May 8, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

Well that’s enough book promotions and griping about bad service for a while. I promise. I want to get back to the focal concern of this blog, and that’s exploring the interface between business and academic research as it pertains to online communities, technology, and entertainment,

I’m in Boston today at a retreat for the Convergence Culture Consortium’s partners at MIT. Writing this from my hotel in Cambridge. We’re going to have a very full agenda that combines academics with businesspeople, and these events are always very stimulating and thought provoking. I’ll post an update for you after it’s done and fill you in.

But first I wanted to provide a little update on a wonderful conference I attended lat week on May 1-2 in Philadelphia. It was the 27th Annual Advertising and Consumer Psychology conference on the topic of “Virtual Social Identity and Consumer Behavior.” The conference got a lot of interest and, again, was one of those boundary-spanning events that drew both academics and working practitioners.

Jeremy Bailenson, the director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford talked about how applications of psychology work out in the virtual world of avatars. His work does a lot of testing of different social psych theories of attraction and repulsion. So, for example, tall avatars are liked better and are more popular than short avatars. Better looking avatars also have an easier time. And, using software, if you get an avatar to mimic your own gestures, or to facially resemble you (with a sort of morph), you will like and trust that avatar more. That was pretty cool stuff.

Lyle Wetsch from St John’s Memorial University presented some very promising and intriguing research he’s doing with students on the socialization in Second Life—they are keeping logs of their own socialization experiences as they move into the culture of Second Life. Alison Bryant from Nickelodeon and MTV, and Anna Akerman from Adelphi, presented fascinating work on the match between kids and particular virtual worlds, and how this linked to their stage of cognitive and social development. I’m over-simplifying, but it was sort of like kids begin with Webkinz tamagotchi-like play world, then they move up to Habbo Hotel, then they get into some of the TV properties like Virtual Hills, and then they graduate into places like Second Life and World of Warcraft. A life cycle of virtual world migration.

Rockstar Georgetown marketing professor Gary Bamossy gave a wonderful presentation on the sacred and profane aspects of online game playing in China, based on his research with Jeff Wang and Xin Zhao. And I thought Bill Minnis, from the company & Billion People, gave a really interesting talk about the problems with online retailing and where it would need to go in order to become as popular and as acceptable as physical retailing. He also compared Second Life programming with cave art and Harry Potter—wondering if the “next Harry Potter” would be a virtual world or a game. This comparison of world creation to art creation is very appealing to me, and I think that conceptualizing these sorts of creations as forms of art could be enlightening to our conceptions.

Newcomer Leila El Kamel from the Universite Laval gave a very scholarly and thorough linkage of Metaverses as Consumer Experiences that drew on a lot of interesting and relevant postmodern theory and philosophy. In such new places, we almost need to draw on elements form science fiction (this was a continual theme) and postmodern theory (Leila was one of the only ones to really push this important point).

I also like newcomers Lauren Labrecque and Ereni Markos presentation on consumption, marketing, and flow in Second Life. Their research explored the implications of marke4ting and brands in Second Life with a number of interesting observations. I also liked that they got theatrical, dressing up in wigs and gloves so that they physically embodied an “avatar-like” presence during their presentation. And, of course, I also loved that they quoted this blog during their presentation. How cool is that? Readers, you are not alone. In fact, this blog is getting some impressive readership now, well over a thousand unique visitors a day, and rising.

Seeing Lauren and Ereni walk in with their wig and costume on while I was presenting (with my co-author Richard Kedzior) was a Burning Man moment for me. It made me remember just how Burning Man Second Life sometimes feels. This Frontier sense and Wild West mentality with different rules, different social structure, a love of technology and technological possibility, a loose feeling of social chaos, of possibility, of anything can happen. Except that I think Second Life’s lack of rules and greater freedom actually makes it a less interesting place than Burning Man. Burning Man has new rules, participative rules, collective identity rules, rules that build community, while Second Life more anarchist approach actually ends up with a more barren, individualistic, predatory feel. Or maybe that’s just because Second Life has become overly commercialized, while Burning Man has kept the black hounds of business at bay….

The best part of the conference was the conversations. One lively discussion was about the future of Virtual Worlds and who to understand them. I made the point that we really don’t have an adequate overview of the different kinds of virtual world marketing elements that are out there yet, and a link to how that relates to our business models. Are they games that are pay-for-play or subscription? Are they advertising, which supports content development? Are they like e-commerce, stores where we buy something online and which replace brick and mortar? Are they add-on services, providing things like customer service or access to a community? Are they themselves a different kind of service, separate from a game, offering some new element to our product? We just don’t know.

