Corporate Dinosaurs and the Internet Comet

Why is it that I go to wikipedia to find out when new Futurama and House episodes are going to air?

I've been to the respective official homepages of both of these websites all of once each; I either could not find the information I wanted, or had to search to the point that it was a pain in the ass. Sure, there's plenty of fun and interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits, trivia, and cast interviews, and I would positively watch those things every time I visited the respective sites.

But you see, I don't visit the sites. The only reason I ever seem to visit official sites like that is in search of schedule information. I would then be sucked in by the extras, and spend hours at their site, seeing their advertisements, even watching promos for other shows on their networks.

Working in a job so intricately tied to marketing has really made me more aware of various marketing related subjects. One thing that I continually return to is how the big media companies just do not seem to get it. There is a legion of consumers who would happily part with their disposable income in exchange for music, movies, and TV shows, if they felt like they were getting a fair shake...

Yet corporations have let greed and fear alienate the consumer masses. Greed prevents them from offering prices that are conceivably fair, considering how easy it is to illegally obtain the same product for nothing. Fear prevents them from letting consumers truly own their digital property, which is truly its own topic and something I've mentioned before.

Though I am against piracy, I can understand where the general consensus justifying it comes from. My own personal frustrations trying to utilize lawfully purchased software have left me with a very bad impression of DRM, and serves as perhaps the most effective argument against its use; DRM punishes the legitimate consumer, while serving as a delaying strategy at best when it comes to piracy.

And so the big media corporations continue to alienate their legitimate consumers while remaining wholly ineffective at stemming the piracy tide. They also continue to make their official websites cumbersome and annoying, giving ground freely to alternative sites that have information displayed more readily.

I'm left to wonder if it isn't the end of days for media corporations struggling vainly in a post-internet world that daily becomes less hospitable for bureaucratic red-tape giants.

Anonymity and the True You

One thing that both fascinates and horrifies me is the phenomenon of how easily people become total assholes when they are no longer under the constraints of society.

Take the internet, for example. We are virtual strangers on a digital frontier. Sitting in front of our computers, we have complete safety and anonymity; here you are truly free from the consequences of your actions.

Most people can easily become a bit of a jerk when they have a clear "enemy", such as while playing an online game against strangers, but aren't necessarily out to attack people otherwise. A few people, however, tend to revel in their freedom and go out of their way to be a jackass.

Often people claim to find humor in such behavior, termed trolling, and they do it because they find it funny or rewarding to get other people angry or upset. I have no clue what inspires such behavior, though I suspect it is linked to the "griefing" culture that has made me stay away from PVP servers.

I wonder what it is inside some people that makes them be so hateful when they are consequence-free. Regardless, after a few hours spent surfing the web, I often take a moment and marvel at how society is such a remarkably effective tool at curbing the baser aspects of human nature.

They say that you show your true self when nobody is looking.

Interesting.