2005-08

 
 
Blog Summary Widget

2019 - AUTHORS’S NOTE: 

      My original aim was true.  Indeed, today in 2019, the scope of Cultural Farming remains steady.  And so I return yet again to Media Nipple for this 3rd iteration of video posts, to help enrich its fulsome purpose.  Which, at first glance, continues to appear to be misogynistic to some viewers.  (Remember that TV is, at its very best, always misogynistic.)  I do so again today even more bluntly this go-around, but still one tiny video at a time.


                                                                        


      


      Media Nipple, the first iteration, was a daily video blog for critically considering TV content by contextualizing and analyzing absurdist production of cultural messages and meanings.  In each post a nipple pic was used in attempt to de-fuse, mock and marginalize the ubiquity of female breasts used to sell everything on television.  (Want to garner media attention?  Just insert a nipple.)  It was a very early experiment in the Cultural Farming project.  Yet even now, some 15 years later, most visitors remain intellectually incapable of seeing the differences in and the purpose of pornographic parody.  And so it goes.

     

      This project was first published in June 2005 through Google’s Blogger application.  Over the course of 3 years, Media Nipple ultimately contained nearly 600 daily posts with almost 2,500 individual videos, while garnering 600,000 page visits from viewers across the globe; a monumental effort for a solo ‘vlogger’ alone at home 15 years ago. 


      However, in September 2008, Google tagged Media Nipple with a CONTENT WARNING label.  Apparently Media Nipple’s content, after three years of public educational experimentation, had somehow become too controversial to some viewers.  Rather than allow Google to ‘shadow ban’ and interfere with viewer accessibility -- which their algorithms are always designed to do --

I ended the Media Nipple experiment on Blogger and purchased the URL myself.  I then re-hosted some of that content here on this page as a second iteration. 


      Listed below, is Cultural Farming’s aggregation of a few of Media Nipple’s most pertinent topical posts, republished in their entirety...  Yes, it’s that yummy TV/media content we continue to suckle everyday.  Maybe as a kind of equivalent to those ubiquitous ‘dick pics’ in 2019.

 



panopticon surveillance

08-07-07


Cameras are everywhere recording every move in everyone's life. But, this is America. We have privacy laws, right? We don’t spy. We simply watch… for security purposes, for our own good. OK, and maybe for entertainment, too.


In England, it is estimated that approximately 300 different security cameras record the average Londoner each day. Why, and to what effect? Who is hired to watch all that video? What are they trying to see? And what is the difference between security and spying?...


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journalism and citizenship

08-06-29


Ten videos about journalism and citizenship, and their code of ethics. But what are ETHICS? Why are they important? Who should obey them? In a world where egregiously bad reporting is growing at every level, will Citizen Journalists (Is there such a thing?) do any better? The future of news looks dark unless we gain a full understanding of how the purpose, principles, and practices of the craft of journalism are easily fouled.


Media Nipple suggests there is no such thing as Citizen...


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fighting like girls

08-06-01


These eight videos visually discuss outward expressions of violence in a mediated world endlessly saturated in deviant behavior.


Why do girls fight? Is it because, as big media always loves to suggest, most women are Lesbians? Is it because men historically attack them first? Most likely, women fight for exactly the same reasons boys do. But today, while cameras are involved in almost every aspect of adolescent life, we see cameras being used to both record and encourage these performances....


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media as capitalism

08-05-29


The twenty videos below are just a few obvious examples of how broadcast television has transformed from a communication device into a "desiring machine" - with its content constructed for the sole purpose of serving as the mouth-piece for corporate capitalism. Television has become the ironic national anthem of seductive exploitation for constant consumption. Little is sacred when profit is king:


2. Punk Capitalism

3. Zen Capitalism

4. Communist Capitalism

5. Pakistani Capitalism

6. Black...


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flat reality

08-05-24


Flat Daddy. Flat Mommy. Flat reality. These four videos examine how image representation is increasingly inter-changed with human reality.


Of course, coping in times of great stress, like having your loved ones shipped off for war, family psychological demands can manifest in unlikely and abnormal behavior. But we are also clearly seeing deeper examples of images being accepted, even encouraged, as the real thing.