There was also a nice set of volleys about whether there is anything really new here at all. Professor Bamossy made some very good points that there wasn’t anything all that theoretically interesting being show here. People were just showing that theories that apply in one domain (like tall people are more successful and more well-liked) also apply in the virtual world domain of perception. Okay, that begs the crucial question: so what? Richard and I had tried to argue that there were key elements of virtual world experience that were actually quite unique. I’ll share those with you another time. But Gary was pretty adamant that we didn’t need new theories to explain how people behaved, even under those new circumstances or contexts, and that the old ones seemed more than capable of doing the job. Goffman explained how people presented themselves in avatars pretty well. Piaget explained the way kids moved through stages. Freud explained why there was so darn much sexual activity in Second Life. This didn’t seem like it was really “new” at all. It’s a very interesting and important point, and certainly in a half-hour of discussion we only got to dig underneath the surface level just a bit. But that’s what these conferences are great for.

On the plane ride home, I began to sketch out a way to understand and focus our attention on virtual worlds, to organize what is still, in a lot of ways, the Wild Untamed West for Consumption and Marketing Theory and for Business Practice.

So thanks to Natalie Wood and Mike Solomon of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia for co-chairing and organizing such a stimulating and exciting conference. I think the ripples from this conference will continue to spread and build into many worthwhile contributions to our growing knowledge of this fascinating development of virtual world.

Posted in Virtual Worlds, Conferences & Presentation, Technology, Burning Man, Communities and Tribes, Marketing Science | No Comments »

September 5, 2007 by Robert Kozinets.

This is pretty thought-provoking stuff. there’s a lot of chatter currently swirling around the Burning Man community and he Internet in general about what happened this year at Burning Man (see my reportage here).

I just read a few very interesting takes on the event. The first is a Wired online interview with Paul Addis, the guy accused of the early burn of the Man. Claiming to be part of an intelligence operation aimed at waking people up through the unexpected and the pranksterish (sounds a little familiar), Addis offers a scathing critique of how Burning Man has become overly structured, mismanaged, and commercialized. What he says echoes extremely closely some informant interviews I’ve previously published. But takes it a whole lot further in terms of directing the critique not at mainstream society, large corporations, or the media, but at the Burning Man organization itself. Here’s a quote from the interview:

“We’re being programmed on every level: TV, radio, internet, advertising. It’s everywhere. We believe in the true promise of the American Dream and that should be for everyone no matter what. We’re jamming the program and allowing people the freedom of their minds rather than the programming someone else is trying to sell them. That’s the most important thing. We’re not telling people what to think or how to think, just presenting alternatives and facts and everything else. Humor, that’s the best way to do things. We’re not out here to be preachers. But Burning Man has become just as nefarious a cultural programmer as General Electric or Disney. You only need to look as far as Burning Man’s media team to see it’s like the Bush media team except with a different purpose. They exercise the same tactics to achieve the same results: to portray themselves in the best lights and to avoid negative media attention.”

There is a lot of stuff here that most countercultural folks would agree with. But Burning Man and Bush sharing a media team? I’ve heard that Karl Rove has been sighted sunbathing near Gerlach, Nevada. Now we know who Burning Man’s new Director of Publicity is going to be. Seriously, are we judging the message solely by the medium? The strategy by the tactics? That effectively locks out all countercultural communication with the mainstream, doesn’t it? Doesn’t that hamstring social movements into little local affairs that will have limited impact?

That Wired article refers back to an earlier statement that Addis made on the Laughing Squid page. In it, he offers a scathing (hmmm….there’s that word again) okay angry screed against the people who attend Burning Man. It’s clear he’s got strong opinions on the event’s current formation and they may be worth repeating here. There’s nothing here I haven’t heard from a lot of people who don’t like the event, but the whole anarchist “without fear” thing is an interesting and perhaps HunterSThompsonesque spin on things.

“We could give a fuck less what you all think of us for doing this. Most of you are newbies who have been drawn in by the semi-religious nature of the event, or maybe just the easy drugs and easier sex. You have nothing to offer the event other than your fucking money and obedience. You spend the rest of your lives in mortal fear of everything that insurance companies tell you to fear, and pretend that you’re free and clear because you spend four days at a desert bacchanal where spinelessness is not only encouraged but genetically replicated for implementation in successive generations. In short, you are the swine of which Thompson spoke. Get over yourselves. Some of us live quite well without fear. Doing so requires the ultimate in what Burning Man used to represent: personal responsibility and individual liberty. That’s all been lost in the last decade of Burning Man’s history. Consider this operation a history lesson that was desperately needed.”

