Support for Socialist Embodied Realism

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,

    This supplements the thesis of my first email in this series, on
Socialist Embodied Realism affecting the tactics of mass movements like the
recent events of Venezuela.

    The New York Times today presented some interesting email related market
thoughts about romance online.  In particular I draw attention to how
on-line is more a part of young peoples lives, that 'churning' is a part of
the social process, and so forth.  The comparison to our view?  I was in a
march yesterday about primarily Palestinian rights in the Middle East.
There were about twenty to thirty thousand people in the march according to
the local capitalist media.  I will make some points here, I saw numerous
people using digital video cameras to take pictures of the march.  The woman
we met for the first time at this march was looking for various people she
knew in the crowd to join up with and share her experience.  That was the
National Writers Union it turned out.

    Achievable email might provide some rather interesting new features to
this sort of mass rally.  There were people leading chants, but neither my
wife no I could understand the words.  A simple email message about chants
would give me information.  But another thing is that why should a barely
hearable bullhorn speaker be the way we coordinate mass voices?  Why not
something more geared to human level communications?  That means addressing
the issue of embodiment!  Or for that matter, a mass rally is pointed at a
central speakers stand where people share the stage to speak.  Why not
information fed into earphones from a variety of sources that people can
switch back and forth from.  Instead of canned speeches from the platform,
all out cultural work, comedy, songs (original to the events, not hoary old
standards!).  People want to dance like they did in South Africa during the
struggle against Apartheid!  Ever seen the power of massed dancers in those
rallies!   Why not an intelligent pool of interviewers of the masses spread
through the masses?  Why not new ways of coordinating tens of thousands of
people at once through telecommunications?  !5,000 along the march, units of
1000 along the sidewalks paralleling the march through more neighborhoods?
That would be unusual show of power would it not?  Creating new forms of
mass rallies would be possible through coordination of communications.  Via
the depth of what email can provide.

    See how this is working for romance below.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/fashion/21PERS.html?ist6=&pagewanted=print
&position=top

April 21, 2002
Young, Single and Dating at Hyperspeed
By WARREN ST. JOHN - New York Times
Wei-Li Tjong's dating binge began on a whim.

Mr. Tjong, a 26-year-old associate at a major New York law firm, was coming
off a breakup and wanted to play the field. Out of curiosity, he said, he
signed up with an online personals service and posted his photograph ? an
artsy profile shot in which he resembled a brooding Johnny Depp ? and
described himself as "passionate and sexy (and in great shape)," someone who
was "working on not being an intimidating know-it-all." Mr. Tjong's
confidence play worked. In just a day, he got e-mail responses from a dozen
women.

"It was a great ego boost," he said. "I was amazed it could be so easily
done."

Mr. Tjong began checking the online service Nerve.com several times a day to
see how many responses his ad had generated. He posted more ads ? and more
Johnny Depp shots ? all of them slightly varied, in an attempt "to appeal to
the broadest marketing category." Pretty soon Mr. Tjong was going on dates ?
lots of dates.

"In the first two to three weeks I was meeting people every night," he said.
"Sometimes more than one date a night."

In just a few short months, Mr. Jong said he went out with around 70 women ?
usually an after-work drink with the option of an easy escape if things
didn't work out. In about a third of the cases, he said, the woman went home
with him.

Mr. Tjong's venture into hyperdating is indicative of the peculiar effect
online personals have had on the social lives of many people in their early
to mid-20's ? the first generation to pass through adolescence in a world
with e-mail and instant messaging.

With few of the scruples older Americans have about putting their
photographs and personal descriptions on the Web, this younger wave has
found itself free to take advantage of what the Internet does best: matching
supply and demand at lightning speed.

For younger people, using online personals is "not a somber, mildly
terrifying business of pairing off before you die," said Rufus Griscom, the
founder of Nerve.com. "It's a recreational activity. It's entertainment."

As with the day-trading boom a few years back, the Net seems to have created
a volatility in the romantic marketplace, especially in cities like New York
where there is a coffee shop on every corner; the speed of online
communications often translates into a quick invitation to meet
face-to-face.

Dating once implied "a very long process where you disclose things over
time," said Robert Rosenwein, a professor of social psychology at Lehigh
University. "The Internet speeds that up considerably. There's a
renegotiation of the concept of intimacy."

Although Internet personals services have been around almost as long as the
Web, since the mid-90's, it is only now ? as the generation weaned on the
Net enters its prime dating years ? that the services have reached critical
mass.

At Match.com, the largest personals Web service, 1.6 million people had
posted ads as of April 2001. A year later, that figure has nearly doubled,
with people in their 20's s accounting for a disproportionate share of
growth, the company says.

Over the last two months, fully half of the new users of Match.com have been
under 30. Nerve.com's personals service, which caters to 20-somethings, has
175,000 subscribers and is growing by 15 percent a month, its owners say.

Yahoo, where first-quarter revenues jumped unexpectedly thanks to rapid
growth in its personals business, is aggressively pursuing people in their
20's.

"We're investing in that younger group," said Katie Mitic, the general
manager of Yahoo Personals. "They're driving tremendous growth in online
dating services."

The reason seems to be the fundamentally different ways that younger and
somewhat older Americans view personals. Where traditionally personals in
newspapers and magazines were seen as last-ditch attempts by the desperate,
Americans younger than 30 are using the online services more casually ?
simply to make friends or to date outside their established circles. Some
ambitious ? or just manic ? men and women play the services as if they were
video games or eBays-for-daters, where the goal is not so much acquiring the
goods as simply playing to win.