Photo images, in these cases, are not merely hung on walls or mantles for...


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killer kids

08-05-17


Twelve videos for discussion. We teach our children. The world teaches our children. Our media teaches our children. But what are our children learning? Are they learning to kill - or just the opposite? Or, are kids learning something else entirely?


In our mediated world, which media are we studying? Is the Koran more powerful than the computer? When children focus their studies on one thing from childhood, does it affect them? Unfortunately, media effects and technological determinism...


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news promotion

08-05-11


These videos ask several important questions – What is news and how should it be promoted?… or more exactly, what is broadcast journalism becoming? When everything in our mediated world is branded and hyped, are we forgetting the very notion of old-school hard-news?


This re-edited MSNBC promotional video focuses on several key words within the text. The “future of news," apparently, is where factual content and straight reportage is seldom mentioned. Instead misguided righteous claims of TRUTH...


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blackness in the media

08-05-05


Today's post is for Dr. Eric King Watts at UNC Chapel Hill... and for TV viewers out there who might think we are in a post-racial context. But, instead of concentrating on just the exploitative media coverage of Barack Obama's primary campaign (or even Coco Tea), let's take a good look at all of TV.


Today, racist visualization on TV goes a bit further than Danny Bonaduce and the Partridge Family. Even well-intentioned advertisements are constructed with visually racial (anthropological?)...


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insidious product placement

08-04-22


Twelve videos that illustrate the insidiousness of product placement in our world today. Does Barak Obama really love Abercrombie & Fitch? Doubtful. But A&F certainly loves any opportunity to strategically position 3 students for the cameras wearing branded T-shirts as free advertising.


Yes, the shock is over, even with KFC. We are accustomed to cross-branding on everything, everywhere - especially our bodies.... our sexy bodies. Of course, in a mediated world, advertisements are not only...


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giving kids visual hallucinogens

08-04-21


Today's post is about legally offering psychotic and hallucinogenic visuals (drugs?) to children. It is done everyday on TV, and in this case, PBS is the pusherman. This Boohbah video is just the program introduction. Question: Why do it this way?


If there is a drug epidemic in the world could it, just maybe, result from TV programming like this? That is doubtful, of course... but also inconclusive. And so the question remains, why make this - is it stimulating education or profit?


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fun with guns

08-04-10


Remember back to the time when Vice President Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face. Remember the media jokes? Remember the glib, cynical media coverage. Why would this happen?


Guns are commonplace. We simply no longer feel gun violence is surprising. Indeed it is interwoven into the very fabric of our lives. Whether you actually own a gun or not… you probably DO own a MEDIA GUN. Right? Admit it... you DO shoot media people every day. And if not, you probably DO you experience media...


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media: pay, steal, or share

08-04-06


We swim in media. It is everything and everywhere. It is the ether of our existence. So we find ourselves in a media dilemma. Who pays for our mediated world? This is a matter of human survival.


1. Will citizens rebel against being forced to pay for the very (media) air we breathe?


1. Or will media become more like selling water? That is, will we be able to get free media whenever we want, even though we prefer to pay for bottled water which we believe is healthier? ...Even though most...


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images, propaganda, and war

08-03-29


Five videos. In this series of video clips from FOX News, we are reminded of not only the individual casualties of war, but also of the importance of visual propaganda. But there is one slight problem – is the US military telling the truth about the death of Al-Zarqawi?


First there was “visual identification” of Al-Zarqawi’s body after two 500 pound bombs were precisely dropped with laser guidance. Scars, tattoos, and fingerprints… but no DNA?


Then, plastic surgeons reconstructed Al-Zarqawi’s...


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you tube news channel

08-03-08


When 24 hour news organizations are motivated primarily by profit making – everything becomes newsworthy, even YouTube. When foreign bureaus are closed, international reporting curtailed, and visual content is ratcheted to ever-higher levels… newsrooms begin to steal from amateur video bloggers from around the globe as legitimate journalistic content. And what better place to find eyeball catching content than YouTube.


But deep problems exist with this kind of reporting, and CNN even...


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ides of march

08-03-15


Julius Caesar   by William Shakespeare:


CICERO

…Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?

