#ratm4xmas Mob Ain’t Democracy in Action
I can’t help feeling disappointed observing the glee many people are taking in the ‘battle’ to get Rage Against the Machine to Christmas No.1 over the usual syrupy X-Factor ballad. Yet again, a virtual-pitchfork wielding mob springs up on Facebook/Twitter, overexcitedly spitting bile about ‘sticking it to Simon Cowell’ and clearly relishing being members of some achingly cool, subversive arbiters of taste and democracy.
But since when was buying 3 copies of a track (that you may well already own) to push it artificially to Number 1 a victory for democracy? And when did subverting the mainstream Saturday night TV populism of X-Factor become about a pop music popularity contest of equally silly, mainstream proportions?
I suppose at least people are buying the music. Downloading ‘Killing In The Name Of’ from a torrent site would kinda miss the point (but I bet it’s still doing briskly on those too this week). Much has been made of the fact that Sony is behind both of the No.1 contenders anyway, so can’t lose, no matter how much ‘people power’ is exerted with a couple of lazy clicks of a mouse.
Odeous as Cowell can often seem, slagging him off on social networks just makes the “I’m buying RATM, yeah!” brigade seem more disenfranchised rather than powerful. Downloading singles is not ‘sticking it’ to any ‘man’. This over-excitement feels like the early days of email, when it seemed incredibly big and clever to send jokes to all your contacts. As the platform (or rather, its users) matured, the childish approach to its new thrills wore off. In 2010 we can expect plenty more mobs to spring up, since the social web is such a new cultural phenomenon. You get the feeling the possibilities are only just beginning to be realised.
Yes, this does give ‘the people’ some considerable new empowerment – the freedom of speech Twitter mob against Trafigura highlighted just how difficult it is for companies attempting to silence the free press – but the faux-rebellious #ratm4xmas campaign also proves how easy it is to mobilise huge numbers of people to join a ‘cause’ they have not thought very much about.
Culturally this is hugely negative. Comedians fear making their most cutting jokes without a ‘campaign’ springing up (@jimmycarr was satirising the lack of weapons for troops but still got pilloried for mocking disability) and politicians have to speak in such bland, cautious terms as to render most interviews pointless. And socially there are potential problems too. With the mob acting as real-time moral police, will groups advocating attacks on ‘peados’ whip up the necessary critical mass online to go and start throwing stones at the local ‘loaner’ without checking the facts of the case – almost certainly.
But this is all inevitable cultural fallout from the rapid assimilation of powerful new communications technology into the core of our daily lives. The mobs will spring up, but the excitement that a Christmas No.1 mob, or a ‘let’s get a rich celebrity sacked’ mob, and particularly the more extreme, hate-driven mobs can bring will surely wane once we’ve all got over how easy it is to make a shallow statement by adding your name to a Facebook group.
What interests me is what comes next. When we’ve collectively grown tired of the latest example of ‘people power’ hitting the headlines, how will these tools be used properly? Simon Cowell’s own ideas of a political X-Factor sound more than a little scary, but he certainly knows that asking the crowd in real-time is going to be far more significant in how we are governed, and by whom, in the near future.
And what forthcoming technological developments will have come along by the time we’ve all got used to these latest ones anyway? The playing field is likely to have changed repeatedly before we’ve had a chance to get comfortable. Living in this new world will require a high degree of media savvy of us all. So, if #ratm4xmas acts as the UK’s ‘email joke’ moment in the evolution of social media campaigning then it might yet prove to have had a little bit of substance. And ok, it has belatedly become a charity fundraising project too, so I don’t want to sound entirely like Scrooge here. Merry Christmas!
Tags: Groups, music industry, Twitter
December 21, 2009
“Culturally this is hugely negative. Comedians fear making their most cutting jokes without a ‘campaign’ springing up (@jimmycarr was satirising the lack of weapons for troops but still got pilloried for mocking disability) and politicians have to speak in such bland, cautious terms as to render most interviews pointless.”
