Viral Links

Vine: https://vine.co/u/1174115496170557440

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sunilastro5150

Facebook post links: https://www.facebook.com/KodyVanHalen/posts/944559165595604

https://www.facebook.com/pinkfloyd/posts/944558585595662

https://www.facebook.com/cantstandlosingyou/posts/944558135595707

https://www.facebook.com/sunil.mahajan.9/posts/944556468929207

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=944564925595028&set=a.733794300005426.1073741825.100001245875769&type=1

Vine

This is my strongest vine.  MTV itself is an old channel and those who want music back on the channel or even care about the channel's devolving state are those outside of the demographic that MTV goes for.  Because that demographic likes vine, sex appeal, and inappropriate humor, I combined all of them in this vine, where I show soft radio rock bands as ugly (which they were considered so at the time) and juxtaposed them with the sexual appeal that was 80's Bon Jovi, using a playful modern spin with the edgy twist of the British Keep Calm poster trend.

Twitter

I used 3 categories for memes to get attention of people that may view the hashtags I used.

Some of my tweets were just hash tags, and others had memes.  I think this is my best tweet because it primarily focuses on the rabid Guns n Roses fan base that has all types of teenage fans who soak anything of the band up because of their age.  The tweet is brief, has a cliffhanger, and exhibits clear click-bait appeal.  The bait works here because it involves the a well known entity (in this case, a rock band)  with fans that think they know everything about the band.  Saying "why" works, since thanking David Geffen and MTV is not enough; this is from the fact that thanking them fully requires an appreciation of MTV's power.

My memes would be strong but I feel like average hash tag followers and twitter users would not get my memes, especially the Billy Squier meme.




Facebook

This Facebook post stands out because it uses a simple caption and lets the viewer take in the infographic.  Hopefully the infographic brings attention to my video that I linked.  This strong even without any descriptive captions because it targets my friends, who, like anybody's friends, appreciate subtlety and low amounts of trying to push a product onto them.  A weakness I find in it is the unexplained YouTube link, but it strikes curiosity at the same time, which works.  People still check out your and take note of posts even without liking it, and it could be reflected with the 22 views of the video. 

Rhetoric Rationale

The video is meant to be a brief description of the immense impact that MTV had on the music landscape, especially through consumption and production.  There are obviously more nuanced books and videos on this matter, but a brief take on this complicated topic is my aim, and fits in the universe that this subject matter resides in (long form media that explains this).

My video resides primarily on narration with related video.  I consider this rhetoric because it stimulates two senses simultaneously (auditory and visual), and the viewer needs to independently relate the narration to the video playing (which also has its own audio playing at a reduced volume in the background).  More importantly, I chose this rhetoric because obviously both elements independently are less attention grabbing, but primarily it is for the viewer to take in video, making instant judgement on it, and let the narration mold the judgement into a sort of proto-schema so that the information given can fit into the greater message (which is the MTV impact).

At the beginning, I narrate an introduction while non-MTV videos play.  I talk about pre-MTV music videos, so I chose to play captivating pre-MTV videos, showing that exciting and iconic bands had content but had no consistent medium to show them.  Everyone knows who Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and Queen are, but to persuade the audience on how good videos were being ignored, I showed sections of The Song Remains The Same (1976),  Van Halen Live in Oakland (1981) video when they play Unchained, and Queen's famous Bohemian Rhapsody video (1975).  As you can see below, it's pretty captivating to watch Eddie Van Halen do a scissor kick while soloing.

During that first narration up until I mention MTV's birth, I play "Video Killed the Radio Star", the first song and music video played on MTV, and this just amps up the rhetoric during some narration that does not directly mention the videos played.  This means that there are 3 messages at once coming at the viewer: direct narration, secondary video that accompanies the general narration subject, and subtle music that's a nod to what the whole video is about.  The listener does not need or shouldn't feel the need to pay attention to the background music, but it's an accent that means something if viewers dig further into the matter afterward.  Or if they listen to the words briefly, they get the message.  