CASCA

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth

Shakes like a thing unfirm?

O Cicero, I have seen

tempests, when the scolding winds

Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen

The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,

To be exalted with the threatening clouds:

But never till to-night, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.

Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy...


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teaching with television

08-02-28


Twelve videos. Can network TV be used for education? Certainly, there are examples of excellent educational TV -- but, are the Muppets any different than: ABC Kids, or Comcast, or Disney, to name only a few. What and how, exactly, does TV teach our children?


What kind of education does network TV actually provide? Since network television’s main purpose is to promote consumption via entertainment, will it create classroom content for kids any differently than for adults? Do educational...


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god damn the pusher man

08-01-26


Make peace with our bodies? Are our bodies at war? Or, are we just drugged out? How exactly do we visualize a breakthrough in relief for our colons? Apparently, using Imodium is like sitting front row at Fillmore West. Warp speed to Uranus... not mine.


Then again, why go anywhere? The best drugs are at home anyway. Just open your medicine chest. Or maybe just breathe in, right where you are sitting. Visual communication on television often exploits the human body and it celebrates this...


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blissful ignorance

08-01-15


Six videos that ask: Are Americans the dumbest people in the world? Of course, the answer depends on one’s definition of intelligence. These questions go well beyond: Are we smarter than 5th graders.


The U.S. may not be dumb, but is it intelligent? That is another matter. As we wage a global war on terrorism, what do we know about the world around us? How can we lead the world when we so ill-informed. Even our leaders struggle with the simplest of foreign questions.


What do we know of our...


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will google buy privacy in second life?

08-01-09


Twelve videos. Google, Second Life, and the Internet... a perfect combo like a cheeseburger, fries and a coke. But what happens when the irresistible virtual world seduces every last bit of information from every last citizen - and their avatars?


Most media continue to sing the praises of the internet regardless of how educationally patronizing and clumsily it visualizes the "magic and mystery". But much of what is left unsaid concerns exactly how heavy-weights like Google and Second Life are...


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photo journalism

08-01-03


Fifteen videos on photo manipulation in news that consider visual intelligence in a mediated world. Remember: One deceptive picture is worth 1000 deceptive words. Today’s post is no different.


We see examples everywhere of the growing awareness to the inherent dangers of visual deception. Unfortunately however, no one has a clear understanding of “journalistic license” or of the “ethical rules” of image construction. So then, what exactly is the “number one rule of responsible reporting”?...


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your secret is safe with me

07-12-03


Thirteen videos that discuss how governments are radically profiling all citizens. Today even technological strip searches are routine. What are they looking for? Maybe it's our civil liberties.


Travelers already need to prove image identity with driver licenses and passports. Our names are already screened for ethnicity. Our bags are scanned and hand-checked. Our shoes must be removed and our bodies are “sniffed” with mechanical smellers. Our fingernail clippers are taken away, and our...

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violent kids - violent cameras

07-11-23


Eight videos for your aggressive child's pleasure. Fight clubs, video gaming, even school recess – what is the difference today? Aggression is a blood sport for today’s youth. And it's even better when staged for the camera.


Is youth aggression something new? No. But something has changed. Personal video is combining with aggression. Fight clubs, or bum fights are not considered FUN, or validated, unless the acts are caught on video. Has WATCHING become a funny aggressive act? Should...


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god in media or media god

07-10-19


Eleven videos that illustrate the increase of spiritual exploitation in media - particularly when news packages religion for vacuous consumption. Why is this? Because everything - even religion - is fair game in the big world of capitalism. ...and, don't forget the internet.


Jesus Christ action figures may only be an animated comedy skit, but Christian representation increasingly embodies Western corporate ethic. And, what happens when the message of god is simply mixed in with all other media...


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when media preys

07-10-12


Ten videos. It is very difficult growing up in today’s world. Danger to children seems to lurk around every corner. It appears to come from every form of media. But who, exactly, are the predators? Television, for one, is always blaming someone else.


Media Nipple is intended to educate our viewers on matters concerning visual and media literacy throughout our mediated world. We have posted many times on how we all are exploited visually, mentally, spiritually, and physically by media...


