Whoever wins the new Norton Antivirus/Snoop Dogg anti-cybercrime rap contest over at HackIsWack.com is destined to be at least as famous as M. E. Hart. Oh. Sorry. You probably didn’t know he was the “rapper” in the 1994 Don’t Copy That Floppy campaign (video below). You know, the one you don’t remember. This marketing campaign by Norton is so full of fail in so many ways that I don’t know where to start. First, I’ll acknowledge that yes, I’m talking about Norton Antivirus, which is part of their goal. In fact, here. Go buy some if you want. I’ll make something like $1.37 if you use that link. But otherwise, this is full of fail. You can almost hear the aging executive at the board meeting that got this in motion: “We need one of those VIRAL things. Make sure we have one of those Facebooks, and that, whatchacallit? One of those TWITTER things. Oh, and a MySquare or whatever it’s called too“. Well, they’ve got their Facebook and Twitter thing set up (although I’m more impressed with Crack Is Wack, a joke FB page by a couple of youngsters), and they’ve got that “hip” domain HackIsWack.com. And then what? You can view all the hilariously bad whiteboy “nerd up to your motherboard” raps here, but guess what. You can’t SHARE them, so we can only link to our current pick, called Hairetsu Entry. We admire it mostly for the fact that the guy seems so gangsta for shizzlin’ on company time by recording his performance on the security cam in the stock room at his shoe store job. If the decision makers at a company like Norton had half a brain, they’d hire Snoop as a consultant, not a celebrity endorsement. Like so many marketing campaigns involving Snoop, while he brings some attention to the brand that he’s hired to endorse, the REAL brand remains Snoop, and I’d bet he sees more revenue than whoever hires him. Go Snoop. You’re a genius. And in the end, the main reason this campaign fails is that anybody who will talk enough about Snoop and computer security in the same conversation to lead to a conversion are technophiles like me who will say “That’s so funny! But don’t use Norton, use Kaspersky or AVG, or Malwarebytes, really just about anything BUT Norton! Fo’ rizzle. By the way, apologies for my less-than-Snooptastic Slanguistics, but gizoogle.com was down.

Here’s the hip and edgy 1994 “Don’t Copy That Floppy” video, starring M.E. Hart. I just have one question. What’s a “floppy”?

Don’t bother trying to play the video below. Part of the built in fail of Norton’s “social networking” campaign is that it isn’t very “social”. The videos barely stream on their site, it’s not surprising they didn’t mess with that crazy “embedding” thing all the kids are doing these days.

One last warning: These are pretty disturbing vids.

You’ve probably seen the nasty lady tossing the kitten in the wastebin…

And by now you may have seen the girl throwing the bucket of puppies in the river…

But are either of these acts any more cruel than how we treat animals at processing plants?

Before I get to the precious links that I know you really come here for, I’m going to preface things with an interesting experience that I had recently. Early in the morning the other day, I walked out of my house to head to what I knew was going to be a long meeting. I lit a cigarette, and as I rounded the corner was confronted by a woman who asked if I had another. I said “sorry” and kept walking. I live in a town that even in bad economic times has service jobs going wanting, which makes it easy for me to pompously justify to myself my reluctance to give things away to the 5-15 people that ask me for something each day. As I walked on, she muttered something incomprehensible, which I assumed was some Gypsy curse to punish me for being such a selfish bastard. About a half block further along, I remembered how my recently deceased mom ALWAYS gave things to strangers, and thought “Great. That lady was probably Jesus in disguise or something, and now I’m going to hell”. I resolved to try to be just a little bit nicer. Just for that day. So a few hours later, I walked out of the meeting, and headed to a nearby alley to indulge in my shameful nicotine addiction. Guess who was sitting at the entrance to the alley. I was on the phone as I passed her and she asked for a dollar. I ignored her because, well, I was ON THE PHONE dammit, so DON’T BE SO RUDE. When I headed back I wasn’t on the phone, and because she had been SO RUDE while I was on the phone, I ignored her as she asked for “just a few” dollars. I walked about 20 feet further and thought to myself “Damn. I planned to try to be just a little nicer, just for one day.” I walked back and asked her exactly what she needed, and she said “oh please mister, just five dollars would really help out.” I explained that I wasn’t likely to just give her five dollars, but would gladly go with her to the nearby store and buy her a bunch of food or other basics she might need, or even take her to a cafe or something for a bite to eat. To which she replied, almost sobbing, “can’t you please just help out with twenty dollars?” I’m not sure how we got from a cigarette that morning to 20 dollars just now, but I explained that there was no way I was just going to give her a bunch of money. I walked away, actually more angry than anything. I was reminded of this little set of interactions today as I read a fascinating article called Westerners vs. the World: We are the WEIRD ones. It explains how we WEIRD people (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) are in fact quite weird in our perception in many ways. It tells the story of how researchers used something called The Ultimatum Game, in which you are given money and asked to share it with someone else. You can offer that person any amount, and if he accepts the offer, you each get to keep your share. If he rejects your offer, you both walk away empty-handed. The results in various parts of the world were quite telling. Along the same lines, a Toronto Star reporter tried a little experiment recently to see how panhandlers would use free credit cards. The actual results were interesting, but not all that surprising. And frankly raises a small question of the ethics of “charity experiments” to create news content, when this sort of thing occurs naturally and probably gets about as much readership. This kind of experimenting is something that can be taken to incredible extremes, as in the case of doing A-B testing to see if a homeless guy can generate more revenue by refining his sign design. I’m not sure if that’s even a true story, but all of these stories reminded me that I’ve been struggling for a long time with how to deal with the people in my everyday life who ask for money on the streets and how I might do something positive that doesn’t involve simply giving away money. To that end, I already have a project in the works to teach computer skills to the disadvantaged, as I think computer illiteracy is a common obstacle to job-hunting confidence, even for homeless people. But I long for a simpler, practical solution to helping those that are struggling, and I think I’ve hit on a clever idea that may have some sense in it. I’d love input on the idea; I’m not sure if in reality it would be pointless or seem condescending. I explain it a little below.