Immediately, we switch to the first major MTV promo advertisement from 1982, and it features the famous "I Want My MTV" phrase.  The ad reels you in with colorful fast moving images that apply to the narration, but not directly.  The video is about MTV, and having the ad's phrases audible while I talk about how MTV used old videos and free promo videos to survive initially can be confusing.  My aim there is to listen to me but show how earnest MTV was, as well as show the stars whose videos were played for free (Pat Benatar, Mick Jagger, and Pete Townshend).  I realize that I'm combining an ad that explains what MTV is with narration on MTV's video selection, but the time constraint led me to combine those.  The combined rhetoric still makes the viewer realize the early MTV appearance, whether with narration or with video. 

It immediately goes into the first seconds of MTV's broadcast.  I used this independent video as rhetoric because the rhetoric MTV used in 1981 at their broadcast launch is what I'm replicating.  It's a launch of a service unlike any other before it, and the same goes for my video: I described the pre-MTV days, and very briefly the start of MTV, but for the audience to feel the scope of this, I used the broadcast recording because it honestly works.  It's a nice break, it is captivating, and relays MTV's early mission statement.

I

I use videos from Billy Idol, Neneh Cherry, and Duran Duran to show that these bands drove the image that I was describing in the narration.  I was talking about how bands with no radio play commanded cultural appeal and impact in different senses, and I flipped through videos that described this.  I chose the videos I did because it fits what I am trying to persuade the viewers into believing: I first say that these videos were not on the radio, and then play three different videos with clear differences in aesthetic, just as I describe the different types of aesthetics MTV influenced (edgy, pop, and sexy).  This way the narration gives information and the video is proof.  I had the choice of more sexy rhetoric from the Duran Duran video, but I did not want to shock too many people.

When I introduce Michael Jackson, I narrate of how his famous album was stalling in sales.  I  used the clip of Billie Jean where Jackson's dancing is dramatized by 3 simultaneous freeze frames, slow motion (mirroring his slowdown in sales), and the framing of his eyes while he dances, closely matching the tone of the issue he was facing in my narration.  I then introduce the Thriller video as I mention the video and it's ensuing success, and it is (hopefully) a familiar video for the audience, assuring them that the success I describe is real, but was preceded by drama that almost killed the album.  The rhetoric of Jackson's dramatic moment in the Billie Jean video being replicated by the combination of my narration and the clip AND the familiar Thriller video should convince the audience my point.

 I transition into a description of how an errant video by Billy Squier killed his career.  This may seem sudden or not along the lines of the success stories I have been describing, but I hope that with this opposing story that the power of MTV becomes apparent to the audience.

 I then transition into a narration about how  MTV had a lot of indirect and direct power over band's decisions about videos.  While I describe MTV's place and practices, I interrupt the comforting traditional video with subdued audio with a kind of disrupting audio with quick broken visuals that differ from the fluid narration.  The narration rhetoric is clear (expressing the dominance of MTV) but the video sequence is more complicated. 

The video sequence is made of the MTV Lost Weekend promo and the Dial MTV promo.  The Lost Weekend promo shows the extravagance of MTV with a jet taking off, and the Dial MTV promo shows the MTV logo crushing a caller, followed by a brief "MTV controlled everything" title card.  At first it is distracting, especially with the takeoff noise, dial tone, and silence audio sequence grating on the audience.  But, because it repeats, the viewer can listen to the narration without missing any new visuals while getting the subtext of my narration.   The point of all of this disruptive video sequence is to show that 1) MTV was not perfect even early on and 2) the images of extravagance, getting crushed, and the title card should illustrate the MTV practices in their more extremes, possibly at the expense of viewers.

The following clips (an excerpt from a David Geffen documentary and from The Evolution of Metal docu-series) are used to show the power of MTV.  The rhetoric here is the trusted source giving information.  Clearly professional video clips with anecdotes give stories more effectively than I could with narration, and it gives the audience a break from the narration and hyper video sequence.  I spoke generally, but these specific anecdotal clips really show what I meant, and that storytelling is good pathos and ethos for my video that is dependent on logos.

The next sequence involves 4 hair metal videos playing simultaneously fading into 1 grunge, 1 alternative, 1 rap, and 1 rap show video playing together.  The narration talks about MTV transitioning their programming because of the homogenous programming in the 80s.  I have 4 hair metal videos playing at the same time to show that all the videos did look the same and looked a bit ridiculous.  By replicating the scene with 4 different videos playing at once, it is a visual representation of what I was trying to express.  I had 3 different genre videos and a critical voice of a genre (rap/hip hip via MTV Yo Raps, using the Tupac clip) to show how MTV retained importance but became varied in the mainstream  (rather than the different shows they had, which I did not describe because of the time limit).

