It has been a never ending winter here in New York. My winter blues have been longing for the chance to spend a single day outside, lounge in the park, lunch outdoors, check out street fair or two…or so I thought.

I woke up Saturday thrilled with how beautiful it was out there. On my way to the door, I couldn’t help but pause to check my Facebook. What if somebody had written on my wall? Or what if there was some new event I had to add to my online schedule? I reasoned it would be irresponsible not to check.

Whew. One Big Mistake…it sucked me in fast and frenzyish.

Checking the FB turned into a cascading whirlwind of distraction – a real trip into the ole rabbit hole. That quick glimpse, the one that wasn’t meant to cause more than a 5-minute delay tops, consumed my day. I didn’t mean for it to happen!

While checking my Funwall, I got distracted by a Juno plug advertised right there on Facebook. I needed to buy the movie that instant. “Honest to blog” (great Junoism), there wasn’t a singular moment to spare. To add that extra bit of incentive, the good folks at iTunes threw in the soundtrack to FOR GOSH DARN FREE. Service with a smile is overrated. I’ll take service with a click any day!

I promised myself I wouldn’t actually watch the movie. I also told myself I was going to go to the store instead of ordering from Fresh Direct. I lied to myself.

Once I started my viewing pleasure, I accepted couch potato status for the day. Then it happened-outside guilt: A friend called insisting we go to the Farmer’s Market or the park. I felt bad turning the offer down. I had a very real case of bad relaxation!

Apparently, this is the state of the world. The blog Stuff White People Like” depicts a similar scenario. One friend says, “Hey, lets go for a hike in the park,” so the other guy says, “Thanks but I’ve been working all week and I’m really excited about watching this game,” and then the first guy responds with, “Don’t be a lump on the couch, you’re wasting your life away,” etc. Supposedly, “If you ignore them, they eventually go away.” Or so we can only hope.

During the sofa stupor I started messaging with an old friend who now spends his days teaching and traveling some outside world. He was on the side of a mountain in Dubai and he was on AIM! Yes, AIM. Which begs the question, is there even such a thing as the outdoors anymore? Does it exist?

Shed the shame, people, remember we’re celebrating Outdoors 2.0. Everyone wants to stay home–it’s national agoraphobia! When people are outside, they are on their Crackberry, phone or connected anyway—glancing at something. Exhale now.

My name is Richard and I’m a WiFi guy. I admit it extends further than my MetroCard. There I said it! First step to solving, right?

Facebook. It’s a verb, it’s an adjective, it’s a voyeuristic bonafied stalking tool. I can’t get enough of it nowadays.

When I cannot fall sleep, instead of counting sheep or watching latenight reruns of poker shows, I travel to Facebookland. I visit profiles of friends, then friends of friends, then friends of friends of friends and so on. I look through photo albums and compare movie taste. Don’t judge, you do it too – admit you love it.

Yet while we revile in Facebook’s awesomeosity we must pause to note Emily Post never penned a screed on such netiquette. There are dos and don’ts and today we review them.

Friend Requests:

I have at least 14 pending friend requests. Testament to my aloof coolness? Well, duh. But a testament to other people spazzing out when they join. Listen, buddy, just because you’re friends with one of my friends doesn’t mean I want you posting on my wall.

Got it?

FB is a powerful networking tool and we cannot abuse it. And if anything, trying to network by creeping people out – yes, it’s a little creepy to get a friend request from someone you vaguely recall possibly meeting once in a meeting you forgot about long ago –is counter productive. So don’t do it.

Newsfeed:

Two keywords: privacy setting. Learn it, manage it, love it. Really, you’re not a fan of Grey’s Anatomy anymore? Suddenly over the reality craze? No longer a member of the Lactose Intolerant League? Great. But every time you add or subtract a group, preference, etc. your friends see it on their newsfeed. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad, but you better be the one making that decision.

“Think That’s Scary?” Check out this unbelievably real mini-doc about Facebook that explains what is truly going on while you type away… Yikes, right?

Relationship Status:

A friend of mine just separated from her husband. Understandably freaked out! Not so understandably, she RAN to Facebook and changed her status from “Married” to “It’s Complicated.” Did everyone need to know that right away? Was that good for her or her husband—with whom she obviously hasn’t worked it out? As her shocked brother-in-law wrote to me, “WTF?!!” Translate that to “Please be prudent and sensitive in the future.”

