It seems Anonymous has targeted Facebook on “Guy Fawkes” day (November 5, 2011), but still not invested in any better text-to-speech technology or graphics. Hey, guys. Here’s a site you can turn text into speech free. Sure it’ll have a commercial behind it, but maybe you can convince them to sponsor you.
The video below is a report, and the actual Anonymous video appears below…
What happens when you take a somewhat effeminate male voice and overdub a National Geographic video about honey badgers? You get this hysterical clip that examines — no judges and condemns and celebrates — the absurdly brave behavior of the Honey Badger (courtesy of the good users at Reddit).
Whether he’s eating snakes, climbing into bee hives, or chasing down poisonous animals, the Honey Badger? He just doesn’t give a sh*t. NSFW.
Props to Randallsanimals (find him on Twitter). Just as I was begging for more, I found them buried under a playlist on his channel. We have the Great White Shark, and here’s the full playlist of the great animal world of Randall.
If you dig it, give it a vote on MSNBC’s Wonder Wheel, or buy a “Honey Badge Doesn’t Care” shirt. Me? I’d prefer one that says “The Nastyass Honey Badger is Doesn’t Give a Shit and is Pretty Badass”
Here’s a press release by Cone (a division of Advertising Conglomerate Omnicom), which did a study about consumer expectations of companies in social media. I’ve got an important point of clarity:
Cone Finds that Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media: Harder-to-reach audiences are ripe for social media interaction.
Some stats:
So I’m not arguing with this study, but I want to make an important distinction. I believe people don’t want most companies truly involved in social media. That’s because a company can do little more than issue an ad or a press release. A company can’t leave a comment, respond to my note, post a vlog, or even write a blog. The company’s employees, however, can get involved individually.
But their names are not Coke, Mac, American Express or Kraft. They’re Mike, Ed, Tom, Jennifer, Micki, Karen or even Woody..
Think about your favorite companies or brands, and the feeling you get when you reflect on them. Do it right now. Picka cool brand. Now think about a different company (maybe a small web-based one) in which you’ve had a positive interaction with a specific employee. You remember his or her name. Often your bond is as strong or stronger with the latter. For me, Revver will always be Micki. Metacafe was Talia. DailyReel was Alex and Felicia. TVWeek is Daisy. blip.tv is Mike. YouTube is BigJoe or Mark (because Chad and Stephen are now under PR-induced witness relocation). These companies are cool because the person I’ve met there is cool. These companies are harder to trash when you’ve met someone whose job isn’t PR or sales.
Like G. Gorden Liddy once said of FBI agents (paraphrasing): we had to behave knowing that the person whom we interact would probably not interact with another FBI agent in their life, and would tell friends and family about that experience.
Vivid Example: On the early videos of the recent “Hooking Up,” the show’s writer was reacting to comments, and signing them “Woody.” I thought that was far more intimate than a comment from “Hooking Up” or “HBOLabs.” Sadly he didn’t have time to ride comments on Professor Klein (Nalts) first appearance. 🙂
People want to get social with actual humans, and companies are just collections of these humans. Woody was funny, laid back, and he did a good job acting as Sxephil’s brother. So when I think of HBOLabs I think of Woody.
It’s a lot easier to trust HBOLabs when they give you a Woody.
“Talk about how sad it is that people refuse to get involved in politics,” says Dan Carlyle, Today Now’s Political Correspondent. “Blaming others for being uninformed is always a great way to seem informed yourself.”
That was part of Carlyle’s advice for people who would like to pretend they give a shit about November’s U.S. election. Carlyle Carlyle provided that advice to Today Now! Host Jim Haggerty and his lovely Co-Host Tracy Gill interview Carlyle, and are subject to his “phone fakeout” when asked about healthcare.
Carlyle also urges us to return from “fake voting” on election day with a poll anecdote that is specific, but not so specific that someone could check it out. “‘I ended up in line right behind my old college roommate‘ works. But ‘the roof caved in’ doesn’t.”
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Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election
Warning: YouTube prank spoiler here. If you haven’t spent some time on YouTube’s homepage today, stop reading immediately.
If you have been there, you might have noticed that each of the attractive thumbnails take you to the same video. Rick Astley’s supah cheesy “Never Gonna Give You Up.” You’ve been “rickrolled.”
My hats off to the person that sold this internally. I’ve watched this video recently, and I’m quite sure I didn’t find it on my own. I wish I could remember where I found it. According to Wikipedia, Around the year 2007, posting mislabeled links to the video on the Internet became popular, in a prank known as “rickrolling.”
I can just hear the discussion at a YouTube “April’s Fool Brainstorming” meeting last week in San Bruno.
LOLLOLLLOLLLL. I can hear them now: “hey, is my computer upside down?” Can I walk you to your car. Mr. Chen? It looks like it’s raining again.