The Cultural Significance of Angry Birds

From The Next Web:-

We knew Angry Birds was popular – it has surpassed 50 million downloads on mobile platforms and recently launched on both PC and Mac. What we didn’t realise is just how much time is spent playing the game worldwide; some 200 million minutes are spent on Angry Birds titles each day.

That's a figure coming from Peter Vesterbacka, the head of Rovio who develop Angry Birds, so obviously can't be verified, but it has been downloaded 50 million times, so maybe 4 minutes per day average is not far from the truth.

But let's put this into TV terms: 200 million minutes per day is the equivalent of a TV show that gets 6 million viewers every day. And I doubt there's a daily show in the US or anywhere else that gets that.

What I'm trying to say is that I think the rest of the media completely underestimates the size of gaming, that it's still considered as something nerds do, while they tell us all about plays which are attended by a couple of thousand people per day.

Olympic Mascots

The 2012 Olympic mascots have been unveiled. Unsurprising, like so much produced by the state, they are terrible. However, I am less concerned with their artistic message than with the process of arriving at these designs.

When you look back at the mascots of other countries, you have Amik, the beaver to represent Canada. Greece named 2 after their gods, and referenced some archeological drawings. Barcelona took a catalan sheepdog and styled him after a Picassa painting which is just too smart by half. China picked 5 which were inspired by various native creatures.

In every case, they either took something of their culture and history.

Yet every part of these Olympics, from the closing ceremony in Beijing to the logo to the mascots is the establishment showing just how much the establishment want to disassociate Britain from its normal or historic culture. The result is something abstract and banal that says nothing about being British.

Matt Frei On Cuba

Link

"Cuba's extraordinary culture is a glorious byproduct of a society that is still pitifully short on the distractions of choice and prosperity"

1. Salsa existed in Cuba long before Castro got in, and exists in many parts of latin America.
2. The ballet only exists because the state funds it and people see it as a way out of poverty (despite being unproductive culture).
3. You take a beautiful palace and put a fucking factory in it? Well, that's a great advert for misusing resources.
4. A lot of cigar afficiandos don't actually rate Cuban cigars as much better than what you get elsewhere.

But I really dislike Frei's quote, because there's so much more evidence that culture thrives when you leave it to the market. American culture dominates like no other, and yet the government does nothing.