A Dormant Brand Powered Down | 2106

S04E06

Zoom cat filter lawyer passes torch to upside-down congressman and corporate twitter accounts are like Gundams?

Full show notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2021/02/12/301-2106-a-dormant-brand-powered-down/

Support: https://thejaymo.net/support/
Webshow: http://comeinternetwith.me
Website: https://www.thejaymo.net/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo


A Dormant Brand Powered Down

The long 2020 is now over, we have moved into the new year with this new moon, things are more stable.

Iā€™m going to try and make this episode in an hour today. It’s been awhile since I made the show with this constraint. Under the time pressure. I feel a need to remind myself what itā€™s like. 

Mainly because I am super stuck on another piece of work/writing. The more stuck I feel on the project the more the days go by, and the more urgent the work becomes. I donā€™t want to get all woe is me about it but Iā€™m sure you all know the feeling what iā€™m experiencing.

I should also say hello to all the new listeners to the show! The first 72 hour download numbers for each episode have been creeping. If you have joined in the last month or so. After the episodes on inner dialogue/meditation, gamestonks or the boomer zoom. I should probably explain that this is a personal podcast. 

Donā€™t expect any kind of theme around here. I make an episode on whatever has been on my mind. So there isnā€™t that much consistency other than its 5mins and one second long. Sometimes I put loads of effort in and others I don’t.

Anyways welcome. I hope you are well. If you do feel like sticking around or even have been listening for a while. Donā€™t forget you can support the show and my other public work by going to thejaymo.net/support and choosing from one of the three great subscription levels.

Iā€™ve been on a bit of a media diet this week. Avoiding social media is going pretty well. Iā€™m averaging less than 20mins across all sites and apps I class as ā€˜social mediaā€™. Which is back to where I was last year. 

Unfortunately I’ve only been using my new found time to sit in front of a Google doc failing to write anything.

I have noticed that Iā€™m being more deliberate about what I’m reading / selecting from my RSS reader. I wrote about my process of panning the streams back in October last year on my blog. Having cut down on the socials this week. I’m finding myself reading personal blog posts and missives much more closely. A more detailed reading rather than just scanning what’s going on in there and getting the gist.

Itā€™s so different from firing off a picture on IG or a note in 240 characters. It’s on their website, sitting on one’s own little island on the internet. they took the time to write something about their life and put it online.

Anyhoos.

I woke up this morning to another trending news item about boomers using zoom. In the week since Handforth council weā€™ve had the cat lawyer AND today we have the upside down congressman. His floating head badly masked against a background that looks suspiciously like a 2010 era business cat meme. 

I just googled ā€œzoom upside downā€ to check to see if he was a congressman or a senator and saw a headline that reads ā€˜An unexpected brightspot in a very dull weekā€™. 

I dunno about you but boomers failing at using zoom isnā€™t a bright spot of any kind. We are at this point, a year into the global pandemic, Zoom fatigue came and went, everyone still forgets to unmute themselves no matter what their age. it’s just life. 

Itā€™s almost as if in the last 7 days the media has decided to add a new category to its staple of story segmentation. Are we about to add Boomer Zoom Blunder to Missing White Woman Syndrome and If it Bleeds It leads? 

Can you believe that ā€œZoom cat filter lawyer passes torch to upside-down congressmanā€œ isnā€™t an onion headline? but then again ā€™Biden formally ends Trump’s border emergency, but troops will stayā€™ isnā€™t one either.

Anyways what I want to say is that I feel very strongly that laughing at boomers on zoom shouldnā€™t become a thing. It needs resisting. We should push back against it. I would go so far to say that appearing in court as a cat. Or a budget Zordon coming to you live from the heart of US democracy should be normalised, not laughed at. 

How am I ever going to achieve my virtual identity dream of arriving at a zoom meeting as a multi eyed, swirling vortex of trumpets and light that pulses and morphs with biblical horror as I speak if people are out there laughing about lawyer cat? 

If anyone is an Unreal developer please do get in touch. 

Another thing I was wondering about the other day since I’m free associating.

Do think social media interns feel like they are piloting an enormous brand machine when they sit down at their laptops at 9am to man a corporate twitter account? 

It would seem to me that being in charge of a brand’s twitter account is an enormous responsibility, like a mech pilot climbing a ladder into a cultural Gundam. 

Which then brings to my mind the image of a dormant brand powered down. Like C3PO in Obi Wan Kenobiā€™s hut 

Blockbusters, Tower Records or Borders are zombie brands powered down. But still animated by our collective nostalgia. 

Perhaps the opposite of a headless brand is a Golem. lurching slowly into the future dragged along by inertial wake of the present.

I dunno, I just really like the idea of people sitting inside brand accounts piloting billion dollar entities, instead of battling it out amongst skyscrapers and highway billboards weā€™ve been left with brands all joking to each other about having weetabix for breakfast or whatever. Its 2021 and everything is pretty weird. 


The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in audio due to time constraints.

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2 responses to “A Dormant Brand Powered Down | 2106”

  1. […] A Dormant Brand Powered Down | 2106 […]

  2. […] back in Episode 20-06 I said that ā€œbeing in charge of a brand’s twitter account is … like a mech pilot climbing a ladder…. Social media managers of brand Twitter accounts are […]

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