This rhetoric choice (of 4 simultaneous videos) is done to show the contrast of late 80s MTV and early 90s MTV.

I left the rap video going in the corner before the Madonna clip to 1) keep the audience entertained while I shift subjects, 2) keep establishing the changing genre movement from rock to rap, and 3) show that this was occurring at the same time as the subject matter I was introducing.

I use the Madonna clip of her essentially humping the stage at the 1984 Video Music Awards to show that the bravado that Lady Gaga or Kanye West present is similar if not dwarfed by the tone set by Madonna.  The rhetoric here is pretty apparent:  the shock value of her behavior still holds up, and isolated clip gives the audience the shock they need to believe that the VMA's modern shock value (already instilled in their head) has an early root, and I use that shock to convince them.

Now I transition into reality show theme songs and introductions, which are different from a music video but at this point, the video is ending, and we return to the standard video/audio with my narration like the video's beginning.  Here, the timeline of MTV's progress I regulated during the video starts to slip into a more amorphous period of transition from the 90s to today.  The rhetoric is now just reliant on the shift from music videos to actors and theme music and spoken word in the background.  The subject familiarity and change should be enough for the audience to connect with the objective (that MTV made reality TV because money became an issue).  This was emphasized by the title card stating "This is why MTV does not play much music" while I talk about making money off music.

The final part uses modern artists using the video medium creatively to end the video with a positive note, using modern videos and stars to show that the music video itself is still an important art form, and that the lessons learned from the early MTV years are clearly apparent.  By using current artists that have the things I listed before (visual appeal in all of its forms), I hope to convince the audience with the visual rhetoric that what the video tried to prove still rings true.

Basically, this whole video uses the basic audio/video with narration as the rhetorical tool to convince the audience of all of MTV's practices and how they (and others) changed what being a popular music artists meant.  I changed it up a bit, with background music, documentary clips, rapid clip sequence,  and two 2x2 video displays fading into one another to emphasize certain points, to contrast different parts of the video, and deliver a subtext in a creative or concise matter.

 

 

 

Here is a link of the evolution of metal episode, BBC American Rock episode,  and the David Geffen documentary that helped inspire this.  The David Geffen episode is silent from copyright issues, but the clip in my video captures the source nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IItvRpYnQs (1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IoPzcybmGg (2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvA4o7pTtXY (3)

Some MTV information was derived from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6jz65YRCy8

MOST IMPORTANTLY, the description of MTV, the tone of the video, and the organization was heavily inspired from this book:

I Want My MTV - The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution

http://www.amazon.com/Want-My-MTV-Uncensored-Revolution/dp/B0085RZHXA

  

Live Tweets

Here's my twitter account link:
https://twitter.com/sunilastro5150


Live tweeting a punk concert is a unique experience.   I was in the back half of the crowd, but I could still see the crowd and the band.  This allowed me less shame in tweeting during the concert, but looking down at your phone in a small venue still looks bad, especially when the band could see you.  It's rude to a lot of people because the ethos that comes with going to a rock/punk show.

The show was fun which  meant tweeting about it was easy.  I was running out of battery, so I was switching in and out of extreme power saver mode on my phone, which limited my tweets.  But, really, tweeting about live music when the venue is not big and I do not know all the bands very well means I need to reduce the amount of tweets to avoid sounding boring.

I used #againstme to link my tweets to the community of fans of the headliner band.  In this way,  I appealed to the band's fans, and I got a couple favorites from other fans.  I used more specific rhetoric to engage with the event.

As you can see, I appealed to fans by using past discography as a signal that I am not a casual fan.  It is hard to describe, but when someone references band information, it's a sign of "trust" and true allowance into the nebula of being a fan.  The hashtag is used as you can see, and I also used  the rhetoric of reliving an exciting moment to draw in attention.  Those uses of rhetoric is what I think made this live tweet session attractive to fans or just people paying attention.  I updated on bands starting and ending, material used by the band, a picture (another use of rhetoric), and relived a moment.

I had to use liquids as a term in the tweet because they were spraying beer and I did not want to reference alcohol.