Newbies & Pros:

The pros are FB guinea piglets and I love them so. They went to High School and college when FB was first coming up. It’s as much a part of their lives as cable is for me. By now we’ve all heard the story about the job applicant who got turned down because of a randy pic from a frat kegger. You know why we’ve all heard it? It’s not apocryphal. People please, check yourself before you wreck yourself! What makes sense at 19 is wrong at 23 when you’re at your first job, friending everyone in your office, and have a humorless boss wondering why his newest hire was tagged in a photo last weekend making out with a dude in a monkey suit (or worse, a monkey sadly placed in a dude suit).

While the plight of the pros is well known, the saga of that amateur is hardly documented. These are the 30+ year olds who joined to stay relevant, to network professionally, or because they read about it in Parade. I’m not naming names (take that, Kazan!), but I heard about an entertainment bigwig who signed up to connect with his “perceived audience.” This media maven, who barely knows Web 2.0 from “Charlotte’s Web,” actually posted his home address and phone number in his profile. Facebook asked, so he answered… makes sense?

[Note: If you answered yes, please don’t join FB without first consulting with a non-snarky niece or nephew or read “Facebook for Dummies,” a very real and useful title.]

Meaning of the above: For two dramatically different reasons, both the pros and the amateurs are ignoring some common sense rules here.

Let’s sum up so you can click off and get back to you social networking mania: 1) get to know how the darn thing works, 2) learn your netiquette, 3) know all audiences, 4) think about yourself, and please, when in doubt, just repeat the mantra less is more 5) err on the side of privacy and ponder the future of whatever* is unerasable (everything*).

If you must, absolutely MUST join Facebook (really, we need to get our Scrabulous on) be your ingenious self and take your time, and if you aren’t able to figure it out, take your intern to lunch and make him do it for you!

I’d like to hear your experiences. Write on dude.

In “Exit Ghost,” Philip Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman informs a young writer: “No one reads anyone when you think about it.” It’s a good line but not true. Steve Jobs was a fool to emote how people have no patience for books. I get 100 letters a month from people taking something from what I write. People would read even more if publishers were even a tiny bit more forward-thinking.

In my book “Punk Marketing” one particular thought appears incessantly: don’t do what you’re doing because it’s the way it’s been done forever. Publishing industry needs that advice in an overt way.

Here’s my story:

I’m a writer - outside of my work running RLM PR, the aptly-named 19 year old public relations firm that I’m damn proud of. Anyway, in the new one titled “2011” there are 77 funny and non-methodical chapters where I pour my heart out about our own outlandish future. To witness the future is to rethink the past and learn something from it. That’s what I’m doing.

I am seriously down on the publishing world (even though I do like McGraw-Hill, I’m still down on it). It’s starting to make little sense why I would write something that while widely read could be given out in a “cleverer” format. Doing a book with a major corporation just starts to seem…odd, given the proclivities in which I do everything else now. With that far-reaching statement, and by means of explaining my thought process, here is why publishing, as the kids say, needs to man up and change itself quickly. Here are some questions I hope will make you go, “I see.”

1. Who’s in charge here? How can a 22-year-old editor bid on a book? What does a post-graduate $32,000-a-year fresh-out know what will hit with the public? Why does this frequently appear to be a case of the nuthouse leaving the inmates to decide! People in publishing (except those that are up top and doing well) are not really supervised, but there are tons a folks who say, “I have to make sure they are in charge of these decisions.” Adorable when they were six and playing with the Easy Bake Oven.

2. How do you expect people to pay 25 dollars for a book!? It’s ridiculous. Economics of publishing need to be studied. And no, “Do paperbacks” is not the answer because Amazon doesn’t feature them. I watch publishers skimp on what’s important—like Web destinations for books —and outsource a lot to India and cheap-labor countries. This is all in the name of corporate salvation. I guess.

3. The editing is done exactly how far in advance? If I write a book that is to come out in say December of 08– they have to have it in February. Why? ‘Cause they have a “schedule to follow,” but it would seem with digital technology you should be able to write right up to the deadline (like we do online).

4. Marketing is something that happens when? You probably know this but publishers basically print and cross their fingers–unless your name is Grisham, King, or Winfrey. But to market them is the REAL waste of money… their fans will find their books like a stampede. It’s obvious that publishers publish way too many books, and have no faith in anything. They just hope something will stick. It’s all teflon!

5. You give nothing away? Every now and then a maker of books announces “Here’s a chapter” gratis, or introduces a limited time free download for online consumption … The limited part is what makes people go “how old-fashioned.” GIVE IT AWAY NOW. (And if I were allowed, you’d get free chapters all the time, but alas I’m not!) My advice is to force those boatloads of readers who may not even know they are readers to think, “That’s something I got to get.” Witness the music business’s sudden realization that yeah they can’t hold onto content anymore. Labels will try anything to get folks hooked on an artist they’re trying to break, but except for some random (House) gimmicks like announcing to the media that last week something was available for free and lookie lookie, we tried something “cool,” book people are afraid to let anything digitized get out there and fight the concept tooth plus nail.

