Luke Sullivan has made a post about trolls, who are internet bullies and cowards after our recent email-chat on the topic. I posted what Luke told me here in The ad hominem attacks on the ad critics: who is allowed an opinion? and went on to ask more people for their thoughts.

In my search for why there are so many jerk-comments these days, I found that the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or the Online disinhibition effect is partly to blame for this behavior. Simon White a.k.a Purplesime weighs in on it in this blog post "Don't feed the trolls".

So, Dave Trott thinks you're a little child, dear anonymous haters. Yes, that Dave Trott, the creative director of CSTTG, where he runs his own blog.

Still pondering the recent uptick of comments that shoot the messenger instead of talk about the work, I've decided to ask a few other people about this phenomena. In The ad hominem attacks on the ad critics: who is allowed an opinion? post I spoke to the ad legend Luke Sullivan about it. Today, I have a chat with the one of the cats from johnnyandangus, Johhny a.k.a @copybeard.

I've noticed an uptick of a particular style of comments recently. There's those who will jump to "you are bitter / you are a hater" retort. Then there's the "what work have you done?" resumé-demanding retort. Then there's the scanner, s/he who reads the headline and will post replies on what they assume the article says, rather than finish reading it. The scanner might have been born from too much twitter.

Tis the season when creatives jump on the election bandwagon to make whatever point they want to make about the election which usually doesn't go beyond "be sure to vote."

Give Jordan Rich credit for at least muddling the simplicity of "be sure to vote," by coming up with a scheme favoring technology and social media over substance.

Jordan believes Florida is the most important state in the 2012 election. Because it was the most important state in the 2000 election. How these are related is beyond me, but whatevs.

Apparently, too, Jordan doesn't actually care about the outcome of the election because he is allowing his vote to be influenced, via a hashtag.

Yes. A hashtag will decide who he should vote for.

What this has to do with Florida is beyond me. What this has to do with the fact that there are in fact nine swing states this year is beyond me. What this has to do beyond a clever hashtag to get some Floridian creatives' name out there is also beyond me.

After all the articles and more articles and more articles and more articles and finally today's Gawker article, Amanda Palmer does the right thing and announces on her blog that she's paying every musician on stage, including the ones who didn't get paid during this tour retroactively, and oh by the way has been for three days neener neener neener and oh hey, my album is doing really well!

To which we say, bra-fucking-vo Amanda Fucking Palmer. Your fucked your own public brand hard, but it's never too late to start attempting to mend fences.

That was kind of our whole point to begin with.

Since Adland's Kidsleepy first posted about the call for free musicians in who killed Amanda Palmer's career? we received mainly comments that were ad hominem attacks on Kidsleepy being a "bitter cynical person". Ah, well, haters are gonna hate as they say, but it's sad to see that so few of them can read. The update more on Amanda Palmer's greed has choice quotes from a live sound engineer who has worked with Amanda, making his points.

We've gotten a lot of comments around our Amanda Palmer article. Seeing how this is a website devoted to advertising, our POV is that Amanda Palmer is hurting her "brand."

Now, thanks to a tip from a musician friend, we were pointed to an excellent post by a producer, mixer and audio engineer, named Justin Colletti. And surprise surprise, he thinks the same thing we do.

Oh. And it is also important to note that mr. Colletti has worked with Amanda Palmer as a live sound engineer, so he is in a better position to speak.

Hey, here’s a question. Can anyone out there name one crowdsourced ad that has been good? Well, there's Silk's Bukkake Ad! Oh wait. That sucked.

How about The Obama Poster design? Well...that seemed to have gotten bad press, since it was an unpaid solicitation to create a jobs poster.

Why would they be upset? Is it because crowd sourcing is nothing more than a cynical ploy to get free work? Or in the case of at least one ad agency, you actually pay them to work? Is it because asking someone to give up their talents for free, no matter how you spin it, is a shitty thing to do?

Yes indeed. And it’s also why the American Federation of Musicians of the U.S. And Canada have started a petition in the hopes of getting Dresden Doll and singer extraordinaire, Amanda Palmer, to pay her musicians.

According to AFM’s petition,

After raising almost $1.2 million for her new album and tour on Kickstarter, Amanda Palmer put out a call for "professional-ish" musicians to volunteer to rehearse and perform in her Grand Theft Orchestra. In return, Palmer says, "We will feed you beer, hug/high-five you up and down, give you merch, and thank you mightily."

