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Why J.D. Salinger's stories resonate in the Internet age

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An adjective counted among the highest compliments in prose—though too casually dropped by most critics—is “timeless.” It’s one thing for an author to capture her historical moment with savage wit and subtle poignancy, quite another to do so in a way that touches readers of the following century (let alone the one after that). With the mysterious emergence of three unpublished J.D. Salinger stories online, it’s worth asking what realist fiction penned in the 1940s might mean to a generation raised on Google search, anonymous message boards, and emojis.

Though Salinger chose to almost exclusively mine mid-century disaffection, the loss of youth in a newly minted superpower, and the lingering trauma of World War II, the structure of his body of work anticipates the Internet age in surprising ways. Focusing mainly on two intricately woven families, the Glasses and the Caufields, the stories correlate and sometimes, in Wikipedian fashion, revise one another, with competing narrators and histories. He was ever fixated on the perils of overintimacy—and now the rest of us are, too.  

Finalized family trees for the Glasses and Caufields are supposedly among the priceless Salinger documents that have yet to see the light of day, but for now, it’s up to readers to decide on official truths. One can easily imagine these fictions as some kind of hypertext labyrinth: click on the name of anyone who happens to pass through a scene and you’d be transported to a story in which they’re the protagonist, describing events important to them. Each time Salinger modifies his master layout, the characters begin to contradict and interrupt one another as at a dining room table.  

“The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” for example, of the leaked mini-collection Three Stories, concerns the premature death of Kenneth Caufield, the younger brother of The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caufield, but in that book, his name is Allie. In yet another piece, “This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise,” Holden is supposed to have died at war in the Pacific theater, though Catcher shaves 10 years off his age, making him too young for the draft. As familiar as we are with these haunted misfits, we cannot be sure of their lives; the details are always fluid, unmentioned siblings and relatives appearing when convenient.  

Especially in looking at these “lost” manuscripts, which are full of typos, proof notes, formatting errors, and certain sentences repeated with slight variations, one has to sort through noise and static for something like definitive answers. The same way a low-quality rip of a new album on What.cd, the file-sharing site where the unpublished material surfaced, will only appeal to the band’s most devoted and impatient fans, these stories have become artifacts for obsessives who have a surgical interest and no patience for the Salinger estate’s timetable. With millions of dollars lost by the copyright holders and a 6-terabyte bounty paid for the stories on What.cd, it was literary piracy on a far grander scale than the term would normally imply.

An elder Caufield brother, Vincent, narrates the sad tale of Kenneth’s (or Allie’s) demise, not before restlessly analyzing the young gentleman’s idiosyncrasies. Typically, he forsakes the real world for immersive art and abstraction; his interest in baseball takes the form of statistical trivia. He sees just one game, at Yankee Stadium, in which Lou Gehrig strikes out twice, and never goes back: “He said he didn’t want to see anyone really good strike out again.” Anyone who’s spent some time on the Web knows the sensation of reality that fails to accord with the theoretical, from major digital hoaxes to slightly misleading OkCupid photos. That disconnect must be as old as civilization, but we keep inventing more ways to experience it.

“Paula,” another leaked text, like 1949’s “The Laughing Man,” is a story about a story, and the need to set the record straight—a common impulse following some convoluted Internet dustup. It’s a psychological chiller exploring a man’s desire to understand the bizarre seclusion his wife has demanded during an apparent pregnancy, but toward the end, there’s a sharp left turn from the limited third-person narration, and the husband personally relates a ghastly final discovery to his friend, who then brings things to a close in his own laconic voice. Being on the outside of someone’s life, looking in, is a central element of social media, where profiles both invite and repel speculation. Salinger might have seen Facebook as no more than a hearsay machine.

This is another side of Salinger’s persona that makes him fascinating to contemporary eyes: The watchword of the millennial generation is “connection,” often of a superficial kind that the painfully sensitive author would have mocked if he thought it worth the effort. In a world where fame is an end in itself, he was seen to withdraw—not from society, as popularly thought, but the media’s maw, which wanted feeding. After “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut” became the 1950 film My Foolish Heart (still the only authorized Salinger adaptation, and disastrous), it was clear that Hollywood wouldn’t get a second chance to capitalize on such content, and so the Caufields and Glasses remain confined to the page, where only the true romantics and maniacs will find them, and Salinger retained a kind of control over his public image that’s practically unthinkable today. 

All this is to say that entering Salinger’s world is, as Internet habitués put it, like falling down a rabbit hole—suddenly you’re in too deep and want to know everything, but the mystery just seems to expand. The Catcher in the Rye is at this point considered less of a book and more a phenomenon; you’d have to admit it’s downright viral. A perceived closeness to Salinger himself (see also: tweeting at celebrities) is why you can spend hours poring over the deceptively simple “Birthday Boy,” the shortest of the three leaked stories: The tension here derives from the perplexing relationships between nurse, patient, visitor, and doctor, but an early line cuts deep. As the nurse explains how the bedridden young man wouldn’t touch his carrots at lunch, we get a quick, unspoken aside: “He was always not touching something.”

There’s something terrifying yet endlessly appealing about that small refusal, that small distance, in an era when we are supposed to be closer than ever before, saying yes, opting in. To the countless variations of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” meme—which not coincidentally has its origins in morale-boosting British propaganda at the outbreak of World War II and the commencement of regular bombings—Salinger adds: “Or don’t.” In his opinion, we’re inclined to believe, a nervous breakdown is a perfectly legitimate response to the hollowness of humankind. Americans suffer from the same hypocrisy and delusion they did half a century ago, and while the mode of contagion may have changed, Salinger’s subversive insights didn’t have to. 