To be honest, I did have some issue with what to tweet in general, because my stance on social media use is generally against light use of live tweeting (light meaning there's a difference between a small concert and the state of the union).  Material for the tweets that I used was to have people involved, but not bored.  I used band names and descriptors (genre names, their origin, musical traits) that were brief and gave viewers an idea, but not to the point of useless details that do not apply at all to the viewer.

Jenny Death When?: Surviving the Hell of Providing Content On Social Media

If you want to have social media reach the most people yet have the content interpreted within the bounds you had in mind, there you certain things you should do.

The first thing to know is that many social media users are savvy and they can smell low effort or purposeful product pushing.  The first major consideration is to have or gain authenticity.  If you truly want to create good content  (let's say you just like having funny content) then is it pretty easy to have authenticity.  If you are a company, then direct references to products either need ot be packeaged with other rhetoric that appeals to emotion (comedy, serious content etc.).  The product is not attractive and can make people tune out.

The second major thing is to have content that is unique, in enough quantity, and does not inundate the followers.  Flooding feeds make people get annoyed because you are one of many things they are paying attention to.  By interrupting the natural flow of feeds with attention starved content you make, things get annoying pretty quick because people find it simply annoying.

So so far, the two major lessons are 1) being authentic and 2) balancing quality and quantity.  

Now, these factors drive the social media train, but if you want compelling social media content, it has to fit the context of the chosen medium.  Instagram is photo-based, so an applicable picture/video with a small caption with some hash-tags (to reach people outside your fanbase/stay trendy) is preferable (the picture has to be the most important part and mostly explanatory. Whereas on Twitter, bursts of rhetoric or just plain entertainment is useful, with some links or picture sometimes.   As you can see, different mediums capture different focuses that users perform.  Amid fitting the mediums are the demographics of the medium.  Twitter has a mixed userbase that trends to some adults and some teenagers, Instagram towards teens and young adults, and Pintrest is female of all ages.

Using the brand you establish is important as well.  Sam Adams, a beer company, made a funny spoof of themselves advertising "HeliYUM beer" and altering voices in post-production to make most video participants sound funny.  Accurate or not, having a sense of humor and not pushing an actual product does wonders for authenticity.   Using the brand can also be used for contests, like Mashable's Easter egg hunt or Marc Jacobs model auditions via sent Instagram photos.  See, those types of social media content or ideas rely on a two way interaction, or at least appear to care how the user fits into what your content means.  If you're a car company, you can post action shots and add some details on what it was like to drive the car, making reader invested in what happened.  They can figure out the product themselves.

In that sense, one of the most important lessons is that the consumer is more savvy than traditional content providers and advertisers used to think.  If you lack in quality (let's say your twitter jokes aren't that funny), your followers will speak up or leave.  If your product pushing gets too direct or starts to lose its authenticity or social cache, engagement will drop and sometimes people speak up.

As you can see, the followers engage with you, sending messages to you.  Like aforementioned, two -way communication is key, and going from acknowledging trends (using hash-tags or memes) to responding to individual fans visibly to the world can further move your content and account from a separate and maybe not fully individual content provider (unlike other social media users, who are individuals) to being human.  Humans respond, and if McDonald's twitter account tweets back at followers, now McDonalds, who is a non-person entity, acts like a person.


There are a lot of things that people say to do for social media usage, especially when trying to make compelling content.  But these are the most important factors.  Sometimes, it's all you need.

Jenny Death When?: Annotated Bibliography

http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/uf.jsp?st=UFPDA000570900&ix=pm&I=0&V=D&pm=1

http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/uf.jsp?st=UF020271725&ix=pm&I=0&V=D&pm=1

https://www.nextbigsound.com/industryreport/2014 (and 2013 and 2012)

breaks down music consumption trends in a micro timelime of the last 1-2 years.  covers screens (naturally) too.  can be interpreted as well.

"NEXT BIG SOUND PRESENTS 2014: STATE OF THE INDUSTRY." Next Big Sound. Next Big Sound, Inc, n.d. 

     Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <https://www.nextbigsound.com/industryreport/2014>.

"The ad featuring “Push It,” released in late November, quickly snapped the band back on the map as evidenced by an uptick in YouTube detections and Wikipedia page views. And that is more, the brand saw an earned media value of more than $1.8 million."
"A lot of people are indeed listening to pop music. In fact, artists defined as pop/rock, such as Billy Joel, Foreigner, and Kid Rock, represent 24% of activity on average across networks."
"People aren’t using SoundCloud to follow artists like they used to, but they are using SoundCloud to listen to their music. We tracked 2.4 billion SoundCloud plays in December 2014."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbyowsinski/2014/08/07/how-the-music-industry-created-its-own-worst-nightmares/

It touches on important changes in music consumption technologically, and they all happen to be screens too.

