[nonostantement #139] - things about the city / esports & gambling / algorithms & war crimes
NOW with MORE Berlin "ostalgie"!
Welcome to nonostantement:
a weekly newsletter with law-abiding, treacherous and quirky stuff found all over the Internet.
Hi everybody, my name is Joele Lucherini, Digital Strategist in Barcelona. Designing and managing online branding and advertising strategies it’s my job but today we are here to take a look at the most interesting links I have found during last week.
I have two links for you as a soundtrack for this newsletter - the first one being one of my favourite tracks from De La Soul - I Be Blowin’, and the second one being a guitar cover of Flim, by Aphex Twin. Let me know what you think of them, just replying to this same email.
Don’t forget that if you like this newsletter you can now offer me a virtual coffee to show your support :)
A bar in Paris
#FASHION
“Today, the fashion industry pumps out these styles at mass quantities and luxury prices, and the internet shines its devouring light on every shadowed nook and cranny of cultural production. It is now absolutely rare to see a fashion collection in which the designer does not, explicitly or otherwise, cite a subcultural community as a reference point.” – Are Subcultures Still Possible, in the age of algorithm?
Can a definite article become a registered trademark? Well, Marc Jacobs is Trying to Register “THE” as a Trademark.
#PHOTOGRAPHY
#PEOPLE
Having spent the last few months without traveling – in the center of Barcelona, a city emptied of many of its meanings, fun and interesting moments – I think it is important every now and then to read stuff like “128 things about the city” to remind me why I chose cities in first place.
I still have many clients in Italy, my home country, and in recent months there has been an avalanche of projects related to e-commerce and pay per click. In a very short time, Italians have thrown themselves into online shopping, raising the bar of how this business works there. How Amazon Conquered Italy in the Pandemic? Pasta, Wine and Inflatable Pools.
#THEDARKSIDE
Mix an enormous, very young, audience (78 million monthly players on Fortnite, over 100 million viewers for the League of Legends World Championship) with big bookmakers offering bets on esports tournaments… what could go wrong? Esports could be quietly spawning a whole new generation of problem gamblers.
One of the big problems with regulating social media platforms, and with internet freedom in general, is that when you put something in place that fixes one flaw, you're often creating another. So, algorithms designed to scrub terrorist propaganda are destroying evidence of war crimes and are making it harder to convict the culprits.
What if we link our online actions to a certain level of - perhaps exaggerated - legal responsibility? A US man is facing up to two years in jail in Thailand after posting negative reviews of a hotel he stayed in.
That's it for now.
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