Photo by Diego Patiño/Flickr


The 2013 'United State of Pop' is a wrecking ball of everything hot

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No one captures the pulse of pop music quite like the mashup artist DJ Earworm

Earworm, based in San Francisco, has made a name for himself on the Internet since first concocting his “United State of Pop” series in 2007. Yesterday, he returned—for the sixth consecutive year—with a five-and-a-half-minute assembly of pop hits that conglomerates into a sound that Earworm, real name Jordan Roseman, hopes can articulate the spirit of modern pop music. 

This year, the spirit is dominated by MacklemoreMiley CyrusKaty Perry, and Rihanna.

The mashup, which includes tracks from Avicii (“Wake Me Up”), Bruno Mars (“When I Was Your Man”), Daft Punk (“Get Lucky”), Jay Z (“Holy Grail”), Lorde (“Royals”), and 20 more artists, has already racked up 250,000 views in one day on YouTube, evidence not only of Earworm’s ability to cull the right tracks, but his uncanny knack for assembling the songs into a composition that’s both witty and entertaining to listen to.

“I’m trying to make pop songs, not mixes,” Earworm told the Daily Dot last December. “It’s a different angle than a lot of people take, and when you’re trying to get all these songs in, it’s really easy to just make a mix instead of a pop song.”

Photo via DJ Earworm/YouTube

Which social network gets the most shoutouts in rap lyrics?

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Rap’s long been a genre facing the forefront of communicative technologies—take Ice Cube’s pager, which’s been blowin’ up since that good day in 1993—so it stands to reason that the world’s hottest rappers hold a reverence for the onslaught of social media sites that allow you to talk to a million people while you’re lying on your couch.

Yesterday, Jason Kottke used Rap Genius's Rap Stats graphing feature to create what he calls "The Jay-Z Social Media Average," detailing the abundance of mentions for Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Myspace, and Snapchat in rap tracks over the past 23 years. It indicates once and for all that Twitter is the most popular medium among the many of the most popular MCs—a legit shock to Fat Joe, no doubt, who could have sworn he changed the game when he concocted the anthemic “Instagram that Hoe” in October 2012. 

We’d also be remiss not to mention Snapchat’s troubles and Vine’s absence altogether, which is strange, since our coverage suggests that rappers comprise half that community.

H/T Kottke | Photo via Macklemore/Instagram

Paul Walker kept this astounding act of generosity a secret

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As people remember The Fast and Furious star Paul Walker following his death from a car crash on Saturday, more stories about how the actor’s actions spoke volumes for his character are coming to light.

And what he did for one couple will hit you right in the feels.

Kristen and Kyle Upham first met Walker at a high-end jewelry store in Santa Barbara, Calif. in 2004 after Kyle returned from serving in Iraq. Having already gotten married prior to his tour, he wanted to buy his wife a new ring. Kyle and Walker eventually started talking, which turned to their professions.

“And when he found out Kyle just came back from Iraq, just, I remember seeing the look in his face,” Kristen said. “He—it kind of transformed.”

Soon after, they got a call from the store that the $9,000 ring was ready. When they asked, the clerk didn’t tell them who had purchased it.

They had suspected that Walker was behind it, but it wasn’t until after his death that a jewelry store clerk came forward and told them they were right.

H/T Uproxx | Photo via CBS This Morning/YouTube

NPR's Book Concierge will help you find your new favorite book

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With a nod of fatigue and a slight dig at BuzzFeed, NPR Books declined yesterday to indulge in the annual mania for year-end lists, having produced 80 of them since 2008. Instead, the staff wrote, they sought a way of breaking the rigid binds of sequence and rankings to deliver a more open-ended, discovery-based format. The result? NPR Book Concierge.

The app includes staff recommendations for over 200 outstanding titles released in 2013, arranged in a Netflix-like tile mosaic. You can click on any cover to read about what makes the book great, but the real attraction is in the filters, which can give you an intimately customized recommendation.

Just browse the “Science Fiction & Fantasy” subcategory, or narrow your search to a single ideal volume: Highlighting “Biography & Memoirs,” “Book Club Ideas,” “Eye-Opening Reads,” “Family Matters,” “For History Lovers,” and “Rather Long,” for example, and NPR will point you toward Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, a consideration of Ben Franklin’s unjustly obscure sister.


 

So go ahead, play around, explore, figure out which “Realistic Fiction” falls on “The Dark Side,” and pick a funny book to give the art lover in your life. Beware, though—while NPR Book Concierge is certainly a noble step toward abolishing "Top 10" culture, you may find that it radically lengthens your holiday wishlist. 

Photo by bluemarla/Flickr

Spotify data proves there are no more guilty pleasures

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Listening to music in 2013 is simultaneously a social and profoundly isolating experience. On one hand, the widespread adoption of personal music players allows everyone to choose their own private soundtrack. On the other hand, music apps like Spotify encourage users to display a running ticker of every song they listen to and share favorite tracks with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

This dichotomy between the public and private aspects of music consumption are nothing new. Anyone who ever got a dirty look from a record store clerk for passing over both a compilation of Velvet Underground B-sides and a whole host of seminal Aphex Twin albums in favor of a Hootie & the Blowfish greatest hits collection can attest to this.