Let's start with the obvious. Palmer raised $1.2 million in advance for her new album and accompanying tour, yet says that she can't afford the $35,000 needed to hire musicians. That doesn't pass the smell test.

Did you know society is fast paced? Did you know we're too reliant on social media? Yes? Well pretend you didn't so this video from international Puntastic Banksy-cribbing "street artist" Above won't be as obvious.

This piece was done for an art festival in Copenhagen called Galore. The video is a time lapse culminating in 5 days worth of painting. No doubt intellectuals stood in front of it, sipping their Carlsbergs and nodding knowingly before tweeting the hell out of it.

Clients want likes. Lots of likes. And big hits on their youtube videos. And there are plenty of social media experts who will tell you that quantity is key. Here's the thing. Quantity is very very easy to manipulate.

Take that brand with millions of likes. They're fakin'.

Take that viral video with gazillions of views. Guess what? There are services out there to help you in your fakin'.

The other day, Business Insider released its 50 sexiest ad executives alive list. Judging by the low-res images scraped from varying sites, it's not only silly, it's downright creepy.

So get this! One agency, Studiocom, was apparently miffed that their ECD, Maurizio Villarreal, wasn't chosen for the list. So they started a Tumblr site to correct the situation and...my god they resorted to the old high school year book joke. Do you know how warmed over this schitck is?

Over at the excellent Music Tech Policy, comes this article.

It starts with the above diagram from a post at a blog called Advertising Perspectives purporting to show off the potential happy fun time win win situation agencies have thanks to the likes of Ad Exchanges.

See, the original steps of web advertising are clunky and the need for a more efficient ship was a primary goal. Hence the birth of the more streamlined and highly efficient Ad Exchanges.

The Huffington Post has an article which points to a couple of University Egg Heads writing a paper bemoaning the fact female athletes get less endorsement deals for a few reasons.

The first being sexualization. It doesn't appeal to the target market. The second, according to the article, is the fact that a lot of the female athletes being used are Olympians, and therefore only "relevant" every four years or so. The article points to the Got Milk ad featuring Olympic Medalist Dana Torres in a bikini. The researchers write:

"Featuring Dara Torres as a middle-aged single mother, able to balance family with work commitments, might be more effective than highlighting her physical attractiveness at age 40."

Yes. Because apparently the calcium in milk is very effective at helping middle-aged single moms juggle their work-life balance. As opposed to building strong bones. Which allows you to swim better. Since Dan Torres is a SWIMMER. Last time I checked, you generally adorn yourself in swim wear whilst swimming.

It's funny to think that around the same time the iPod was introduced, forever changing music as we know it, advertising had what was arguably its greatest moment in pairing music to spot. Namely, VW's Cabrio spot, which launched a long dormant (and long buried) singer named Nick Drake into the spotlight once again.

Buzzfeed has a post about how Sarah Robles, the US Olympic hopeful and the strongest woman in America lives in poverty. They paint a picture of a dedicated, wholesome, healthy and truly hard-working gal, who has begun mentoring athletes younger than her too. In short, she's exactly the kind of person any brand would want as a role model - so why aren't brands sponsoring her? they ponder.

Everybody's favorite German shoe company, adidas, decided the pair of JS Round House Mids with shackles would be just the thing to attract the hipster contingency.

Update Tuesday June 19: Adidas cancels release of 'shackle' trainers.

They didn't think a backlash would occur when they dropped these bangin' shoes on their Originals Facebook page. Complete with this quote: Tighten up your style with the JS Roundhouse Mids, dropping in August. Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles?

Last week, Greenpeace gave us "Shell Oil Disaster Video" and everyone was fooled. They even did a "making of," which you can read about here , although it would have been better to have released a making-of video for more content as people don't read that much (duh!)

Now Greenpeace is gettin' all meme and bringing us a bizarro Shell Website, called Arctic Ready, with tongue firmly planted in juvenile cheek.

If I had a nickel for every last social media guru ninja wizard who said breathlessly "You are your own brand," I'd have enough money to shut the internet down. And why would I want to do that?

Because I am not, repeat, NOT a brand. I don't need to add a ™ next to my name. I do not live in fear of declaring bankruptcy on myself. I have not once gone public with an overvalued stock price. And I certainly haven't had to do a massive mea culpa on social media for something stupid I've said.

See, the only human brands out there, are the ones who work really hard at to become a brand. All the while unaware that any of the above circumstances will happen to them sooner or later.