In late January, I proposed a Facebook meme to share a love song a day for February that contains Valentine’s Day. Here are the first seven songs of my list and some short commentary with each.
great
I’ve Boycotted Most Canadian TV Channels for Replacing Good American Ads
Here in Canada, for a lot of American sport events, the American commercials are replaced with terrible Canadian ones. This is true even on cable on the American channel itself, not just the simultaneous broadcast on the local network. In Nova Scotia, where I am located, the commercials are even sub Canadian standards. They’re so awful I will often skip watching a show or an event, or go out to a place where I can watch it without those commercials. Or I’ll get what I’m looking for from another source, like news from CBC NewsWorld or MSNBC instead of CNN that’s now proliferated with ghetto budget local business ads when I’m there to be thinking globally.
Do these Canadian ad buyers think they’re getting their money’s worth for those prime spots?
I know there are some rules about rights across the borders, and Canadian content rules and such, but that’s for the channels to worry about. The ad buyers don’t have to buy in to this, and without them, the channels don’t have commercials to run. The channels probably offer ad time with events like the Super Bowl as a bonus to a package rather than selling ad time during the event like it’s done in the US. Still, I would decline it if I were a Canadian ad buyer cause I don’t think people think of those spots fondly.
This comes to a point with the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is as well known for its ads as the game itself. Just observe the chatter the day after the Super Bowl. To watch the Super Bowl with local commercials is like to watch the Super Bowl with one real team and one team of local substitute players. I resent having to watch the Super Bowl with crappy Canadian commercials so much I watch the event on broadcasts with American commercials now, I have blocked the Canadian channels overriding American signals. That means CTV for this Super Bowl, and Global and ASN from previous other offences.
Now, those channels don’t even have a chance that I might surf by and catch something I like when channel surfing. I get local news from the CBC solely now, and you know what? I’m doing just fine without those other channels. I’m not even losing Canadian content, cause it’s not like they show much Canadian content anyway. Why bother with Canadian commercials on prime events, or even just for the Super Bowl, if resentment like this, with some people turning it into action, is what you get?
For events less prime than the Super Bowl, where I might put up with Canadian ads on overridden American shows, I take note of some of the advertising companies and occasionally put them on my “no buy” list. It’s not that I end up watching the commercials to do this. Usually, they annoy me enough from what I’m doing to distract me, and then it’s an easy choice. Eastlink was the first on my list.
I wonder if some of these companies ever imagined their advertising strategies to lead to this?
Oh, and here’s a great example why I go the extra distance for the Super Bowl with the real ads. 🙂
Post a Love Song a Day on Facebook – A Meme for February
Why?
Why, for love, of course!
But if that’s not a good enough reason, here are a few more reasons with real emotional, intellectual, social and psychological benefits, to you and all who can look at your Facebook Wall, unlike most other memes.
Haiku Facebook Status Idea and Challenge
I have a friend living in Japan who has only updated her Facebook status this year with that most famous of engaging Japanese poetry forms, the haiku. From her first haiku update this year, Sarah Jane Blenkhorn, originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, declared that she intended to keep this up all through 2011.
What a really neat idea! It’s something I can see being on CNN or other sites which posts neat Internet undertakings, especially after a decent body of work might have been done. I would say about 200 haiku status updates should be enough, or about half way through the year, to get the world watching the rest of the year.
I’m sharing this idea because aside from it being neat, I think it’d be a great challenge for those of you out there looking for interesting ways to liven your Facebook status updates. You don’t have to use haikus, although they are easily engaging, or do it for a year. Maybe just do some poetry for a certain time, like National Poetry Month in April. I’m considering that as I am writing. I have a lot of visitors who come to this site for the Facebook tagging memes I’ve created, as well as Facebook safety and advice. I hope some of you will take up this challenge. I think it should be a national movement in Japan!
In practicing good Facebook behaviour, Sarah Jane’s status updates are not publicly available. I have encouraged Sarah Jane to hook up her Facebook status updates to a micro-blog, much the way one can hook up Twitter feeds to WordPress micro-blogs, so the world can share in her entertaining and thoughtful Facebook status updates. Nothing has become of it so far, but she did give me permission to share what she has written so far.
Over 250 Cartoon Pictures for Facebook Profile Pics Campaign Against Child Abuse
Until December 6th, there is a global campaign on Facebook where people replace their profile pictures with their favourite cartoon character/s, then encourage their friends to do the same. Now this campaign I like! Too bad it’s way too short but it’s gone viral globally after just a day’s notice!
I’ve got over 250 cartoon pictures made for Facebook profile pics at the bottom, arranged in alphabetical order with names, which include some modern and some old cartoons.
Digital Citizen 