6. Bookstore chains are difficult corporations? Let’s be real. Borders, Amazon, Barnes & Noble are just as scared about the economy as publishers are. So I say work with the little stores just as hard as you used to with the biggies. Every little venue needs handholding and we authors will help get the word out, but everyone in pub is so afraid to say anything that might be construed as “insulting.” At Harper-Collins I wanted to offer free marketing advice to stores who bought, “Punk Marketing.” And as a marketer I’m pretty damn expensive. Some consultant there said, “We can’t do that—someone will think it’s demeaning.” What? Grow up. No one cares about being insulted—they care about getting something for free. See 5.

7. Why is everyone so afraid to make waves? Isn’t that the only way to rise above the noise! Retail seems to be dying—and yet the stores scare publishers in ways that shake my head involuntarily. I’ve done books with most of the big publishers, and no one ever said to Barnes & Noble: “We want placement, what’s it going to take to get it? This book is important!” I know that BN is LOOKING for ballishness. They want publishers to get behind authors. Especially those who can promote themselves with some help. Honestly, those big corporate publishing behemoths have power, but don’t use it. Gosh. As my 9th grade teacher once told me: “Prove you are the one who can take the ball and run with it.” Publishers need to take live ones - authors with big mouths - and make them stand out as new discoveries BEFORE they are already discovered.

8. You won’t publish me even if I’m the next Tolstoy unless I have a platform of my own? Yeah I get it. I’m all about the podcasts, the blogs, the articles, the mini-tours, the loud hawking, what is dubbed “relentless” push for my product…. In 2002 I got myself booked with the then-adorable Katie Couric on Today Show for “trendSpotting” and I told the people at Penguin-Putnam who thought I was kidding (”Well, let’s see”) —and when I was scheduled they didn’t bother to alert sales force, stores, or anyone. So 20 million watched me cavorting with that perky thing, and a dozen books were in stores. Publishers don’t know how to sell, that’s the fact. They wait. Very Darwinian. If something takes off THEN they start pumping out the marketing.

9. What about the number of books? Publishers will have to “break” artists like the music biz does and don’t just publish whatever sounds good … Save your money and invest in a few key artists. A final thought here: Since so many people (not me, I say with my arms folded) write books so they can buy thousands to give to prospects or customers, let’s not allow them into mainstream channels any longer. You guys stick with the professional writers.

10. The agents are working for exactly whom? Lit agents I’ve met, with few exceptions, though none I can think of as I type, are beyond frightened of pissing off the editors, so they won’t fight like Hollywood agents will for the clients. They say things like, “Well yes, it’s cheap money, kiddo, but think of it as an annuity.” Or, “I wish I could do more but they’ll never budge” or this one (breathe deeply, Richard): “You’re lucky to get it.” The lawyer I use in La La Land would teach those foohs mottos like: “We’ll cut them off at the knees—since gees they act like they deserve less of one.”

11. What’s with all the titles? Who’s the editor, who’s the president, who’s the publisher, who’s the director …? And who’s the marketing director of strategic planning? The world’ most successful businesses don’t sit around having meetings all day - Google? - and golly, turf wars are so 90’s! Publishing geeks seem so afraid to step on one another’s toes. “Let’s have a meeting to see how X feels about it.” Garrrrrh! All that endless chitchats around oak tables. I say let’s fan out, make trouble, be disruptive, start our own religion … anything,. Plan less — do more. Rise up. Be aggressive. As Fred Trump once said, “No one gets any work done in the office.”

12. Small publishers? Nah, don’t think so. I found they were just as cheap-headed as their older brother, and only provided support when the author paid his own way. Seems like the small publisher is a misnomer–like indie film. Neither exists except as marketing gimmick. In the long run, small comes knocking with finger-in-air offers like the Midwest publisher who nervily said “Here’s five grand” advance for a book about the porn industry’s history of influencing business decisions thru history… (Where’s Judith Regan when I need her!!!)

13. Finally, and for the good of the readers, shouldn’t everything be made available online? We’re inundated with material to read online and that takes our attention. Having a book in hand – even on the excellent Kindle, which is really fun—isn’t the most efficient way to digest someone’s work. Like when I read a book offline and want to share a passage with a friend, I have to type it out, yeah! That’s almost as frustrating as not being able to send my DVR moments to pals who absolutely need to see that sucky ad I witnessed.
Whatever comes of publishing—chapters online via micropayments, baby—I can look backwards and remember with glee when my first representation, “Native’s Guide to New York.” came out 19 years ago and that arrogant publisher sat me down and said to his staff of onlookers: “Let’s hire a PR person and get this crazed nonstop talker into as many outlets as we can get him to do before he’s worn-out!”

