Travelling around a Europe and can’t understand the local tabloid headlines? Fear not, this simple guide should put you on the right track!
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Sunday
media
Death and Taxes
Coming as I do from Ireland, and being born at a critical time that means I remember a time before the economic boom and church paedophilia scandals, I was part of a generation of schoolchildren that were probably the last to enjoy a primary education that was dictated by the Catholic Church. Religion was a large part of my education from the ages of 4-12, which involved at least an hour per school day saying prayers and learning about Jesus and how great he was. This is a level of indoctrination that would be mocked if we heard about something similar happening in North Korea, but back then it was part of life and it didn’t seem like anything strange at all. In the separation of Church and State during the process of Irish Independence, somehow the Church had been given control of the nation’s children, which is intuitive, as the Church works for Jesus, and there was no better man.
These daily religious lessons focussed mostly on Jesus and his travels, with a lesson to be learned from each story about how to live in society and function as a reasonable person. One of the stories I remember most from my tenure as an Irish primary school pupil was the story of Zacchaeus, a tax collector who learns from Jesus that there is more to life than collecting taxes. Basically, people in a town get pissed off with Zacchaeus taking all their money and chase him up a tree. Jesus comes and saves the day before the taxman presumably gets lynched by the angry crowd. It’s unclear to me to this day precisely why Zacchaeus was the bad guy in this situation, and apart from some very obvious anti-Semitic undertones there is little substance to the parable. It did make me think at the time that a tax collector was obviously a bad person, since Jesus had to help him out and set him on his path. This conflicted with everyday life of course, as tax men were a part of normal life, and it didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with their choice of profession. Continue reading
Hard F***in’ Data
If, like me, you work in the technical end of the professional spectrum, for the past two years all you will have been hearing about is the advent of big data and how it can be used to change our lives for the better. Even if you have no idea what big data exactly is, the countless news articles and opinion pieces on the subject that were forthcoming once Edward Snowden revealed to the world that each individual has personal data, and (if you have ever had electronic contact with someone in the US) that this ‘metadata’ flows directly to the NSA definitely gives you an idea of the concept. So basically we as a society are big data, and through the maintenance of online profiles and social media we contribute towards the biggest dataset in history, which unfortunately for us consists mostly of #neknomination videos, filtered pictures of food, and declarations of love for One Direction. I doubt even the processing power of quantum computing will help us even broach the sociological implications of how people live their online lives, but of course that job belongs to the NSA: they wanted it, let them organise it. I have followed studies on online behaviour closely for the past decade, and have never really been impressed with any results that have been published. That is, until this week when I saw that PornHub released an interactive graph that showed the responsiveness of online porn traffic to major global events.
I tried vigorously to embed (giggity) the full interactive graph here in this post, but unfortunately this is not possible and you will have to click here and visit the graph on the PornHub blog if you want to play around with it yourself (ooh sir!), or maybe you will be fully satisfied (I will stop soon, I promise) with my discussion of the results here and not wish to seek any more knowledge on the secret lives of others. Anyway, I would highly recommend checking out the full thing for yourself, the results are fascinating. Firstly, by major global events, I mean cultural benchmarks that bring people together en masse, and in this situation specifically they target sports events, holidays, news events, and American TV schedule lynchpins. If you are disappointed with that definition of major global events, I am sure there is a less depressing world out there for you somewhere, but in the meantime I will move on to the data.
Starting in South America, you can see below the graph showing PornHub traffic during the Copa America final in Summer 2011 (it says 2012, but the PornHub guys are American so don’t know about football), where Uruguay played against Paraguay. Overall in South America, there was a 6% drop in porn consumption, while the figures from the individual countries are much greater. Paraguay showed a drop in 20%, while Uruguay reduced their porn needs by just 12%. Uruguay were heavy favourites for the game and indeed went on to win comfortably, which might explain why the Uruguayans went back to their normal schedule sooner than their optimistic, and ultimately decimated neighbours.
PornHub traffic variance during Copa America final
This is to be contrasted drastically to the following years European Cup final, where Italy played Spain. If you look at the individual countries, it is obvious a fair amount of people were watching football instead of going about their usual PornHub routine. What is interesting first is that the drop in porn consumption is much greater during important football games in European countries involved in finals than in their South American counterparts, which might have implications about how comfortable Uruguayans are watching sweaty men on one screen, and sweaty men and women on another simultaneously. What is more interesting about the European data is that overall porn traffic is up 7%, which means that not only are the other European nations (who didn’t reach the final) watching more porn than usual during the highlight of the football season, but that they are watching so much that it actually compensates for the loss in a third of the Spanish/Italian market. Who says European integration is dead?