Is this comment not slightly contradictory? Surely the whole point of the campaign is to stick two fingers up to the very purveyors of such bland media, not encourage such blandness. One of the main reasons Killing In The Name was chosen as the protest song is due to its edginess.
The complaint is against yet another uninspiring artist, performing a meaningless, uninspiring song… Too many critics are taking the ‘fvck you I won’t do what you tell me’ far too literally, and this is a minor victory for those whole want songs with passion, meaning and purpose to top the charts, not necessarily people trying to stick one to the man. It’s a little bit of harmless chart sabotage and sending out a signal, that many people would prefer music with a bit more meat on its bones.
December 21, 2009
I’m certain that most who bought RATM did so because they are keen supporters of culture with ‘meat on it’s bones’. Therefore I think it’s even more important to point out that there are contradictory effects to this new-found power.
The social media mob is going to be a cultural phenomenon in 2010, and I’ll wager a lot of that will be fairly negative. However, once we’ve got through that stage the potential is fantastic.
The quicker we all become savvy to the medium and treat it with respect the better. Too many of the tweets I’ve read on #ratm4xmas have been mob-minded, relishing how easy it is to feel culturally important while doing very little. That sort of thing can’t last as such campaigning matures, so the longer-term outlook is promising.
If RATM-buyers really want to send out a signal they need to support less bland media all year round too. That power is now ours, yet X-Factor is pulling in record viewers. Time to get the mob thinking beyond smug victory, I feel…
December 21, 2009
Yes, not too sure this is about ‘da mob’ but really just a bit of fun at Chrimbo. The RATM response in The Sun today puts it into perspective = focus on Shelter, not the stunt.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/2779109/Rage-Against-The-Machine-beat-Joe-McElderry-in-race-for-Christmas-number-one.html
steve
December 21, 2009
I couldn’t agree more that it needs to be year-round support, but sadly people are only able to mobilise in impactful numbers for a coordinated ‘event’ such as this. The reality is that X Factor and similar shows, as well as the more typical throwaway pop that people were so keen to Rage Against, receive far wider coverage through more traditional media channels, which apart from isolated campaigns, are still by far the most effective method of generating sales.
However, uncompromising rock bands such as Rage Against the Machine have proved in the past that they *can* command comparable sales to the pop acts of the day, but are completely ignored by the media planners. Only artists who fit certain criteria are deemed worthy of mainstream television, and that usually requires a huge compromise in the very values that make them interesting in the first place. Eventually, after a time, this spiral of dilution hits a point where people snap and say enough is enough.
I don’t think the spirit of this campaign is really hugely different to the punk acts of the late 70s, or the advent of the rave scene, or even the impact of Rage’s first wave contemporaries in the grunge movement. People are mob minded. They copied the dress of their heroes, they copied hair styles. Bandwagon jumping is nothing new. This, however, doesn’t impact on the significance of all the afore-mentioned rebellious musical explosions. The fact that people have jumped on Killing In The Name, now, is IMHO because that time of critical mass has reached us once more, and the industry needs a big old shake-up.
The one thing that concerns me the most, however, is that all the afore-mentioned movements were from new bands, pioneering a new sound, or using new and unusual technology. This is the first ’shake up’ that features nothing but an old song with a new route to market, and yes, it does make me question whether the depth of the rebellion is there to sustain it beyond a token mischevious one-off middle finger salute. If people really are ready for another dose of brutal reality in their music, they need standard-bearers, and I’m not sure that out-marketing the ’system’ with an old track really hits the nail quite squarely enough.
December 21, 2009
I don’t think we’ll see this as a watershed moment for UK music (Xmas number 1’s are always a bit of a novelty) but it’s going to cause a stir in the way music is marketed.
Even now, the music industry is playing catch-up with where their audience is at. Look, Cowell has offered the Facebook group couple a job!