Those were the days, my friend, hoped they’d never end. They did. I want them back.

[Stay around Laermer.com for the second part of this 3-part essay titled, “Whither Product?”]

Some things you see in the news make you go “Oh please.” Let’s get into it:

After years of Hangin’ Tough, watching the varying worlds of pop culture pass them by, the New Kids on the Block are gearing up for a comeback, returning to their old stomping grounds, which I suppose is… the Block. (Does J. Lo owe them a licensing fee?)

NKOTB deserves credit for appearing on Today Show to announce their reunion. I found myself thinking about the late 80s. I saw the huge crowd, screaming girls, even some crying fans, all I imagine hired by the NK’s desperate chieftains. But you got to hand it to them—they did it right.

Young Gen-Xers and old Yers are ready to re-embrace the Kids Who Have Been Around the Block Quite a Few Times (now KWHBATBQAFT). Road to retro has not been easy. They were has beens for more than a minute and had to endure embarrassing solo careers, some attempts at serious acting, and no doubt at least one abortive stab as a real estate agent. Which leads me to think we can blame the subprime mess for this too!

The actor of the group, ole Donnie Wahlberg has been on the rise since the group disbanded in ‘94. He toured with little bro Marky and that nutty Funky Bunch, and by 1996 he was already on the big screen. He really worked for it! “I didn’t have big movie offers, or any big agents wanting to work with me,” he said. “I had to go grassroots, start at the bottom and go on 150 auditions before someone finally gave me a shot.” From The Sixth Sense to NBC’s brilliant but cancelled Boomtown, to a lead in HBO’s Emmy-winning Band of Brothers, Donnie managed to stay employed and relevant. He even has two projects in post-production in 2008. He’s smart, he’s building momentum and putting himself out there.

Others not so much. Danny Wood, aka, the one everyone forgot about, blogged to his fans, “I want to start off by saying I am so thankful and feel blessed to have this opportunity again.” Followed by”I feel like I have won the lottery twice.” Well, dude, you totally have.

He totally went one step too far then. “We finally have the chance to give all you guys what you have always deserved.” Didn’t you guys do that when you broke up in 1994?

The Backstreet Boys are what-happened-tos, too, but they’re only about six years removed from their peak. The Spice Girls? Check cashed. Between the two they’ve logged three comebacks, but the nicest way to put it is that one fizzled while two failed. As 70s nights fade, 80s nights are ruling, while 90s nights are still too fresh in our memories. To that, NKOTB provide an interesting lesson in nostalgia. There is value in carefully resurrecting old brands with a retro-cool feel that can draw from the well of pop culture’s goodwill.

Take Boones Farm Wine. No longer such a joke, right? What used to be down-market even by Kwiki Mart standards has T-shirts selling with the moniker at Saks; a fan site populated with photos of hipsters hitting the retro sauce (at boonesfarm.net), and more than a few celebrity endorsements by way of the groovier-than-thou tabloids.

Marketers have used old logos, promos, and slogans to reestablish emotional connections between brands and consumers for a while now. The smart ones, however, know the limits of this particular tactic. These must be short-lived, meant to give a jolt to a brand, not take the place of a genuine branding/rebranding effort. With that, you will note how McDonald’s may dust off old commercials every so often—but you will never see them completely going backward.

And that, my friends, is why this is the end for the Kids—quicker than you can say “blow your mind.” A quick splash of nostalgia-fueled fun, a couple of kitchsy (and well-covered) concerts, maybe even a new single grafted to a rerelease of a greatest hits collection…but that, folks, is it. Six months from now, it’s time to dust off the real estate licenses and go back to work.

As Linda Richmond might mutter: New Kids on the Block! Not new! Not kids! Discuss!

The Masters golf tournament opened Thursday. It is, in some ways, like Passover. It falls sometime in April, matters a great deal to a small segment of the population, and everyone else kind of looks up and thinks, “Oh, right, it’s probably time to take off the snow tires.”

But in recent years The Masters has been a somewhat bigger blip on America’s socio-cultural calendar, and for one reason: 11 Aprils ago, a man of mixed race months out of college went out there to take on the world’s best golfers (on a course, it should be noted, that for decades hadn’t allowed black members) and coolly destroyed them. Destroyed. Them. And ever since Tiger Woods put up the biggest winning margin at one of golf’s majors in over a century on its grandest stage, the tournament and the game have never been the same. The history from there is known. Tiger became the face of the sport and its best player. There were Nike ad campaigns, higher television ratings, swarming hordes in the galleries, etc. Blah blah-de-blah.