Owsinski, Bobby. "How The Music Industry Created Its Own Worst Nightmares." Forbes. Forbes, 7 Aug. 

     2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbyowsinski/2014/08/07/ 

     how-the-music-industry-created-its-own-worst-nightmares/>. 

"Over the last 30 years, not only has the industry made a series of grim mistakes that has emboldened its competition, in some cases it has even created it."
"MTV had gone from a channel almost no one wanted to one worth at least as much as the major record labels, much to the industry’s chagrin. "
"The file distribution service they used ultimately matter didn’t, as music consumers liked the portability of the digital song file, and the horse was now out of the barn forever."

http://www.colemaninsights.com/news/when-is-a-hit-a-hit

shows music popularity in todays era, combines screenbased music with traditional media for a comparison. small interpretation but gives data that I can talk about.  

Bailey, Matt. "When Is A Hit A Hit?" Coleman Insights. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. 

     <http://www.colemaninsights.com/news/when-is-a-hit-a-hit>. 

"The vintage distribution of on-demand’s biggest hits is remarkably similar to the vintage distribution of radio’s biggest hits. "
" As a recently circulated graphic published by Spotify’s Director of Economics highlighted, Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” caught on faster on streaming services in the U.S. than it did on radio. "
"Many of the songs that radio programmers thought would never go away, such as OneRepublic’s “Counting Stars,” Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” and John Legend’s “All Of Me,” were the very same songs listeners continued to play for weeks on the on-demand platforms long after the typical expiration date."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/06/15-years-after-napster-how-the-music-service-changed-the-industry.html

describes the impact that the modern screens technology especially on media and the industry, first person.  

Suskind, Alex. "15 Years After Napster: How the Music Service Changed the Industry." Daily Beast. 

     N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/06/ 

     15-years-after-napster-how-the-music-service-changed-the-industry.html>. 

"The multi-year gap between the death of Napster and the birth of iTunes was extremely damaging for the music industry—too many years went by with few decent legal options to download or stream music."
"I liked CDs; all I really wanted to do was download the stuff I wasn’t otherwise going to buy on CD."
"I'd say the invention of the MP3 was more revolutionary, but Napster is the poster child of the traditional music industry’s transformation into what it is now. "

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/perfect/mtv.html

interview style explanation of mtv and its influence and impact.  very balanced and not a nostalgia article.

"The MTV Effect." PBS Frontline. PBS, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ 

     frontline/shows/music/perfect/mtv.html>. 

"MTV is the most powerful force that's probably ever happened in the music business. You know, you can make a star overnight if they make the right video, and if the right magic happens, you know."
"But to me, what started with MTV and became about trying to sell a $16 CD based on three minutes of music, is what killed the album. …"
"I don't exactly know. I mean I think you can look at MTV as the most powerful radio station in America."
Abstract: 

This project will follow the assignment directions (generally) and track the progress of screens through the filter of music consumption. Studying with television, screens have played an important role in music consumption, changing our daily lives and changing the industry many times as well.  We start at the beginning with television shows like the Ed Sullivan show or Soul Train, moving into the MTV era, which can be broken into different segments.  This era had the early years, the music specialization shows (Yo Raps, Headbangers Ball, 120 minutes, etc) and moved to less videos and finally Total Request Live. As TRL was taking off, Napster exploded, introducing a new screen into music consumption.  It was destroying there industry in its most profitable time, ending early but spawning the new era of music consumption that now requires screens. We see music pirating dominate the screen based music consumption until the iPod and iTunes come out, coexisting with music piracy and becoming the screen based Walkman, essentially, catering to individual music file usage like the Walkman did for full albums.  Today, the dominant music consumption is streaming via screen  (computer), taking over paid music downloads and music piracy as the dominant screen based music consumption.
The reason screens are important in these technology examples is because the screens present how we treated the  incoming media.  Televisions captivated us and gave us choices only after huge numbers used it.  Computer screens allowed for everything, but evolved as the screen evolved: basic computers meant slow shady Napster file downloads, which led to big data iTunes and then led to huge data streaming that took more computer resources.

