chrisroper.co.za » Dailies

Nonhle vs DJ Fresh

Chris — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:52:24 +0000

Nonhle Thema is famous for tweeting outrageous things at suspiciously early hours of the morning. Here are a few highlights to make you chuckle, but what I really wanted to show was the first section below. It perfectly encapsulates the difference between DJ Fresh, a celebrity who is cool and clever and philosophically evolved, and Nonhle who is a tweeting genius, but who has a very different relationship with her audience. Whereas Fresh tries to educate, and make South Africa a better place, Nonhle is all about pandering to her audience’s worst attributes.

So when DJ Fresh got a tweet that said (I paraphrase unfortunately, because I’ve lost the actual tweet) “I love you Fresh! I’m male, but don’t worry, I’m not homo”, his response was something along these lines: “Thanks. And whether you’re homosexual or not wouldn’t actually matter.”

When Nonhle gets this tweet from a woman: “No homo but Ur so sexy & beautiful,love you a lot,your a true Insipiration of beauty”, her response is simply “Thank u”. Okay, so it’s not the job of a celebrity to try and correct their fans, I guess. So we’re not judging Nonhle here for her lapse. I AM judging DJ Fresh though, and he comes out of it as a shining example of how celebrities can be a force for good, not just moneymaking monsters.

Some other Nonhle tweets, alas, don’t show her in a particularly good light when it comes to treading sensitively around gender politics..

Here are some tweets I used yesterday in a column called “Jesus, Smurfs and Nonhle Thema“.

The Tweetings of Nonhle
- Guyz that keep hating on me. As a GIRL need a DICK up their asses Full stop…faggots……

- Im your JESUS…just Deal with it..and keep it moving…ha ha ha IM TOOOO POWERFUL

- Do u know your dad since your mother was a HOE. And was also rapped ha ha ha

- Im sure youre sooo ugly cos your mom tried to abort your fucked up ass….but gaddd damm u alive but UGLY and DIRTY as as shit

- Im sure SEAN PAGEs mother was rapped when she made his UGLY DUMB Ass…nigga looks like a RAPED rapper

- Aaawwwwww a NIGHT SHIFT thats how nigga was made…ha ha ha thst why he will neva marry. Cos his dick was also sucked by his mother

- Nice RT @Attenuater: @NonhleThema am your servant and you are my jesus! I worship your holy name my Smurfette! *bows*

- Ha ha boo Never i even lick my own ass i LoVE me RT @Sibunzi: @NonhleThema you keep on saying the same shit don’t u get bored of urself?

- How cool im dead….Thank u RT @TerisaJ: @NonhleThema one of the beatles claimed they were more famous than God! … http://m.tmi.me/lgPch

- Im making it rain NOW…im your GOD soo sit back and watch me do my magic….

- I make rappers angry an curse me out for PR LOL im the ish RT @MrPink47: @NonhleThema jesus performed miracles,so what can u do ???

All very amusing, but a decided contrast to the approach of DJ Fresh. (Oh, and if you have your own favourite Nonhle tweet, please put it on the comments section).

Visit Nonhle’s website.

Zombie flash mob vid

Chris — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:10:28 +0000

Filmed a random Zombie flash mob on rollerblades, in Madrid on Halloween 2011.

Congrats! You’re my 1 trillionth visitor!

Chris — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:36:21 +0000

A momentous occasion in the history of the interwebs. All over the world, websites have simultaneously hit 1 million visitors! For about 20 years we’ve been looking at this ad:

Suddenly, at exactly 12 midnight geek time last night, all ads switched over to this:

Wow. I didn’t see that one coming. I guess it’s inflation linked. Or maybe, miraculously, the idiots who design these ads finally realised that nobody gets a prize for being the visitor before the millionth visitor.

Bought in Buenos Aires

Chris — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:18:48 +0000

I thought it’d be fun to post some of the ridiculous things I bought in Buenos Aires last week. Amazing the amount of useless stuff that tempts.

For example, this cardboard Tintin rocket ship. How long is this going to remain amusing?

Tintin Rocket Ship

And these cool cow cufflinks, from the fantastically iconoclastic No Brand store. Cool, sure – but I have no shirts that take cufflinks. I just liked the little leather case. Argentina – they use all of the cow.

No Brand cufflink packaging.

Cows on your sleeve

And then a bunch of silly things, like a Che Guevara fridge magnet set (to go with my Michelle Obama one) and the complete Beatles albums fridge magnets. Yep, pretty useless too.

The revolution will be magnetised

The Fridge Four

More junk, without rhyme (especially the harmonica, since I can’t play it) or reason.

Genuine Argentinian Chinese harmonica

@Swimlittlefish dolls

And dvds I might as well have bought on iTunes

You REALLY need to own these. I guess.