History and greatness and underdogs-cum-superstars attract eyes.

That’s old news, and has been the case in entertainment, sports, politics, and culture for the better part of forever. In everything there’s a pecking order. Bill Clinton will always draw a bigger crowd and a higher fee than Jimmy Carter. Meanwhile, that French lady who won the Best Actress Oscar this year will be forgotten by six months after THIS year’s telecast; Lindsay Lohan, with zero awards to her name, is roughly 20,000 times more famous. Just the way it is. And we like it that way.

But what’s interesting this particular week is not The Cult of the Superstar. It’s The Cult of the Narrative. It’s often said that we build up our heroes only to tear them down. And to justify the claim we hold up to the examples of Britney Spears and Eliot Spitzer and all the rest. But I think it’s only part of the story. It isn’t the downfall we crave - it’s the Grand Story. We are a culture of Fabulists and Fictionalists and Dreamers and Absolutists. Our mediasphere behaves accordingly. Sure, sometimes the Grand Story is a bit more tangled and harder to pinpoint (what is it, for instance, we eventually want Hillary to represent in the end, win or lose?), but most of the time we get a handle on it early and fit the facts to it.

Tiger Woods has failed to win four of the past five Masters tournaments. This, of course, does nothing to diminish his deserved status as the world’s best at what he does. But his superstar status doesn’t alone quite explain why 90% of the coverage and attention is devoted to him again this year. Yes, we get it, he has an exponentially better chance to win than any other single golfer, but somehow Las Vegas puts him “only” at about even odds to take the thing. Surely there must be some worthy stories out there among the dozens and dozens in the field?

In 2007, an unknown named Zach Johnson came from nowhere to win the thing. Catnip for a country that loves an underdog, right? Well, 12 months later, I think even Zach Johnson’s family is probably more interested in The Grand Tiger Narrative than they are in young Zach’s chances to repeat. And it’s because we like big, shiny, lasting arcs that we can take with us from one season to the next.

We like the Narrative. We like curling up and having ESPN (or Access Hollywood, MSNBC, you choose) filter out all those annoying subplots and details, the Zach Johnsons and the Marion Cotillards.

It’s the Narrative that is at work this weekend in Augusta, not the Known Superstar. And there aren’t many nuanced alternatives. Downfall is one, like what we’ve chosen for Britney. Glory is another, and it is Tiger’s at our behest. Some we build to tear down. But some we build to keep building and building and building.

Today’s the day that “2011: Trendspotting” is officially released.

So… What’s it all about?

Start with a clear head and a sense that everything that’s happened in the last couple of years is about to fall away, whether you want to pick at the dead skin or not. Then take an overarching peek at what’s ahead—while knowing that the conventional wisdom is totally wrong. After that, you laugh a lot at everything you’ve livedthrough—and some of us even have to take a gander at those horrible haircuts of the 1970s to remind ourselves that mistakes are meant to be remembered, chuckled at, then forgotten forever.

For the cherry, you dust yourself off and start anew, usingthe tools you have learned from everyone you listen to andbelieve in. If those people are saying anything resembling thetruth, you are in good shape.

So it is: an exploration of trends that will affect our lives and a sense of what we have to overcome just beforewe leap into the new about-to-be-filled space. Or, as Woody Allen once said: “A kind of void, you know, an empty one.”

And now the news: I don’t want to predict a thing—notreally. Regardless of what the soothsayers you read have beensaying (and think about it: a book? Are you kidding? How old- world, anyway?), prediction of even the simplest events is extremely difficult and at best a finger in the air.

What am I going to do, predict new types of cities and worldviews and sex and networking and the dance between workers and employers, yada yada?

Or, particularly, forecast how we all change constantly? Then there’re the topics I have chosen: notorious people and famous places, social movements, ecologica lideals, communication issues, artistic thoughts, sex forthe ages, science, and all that outlandish tech.

Predicting all that is just impossible. What I’ll do, rather, is explain and forecast a range of possible futures for the subject, which is what will begin happening around the year 2011 and beyond—create a map, rather than aspecific one-dimensional destination!

Most books build credibility by employing a tone of absolute authority and driving away any shadow of uncertainty. When I am working in fields where one can make credible projections or where there are accepted techniques for long-term forecasts, I will speak with confidence and say you can’t stop this. But a kind of majestic confidence is false—fake, actually. (See the chapter “Self Something or Other,” on artificial confidence.)

