Browsing the web this morning, I strumbled accross a movie found on Der Schockwellenreiter’s blog. „Mom, dad, there’s something important I need to share with you […] I’m German!“, Günther said in the movie. The clear message „You’re not German, you’re an idiot!“ portrayed the common image for Germans in many other countries. I’m not going to justify the filmmakers or Germany, but instead I noticed another number of common mistakes made by non-German filmmakers as they wish to portray Germans in their movies.
First of all, Germans are not Bavarians! Bavaria is the former Kingdom of Bavaria which has been „annexed“ by Germany. A small glimpse of history passed and ratified the legal existence of this Kingdom, which became a „Freistaat“ (free state) in modern Germany. But unfortunately, this last remaining colony of Germany however is used as prime example for German culture – which is not German culture at all. Instead, Germans try to live with the obscure and strange behaviour found within Germany’s borders. For most Germans, the Bavarians are a horde of cultural animals. Sometimes we think about reincarnating the Iron Curtain to restrict the access from and to Bavaria…
Furthermore, the idea of having David Hasslehoff as the nation’s biggest hero is a major mistake. In the late 80s and early 90s, the actor became famous due to his appearance on the TV Show „Knight Rider“. Most people recognized Hasslehoff’s germanic heritage, but the TV Show became famous because of the speaking, self-acting and absolutely cool car named „KITT“. Hasslehoff is the anti-portrait of a hero for modern Germans.
The cuckoo clocks only exist in southern Germany to feed the tourists with economical subordination, a new form of recycling trash and making money out of it. The hint to Bavaria and their strange culture is obvious while the traditional Bavarian clothing is presented as a significant sign for Germany, especially the „Schuhplattler“ is a common make-out dance in Bavaria, but nowhere else! I would never wear such clothing or perform this idiotic dance. Besides this, blonde people are rather dying out due to the inferiority of the blonde genes. Only a few hundred years and any blonde person in the world is a make up doll or just fake.
Germans do not dig up the sand to build windbreaks on the beach or build castles. Instead, they prefer to use their towels in the early morning to claim any beach chair or couches at the pool. However, kids still ruin the beaches for the fun of it.
More or less correct are the following things seen in the movie: We love beer, but we can drink it much better than this guy. We love cars, but usually we drive BMW or Mercedes… please, who needs an old Volkswagen Beetle?
I wish people would be more intelligent, open-minded and not enclosed to intercultural miscommunication due to the lack of cultural awareness. There are other ways on how to portrait Germans without using Bavaria as major example. Now you know why Germans have no humor once Bavaria is mentioned. They could be a part of Austria, and we all know where the brown dung came from…
Blog-Awareness and Audience-Pushing
BlogkulturVisiting the Buch Blog, I strumbled upon the idea of „Blog Awareness“ found in a small debate on girlizine (german). The author describes the idea on how to push your blog with small chunks of blog entries in order to be omnipresent on the bloghoster’s main page which shows a list of all recently updated blogs. I consider such as blog spamming and commented the following:
In the end, you only destroy your own reputation as blogger by becoming a spammer on your own. Instead of creating useful or interesting content, you become redundant to the readers.
G-Mail²
Social MediaRecently, I got an invitation to the G-Mail service by Mario Sixtus and created my account under the name sichelputzer gmail com. I hardly use the service because I only wanted to obtain an account at G-Mail. After waiting for about a year, I was generally satisfied to become a part of this invitation-only community. But apparently, G-Mail chose to invite the users waiting on their notification list on which I signed up in the past. I received my official invitation by G-Mail today… don’t they check by using a simple regular-expression-match operation if somebody has already been registered via user-to-user invitation? It’s quite amusing how the G-Mail service can annoy its users with spamming. I might register a second G-Mail account if this is possible… the purpose of the idea by using invitation-only methods has become voidable.
About being sold!
MedienFinally, one of the largest infomercial webportals has been sold. As reported last week, About.com was auctioned off – the New York Times was the highest bidder with 410 Million US Dollars. I personally hope the content of about.com will continue to be blogger-friendly.
Timeless Web-Design?
DesignThomas commented on my blog and the design – thank you. But exactly your comment, Thomas, made me wonder about my website’s design. I believe it is the same layout which I used in 2003 – and I have not made a significant change yet except minor updates like image additions. There has been no real modification, and no alteration of the looks of this site. Without improvement, I’m hardly catching up with modern existence on the web.
For instance, the most disturbing factors are the doublette found in the blog categories and the major navigation bar at top. Of course, the Starting Point has to remain as major entry to the site, and the Sichelputzer is the actual link to the blog. The category for links in Linkage fits its purpose perfect as much as Shots’n’Pics fits for the gallery – but the other categories of Ego-Mania, Unicum Akademie and Party Radar seem to be redundant the more I contribute to the blog. I hardly update these parts of the site, and even the categories of the blog are filled once or twice a week by now.