The divide between what we actually listen to and what we want others to believe we actually listen to has never been acutely quantifiable. Sure, back in the pre-Internet era, you could compare the best selling albums of the year to the records all your friends insisted you simply had to check out, but that was never particularly scientific. Now, thanks to the rigorous data collection practices of streaming music services like Spotify, it’s possible to see if the music people advocate in public is the same as what listen to in private.

Earlier this week, Spotify released a list of 2013’s 10 most listened to tracks from around the globe:

The list itself isn’t particularly surprising. It’s dominated by danceable, mainstream pop confections from artists like Imagine Dragons and Robin Thicke. The most interesting thing about it is likely the twofold presence of moralizing Seattle rapper Macklemore, who became the first unsigned artist in ages to generate a chart-topping hit.

The most streamed list for the United States is similar to the global list, except it swaps Pink for Justin Timberlake’s "Mirrors,” Passenger for Lorde's "Royals,” and Calvin Harris for AWOLNATION's "Sail."

Where things get fascinating is when the list of the most streamed songs is compared to Spotify’s tally of the most ‟viral” songs of the year. Spotify calculates a song’s virality by taking its total number of shares and then dividing by the total number of listens.

Spotify spokesperson C.J. Stanley explained that the most shared tracks, in terms of raw numbers, are typically also the most streamed tracks. On one hand, this fact may simply be a testament to the power of social media in modern-day music discovery, but it also shows the music people encourage others to listen to (thereby publicly showcasing their own personal music taste) is also what they actually listen to.

Last month, Spotify investigated its listeners’ favorite guilty pleasure songs. Journey’s ‟Don’t Stop Believin” won hands down, getting more than double the votes tracks like Britney Spears’s ‟...Baby One More Time,” ‟Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by the Backstreet Boys, and Wilson Philips’s ‟Hold On.”

Notably, none of those songs are even remotely new. Spotify gathered the data in the first place was by the tallying up the number of times a song appeared on a playlist entitled ‟Guilty Pleasures.” Since many playlists are visible to users’ followers on the service, enjoyment of these songs might be embarrassing, but not quite embarrassing enough to be entirely kept secret.

While Spotify’s viral list punishes songs for racking up a large amount of listens, there was some overlap between the two lists. Tracks by Imagine Dragons, Lorde, and Daft Punk appeared on both, meaning that everyone listened to them and everyone shared them. This is especially true for Daft Punk ‟Get Lucky,” which was rated as the most viral track of the year and earned the honor of racking up the most streams ever recorded in a single 24-hour period: 1.5 million.

The other songs on the viral list are largely there due to their popping up somewhere prominent in contemporary popular culture.

On Eminem’s ‟Rap God,” Mr. Mathers crams 100 words into a 15-second verse conclusively proving that he’s among the best technical rappers in the world. Arcade Fire’s ‟Reflekor” had contributions from LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and David Bowie, making it the hipster event of the young millennium. Badfinger’s ‟Baby Blue” had a prominent placing in the series finale of Breaking Bad. ‟He Stopped Loving Her Today” was the biggest hit of country legend George Jones, who passed away in April. Also, don’t forget the brief period of time earlier this year when everyone on Facebook was wondering what ‟The Fox” said.

However, other than ‟The Fox,” none of the songs appearing on the list for largely for cultural reasons cracked the top 100 most played tracks, either in the United States or globally. These songs’ place on the list may be the result of a relatively small sample size people listening to them in the first place. But to paraphrase Brian Eno’s famous line about the Velvet Underground, only a few thousand people may have listened to these songs but every single one of them hit the share button.

Most streamed tracks of 2013

  • Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, ‟Can’t Hold Us”
  • Avicii, ‟Wake Me Up”
  • Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, ‟Thrift Shop”
  • Daft Punk (ft. Pharrell Williams), ‟Get Lucky”
  • Imagine Dragons, ‟Radioactive”
  • Let Her Go, ‟Passenger”
  • Robin Thicke (ft. T.I. & Pharrell Williams)
  • Pink (ft. Nate Russ), ‟Just Give Me A Reason”
  • The Lumineers, ‟Ho Hey”
  • Calvin Harris (ft. Ellie Goulding), ‟I Need Your Love”

Most viral tracks of 2013

  • Badfinger, ‟Baby Blue”
  • Imagine Dragons, ‟Monster”
  • Lorde, ‟Royals”
  • Eminem, ‟Rap God”
  • Daft Punk, ‟Get Lucky”
  • George Jones, ‟He Stopped Loving Her Today”
  • Arcade Fire, ‟Reflektor”
  • Pink Floyd, ‟Wish You Were Here”
  • Sia (ft. The Weeknd & Diplo), ‟Elastic Heart”
  • Ylvis, ‟The Fox”

Screengrab via Ylvis/YouTube

Lana Del Rey's 'Tropico': Jesus, John Wayne, and a ton of strippers

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Apparently determined to outdo Lady Gaga’s habit of making 10-minute music videos, Lana Del Rey’s Tropico clocks in at almost half an hour. Featuring three tracks from her album Born to Die: The Paradise Edition, it makes up in symbolism what it lacks in plot. 

Lana’s brand of whimsical Americana is still going strong, as the self-penned short film opens with Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, and Elvis, all hanging out in the Garden of Eden with a unicorn. In her role as Eve (Adam is played by model Shaun Ross), Lana wears a flower-garland bikini, which pretty much sets the tone for the next 25 minutes of short-shorts, crop tops and underwear. There’s also an extended sequence where she recites Allen Ginsberg’s Howl over a montage of strip clubs, guns and stylish gangster girls blowing cigarette smoke into the breeze. But we wouldn’t want to give you too many spoilers before you watch the actual video.

