Tech Is Boring Me
- Posted on: Jul. 20, 2008
- 49 Comments
It’s time for me to expand. I love tech, but it’s not the only thing that interests me.
Posted in 1938 Media, Blogging, Boredom, Web49 comments
1938 Media
Old Values - New Media
Please do expand, the more you do the better. You’re one of my favorite entertainers and you expanding can only do great things for you and your fans.
ReplyLoren,
ReplyThis is the most candid I think we have seen you in the last 6-8 months. This attitude reminds me of why I liked you in the first place. Maybe you have come full circle, moving past the crap of the last 3 months or so? Body language, eyes, pauses between sentences… all different.
Secret,
Yeah it’s time.
ReplyThe thing I like about you and your work is your brutally honest commentary - oh, and the puppets. Glad to hear that you’re going back to what you love, producing stuff that gets you closer to what you’re interested in and leaving the widget heads to move on the whatever they need to blather about next. Stay cool my brother..
ReplyLoren, glad to hear that you’re expanding to include other discussion topics. I think one of your coolest videos was actually about that guy who sells mature trees. You filmed this gigantic tree that he was going to rip out of the ground and sell for $25,000. I was doing some landscaping several months later, and got thinking about it at the tree farm. It was really cool, and made me think about things in a new way - that can’t be said for rehashed widget discussion.
ReplyRather than couch it in semi-sombre tones, I’d phrase it as you having a wide range of skills which you could pretty much press into service in whichever you wished.
The media game is a vast territory open for the taking, and now that you’ve honed your skills and proven your mettle with tech and the “zero commenting” crowd, think about how this can be just another arrow in your quiver, bro.
It’s like going to a swanky A-List cocktail party and sampling all the various hors d’oeuvres — you can have a bit of this and a bit of that and not limit yourself to any one thing. By the way, you’ll want to catch the film commentary of MATCHSTICK MEN (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325805/) to find out how screenwriters Garcia and Griffin managed to get the privilege of working with Ridley. I can totally see you falling into that sort of crowd…
Definitely would be cool if you ramped up things on the celeb font, LF. Wouldn’t mind seeing how you proceed on that front. Blue collar? Fuggedaboudit!
Whatever you’ll choose to do, you’ll be convincing at. And what’s more, you’ll always have your core audience — us — go along with you for the ride.
–ADM
ReplyAdam,
Not somber really. Just disappointed a bit I guess. Not sure even why honestly.
ReplyI have to say that I totally agree with you, and have been feeling the same boredom. The whole twitter vs. friendfeed thing DOES NOT MATTER, because the truth of the matter is normal people do not use any of these services.
ReplyAwesome, dude. I think you will do great in other avenues. The tech-centric are too self-important, and I’ve never thought of you to be that at all. Oh, and the Mashable thing I was doing? Stiffed. Square one.
On it goes.
ReplyArt, that’s so fucked up. You did the work and you were stiffed?
ReplyTakes second prize in today’s “Get-over-yourself” contest.
ReplyArt, sorry about getting stiffed that is F’d up.
ReplyWow, Art- that’s awful.
Loren, how can you miss if you just do what you want to do? At the end of the day, that’s what matters- doing what you love, doing what you think is meaningful.
ReplyDude I just linked to you.
ReplyHEY I HAVE 10 COMMENTS!
Respect buddy, keep it going. Who else is going to inspire and piss off the internets.
ReplyYeah, time to *use* the tech to talk about something *else*. Like race, politics, culture as you say. Keep dissing the tech and pricking the pricks’ balloons but use the tech to go further otherwise you are like Scoble interviewing your iPhone and not the person.
Yep, I love those eye flickers of sincerity occasionally coming through the thick layer of cynicism : ) That you want it to *mean something* — well, that’s why we keep coming back : )
Go do something like interview David Remnick about the cartoon on the New Yorker with Obama or just talk to people on the street about it. Stuff like that.
ReplyRespect, someone had to say the things you said.
ReplyI don’t want to get all existential on you bro but the answer is within. Read my Week in Review, http://prblognews.com - don’t look for love in all the wrong places.
ReplyLoren - Esentially, yes. My buddy who works for them orchestrated a sizeable ad contract for Mash, and he decided to sub-contract me to help with the content production workload.
Well, to make a long story short, my buddy got stiffed on his cut, so that means I got stiffed on mine.
Then, Last week, Aaron Brazell invited me on one of his podcasts to talk about politics, and essentially treated me like an ass. It’s not *MY* fault if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I’m sick of web2 people. Bunch of incompetent boobs.
