Buffalo Wings and Toasted Ravioli

By the Standup Economist: 

(See earlier posting here.)

OK, this is getting ridiculous.  Today’s posting at Podcasting News, “iPod Madness, Techno Addiction Ruling Lives,” links to a BBC story suggesting that people are becoming addicted to their wired and wireless gadgets.  The illustration?  A pinup-style photo of a scantily clad blonde with a cell phone.

Maybe I should just quit reading Podcasting News.

Almost a year ago, popular tech blogger and author Kathy Sierra canceled a speech, and stopped writing her blog, after receiving a series of gruesomely explicit threats of death and violent rape.  Things like that happen online.  What really disturbed me about the incident was the number of “decent, well-intentioned” bloggers–mostly, but not exclusively, men–who just didn’t get it.  I read a number of blog postings about how it’s a rough world out there, and if you’re going to blog you just need to develop a thick skin.  After all, lots of guy bloggers get hate mail to, don’t they?

Never mind the fact that men at least like to think they can defend themselves in a fight.  Never mind the macho culture that enables men to feel continually empowered in a way that women, who always live with the threat of rape from some stranger or–more likely–acquaintance never can.  If some anonymous blog commenter threatens to punch me in the face, that’s no different from a woman blogger being threatened with rape, mutilation, and murder, is it?

It’s the casual sexism and misogyny of the online media that I want to take on here.  The promise of online media is that it is accessible to anyone–that traditionally unrepresented voices can make themselves heard through blogging, podcasting, and other digital media.  However, stories like this one in Podcasting News show how far the reality falls short of the ideal.

As reported on the ClickZ Network:

Businesses hoping to get the attention of 18- to 34-year-old women should consider buying ads on Web sites that offer so-called “long form” video installments related to popular network TV shows, according to Nielsen Online.

The company said its VideoCensus syndicated online video measurement service, unveiled last spring, is finding women tend to watch more online versions of TV network programs than do their male counterparts. Men of the same age range gravitate more toward sites like YouTube that feature consumer-generated content, according to the VideoCensus data.

But the headline given to the same story in Podcasting News is a bit pithier: Men Want It Quick And On Demand; Women Like To Take Their Time And Enjoy It.  Illustrated, of course, with a photo from the marketing video podcast French Maid TV (which, incidentally, has not released an episode since July 2007, making its relevance to the story even more remote).

The bibliomancy meme has been going around for awhile, and since it’s been slow blogging here lately, why not try it here?  “So, the instructions are as follows: ‘grab the nearest book, open to page 123, go down to the 5th sentence and type up the 3 following sentences.’”

My nearest book: Persepolis 2, by Marjane Satrapi.   (And yes, I can’t wait to see the movie.)

The sentence: “Be careful!  He’s a ladies’ man.”

Now your turn.

So I noticed that there is  WNY Psychics Meetup Group on Meetup.com.

Query: why do psychics need Meetup.com?

Michael Froomkin at Discourse.net writes:

Boing Boing reports that TSA is now requiring that you remove all electronic devices from your carry-on bags, including cables etc. and place them in a separate bin to be scanned at the security checkpoints. I could hold the line up ten minutes myself given all the gear I travel with…

No word at present about this new assault on air travel at TSA’s new oh-so-friendly PR blog (“Liquids cover 70% of the earth and they also make up a good percentage of our comments from the traveling public.”).

Don’t let the smiling faces fool you: the more we engage in security theater and ‘protect’ against minimal threats to look good while diverting resources from things that matter, the more that any hypothetical enemies are laughing.