On the contrary, it is imperative that I admitonce and for all that looking into the future is an uncertain business—except for certain people who read magic eight balls with uncanny ability.

Here I explain to you - already doubting you - why this is so and why it can be a cause for anxious hope. Am I a futurist? I guess so. Since the publication of my first trends book, “TrendSpotting,” in 2002, I’ve been told I am—by the major andminor media, and by a host of influentials.

But I don’t believe in clichés and run from them with my legs flailing! The book did a good job of looking ahead for you (and me). A book teaching folks how to look ahead for business calls for intelligent, grounded speculation, and of course professional expertise was the call of that day. I am not really as much futuristic as I am a show-off: I want you to use this stuff thatI’ve gathered and realized to chart possibilities.

Here is what we will talk about in these pages. Will this book tell you about the future? More than anything,it’s loaded with topics: ideas to spur you on, move you in certain directions, and inspire you to look ahead.

* We all will work while we’re sleeping. Gosh, are all thesenew products going to be, ahem, utilized in hours when we’re supposedly adrift in our dreams? So no more wasted hours for us suckers!

* Self-involvement evolves into an art form. What used to be gross and looked down upon—self-aggrandizement— becomes in no uncertain terms beloved and coveted. Everyone wants to be like David Geffen.

* Slow attention span takes precedence. ADD peaks.We begin to take a backseat to speed, and the sudden craze is, “Why rush? We have all the time in the world.” Some businessesare born; others are down!

* Customer service finally becomes law. That’s enough ofbeing put on hold. After years of thinking silently, a newmovement is afoot: it’s an adhered-to policy to take care of the paying folk!

* Look forward to “turn of the decade syndrome,” where we reboot our lives. Come January 2011, the actual start of a new decade (and not a moment too soon, y’all) is upon us. Everyone prepares madly—just like Y2K, but positively—and uses it to make the one change to themselves that they’ve been desperate to achieve. So quit, start, redo—or forgive. It all happens on that very day!

* There’s a movement to stay at home that occurs because— there’s no real explanation, so why fake it? Our friends are more relaxed and friendly there.

You’ll notice in the book that each chapter is short, seriously so. That’s what you want, and belaboring 70 or 90 topics seemed really dull and unnecessary.

Take a look at it.

The future of the future is a huge idea. It scares the crap outof me. The only way to make a book out of it (except that I had a contract, dude) was to give as much knowledge as my braincould muster, and try to leave out nonsense that I found fascinating when I honestly knew that it was only me who got what it was—or cared.

Thanks for joining.

Got an e-mail from a friend earlier today, pointing me to a curious little glitch on Thesaurus.com.

Seems if you type in “weaker,” you get two batches of synonyms: one grouped around the word “female,” one grouped around “lady.” Get it?

Yeah, not funny.

But sometimes the bar is set awfully low with these memes, and while the Roget’s hack was but a misogynistic ripple in the vast ocean of Internet phenomena on Tuesday alone, it proved “Hey, have you seen this?” enough to be linked by a major women’s media blog, Digged here and there, cross-blogged, and otherwise entered into the digital echo chamber by afternoon’s end.

And, of course, we’ve seen this type of thing before. Hackers get into a big, honking search engine or reference site and plant some seeds of mischief. Perhaps most infamously, for a long while hitting Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button when searching for “miserable failure” brought up the Web page for the White House. Google bombs and link pranks are just a fact of life on these here InterWebs. They go with the territory. Sometimes amusing. Sometimes harmless. Sometimes distasteful. But while people chuckle and pass along the prank, they’re unlikely to believe that there’s anything at all credible about the joke.

(All real-life correlations between the current Presidency and failure notwithstanding.)

But . . . maybe we should start caring. Just a little. Not that people will actually believe that “female” is synonymous with “weaker” because Roget’s site says so. But because it signals a basic problem with the Net as we burn the last public libraries to the ground

and move all information online: How wiki will we be? Not just in terms of deliberate open source, but also our toleration of breached closed sources? It stands to reason that one day there will be regulation of the Web unimaginable in its current wild west-frontier

incarnation. The hackers will always be a step ahead, though, or at least always capable of being steps ahead. And if not outright hackers, than those meddlers who trick the search algorithms. It’s obvious that we can tolerate one or two Google bombs, one or two jokey thesaurus entries, a handful of graffitied corporate sites. But where do we draw the line? When do we start seeing them not as flies in the ointment, but as toxins poisoning the entire information pool? When the blatant misogyny of a joke Roget’s entry gives way to more subtle, less noticeable, and more assimilated prejudices on “educational” portals? When MSNBC.com is compromised once a month? Once a week?  Every day?