ReplyProbably for the best. I mean, from a business stand point you might lose a little but I think people are coming here for you and not for tech news at this point. Plus, on a personal level, I think no matter how tough you are the last few weeks had to take its toll. I mean, no matter how foolish your critics are they always seem to get through in some way.
When I was younger I used to Stage Manage for Theatre productions (it was a hobby though I did get paid). During that time I was always amazed at how hard the cast would take reviews.
For those who don’t know, Theater reviewers are the worst kinds of hypocrites. They’ll often audition for a show, not get cast, and then come back and review it for a Newspaper. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, knows they’re full of it. But still the cast would be upset by a negative review.
Same thing here, no matter how much your critics might be idiots it still hurts to be told you’re a horrible person. I sincerely doubt you have any interest in people’s sympathy but I still have to say one of the most amazing double standards of the Verizon situation is that everyone was talking about how “hurt” people were by the video you made and no one even stopped to consider how damaging it is to call a person racist with no real proof.
Anyway, I don’t care how strong you are your batteries are going to need a recharge after something like that and there’s no better way to get that recharge than to strike out and do something slightly different for a while. I sincerely doubt you’ll be gone forever from the tech world.
(If nothing else there are rumors of a new iPhone in about 6 months or so and you just know Fred Wilson is going to hate it)
ReplyLoren is Searching for ” Purpose” This is Going to Be Awsome!!!
U2
ReplyLoren,
An idea…
Bring the gear on out here across the Pond and me and the best gal (and best gal’s hot friends) will show you around town and you can do pickup shots and we can, um…cover the Central European scene.
One week — JFK to Prague. Nothin’ but net — call it your Eastern European reccie — location scouting for the new gig. Your one week sojourn behind the Iron Curtain, as it were…
I like what @Tom says, though: “You put it out there, you’ve got to be ready to take the knocks.” I can tell you as a working journalist, it’s not easy to take potshots (I get them all day from several fixture lumps!), but that’s what being a public persona is all about, bro. You want to shake that stick, law of the jungle says some cat’s going to try and take the conch shell from ya.
The silver lining is thus: your skills are consummately portable. You’re not tied down to anyone, nor anything. You can swing ‘em like the best of ‘em. The meanest spherical sac of venom out there.
While the rest of the tech cats have to go on appeasing the same fixed crowds…you can take that show on the road anytime. A la carte.
That’s power spelled with a Capital-P, if you read me.
Chin up, bro.
Can you hear it…? It’s CLOBBERIN’ time!
–ADM
ReplyListening to or reading about tech people talking about tech shit is like sitting at the kitchen table with a bunch of your stoner pals staring at a bag of pot and talking about getting high.
As John Lennon said: “Talking about fucking is talking about fucking. Not fucking is not fucking.”
Either you’re doing it or talking about it. Which is better?
Replyim a fan regardless of topic. im happy to see you expand out of tech.
let the good times roll!
ReplyThanks for all the kind words. To be honest fuck the reviews, I can handle all that bullshit. It got me thinking though. I just want to do something that connects with me, and hopefully you. I’m not going anywhere, just moving over a bit.
ReplyADM - Just a special note to you. I think you are fucking awesome, you have such a wonderful energy. Yeah, I’m gonna take you up on that. Get back to my Hungarian roots.
ReplyThanks Tom. The best thing about the whole Shel idiocy was finding you.
ReplyI feel you, Loren. Tech world is starting to get boring. No startup being founded is half as revolutionary as the nitwits that are starting it. Facebook is THE ONLY Web 2.0 company that has truly been ‘revolutionary’ (perhaps flickr… but its still a generic concept). I think you can agree that everything else is kind of nice and kind of cool and sure maybe it saves time but, in the end, its all bullshit that wont change the world. Best of luck.
ReplyMark Rose,
Read your article. While I get the point, and appreciate it, I think you might have missed the mark a bit. Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis are friends. Period. I never gave a shit about their business,nor they mine. My relationship is personal, and I have nothing but good words to say about both of them.
ReplyI don’t know who Shel or Dave Weiner is and I don’t care either. This doesn’t mean that those funny bits are going to go away does it? Maybe work those puppets into whatever you move on to next?
ReplyGood show. May The Force Be With You. Just don’t start covering Hollywood morons like Paris Hilton all the time. I hate that shit.
ReplyThe reason the tech is boring is that you’re not a tech guy, you’re a schmoozer like Calacanis and Arrington. It’s true that the bullshitters are are full of shit, sure. Welcome to your own life.
