Category: Articles

Have you listened to S-Town? S-Town is a new podcast from This American Life and Serial. It starts off teasing a potential murder mystery but quickly becomes an exploration of one man’s life and his complicated relationship with the small Alabama town in which he lives. The show is beautiful and literary, steeped in metaphors and southern gothic comparisons, both implied and direct. The man in question, John B. Macklemore himself, is a Faulkner fan and gives Brian Reed — the narrator and journalist behind the series — a copy of A Rose for Emily.

To avoid spoilers, I’ll try and keep this as high-level as possible. However, if you’ve just started the series and you’re worried about it, now is the exit point.

S-Town is not a true crime story, but it is a tragedy. There is a death and details of the deceased are investigated, plumbed, revealed, and eventually exposed. It is a fascinating story about a fascinating person. It’s also an interesting exploration of what we consider private and the narratives we create for ourselves and other people. S-Town is a rumination on loss, grief, memories, and storytelling itself. As Sarah Larson for The New Yorker puts it, ‘it also edges us closer to a discomfiting realm of well-intentioned voyeurism on a scale we haven’t quite experienced before.’ We all participate in voyeuristic exercises on a regular basis, although never quite at this scale or quality.

People scope potential crushes and partners on social media. Dating apps let you link your profiles so that you can show more of yourself, and provide more of a gallery than a snapshot of your life. We peak into each other’s lives all the time, and frequently, it’s to revisit or preserve an old feeling. Breakups, for example, can be that much harder when you still have your ex on Instagram or Snapchat. You see snippets of their life — but of course, not just snippets. The best snippets. Their presence on your feeds can be a constant reminder of a different time, and whether happier or sadder, a time that has passed.

We often think of social media tools as innovations that separate us from the past — we rarely consider the ways in which they help us stay hopelessly tethered. Jenna Wortham’s most recent article for The New York Times Magazine discusses why it is so difficult to tackle online harassment. Examining the origins of the net, its founding principles and the fact that online society reflects the people created it, she ends on a dark note:

‘As I talked to Cohen, another story of the internet began to take shape, one that looked more like a dystopia. It is entirely possible that these men never imagined the internet would free us from our earthly limitations. Instead they strove to create a world like the one we already know — one that never had equality to begin with.’

As Wortham reminds us, we often forget that our actions are not the product of the Internet, but that the Internet is a product of us. With its birth, there was much worrying and hand-wringing over the temporality of information and interactions. But the question of permanence is one that has come to plague us more often, not less, since the web was created. Browsing data, search results, buying history — it all amounts to a permanent collection of behaviour. In our line of business, screenshots afflict companies and individuals alike. Although we’ve all experienced it repeatedly, as a collective we still like to deny the indelibility of the net.

The digital age has awarded a kind of immortality to the everyday citizen that used to be reserved for celebrities, athletes and politicians: people with some sort of name recognition. Now, we can live forever on the Internet through our different social accounts. Facebook can turn your page into a memorial after you die. Instagram doesn’t have an official policy besides how to contact the company about a deceased user, but since they were acquired by Facebook in 2013, they may have a similar policy to Facebook that is not posted online.

There’s a very clear moment in S-Town when you wonder if a line is being crossed. There’s an ethical decision that Reed confronts and explains for the listener — but the entire production builds up to disclose very personal and intimate information. The story was three years in the making, meaning, for one thing, there was much more audio content than what we’re presented with within the framework of seven episodes. It slowly exposes the full picture of the man we’re left with at the end, but not all of that picture was expressly sanctioned by the subject. Personal social media use is selective exposure, but we are in control of what we’re producing. Through the photos and filters we choose, to the articles we share, and the videos we capture, we’re creating our own narrative. It’s us, but our curated selves. Whether we’re Valencia or Clarendon-filtered or trimmed down to an eight-second snap, it’s not raw.

Our terms of privacy, whether it’s through the disappearing messages of snapchat or a public Twitter account, is one that we’re constantly negotiating with a vast number of things: convenience, ignorance, and connection. Generally, we are fine with the trade-off, if what we’re forfeiting is portrayed in a positive light. Voyeurism is fine, until we have to ask ourselves what we get out of it. Tacit compliance is different than express consent, and in terms of our privacy, we seem to have a difficult time drawing a hard line until we feel it has been crossed.