It’s a nightmare/worst case scenario, of course. The good and correct will always outweigh the bad and circumspect, at least with regards to ahem “trusted sources.” And there will always be watchdogs. And, just as the fun of a harmless prank like today’s is made possible by rapid response, so too is the Internet largely protected by the wisdom of fast seeing, fast-acting masses.

But as we put more and more faith into systems over which we have less and less oversight, some weird gamesmanship is in the offing. Ten years ago, if you cracked open the hardback Thesaurus and saw some lines crossed out and replaced with a joke, there was no disguising the act.

Today, as you use that hardback as a mouse pad and click around for answers online, the line between fact and fiction is still rarely crossed and mostly obvious. But ten years from now, when no one’s heard of a hardback and we stare through our Inter-goggles into a layered, niched-out-the-wazoo information landscape with infinite opportunities for sabotage, how will we ever know for sure? How?

If you live in New York and have left your home since the middle of March - a safe bet unless your governorship ended then - you’ve seen messages everywhere. Harsh little missives scribbled in black on a white background. On bus stops and taxis, billboards and buildings. They’re everywhere. And they’ve blanketed Los Angeles and Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco, too. The petty taunts of a scorned lover.

“My Mother Always Hated You, Sarah Marshall.”

“You Do Look Fat in Those Jeans, Sarah Marshall.”

“I’m SO Over you, Sarah Marshall.”

“Wow!,” you think. “Someone really pissed off her boyfriend and, hoo boy, he is NOT shy about airing their dirty laundry! The claws have come out!! Also: he must have remarkable reserves of disposable income and a great deal of free time. Hey, wait . . . I have disposable income! Just about eleven dollars and fifty cents. I wonder if there’s an easy way to spend it, quickly and mechanically . . .”

Of course, that isn’t what happens. Among the sentient, or at least among those young, gorgeously media savvy who got wise when they got born, “mysterious messages” mean only one thing: a bit of viral marketing. I’ve seen cryptic things plastered on bus stops and subway stations. They don’t carry trademarks or even directions to a Web presence.

“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is the latest movie to emerge from the Judd Apatow comedy industrial complex. To build buzz, Universal hit major cities with the signs. The goal: get people to ask, “Who is this freaky Sarah Marshall?” Read her official bio on http://www.sarahmarshallfan.com/. And then, presumably, to ask: “When will my local multiplex answer this question, as it has so many others for me?”

I’m going to see it, yeah. You know why? Because it’s Judd Apatow and I get his style. Also because most of the people I know will see it (again, ONLY because it’s Judd Apatow - not because it stars the dude from “How I Met My Mom” who strangely is NAMED Marshall on that show…). Anyway, you know that we all tend to see movies that other people see. I, like you, can predict the “Marshall” plot with 85% accuracy from the 2-minute trailer. I can also probably predict with 85% accuracy how much I’m going to enjoy it. There’s very little about the movie that can be described as intriguing. It’s a romantic comedy. There will be dirty jokes. It’ll be kind of like Knocked Up and Superbad, and then we’ll all wait for the next one and wonder what new “taboo” will be discussed (bro-mantic love? pregnancy between a beauty and a beast?).

Anyone who plops down in the stadium-style seating on Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s opening night does so after seeing “wacky, cutting-edge” buzz scheme and shrugged “Oh.” Its core audience is too “alternative marketing”-bombarded to pull double takes at a major motion picture studio’s carpet bombing of focus grouped ad copy, no matter where that copy shows up. And the people who see the movie on its second weekend do so merely because their friends’ kids said it was a riot.

And oh yeah if you go to SarahMarshall.com, you see an allegedly “self-made” Web page with YOU ARE THE 17280th PERSON TO HATE SARAH MARSHALL. We’re naive to believe it…. But at least it isn’t smacking us over the head like so much bad advertising.

We all know the saying keep your friends close and your enemies closer. For celebrities and the press, it’s more cardinal law than old saw. There ain’t much choice.

But in the TMZ Era – which makes the US Weekly Era years back seem like a Norman Rockwell portrait of tranquility –savvy celebs are more creative in how they manage that schizoid relationship.

Today’s lesson, girls and boys and trannies, is the fake wedding.

George Clooney ambled by Today Show yesterday to promote his new movie, the one about leather. While talking shop with Meredith V, Clooney admitted gloriously loving all of the false rumors and media fodder. His favorite rumor? False one about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were slated to marry at his house a couple of years ago.

