The OUYA: A lack of developer engagement

Consumer behavior:

The OUYA is an Android-based game console which first became publicly visible as a Kickstarter campaign. Its selling points were these:

- it's totally open source

- it'll run any software you write for it, unlike regular game consoles

- it's compatible with many existing Android games

- it'll cost $99, which is 1/3 the price of other consoles

- it's as fast as an Xbox 360 or something, I don't remember

- all games sold on its store are required have a free version

It exceeded its goal of $1,000,000, and ended up as the second-highest-funded project on Kickstarter. 

But nobody made any games for it. Since it's open source, it's very easy to pirate games on it. Since its selling points are low console cost and free games, developers were worried that consumers wouldn't actually spend any money on games. And although it raised a lot of money on Kickstarter, only 80,000 people bought it, which is too small a potential audience for a developer trying to make a living. 

It ended up getting pretty bad reviews from journalists, and the most exciting OUYA-exclusive game is Chess 2: The Sequel. The OUYA is still available to buy, but nobody's talking about it, so nobody knows about it, so nobody's buying it. 

It had a really good Kickstarter, though. 

Environmental Campaign

http://youtu.be/8NbsVwzTb_A

Greenpeace is running a campaign criticizing Proctor & Gamble for destroying forests. 

They look at a popular P&G ad celebrating motherhood, and turn it on its head, saying that P&G actually manages to take away mothers of some animals. This takes advantage people's feelings towards their moms, people's feelings towards cute animals, people's instincts to save cute animals, and people's predilection towards criticizing large companies. 

Because they provided a clear and engaging reason to be angry at someone, their ad will probably be all over the blogs. 

Adventure Time's only human character is a white guy

TV show Adventure Time pretty much has gender diversity, but doesn't have racial diversity. Its only human character is a white guy, but its non-human characters have a reasonable male-to-female ratio, as well as allusions to transgender and gay characters, and interracial relationships.

Representation of a variety of characters is important for a bunch of reasons:

1. Stories about a group of people humanize those groups of people for voters and policymakers. When a dominant group holds power over a minority group, and the dominant groups thinks negatively of them, the dominant group will set up legal policies harmful to that minority group. For example, Voter ID laws disproportionately prevent minority voters from voting. This would not happen if dominant-group policymakers actually cared about those minorities.
2. Role models are an important part of human development. If I see someone on TV, who looks like me, flying to the moon, I feel like I can fly to the moon, too. If, in my 23 years of development, I've barely seen anyone on TV who looks like me at all, and the only ones why do are criminals or background characters, that has an impact on my perception of whether I can achieve the same kind of success as the guy on TV who flew to the moon. So I won't even try. This phenomenon has been empirically proven.

To positively portray a woman or a person of color on TV, give them their own personality, goals, motivation, agency, capability, and everything else that you've already automatically given to the white-guy main-character. You might have to learn some film school and some feminism.

Then rewrite them so that they're not adhering to the stereotypes that you inevitably wrote into their character on the first draft.

Do advertisers have an ethical responsibility to not harm other people?

Racial stereotyping is very tricky to do correctly. People shouldn't try it at all unless they have expertise in the culture they're stereotyping, as well as familiarity with research on the impact of that stereotyping. 

This means that they should 

1. get equivalent education to a college-level class on the history of the group they're stereotyping,
2. hire people from the groups being stereotyped, and
3. hire people with degrees on the topics of minorities, ethnic groups, and the shit they've been through.

Substantial research has shown that racism is all over the dang place in every corner of media. To paraphrase literally the first thing I found in a Google search for "media representation effects", here are some distorted patterns of media representation of black males:

1. They are underrepresented overall as main characters in stories, as experts, as owners of luxury items, and other roles.
2. They are overrepresented, proportionally, when negative traits — such as criminality, unemployment, and poverty — are being portrayed.
3. Their are underrepresented, proportionally, when positive traits — such as achievement in sports or music — are being portrayed.
4. Compared to white people, disproportionately few aspects of their lives and historical context are portrayed.

For all our talk of 2014 progress, those patterns were ALL OVER the Super Bowl.

To quote directly from the same executive summary of 117 studies, this has had the following (empirically proven) effects:

• General antagonism toward black males;

• Exaggerated views of, expectations of, and tolerance for race-based socio-economic disparities; 

• Exaggerated views related to criminality and violence;

• Lack of identification with or sympathy for black males;

• Reduced attention to structural and other big-picture factors;

• Public support for punitive approaches to problems.