Binging on S-Town leaves you exhausted because you delve deeply into one man’s life, but also into our society’s preoccupations. History and memory are the major themes of S-Town. One of the chief side explorations, threaded throughout, is time. John Macklemore loved sundials and he restored antique clocks. The man and the story seem of a different era, one that existed before the Internet age, which is part of its appeal. John Macklemore reached out to Brian Reed, a reporter, and over a number of months, told him about his life.

Facebook’s ‘memories’ function frequently encourages you to remember, preserve, and celebrate the past. Perhaps it’s because I’m part of the original Facebook generation that has now been using the platform for over a decade, but the shared memories, anniversary reminders, and insistence at nostalgia seems to be coming at me at an alarming rate. You can choose whether you want to keep these things to yourself or share them with your network. John gave Brian a copy of A Rose for Emily to try to help Brian understand the context of his Alabama town, of people who can’t let go of the past, a portrait of decay and stagnation. A Rose for Emily is a story about a private woman, intensely observed by the townspeople, who refused to share the details of her life and died secluded and alone.

‘There is a spectre haunting Europe’and all the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise it.’

When Karl Marx wrote those words in 1848, he was warning the powers-that-be the growing influence of communism. Later that year, anti-establishment and left wing forces led revolutions across the continent. Now, in 2017, a new spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of populism.

Support for populist parties in Europe and across the Western world have been increasing. Spurred on by the success of Brexit in Britain and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States, the battles between established parties and populist insurgents have become the centerpieces of recent elections.

In France, Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate for the far-right Front National, is the top choice for almost half of the voting public. In Germany, support for the anti-EU Alternative for Germany has been growing consistently and is trying to prevent Angela Merkel from forming government in the next election. High polling numbers are the norm for far-right parties across Europe.

Most establishment parties fear that these populist parties — which are anti-EU, anti-globalization, and anti-immigration — will gain power and upend the existing global order. Radical and without a history of democratic service, populist parties in Europe could wreak havoc on the continent’s political institutions and way of life.

The question, then, is how to deal with these parties. In the U.S. the Democrats lambasted Trump for nonsensical policy statements, outright lies, and sexist and racist remarks. He still won. In Britain, all major parties campaigned in favour of continued EU membership, while UKIP, which had only one member of parliament, succeeded in its campaign to leave the EU.

Recently, Sweden undertook a more drastic attempt to stop the rise of a populist party. The 2014 elections left Sweden with a minority centre-left Social Democratic government led by Stefan Lofven. However, the populist insurgent party, the Sweden Democrats, more than doubled their seats and continued to rise in the polls. As Lofven’s government was unable to form an effective coalition or even pass a budget, everyone assumed there would be another election. However, in a shocking turn of events, the opposition centre-right parties agreed to support Lofven’s government (despite their continued dislike of Lofven’s budget) in order to stop the Sweden Democrats from winning a plurality of seats.

This decision appears to have backfired. Sweden faces many of the same issues plaguing Europe — high levels of public debt, a sluggish economy, and growing public discontent with the ongoing refugee crisis . When all parties on the left and right came together to stop the Sweden Democrats, it wasn’t seen as an act of solidarity to protect the nation; rather, it was seen as a self-serving act committed by widely unpopular politicians. Currently, the polls show that if the election was held today, the Sweden Democrats would, once again, double their share of the vote and become the largest party in parliament.

If intellectual criticism, public campaigns, and blocking electoral participation can’t stop populism, how then can establishment parties deal with the growing threat? Finland’s current prime minister Juha Sipil’ offers a potential roadmap.

After the 2015 elections, Sipil’, leader of the rural Centre party, formed a coalition with the conservative National Coalition and the populist True Finns. The True Finns had become the second largest party in parliament and, initially, looked like they would continue to grow year over year. However, two years after joining the government ‘ and two years of continued economic stagnation, high public debt, and a refugee crisis without a foreseeable solution ‘ the True Finns have lost half their public support.

