May 2011
Random Person at Party: So, what do you do?
Ylva: I work in media.
RPaP: Oh, that must be fun.

May 2012
Random Person at Party: So, what do you do?
Ylva: I work in media.
RPaP: Oh, that must be challenging. You know, [insert one or more of the following, albeit in much longer version: I will never pay for any kind of media again (+ apologetic smile). | My children won't pay for any kind of media, but I do like the smell of print on paper (+ equally apologetic smile, illogically). | Other people's children won't pay for any kind of media, and should be put down.]
Ylva, trying to break through rant: …. digital… exciting… opportunities… business models… consumer-centred… etc…
RPaP: So to sum up, challenging, very challenging, Armageddon basically.
Ylva: Actually, I was going to get a glass of wine, so…
RPaP: Well, you do need it.

May 2013
Random Person at Party: So, what do you do?
Ylva: I work in media.
RPaP: That must be…
Ylva, trying to avoid the unavoidable: YES! IT IS REWARDING, INTERESTING AND HIGHLY ENJOYABLE to be in media at the moment, really perfect for someone who likes doing business creatively, the internet and people making magic in equal measures.
RPaP: No, no, I meant to say challenging. You see, I will never pay for any kind of media again, my children won’t pay for any kind of media, and I hear that other people’s children now expect to be paid for being arsed to consume media.
Ylva, trying to break through rant: …. innovate… mobile… new… thrilling… disruptive, in a good way… etc…
RPaP: So to sum up, you will be out of work any day now. Perhaps tonight even, check your phone for messages.
Ylva: Actually, I was going to get a glass of wine, so…
RPaP: Can you afford that? Under the circumstances.

May 2014
Random Person at Party: So, what do you do?
Ylva: I’m on temporary release actually, just for the weekend. Normally I’m doing time at Hinseberg, Sweden’s largest women’s prison. 25 to life.
RPaP: Aha. What, if you don’t mind me asking…?
Ylva: It’s no secret. I had a nervous breakdown and killed a Random Person at a party, after s/he had pestered me with anecdotal evidence of the decline of legacy media and some misguided pity. You see, I used to work in media, and I loved it but this endless monologue repeated from various RPaP:s just made me lose it. So, I bludgeoned him/her to death with a triple magnum bottle of wine I had just ordered to make a point. And here I am, now.
RPaP: Oh. Well, at least it got you out of the media industry.
Because that must have been really challenging.

The Swedish Social Democrats have a new pin for 1st of May.
It’s a QR code.
It would be too predictable to write something ironic about this, so I refrain. However, here’s the fun part: The Swedish Social Democratic Youth League, in a brave act of resistance, made their own instead.

“It’s fine for them“, the Youth League’s communication strategist, Juan-Pablo Roa, sneered to media industry magazine Dagens Media. “But our target group is trend sensitive.” (To be fair, I added the sneering and italics to entertain you. Unbiased quotations is for journalists, I feel. I’m an account director, I have no conscience.)

Which is why, quite brilliantly, their 1st of May mark instead treats the idea of Social Democracy like it was thought out by a fashion editor on Instagram speed. “It feels, you know, really NOW with this whole vintage Solidarity/Olof Palme/Nude make-up/Holding meetings under bad fluorescent lighting/Being a young parent without being regarded as white trash/8 mm aesthetics thing. Can we do something with that?”

Yes indeed: a symbol inspired by a 1960 election poster according to the Art Director Simon Röder – who apparently is confident (and rightly so, I say) that in a culture of Constant Now, it’s not ironic that a blatantly retro sign bears the message “Politics in Motion”. “The Right stands still, but a society in transition needs politics that move forward constantly”, he says.

Now look at that. Instead of an uncomfortable symbol of reverence to the deity IT with a faint smell of “I should really learn how to tweet”, a sign created right from inside mediated, aestheticized, fragmented (digital) 2010′s culture. Aha!

 
Oh, I (+ N the Boyfriend) wrote something about the state of the artwork in 2012. I also sang, danced, and raised glasses to a variety of backgrounds. Now, I better get back to conspicuous consumption on the internet, digital adventures of legacy media, Zuck’s hoodies, that sort of thing. Hello.

Mentally, this is me now. Physically, I celebrate the new year in a more traditional Swedish fashion: +2°C, rain, running in semi-panic down the street shielding my hairdo with my coat. Oh well.

Sunday reading!

1. Fred Wilson: What has changed? (AVC.com)

NY based VC Fred Wilson comments on why VC funding of consumer web and mobile companies is down 42% in this first nine months of 2012, compared to 2011. Now, I’m not all that interested in why startups can’t get funding per se, but I am interested in why it might be harder for digital consumer services to make it big. In an economy of expectation with the next big thing always just around the corner, what happens if that thing just isn’t there?

Read it here »

2. Liz Gannes: Nobody goes online anymore (AllthingsD.com)

In a recent Forrester survey, people claimed that they spend 19.6 hours per week using the Internet, versus 21.9 hours per week in 2011. Well, obviously not true. Looking beyond that surveys are not the most trustworthy of market research methods, it points to the fact that since it is now very hard to do much of anything without being online, consumers forget about the whole digital thing. Instead they see it as the normal way of doing whatever they are doing, taking photographs or finding an address on a map. Finally. Times of boring technology are the times when revolution really happens. And as any social scientist knows, it’s what people think is not worthy to even notice that’s the most telling part of a culture.

Read it here »