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politics and visual slander

07-09-28


Ten videos that discuss visual language in a world of media politics. Whether in political parody, or off-handed yet premeditated comments, slanderous visual discourse continues on its merry way. Nothing is new.


Slander is often presented visually in forms like this TV advertisement comparing gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos, the Michigan son of Amway, to George Bush - or from John Spenser images that claim Hillary Clinton spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. Whatever, this is the...


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when TV kills every animal in nature

07-08-06


Twenty eight videos that ask... Humans - Television - Nature: Exactly who is killing whom? One thing is certain, TV is stoking our fear, stupidity, and ignorance about the natural world - all for our entertainment. And so, in a mediated world, we must defend ourselves, right? Simply put, in TV visuality terms, Nature is going berserk and it wants us dead. That is unless we can force animals to be like us... so we can gawk at their oddness.


Of course, television like all businesses must make...


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the dark side of the camera

07-07-20


Eleven videos. What happens to the photographer, after the photograph? What happens to our memory of an difficult image? C an an image remain long after it has been deleted?


Tony Zumbado of NBC will not forget the images he recorded in New Orleans. Never. He was paid to do his professional job. We too record images every day, but what happens if we record something personal, tragic, exploitative, profound? What do we do with that image? Do we sell it to the highest bidder? Do we delete it...


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nature is dead - long live the screen

07-07-11


Remember when nature was something real, tangible? Not just exploited in museums called national parks or manipulated for TV? How did that happen? When did nature die? Well, it occurred in parallel with the rise of the screen. Our bodies now are little more than projected surfaces. Our new realties exist only on the screen. If fact, we're convincing ourselves we love it that way.


Today, all our senses are being reproduced. What will this new digital future look like? Certainly not like...


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editing for stimulation over cognition

07-07-09


These two videos illustrate how the language of editing is increasingly marketed simply to stimulate. The recent movie CRANK is a perfect example.


The trailer for CRANK, which is 30 seconds long, has approximately 120 individual edits – or 4 edits per second. Human cognition cannot process visual information at this speed…. but our involuntary human senses can.


Question: Then why do it?

Watch the CRANK video again in slow motion.


Editing is a classical form of montage - juxtaposing images to...


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female fashion folly

07-07-06


Twelve videos that discuss distortions of female beauty. In a mediated world, ideas of beauty are constructed and commodified. But is something more involved?


Can our notions of beauty be genetic, or whims of biology? Can our perceptions of beauty be directly tied to ovulation? Dr. Martie Haselton from UCLA thinks so. She compared photos of women before and after menstruation cycles and now believes that female notions of beauty can be linked to periods of fertility. But is this “well...


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subliminal perversion

07-07-05


Four videos: New technologies, like TiVo, are encouraging new never before seen advertising models. With more and more viewers fast-forwarding to skip through commercials, more advertisements are constructed in slow-motion so as to re-appear on-screen in “real-time." But another curious tactic is also occurring – new forms of subliminal content: GE One Second Theatre. ...or, placing ads within ads.


With personal digital video recorders, viewers now have the ability to watch all TV...


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the human touch of bio security

07-06-05


Thirteen videos that discuss how today’s security technology is visualizing everything about you. The whole world is watching.


Little Brother – the name for the ever-growing myriad forms of security technology – is now embedded into every facet of our lives. There is no escape. Fingerprints, voice patterns, facial features, eyeball composition, body odor… everything is captured secretly, analyzed by computers, and filed into endless databases. Everything about you is recorded somewhere - like...


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sexual fetish and erotic technology

07-06-05


Fourteen videos: Possession and objectification of the female image by the sexualized male mind. What happens when sexual pleasure is performed by technology? Is physical satisfaction as one-way communication, preferable? What happens when human passion, love, sex and human relationship are enacted with machines? Are we truly beginning to believe - and love - our digital world?


- Real time polygon stimulation games.

  1. -Interaction that...


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the facebook conspiracy

07-06-05


Eleven videos that discuss rumors of the Facebook conspiracy? First, let's take a closer look and define this thing called social networking?