The reason is that populist parties are inherently protest votes. Their membership is comprised of radicals and activists who have little or no experience in actually governing a country, let alone navigating the intricacies of a state bureaucracy. One could call them untested, but their supporters see them as untarnished by the mistakes made by the establishment parties.

However, this untarnished persona disappears quickly when brought into government. When insurgent parties are forced to address the realities of government — and all the deal-making, broken promises, and disappointed constituents that entails — they lose their sheen because they were supposed to be different. They promised a politics that would deal with the ‘real problems’ facing the public (whatever they claim those to be). When this doesn’t happen, the public is faced with the reality that populist parties are not a magic wand that can wipe away the existing problems in the system. In practice, populist parties are no different than establishment parties when they are forced to govern.

Electoral success for populist parties might be viewed as an apocalyptic outcome by establishment parties, but it may only be a pyrrhic victory for populism. As Juha Sipil’ and his dealings with the True Finns show, the most disastrous outcome for populist parties and their charismatic leaders might be forming government in the first place. You can’t be anti-establishment if you are the establishment.

It’s March, which may seem consequential for things like daylight savings time (unless you live in Saskatchewan), something or other about an equinox, or even, perhaps, the fact that March is the best month to have a birthday (I may be biased). But, my birthday notwithstanding, these are all wrong. March is March because March is March Madness.

What is March Madness? You might ask, as you realize something incredibly important has passed you by every spring and lean in closer to learn what could possibly be better than the celestial alignment of the Earth with the sun returning daylight, and therefore, meaning, to your life. Well, dear neophyte, March Madness is the drama, the pathos, the excitement you didn’t know you were desperately missing. If you ever wondered if you were lacking in unhealthy attachments, the answer is a definitive yes.

Let me explain: every year the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) holds a Division I basketball tournament for men and women’s basketball. I say women’s basketball, but unfortunately, I’m really just referring to the men’s side. Like in most things, the women’s side is largely shunted into obscurity, relegated to secondary network channels. But the gendered politics of sport are for another time. Anyway, this tournament is called March Madness. To win March Madness, your team must be perfect. Sixty-eight teams are invited to play, then seeded (ranked) to determine who they play in the first round in their respective conferences (East, West, Midwest and South). Top-seeded teams play lower-seeded teams in early rounds to make sure better teams make it to the finals. It’s a single elimination tournament. You lose once and you’re out. Naturally this leads to enjoyable upsets and Cinderella stories when lower-seeded teams go on a hot streak and knock out tournament favourites — here’s looking at you Wisconsin. You don’t need to know anything about college basketball to get unhealthily invested in this tournament , although it helps. But, you can get caught up on long-standing grudges, the teams everyone hates (everyone hates Duke, if Duke wins, everyone loses. Thankfully, Duke has already been eliminated) and players to watch, pretty quickly.

And now you’re asking why — why does this matter at all, you’re reading stuff from Navigator not TSN or ESPN. Here’s why: the other fun part of March Madness — I would argue it’s as fun as actually watching the games themselves — is reading the coverage. Because this tournament is elimination, because the players are incredibly young (I mean kids, I mean born in the late 90s, I mean really young, okay), because they still have to go to CLASS the day after a devastating loss (again, Duke), March Madness is as much about the storylines, the narratives that get developed, as it is about the basketball. Let’s all bask in the glory of exciting long-form sports journalism. And also, because the NCAA is actually pretty evil and all of these kids are exploited under the guise of amateur sports. See? Drama.

