1. A vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled.
2. A sudden and irrational rage in response to reading an ‘@-reply’ on Twitter.
3. The state of being ‘installed’ at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard like desperation.
4. The car collision of appetite and discomfort one feels simultaneously when using the internet to seek and consume images or information that may be considered unseemly or inappropriate.
5. The sense of fatigue and disconnect one experiences after emitting a massive stream of content only to hit some kind of ‘wall’ and forget and/or abandon the entire thing.
The FDA (which can now regulate tobacco products) unveiled a bunch of new warning labels for cigarettes. They’re taking public comments and will select 9 from the 36 proposed.
It doesn’t really look like anyone put much thought at all into these. In fact, they’re pretty terrible. And generic “It’ll give you cancer” messages have been proven ineffective (and even counter-productive for younger smokers).
However, what has proven effective, even with younger potential smokers is social perception. Kids who thought their friends were effected by anti-smoking messages were less likely to state intentions to start smoking.
Maybe that’s the thought behind the FDA’s new designs. They just got some shitty stock photography and wrote some totally bland, inoffensive copy on it. There’s nothing compelling or controversial about it at all. It makes cigarette boxes look totally lame. It’s a sort of un-branding.
For young people, it seems that smoking is largely a public performance… it’s all about creating perceptions. And people look to brands to help them create those public perceptions. The FDA is potentially taking away some of the power of those brands to help kids create a desirable public image. Of course, some of these are pretty funny and that helps build social capital, which would make them less effective.
Maybe it’ll work. I used to smoke Kamel Reds (partly because the packaging was cool, and I’m a bit of a design nerd) and this doesn’t look nearly as cool as this.
“The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that less intelligent individuals have greater difficulty than more intelligent people with comprehending and dealing with evolutionarily novel entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment.”
In other words, human intelligence evolved/progressed to address situations that aren’t fundamentally essential to basic survival… in theory.
This theory is now being used to explain preferences, values, etc… including some interesting data indicating smarter children (in the US and UK) grow up to be adults that drink more than their less-intelligent peers. The consumption of alcoholic beverages is considered “novel” in that it was not a basic necessity for the original humans’ survival.
Because boozing is evolutionarily novel, intelligent people are more able to comprehend it, thus making them more likely to show a preference for it, even when controlling for factors such as socio-economic status, ethnicity, religion, marital status, etc…
The graph below shows the latent factor for adult quantity of alcohol consumed by the cognitive class of survey respondents as indicated during childhood.
It is important to note that the relationship between intelligence and drinking is correlational, not causal… so don’t start drinking more to make yourself smarter. It won’t work…
… unless you believe Cliff Claven’s buffalo theory:
“Well you see, Norm, it’s like this … A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”
I did every test on the first couple of pages of the Google results and took screenshots of the results.
There’s a lot of variation in the results of these *totally scientific* tests, but overall, I seem to be pretty balanced.
So, there’s that. If you want more data to analyze, hit me up on twitter, linkedin, flavors.me, last.fm, about.me or krop.
Ford had a huge social media effort leading up to the launch of the new Fiesta… and it looks like it’s working.
The results are pretty impressive. They’re outperforming every other competitor in their category, capturing a respectable piece of the market interested in imports and driving general interest in Ford as a source for vehicles even in other categories.
And, a lot of their traffic is coming from Twitter:
For the record, the new Fiesta is much nicer than the old one:
Washington City Paper launched a pretty awesome interactive interface for analyzing their most recent political polling data.
They’re allowing users to graph data points like mayoral vote by other points like the number of years spent living in DC. There really are some pretty interesting (though not entirely surprising) correlations.
Pictured here: Opinions of DC’s lack of a congressional vote x education level, importance of maintaining DC’s majority-black population x perceived neighborhood safety, opinion of Marion Barry x by race, and pick for DC mayor x perceived neighborhood safety.
It’s unfortunate they didn’t include sample sizes/margins of error, but it’s a great effort anyway. Well done, city paper.
Behaviors are described in terms of duration (once, for a set time and for an indefinite period) and the nature of the behavior (new or familiar behaviors, increasing or decreasing behaviors and stopping behaviors).
Charts like these really simplify the formation of strategy by putting the end result (motivating a behavior) in very clear terms.
via: PSFK
Arcade Fire’s new video uses Google Maps data and HTML 5 to make a custom video experience for the Wilderness Downtown.
It’s pretty processor-intensive, but it’s a lot of fun.
BETC Euro RSCG created an automated system for producing static advertising. All you have to do is input product type and category, objectives (generating awareness, creating loyalty, introducing a new product, etc…), demographic targets and intended benefits of the product.
The system then generates 3 ads meeting the specifications. And the ads are apparently terrible (“There’s no set age to be healthy”? Really?).
But it’s still a cool idea. If they could combine it with the Sketch2Photo internet image compositing tool, we could stop wasting so much money on creative departments that produce terrible work.
Shot for NYTimes, Ryan McGinley took a beautiful mix of photos with M.I.A. View the full set at his website.
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