I also bought some famous Argentinian Dulce de Leche. Of course. But we don’t need a picture of that. If you haven’t eaten it before, it’s the sweetest thing you’ll ever eat.

The UP Assignment

Chris — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 06:36:36 +0000

Hello, Potential People of the Media Tribunal

This is your assignment. It has no specified length – that’s called freedom, they tell me, and it’s your burden.

It has a due date – which I’ve forgotten, so ask Pippa.

Making online news happen:
Choose a topical news feature article, and put together a plan for a social media and multimedia package that will add value. Explain how it adds value, and – crucially – what that value is.
Your answer must consist of words, links and references. Feel free to publish it to your blog and send me a link. Paper will do too.

If you have any questions, mail me.

Go wild.

Chris

How to drink wine

Chris — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:02:00 +0000

Received a press release from the strangely named Hot Salsa Media (boy, all the good names really are taken), praising the success of the Soweto Wine Festival. Apparently, “over the 3 day event, a record number [of] 7548 black middle class South Africans tasted their way through over 800 wines and enjoyed live music by township Jazz band, Safika, food and wine pairing courses in the Pick n Pay tasting theatre and local menus from home-grown Soweto restaurants.”

I’m not sure how they cut out the non-black attendees from their records. I don’t remember tickets being marked according to race. Maybe all the whities, Indians and others were there on freebies. And how do they know they were middle-class? Because they can drink wine without talking about someone’s mother’s genitalia? I’ve known quite a few low class wine drinkers in my time, and you couldn’t really tell the difference that easily.

Anyway, nitpicking aside, I really enjoyed the night I was in attendance. And I remembered that I’d once written a newsletter for an online wine company, about the difference between wine connoisseurs and just plain wine drinkers. And it occurred to me that not much has changed. This is no reflection on the Soweto Wine Festival, which was a buzzing, happy mix of both those groups, and the crossover types too. But it does give a little hope to those of us who want to have fun drinking wine without necessarily becoming competitive quaffers.

Wandering the very well supplied booths at the Soweto Festival with a video crew (pictured on the right because I can’t be bothered to go and find an actual picture of the actual wine), I realised that there are two ways to drink wine. Well, three ways if you count glugging, which I don’t think we should, not if we want to get to the end of this column. The first way is knowledgeably, with all the terms on the tip of your finely educated tongue, and with a vast body of experience that you bring to bear on the wine at hand. Or at mouth, whatever the right phrase is.

The second way is stylistically, where you don’t really know much about wine, but you know what people like. So, not to put too fine a point on it, you fake it. This isn’t as nefarious a deed as it sounds. Let me explain it this way. You know that social soccer club you joined when you became too old to play serious sport? Well, a bunch of people who don’t know much about wine, sitting around a dinner table and sipping whatever bottle was recommended to them, are very much like that soccer club.

How, you ask? Well, your buddies are always complimenting you on what a fine game you’ve played, and every time you try something fancy with the ball, they step back and admire you instead of just kicking you in the shins. That’s what it’s like drinking wine with people who don’t know much about wine. Basically, it’s a support group for wine lovers. Every time someone says something profoundly stupid, like “This tastes rather of the inside of a gym. Very okey,” you nod approvingly.

And people who don’t know much about wine are the true wine lovers, I’m afraid, not the people who are connoisseurs, and who know everything there is to know about fine wine. That’s not love, that’s just education. True love is mysterious, and the object of your love is equally mystifying. It’s more a spiritual transaction than a vinuous one.

That’s what was so much fun about the Soweto Wine Festival, or at least on the night I was there. Everyone, organisers, growers, punters and passersby, were all entirely on the side of wine, rather than on the side of wine connoisseurs. So good work to them, and I’m sure they’ve opened up a few more people’s palates, minds and wallets to the magic that is wine. Just maybe go a little easier on the racial classification next time. Or we’ll start thinking you’ve created an upgraded dop system.

(A third – the theoretical bit - of this column is lifted from something I wrote about 4 years ago, although I can’t remember what publication it was – nothing to be ashamed of, it’s called recycling, and it’s environmentally friendly.)
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‘It was a dark and stormy night’

Chris — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:16:39 +0000

For my second lecture to the absolutely delightful, if a little smelly, University of Pretoria journalism students, we’ll be dealing with the topic: “‘It was a dark and stormy night (click here for Weather.com)’: How online journalism has changed what journalism means.”

There’s only one official reading for this class, and it’s the text of the Hugh Cudlipp lecture, given this year by the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger. It’s entitled “Does journalism exist.”

Here are three salient bits.

“[J]ournalists are, as a rule, better at thinking about journalism – including the most fundamental question of all, hinted at in my title tonight – of whether there is such a thing as journalism.

“If you think about journalism, not business models, you can become rather excited about the future. If you only think about business models you can scare yourself into total paralysis.”

