Social Media Workshops in Yellowknife

raincoaster media, yo

raincoaster media, yo

Just a quick note that over on raincoaster media and in Facebook I’ve got the announcements up for two new Social Media Workshops, these ones in-person, in Yellowknife at Chef Pierre‘s Aurora Conference Centre.

Social Media for Political Campaigns is Wednesday

and

Social Media for Business is Thursday. Both run 1-5.

And then at the end of the week I’m headed to Vancouver (via a 17-hour flight, thanks a lot, AIR CANADA!) to speak at Social Media Week on the Blogging Technology Panel, emceeing the Social Good Summit, and participating in the Guerrilla Mashup event.

EatDrinkTweet Social Media Workshop Discounts

Eat Drink Tweet

Eat Drink Tweet

Just a quick note to let you all know I’ve got a whole whack of new social media workshops posted on raincoastermedia.com and if you’re at the EatDrinkTweet conference in Penticton, you can get  a discount! So what are you doing here? Go take a look and sign up!

Operation Global Media Domination: the Thank God It’s Not Me edition

Total Information Awareness

Scientia est Potentia

As longtime readers of the ol’ raincoaster blog know, occasionally we take a good long look at our stats, indeed, nearly disappearing into our own fundamentals from time to time, most particularly when something has either gone spectacularly well or when it has gone spectacularly badly. We call this Operation Global Media Domination.

As you, gentle reader, are doubtless also aware, recently things have been going spectacularly badly with the exception of the unfortunately shortly-lived Cusack Effect. You may be sure that I am doing all in my power to drag my hits out of the ditch in which Automattic has thrown them (and a long, technical rant on why will doubtless be forthcoming) including appearing on podcasts, speaking at conferences (four this month: FOUR) and pimping out my blog in my linkblogging every chance I get.

It’s paying off slowly, as we’ve gone from about 650 hits a day in May up to 1100, but when Automattic made the link from the global tag pages NoFollow, they basically threw me off a cliff, or at least my hits. My graph:

I die! I DIE!!!

Is it any wonder I'm so fucking CRANKY?????

But there’s something worse than facing that graph: facing THIS graph:

Nick Denton is not a happy man

Nick Denton is not a happy man

Can you guess when the new Gawker redesign was implemented? Can you believe a man as smart as Denton has a cash bet that pageviews are going UP? Can you believe he still doesn’t see the problem?

Can you ever be thankful enough that that’s not you???

Nick Denton BOOM Winning. Just ask him.

Nick Denton BOOM Winning. Just ask him.

Non-RebloggingNonSociety

Scaaaaary 404

Scaaaaary 404

Not “Non” as in “Nony” or “Non” as in “NonSociety” but “Non” as in poof, gone, doesn’t exist anymore.

The Website Formerly Known as Reblogging NonSociety is no more. It was suspended or deleted for a violation of WordPress‘s famous Terms of Service, and let’s just say that the self-hating Julia Allison fangirl community is taking it hard.

Some vague background, because really all I know is vague background here, and for that, I am deeply thankful. Having gone about as far into fandom as one can do without getting a restraining order, I know the level of passion involved, and it’ll be no stranger to anyone who saw that rather unfortunate DeNiro movie. No, not the Fockers, the other one.

Anyway, there’s this person, Julia Allison. She’s an actual person and a decent writer, but she behaves like a fame-seeking android at all times except when she is renouncing fame and talking about settling down with her Rich Geek Boyfriend Du Jour. Let’s call it 99.842% of her life that the android is dominant, and the remaining 0.158% of the time she’s really only link-baiting Gawker.

Nick Allison, by CVXN

Nick Allison, by CVXN

Gawker. Oh yes, Gawker. This was all their doing, actually, because long ago, in a city far, far away, they plucked an obscure little blossom from her mundanity and bestowed upon her that most current of currencies: fame.

Fame Whore

July 6, 2010 Urban Word of the Day

An individual who is willing to do anything, regardless of how humiliating or demeaning, to achieve notoriety.

More often than not, this involves appearing on multiple reality television shows and/or having “private” sex videos “leaked” to the press.

Behold the reason for Julia Allison’s first major coverage in Gawker:

Julia Allison dressed as the Condom Fairy, Halloween 2006. Oh, has it really been four and a half years?

Julia Allison dressed as the Condom Fairy, Halloween 2006. Oh, has it really been four and a half years?