I considered two extremes for a redesign of the layout – classical hardliner vs. multimedial overload. The first principle has its focus on the simplicity of design found in the early stages of the internet. Traditionally, Google, Ebay and Amazon still keep the simplicity in their design as major steps of multimedial design is nearly banned within the layout. On the other side, the focus on multimedial content and design plays an important role in today’s media. With grafical power and miracles of technology, another method of overloading the user can be reached.
But a clear destinction between informational content and multimedial content is a must. Probably, a merger of both alike the current layout but with a higher interactivity and linguistical focus on information and entertainment, perhaps edutainment, will aid the process of enriching this virtual spectre of myself. I need to reorganize the content and find a new design… if anybody has some ideas, feel free to let me know! ;)
Kress‘ spammiger Newsletter
Medien, SpamDen Kennern der Branche ist er längst bekannt, und all jenen, die den Report nicht im Abonnement beziehen, jagt der Kress Verlag den täglichen Newsletter von und mit den Akteuren der Medienbranche ins Postfach. Ein schöner Service, den ich gerne nutze, weil gerade ich mich abends gepflegt um ca. 18 Uhr darauf verlassen kann, ein Häppchen der großen Medienwelt zum Abendbrot genießen zu dürfen. Dass die weiterführenden Informationen immer wieder nur für Abo-Kunden gelten, stört mich nicht. Dass das Angebot nach den „KressKöpfen“ zu suchen auch kostenpflichtig wurde, hat mich aber in der Vergangenheit gestört. Für diese doch hilfreichen Information mochte ich kein Geld bezahlen, zumal das System für mich nur von allzu kurzer Dauer nutzbringend wäre – vielleicht ein oder zwei Mal im Monat. Damals benötigte man die Infos beruflich immer wieder, und heute bin ich aus reiner Neugierde daran interessiert, nur um zu sehen wer aus meinem Bekanntenkreis wo in der Medienbranche arbeitet. Jedoch weigere ich mich auch heute noch strikt für diese Kontaktdaten etwas zu zahlen. Und natürlich gab es die Nachrichten von Kress auch damals noch umsonst, damals war so circa 2003. Heute muss man dafür ebenfalls extra bezahlen, was sicherlich jedem von uns ein Dorn im Auge ist – das Geld schwindet nunmal mehr und mehr aus unseren Portemonaies.
Zu meiner Überraschung führte Kress mich heute an der Nase herum, indem ich ein spezielles Angebot per extraordinärem Newsletter bekommen hatte. Einerseits habe ich nicht gewünscht, von irgendwelchen Marketingaktionen seitens des Kress Verlages informiert zu werden, andererseits erhielt ich diesen Newsletter gleich zwei Mal gegen 13:50 Uhr und 15:02 Uhr. Ich wurde einmal als „Sehr geehrter Empfänger von kressexpress“ und „Sehr geehrter Nutzer von kressköpfe“ betitelt. Ersteres verstehe ich ja, dass ich als Empfänger des kressexpress (besagter Newsletterdienst) für nur magere 27,00 Euro im Monat den vollen Zugang zu kress.de und allen tollen Funktionen erhalte… aber momentmal? Warum bin ich ein Nutzer von kressköpfe, und das nur etwas mehr als eine Stunde später? Damals teilte man mir recht freundlich mit, dass kressköpfe ab dato nur noch kostenpflichtig sei und ich gefälligst zahlen müsse. Nun bin ich einige Jahre später noch ein Nutzer des Angebots, kann es aber nicht nutzen? Da ich eindeutig von Kress als Nutzer des Angebots identifiziert bin, erwarte ich auch entsprechende Freischaltung für das System. Falls dem nicht sein sollte, dass ich als Nutzer von kressköpfe das System nutzen darf, möchte ich entsprechend das Angebot für den verstrichenen Zeitraum rückwirkend nutzen. Und falls Kress mir noch weitere ungewollte E-Mails zusendet, dann könnte dies ungeahnte Folgen für den Kress Verlag nach sich ziehen. Danke, lieber Kress Verlag, für diese persönliche Veralberung.
The Kyoto Protocol
MedienA great and warming welcome to the Kyoto Protocol – can it be true? The global warming pact went into force this Wednesday after waiting for it for over seven years. The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty on reducing the global warming. Basically all countries which ratified the protocol will reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methan and the ozon destroying chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) and other greenhouse gases. The European Union will reduce the emissions like many other countries worldwide. The USA, which is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (21% of the world emissions), does not intend to ratify the protocol – are they scared of loosing something precious?