Winning is defined in many ways. "It could be just getting someone to write
back to you, to meet or to fall in love with you, or it could be getting
someone to go home with you on a particular night," Mr. Tjong said.

Where older Americans are likely to see perusing the personals as a solo ?
or downright lonely ? experience, people in their 20's are likely to make it
a social event, like going to the mall.

"We call it `man shopping,' " said Shelly Parnes, a 28-year-old publicist
from Queens, who recently placed her first ad. "We order sushi and sit there
ranking guys."

Michael Farah, a 24-year-old freelance writer from Brooklyn, said he posted
his ad on Nerve while discussing the single life with some friends.

"We all just decided to sign up right there and then," he said. "We weren't
desperate for social connections. I more or less just threw my profile out
there to see if anyone would respond."

Mr. Farah quickly learned the first rule of the online personals game:
"Without a picture, nothing happens," he said.

One of the things people realize when they post their ads is that a lot of
other people have posted ads, too. The problem quickly becomes finding a way
to shine through.

"It's the same as eBay," said Victoria Wasserman, a 28-year-old online
personals user from Manhattan. "If I look for a Pottery Barn quilt, by the
time I get to Page 11, they all blend together."

According to Mr. Griscom, many Nerve subscribers address the problem by
turning their ads into "constantly evolving marketing channels," regularly
tweaking their sites by updating photographs and changing text to refine
their pitches. Others simply create multiple ads.

"You could be a cocky guy in one and a humble, thoughtful guy in another,"
Mr. Tjong said. "You're hitting a much broader target audience. Getting
someone to write you back affirms your ability to market yourself. It's an
indicator that you're commercially viable."

It is in this need to stand out that online dating services find their
greatest business opportunity. Most personals services charge a weekly or
monthly subscription fee. For an additional $4.95, Yahoo lets users post
multiple pictures with their ads, and gives those ads prominent placement at
the top of those pageslong lists for 45 days. Nerve essentially allows
limitless spending by selling credits, which can be used like arcade tokens
on things like instant messaging sessions and "collect calls" ? essentially
e-mail messages ? to other members.

While older generations of adults often seem to cling to the notion of the
Net as a separate, foreign universe ("cyberspace"), the youngest adults,
those who grew up with e-mail and instant messaging as fixtures, seem to
think of the Internet as a seamlessly integrated component of their social
lives.

"If you ask people in their 30's, `Where do you meet people?' they'd say
`work, church, the laundromat,' " said Clay Shirky, who teaches a class on
networking at New York University's interactive technology program. "If you
ask a 25-year-old, they say `work, church, the laundromat, the Internet.' "

For Lucia Martinez, 19, a Florida State violin major who said she doesn't
have trouble getting dates offline, the Internet is "just a part of my
social life." "I see it as just another venue," said Ms. Martinez, who
arranged five dates through Nerve
.com for a visit this weekend to New York. Yet problems often arise at the
meeting phase. Personal profiles tend to represent the author's aspirations,
more than the reality, and people trying to sell themselves sometimes leave
out complicating details. Mr. Tjong said he once met a date who had gained a
significant amount of weight since posing for the photograph for her
profile. On another occasion, he was surprised to find out in person that
his date was a dwarf.

The rate for second dates, at least anecdotally, is extremely low.

Kathleen Haley, 26, a graduate student in comparative literature at Harvard,
has been on 34 dates in the last four months through Nerve personals, but
only three have resulted in second dates. One potential paramour flew to
Boston to see her from Arizona.

"It just didn't work out," Ms. Haley said. "It was a disappointment for both
of us."

Although Mr. Tjong says he went home with roughly a third of his first
dates, he only went out on second dates a fifth of the time.

Mr. Shirky of New York University calls the idea that mates are as
customizable as airline itineraries "the Pygmalion fantasy."

"If I describe my ideal mate, she'll appear from the mist,"' he said. "But
in fact, you're dealing with real people."

Like day traders in the boom years of the Nasdaq, who refused to stick very
long with a stock that didn't move, users of online personals can always
head back to a busy marketplace in search of the next winner.

The result is a kind of social churn. And like those online trading
companies a couple of years back that were vying madly to serve day traders,
online personals providers see their growth in courting these hyperdaters
ahead of the Warren Buffetts of romance who chose to buy and hold.

Match.com, which once billed itself as the place to find "the one" ? hence
the name ? is racing to implement instant messaging, a big draw for the
younger crowd, and is promoting itself as "a place that provides positive
social interaction in its own right," according to Tim Sullivan, the
company's chief executive.

Nerve.com, a company that gained wide attention in the dot-com days as an
online publisher of bohemian erotica, has spun off its personals business
into Spring Street Networks. With financial backing from Michael Fuchs, a
former chairman of HBO, and Louis Rossetto, a founder of Wired magazine,
Spring Street has hired a chief executive with Wall Street experience.

And the next wave of Internet entrepreneurs can't wait to get into the
business. Fully a fifth of Mr. Shirky's students designed online personals
sites for their midterm projects.

But the fate of those online stock trading businesses might give pause to
anyone thinking of getting into the online dating business.

Reality intervened to dampen the volatility of the stock market of the late
90's, Mr. Shirky said, and the same thing could happen in the dating world.
Somewhere around Date No. 70, for example, Mr. Tjong met someone he really
liked. He says he's now in love.

"In the end," Mr. Shirky said, "It could be that going on 70 dates is more
exhausting than interesting."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company