At least a quarter of Tropico is taken up by Lana pole-dancing mournfully as part of the main “story”: A wistful romance between herself and her gangster Adam in modern-day Los Angeles, culminating in yet more religious imagery. It’s like a cross between Badlands and the classic L.A. magical-realist romance Weetzie Bat, but with more pole dancing. (Possibly too much pole dancing, but who are we to judge the film choices of an artist whose success is mostly thanks to her music videos?)

Tropico may be a big step away from Lana Del Rey’s earlier, more DIY-style videos, but it will certainly give pop critics something to chew on. 

Screengrab via Lana del Rey/Vevo

Bleeding Hearts: A Spotify tribute to the emo class of '03

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BY RAMON RAMIREZ

Somewhat unexpectedly, emo is a trending topic in music. This is significant, as emo at its most famous was laughed off the stage somewhere between Spiderman 2 and the Jay Z-backed Fall Out Boy record. I’d more easily buy a revival of rap-metal—it’s a better look for new bands than weepy lyrics about frivolous, adolescent whims and suburban despair.

Emo was easy slang for “power pop with self-taught guitars”–accessible, easy, communal. The genre had flurries in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s. It makes sense that the sound strikes back periodically—awkward teenagers with feelings will always exist—but the governing term is an odd banner to revisit.

Grantland’s Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan were big emo guys. Greenwald wrote a defining book that detailed the scene’s collective (ultimately failed) coup. Ryan was an emo kid, attending college in Boston during the ’90s. Ten years ago, the old guard of major label fat cats was banking on this to be grunge. It didn’t happen for a number of reasons Greenwald and Ryan explored on their recent, retrospective podcast.

My older, scenester editors, like Ryan and Greenwald, had a tangible, authentic, regional music scene. I had absolutepunk.net, AOL Instant Messenger, Hurley polos, and faux indie labels (Vagrant, Drive Thru, Fueled By Ramen) with big money investors and secret puppet strings. The previous class had couch-surfing lead singers, and bands like Mineral that remain legitimately great. We had quirky, novelty side projects from leftover keyboard players like Reggie and the Full Effect.

Was emo a healthy net positive for bored teenagers that didn’t have DIY interests but thought the songs were fun to pirate? I am conflicted as a perpetual apologist of this era, despite its bundles of comically bad songs. And that’s just Fall Out Boy. At its most inspiring, high school jocks dug punk aesthetics and political, local bands like At All Cost in Austin, Texas screamed about George W. Bush—deterring kids from Godsmack in the process. At its worst, girls were broken down into foils for singers and everything we rocked out to was a dollar-menu diet of prospect bands.

This playlist hones in on the music of 2003. It is comfortably the best year for 21st century emo. It was the most inclusive: Linkin Park’s Meteora was paired with AFI’s Sing the Sorrow as essential Hot Topic healing; rapper Slug was welcomed at the Warped Tour; Coheed & Cambria used the scene to become prog stars. Punk stayed flippant and political at the height of the Iraq War. Sensitive scream-y stuff straddled a competent line between “self-serious, passionate, to be commended” and “I am embarrassed for this guy as I hear this.” Songwriting was stellar at its most well-funded genre apex. The Exploding Hearts died, leaving behind one perfect punk album. Ben Gibbard dropped Transatlanticism and Give Up. Blink-182—aged pranksters and advocates for promoting punk bands to teenagers—recorded their most mature and best album. Thursday and Brand New released masterpieces.

In 2002, the Used sounded like this. In 2004, the Used sounded like this. In 2003, the stuff was at its most exciting—bankrolled yet raw, a first round draft pick with a signing bonus check to burn at a nightclub.

Ever since, my attitude as a music scribe has been “whatever man, you had to be there.” But fuck that. Some of the 21st century’s best secular, Western rock stems from emo. I hated Arcade Fire’s Suburbs record for a number of different reasons, but a lot of it came down to: I’m proud of my life and the things that I have done. You can lead with decorative vests or you can put a bleeding lung on the operating table.

The article originally appeared on Bro Jackson


This dude is about to change the way you hear drums

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The first fight I got into with my best friend from college happened when I equated his type of artists to bangers. Connor was a drummer—a batteur, the French kids called him—so I studied the stigma: percussionists were beat keepers and timesticks, not melodic or musical. They simply banged on things. 

Through four years of recitals I was repeatedly proven wrong—and I was again  today after witnessing the work of French Wikidrummer Julien Audigier, late of De Palmas and Nina Attal.

In this video, he lays down two minutes of sound-shifting funk through the amplification system that is our really real world. What you find plays out like a John Cage experiment for the YouTube era: The music comes from everywhere. In Audigier’s case, tones echo off every garage roof, soccer field, courtyard, and industrial factory, with about six more scenes intermixed within the clip. 

“No artificial reverb added,” he stressed. Just a kick, hat, carpet, and snare.

Photo via Audio Zéro/YouTube

Rebecca Black's new single, 'Saturday,' kinda rules

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"I'm trying to get Friday out of my head," Rebecca Black sings in her new single, called—of course—"Saturday." It's actually kind of good! It's catchier than the original in a nonironic way, even though it's the exact same, structurally and visually. But you could listen to it, maybe, twice on Spotify without disconnecting it from your Facebook account in shame. 