Again, these are the empirically proven results of the patterns of media representation that were ALL OVER the Super Bowl.

I'll quote the second thing I found, this one from Australia!

research has linked ongoing stigma such as that seen in the mainstream news media to negative physical and mental health outcomes, to negative material implications such as poverty, to the reproduction of racism which may in turn lead to persecution, and to heightened inter-community tensions.

We've got laws against murdering people, because it's obviously harmful. We've got widespread social disapproval of murdering people, because it's obviously harmful. 

We've got data, from real-life scientists, that proves that media representation of ethnic minorities is, on average, harmful. But because it's not obvious, advertisers get off scot-free, ignoring criticism and avoiding regulation. 

I don't think advertisers specifically have an ethical responsibility not to harm people. I think everyone does. And I think this shit should be taught in high school. 

But I do think it's much easier to regulate and educate industries like advertising than everyday conversations and teenagers' social media accounts. 

Anyway, if you're going to stereotype, do it responsibly. Or, ideally, don't do it at all. Because you're hurting people. 

Rats and prostitutes and coin slots

This is a print ad for Boecker Public Health, a pest management provider in Beirut. It shows a trail of toilet paper leading from the open door of a bathroom to a rathole in the wall. 

It uses the rathole as a sign. The signifier is a hole in the wall, curved on top and flat to the floor on the bottom. Its short, but tall enough to accommodate a large rodent. It's lit from within, which makes no sense. 

The signified is the apparently oversized family of probably-rodents living in this building. They are not actually shown. 

The ad implies that the rats are living comfortably, both because they are using human toilet paper (implied by the fact that the toilet paper extends into their home) and because there is a plain caption saying "don't let them get too comfortable."

This is an outdoor ad by Pro-Sentret, a prostitution advocacy organization in Norway. The agency deliberately set up the poster to extend out of its frame. The poster shows a woman, and a caption implies that she's a prostitute. This poster relies on the interaction of its viewers: since the poster extends so far out of the frame, passerby are likely to step on it as they walk by. 

The signifier is the act itself of stepping on the poster. 

The signified is the inhuman treatment and consideration of prostitutes in Norway.

http://youtu.be/YNLZdEiSmEQ

This is an ad for some car. It stars some guy who puts coins into various slots in his car to turn on its radio and air conditioning. His date is very impressed. When everything seems to be going well, the bells and whistles shut off and start blinking and beeping, asking for more coins. His date loses interest as he fumbles around, embarrassed. The ad closes with the message, "Don't pay extra for extras." It shows its car, captioned "All extras included."

The ad implies that a savvy consumer whose car includes bells and whistles will have a successful date, as shown in the first half of the ad. A unsavvy consumer who buys a car without those things will embarrass himself, like the guy in the second half of the ad. The wisest consumer will by a Citroën, a car that includes those things, and won't have to pay so much maybe. 

Cheerios & Racists

Out of 56 Super Bowl commercials, 27 starred white men. Another 10 included white women. Another 8 included diverse crowds. Another 7 featured non-human characters. And the remaining 4 starred people of color.

Cheerios ran an ad a while back with an interracial family. There was a large backlash, on YouTube, from racists. It was a reminder — predictable to some, stunning to others — that we still have a bunch of racists in this country.

This Super Bowl, amidst a sea of white people ads, before an audience of racists, they showed a second ad with that interracial family. It was funny and adorable and it made me feel happy about Cheerios.

The original ad, from May:

The new one:

I'm kinda over ads

When I was a kid, ads dictated what I wanted. I based my decisions on TV episode previews, LEGO Magazine comics, and videogame billboards.

Today, reviews dictate what I want. Before buying a spoon, I find out the most important criteria a good spoon should satisfy, and I find objective data on how well any given spoon adheres to those criteria. Then I wait a month, to avoid impulse buys.

Today, when I look at an ad on purpose, it's because I'm hoping that it'll give me concise, objective information. Give me the pros and cons of your product, and I can skip that step in my research process. It rarely works out that way, so I rarely look at ads on purpose. (Unless they're funny.)

Here's my ideal ad. It's informative, entertaining, and objective about the app it's advertising. After watching the ad, I don't need to look at a review, because I learned everything there is to know from the video.

That ad is five years old. The guy who made it stopped making iPhone apps and started making ads for other people. Maybe he's onto something?