Perspective into German culture
KuriosesBrowsing the web this morning, I strumbled accross a movie found on Der Schockwellenreiter’s blog. „Mom, dad, there’s something important I need to share with you […] I’m German!“, Günther said in the movie. The clear message „You’re not German, you’re an idiot!“ portrayed the common image for Germans in many other countries. I’m not going to justify the filmmakers or Germany, but instead I noticed another number of common mistakes made by non-German filmmakers as they wish to portray Germans in their movies.
First of all, Germans are not Bavarians! Bavaria is the former Kingdom of Bavaria which has been „annexed“ by Germany. A small glimpse of history passed and ratified the legal existence of this Kingdom, which became a „Freistaat“ (free state) in modern Germany. But unfortunately, this last remaining colony of Germany however is used as prime example for German culture – which is not German culture at all. Instead, Germans try to live with the obscure and strange behaviour found within Germany’s borders. For most Germans, the Bavarians are a horde of cultural animals. Sometimes we think about reincarnating the Iron Curtain to restrict the access from and to Bavaria…
Furthermore, the idea of having David Hasslehoff as the nation’s biggest hero is a major mistake. In the late 80s and early 90s, the actor became famous due to his appearance on the TV Show „Knight Rider“. Most people recognized Hasslehoff’s germanic heritage, but the TV Show became famous because of the speaking, self-acting and absolutely cool car named „KITT“. Hasslehoff is the anti-portrait of a hero for modern Germans.
The cuckoo clocks only exist in southern Germany to feed the tourists with economical subordination, a new form of recycling trash and making money out of it. The hint to Bavaria and their strange culture is obvious while the traditional Bavarian clothing is presented as a significant sign for Germany, especially the „Schuhplattler“ is a common make-out dance in Bavaria, but nowhere else! I would never wear such clothing or perform this idiotic dance. Besides this, blonde people are rather dying out due to the inferiority of the blonde genes. Only a few hundred years and any blonde person in the world is a make up doll or just fake.
Germans do not dig up the sand to build windbreaks on the beach or build castles. Instead, they prefer to use their towels in the early morning to claim any beach chair or couches at the pool. However, kids still ruin the beaches for the fun of it.
More or less correct are the following things seen in the movie: We love beer, but we can drink it much better than this guy. We love cars, but usually we drive BMW or Mercedes… please, who needs an old Volkswagen Beetle?
I wish people would be more intelligent, open-minded and not enclosed to intercultural miscommunication due to the lack of cultural awareness. There are other ways on how to portrait Germans without using Bavaria as major example. Now you know why Germans have no humor once Bavaria is mentioned. They could be a part of Austria, and we all know where the brown dung came from…
Gates vs. Denmark
MedienMr. Microsoft himself (Bill Gates) visited the danish Prime Minister Rasmussen. After the recent takeover of Navision, Bill Gates informed Rasmussen he would rather choose to transfer 800 workplaces to the USA, if Denmark will not vote for the softwarepatent guidelines in the European Union. Read more about this case for blackmail, bribery, corruption, lobbying, fear, uncertainty and doubt at Groklaw (via Hugo).
Tags: blackmail, bribery, corruption, lobbying, fear, uncertainty, doubt
Unerwünschtes Gewinnspiel Marketing
MedienDie Firma KKL Dialogmarketing, Callcenter & Vertriebsmanagement aus D-22880 Wedel (Tel: 04103 9000644) belästigte mich diesen Mittag mit einem unerwünschten Anruf. Laut Aussage des weiblichen Callcenter-Agents habe ich in der Vergangenheit an einem Gewinnspiel der Firma teilgenommen, was ich sofort verneinte, da ich an diesen unsinnigen und nur zum Adressklau dienenden Gewinnspielen nicht mitmache. Ich bat entsprechend um die Löschung sämtlicher meiner Kontaktinformationen und um die Beendigung jedweder zukünftigen Anrufe.
Öffentliche Warnung
Ab sofort berechne ich für unerwünschte Anrufe von Marketingfirmen, Gewinnspielunternehmen und Callcentern ein Honorar von 150 Euro pro angefangenes Telefonat. Die Rechnung erfolgt auf dem Fuße, Abmahnungen werden ebenfalls getätigt. Meine Zeit ist kostbar.
Google redefines Journalism
MedienJochen Wegner, the founder of jonet, one of the largest german online discussionforums for journalists, wrote the interesting article Bauer Poppe and the Googleisierung concerning the recent abuse of Google’s search results found within various newspapers and online magazines to create pseudo-journalism based on the laziness of the authors. His conclusion on how Google changed modern journalism is summarized by these four statements (translated into english). For his full explanation on these thesis, please refer to the original article.
1. Google today defines the minimum standard for journalistic research.
2. Google exploses the template-journalism and fakes.
3. Google often defines the maximum standard for journalistic research.
4. Google offers a warped image of the media world. This distortion takes effect on the media in return.