Some wild stuff happens in this video, too! How old is Rebecca Black now, 16? Her friends still love riding in convertibles, but now they're getting into smoke bombs, red solo cups, spanking dudes, silly string, underwear parties, and other things that almost seem fun. The video is a blatant homage to Miley Cyrus and "We Can't Stop"—there's even a girl dressed like Miley at the VMAs doing some twerking, or something like it.


 

My favorite part, though, is when Rebecca strolls into the party with her sunglasses on—


 

And then the dudes are like, Whaaaaat!


 

RB totally owns it. The whole thing is super-self-aware, but confidently so. She knows what she's done to the tween-pop industry, and she might've been lucky enough to get out of the shit circus alive, leaving behind producer Patrice Wilson and the awful, quasi-exploitative, culturally tone-deaf ARK Music Factory. Rebecca Black's life seems kinda awesome, and we should root for her to be more than a one-hit wonder.

That scene at the end where a black guy gets arrested (is he supposed to be Patrice Wilson? I really don't get it) is weird, though.

So what's next?


 

Screengrab via YouTube

Everyone on Twitter is watching 'Elf' right now

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Some traditions are so important that Christmas just doesn’t feel right without them. And one of those, apparently, is sitting down to watch the Will Ferrell comedy, Elf.

When British TV viewers realized that for the first time in years, Elf would not be shown on the public Channel 4, they were horrified. Although the movie only came out in 2003, it’s already become a Christmas institution, marking the start of the holiday season. Unfortunately, the subscription-only (and Murdoch-owned) Sky Movies channel bought the film rights this year, leaving most of the nation in a disappointingly Elf-free zone. Something had to be done.

For the past week, the hashtag #Elfalong has been spreading across British Twitter like holiday cheer. Started by Guardian TV critic Stuart Heritage, who was one of the first to notice the absence of Elf on this year’s Christmas viewing schedule, the #Elfalong was a plan for everyone to organize their own shared Elf event. People set their DVDs to play at 3pm on Sunday, Dec. 8, so Britain could enjoy its annual Will Ferrell appreciation day without having to pay the middleman.

“This Elfalong thing has got a bit out of hand,” wrote Heritage in the Guardian, hours before the mass viewing was scheduled to begin. “But that just speaks to how beloved Elf is.” Even the film’s director Jon Favreau got involved, publicizing the #Elfalong to his 1.6 million followers.

Screencap via stuheritage/Twitter

No, Kanye West did not call himself the 'next Nelson Mandela'

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If the Daily Currant is to be believed, Kanye West has already chosen Nelson Mandela’s spiritual replacement: himself.

Relax. West may have a notorious ego, but he hasn’t actually outclassed himself by declaring that “he will soon be a bigger cultural and civil rights icon than Nelson Mandela” during an interview with WGCI radio in Chicago.

The Daily Currant is a satirical news site, like the Onion but without humor. Headlines include “Message From God Found Hidden Inside DNA Sequence” and something about Rick Santorum “Producing Straight Remake of 'Brokeback Mountain.’” Still, the joke seems to be lost on many readers. Maybe because nothing Kanye says is really that shocking nowadays.

From the parody article:

"I'm only 36 years old, and when I look at everything I've accomplished, it's the only comparison that makes any sense. By the time I'm 95, I'm going to be a bigger hero than he ever was.

"Nelson Mandela did a lot of good work, don't get me wrong. But I think I'm on track to do something even bigger. I liberate minds with my music. That's more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

"Not to say Mandela wasn't for real. I have mad respect. I just think we need to keep things in perspective here. Anyone can be replaced. And I think I'm well on my way towards being the next great black leader. I'm already worshiped around the world. And there's more to come."

If all this sounds like it could come straight from a regular news report—at least until you actually read what Kanye is alleged to have said—that’s part of the problem.

The Daily Currant, which describes itself as “the global satirical newspaper of record,” has a style that’s less tongue-in-cheek as it is straightforwardly deadpan, which confuses readers so much it’s practically got its own Snopes debunking category. It’s been roundly criticized for failing to achieve a cohesive satirical tone that doesn’t just take potshots at pop culture—often coming off as more ableisthomophobic, and racist in tone than the things it’s attempting to skewer.

It’s incredibly easy to misconstrue this type of story for the truth, and unlike similar oft-confused sites like Landover Baptist, there’s no larger satirical theme to tip off confused readers that they’re reading works of parody.

So while many readers pointed out that the article was clearly satirical, plenty of others lined up to attack the artist for his alleged comments.

Given that Kanye’s latest album features a guest spot from “God,” it’s understandable that people might fall for the gimmick, at least at a glance.

But even if Jamie Foxx thinks Kanye and Jay Z are comparable to Martin Luther King Jr., we can’t see Yeezy declaring a national holiday for himself just yet.

Update: It looks like Kanye’s seen the article. And even he feels the need to set the record straight.

Photo via ddalledo/Flickr

Will 2014 be the year of the playlist?

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It’s no real surprise that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Thrift Shop” was the most popular track of 2013 on Playlists.net’s top 100 list. It was inescapable this year, and even brought some people to their breaking point: Back in April, a woman attempted to strangle her boyfriend after he played the song repeatedly.