In order to really bring the story to life, Clooney ordered tables and chairs to be placed in his backyard. Oh, that guy! The paparassholes, along with the rest of the world except me, waited with baited breath to catch a glimpse, even a peak at the couple. The wedding never happened but the story sure did.

Just this past week nearly every tabloid EVER and those in the seemingly bored bloggy-sphere tattled about Brangelina having tied the knot in New Orleans. According to Star’s site, “Sources in a position to have information regarding a secret wedding ceremony between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had confirmed to Star that the couple married in the French Quarter Wedding Chapel on Saturday, March 29.”

Pitt’s publicist played on the rumors claiming she had “no idea” as to whether or not the story was actually true. Hmmmm, likely. Of course, Star along with every other weekly, gossip show and online mag had to retract the story. Double the coverage! (Let me put this into context, those sites got more hits from this story than Amy Winehouse from a crack pipe. That’s a lotta hits.) Another wedding is set to launch, rather is scheduled for TODAY, and this time it’s Jay-Z and

Beyonce—both of whom have launches currently occurring that need heat behind ‘em. Perez Hilton suspects they chose April 4^th because they are both born on the fourth day of their respective months – put it together, you get 4/4. I know…sham or leaked plan or just way too much thought for two future Trivial Pursuit answers…we shall need to wait and see. And finally, while A-listers like Brangelina and Jay-B lead the pack, the rest of Hollywood isn’t too far behind. Heard of a promise ring? Young Hollywood is so crazy for these. They are tokens of love to put Eliot Spitzer’s hooker-tab to shame. Celebrities wave to the paps, new bling ablaze and gee is it an engagement or a marriage or a baby or whah? Everyone wins here. We’re entertained, they’re famous and the media makes money. It’s fun, right. And ridiculous. What more can America in its Mediocre Period want?

Captain Planet, he’s our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero
 
He’s our powers magnified
And he’s fighting on the planet’s side
 
Gonna help him put asunder
Bad guys who like to loot and plunder
 
Remember him?  He was a super hero, who, along with a posse of kids, aimed to save the environment.  CP is still around — he goes by a different alias and that is Al Gore.  And his posse of kids? They have grown up to become the Green Collar workers – out to save the world and maybe even the economy.
 
(I had a neighbor that got arrested for being a green collar worker in the 90s – different kind of green though…. More on that another time.)
 
Before the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” the concept of global warming was still up for debate.  Science was clear, but yet doubters persisted.  Dubya didn’t believe in the issue.  In his circle it was a cause for the liberals, the hippies, and the liberal hippy media.  Nothing serious.  Remember The Kyoto Protocol?  Don’t feel bad, neither do they.
 
But when that movie rose up, things changed.  Everyone seemed to take notice, and what environmentalists and scientists had been saying for years became almost overnight the new conventional wisdom.  Gore wasn’t that boring suit who awkwardly smooched Tipper, he was – yep - Captain Planet, the voice that moved the world.
 
The film itself made around 25 million domestically.  Great for a documentary, but that many Americans saw it.  The publicity more than the movie itself changed the zeitgeist so dramatically that even Bush didn’t have a choice and soon he had to cop that global warming was pretty real.
 
Just like Styrofoam, that publicity for Gore’s movement isn’t going anywhere – it’s spreading everywhere.  Now everyone wants the green seal of approval, and what’s fascinating to trend watchers is that, like the film, it’s the PR that’s leading the change.  When a company says it’s easy for it to be green, it takes increasingly large steps to be green.  Actions are now catching up with the branding.
 
Time Warner Cable tells customers “Going green is simple when your bills are paperless.” GE even launched Ecomagination campaign years ago to promote, among other things, how it works with wind turbines. Now even that monolith is doing more to maintain the momentum and integrity of those earlier promotional promises.  From NBC Universal’s Green Week – hardy har har – to the new Ecomagination.com site, GE’s own slogans are motivating behavior.
 
Frito-Lay and PepsiCo are flexing green in a funny way too: The product SunChips is about to transition into a “green brand” by transforming one of the seven plants that manufactures the chips into a “sun” or solar powered operation.  Their brand always seemed (a/k/a were branded as) earth friendly, now their policies are following suit.
 
The economy?  Well, stupid, who is making all of these changes?  In the wake of economic recession, the Prez candidates are talking about the promise of a “green collar” workforce. Urban groups are watching this as a way out of poverty, corporations see it as a the path to environmental favor (and a little bit of street cred) and environmentalists see it as the path to a better tomorrow!  Everyone is happy.  Thanks Captain!
 
The negative side to the environmental craze? Let’s quote Lewis Black: “President Bush said that he now believes there’s global warming.  As a result, I’m not sure anymore.”