Because he is so incredibly judgmental, I suppose he invites a little bit of evaluation of his own thoughts and actions. Talk about obedient and unthinking “swine”: who is quoting his mass media idol here and not actually thinking for himself? When Wired asked this righteous dude, who is emphasizing “personal responsibility” whether he burned the man early, guess what he said? “For legal reasons I can’t answer that.” Then he proceeded to defend the burning in every way. When asked what he would be pleading, he said: “Not guilty to all charges.” Personal responsibility? Oh, I recognize that personal responsibility. That’s the one that other people are supposed to have. And I guess the same goes for the lack of fear thing too. I saw nothing in that article that makes this any different from the guy stealing into Rockefeller Center in Manhattan and burning down a piece of someone else’s art there to prove a point. Vandalism. Arson. Evading the truth. That’s lack of personal responsibility.

I also don’t get beating at the counterculture from within. According to a lot of pundits, that sort of pointless and stupid infighting is what has condemned the Left to so many years of pain. While the Left is endlessly fragmenting, the other side is organizing. Unifying. And Winning Power–Real Power, not the Symbolic stuff that turns into ashes really quickly. And it’s sad to say but that’s a microcosm for the environmental movement right now. That’s why we have corporate style environmentalism winning while the harder cores argue amongst themselves.

That’s not to say, as one of my comments today aptly remarks, that Burning Man is Left or Right, or easily fits into those notoriously slippery political designations. This is more about two contending aspects of counterculture: the anarchism, and “anything goes” mentality that a lot of bohemian and postmodern theories assert, the acting-out rebellion for the sake of rebellion against the more institutionalizing form of enacting social change that may use some shock tactics, but is more about building lasting social change into wider society.

Finally, this posting, “Two Flames: The Story of Green Man 2007″ by Doctress Neutopia cuts much more to the core of an environmental critique of Burning Man, inflecting it in an spiritually-inclined, shamanic mode, anti-nuclear, ecofeminist vein. I recommend the read. It’s thoughtful and coherent (but utterly wrong-headed, IMHO).

Bringing Burning Man back to its subversive roots could cause shock waves throughout the world media. Burning Man could truly become a social movement that Harvey dreams about fusing art and politics for the transformation and salvation of humanity. To go up against the global corporate military regime, we need to fight fire with fire, symbol with symbol, religion with religion.But, alas, as in the real world, the Burning Man staff didn’t take time out to reflect and understand the significance of Addis’ wise action. Instead, they called it a selfish publicity stunt. They rebuilt the Man so that the Saturday night’s “Burn” could go on as scheduled. It seems their Green Man effigy was only “green washing.” Rebuilding it to re-burn it only caused more CO2 to be cast into our dying atmosphere and more forests were destroyed to provide more wood for the “ Green Man. ” Addis writes, “ Burning Man should stop the disingenuous Green Man immediately. It’s all a lie. If you want to know how much a of a total lie it is, run a Google satellite photo of Burning Man right now and count the number of RVs there. And they’re telling me it’s an environmental movement? Bullshit. There are people sucking gas up there faster than they are passing it.”

Everyone radical is arguing that Burning man isn’t radical enough. Everyone subversive is arguing that Burning Man isn’t subversive enough. So who do they attack? The society that they think needs this high level of radicalized discourse and action? Nah. Burning Man, of course. Why? Maybe because the counterculture is much more likely to embrace them for attacking it than the mainstream. You attack the counterculture, some in the counterculture (the counter-counterculture?) will applaud you, set up a legal fun to defend, and members of the mainstream will either ignore you, praise you, or just shake their heads in bewilderment.

Burning Man against the world media? Burning Man against the military establishment? Who are we kidding here? The reason I think Burning Man is at a tipping point is precisely because the organizers of the event are entwining the “project” with social forces and powerful institutions. They are making themselves solid. And that’s another reason why they’re being attacked by the more insubstantial elements in the countercultural space. Because they are gaining steam. The dramatic increase in numbers is only part of the story. A small part of it. Rather than burn down people’s effigies, why not clean up a hurricane’s mess, like Burners Without Borders? Or make your own art piece, and burn that?

I just don’t get it. Or why otherwise sensible people are defending it.

Posted in Burning Man, Communities and Tribes | 3 Comments »

September 4, 2007 by Robert Kozinets.

Oh, in case you were wondering, the Man burnt on schedule this year despite the adversity I reported earlier.

Bocking: A premature burn. A suicide. A serious injury. Lots of weird publicity.

And a very big crowd. The Associated Press reports that 48,011 people showed up for Burning Man this year. That’s the biggest crowd ever, and a whopping 23 percent increase from last year. Quite remarkable given that the event’s attendance has been flattening for a while.

I can’t help but to try and interpret all of these events not only for what they mean for Burning Man as a Project and a social movement, but also for what they harbinger in terms of an understanding of the theme of The Green Man this year, about our relationship with the Planet at this point in time.

And it makes me wonder…

Posted in Burning Man, Mysteries and Spirituality, Green marketing | No Comments »