Reply“my videos will never come down - ever” be careful using YouTube, they just took down my entire account for days… keep posting them in different places…
on the getting your mind switched to broader topics, I agree I actually feel the same.
ReplyI’m just glad the dopey videos continue.
They make my day and as Sean Percival said, they can piss the internets off!
Keep up the great work!
ReplyMan, it is refreshing to hear an A-Lister actually admit that the tech echo chamber is way overblown. Don’t get me wrong, I love tech and techie things, I live and work in tech in Silicon Valley, but there is more to the world than Tech. If you spend all of your time reading the tech blogs and hanging out on social media sites, you would think that the whole world revolves around tech and that nothing else exists or matters. I’m looking forward to what Loren has to say once he broadens his horizons.
Replyyour Loic impressions were priceless though
ReplyI call bullshit. I’m ready to jump on your bandwagon or whip the horses if you don’t feel like driving. Fortunately you’re a New Yorker so you can, by my (barely upholstered) armchair view a) do theater b) standup/sketch/improv 3) some experimental hipster gig that caters to the nouveau-Pabst drinkers of this city or d) add some spice to Brazilian martial arts or some functional equivalent and brazenly take center stage in Washington Square. Certainly none of that would preclude you from sticking with your current gig; no matter your feelings about Ze Frank (who was on the interview hot seat at Sketchfest NYC having a worthwhile talk about meta-tech with Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart, at sketchfest NYC) made a compelling point that resonated with the creative and reluctantly tech-reliant audience. Specifically, professionally vlogging (that people use a word like that without a hint of irony does make a solid case for your position but I digress) and more importantly making the commitment to grind it out, a video a day, no excuses about joices or lack thereof, had more intrinsic creative value than he’d realized at any point during his year on computers everywhere.
But I imagine you’re still asking yourself the only question still worth asking: what would McLuhan do (and would Robert Scoble qua Robert Scoble agree)?
And I venture to say that we wouldn’t have this (http://tinyurl.com/6hmt3t) in our lives without a critical mass of egomaniacal and talented people writing ceaselessly about the zeitgest of these sould sucking series of tubes.
ReplyLoren, you express an existential angst that we all feel from time to time, you do it well. I share your cynicism abut tech talk. I blog about culture, politics, art, travel, I blog for my self; I enjoy blogging, I know you enjoy what you are doing too.
Keep it man, you value to the great din that is the web.
ReplyWho was “bored” first? Loren or Julia Allison?
Its either going to be wedding bells or a sex tape in future - I’m still not sure.
I think Loren the “tech vlogger” pretty much jumped the shark with that ‘Bill Gates has big balls’ video. At that point it was time to either give it up or find some subject matter that was at least going to be in some way even remotely interesting. I don’t get Twitter at all. Why? And who gives a shit. Maybe this is the crest of some kind of new wave. Maybe its time for all these tech people to pull their heads out of their massive collective ass. When everything becomes about self promotion and looking for that big pay day it all soon becomes insufferably boring very quickly. Read a book. Take a walk.
ReplyAwesome. I would personally like to see more funny stuff like that Calacanis exercise video you did a while back…but make fun of celebs, famous people in business, etc..
ReplyGood luck, Loren. I’ll keep checking in.
If you miss Loren’s anti-tech industry rants, check out http://lowtechtimes.com
But it’s mostly text, not videos…
ReplyIt’s time to do a film or a play or something creative…
ReplyAt this point why not just go full frontal?
ReplyBonjour Loren!
I’m just glad I’ve found you.
I LOVE YOU!
Thanks to gapingvoid who mentioned you on Twitter, I’ve discovered a new place to hang out. Cool!
Now…make me laugh.
S’il vous plaît
Big hugs always,
Mudd a.k.a. Oza
xoxo
P.S.: I’m one of the people who rarely gets comments on their blogs. I’m so ashamed…
ReplyTwitter may not change the world, but humans and their technology are a few clicks away from building a bridge over the sea of stupidity to a world where truth, integrity, courage and REAL people like yourself are holding all the crooks and liars accountable.
Keep crashing servers Feldman. Art is this world’s only hope.
ReplyI myself will be moving back into non digital media for my artwork. Will be working in Acrylic because I like the durability of it. I will still produce facebook graffitiwall drawings and vectored animations… but a lot less of it. in the end it is all about concepts.
keep up the great work Loren! I will always look to your vids for ideas
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