Skunk Totem's Blog: A Twitter-Free, Facebook-Free Zone

I'm sick of Twitter and Facebook. More accurately, I'm sick of the craze that seems to obligate everyone to use social networking. Fans even dare to assert that shunning Facebook is a kiss of death to your career. It reminds me of the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!"

At least the Borg are fiction.

I hope that Twitter and Facebook go the way of CB radio. (CB remains the ideal communications medium for truck drivers and volunteer emergency responders; it just isn't a dictatorial fad like in the late 1970s. So I'm not wishing TW and FB out of existence)

I'm hardly alone. Read this Omaha World-Herald article on the Slow Media Movement. It quotes and journalism professor Jennifer Rauch: "The movement attracts people who feel 'that some sort of boundaries need to be set;' that technologies should be chosen, not embraced blindly; should serve, not be served."

No, I don't drive a '72 Pinto with an 8-track player. I don't have a black-and-white TV. And if I hated the Internet, you wouldn't be reading this. But I am content with my Stupid Phone and a computer that must be plugged in. If I wrote books, I'd have them available on Kindle (but I read the old fashioned kind: no batteries required.) I, Ms. Rauch, and other "Slow Media" advocates bristle that we are Luddites or even "anti-broadband." We just want to take our technology in smaller doses. I love peanut butter, but that doesn't mean I want three pounds of it in one sitting or to put it on everything I eat.

Forget Nostradumbass prophecies: I figure we'll be doomed when the Old Order Amish are on Facebook.

Toyota Highlander Kid Sucks

I don't think I could write anything new with regard to contempt for the recent advertising for the new Toyota Highlander. (If you haven't seen them, the ads star an eight-year-old boy with messy reddish-blond hair disparaging other vehicles: his message to parents: You don't have to be lame, buy a new Highlander.) In fact, when it comes to Internet "rant" articles on the subject, it's impossible to tell whether the authors have plagiarized one another. This fellow pretty much word for word sums up why the ad is so annoying and presents the wrong message to parents: Ad Rage. It has received widespread condemnation, including online parents' magazines and even Time. It's hardly a favorable message about American culture when one of the world's biggest manufacturers thinks that this ad will boost Highlander sales.

Update: I don't know how I missed this article from AutoTrader.com: "Is Toyota Lame for Calling Parents Lame?" (November 10, 2010). That article quotes a Toyota spokesperson who responded, in part, "Our values as a company have always been to put our customers first and provide them the highest levels of respect and understanding." But just a few sentences downstream (after blathering about "research") he includes, "While we regret that the ads have been misconstrued as insensitive [and] we don’t have any plans at this time to discontinue the campaign (emphasis mine)." So much for providing the highest levels of respect and understanding. C'mon, Toyota, you don't have to give us an apology on the front page of the New York Times, just yank the damn ads! The only car that brat would inspire me to buy is a secondhand Buick Roadmaster station wagon.