Take "emo," for example. Is most music not inherently emotional? (It is.) And yet, someone decided that something was "emo," and so it was, because we're all idiots. Or "indie." How can a band be independent ("indie") of anything when they are already a group of people aligned with each other? Or, for that matter, signed to a record label?

They can't, but because English-speaking human beings are creatures who care not for the beauty and brilliance of language so much as the convinence of what Orwell rightly predicted with the advent of Newspeak only a little over half a decade ago, Hipster Runoff—at its best, an unimpeachable satire on contemporary youth culture—was able to create "Chillwave" and get every music writer on the planet (including one at the New York Times) to use it, which is to say nothing of "Witch House" and furthermore, "Rape-Gaze."

And so we arrive at the juncture wherein someone has taken it upon themselves to devote time and intellectual capacity to a page on Wikipedia documenting "Tumblr-Wave," a genre that takes its name from that of the microblogging platform adored by melodramatic teenagers and incestuous media types everywhere.

Yes. This is something:

Forget the fact that plenty of artists prior to the three that the creator of this page singled out have strewn their music with references to Tumblr long before this, and that those same artists have often "allude[d]" to "90s culture and pop culture" in their music, and all of the people who also make music with Macbooks—the specificity of which is admittedly hilarious—and synthesizers (which is in all likelihood redundant, save the few fans of these artists who know what a real synthesizer actually is, but it might not be).

You can even forget the fact that proper nouns really have no place in genre-naming unless we're talking about the various movements of great late 20th century ice cream artisans.

And still, the reality of the painful realization that someone was stupid enough to make "Tumblr-Gaze" manifest in the form of that I'm-Beginning-To-Question-The-Beauty-Of-Its-Democratic-Nature human endeavor Wikipedia is simply that this must be the work of a sole madman or madwoman, a rogue etymological terrorist who must be stopped, and easily can.

As such, this writer endorses the unequivicoal deleting of "Tumblr-Gaze" from human existence, save that screengrab, which could serve as a lesson to us all about the way stupid ideas can hatch into things that burst from the chest of collective human intelligence like an alien bent on killing all aboard the spaceship of modern civilization's progress.

UPDATE: It appears someone has already started The Work to Be Done.

Godspeed them.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Kickstarter is looking more and more like the place for top talent to find production outside of the creative limits of studio systems and record labels. Earlier this week, a release went out heralding the arrival of neo-soul legend Cody Chestnutt's first album in a decade, funded through Kickstarter. Today, it's Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Being John Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, teaming up with the ousted showrunner of Community for a new movie through the crowdfunding platform.  

NBC's Community was a show kept alive by a rabid fan following who nearly read the network the riot act when showrunner Dan Harmon was ousted from his own production, which will continue for one more season.

Meanwhile, Charlie Kaufman is the kind of screenwriter and director whose unfiltered creative process no doubt scares most of Hollywood's "creative execs"—or the studio suits who give screenwriters "studio notes" on how to give their material "more shape" (i.e. more marketability)—out of their skin. In the age of Transformers 3, it's sometimes amazing that his films, which are almost always critically lauded, have even been made.

It's not surprising that this higher-profile material is beginning to find its way onto Kickstarter. Their statement for Anomalisa's presence on Kickstarter reads:

Our goal is to produce this unique and beautiful film outside of the typical Hollywood studio system where we believe that you, the audience, would never be allowed to enjoy this brilliant work the way it was originally conceived. We’ve been working in the television and movie industry for years and we just want to make something ourselves. Something pure. Something beautiful.

There's a slight point to be made in opposition to the presence of projects like these, however: Is Kickstarter big enough to hold both big name creative endeavors and those users who aspire to get their ideas funded who haven't achieved some modicum of fame already? Moreover, are those who would fund either project carrying wallets big enough to push both?

Watching the two sort each other out—as well as the work of boldfaced-named funders' and creators' labors on the service come to fruition—is going to be a hell of a thing to watch. For the fans, sure, but especially for the studios and labels these artists are shrugging off, who are probably paying as much attention as your average rabid fanboy to the way this all plays out.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Marnie: "No, I think he's hot. And what he does is so interesting."

Jessa: "What is a venture capitalist? It sounds like some sort of explorer but that can't be the case."

