The Old Country's Biggest Blunders

The product placement article about La Croix (with a plug for Sodastream) has to be a new low.

Are you kidding me? Read both articles. The Vox article is so pandering it's embarrassing. If you just read the pull-quotes it reads like a press release. And if you can't tell the difference between journalism and marketing, I can only assume you're one of those 'new media' kids. You have my sympathy.

hey todd come step into the LION TANK for a fun time, son

...you do know that swagonion is Todd Vanderwerff, right?

I'm just here to say "Hi, Todd". I miss your WOTs.

As I understand it, the site went to hell about one year ago, a fact on which there has been a consensus for at least 6 years.

www.vox.com/2016/6/20/11666314/lacroix-sparkling-water-seltzer

And you guys thought the AVC article was bad.

I drink way too much LaCroix and would love for them to sponsor me drinking LaCroix.

I get that there are standards for sponsored content and that if Todd says it's not sponsored, it's not sponsored. And business reporting - with an infographic about all the different flavors of La Croix [eyebrow raised] - may have a place in Vox, but why the fuck does that merit re-reporting in AV Club? Also, why is the first line of said AVC article a blatant plug for Sodastream, complete with a link to their corporate website?

Maybe no one's getting paid, but I bet someone's at least getting comped a fridge full of sparkling water. That I assume because I also work with a certain local media outlet and we got contacted by a different sparkling water company to do just that - keep our staff & volunteers cool and refreshed with an endless supply of their product. Oh, and maybe our DJs could be seen swilling their drink and we could thank them on the air from time to time? If you think soft drink marketing is small-scale or innocuous, I have three words for you: Coke vs. Pepsi. The Vox article basically admits that the brand got popular by courting writers (like maybe writers for pop culture publications?).

As far as the overall shift in AVC's editorial focus, I assume the suits at Leo Burnett or wherever, who are buying ads in AVC, pitched somebody along the lines of "we know millennials read AVC to find out what's cool in pop culture, but you know what's also cool? Capitalism!"



And the sad thing is it's true. In the 'everything's cool - don't be a hater' world of millennials, if you're not clicking, posting, or buying something, life is meaningless. It's the only way I can explain stuff like this, which is hardly in the spirit of the mid-90s indie bands it sonically apes:  www.avclub.com/article/littler-celebrates-glory-la-croix-video-slippery-235676

I mean, perhaps they're being ironic, but who can even tell anymore? From the comments, it really seems like millennials can't tell the difference, or otherwise don't care. It's the latter conclusion that really gets my goat (I'm an ancient 30-something), because spoon-fed capitalist exploitation met with uncritical complacency or apathy will be the ruin of our society.   That's how you get shit like housing bubbles and unchecked corruption, which then feeds conspiracy theorists and simmering discontent. 

As a millennial, not only do I not relate to these points, I don't even understand where you're coming from. My generation is probably the most cynical about, inured to, and hyperaware of advertising there's ever been. Marketers are torturing themselves over how to appeal to us, because we think their whole industry is bullshit.

Also, this is the first I've ever heard of my generation being "everything's cool - don't be a hater." We have the same cliques and haters as previous generations, right? Like, consider the hipster wars, or Linkin Park, or Trump, or the whole internet.

Leaving aside any specific articles, I don't really think there's a generational shift at play here (I mean maybe in the very specific case of The AV Club, but I find that old school AVC readers often seem to remember it as The Hater and then very little else). Fluffy, light features have always been part of journalism, and they've always been popular, because people want to know about [insert trend/hip thing here]. And they can be done well or poorly! That's a problem if you're applying that sort of fluffiness to, like, politicians or policy questions. But when it comes to less essential things, like celebrities or fashion or sparkling water, fluff doesn't really hurt people. (Certainly there are non-fluffy ways to cover these topics, but I don't know that every story on Earth needs a hard-nosed approach to be good.)

More broadly speaking, I think what you're talking about is how the internet used to be the primary news source for very few people, and those people tended toward a sort of earned, bitter snark, a kind of exhaustion with the system as it was and a certainty that it would never change. And that also pointed toward institutions like the media itself. To read, say, Gawker in 2005 might have been exhausting and made you feel a little dirty, but it also felt like it was "real" in a way the traditional media didn't (because to this sort of reader, that snark really WAS more real). 

But now everybody gets their news on the internet, and that means the tools of the old media have largely moved onto the internet unchanged. Some of them have started to die off (the celebrity profile is probably going to go away), and the internet has invented new forms. But for the most part, the vast majority of online #content is there to suggest that things are just fine, that the system is, in some ways, equitable, and that most of the changes we need to make are cosmetic and around the edges. When we know that's not true! So the trick is when to agitate and when to celebrate (because we need both), and what the mixture is. Nobody's figured this out, but I don't think skewing all the time toward snark is the answer.

I agree that your generation (and by some accounts mine too, I should mention) is hyper-aware of advertising and inured to it to a large extent. But I don't see much cynicism - I see 'poptimism'. I see kids who identify so closely with products that they see critiques of capitalism as personal attacks. I don't want to get all Fight Club here (though this is exactly what Fight Club is about) but for better or worse, you are not the beverages you consume. 

Again, I don't think this is something particularly unique to millenials.  I am pretty sure that shit like graphic tees promoting consumer brands or Pepsi point-esque loyalty programs where the only rewards were corporate swag were already a thing when I was a child, and thus not the generation driving that bus with my disposable income.  And beyond that, I don't buy that the Fight Club model of basing your identity around the brands you reject is really that much better than just basing your identity around the brand.

An old friend of mine used LaCroix to stop drinking so much damn beer because he'd realized that he didn't like drinking alcohol in particular, he just liked drinking in general.