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/974818/Simon-Cowell-offers-jobs-Rage-Against-Machine-campaigners/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
All they did was set up a group and coordinate people to download stores and he thinks they have ‘the secret’. Social media is proving it’s power without anyone in particular at the controls, which has great disruptive qualities. But I still plea with the mob to think a bit more about their actions and not just jump on easy-target bandwagons if they are to really be spoken about in the same breath as punk or rave…
December 21, 2009
I disagree about it not being watershed moment, the time is absolutely ripe for something to kick off in a big way. The economic conditions are perfect, doomsday theories abound with regards to climate change and the future of the planet, and people are making a lot of noise about their distaste towards the current musical elite. What it really needs is a true catalyst, an underground scene to defiantly emerge and capture people’s imagine. This Rage campaign is certainly not that catalyst, more an indication that people are looking for something different.
I did wonder last week, when reading in Metro of Simon Cowell telephoning the Facebook couple to offer his congratulations, whether he’d offer them some form of job. I decided he was far too shrewd to fall for that old trick, but nope, he’s just another out-of-touch media bigwig mystified by the smoke and mirrors of social networking. There is no great science to it, it was merely the right campaign at the right time and they chanced upon the combination of elements that captured people’s imagination. I think he’ll be deeply disappointed when he can’t replicate the same success for his own cynical means. As you quite rightly assert, it’s far easier to use these portals for negative and destructive campaigns than for sales and promotion. It’s people’s personal space, invade it with advertisements at your peril.
December 21, 2009
a small sweet victory for the people
So Rage have beaten Performer Joe X to the Christmas number one spot, thanks to a Facebook campaign. The theme ringing out this season of goodwill is therefore the rather refreshing and uplifting – fuck you I won’t do what you told me.
Traditionally, of course, the Christmas number one has always been rubbish, either a comedy record or a charity record or, in recent years, the X Factor finalist’s cabaret cover version. So, this is no small sign that there is life out there in consumer land. That we, the people, are not all couch potato zombies in thrall to Simon Cowell and his cronies. There are thinking, feeling people who still love music and would rather be force-fed a dose of adrenaline fuelled, old school agro-rock than the latest bland offering from the X machine. OK, it’s an old, dumb tune but the message is clear.
In these tough times we must celebrate these small, sweet victories. This is certainly not the end for X, Cowell and reality entertainment shows that pretend to be something to do with music, it’s not even the beginning of the end but it could well be, as Churchill said, the end of the beginning.
This little national event will make TV execs and radio programmers and those in charge of what’s left of the real music business, think that maybe it is worth looking at music beyond the narrow band of manipulable, pretty young things that Cowell parades in front of his lazy, hypnotised punters.
The point to be made is simple. There is more to music than cabaret for a mainstream Saturday night TV audience. Thanks to the net it’s easier than ever before to find music that suits our tastes (however eclectic or peculiar). There is amazing, exciting, innovative music being made by all sorts of different people in all sorts of genres that we can explore and experience and fall in love with. So let’s get out there and do it.
December 22, 2009
Lots more comment on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/tom.kihl?v=feed&story_fbid=234648934051&ref=mf
I think we shall return to this topic often in 2010!
December 22, 2009
“This little national event will make TV execs and radio programmers and those in charge of what’s left of the real music business, think that maybe it is worth looking at music beyond the narrow band of manipulable, pretty young things that Cowell parades in front of his lazy, hypnotised punters.”
I think here lies the crux of what I was long-windedly getting at… Those in charge of the typically more successful marketing and output channels might now look at an edgier, emerging, or even dangerous new scene as worth a punt, and could well provide the rebellious explosion the people have just shown they’re looking for… The time couldn’t be more right for something come out of the leftfield and completely change the lives of an uninspired youth… The new punk (or similar)? Who can know? But the people are primed and ready for it…
Naturally whatever it is, they’ll over-saturate and kill it pretty quickly, but such is the nature of all counter-culture mainstream musical explosions.
March 10, 2010
“Facebook groups have become about something much more tedious: reactionary campaigning.”
Nice article in today’s Guardian about the development of the social media mob: http://ow.ly/1gs6q