NextNow Member Blog

Shaping Youth.com is being bullied by cyberterrorists for revealing some of the more insidious marketing tactics being used to target kids. I need to access the brain cells of NextNow technologists to help get a handle on this, before it escalates further.

You may recall when we were all hanging out at Doug Engelbart’s, I was the one concerned about blogging transparency from a security basis, knowing full well I’d soon be treading on turf akin to Erin Brockovich. Media is a powerful industry, and the collective conscience of some of my egomaniacal creative colleagues is bupkiss, so it shouldn’t surprise me that they’re after my tail. There are millions of marketing dollars at stake, and corporate ethics can be an oxymoronic term. Examples?

I thought advertising had hit bottom when radio stations targeted 12-17 yr. olds for plastic surgery, but then Virgin Records launched the trashy hip-hop viral marketing website promo encouraging girls to post their tushies online. (this is the article, not the site, folks, I’m trying NOT to give them publicity)

These are damaging trends of an appearance-based culture gone mad, taking a societal toll by accelerating childhood, mining kids’ sexuality for profit, and hyper-objectifying every aspect of youth as a consumer ‘opportunity’ for exploitation…BUT by taking a “whoa, this is NOT okay” stance, my portfolio was embedded into countless raunchy URLs & a plethora of spam started flooding my inbox.

And that’s nothing compared to Lisa Fager of industryears.org (one of my Shaping Youth board members) She dared to use her intelligence and media prowess to take on the radio stations in D.C. and now has an entire pictoral hate site that slams her, complete with donation button! (We met & spoke on CSPAN at a conference last year about digital advertising and media and both appear to be ‘fair game’ for cyberterrorists now)

So riddle me this, tech gurus, how does one use “counter-terrorism” tactics to remove the drek, trails, pings & internet sabotage? And how do we protect ourselves from these pathological nutcases? What about our publishers?

Is this kind of cyber-flaming common in ’cause marketing’ or is it because we’re taking on mega-media moguls w/big bucks? I can take the heat, but I know it will keep getting worse as this consortium of mine continues to grow.

My last article was the ONLY one on Common Sense Media’s site to log 128 trackback pings (to date) linking the headline to ‘porn, hotties, photos’ & more. So it’s definitely an ‘industry insider’ attempt to intimidate, and clearly ‘personal.’

Right now I have a new one going to press about Pepsi, Coke & McDonalds hawking “fitness” to kids via school CURRICULUM…using freebies, teacher incentives and subtle (even unbranded) programs to get in through the back door with P.E./health exercise cutbacks. Can’t wait to see what zingers I’ll get when that runs. So NN thinkers…Ideas?

I’d like to get out of the blast zone as much as possible, so would appreciate any technological wizardry, firewalls, gizmos, tips, gurus or guidance to combat the cyberterrorists that have me in their crosshairs.

Today’s Ad Age has a blurb headlined, “The Lists Every Blogger Wants to Get On” and even though Robert’s on a ‘blog break’/vacation, I guess his technorati rankings hold firm. btw, Robert, I wrote an article based on your son Patrick’s sage preteen slam on the absurdity of junk food marketers using athlete icons. It should be out in the next couple of weeks via Common Sense Media, later archived on their blog, if I get swamped & forget to post here.

There’s an inherent ‘disconnect’ between sports-n-soda that’s been around for years, but delving deeper I found the world’s largest junk food corps are now seeping their brands into schools by promoting (get this) fitness & nutrition programs! That’s right, we now have curriculum components based on corporate sponsorship ties, with teacher incentives for implementation linked to other partner/sponsor websites! Talk about spinmeisters.

Somehow push-ups paid for by Pepsi and crunches by Coke rank right up there with Burger King sponsoring the President’s Challenge for physical fitness. (yes…all true, stranger than fiction, n’est ce pas?) While I’m at it, I should’ve posted my last article for Shaping Youth here too. It was called “Kids Gobble Up Interactive Junk Food” dealing with embedded SMS/text media promos and online gaming for wee ones where advertisers are branding kids’ brains with sugary slop. (amidst the surge in childhood obesity/Type 2 diabetes)

For NN members in the social responsibility arena, this week’s Parc forum on technology looks great…

“Jim Fruchterman will talk about his transitions from rocket scientist to tech entrepreneur to social entrepreneur. Benetech’s nonprofit structure allows it to tackle less lucrative but socially critical applications of technology. These range from a digital library of books for the blind, to human rights database, project management software for the environmental movement and humanitarian landmine detectors. Find out more about how the latest Valley technology gets directed towards serving more of humanity!”

I recently joined an effort to create a “mycelial network” of healers, artists (including in social artistry) and general consciousness-raisers to help grow and network focal points for conscious community. Mycelial is a beautiful metaphor for growing a network because mycelium are masses of mostly underground branching tubes that make up the body of multicellular fungi– inconspicuous until the fruiting body appears above the soil, often all at once (at least, that’s how I understand it).

Some NextNowers might be interested in plugging into this network when the time comes. More importantly I wanted to share a few web resources with NN that I shared with my mycelial group: Plum (aggregating/sharing/connecting), PoweredbyImp (mass market distribution of content), and Current (“Bringing Your Voice To TV”).
Plum is about to go into public beta; you can sign up on their website.

1-click collects: web pages, blog posts, emails, photos, feeds, etc. so that you can annotate, comment on, review, organize

1-click shares: collection becomes a blog, an album, a feed, etc. so you can share as broadly or narrowly as you choose

1-click to connect and discover: maybe the most interesting feature–you can be automatically linked to other collections like yours so you can discover the unexpected and connect with others with the same interests.

Imp launched its beta in January and you can sign up to download their test player. One of the forces behind this media revolution technology is Sam Utne, son of Nina Utne of Utne Magazine, which is how I found out about it. (more…)