Yo NoLem, “Thom your full of shit. Its all Alinsky and Cloward and Piven and you hate America and Freedom.” The only person who talks about these three who have nothing to do with now and are not on Obama’s bookshelves is Glenn Beck, the guy who used to be on TV but his 15 minutes came and went. You might have squeaky voiced Levin running around squawking but he is a true lesser light of the right. He shoudl be seen but not heard.

Remember the economy the day O was sworn in? It is a helluva lot better today while the world is still in recession.

Every time you use the word ‘Alinsky’ some poor angel loses his/her wings. Lyin’ b bad.

Earth to Nolem: Beck is history to never return. His demographics always averaged in the mid 60s like pretty much all main stream media except for Colbert and Stewart. If you really wanted to make a difference you would skip all this typing and find a way
to get more interactive to attract a younger demographic. My suggestion is games. Less txt more youth that is the way the world works. The streaming video you cite is rarely interesting or funny which also means fewer eyeballs. Beck used to joke that he was a former rodeo clown which was the part of him that worked. When he veered into insanity and making believe he was a Constitutional scholar the shark was jumped and the game was over.

I’d look at HuffPo first for how to attract a younger audience but I have to admit that I like the little quiz on the National Review Online a lot. Simple and engaging.

You have the potential with a name like YourDaddy’s. to get expnasive and realize that ther are a lot of daddies out there and they all differ so get a little more variablity and the eyeballs increase.

Just a thought.

Your BFF THom

NoLem, when Beck claimed to be advancing Thomas Paine the shark was jumped. Paine woild never recognize what Beck does as patriotic to anything other than his pocketbook. Bottom line Beck is a rodeo clown and everything he does is to raise money. If he was ‘ worth’ it to Fox he would still be there.

If you look at the entire gamut of talk on the right the demographics are in the 60s from paper to the tube. Add to this the total numbers are plummeting. People 60 plus tend to die eventually and there place hopefully is taken by a youngster who wants to ‘interact.’

Something comes next but my money says it won’t be screens of text, half in CAPS and the other people putting bacon in Korans to become bett Christians. That is beyond a shark jumper.

Why don’t we run game ideas and see what would be acceptible to both and go from there?

Maybe use then old PBS Firing Line model, partially supported by the government. Remember, it was the Government and PBS which gave voice to the lions of the right: William F. Buckley and Buchannon. How long did they air and actually bring to fore Buckley and Buchannon? I forget was it 15 or 20 years on government supported media. Contrast this with FOX and Hannity and Colms. A couple of years and: what do you mean, they moved Colms to midnight.

We are never agreeing on much political but we might be able to agree on technology and media. I think we could design ‘political fun.’

YurDaddyGames, the future of political entertainment. I like Yur more than Your for the hipper folks we hope to attract.

You are missing my point: high probability that streaming media per se is dead already at least for anyone under 40.

If you want to attract young eyeballs you have to use games. It actually is the only media which allows you do simulations and what-if scenarios. The problem with simulations is you can’t control the narrative so you have to have flexibility people others are going to reach other conclusions than you might want.

Gut feeling right now is I’m talking to someone a little older than I imagined because of the way you are flinching at the use of the word ‘entertain.’ Old folks flinch at this word because it doesn’t seem respectful enough and almost silly except that the word ‘entertainment’ actually means at root ‘to hold in the minds eye,’ which means attention, eyeballs and learning so in the age of the Internet it is entertainment as far as the eye can see which is what you are already missing in the dismiss of Glen Beck. He actually was the only funny right pundit on the right. Dennis Miller is running very close to the center mark and has the growing audience and the training as an ‘entertainer’ which means ‘educator’ one who holds in the minds eye.

You can not make anyone read, watch or play anything boring.

What kind of game would you like. Just feed me a single sentence and we can from there and maybe others jump to think about ‘fun and growth.’

I think I’d be a bit leery about any sort of set top boxes since they are aimed at TVs, which are dead, and they began life in the early days of videotext and have never really taken off. Picking Roku also means you are in the same market as Apple, Google and Microsoft’s xBox, the real potential big dog. I just don’t see TV ever achieving its owl numbers but video streaming all over the net which means all the set top boxes are dead and you are a technological battle with the world group mind which can’t be won, only followed.

Games:

Games Progressive play> Follow Portugal over the Cliff.

How about we call this Poutgalia, a fictions land where size can leveled up from a village to a country to a Union. At each stage people can make decisions about what to spend their money on. Maybe you follow Portugal, maybe you don’t. That is the difference between what I call flat linear media such as print and TV and radio and games. No one plays a game they know the ending to. You could prototype this pretty easily with what is left of Second Life.

Enslave the unborn with Taxes Constitution.

Great idea. I have been told this all through my life but the debt never got passed on ever, it seems that a rising tide does raise all boats. But, the goal would be to write reasonable rules and see what happens. This could be an expansion pack for Portugalia. Gene Roddenberry used Star Trek as way to talk about the present without being burdened by people’s expectations of the present. Spock was probably the first depiction in popular media of someone on the Asperger’s spectrum.

Red Rover Red Rover Send OUR Racism On Over

This would make a great small app game which used polling to present statements and let the players vote on true or not. Super winners get to compete on a stream video feed for real bucks. We could do some interesting juxtapositions with time and culture. Is what was racist then racist now? Thinking of Huckleberry Fin and young Jim’s language use.

Blame Bush

No idea what the game is but I love the name. Might do more of a simulation which shows the percentage of funds plus or minus in the economy can have a tinge from Red to Blue with Blue being Obama’s debt and Red Bush’s and the pink range in between what we aren’t sure about. In games, what you don’t know is the most educational.

Abort abort its a Burden

That might be a category in a game but a rape victim, a woman just on the border of menopause, a child assault victim, someone who heart might start during labor they might complain. How about we just call this ‘Women’s Rights’ and allow the players define the lines of play. Might do this as an ARG in Atlanta.

Hide the Lies Hide the decline

Clumsy name. I’m thinking of Jared Diamond’s book Collapse on why societies fail. How about we call this game Decline. I think we can do levels starting about 1929 to see decline or not over time.

Good first pass. So, do you have a fav? Variations you want to propose?

Anyone else out there want to think about political games and simulations?

You play well, young NoLem — think of me as your personal Obi Wan

I never thought you were a novice but it is pretty obvious that there is a major change in media happening. In 1967 the primary media in the US was print and books, that was the last year books have lead media. Today in the NY Times there is an article about the major erosion of younger viewers from TV across the board. there is NimbleTV rolling out into your area which will either kill Roku or buy Roku.

And then there are games and younger folks. No guessing what their major media is.

Then there is the whole issue of ‘user experience’ with YourDaddy. At best an average design at worst ineffective in attracting expanded and new audiences. Look at Red State, clean, clear and totally boring. HuffPo on the other hand is the prototype repeater site. They have user experience people because I know them.

That sort of comes around to why you don’t really expand YourDaddy to your readers? [I'm not talking about me here] Expansion and trust will grow everything. Having a group also helps you manage your web site.

A nice expansion of this sort of expansion to grow your site is TerraNova the virtual worlds discussion site: http://terranova.blogs.com/

–Thom