CROWDCTRL

Ok, so we watch tv, alright?! Can’t beat the unwind. At the moment I’m watching a soapy teenage angsty drama-queen rendition of Nada Surf’s 1996 “Popular” called One Tree Hill on the WB. It’s an episode from earlier in the season, recorded as a rerun over the Thanksgiving break that I’m just now getting around to seeing.

Taped on VHS? Of course not. By this time it’s just inferred that I’ve TiVo’d it with a season pass and am surfin the recorded shows bin. DVRs, baby, and they are more addictive than crackberries or ipods or the OC itself.

But wait. Here we go. Addictive products. Corporate drugs. Dealt out of crackhouses disguised as malls and the dark shady alleys of this internets.

The Blackberry is so addictive it’s dubbed the “crackberry”. Little white earbuds (check out the ads bought on those keywords) are on every bus and street corner in America. Shows like the OC or CSI and even Dora reel you in like a floppy bass, throw you in an icy cooler and next thing you know you’re on season 6 and you’ve spent several hundred dollars on your dvr and dvd collection.

They’re killer apps, killer shows, and killer products. Every company is trying to find that secret sauce to get you and all your friends drugged and circle-eyed like hypnotized zombies.

What makes them killer? What gets them into our veins? Here’s what I’m thinking.

It’s the whole idea behind Crowd Control, and it’s one of the purposes of this blog to find out what that is and identify who’s doing it right and what they’re doing.

I’ll likely write whole articles about TiVo, Blackberry, iPods and the other products I’ve mentioned here. A unifying element? They all connect with their viewers and users and the public as a whole. They make us feel cool (maybe cooler than we really are - or as cool as we want to be), and they are basically enablers - serving whatever we want just how and when we want it.

Most of all, they just make us feel good—which is what it’s all about, isn’t it?