music and its consumption as it relates to screen

include a 2veritasium type of video (hold camera in hand)

also Vox-esque or YMS type video.  basically quick images that sometimes make jokes by themselves, and mix it with a 2veritasium type commentary.   explain as well as the needle drop. also nerdwriter does a great combination of these.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIKgT-OSLQ

how to make a youtube channel: how to talk to a camera, how to start the video to draw in viewers, and how to combine creativity and education in a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHza2j3bTCs

taking something familiar and in a certain tone, and totally blindsiding the view in a random way that also pokes fun at the serious part of the video or the content. basic internet video humor based on coincidences, creativity, and satire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7RnH6bnGHc

explains phenomena in music very clearly with supported opinions and observations. executes jump cuts smoothly, strategically, and only to smooth out the dialogue and not as a center point of the video.  Also has several overlays which help explain the point he makes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50MU4Cz62so

challenging the medium you work in to become creative, mock the formulaic fakeness the medium is usually presented it, and the video itself presents sequential presentation of narrative with video to support it.  A model of a way of thinking while doing the video in short.

It needs to be quirky, entertaining, but funny, using quick takes and sudden changes.  The subject material can be boring but can be done in a fun way if i used the right references.

Jenny Death When: The Best Video

Contrary to popular belief, non-profit videos can be entertaining and powerful, just like commercials often are.  This is especially true for "Yes, that's my father.".  The video is for the United States Holocaust Museum, the video manages to convey the importance of the museum as well as its cause all the while maintaining a connection with the people in the video.

The tone of the video was somber but of a more removed sense, that it was not overwhelming but more of a defining feature, as both of the people have dealt with the tragedy for a long time, and is  defining part of them as well.  It then moves into a sort of empathy, sympathy, and sad joy into the end, when we see the father see a picture of his father for the first time since the war.  This ending was helped along by the portrayal of a journey in the video, as we go from initial feelings of sadness and guilt, to relieving some guilt via contact from the museum, which 1)exhibits the power of the  museum early on in the video and 2) sets up the logical progression of the museum a picture and allowing the father in the video to see a picture of his father for the first time since the war.  All of this is certainly appropriate, as the subject matter matches the tone and the audience gets the material and emotional message and purpose of the museum.

To do this, the video had to be edited a certain way, which is clearly was: music that related a solemn mood, with a wind like synth and simple piano notes strung out as the background music, which is not too earnest to set the mood unlike the ASPCA ads that we all know.  Simple fades and pictures over the subject's memories or thoughts keep the tone and add to the message of the video (of how life was permanently affected by the Holocaust and the museum's effect).  The white text on black was used as a graceful transition piece, and was done sparingly, which helps with the message of transition.  

In my own video, I would use the combination and switching between talking and talking over a picture.  The background music needs to be just like this video's, where it sets the tone but does it subtly.  

Jenny Death When?: Combining the Past with the Present

The digital age came with its expected death notices.  Old technologies and companies that were doomed from the start: typewriters, vinyl records, and polaroid cameras come to mind first.  But alas, somehow people still use typewriters and 9.2 million vinyl sales don’t exactly spell death for vinyl records. The same can be said about polaroid cameras.  But unlike typewriters and vinyl records, some adjustments have to be made for the new age, which makes sense because the Polaroid is the most visual and distinct of the three.  The Polaroid represented spontaneous memories and photo worthy moments. It was even the focal point of Taylor Swift's 1989 album cover: steeped in nostalgia and beckoning you to consider it as an major part of your life
But now, photos and cameras in general have such an integrated place in society now, that unlike vinyls and typewriters, they blend into society as a social tool rather than stand alone as solely memories and moments. They are tools to express your lifestyle and life story and can build an social image or social cache for you, view-able to anyone you choose, and this is done almost fully in a digital format. Photos can be anything you want: moments, a story, a running journal of sorts, the choice can be yours. In the process, the instant physical photo has been replaced by the instant digital photo, a form much versatile that it can even become physical like the Polaroid, although many choose not to. A Polaroid photo used to hold the cache of valuable yet in the moment photo taking. Now, because cameras are everywhere, not foresight or conscious decisions are needed for photos: they are more disposable than ever, far from what the Polaroid photo's cultural value was. So the challenge for Polaroid now is, how do you take instant physical photography, something that's removed from popular society in almost every way, and reintegrate it?