But this year music made people do strange things: Parody Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” beyond context, expose every raw nerve over groups like One Direction. This was a year in which pop Xeroxed itself, from the borrowed soul of “Blurred Lines” to the borrowed ‘70s funk of “Get Lucky.” Then there were acts like Kanye West, whose Yeezus relied heavily on sampling, while also making some of the most drastic alterations to pop and rap.

Playlists.net, the mixtape-making left brain to Spotify’s quantifying right brain, recently released their stats for 2013. The remaining top nine tracks of the year include two by Swedish House Mafia, plus Skrillex, Daft Punk, Avicii, Calvin Harris, another Macklemore song, and will.i.am featuring Britney Spears. The top 20 is heavy on pop: MGMT, fun., Passion Pit. Gone from the top of many of these lists are women who also made alterations this year: Lorde, Lady Gaga, Janelle Monae, Miley Cyrus, Solange.

This might give you some idea of the Playlists.net demographic. Curiously, one playlist in particular has had an amazing run on the charts for two years now: Hipster International, curated by Napster founder Sean Parker. In fact, he takes this playlist very seriously.

“There weren’t any other real surprising trends other than we’ve had hundreds of ‘hipster’ playlists submitted, which I attribute to Sean Parker,” Playlists.net founder Kieron O’Donoghue adds.

Let us give thanks.  

Another trend this year: Television and gaming soundtracks were popular. O’Donoghue says that’s because there’s been a more concerted effort towards curating music in those industries. This can be seen in Spotify’s recently released data from 2013, which shares many acts with Playlists.net’s lists: The number one most "viral" track is Badfinger’s “Baby Blue,” which was featured on the final episode of Breaking Bad. Icona Pop’s “I Love It” experienced a viral renaissance after a cameo on Girls.

“I think that music supervisors for both TV shows and video games have upped their game in 2013, hence we have people actively searching for the music that was played in TV shows and games," O'Donoghue says. "I know that Rockstar Games especially have teams of people dedicated to discovering and licensing music for their games.”

The number one playlist in 2013 was the Weekly Top 100, released every Monday, which shows people are using the site as a means to keep up with trends. The top artist was Kanye West, another musician who made us do strange things this year, if only as a means to live out his fantasies with him. The rest of the top 10 is a fairly underwhelming mix of mid-Aughts arena pop, mixed with Jay Z and Michael Jackson, but the fact that David Bowie is at number nine seems promising.

But to find the real meat on Playlists.net, you’ve got to dig deep into the user selection. The top user of the year is Reggie Prim, who’s posted obscure, smart lists like this one.

“In terms of predictions for 2014, I think the playlist is definitely going to come of age as a format and traditional compilation albums will suffer because of this,” O’Donoghue says. “After all, a playlist of the top 500 songs ever doesn’t have the same limitations as a CD that can only store 70 minutes or so of music.”

But as our attention spans continue to shrink, is that for better or for worse? Will music continue to be made to fit those attention spans, to go viral, to market a product, to make us strangle each other? Or has the playlist format evolved as a necessity, to add a personalized touch to the way we share and experience music as a social act?

Screengrab via Ryan Lewis/YouTube

This 'Fallout 4' countdown fooled everyone, and then the creator came clean

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When it was just a bunch of video game junkies speculating on Reddit and YouTube, that was one thing. But when their theory was mentioned on Spike TV’s massive video game award show VGX 2013 Saturday night, Bethesda Softworks had to step in.

The mysterious website The Survivor 2299 had gone too far, convincing fans for nearly a month that it was tied to the next game in Bethesda’s popular post-apocalyptic game franchise Fallout.

“Some men just want to watch the world burn,” explained DCHoaxer, the creator of thesurvivor2299.com. “I wanted to force Bethesda to reveal something during VGX on 12/11, and bring /r/Fallout community together (for at least 3 weeks) Unfortunately, this plan Failed.”

Although DCHoaxer’s plan did fail to force Bethesda into an official announcement, it definitely brought the Fallout fan community together. His fake website sent the gaming world off on a massive scavenger hunt for the trailer for Fallout 4, a highly anticipated game that hasn’t been officially announced yet.

Thesurvivor2299.com went up on November 14 with nothing but a simple countdown and the logo for Vault-Tec, a fictional corporation from the Fallout series. That was all it needed to get people speculating.

One of the first to spot the site and connect it to Fallout was Zero Period, a YouTube gaming channel. In a video posted a day after thesurvivor2299.com was live, Zero Period explained how the survivor was a possible reference to the protagonist in Fallout 4 and the year 2299 would be when the game is set. Zero Period also pointed out that the countdown was scheduled to end on Dec. 11, the date of VGX. This was the same event Bethesda chose to announce The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2010.

About a week after the site launched, DCHoaxer began releasing clues, ciphers, Morse code, and other hints referencing people and places from the Fallout series. 

To help keep track of it all, members of Reddit’s r/Fallout subreddit began crowdsourcing all their research on Google Docs. One piece of information that seemed to legitimize the Fallout 4 theory was the fact that thesurvivor2299.com was registered with Zenimax Media, the owner of Bethesda.

This detail, and the use of the Vault-Tec logo, were the foundation upon which the rest of the conspiracy theories were built upon.

“The site has the Vault-Tec logo. This is huge,” hairbrushheroes commented. “The site would never have lasted so long if it didn't belong to Bethesda/Zenimax. It it was fake they would've ripped it down immediately due to Copyright Infringements.”

