f this
Recently, while waiting at a bus stop, I noticed something on the poster for a particular brand of beer. Or rather the absence of something. The lack, in 2010, of a promotional url; Just an icon. That Zuckerberg prosperity-sigil in the corner. A glyph, perhaps, invisible to eyes beyond a certain age? Imagined cultural-presbyopia.
The implication being that some digital distillation of their drinking “experience” awaits you on the facebook. That you can, perhaps, express your digital friendship with it?
Can one be friends with beverages on the facebook, or just a “fan”? (As if it wasn’t overloaded terminology already anyway.) God knows there have been times when vodka and cigarettes would have dominated my own “Top 4″. Widely, publically, flirting with self-destructive consumer choices? Oh, yes. Muscling in on indie music’s traditional role in telegraphing abject miserableness. A cultivated reputation without the need for that poorly iPod-karaoke’d rendition of “How Soon is Now”.
And if not a friend, then a “fan”? I’ve never been comfortable with the term, since I’ve always mentally expanded it to “fanatic”. Of low critical threshold (“Only the fans liked the weak sophomore album”). And, in recent years, of some pheromonal whiff of violence. But now it seems almost interchangeable with “mostly likes”. Someone who’ll give a “thumbs up” to some million dollar advertising campaign. To what end? Is there some threshold that results in a bell ringing somewhere? A couple of marketing execs high-five when the cost-per-head of their spend drops again. Awesome job!
Of course, I’ve just assumed it’s a promotional reference rather than some break-through Portman Group campaign. As if someone had gotten hip to the cavalier attitude to health implicit in youth, but that the truly horrifying consequences of binge drinking (in the age of ubiquitous cameraphones) is waking up to discover the evidence online, tagged with your name.
That logo merely a nudge. “Thinking of getting paralytically drunk tonight? Maybe try to avoid looking shitfaced in the photos again, eh?”