Now that we've defined the social media genre, is Mark Zuckerberg the person behind the Facebook conspiracy? Maybe, but would a kid in flip-flops create such a dangerous mode of communication? But SHARING with others is a good thing, right? So then, is this conspiracy fueled by Facebook itself - or by ignorant (read: lacking common sense) users?


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marketing to infants and toddlers

07-06-05

These seven videos examine Walt Disney, Hot Wheels, Barbi, and NASCAR – and how major corporations (and nations) exploit children for profit by building their brands.


Merchandizing to kids is like shooting fish in a barrel. Or, stated more bluntly, these examples are nothing short of corporate pedophilia. Of course, Disney family products have long been a mainstay of global consumerism. Today, green with envy, every company races to win fast-money from demographics as young as 2-6 year olds....


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manufacturing style

07-06-05

These seven videos examine the debut of Katie Couric on CBS and how the majority of media reviews focused on Couric’s image presentation rather than news content.


More than any other topic, Couric’s style and on-camera look dominated most discussions. And of course, that discussion particularly revolved around her face. These are bad enough, but oddly, this review illustrates the disconnection between reality and mediated image construction. Botox? These discussions assume the on-air image of...


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visualizing bad weather

07-05-07

The weather isn’t bad…the weather reporting is bad. It is a bit of modern mystery why weather reporting is so idiotic. But the real problems with TV weather reporting are the maps made by the weather people. Collectively, weather maps represent some of the worst examples of visual design seen today.


For this post, lets examine just a few of the presentational color schemes. For instance, what do these COLORS represent:


RED means: Low pressure, warm front, heavy rain, moderate risk, hurricane...


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visual communication literacy

07-05-05

Eleven Videos. In a verbal world, culture is primarily expressed and recorded with words; and of course, those who master words become the primary spokespeople and builders of that culture. Our growing understanding of Visual Communication, however, is reconsidering the privilege of words.


In a visual world, image construction and visual design gain equality, and forms of visual expression gain communicative currency. Font design is a perfect example of this transformation. Individual letters...


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youth video violence

07-04-05


Thirteen videos. On this day of insane tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus, we are reminded again of growing youth violence. But what we are also seeing is how these violent acts are recorded for our prurient viewing pleasure.


Does video beget violence? Are youth compelled to mimic media violence - or do they simply perform violence for the camera? Bum fights... girl fights... bus fights... wilding... violence overwhelms our media. Is it becasue we love to watch? Is it for fame or...


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television & vaginal predators

07-04-06


Who or what is the real sexual predator today? Who really stalks little girls all day, everyday? It is television. Who hasn’t seen adult sexual inference and extreme animated imagery targeting children on TV? How can content like this get broadcast into every home? In a ‘free” media market, money rules regardless of who it hurts, even if it means exploiting our most vulnerable.


Big media considers itself proactive in regard to community service. By airing PSA’s broadcasters feel they are...


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clinton obama in 1984

07-03-06


Seven videos about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Macintosh 1984, YouTube, political advertising, and our new social media landscape. Is "Hillary 1984" an amateur video? Is this a clever product-placement marketing ploy by Apple Macintosh? Is this the new expressive face of citizen media?


How did this video remake become a political statement? Let’s examine both more closely. Here is the famous, ideological, original Macintosh 1984 Superbowl TV ad. And here is the new ideological remake of...


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when nature kills

06-11-06


Eight videos that show exactly how Nature is killing us. We must defend ourselves. Nature is going berserk and it wants us dead.


Television must make money. And one of the very best ways to attract viewer eyeballs is to create fear. This makes Nature a perfect target for exploitation. In a mediated world, humans must fear all that is natural.


And so, Nature is presented as no longer gentle - it is conspiring to attack. It wants revenge. Animals are evil-doers, and we must fight back. Right?...


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bush and the existential stranger

06-08-06


The Stranger is Albert Camus’ enticement to readers to think about their own mortality and the meaning of their existence. The hero, or anti-hero, of The Stranger is Meursault. His life and attitudes possess no rational order. His actions are strange to us, there seems to be no reason behind them. We are given no reason why he chooses to marry Marie or gun down an Arab. For this, he is a stranger amongst us. And when confronted with the absurdity of the stranger's life, society reacts by...


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