After this year's VGX, the buzz surrounding thesurvivor2299.com was immense. On YouTube, a search for “survivor 2299” turned up more than 51,000 results. And between Reddit’s r/fallout (101,000 readers) and r/gaming (4.1 million), thesurvivor2299.com was the subject of more than 140 threads.

It got so big that Bethesda’s Vice President of marketing and public relations Pete Hines had to set the record straight.

By Saturday night, DCHoaxer had been contacted by Bethesda and told to shut off the countdown. In an AMA (“ask me anything”) session, DCHoaxer admitted that he had spent $900 to build and maintain the site.

“I'm one of these ‘selfish bastards with a lot of money’ so I wanted to release a CGI Trailer,” DCHoaxer said. “But Pete Killed my plans. Maybe I'll release it later along with the script, so somebody else can use it!”

Reddit's giddy speculation had been replaced with words like “depressed” and “disappointment.” 

“I don't know if I'm more pissed at the person who created the hoax or Bethesda for not stopping it sooner,” reallygoodusername commented. “F*ck everything about this.”

The question reallygoodusername brings up is a fascinating one, particularly when looking at a similar hoax perpetrated by the clandestine marketing group SocialVEVO. They created briansannouncement.com, a site counting down to a mysterious announcement involving Family Guy’s family dog, who had just been killed off in dramatic fashion.

Less than a week after the site was launched, Fox burst SocialVEVO’s bubble.

“The producers have confirmed that the 'special announcement from Brian' website is a hoax and was not created by anyone connected to the show, studio or network,” the network said in a statement provided to TVLine on Nov. 26.

After the site was revealed as a hoax, it’s now rumored that FOX and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane will actually bring Brian back in an episode later this month. 

Reallygoodusername’s question will likely never be answered. And in the end, it really doesn’t need to be. 

Without having to spend one cent, Fallout 4 received the sort of publicity and social media attention marketing firms salivate over. And Reddit’s r/fallout? Well, it saw its biggest traffic spike of the year in November and December. (Click to enlarge.)

If Bethesda were planning a real Fallout 4 announcement, now would be the perfect time to make it.

H/T @randal_olson Photo via Bethesda

And the award for weirdest gaming awards show goes to…

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Last month’s inaugural YouTube Music Awards were chaotic and broke the fourth, fifth, and sixth walls. It had a few WTF? moments, mainly because there was a lot going on, but it also redefined what an awards show can be. That show seemed like a professional venture compared to what happened during Spike TV’s VGX Awards.

The Saturday evening gaming awards, which previously went simply by “VGA,” were hosted, inexplicably, by Community’s Joel McHale. Those hoping the format might follow that of his much-loved The Soup were likely… perplexed.

McHale flubbed his lines, seemed like he might be inebriated, alluded to the fact that he might be inebriated, talked over guests, and made his cohost, Geoff Keighley, look pretty concerned.

“It’s hard to believe that just four short hours ago, my wife had to awaken me from a booze and pill-induced haze to remind me that I thought it was an awesome idea to host a live nerd thing,” McHale said.

Here are some of the most cringeworthy moments.

This year, the folks at Spike wanted to change the tone of the show a bit. The show was streamed online instead of  television. They tried to focus more on the gamers than celebrity presenters. They added the “VGX.” There was no studio audience.

The inclusion of McHale could have added some levity; he’s good at smart-aleck comments, and could have given this “nerd thing” some needed punch. But instead he took every shot he could at the gaming community, and made it clear he didn’t want to be there, which only added to the formlessness of the show. Seems like Spike still has some fine-tuning to do.

Screengrab via Redemption Unleashed/YouTube


This music video transports GIFs to a whole new dimension

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Brooklyn electronic group Estate recently partnered with Tokyo futurist Liquid Pegasus for a joint single, “Tendency.” For the video, photographer Josh Ethan Johnson used a series of GIFs he’d created using photos of people taken in New York City.

The result is a stuttering, three-dimensional walk through a day of people-watching, condensed into three-and-a-half minutes. Johnson used a Nimslo, a stereo camera that produces 3-D GIF images, which in turn skewed perspective. The colorful images seem to be moving free of their background, unlike normal looped GIFs.

 

Liquid Pegasus recently completed a song-a-day project, which is worth checking out as well.

H/T Gawker | Screengrab via Estate/Vimeo

Donald Glover blurs the lines between real and imagined self

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Is Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, the most visibly meta musician we have right now?

Glover became popular on the Internet—for both his music and starring role on Community—named his new album Because the Internet, touched on our new collective online language, and used that very Internet to work out some of his issues with the very celebrity the Internet brought him, as well as do some clever promotion for his new album.

Because the Internet was released today, and it unpacks what it means be a virtual celebrity, to live on the Internet and open ourselves up on TumblrTwitter, and Instagram.

On Because, references are as legion as Anonymous. The closing track is titled "Life: The Biggest Troll (Andrew Auernheimer)" and references imprisoned hacker "Weev." Another track, "Zealots of Stockholm (Free Information)," feels a bit arch next to a track like “Sweatpants” or “Worldstar.” You half expect a “hashtags rule everything around me” joke.

 

And it might be all those references that actually weigh the album down. Like his vulnerable Instagram hotel notes from a couple months ago, the album comes off like a series of ideas written in the moment, with no strong thread to keep them cohesive or linear. The concept is certainly there, but the music is more imitation and there’s not much of a critique of the actual Internet that informs nearly all of the album’s tracks. OK, so, because the Internet...what?

