"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."—Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"

An old friend once told me a story about her son Edison and this other kid he grew up with, Brendan. It seems that when they were really little, like six or so, the boys were on a soccer team, they were playing soccer and Edison fell and was hurt. And everybody clustered round and was all ooh, ahh, to make sure he was okay. Straightaway, Brendan totally faked an injury of his own, thumped to earth and started wailing, so that [...]

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*The Wizard of Menlo Park

* The Wizard of Photography

* The Wizard of Bras

"The ads promote HobNob as just the right wine to go along with the busy, casual lives, filled with friends and entertainment, of the members of the generation known as millennials, Generation Y or echo boomers." —Enjoy your millennial wine.

We live in an amazing time for web advertising!

Previously: Ad Obliterates 'New Yorker' Website.

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Acapulco: Not That Many Decapitations Per Capita

Touring The French Riviera? Well Heads Up Because For Some Reason The Casinos Make You Wear Shoes

Detroit — Don't Bother Locking Up When You’re Done

Berlin: Now With Flights To Barcelona!

Come To Sunny South Africa (Unless You Fear Black People, Of Course)

South Korea, Where That Quiet Weirdo From College Moved Shortly Before Never Being Heard From Again

Are you a literary harlot? You are not alone. Even Vladimir Nabokov had an eye for self-marketing, subtly suggesting to photo editors that they feature him as a lepidopterist prancing about the forests in cap, shorts and long socks. (“Some fascinating photos might be also taken of me, a burly but agile man, stalking a rarity or sweeping it into my net from a flowerhead,” he enthused.) Across the pond, the Bloomsbury set regularly posed for fashion shoots in British Vogue in the 1920s. The frumpy Virginia Woolf even went on a “Pretty Woman”-style shopping expedition at French couture houses in London with the magazine’s fashion editor in [...]

A few days ago, in my professional capacity as a Japanese TV News Producer (read: guy who carries tripod, tells police, “sorry, we’ll leave”), I was dispatched to Detroit for the North American International Auto Show.

The first day began with the Car of the Year awards, and the first of many bad metaphors to come: “Michigan’s film industry is also booming, so to put this in film terms: this is the feel-good movie of the year, and the NAIAS is the theater.” On stage, the CEOs lined up almost Von Trapp-style, except for that one guy on the right. The Chevy Volt beat out the all-electric Nissan [...]

A crisis pregnancy center in St. Cloud, Minn., has figured out a way to entice local students who might not otherwise appreciate their mix of sex education and religious lecturing (not to mention whoosh-filled videos): According to a coupon inside the most recent edition of the St. Cloud University annual agenda, the Pregnancy Resource Center of St. Cloud, Minn is packaging its STD, HIV, and Pap tests with a free cheese pizza at the local Little Caesars. (One pizza per person only, alas. Although given the religious bent of this place… if you're pregnant, does that mean you're eligible to eat for two?) [Via]

There's an (allegedly) iPhone-taken video with 60,000 views that went on YouTube on June 9, 2010. It's not very good or very funny, but it surely is black ops marketing for one major burger chain, even though it's shot in another major burger chain. And this is how the greatest minds behind the big business of viral marketing today apparently think is the best way to get their video "picked up" by blogs: casual emails that look pretty much like emails anyone with a blog gets on a daily basis except… less good.

This is, to put it very plainly, a huge gay catastrophe! The tween clothing line that Madonna and her daughter Lola are doing for Macy's is getting pimped to high heaven, because it hits stores soon, and the latest bit of marketing is… a blog post. Written by Lola herself-a "From The iDesk of Lola" kind of thing, to rile up the tweens. It's sort of heartbreaking, actually. Beginning, as it does, "Helluuur thurrrr, I'm Lola and this is my first blog entry so it's kind of like ummmm….."

A New York author has figured out a viral-marketing scheme that at least worked well enough to get herself, and her "not-so-happily-ever-after" novel, into The New York Times: She's hiring female actresses to pretend-read her book around the city, and laugh while doing so in order to draw attention to themselves — and, subsequently, the book they're carrying. "Do you want it to be more, like, a natural, like, actual laugh, or, like, a 'That woman is crazy.' " That Belle was edited to seemingly answer that all she cared about was her actresses' ability to laugh loudly and disruptively enough to make people gape — and catch a glimpse [...]

What I don't understand about the future, AKA the present, is: well, who's zooming who? Take a "brand synergy moment" like Lady Gaga premiering her new album in Farmville, which, if you are new to the Internet, is some kind of "time management" game on Facebook where you grow crops. So who pays whom for the honor? Gaga gets an enormous, frightening, keyed-in audience; Farmville gets exclusive "added value." Maybe nobody pays anyone? Is this what Tina Brown wanted in the 90s? Also, between this, her abandoned Target promotion, the terrible new song and everything else, has anyone ridden the steep sine wave of exciting fame to slavish [...]

I like Major League Baseball a lot. But I do not like its new marketing campaign, "MLB Always Epic." At all. This is because I like the word "epic." Or I used to, at least. But now it doesn't mean anything any more, and the new MLB television commercials are the most glaring examples of that fact that I've seen.

I've spent the last couple months wondering about dating site OkCupid and its data-driven attempts at viral marketing, but I've always been too lazy to really look into it. Fortunately, Awl pal Rob Walker did so this weekend, and now I know everything.

The marketing team that dreamed up Drake University's latest campaign, "The D+ Advantage," got so carried away by an apparent allusion to positively charged molecules that it thought it could either ignore or, alternately, capitalize on one obvious fact: the logo is the grade for pathetically under-average schoolwork, a D-plus.

Or, as Drake envisions it, "your Potential + our Opportunities."

It's a chemistry equation, see… except with people and a horribly misguided institution of higher learning. (Never mind that a positively charged ion attracts negativity-but hey, I barely passed Rocks For Jocks in college, so I'll leave the scientific interpretation to others.)

There has been much commiseration lately over the perceived decline of hip-hop. It's bad because it's fully transitioned to pop, say some. It's bad because of The Internet, say others. To me, this seems to be a whole lot of misplaced nostalgia. Do these people really want to return to the early 90's-so they can hear Cypress Hill on the radio? Or maybe the late 90s, to catch a guest verse from Fiend or C-Murder on some No Limit clusterfuck of a record? The 90s were not some paradise for commercial rap where mainstream radio played UGK, Heltah Skeltah and Mac Dre all the time; most commercial rap sucked in [...]

There was a free corporate-sponsored event this weekend! Billed as a multimedia arts venture, the event took place in the meat packing district of some city. It was one of a handful of events that will be held internationally this summer, offering up exciting artistic experiences across several technological platforms. It was a music festival featuring a bunch of hot acts. It was also an art show with interactive exhibitions. There were film screenings, including one from a highly acclaimed director. Some companies provided food, and still other companies kept bars stocked with beverages, both alcoholic and otherwise. All for free. It was an embarrassment of riches!