A few things in the shows portrayal of the VC are of note:

For example, the fact that 'Girls' creator Lena Dunham has stated in interviews that many a character and story-line have been inspired by and drawn from personal experiences, either of her own or her friends'.

Another is that the show does archtypes—especially those pertaining to Brooklyn—particularly well.

For example, if you can't say you don't know anybody with money in the tech community who lives in Williamsburg, who buys ostensibly interesting modernist furniture (that's really just whatever's at the front of the closest CB2), who fancies themselves somewhat creative with creative hobbies to go with said self-designation, you may not be paying close enough attention. Also, are you surprised that the first VC character to have a significant plotline on a buzzed-over show is a man? You shouldn't be.

And maybe you've heard stories about many a VC being an "asshole." Or the inter-personal relations of certain VCs looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe Lena Dunham has, too.

Either way, the character was part of a brilliant setup for one of the funniest moments in the show's run so far. Even better was the small attention to detail, especially where the show's writers' ideas about how a VC would act in this situation are concerned.

We've annotated and transcribed some of the scenes for your viewing and reading pleasure, up above. How right are they about this type of person? And even more:

Is it anybody in particular that they're right about?

We'll let you be the judge.*

[*Unless, of course, you know anybody who may reflect this character. In which case, shout.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Social media is just like this in that it has proven an adept method at making people's careers or salvaging them—it's either a life-raft for brilliant publicity maneuvers or a digital noose with which one can hang themselves in an instant. One of the best illustrations of this we've heard concerned the spice, Old Bay, and their attempt at social media, asking "Fans" of Old Bay on Facebook what their favorite uses for Old Bay was. The page ended up being more effort than it was worth, because as it turns out, many a marijuana user employs used Old Bay containers to store their weed. Who knew!

Like so many other things, social media is a conduit with which those trying to exploit it for gain can be turned on in an instant. A crucial difference, however, is that those most often betrayed by social media are often the least suspecting of it, which results in, to be kind, some very funny shit.

The setup in the video below involves the local news team outsourcing the question of what to put in a time capsule. Yes: A time capsule.

Without further ado—as seen on The Soup last night—here is a local news anchor team from Sacramento, caught off guard by Facebook:

If you do not get the joke—such as one Betabeat editor didn't—please feel free to ask those around you to explain it to you. Out loud. Ask them out loud.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Single-serving sites continue to transcend the outward resemblance of being useful. They're almost always better when paired with a performative aspect. When done well, The Single-Serving Site as Statement conveys a witty, sharp idea succinctly that offers only marginal functionality, if any. Besides, who needs a legitimately functional single-serving site when Twitter, desktop widgets, feeds, and SEO-baiting Huffington Post searches exist?

For example, while Babes of NPR might be interesting, fun to look at, and appeal to plenty of people, it's not as useful, funny, or memorable as Did Buzzfeed Hire Anybody New Today?

Which is why, to be modest in praise, the following may be the most perfect single-serving site ever.

Last week, someone started a Tumblr:

picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com

It has 148 notes on one post—its only—that simply reads "No posts yet."

This modest joke, if you still need it explained to you, is that nobody sees anybody else using QR codes, ever. And that it's an idiotic, square peg of an idea that advertising and marketing experts have unsuccessfully tried to shove down consumers' throats.

And that is how you make a single serving site.

Above, the QR code to end all QR codes. Scan at your own risk of being totally blown away.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

For another, Yahoo's stock took a hit, reaching a three-month low not a week later.

And now, according to All Things D's Kara Swisher, we're about to watch another seismic shift in Yahoo's operations, in the form of corporate restructuring and layoffs. In fewer words: This is about to get ugly.

Swisher reported this morning (emphasis ours):

According to multiple sources both inside and outside the Silicon Valley Internet giant, Yahoo’s CEO Scott Thompson is preparing a massive restructuring of the company, including layoffs that are likely to number in the thousands. Much of the change — which could be announced as soon as the end of this month — is being aimed at Yahoo’s large products organization, as well as other arenas in which the company has lagged. Also among those being considered for targeting: Public relations and marketing, research, marginal businesses and weaker regional efforts.

Shares of Yahoo only took a ten-cent hit today, but they won't be helped at all when this Economic Times report comes out. Yahoo's head of design, Tim Parsey, did not have his words given the kindest of contexts by the paper:

A year into his stint at Yahoo, Parsey admits that the company needs to change - and change majorly. As the Valley-based net giant grew across geographies and businesses, it failed to create a standardised technology base and that needs to change, Parsey told ET in an interaction. Yahoo, says Parsey, has thus far been a collection of disparate Internet properties.

There's nothing in the quotes to indicate he said anything exactly like that, but it is the second paragraph of the story. The most significant quote, from Parsey:

I'm building a culture of design that is rational, emotional and meaningful," said Parsey who believes that the evolution of design in the digital space is set to go to the next level. He has been visiting India and his team in Bangalore at least once every three months for the last year.

One can imagine he'll be getting a call from corporate on this.

If Swisher's report is accurate, though, it probably won't be nearly as bad as some of the calls other Yahoo employees will be receiving in the weeks to come.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Yes, here is how ESPN plans on attracting the best developing talent in the world to their company and their API:

Okay, okay. To be fair, they added a parenthetical:

Still, note the distinguishment between "nerds" and "awesome sports stuff," as if

(A) Nerds are incapable of doing anything but servicing "awesome sports stuff."
(B) "Awesome sports stuff" and "nerds" are generally mutually exclusive.
(C) They still have yet to fully process that thing with the hands and the eyes and the imaginary books the two guys on the Knicks keep doing. Maybe they're making fun of "nerds"?
(D) They've run out of the creative force used to bring racist Asian puns into the equation because all of those resources have been devoted to covering Jeremy Lin, so they just decided to malign other people besides Jeremy Lin known for their mental dexterity.

Either way, here's hoping some "nerds" show ESPN's API what kind of "awesome sports stuff" they can build, like a single-serving app that launches a DDoS on Bristol, or something that prevents Chris Bermann from getting his third and fourth lunches.

[Further insight from Mr. Langer here.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Have your heard of this new contraption by Nike, the Fuelband? It's the company's latest attempt to capitalize on the techno-fitness craze, and you can't get in on it.

A limited quantity of Nike Fuelbands went on sale yesterday at 5PM for $149 a pop. A tipster, who was in the market for a Fuelband, explains his experience trying to score one:

They opened it up for preorder with a tweeted link at 5pm just now, sold out by 5:04 and people got screwed because the site crashed.

Fucking insanity. Can't wait for the homicides to start

Runner's rage, perhaps?

So, what is this insanity-inducing so-called Fuelband thingermjigger? Basically, it's a watch that seals around your wrist with a USB port. It then counts your physical activity for the day not by calories, but by "oxygen kinetics," which is then translated into a metric Nike came up called Nikefuel, which is the number assigned to your physical activity for the day. It then shares your Nikefuel output with your iPhone/iPod, which it then does a bunch of things with: Broadcasts it socially, measures it with your day-to-day, compares it with your emotions that day, etc. It's kind of compelling. It goes in line with the continued Gamification of Fitness Craze and the Self-Quantified Life. It's also currently totally sold out.

Try to get one, and you're probably gonna see this:

Nike first started to get into the techno fitness watch craze with the Nike+ Apple system, wherein, you put a button under your Nike shoes, and it syncs up to your iPod/iPhone. It gave rise to a bunch of technofitness gizmos since then: the Jawbone, Fitbit, etc. But a bunch them aren't that great. And Gizmodo says the Fuelband is "awesome." It's supposed to be the best one of these things yet, for those obsessed with this kind of thing.

Since the debut of the Fuelband in January—and of course, Jeremy Lin's effect on the athletic apparel market—Nike stock's been on the-up-and-up:

One of the crucial features of the Fuelband is the way it participates in social networks: If it works, and people begin advertising their "Nikefuel" outputs on Twitter, they'll have a device on their hands that creates and advertises its own viral element through its users. Which, for any company retailing anything, is the Magical Gobstopper of retail that everyone's trying to get right.

For further evidence, see the New York Times' own Twitter-savvy media reporter Brian Stelter's interview about losing weight publicly, on Twitter:

I had tried in the past — in very slight ways, without a real goal — to eat better and I would fail every time because no one around me knew I was trying. This time, by having it on Twitter, both my friends and family — as well as strangers — would hold me accountable. So if I did screw up and if I did have too many cookies, I’d hear about it from people on Twitter, and I needed that constant reinforcement because you really are fighting against both yourself and also society when you’re trying to lose weight, and I needed that reinforcement all the time.”

The Nike Fuelband could just be a (literal) product of retail hype and Shiny New Thing qualities that doesn't do much for the entire market of products merging technology and good old fashioned fitness. Or it could revolutionize it.

There's also the possibility that this exciting new diet pill will just do the work for us and make everyone forget about how important exercise is. So, who knows. But it'll be interesting to watch, considering all the mostly-failed attempts of the past for this kind of thing to catch on.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Jeremy Lin may be the most popular athlete in history whose physical skills are equally proportional to his consummate nerdiness. One example: The Landry Fields/Jeremy Lin "Nerdshake." For another, just look to his fanbase, which apparently includes coders and the tech-savvy users they cater to, both of whom are expressing their Linsanity through popular web apps.

Instapaper, Marco Arment's original "reader" app, has now been transformed for the Jeremy Lin-obsessed into—yes—Linstapaper, which collects all the Jeremy Lin-related reads obsessives would want to pore over, all in once place, in one nifty URL, which "Read Later" tags attached to them. The man behind it? Jeremy Singer-Vine, a journalist-programmer who's written and programmed for Slate and the Wall Street Journal. The Atlantic Wire points to Mr. Singer-Vine's Twitter, where he notes:

Wow—In the few hours since linstapaper.com launched, it's had visitors from 30+ countries, including Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia.

— Jeremy Singer-Vine (@jsvine) February 20, 2012

Not bad. He's also been taking recommendations over Twitter for what to aggregate into Linstapaper; it's an impressive case study in crowd-sourcing moving in the opposite direction it usually does.

Elsewhere, there are LINSTAGRAMS: Code for Instagrammed photos tagged with the word "LIN" and aggregated on Hashgram (which picks up various Instagram tags). There's no cute URL for it yet, but there's more than enough to keep the tag moving.

Meanwhile, SF Gate's Tech Chronicles blog notes the Lin Effect on social networks.

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian recently attempted to explain the nerd-crush on Jeremy Lin as best he can at Wired on how Jeremy Lin's success is so exciting for him and his "fellow geeks" (he offered Betabeat the same takeaway a day before):

Jeremy Lin is a validation of our worldview: Ignore expectation, follow the data.

...which, as evidenced, said geeks will be continuing to provide on many a medium in the coming months until the NBA season ends, and probably long after that. Linsanity—especially on the Internet—isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The timeline of New York Knicks overnight superstar Jeremy Lin on social networks probably goes something like:

1. Twitter ("Who's this Jeremy Lin guy?")
2. Facebook ("Look at this Jeremy Lin guy.")
3. Foursquare ("I'm watching this Jeremy Lin guy right now.")
4. Tumblr ("Fuck Yeah This Jeremy Lin Guy Dot Tumblr Dot Com.")
5. Reddit ("Here is everything about this Jeremy Lin guy that will be reported by news outlets in no less than two weeks.")

And then:

6. Quora ("What is it like to play basketball with Jeremy Lin?")

Well, not only has the question been asked, but it now has an answer, and it's basically set Quora on fire.

[FURTHER LINSANITY: THIS IS WHAT JEREMY LIN HAS DONE TO THE STOCK MARKET]

Quora—the question-and-usually-intelligent-answers social networking site—got gifted with a pretty great thread: A former Harvard Basketball teammate and a former sixth grade basketball teammate of Jeremy Lin's are both talking about what it's like to play basketball with him. The questions have since been upvoted 400 times and read 10454 times.

There are some obvious, to-be-expected moments of awe:

We were chanting his name on the shuttle ride home, never imagining that a sold out Madison Square Garden would be doing the same thing a few years later.

The legitimately insightful tidbits:

...During the 4th quarter of the Nets game the announcer kept saying that Jeremy looked exhausted. What he doesn't know is that Jeremy always looks like that. He would appear to be dead tired after 5 minutes of warm ups. No one really knew why, but no one really cared because he would always come out and put in work for 40 minutes.

And the funny, classically Quora-ephemera lines:

I was always more of a Madden guy, but from limited experience and word of mouth I gathered he was excellent at Halo.

It's worth a read, definitely for fans of the Knicks and Jeremy Lin, but also as a guide to how Quora works best. Also, if anything, because it's probably going to result in a few new Quora users by the end of the night.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek