Social Science Morally corrupt things you do

[Beerfish]

Bidet ftw.

Although I'm reluctant to use it during Winter and no longer scoff at the thought of heated ones.

 

[Toump Ass]

It's no different from the old days really, when money changed hands to get a certain record played on heavy rotation on the radio

Bottom line: same as always, if you want good music you have to go looking for it. At least in the digital age smaller bands have the means to promote themselves better than they did

Yup, there's definitely benefits in the digital age. Artists can connect directly with their fans (in fact they just about have to). They can also cut out the middle man with sales, and can leverage a whole load of far-reaching platforms that never existed before (ie: blogs, podcasts, online radio stations etc.).

For me the difference with the pay-to-play model of Spotify v. "the old days" is that there's always been a tonne of radio stations, but radio declining could make it harder for independent artists to establish themselves (despite the blogs & online promotional tools that didn't exist before). It's also interesting that Spotify are now doing direct deals with artists themselves, and are almost certain to replicate the Netflix model of creating their own content in the future too. None of these are good for the industry (IMO), unless you're a fan of homogenous music created by marketing executives rather than musicians.

As I said, I'm not sure what the industry will look like in ten years, but it's a worry that the ones making the most money out of music are companies like Apple, YouTube and Spotify.

Didn't see it mentioned in the article, but artists only get paid if a certain percentage of the song is listened to (not sure of the breakdown, but if people play a song for 20 seconds and turn it off, the artist doesn't get paid, but they do if it reaches 50 or 70 per cent of the length). The net result is artists are writing shorter songs as people are more inclined to see a shorter song to its end. Could mean the decline of the epic song.

Yup, absolutely. Pop songs are definitely getting shorter (though maybe that's due to millennials attention spans?) That being said, loads of pop songs in the early Beatles/Beach Boys days were two and a half minutes too...

Either way, given playlists favour shorter songs it follows that record labels will pressure artists to follow suit. And obviously Spotify's preference for playlists (/moods/soundtracks/moments/whatever crap they're marketed as at the moment (memories, lol)) mean there's even less money for "albums". Hard to imagine a major label funding something like Spirit of Eden or The Wall these days...

[rant over]

 

[Firestarter]

No way in hell was I reading that...

 

[Scotland]

Everything in the digital age is driven by hype. Clicks, views, streams etc. Whether you are an artist (like an actual artist), distributor, producer, "content creator" (so not like an actual artist) everyone is chasing the next wave of virality. Psy's Gangnam Style has 3.4 billion views on Youtube. By a very crudely calculated average every second person in the world has seen it. None of his songs ever charted anywhere outside Korea before that, why would they? Gangnam Style went #1 everywhere after the clip went viral. And years later he has faded back to K-pop obscurity and no one in the rest of the world cares.

Back in the day a record company would flog the s**t out of Britney Spears or whoever and get them in ad campaigns for Pepsi, get every station that is for sale playing the singles hourly and push people towards their product that way. Now they sort of let people on the internet do half their work for them. Instead of producing s**t and forcing it onto consumers they produce s**t and hang it out on the internet to attract flies. Whatever gets a bazillion hits in a hurry finds its way into top 40 charts and onto the radio that way. It's kind of organic, but still s**t.

Someone like Taylor Swift has released a s**t ton of singles. Some go number 1, some never really take off. But she keeps churning them out and the ones that get the most clicks end up on the front page of Youtube and in iTunes charts etc. and the hype feeds more hype. The easiest way to get a million views on Youtube is to already have a million. Once you are established (like Tay Tay) then you are going to get tens/hundreds of millions of views, single downloads etc. at a minimum anyway. Ed Sheeran can release literally anything now and it will get 500m views.

Jim Jefferies has been around as a comedian for years. He was popular enough on the comedy circuit to do recorded specials 11 years ago, then one 10 minute bit from one special (the 5th one, in 2014) went viral and now he's a star (sell out) with a Comedy Central gig in the US. He probably spent 10, 15 years doing gigs in dingy comedy clubs in front of 8 people and whatnot and one clip from one show on the internet and suddenly he's a thing.

 

[Firestarter]

Everything in the digital age is driven by hype. Clicks, views, streams etc. Whether you are an artist (like an actual artist), distributor, producer, "content creator" (so not like an actual artist) everyone is chasing the next wave of virality. Psy's Gangnam Style has 3.4 billion views on Youtube. By a very crudely calculated average every second person in the world has seen it. None of his songs ever charted anywhere outside Korea before that, why would they? Gangnam Style went #1 everywhere after the clip went viral. And years later he has faded back to K-pop obscurity and no one in the rest of the world cares.

Back in the day a record company would flog the s**t out of Britney Spears or whoever and get them in ad campaigns for Pepsi, get every station that is for sale playing the singles hourly and push people towards their product that way. Now they sort of let people on the internet do half their work for them. Instead of producing s**t and forcing it onto consumers they produce s**t and hang it out on the internet to attract flies. Whatever gets a bazillion hits in a hurry finds its way into top 40 charts and onto the radio that way. It's kind of organic, but still s**t.

Someone like Taylor Swift has released a s**t ton of singles. Some go number 1, some never really take off. But she keeps churning them out and the ones that get the most clicks end up on the front page of Youtube and in iTunes charts etc. and the hype feeds more hype. The easiest way to get a million views on Youtube is to already have a million. Once you are established (like Tay Tay) then you are going to get tens/hundreds of millions of views, single downloads etc. at a minimum anyway. Ed Sheeran can release literally anything now and it will get 500m views.

Jim Jefferies has been around as a comedian for years. He was popular enough on the comedy circuit to do recorded specials 11 years ago, then one 10 minute bit from one special (the 5th one, in 2014) went viral and now he's a star (sell out) with a Comedy Central gig in the US. He probably spent 10, 15 years doing gigs in dingy comedy clubs in front of 8 people and whatnot and one clip from one show on the internet and suddenly he's a thing.

He's at least self-aware of that in a way. His "everyone has dreams" bit.

 

[JackOutback]

Everything in the digital age is driven by hype. Clicks, views, streams etc. Whether you are an artist (like an actual artist), distributor, producer, "content creator" (so not like an actual artist) everyone is chasing the next wave of virality. Psy's Gangnam Style has 3.4 billion views on Youtube. By a very crudely calculated average every second person in the world has seen it. None of his songs ever charted anywhere outside Korea before that, why would they? Gangnam Style went #1 everywhere after the clip went viral. And years later he has faded back to K-pop obscurity and no one in the rest of the world cares.

Back in the day a record company would flog the s**t out of Britney Spears or whoever and get them in ad campaigns for Pepsi, get every station that is for sale playing the singles hourly and push people towards their product that way. Now they sort of let people on the internet do half their work for them. Instead of producing s**t and forcing it onto consumers they produce s**t and hang it out on the internet to attract flies. Whatever gets a bazillion hits in a hurry finds its way into top 40 charts and onto the radio that way. It's kind of organic, but still s**t.

Someone like Taylor Swift has released a s**t ton of singles. Some go number 1, some never really take off. But she keeps churning them out and the ones that get the most clicks end up on the front page of Youtube and in iTunes charts etc. and the hype feeds more hype. The easiest way to get a million views on Youtube is to already have a million. Once you are established (like Tay Tay) then you are going to get tens/hundreds of millions of views, single downloads etc. at a minimum anyway. Ed Sheeran can release literally anything now and it will get 500m views.

Jim Jefferies has been around as a comedian for years. He was popular enough on the comedy circuit to do recorded specials 11 years ago, then one 10 minute bit from one special (the 5th one, in 2014) went viral and now he's a star (sell out) with a Comedy Central gig in the US. He probably spent 10, 15 years doing gigs in dingy comedy clubs in front of 8 people and whatnot and one clip from one show on the internet and suddenly he's a thing.

I knew him when he was performing in dingy Perth clubs in 2000, so it’s been longer than that.

 

[quotemokc]

Saying "bless you" when someone sneezes is stupid.

I never say it to someone else when they sneeze and when people say it to me I just ignore them hoping that they won't bother to do it again.

 

[Hawk Dork]

Gesundheit

 

[Beerfish]

Saying "bless you" when someone sneezes is stupid.

I never say it to someone else when they sneeze and when people say it to me I just ignore them hoping that they won't bother to do it again.

Same. I stopped doing it for the same reason but didn't come to the conclusion until I'd been working in a dusty environment where every campaigner sneezed constantly. Wifey used to get shitty at me every time I didn't say to her for years until she finally accepted I don't gaf and I'm not saying it because it's stupid. Her soul is not escaping from her head and even if it was me saying bless you won't change it so just deal with it.

 

[craigos]

Gesundheit

Never imagined this is what it would look like spelt. Amazing.

 

[Cruyff14]

Don't put in my sick leave at work.

 

[Cruyff14]

When I see people riding a bike not wearing a helmet, I hope they fall off and hurt themselves.

 

[jd2010]

When I see people riding a bike not wearing a helmet, I hope they fall off and hurt themselves.

This... but with people who tailgate when you're going the speed limit

 

[ashley12]

Il gamble on some morally questionable things. And by gamble I mean exploit peoples stupidity for personal profit.

Background is I play a lot of poker which means you have acquaintances through poker that are already open minded to gambling. This gambling then moves across to sports, then politics and in general any kind of objectively measurable contest.

I was on COVID being a mildly big deal pretty early (pretty sure in Jan 2020 we named our quiz team "Wuhan Clan" or "Coronavirus with lime" a few times before realising how serious it eventually got).

Come early March while there were still only a handful of cases I made predictions that life would change pretty soon and pretty hard. Predicting border closures/no crowds at footy/no footy at all/closed pubs etc... This was met by "yeah Ash sure mate" and eventually became bets on things closing down.

Obviously every single bet won for me and since then have also had a heap of money on Biden to be president made IN DECEMBER off a bunch of Trump fans so yeah, morally questionable but ultimately if they want to bet and Betfair have closed the market it would be wrong of me to not give them a chance.

 

[Cruyff14]

Il gamble on some morally questionable things. And by gamble I mean exploit peoples stupidity for personal profit.

Background is I play a lot of poker which means you have acquaintances through poker that are already open minded to gambling. This gambling then moves across to sports, then politics and in general any kind of objectively measurable contest.

I was on COVID being a mildly big deal pretty early (pretty sure in Jan 2020 we named our quiz team "Wuhan Clan" or "Coronavirus with lime" a few times before realising how serious it eventually got).

Come early March while there were still only a handful of cases I made predictions that life would change pretty soon and pretty hard. Predicting border closures/no crowds at footy/no footy at all/closed pubs etc... This was met by "yeah Ash sure mate" and eventually became bets on things closing down.

Obviously every single bet won for me and since then have also had a heap of money on Biden to be president made IN DECEMBER off a bunch of Trump fans so yeah, morally questionable but ultimately if they want to bet and Betfair have closed the market it would be wrong of me to not give them a chance.

How much did you make out of it?

 

[ashley12]

Low to mid 4 figs

 

[Cruyff14]

I also assume the worst of a pack of teenagers/young males hanging out together.

 

[74561347]

Used to catch the train with no ticket back in the day with metcards.

Would take all my Id out of my wallet and only have in there a medicare card id found in a car park one day. If an inspector came on, would say it's the only id I have on me.

I don't know who you are Raymond, but you saved me a heap in fines.

 

[wadistance]

Parked in the city one day back in the mid 2000s and had no coins for parking, and obviously card wasn’t an option. Car behind me had a parking fine, so I put that fine on my window to deter the parking cop.

Came back 2 hrs later and the car behind me had a new fine on its window.

I put both fines on the window and drove off


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[JackOutback]

Parked in the city one day back in the mid 2000s and had no coins for parking, and obviously card wasn’t an option. Car behind me had a parking fine, so I put that fine on my window to deter the parking cop.

Came back 2 hrs later and the car behind me had a new fine on its window.

I put both fines on the window and drove off


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You monster.

 

[ioppolo]

If the guy had any idea, he'd have at least one of those waived pretty easily.

 

[Big Sauce 21]

If I go away for a few days and the weather forecast is not hot i'll turn the air con switches off on the outside outlets. My 2 dopey room mates think it's always a fuse problem in the meter box and that I only know how to fix it. I'm sick of paying a split bill on wasted electricity

 

[Trojan90]

Parked in the city one day back in the mid 2000s and had no coins for parking, and obviously card wasn’t an option. Car behind me had a parking fine, so I put that fine on my window to deter the parking cop.

Came back 2 hrs later and the car behind me had a new fine on its window.

I put both fines on the window and drove off


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good one this! When I was at uni I had to catch a train for a year. Would park in the 1/2hr parking spot right at the front of the station and use an old parking ticket for about 3 months before they caught on to it. Then moved onto the station further up the road and pulled the same scam for about a month or so.

 

[Shell]

Parked in the city one day back in the mid 2000s and had no coins for parking, and obviously card wasn’t an option. Car behind me had a parking fine, so I put that fine on my window to deter the parking cop.

Came back 2 hrs later and the car behind me had a new fine on its window.

I put both fines on the window and drove off


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You sir. Are an evil genius.

 

[Billy ray]

Not sure if i already posted but at uni i was going to an exam and slept in a little and was running late. I knew i wouldnt have time to park and walk from student parking spot so I parked my car on median strip of road right outside the exam venue, put hazard lights on, lifted bonnet and walked away.
Came back three hours later no ticket. Put bonnet down and drove away.


I repeated this last year when i went to a weeknight afl game at metricon and peak hour traffic was horrendous. Parked on side of road and went to the game. Again no issues