Category: Netculture

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They Never Said It

Fake quotes, misquotes and misleading attributions (Italian version here) is a short essay that made me stop and think about the role of quotes into the politics and business arena. As the author writes:

Wrong attributions may seem just silly. But they aren?t irrelevant ? even if they are not deliberate cheats. There is a change in perspective when a thought or an opinion is perceived as coming from a different source.
It can be interesting to find that something sounding ?modern? was said or written, with the same meaning, three hundred or three thousand years ago ? or something that seems traditional is actually quite recent.
Or to notice the differences, or similarities, in sayings originated in other, close or remote, environments. Or to discover that ancient (or recent) nonsense (or lies) are being broadly and endlessly repeated without ever checking if they make any sense.
A dirty trick, when there is a disagreement, is to attribute to opponents something they never said ? placing them in the uncomfortable position of having to deny it. Historians are busy trying to sort out problems of this kind.

A rather ample source is They Never Said It, by Paul Boller and John George, published in 1989 by Oxford University Press. A bit old, but still deserving a read.

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The Internet As an Intrinsic Threat: Yesbutters vs Whynotters

Italian politcians’ mantra, starting from the Chair of the Low Chamber, Boldrini and down to local parties’ minions is “The Internet is an opportunity but…” and then a stream flows of statement like “we need to regulate it”, “we need to keep it free for the righteous citizen”, “we must block hate speeches” and so on.

This reminds me of an old, untitled essay I read on Giancarlo Livraghi’s gandalf.it:

Yesbutters don?t just kill ideas.
They kill companies, even entire industries.
The yesbutters have all the answers.
Yesbut we?re different. Yesbut we can?t afford it.
Yesbut our business doesn?t need it.
Yesbut we couldn?t sell it to our workforce.
Yesbut we can?t explain it to our shareholders.
Yesbut let?s wait and see.
All the answers. All the wrong answers.

For the positive part, dedicated to the Whynotters, just follow this link.

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Audi (Volkswagen) Ads and the Ignorance of Logic

Another (Volkswagen) Audi commercial, another interesting detail.

The TV ad for the Audi Quattro line broadcasted yesterday in Italy is based on creating a climax of even number, with the number “Quatttro” (four, in Italian) on the top of the ladder.

To obtain this effect, the copywriter of the Italian advertising agency thought of a line that reads something like “due sono le alternative” (two are the alternatives”) and then something about the uniqueness of the car. In other words, the script is based on this sequence: two (alternatives) to one and only car, the four (Quattro).

As much as this script looks tricky, it contains a logical fallacy: “alternative” include two options (either going right or left, fight or flight and so on) thus if the Audi script says there are two alternatives, it actually means four (different coupled) options.? To be? correct, the script should have said something like “there are two OPTIONS” instead.

No big deal at the end of the day: advertising, as a form of art, is entitled to be sloppy.

Carmaker, on the contrary, shouldn’t.