The entire NCAA hinges on the fact that athletes are ‘student-athletes’. The hyphen is very important because it lets the NCAA determine that intercollegiate sports are ‘avocational’, aka not a job, aka, you shouldn’t get paid. Which would be fine if we were operating in a world where the righteousness of sport and opportunity was what this was all about and not the fact that the commercialization of college sport has led to a billion-dollar industry. March Madness alone is expected to rake in $900 million for 2017 in revenue. Conferences get some of this payout, and the conferences are supposed to divide the money amongst their schools, but they have to cover the expenses of the tournament as well. There’s a lot of accounting and explaining away that happens with the NCAA and its profits (also the fact that it’s considered a nonprofit), but none of it goes to the players. There’s also a lot of criticism about a model that relies on players whose scholarships (which only account for about 5-7% of the revenue) can be revoked if they’re injured and includes players complaining about being unable to afford food when the NCAA is raking in the dollars. Coaches also make an obscene amount of money, bringing in between $2-$6 million a year. On top of that, according to the NCCA’s own stats, the likelihood of playing pro basketball is 1.1%, leading many to question the ‘student’ part of ‘student-athlete’, saying NCAA players receive inflated grades to ensure eligibility, and because quite frankly, many don’t have time to compete in both an incredibly demanding athletic program and academics.

Now let’s go back to the coverage. Besides diving into the actual games, each March, you can delve into the intricacies of the funding models and see how the NCAA keeps trying to spin itself out of the annual exploitation muck. The NCAA reflects the world we live in, and there is a racialized element to this whole thing, that is pointed out more and more frequently. The vast majority of the top brass of the NCAA are old white men and NCAA players are predominantly young black men, and that’s not just an optics thing, it can also play out in people’s attitudes on paying these players.

Plus, there’s the fact that many of these kids are living their glory days right in front of you, in front of an audience. Although we all know meritocracies don’t exist anymore, sometimes it really feels like they do when some freshman showcases undeniable and promising talent and is instrumental in taking his team to the Sweet Sixteen. So all things considered, dreams are actually being made and broken here, and March 19, the first Sunday of the tournament, was the most-watched first Sunday in 24 years. The stakes on this thing are ratcheted up to 12, and I haven’t even talked about the gambling. Fans create tournament brackets predicting winners for each round, and bet on the outcome. For 2017, The American Gaming Association expects Americans to bet $10.4 billion on March Madness.

Those of us who are fans are complicit in this whole exploitation factor, and to be clear, I’m not advocating for the exploitation even if I can’t seem to remove myself. My point is that the NCAA makes you care and it makes you care a lot. My point is that the more I know about the sketchy structure of this whole thing, the more I care about these players. My point is that I have a hard time watching a 6’11 ambidextrous German teen single-handedly dismantle the defence of one my final four picks and not read everything about him.

My point is that if you want to see seven different layers of how a story can get told and how far it can go, and how quickly the tides can change for or against you in the span of three weeks, how unlikely teams and players rise to the top and how old storylines (Tom! Izzo! In! March!) get rehashed whenever it’s appropriate to rehash them, then follow the tournament. My point is this is both terrible and great, it’s sometimes serious and sometimes incredibly ridiculous and funny. My point is that this is every kind of coverage all rolled into one month.

Look, I’m not saying this is going to revolutionize your communications or reinvent the way you do business, but this is a real-life sports movie that plays out every year. Let it wash over you and accept that yes, you can in fact care this much about a nineteen-year-old from Bentonville Arkansas (where??) for reasons as arbitrary as the fact that he wears your old jersey number to ones as concrete as the fact that 95 per cent of the time he wants to win more than anyone else on the floor. I’m saying accept that it’s March, and accept that it’s Madness, and read all about it.

The internet is going to be a lot less annoying soon. Headlines like ‘Google has finally killed the CAPTCHA‘ give us a hint as to why. But these headlines don’t tell the full story — which is a shame, because the full story is kind of cool.

Yes, there is reason to celebrate. CAPTCHAs those boxes that force you to prove you’re human by clicking three pictures of an umbrella or typing out grainy text — are going away. But CAPTCHA is not dead — it just evolved. The latest version is completely invisible, but very much still there.

CAPTCHA, an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart will finally realize its original design, automating a test that determines if we’re human beings. CAPTCHA has learned from human behaviour so well, it no longer needs us to confirm our humanity, it assumes it. The latest version only serves the annoying quizzes to suspected bots.

Now that CAPTCHA automatically detects human interaction, the bot intended to protect against simulated human behavior is, in a way, closer to that perfect human simulation than the bots it was originally created to protect against, who are themselves trying to achieve an undetectable human simulation.

See? Kind of cool.

But why does this matter? And how does it work?