Actually, the condom dress was the most awesome thing she ever did. That took audacity, even for a sex columnist in a gimme paper, and before you laugh reflect on the fact that upon some very flimsy corsets great empires have been built.

Thus, from Gawker to Wired: not just to an article in Wired, but to a COVER STORY in Wired, on how to become an internet fameball (the gender-neutral, sex-trade-worker-positive replacement for “famewhore” that Gawker favours). And, really, who better to explain/personify/demonstrate it? Five years ago she was bumming around New York looking for a gig, any gig in front of a camera or behind a keyboard and within three years she’s on the cover of a Conde Nast glossy, albeit the geekiest one. She even got some venture capital for her website/lifecast/whoknowswhatthehellitwasreally, NonSociety.

One does not rise so far, so fast, without attracting several things:

  1. attention (see all of the above for details)
  2. fans
  3. haters
  4. that very complicated, metamorphic and unstable substratum of people who hate themselves for loving you and express this by dogging you, as publicly and as frequently as they can.
Haters Gonna Hate!

Haters Gonna Hate! Hatters Gonna Hat!

It is of these last that Reblogging NonSociety was formed, back in the early days of the interwebs, say, January of 2009 on Tumblr and, after a short, sharp shock in the form of the blog being taken down by Tumblr, on Blogger. After awhile, they decided to move to the (obviously superior) WordPress platform.

So what happened today really shouldn’t come as any surprise.

Continue reading

What Did You Do Today, raincoaster?

Desert Island disc-less

via fleetfootedfox

Nothing much, just:

Posted:

Discouraged a half-dozen or so people from attempting to pull the broken glass out of the door of the office and break in. I have some powerful stink-eye. A junkie kicked the glass door in the other day, but we have bars too, so even if you did scabble with your paws and get all the broken glass and the glass patch and the vinyl patch out of the frame, you’d just be stuck standing there looking in, only with you’re own blood all over your hands, and wouldn’t you feel stupid then, eh?

Watched an old lady get helped out of her wheelchair so she could root around in her bag for her crack pipe, and then watched as she dropped the pipe and the burning crack onto her slipper socks and then tried to suck the crack out.

Declared a moratorium on talking about dead people. Until BusyBeeBlogger pointed out that would give VanityFair nothing to talk about, so I said it was okay as long as the people were dead, fabulous, and not of my circle of acquaintances. Which describes most of the people they write about to a T. Or even an I.

Read Gawker and got depressed.

Pre-posted for the next couple of days. I’ll have to do a linkpost and something for TrueSlant Monday, but otherwise can take a day and a half at least off without feeling guilty.

Realized that, of my top ten posts, only one is less than a year and a half old. And got more depressed.

Self-diagnosed (probably accurately) with this fancy new, imported death fungus (25% fatality!). Have to get myself back to the doctor; maybe I should just camp there? I have every one of these symptoms INCLUDING the one only reported in animals so far. And I’ve had these symptoms for two months now.

Dealt with the post office, the bank, the other bank, Fido, the Sister, the Shebeen Club event on Monday, and American Apparel, who apparently wishes to send the Manolosphere some shoon.

On the plus side, when I go over to Victoria to speak at WordCamp Victoria, they’re putting me up at the Fairmont Empress. Yes, you may now envy me. Oh, AND the afterparty is going to be a gin tasting at Clive’s with a representative from Victoria gin and perhaps another gin which hasn’t been released to the public yet. Gotta hand it to that Dutch Courage: it works. There I was snarking about how you could use the stuff to strip paint and BAM! They ping me on Twitter and offer me another sample to see if it hasn’t improved. That takes courage of SOME kind, for sure.

Victoria gin is the third gin company that’s offered me a bottle, but it should be noted that Beefeater hit me up on Twitter and offered, but never actually came through with the goods. Bombay, of course, did. Not that I keep track of these things.

I submitted my blogs to Zemanta for consideration for inclusion in their devastatingly clever little linking system.

I offered up my services as a linkblogger: if I’m going to spend two hours every two days doing this, I might as well resell the end product: doing so will actually increase the value of each link, as it’ll be coming to any particular post from an increasing number of blogs. So, if you know a gossipblogger who’s got better things to do with his/her time than read and link, let me know. The more people who buy the service, the cheaper it gets.

Checked and re-checked Google and Bing for why they’re not indexing Lolebrity properly: I think it all comes down to this topless Helen Mirren photo. Hell, I even photoshopped out the nipples AND covered them with @ signs: what do these people want from me????

And, of course, did this post.

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