PornHub traffic deviance during Euro 2012 Final
There are so much more priceless nuggets of information contained in that infographic, so much that I would go so far as to name it the best infographic of all time. The release of the first iPad coincided with an upturn in porn traffic of 9%. The Christmas period sees a big downturn for PornHub, except in Japan, where Christmas Day sees a spike. Environmentalists, beware, as Earth Day (where people should use electricity and therefore internet-enabled devices sparingly), sees no change in porn consumption whatsoever. I said 18 months ago that Felix Baumgartners space dive was a pile of wank, and the data confirms it: +4% worldwide. And finally, nothing kills a good porn buzz like the Jewish High Holidays and New Years Eve, which each inflict a traffic loss of over 40% in assorted territories. Check out the full graph, there is something there that will surprise you, I promise.
What is important about all of this data and the subsequent findings is that it is actually trustworthy. PornHub is a virtual platform and therefore operates within a two-sided market, which means it earns revenue through gaining user hits that contribute to its advertising revenue (I assume: I am not familiar with such base sites, however I did write my Master’s Thesis on the theory behind how such a business would operate, which I blogged about incessently here). PornHub gets paid for each set of eyeballs that view their site, and therefore they need to be very aware of how many eyeballs they possess at any given time, as this data is needed in order to set prices for their advertisers. PornHub will charge advertisers more for an ad running during a potential apocalypse (see data in the chart about the Mayan Apocalypse in 2012), and lower for an ad on New Year’s Eve. Although I assume the New Years Eve crowd would be a much more niche group and therefore there would definitely be some targeted marketing opportunities. Anyway, the point is that no matter the source, the data itself is pure, and therefore the results are open for analysis.
The reason the results from this dataset are so interesting for me is that they describe deviance from a normal schedule (yes, in this case deviance means “abstaining from watching porn”). It therefore tells a story that direct actions or statements from the general consumer would never capture: let’s face it, no one would admit to turning off PornHub just to watch news coverage of Osama Bin Ladens’ death. The PornHub traffic data captures revealed preferences, rather than stated preferences, which is the economic theorists dream (yep, I have blogged about this subject before, here). In economic theory, what people reveal willingly about themselves is not as important as what their unconscious behaviour reveals, and this information is hard to come by (yep, a final sex joke). The PornHub data reveals that there are instances and events in our shared cultural history that cause a marked deviation from normal behaviour, and this is interesting on many levels. This years’ World Cup in Brazil will prove the benchmark in such a data analysis, as it will involve viewers from all over the world as spectators, but with an emphasis on the two countries competing in the relevant game. PornHub will release the data on this, and I actually do think that more than a few social scientists should be interested in using it for their research. I will leave you with this other excellent graph from PornHub, which shows the online porn-watching exploits of fans resident in the areas home to the two teams involved in last weeks Superbowl: the Denver Broncos and the Seattle SeaHawks. The SeaHawks had won the game by halftime: see how fast the Denver Broncos fans got over the loss and got back to their normal ways?
Superbowl PornHub Traffic: Denver v Seattle
From Fritzl to Ramsey: Nobody Got Time For Dat?
In April 2008 a story emerged from a small town in Austria that a man named Josef Fritzl had not only imprisoned his daughter in his own home for almost 25 years, but also engaged in incest with her, which led to her bearing his children, all of whom were raised in Fritzls makeshift basement dungeon. His eldest daughter (also mother of the rest of his children) escaped that day in April 2008 and alerted neighbours in the area, who called the police. The ghost of Josef Fritzl and his basement family haunts the mindset of most Austrians. The rest try to erase all memory of such a horrible, unimaginable event. Fritzl himself lived in plain sight for the entire time he had imprisoned his extended family. This begged questions about what exactly Austrian society was, or if Austrian society even existed, since this occurred in a small community where everyone should theoretically be looking out for each other. The focus of all media coverage was on the event, and how it could possibly have happened without anyone finding out for a quarter of a century.
This week a story came out of the USA where it was discovered that a man had held three women in captivity for almost a decade, in a house in a normal suburban housing district in Cleveland, Ohio. One of the women escaped from the house earlier this week and ran to the house next door, where she found her oblivious neighbour Charles Ramsey, who then phoned the police. I know Charles Ramsey’s name because the focus of media coverage of this story was not on the women, or the societal implications of the unlawful imprisonment of women, it was on him: the neighbour who phoned the police. Ramsey was instrumental in ending the whole sage, but this is not why he has been interviewed repeatedly on TV shows all across America, nor why he has become a viral sensation online. Ramsey is a hero, but he is also a poor, straight-talking black man. And this archetype is the lynchpin of local news networks all across America. Continue reading
The Cult of the Ranter: The Insanity of American Cable News
On Monday nights edition of CNN’s highly rated chat show Piers Morgan Tonight, Morgan interviewed Alex Jones, a conservative (in the American sense of the word) pro-gun, wide-reaching daily radio show host who started a petition to deport the Englishman from America due to his recent anti-gun stance. The footage of the resulting interview has been one of the most shared and discussed items on the internet over the past week, with most commentary acutely deriding Jones’s over-the-top performance. The interview itself is hard to watch, as we see two men, sitting across from each other, where one of them tries to ask the other a question, after which the respondent goes into an inane rant of irrelevant statistics and inappropriate analogies. Americans need semi-automatic weapons to protect themselves from the government, sharks are more dangerous than guns and so on. As the interview goes on, as Morgan tries again and again to get Jones to answer a question rather than getting worked up into a lengthy off-topic monologue, it becomes apparent that Alex Jones does not know what an interview, or a debate, is. I have never heard his radio show, and probably never will, but from my experience of similar American media personalities, I would imagine that his show is reminiscent of his performance in the Piers Morgan interview. I would be willing to bet that Alex Jones is a Ranter, and that he is well-versed in talking to himself for several hours every day.