Unfortunately we can’t really know the how the new CAPTCHA works.. It doesn’t make sense for Google or any company making widely-used security programs to publicize how those programs work. Captcha exists because spam, virus, and all the ugly parts of the internet exist. Whether its preventing fake accounts from voting in online polls or blocking malware, there has been incentive to filter out unnatural website behaviour from genuine interactions, as long as the internet has been around.

All we know about this new phase of CAPTCHA is in this video. The latest version of rechaptcha, aptly named ‘Invisible Recaptcha’ uses ‘a combination of machine learning and advanced risk analysis that adapt to new and emerging threats’. My personal theory is that this has something to do with a recent search-engine algorithm update, nicknamed Fred. It’s too coincidental that the same week Google adjusts its criteria to penalize or reduce the search authority of blog-style sites with ‘low content value‘, it also unveils a breakthrough in separating genuine human interest from robotic simulation. Fred hit content farms, the places where black hat or unnatural linking techniques live. Basically, until a few days ago, it was possible to manufacture conditions that search search engines would mistake for actual user interest in a site, so that the site could eventually improve its position on results pages. Like with the new CAPTCHA, end-users never see search-engine algorithm updates when they happen, the search engine results just change. If Google can distinguish between human and bot behavior in links or searches, it is a small leap for the company to extend the technology to cover general browsing.

Many have also speculated that this would not be possible without the piles of data Google has been mining through its other projects. That’s also probably true. The company needs some kind of a baseline for how people really act online to pull something like this off. Of course this development probably brings us closer to that inevitable robot uprising, but why not give Google the benefit of the doubt for once? Sure, it’s a little bit suspicious that it blatantly repurposed the scanning technology it originally acquired to help digitize books for security or consumer research that borders on surveillance. But, CAPTCHAs were also really irritating; now they’re going away. Google keeps repeating ‘what’s good for the internet is good for Google’. This time, I’m inclined to agree with them. Not having to enter CAPTCHAs will make browsing better, which will indirectly encourage people to use Google services more often. Internet security supposedly improved. Everybody wins.

Over the last three years, Vivaldi’s Winter, The Four Seasons (Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 8, RV 297) has become a Pavlovian tune for fans of Netflix’s hit show, Chef’s Table. As a violin soars expressively above a dynamic bass line, heartbeats quicken, breaths abate, eyes widen and appetites awaken. The piece is the theme music for a three-season feast for the senses, where each episode features a prolific chef and their restaurant. Produced by David Gelb, filmmaker of the mouth-watering Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Chef’s Table has made haute-cuisine accessible and inspiring. That no culinary show comes close to matching the stature of one of Netflix’s crown jewels speaks volumes. As communications professionals, we would do well to listen and take two valuable lessons from the show.

Lesson 1: Why you do it

Renowned thought leader Simon Sinek has often said that people don’t buy what you do, or how you do it; they buy why you do it. This belief is at the core of every episode of Chef’s Table. Understanding who a chef is and why they cook is equally, or perhaps even more, important than what they cook.

Consider for example Episode 1, Season 1, which profiles Massimo Bottura, Chef Patron of Osteria Francescana, named world’s best restaurant in 2016. The episode deftly establishes why Massimo cooks — to reinvent Italian cuisine — and what inspires him — music and art. Thus, when the episode unveils a dish such as ‘The Crunchy Part of the Lasagne’, a dish consisting of crispy pasta, the viewer understands the intent with which it was conceived. Similarly, when Bottura presents ‘Tribute to Monk’ — a dish of ash-covered black cod in black katsuobushi broth, imagined as Bottura listened to Thelonious Monk late one night and heard ‘a flash in the dark’ — the viewer’s knowledge of the chef’s interest in music places them in the unusual position of almost sous-chef.

Though the show’s decision to seemingly prioritize chef over food may seem counter-intuitive at first, it is an approach that reflects the producers’ keen understanding of what consumers are eager to watch. As Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, suggests, people seek out brands that behave like human beings; specifically, brands that tell stories that forge emotional connections. Chef’s Table’s camera lingers on the chef for an inordinate amount of time. However, in doing so, it captures an introspective exercise at work.