The idea is that aside from people who have made hustling and panhandling a committed lifestyle choice, there are people who are really just down on their luck and floundering. And in tough times like this, there are plenty of us who are fairly broke ourselves, and can’t afford to pull twenty bucks out of our pockets daily to help these people that are worse off than ourselves. In many communities - especially the one that I live in - there are probably more than enough resources available to help out those in need. Once a person is living with the anxiety of simply eating that day, it becomes hard to think clearly about anything. I know. I’ve been there. I’m fairly confident that very few people who start reluctantly panhandling even know where all these resources are. So I’m going to try my own little “charity experiment’, and print up “dollars” that fit in my wallet, and start passing them out in lieu of cash. They could include all sorts of information, like where to get substance abuse treatment, shelter from physical abuse, temp work; the possibilities are endless. Above is a simple mockup of the idea. What do you think?

Here’s that A-B testing mentioned in the article:

	Teddy Bear Wireless Camera Yeah, they pitch it as a product for baby monitoring. But what a surprise for your cheating partner when they learn that little Teddy’s broadcast-ready.
	Pocket Pro Pen Style Camcorder In spite of its bulk, the nerd most likely to use this probably has adequate pocket-liner clutter to keep this device stealthy
	Covert Micro Pinhole Spy Camera Pretty creepy. Just make a pinhole in any object, place the camera, and you’re ready to watch your target’s banal existence 24/7.
	Microeyes Nanny Cam The perfect gizmo for the constantly expanding Nanny States of the world. What a cute name for a survaillance device!
	Secret Compartment US Quarter I envision a nationwide network of undercover buskers and bums transmitting important data via casual coin tosses.
	Mini Realtime Covert Vehicle Tracker You can engage in the same kind of invasive vehicle tracking as the government for just 300 bucks. Great for tracking pizza deliveries too.

You have to wonder who these vendors are really targeting. The image below was used by several of the spy camera makers listed above.

I’m always searching for ways to bring you interesting content without actually doing any work. For a long time, I achieved this with our Monday Demotivators, but with the incredible growth in the unemployment sector, no one’s at work on Monday these days to avoid it, so we dropped that weekly feature back in December 2009. More recently, I thought I’d sneak by with a weekly “linkdump” (like this one and this one), but quickly realized that this would be almost as much work as actually writing something, so I hope you enjoy this final collection of useless infographics, pointless lists, and YouTubidity. The infographics and videos are first, because the stupid list of 66 stupid lists would take you almost as long to peruse as the hours of suffering all the involved parties endured in the hope that someone would actually take the time to look it over. Oh. But before we move on, my pick for link of the week is the story of how Coach scrubbed their brand clean of all the filthy Snooki.

Weekly WTF

I’ll be eternally grateful if you can explain these two images to me:

Videos You Need…

Brilliantly Cute Video Of The Week
(Thank you Giri & Jordan)

Meanest Video Of The Week
Laughing at this requires a well-developed sense of schadenfreude.

Near-Miss Internet Meme
I want to strangle the creator of this video for going to all the trouble of being almost brilliant and then NOT SYNCHING THE EDITS. Shame.

Infostractions For Graphtards

Finally, a smart infographic. Couldn’t find the original source. Full image here.