        Well, Polaroid thinks it reintegrate physical photography with the Socialmatic, the all new, eggs in one basket camera that intends to transcend modern times while filling traditional roles (note how the name they gave clues consumers in on the intent of the camera)

Right now, you’re probably thinking that with whatever Polaroid could hope to do for sake of relevancy can be done with a phone, and probably even better than any actual camera maker.  And that may be true, but detractors forget one thing: the physical aspect of amateur photography.  Computers can play music arguably better than vinyl, and the ear can’t tell the difference between a FLAC file and perfect vinyl, but people still buy them for the physical aspect of vinyl, and the same can be applied for pop photography.

Last year, Taylor Swift released 1989, the most popular album of the year, with the cover as a Polaroid of herself, clearly keeping the Polaroid photo relevant in the cultural schema, albeit in a commercial nostalgia sense.  Yet that seemingly shallow attribute is  the foot in the door, because nostalgia is not damning if driven correctly.  Just as vinyl was a nostalgia niche that grew into an industry driven on connection to physical medium, the Polaroid can do the same.  Photos lost value through the digital age and regained some through social media, especially Instagram, and through digital scrapbooks like Shutterfly.  This process involved digital photos become disposable by nature, but gained value through social media (Instagram) and the opportunity to make them a physical entity (Shutterfly). Yet, they still have lost that value that a single photo can bring to the owner. Polaroid photos used to not be in huge number, so photos counted. Combining this with disposable nature of digital photos, the Polaroid company thinks it can corner this logical progression by combining all of this with the current trend of nostalgic physical objects, creating the Socialmatic.

The Socialmatic can take a digital picture (smartphone-esque dual camera), upload the picture on social media, edit the picture, geotag it, and print it instantly.  It looks almost exactly like the Instagram app logo, can stand on its own via a thick square body, and appeals to the Pintrest/Instagram demographic (mainly female young adults).  The camera includes a full Android tablet OS 4.4.2, so the possibilities really are endless.

It would be so easy to take this device apart and call it a fad.  But there’s just too much in it.   It honestly speaks for itself: it has all the features any social photo taker would want, features Zero Ink printing where all it takes is special film and there is no ink to fiddle with, producing stunning pictures with no quality variation.  Obviously, the barrier is that it is a separate device to purchase, and it is expensive for now, but the product itself is no gimmick: it is the true Millennial’s camera.  It is not trying to create social dialogue, it is the product of social dialogue. The social dialogue is what the modern photo taker does with their photo: its a personal, public, and chronological timeline that serves so many purposes as time passes, and the Socialmatic does just that, servicing every mode of photo taking for the modern mass photo taker would need.

Something to keep in mind is that prior to this device, the digital photo has social cache and can fit into the narrative of someone's life, while the physical photo is a memento for a event or time in someone's life, is a marker on the timeline (so to speak). But, with the printing and digital photo combined in one device, things start to blur. What if you combine the social narrative of your life with the memento photo? This can be done with the camera, taking photos and creating the social narrative with many photos (digitally) and print the ones representative of major parts or emotions in your life. This way, all your photos have value: you can have 200 vacation photos, and one portrait at the beach that encompasses all you felt at the time.

In this fashion, things really do blur in the best way possible: everything on this is on-demand. Printing, editing, posting, it's all at your disposal. It's intuitive, portable, cute, stands on a surface, and is a tablet. It clearly works for families and the Instagram population it is currently pushing for, and that's key. It's just the $299 price tag that limits it, probably due to having such an advanced computer inside it! Marketing for devices like this (Honda Insight (2000/2014), Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Zune, etc.) were ahead of its time and it's superior break-away from consumer mainstays were not properly advertised. And if having another device that seems not useful is a consternation to you, let me remind you that the iPad is the most awkward successful device, not doing a laptop or phone's job well, and still powering over the Surface, which does laptop and tablet both well.

Polaroid has run out of time. It has reduced the value of its name overtime with failed marketing and the Socialmatic is the hail mary for the company. It could be ahead of its time, as we are still in the midst of the smartphone/camera revolution, but with the past now coexisting with the present, now’s better than ever to make your own 1989 cover. -Sunil Mahajan