Month: September 2018

Trump & The #MeToo Endgame

by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner

If I remember correctly, it wasn’t until the beginning of Obama’s second term that Trump got into birtherism. So, it makes sense that we may very well be well into Trump’s second term before we fully grasp the social and political implications of #MeToo. Of course, it could all change if Trump somehow is such a bad president that he is impeached and convicted.

The below video is fairly interesting. Enjoy.

Idle Mulling Of Seoul’s Haebangchon Versus NYC’s Brooklyn

by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner

I lived in Seoul a few years, specifically in the Haebangchon, or HBC neighborhood. It was all a long time ago and I have romanticized the experience so much that it’s virtually a daydream. But what is interesting is when I finally managed to find myself in Brooklyn, I found it rather meh compared to HBC.

HBC, at least when I was there, was a small and intense community of creative types from all over the world. It was almost like a really, really small college town. There were a lot of older guys dating younger women. Lots of sex. Lots of booze. Lots of drugs. But all of that has very much changed as best I can tell.

It’s all a very different experience now. The place has gentrified to a great extent and I think native Koreans have largely lost their unwillingness to live near expats. So, things are different. It used to be you could get a decent apartment for about $300 a month with an amazing view of the Seoul cityscape. This is, alas, not the case anymore I don’t think.

I really miss my time in Seoul. It was a lot of fun. But that moment in my life is over. I can’t go back. I’ve gotten older and all the energy I felt back about 10 years ago is long gone. I sometimes idly think about one last trip to Asia at some point in the future before I turn 50, but that doesn’t seem likely at this point.

But for the want of a nail, I would still be in Seoul. But it just wasn’t meant to be. My future is — if anything — one of a novelist. It will be interesting to see how things work out.

V-Log: How To Save Time Magazine

by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner

In this v-log, I talk about my vision for “saving” Time Magazine by turning it into an app. I love this concept, I just wish someone would listen to me.

V-Log: A Deep Dive Into Saving Time Magazine By Turning It Into A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

No one listens to me, but this is a really compelling concept. The idea of turning the legacy brand Time Magazine into an app that would compete — and ultimately kill — Twitter is really cool. And on the face of it, it’s pretty obvious. What you do is, you use the existing content creation backend infrastructure of the magazine to start the app.

There’s just so much to talk about. I talk about all of it pretty extensively in this video. But, like I said, no one listens to me and I’m just pissing in the wind. But it is fun to talk about. I just wish someone with some power at Time Magazine might at least listen to me.

V-Log: Monetization Of The Transition Of Time Magazine Into A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is an interesting talk. Enjoy.

V-Log: Re-Imagining Time Magazine As A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I guess why I keep writing about this concept is it’s so obvious to me. I’m something of a “power user” of Twitter and I kind of hate it. It sucks. The reason it sucks is, really, only about 10% of its user base is worth anything. So given that Time Magazine has been bought by a technology company, it seems pretty obvious to me that if you’re going to “save” it, you turn it into a social media platform designed to fell Twitter.

There’s just so much you can do with this concept. For me, the crux of it all is if you base the service on the old Usenet platform’s concepts, it make a lot of sense. Now, Reddit is a lot like Usenet, but it’s such a poorly designed implementation of Usenet as to be useless, at least in my opinion.

But here are the basics of my re-imagined Time Magazine.

Groups
Existing writers and editors of Time Magazine, instead of putting a magazine out every week, would be paid, in essence, to contribute content into the service in Groups they would be responsible for. Given that they would be paid to use the service, they would have a reason to be willing to take the time and effort to manage these Groups as systadmins. They would — at least at first — have the exclusive ability to create new Groups. Later, as a Point system kicked in, other people might be able to bubble up to the surface of the system and also be able to serve as systadims. But that would take time.

Posts
This is one cool feature — instead of being limited to 280 characters people using the Time App would have an entire full-page, multimedia Post to write content into. These Posts would have a robust threading quality to them, as well as the ability for users to in-line edit them once they had proven that they weren’t completely insane. (How they might prove this is up to discussion. I think at first it would be simply the amount of time you had used the service or whatever. Something intuitive.)

Video Conferencing
Another cool feature would be the ability to have recorded 4-way video conferencing. If you limited this feature, at least at first, to Time App staff, then you wouldn’t have to worry about abuse.

Anyway, there is so much more I could talk about, but no one listens to me. But, like I said, this is so obvious to me. It just makes so much sense. The user base of Twitter is in near open revolt and if you gave them a better mouse trap, I think they would flock to it in droves. I know a lot of celebrities and thought leaders hate Twitter with a passion. If you gave them something like my proposed “Time App” I think they would love it from the get-go.

V-Log: Saving Time Magazine By Turning It Into A ‘Twitter Killer’ App #Disrupt

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

There’s just so much you can do with Time Magazine’s content. It has a great name and it generates huge amounts of content on a minute-by-minute basis. So, why not use its editors and writers as the core of a new social media app and Website, one that could “kill” Twitter.

I mean, really, Twitter is completely useless and only about 10% of its user base produces any content that anyone wants to read. So what would happen if you started off from the ground up a new service where at first only the editors and writers of Time Magazine could contribute into the system full page, multimedia posts that were in different Groups devoted to thousands of different topics?

Now, I’m basing all of this in a very loose way on the old Usenet newsgroups. But to the modern user, I guess they would see it as kind of a mixture of Twitter and Reddit. What happens is, you seed the service will Time Magazine staff, then gradually, over time, others would build up enough “points” that they could also do administrative things.

It’s pretty widely known that most people — especially celebrities and other thought leaders — hate, hate, HATE Twitter for any number of reasons and I think if you gave them a viable alternative they would flock to it. There is just so much you could do with this premise. You could have recorded video conferencing, you name it.

But no one listens to me, so I’m just pissing in the wind. But this is such an obvious yet out-of-the-box use of Time Magazine staff and content it’s kind of sad that no one will do anything with this concept.

V-Log: A Deep Dive Into The Issues Surrounding The #2018Midterms #Resist

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Here are some words about the state of the 2018 mid-terms. I get into a fight with someone in the comments, which might be entertaining.

V-Log: The State Of My #Scifi #Novel I’m #Writing For Sept. 20th, 2018

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Just a little mulling.

V-Log: A 2018 Mid-Term Issues Deep Dive For Sept. 19th, 2018

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I really want to start a podcast about the 2018 mid-terms, but for the time being, I’m going to just do a scope or Facebook Live about where things stand each day leading up to election day. I don’t know what I’m going to call this, but I was thinking maybe Daily Mid-Term Deep Dive or something like that. I don’t know when I’m going to do these little videos, but probably later in the day to account for breaking news.

I keep vowing to myself that I’m going to tune out from politics until after Nov. 6th, but I fear that’s just not going to happen. So I might as well wallow in politics and angst if I’m not going to be able to get myself off the grid.