My first encounter with the modern American news show came in 2002, when lying jetlagged on a bed in a New York hotel room I switched on the television and there was Bill O’ Reilly, ranting about why an American should get special treatment if arrested abroad. The whole experience was very surreal, as I could not tell if the show was a joke or not. This was a man shouting at the viewer, in their own home, through their own television set, about what horrible things were going on in the country, and what horrible things were happening to the silly Americans who ever left American Soil. He had interviews on the show but anyone that didn’t agree with him, he either bullied into submission, or he ended the interview in anger. It stopped being surreal in the following days, and became scary as all through New York City I saw advertisements for his show The O’ Reilly Factor which informed me that it was one of the most watched news shows in the entire country. Ever since then I generally am not surprised with whatever garbabge American news shows throw at us. Glenn Beck was a natural progression from O’ Reilly. Beck came from radio and simply transplanted his one-way-street argument style straight into his television show. What was original about Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News that it was just one man, moving through an entire television studio, all alone, free to write nonsense on blackboards and rant and “reason” until his heart was content. Beck also punctuated his rants with supposed interviews, which would be cut prematurely if they did not go the way he wanted them to. Beck and O’ Reilly share this uniquely American current affairs TV show format: the uninterrupted solo editorial rant.
In 2005-6, YouTube suddenly opened up the worlds media as it had never been before. College kids all around the world were suddenly watching crazy news footage from New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela and South Africa. The different journalistic tendencies of different territories was exposed as never before, and what is not surprising is that the American news shows came in for the most criticism and lampooning. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart become very popular in Europe at around this time due to its daily summary of the insane methods that partisan news networks use to spin whatever story they are reporting on. From The Daily Show came The Colbert Report, a spinoff about a rightwing newsman ranting to the camera, about whatever fulfilled his agenda. This spinoff was ridiculously popular in the United States, as it struck a chord with critics of the Man Ranting format of current affairs shows. Outside the USA, college kids tried hard to like The Colbert Report, but really, the comedy just was not there. We get the joke, but mostly due to seeing clips of US cable news shows on YouTube. The potency of the humour is not so important as it is to Americans.
I can only speak for Ireland and the UK, but any show like O’ Reillys or Becks would be laughed off as a sideshow in Ireland or the United Kingdom. In these countries, the Panel Show is sacrosanct, where a multitude of relevant, informed guests are invited to appear on primetime TV and debate the relevant issues, moderated by a respected journalist, on a regular basis. In Ireland and the UK, we berate Jeremy Paxman and Pat Kenny, but they are journalists, and not Ranters. An editorial rant such as what occurs on American cable news simply does not happen in most democratic countries. The closest thing I can compare Glenn Beck to outside America is the daily TV show Hugo Chavez presented in his healthier days as president in Venezuela.
What annoys me about the Alex Jones interview on Piers Morgan Tonight is that the topic was an important issue in America (gun control post-Sandy Hook), and that Alex Jones is inexplicably a person of influence in America. In the interview with Morgan, Jones mentions that he is syndicated throughout the country, with a significant number of dedicated followers, who listen to his every word about how they all need semi-automatic weapons. A quick Google search of Alex Jones also reveals that he is an avid fan of conspiracy theories. Piers Morgan (cheaply) tries to bait him with this in the aforementioned interview, asking him if the American Government planned 9/11. Jones believes this, and also is a firm proponent in the David Ickes story of international reptilian overlords controlling our every move. This is irrelevant to the debate however, as it is cheap conspiratory ideology that captures the imagination. Most of the people who have shared the Morgan-Jones interview have mentioned that Jones is crazy, often followed by a LOL. Anyone sane person that watches the Piers Morgan interview will attest that Jones is probably insane, or drugged at least. I don’t think Alex Jones is crazy, I think he is insane. That is not an insult, it is perfectly understandable. Anyone who talks to themselves for three hours every day, as he does in his radio show, is more often than not, eventually going to go insane.
Curves of Indifference 