But perhaps that explanation's still to come. A screenplay based on the album has recently come to light, so his Instagram notes and Tumblr posts might have been part of some bigger concept, adding an extra layer of meta to the story. It’s hard to say whether we’re getting Glover or Gambino as more of this story unfurls, but on the Internet, it’s quite easy to lose track of real and imagined self.

Screengrab via ChildishGambinoVEVO/YouTube

Hilarious 'Skyrim' mod replaces all dragons with Thomas the Tank Engine

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“What in oblivion is that?!”

This line from Skyrim’s first cut-scene reaches a whole new level of fantasy melodrama when the answer is no longer “a dragon”—which you’d kind of expect to find in a game like Skyrim anyway—but “an animated steam train.”

In this new fan-made mod, Skyrim’s dragon population is replaced with characters from the beloved children’s TV series Thomas the Tank Engine. In this YouTube video of that first, fateful scene, we get to see a whole new side to Thomas. This fire-breathing-dragon version of the cartoon train is stuck somewhere between hilarious and disturbing, as his round, wide-eyed face gleams in the firelight of a burning village. 

The “Really Useful Dragons” mod is available from NexusMods or Steam, where its creator writes, “Some dragon spells replaced with more appropriate versions of said spells. You'll see what I mean.” He doesn’t specify any further, but the screenshots indicate that it’s a pretty comprehensive mod, including scenes where characters face off against a flock of anthropomorphised freight train carriages with disturbingly fixed grins on their cartoonish faces. 

There’s something surreally brilliant about this mod, but it’s the sound effects that really sell it. As the malevolent animated trains swoop into view, they don’t roar like the original dragons in the game—they let out Thomas the Tank Engine’s cheerful steam train whistle. Perfect. 

GIF via calliecucumber/Tumblr

Screengrab via steamcommunity.com

YouTube is suddenly flagging thousands of videos for copyright claims

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BY 

YouTube Is Suddenly Flagging A LOT Of Videos For Copyright Claims

When we first heard of YouTube’s plan to begin screening videos from Affiliate channels of YouTube Multi-Channel Networks and subjecting those videos to a process of monetization review, we figured we had at least another month and an explanatory blog post still to come before the changes would take effect. Apparently, however, some of the changes associated with the new system may have come sooner than we expected. 

Dozens of prominent YouTubers, mostly in the gaming vertical, are reporting that Content ID has flagged tens, and sometimes hundreds of their videos. What’s more is many of the copyright claims are coming from suspicious third-party sources who—in some cases—don’t appear to be the owners of the questionable content.

Many of the creators whose videos have been flagged are among the most popular on YouTube. TheRadBrad, a gamer whose walkthroughs have earned him nearly 2 million subscribers and multiple appearances on our Top YouTube Channel Charts, has seen many of his videos flagged, with background music serving as the culprit. Other gamers, such as Tetraninja and GhostRobo, have seen their videos cited as well, with offenses sometimes as trivial as infringing background music playing within a game.

While this isn’t necessarily the upcoming monetization review process in action, the Content ID claims seem to be mostly targeting channels that are either Affiliate channels of an MCN, or not with an MCN at all. We’ve reached out to several YouTubers in the gaming vertical who claim to be in a Managedrelationship with their multi-channel network, and none are receiving the quantity of Content ID claims as the channels mentioned above and below.

The copyright claims raise the question of why gaming companies (who are not Nintendo) would want to remove videos that popularize and bring exposure to their games. But in the vast majority of these cases, it’s not the game companies flagging videos; many claims have come from third parties seemingly unaffiliated.

TotalBiscuit has brought to note a channel named 4GamerMovie that is flagging footage from the gameMetro: Last Light.

These unjust claims are reportedly rampant among the hundreds of videos that have been flagged thus far. Even MCNs (like Machinima and its head of Affiliate Network) seem to have been blindsided by the wave of Content ID claims.

But look for those MCNs and the creators to begin fighting back soon. Many of these claims will likely get thrown out as they are revealed to be improper (and any creator who believes his or her video has received a claim in error can immediately put in a dispute through their YouTube video manager). For now, however, many creators are left with tens, if not hundreds of videos, that are not able to generate any revenue because of the copyright claims. It’s a mini-crisis for YouTube, its networks, and those networks’ partners, one that will hopefully get sorted out sooner rather than later.

Illustration by Jason Reed

YouTube rewinds 2013 with a massive, star-studded mashup

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It’s been a long and strange year on YouTube.

The company had a lot to tackle in its annual Rewind video in a year where twerking made us forget about the Harlem Shake phenomenon and a simple question from a pair of Norwegian brothers distracted us from Psy's massive followup to “Gangnam Style.”

But Ylvis, Miley Cyrus, Psy, and more are all there in spirit (if not in person) to look back at 2013 and ask just one question: What does it say?

Like with last year’s massiveGangnam Style” mashup, Rewind 2013 is a who’s who of YouTube, with over 50 credited cameos and a rather catchy tune remixed with the biggest songs of the year (most notably “The Fox”) by mashup legend DJ Earworm.

It showcases some of the biggest viral stars of 2013 like Convos With My 2-year-old, the screaming goats we love and hate, how animals eat their food, and Prancercise, as they rewind the past year with the press of a button.

By pressing that rewind button, you’ll not only be reminded of the trends and memes you already forgot, you’ll also remember YouTube itself has changed—and not necessarily for the better

And remember: If it looks fake, it probably is.

Photo via YouTube Spotlight/YouTube

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