“There’s been one change so big and obvious in the last decade that we may not have noticed it: the new media have disappeared. They are just media now: the means through which our world must be experienced. No one under 25 can remember a world without them. Everything shows up on screens, from the big ones we sit in front of all day at work to the small ones on the phones with which we spend our leisure hours – when they’re not sending us emails.

“These screens give us very much more than written words, and they change the ways we understand the world – from text to multimedia; from linear to hypermedia; from passively absorbing material to learning how to navigate actively – and we change them right back.”

“[J]ournalists have never before been able to tell stories so effectively, bouncing off each other, linking to each other (as the most generous and open-minded do), linking out, citing sources, allowing response – harnessing the best qualities of text, print, data, sound and visual media. If ever there was a route to building audience, trust and relevance, it is by embracing all the capabilities of this new world, not walling yourself away from them.

“Two further points about this fluid, constantly-iterative world of linked reporting and response: first, many readers like this ability to follow conversations, compare multiple sources and links. Secondly, the result is journalistically better – a collaborative-as-well-as-competitive approach which is usually likely to get to the truth of things, faster.”

Read the lecture on The Guardian. We’ll also be touching on the hoary, old and largely irrelevant question about whether blogs, tweets and so on constitute journalism. Here’s some further reading about that (Newspapers vs. Bloggers: The New News Process), but really, the central point is this:

“Newspapers aren’t worth saving. Journalists are.”

Oh, and guest lecturer is Mail & Guardian Managing Editor Verashni Pillay, follow her on Twitter @verashni and read some of her columns here.

Tanzania’s AMLC

Chris — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:04:55 +0000

I don’t normally put up press releases, but since I’m involved in this conference, I thought you might be interested. I went to the one last year in Ghana, which was extremely useful, especially in terms of setting up contacts with online practitioners in other African countries. Also, I know you’ll laugh at the ‘leading media executives’ bit. Well, if you know me.

African Media Chiefs to Discuss Sustainable Business Models at Annual Summit

JOHANNESBURG, September 2 – Leading African media executives are preparing to meet in Tanzaniafrom 26-29 September for the 2010 edition of the Africa Media Leadership Conference (AMLC). This year’s summit will focus on identifying and developing “Sustainable Media Business Models in the Digital Age”.

The AMLC series – now in its ninth year – is the foremost pan-African gathering of senior media professionals, and the gathering represents a key opportunity for Africa’s most influential media leaders to discuss strategic, operational and other challenges in a fast and constantly changing media landscape.

A shot of the decapitated statue of Nkrumah in Ghana, where last year's AMLC conference was held.

Since its inception in 2002, the meetings have developed into an annual high-level forum for strategy formulation, networking and sharing by senior executives of print, broadcast, online and converged media on the African continent.

The conference is co-hosted by Rhodes University’s Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership (SPI) and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), and was convened to promote high-level interaction among Africa’s media chiefs.

“This year we switch focus from a broad look at understanding and doing digital media in Africa to specifics of what works and what does not work under African conditions,” said SPI Director Francis Mdlongwa.

Frank Windeck, the director of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung’s Sub-Sahara Africa Media Programme, the sponsor of the AMLC series, said: “These meetings provide Africa’s top media people with a unique opportunity to network at the highest level, debating key industry challenges, while seeking practical solutions by examining case studies drawn from Africa.”

The conference meets annually in an African country, and past AMLC summits have debated timely topics such as “Managing Media in a Recession” (Mauritius, 2002); “South Meets East: Strategic Challenges for African Media” (Nairobi, Kenya, 2006); and “Learning from the Future: Africa’s Media Map in 2029” (Accra, Ghana, 2009).

Issued by:

SPI Director Francis Mdlongwa (email: f.mdlongwa@ru.ac.za; mobile phone +27-(0) 83-629-2312; office phone +27-(0) 46-603-8781; fax +27-(0) 46-622-9591)

KAS Director Media Programme for Sub-Sahara Africa Frank Windeck (email: Frank.Windeck@kas.de; office phone +27-(0) 11-214-2900)

The Dancing Striker

Chris — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:08:52 +0000

I know I shouldn’t lampoon people striking for a (barely) living wage, but really, this woman’s performance is too good to let go. So I’ve decoded her dance steps for you, and worked out what her message to the government really is.
Basically, it’s ‘bite me’.

Thanks to the inimitable Demelza Bush for shooting and editing this for me.

Same old, same old

Chris — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:17:07 +0000

Governments change, but the lying bastards stay the same. Compare a cover from the Weekly Mail of July 26, 1991 with the Mail & Guardian of May 14 2010. Politicians never believe they’ll get caught out lying, apparently.

Vlok, Simelane – notice the family resemblance.

Shaun De Waal, the M&G front page layout guy, better keep that nose on file. We’ll need it again.

Big white lying nose.

Big black lying nose.