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Amy Winehouse's Racist Song [Race-baiting]
The latest awful thing druggie singer Amy Winehouse has done is to sing a racist song on camera, set to the tune of children's song "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" but with racial slurs substituted for body parts. The British singer's racist ditty was recorded a year ago by husband Blake Fielder-Civil, who swore the videocamera wasn't on. Britain's News Of The World, which released the video, said Winehouse appeared to be in some sort of "dingy crack den." If some terrible bigoted crap like this has to come out, it might as well come out now — Winehouse is so far down the road of self-destruction that a disaster of this scale was considered pretty much inevitable, and the fact that she was goaded and high will help blunt the backlash. Video of the song, if you care to watch it, is after the jump.
read moreamy winehouseClipsGossipMon, 09 Jun 2008 05:20:14 EDTRyan Tate
Easiest Blog Book Deal Ever [Facebook]
An anonymous blogger is posting Facebook statuses along with comically slightly disguised photos of the people who wrote them. It has the potential to be a carnival of derision, except the blog has no comment form. Good thing we do.
read moreBloggerstumblrwebtardsMon, 09 Jun 2008 04:55:25 EDTNick Douglas
Who's Trying To Convince Everyone That Cell Phones Pop Popcorn? [Hoax]
A new handful of YouTube videos supposedly show cell phones popping popcorn. The method: Surround kernels with a few cell phones and call the phones. When they ring, the kernels pop. The videos have gotten a couple million combined views, and they've seemingly convinced many commenters to fear phones, despite the several obvious signs that they're fake.
1. It's scientifically impossible. Snopes already covered a similar hoax about cooking eggs with phones. As Snopes explains, the energy emitted by mobile phones isn't nearly powerful enough to sufficiently raise the food's temperature. A British TV show debunked the myth when it failed to even warm an egg under a pile of a hundred phones. And a YouTube commenter explains further: "A 1 kilowatt microwave takes around one minute to pop its first kernel, and that's in a closed environment. A cell phone transmitter operates from 0.1 to 1 watt, but this video shows these kernels popping almost immediately."
A poor grasp of science leads people to fear the technology around them. Everyone's vaguely aware that phones use radio waves, so they misapply the concept. The phones in the video are merely ringing, which only means they're receiving the radio waves that are always around us. If those waves popped popcorn, there wouldn't be an unpopped kernel left in the U.S.
2. It's got the same hallmarks of fakery as other viral videos.
Remember the viral Levi's ad and Ray-Ban ad? The actors in these videos have the same fake camaraderie. I always doubt a video's veracity when I hear someone say "Tell me you got that!" Strangely, no one ever seems to say that in real stunt videos: They know the cameraman got it, that's his damn job.
Okay, so who's making these?
These videos don't take much effort — just four phones and some time in Adobe Aftereffects. So anyone could have made them. But who would bother? Googling some of the video makers reveals they've been spamming blogs promoting their video. It's just one of the many annoying tactics born of YouTube, but at least it reveals that our creators are gunning hard to get a lot of attention for very little work.
That might be the behavior of a bad viral marketer. And I mean really bad — would any phone company actually contract videos like these? Can you sell phones by convincing stupid people that they'll fry their brains? Seems a bit counterproductive, but I'll admit it would be satisfying to see this uncovered as history's worst viral campaign.
read moreCell PhonesClipsTechnologyValleywagwebtardsMon, 09 Jun 2008 04:25:30 EDTNick Douglas
Self-Humiliating Your Way To Literary Stardom [Celebrity Science]
The Wall Street Journal ran down the list of authors who have created YouTube videos to promote their books, and it turns out there's way more than enough writer videos to call it a trend! Video makers include Meg Cabot of Princess Diaries; Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club; Naomi Klein of Shock Doctrine; Sherre Hirsch and Jen Lancaster. There are even companies that specialize in making these "book trailers." Is this a sad case of desperate scribblers whoring themselves out to an increasingly apathetic public? Probably! But it can be fun to watch!
"Making a promotional video can involve sacrificing some personal dignity," notes the Journal, after describing one writer who interviewed the protagonist of his novel, played by a man in drag.
And it turns out "there is scant evidence... that the average book trailer actually has much impact on book sales."
But how sad is it that, 15 years ago, there really was no mass outlet for a video of Cabot using two dolls to stage a scene fromPretty In Pink, as show in the first of three dignity-sapping author videos below? The brave experiments in writer exposure must continue, if only so we can all see more awesome doll play.
An anonymous blogger is 
A new handful of YouTube videos supposedly show cell phones popping popcorn. The method: Surround kernels with a few cell phones and call the phones. When they ring, the kernels pop. The videos have gotten a couple million combined views, and they've seemingly convinced many commenters to fear phones, despite the several obvious signs that they're fake.