For example, in Season 2, Episode 3, the talented and soulful Dominique Crenn remarks that her seemingly eponymous restaurant Atelier Crenn is not named after her, but after her father. It was Allain Crenn, the French painter and politician, who encouraged his daughter’s artistic pursuits. The closeness of their relationship manifests itself in Dominique’s dishes. Her dessert, ‘Walking deep in the woods, as the earth might have something to spare’ is a reflection on a walk through the woods she took with her father. Prioritizing who Dominique is before unveiling her food enables Chef’s Table to highlight the emotions behind the food. This, in turn, engenders empathy and secures investment from the viewer, who is not simply eating a dessert, but observing a relationship.

The lesson here is simple: we need to approach communications projects with a willingness to ask and answer ‘why’. We need to be willing to present messages in a way that is authentic and genuine. This humanizes the message and, thus, deepens its impact on the consumer.

Lesson 2: The wrapping matters

Chef’s Table pays a great deal of attention to what its camera captures — a subtle expression, a dusting of icing sugar, the plating of a dish, the harmonious chaos of a kitchen, the majesty of a landscape. In particular, the show’s treatment of plating and landscapes reflects the producers’ acknowledgement that viewers are willing to engage with sophisticated detail that is presented in an elegant way.

David Gelb, Chef’s Table’s creator, first raised the bar for food shows to then-unsurpassable heights with Jiro Dreams of Sushi. In a clip from the movie, a Japanese food critic and friends sit down to experience a 20-course omakase menu. The critic describes the series of dishes as a concerto, with individual movements paying homage to particular ingredients and flavours. As each course is served, the camera draws near and captures every detail of each piece of sushi — the glistening soy sauce, the thickness of the fish, and the structure of the rice base. Gelb recognizes that viewers’ palates have become more refined and, as such, presents polished images that engage all the viewer’s senses. It is this recognition, manifested in a surprisingly unorthodox commitment to visual quality, that Gelb has brought with him to Chef’s Table — an approach that is at the heart of the show’s success.

Equally breathtaking are each episode’s stunning landscapes that transport the audience to different corners of the globe. In Season 1, viewers soak in Francis Mallmann’s Patagonian landscapes; in Season 2, they lose themselves in the mountains of Ana Ros’ Slovenia; and in Season 3, they find serenity in the verdant hilltop surroundings of Jeong Kwan’s temple. In every Chef’s Table episode, the camera pauses lengthily on these landscapes or deliberately frames dishes in their foreground. By carefully capturing, curating and presenting the chefs’ environments, the impact of the food itself is heightened. That Mallmann’s brook trout, baked in clay, is prepared and served against a Patagonian lake and filmed in dim natural light, speaks to who he is and what his cuisine is all about — mastering natural elements. Similarly, the tranquility of Jeong Kwan’s ‘temple food’ is only fully realized once the viewer has soaked in the stillness of her monastic surroundings. This technique distinguishes the show because it suggests an implicit trust in the audience’s ability to leverage subtle context and, thus, engage with a story on a deeper level.

The producers’ acknowledgement of how sophisticated viewers have become is reflected in the great attention they put into establishing context around each chef’s dish. With all of the ways people are bombarded with visuals, relying on brash presentations of content is unwise and simply exacerbates consumers’ visual fatigue. We need to trust in consumers’ ability to digest complex detail while simultaneously ensuring that our key messages are beautifully wrapped if we want them to be unpacked.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concerti were published with accompanying poems that elaborate on what it is about the seasons that each concerto was meant to evoke. In the Winter concerto, Vivaldi presents different poetic observations for each of the Allegro non molto, Largo, and Allegro movements; an exposition of the harshness of the winter months in the Allegro non molto and Allegro passages is juxtaposed against a cozy hearth in the Largo movement. That Vivaldi trusted his listeners to marry two different forms of art to engage more deeply with what each concerto seeks to convey makes his music a fitting theme for a show that challenges its audience in a similar fashion. In an increasingly spoon-fed world, pursuing greater meaning and embracing complexity are approaches that are critical to success in communications and beyond.