This week’s winner of the useless infographics award is Deflation Education: Secrets of the Death Spiral:

Is it dead yet? Is the Internet dead? Is Facebook dead? If you spend enough time on the web, this kind of question becomes incredibly tedious. See The Tragic Death of Practically Everything if you don’t know what I mean; it’s a tidy roundup of press about the death of everything from iPods to e-mail, including the death of both print and eBooks. Now that would be a tragedy. If that happened, what would we read, especially now that the iPad is killing the magazine (and 18 other things) as well? As a result of all this kind of linkbait content flooding the web, I actually find it refreshing when one of these deaths is more or less confirmed. Especially when it impacts me directly. It wasn’t too long ago that you could debate whether newspapers are dead, but I think the eulogy is being delivered as you read this. And now, at last, I think the real death of the printed book is imminent. Although as recently as September 2009 I was pondering the pros and cons of eBooks vs their dead tree counterparts, a few pieces of information finally tipped the scales for me recently, which was a relief, because I’m nearly finished with a book myself, and was struggling a bit with how to market it. The fact that there’s an iPad vs Kindle debate going on at all is a powerful statement that those who understand books and making money are committed to the future of the eBook. But what is probably informing my decision even more is the wealth of information about how much money you DON’T make in traditional publishing. My first glimpse into this was this article from last year in which the author of a top 20 NYT bestseller shares that she netted about 27 grand for her troubles. And most recently, influencer and media guru Seth Godin said that in spite of his significant success with traditional publishing, he’s giving it up for his future releases. Which has helped me solidify my plan to forgo the traditional publishing route (unless you can introduce me to Ellen or Oprah) and utilize a mix of guerrilla marketing and the web, with print on demand solutions to satisfy the paper-addicted. I often joke that with certain technologies like landline phones you need only wait for the over-fifty crowd to die and the technology will die with them, but books are much more emotional. What do you think? Will the book be joining its distant cousin the newspaper within say, a decade? And if your answer is a resolute “no”, are you over forty?

I’d say this technology has seen its day:

One thing we can all probably agree on is that Washington could use some fresh blood. That’s why we’re so excited about the new GOP superstar Ben Quayle’s recent win in the Arizona congressional primaries. We think the brilliant 33 year old was spot-on with his observation that aging Washington insider Barack Obama is the worst president in history, a fact that so-called “scholars” absurdly try to refudiate. We think Ben’s platform based on “that guy’s the WORST” and “I’m gonna knock the hell out of Washington” is exactly what America needs, and that his recent victory points in only one direction: The White House. In spite of our confidence that when he’s old enough, he’ll be prepared to be the leader of the free world, the sad fact is that in 2012, he won’t be. Old enough, that is. Which is why the obvious choice to head the ticket is the seasoned political hand of Sarah Palin. We think citizens and legislators on both sides of the aisle agree that this is an absolute dream ticket for the GOP in 2012. Frankly, the only problem with the GOP ticket in 2008 was that John was too old, and everyone’s fantasy was for Sarah to be on top. To show our support for the 2012 GOP dream we can all believe in, we’ll be rolling out a line of promotional items, but for now all we have is a bumper sticker . Which at the insane price of six bucks even WE can’t afford. But grab these limited edition Cafe Press items while you can, because we’ll be looking for a service that gives us a wholesale price that isn’t 300% of normal retail, and then these items will be collectibles. Feel free to share any clever slogans of your own; we won’t share the profits of course, but you’ll have the personal satisfaction of helping bring this country the leadership it desperately needs.

Perfect for your stretch Hummer!

Get the bumper sticker while supplies last.

Well, now that you mention it, maybe I did.

It had been a long time since I had thought of the game Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon. That is, until a friend recently turned me on to a production starring (among others; more on that further on) Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, and Cesar Romero. Sounds like an episode of the Batman TV series, right? Well if you add Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Mickey Rooney, Slim Pickens, and Groucho Marx in his final appearance in film, you have Skidoo, creating one of the weirder nexuses possible in the six degrees game. I have no idea how I managed to make it this far in life without having seen this star-studded masterpiece of late sixties psychadelic wackiness. It’s like Jackie Gleason on acid, because, well, it stars Jackie Gleason - on acid. Along with just about everyone else at one point in the film. The cast alone makes this flick worth watching, but you’ll especially enjoy it if you’re into other movies from 1967/68, a couple of years when it seems someone must have been pret-ty busy running around Hollywood spiking the punch and baking brownies. Movies like Head, The President’s Analyst, The Party, Barbarella, and Casino Royale. There’s also a ton of interesting background story relating to the movie. It was produced and directed by the legendary Otto Preminger, who - in an amusing twist on the connections mentioned above - played Mr Freeze in the Batman TV series once. And only once; apparently he wasn’t too popular on set. Also worthy of note is that aside from being Groucho’s last film, he tried LSD before taking the role, feeling that it would be irresponsible to play a character named “God” in what was essentially a pro-LSD propaganda film without having tried the stuff. Good luck finding a copy of Skidoo; although it’s been broadcast on cable and bootlegged, the only copy we could find was a poorly-seeded torrent that is apparently a really bad copy of an old Beta tape.

The Trailer For The Movie

God and His Sidekick, Played By The Ethereal 60’s Model Donyale Luna