangman and disposing of the vile remains.

The music industry doesn't seem to understand the fact that kids still love music is their enduring opportunity to exploit in some mutually beneficial way. If anyone knows about exploitation after all…?

Sadly pathetic attempts to shame their customers into submission by implying they are sad fetishistic geeks who like to wear women's underwear on their heads in their sad little bedrooms is going to have about as much effect as pathetic attempts to shame their customers into submission by implying they are sad fetishistic geeks who like to wear women's underwear on their heads in their sad little bedrooms.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Addict-o-matic

A cool resource for you to try. Aggregates search topics from a number of sources. Thanks to Brand DNA (again) for the heads-up.

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer