“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moment’s notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-17 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Programs from week of March 6, 2017
This Week’s Podcast:
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
THINK
I’m doing some substitute teaching these days, so that puts me in classrooms. One of the things I’m seeing there are posters that read “Before you speak – THINK”. Think is then broken down by letter. Is it True, is it Helpful, is it Inspiring, is it Necessary, is it Kind? It’s designed to help kids develop an internal editor and verbal impulse control. The basic concept is one that’s been around for years. Rotarians will recognize its relationship to what they call the Four-Way Test. A Quaker will see their tradition of the “Three Sieves” here as well. There are many of us who will remember being taught by our mothers that “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all”. While the concept is being attributed to everyone from Abraham Lincoln to the Persian mystic poet Rumi, we don’t really know where it comes from. But in one form or another, it’s been around for a long time.
Not that it seems to be helping much.
The Internet is rife with a whole lot of behaviors that clearly aren’t following the “before you speak” guidelines. There have been a variety of attempts to deal with this. Whether it’s a reminder to “Don’t feed the trolls”, in an attempt to freeze out people who misbehave, or simply eliminating comment sections, as more websites have been doing, to try and rein in the madness, there’s still a very serious problem facing us pretty much every day we’re out there.
The folks at NRK, the Norwegian public broadcasting entity, are trying something different. Before you can comment on an article on their page, you have to pass a test. A three-question quiz about the content of the article itself. The concept is that if you can get everyone to agree on some basic facts about the content, which requires them to actually READ the post, the quality of the discussion should improve.
I stand in awe of the sheer brilliance of this. Comments from people who have clearly NOT read the link are all too common when I’m scrolling through my pages. Plus it gives everyone that momentary pause before we begin yet another flame war.
Early results seemed to be pretty good. I love the phrase they use to describe what they’re trying to do. They talk about “…taking the edge off rant mode”. They admit that right now the process is only being used on one of their best behaved online communities, but it’s an attempt to find a new way of encouraging civil discussion.
There is one other variation of the “before you speak” rule that I’m seeing these days. It asks “Is it an improvement upon silence?”. That’s a test that far too many of us fail, I’m afraid.
Snapchat
We seem to have achieved a standard story line for a social media application. They all go something like this – A small group of very smart people get together and create something they think is cool. Once they launch their service, a whole bunch of other people discover it and think it’s cool too. They tell all their friends and suddenly hundreds of thousands of people are involved. Around this time the media finally catches wind of what’s going on and declares the new social media service as “the next big thing”. At which point millions of people start using it. Shortly thereafter money enters the picture. It starts with venture capital, which shows up very early in the story arc. Then either one of the “big boys”, right now that would be Google or Facebook, buys the service, or there is an IPO. That’s an Initial Public Offering. In other words, they sell stock. About this time adults start showing up in bigger numbers, and the younger users begin to move on to something else. Soon after that, the money people start wondering when this is going to make some money for them. At which point, the service either begins to die slowly, is finally bought out, or in very rare cases, actually begins to function as a business.
The folks at Snapchat find themselves in the middle of this story arc right now. Three former Stanford students got the ball rolling, and we have now just passed the IPO phase of the story.
Oh, and the adults have started showing up. The demographic of 45 and older is growing, while the 24 and under demo has started to slide.
All of this combines to create a challenging environment for the latest “next big thing”. Much like when Twitter first hit the big time, that older demographic is struggling with just what Snapchat is all about. I will say that I am not a Snapchatter, so I looked the answer up. The one I like the best says that Snapchat is about having a conversation through pictures. Those pictures, called “snaps”, only last for a little while and then disappear.
There’s still that question waiting at the end of the story. And the news there isn’t good. Last month parent company Snap Inc. announced a five hundred million dollar loss for 2016 and warned that the company may never be profitable.
So for all the hoopty do about the newest “hot” social media, it could be headed toward the same limbo as “Friendster”.
Social media can be a lot of fun, but we need to remember that their story may not last any longer than a snap.
Growing Up
Eventually, we all grow up. It’s not something that all of us look forward to, and plenty of us fight the concept tooth and nail. Often long past the point when we need to just acknowledge it as fact and move on. So the reaction to the new movie “Logan” interests me. It’s another sign that the most juvenile of movie genres is at least thinking about growing up.
I don’t use the word “juvenile” in any derogatory sense. Juvenile means having to do with young people. Comic books, and the movies made from them are of their very essence, juvenile. I am sure that more than a few hackles will be raised at this, but the nature of comics is a relatively simplistic world view. While good and evil are not as clear cut in these stories as they were fifty years ago, it’s still good guys versus bad guys. And the solution to problems and conflict is achieved through classic “Biff”, “Pow”, “Bam” techniques. In the movies, the fighting is accompanied by a steady drumroll of explosions.
It is simply not the most sophisticated storytelling in literature.
Which doesn’t mean it’s bad. I was a dedicated comic reader as a boy and into my teen years. My daughter will tell you that she thought I was having a fit the first time I saw a trailer for the original Ironman movie. I was so excited I literally came up out of my seat. But as time went on, I needed more sophisticated stories and more refined resolutions.
“Logan” is the ninth movie about the Marvel Universe character called “Wolverine”. All nine of them star Hugh Jackman, a virtual unknown prior to 2000’s “X-Men”. He announced prior to the release of “Logan” that this will be his swan song in the role.
By every description, and I will note I have yet to see the movie, “Logan” doesn’t settle for the usual approach to a superhero movie. It’s darker and edgier. To the point that it earned an “R” rating, anathema normally to a movie with a teen-aged audience demographic.
But think about it. If you were ten in 2000, you’re twenty-seven now. While you certainly still love many things from your childhood, you are looking for something a little different in just about every part of your life. One of the brilliant things about J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series is that the stories become more grown up as Harry grows up. They anticipate that the audience is becoming more sophisticated as well.
There’s still room for an old fashioned “Pow” “Biff” “Bam” superhero movie.
But there’s no reason why our comic book heroes can’t grow up with the rest of us.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2017
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
Stories Are My Life 
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