Utah Undie Run 2011

Nate and Aimee Porter were sick of Utah's deeply conservative politics (restrictive liquor laws/adoption laws/anti-equality legislation). They were tired of Utah being perceived - both in and outside the state - as an uptight, religious enclave. They wanted to do something about it. So they ran 5 miles across town in their underwear.

With 2,268 other runners.

The 2011 Utah Undie Run was a "Protest Against Utah Being So Uptight" (their words). It started quietly enough with Facebook invitations to 500 people. But those people started inviting other people, until the I'm Attending list reached over 12,000 people. Local businesses that were tied up in quasi-religious red tape came on board as sponsors. Participants were given a dress code (no thongs, nothing see through) to help avoid tickets from the waiting police. And they were invited to write whatever slogan they wanted on their bodies. While the Porters had particular issues that motivated them to launch the event (their stated hope was to register 3,000 new young voters) this was an open source protest.

All 12,000 people didn't run, but 2,270 did, setting an official Guinness Record for Largest Gathering of People Wearing Only Underpants/Knickers. The event received local, national and international press. 1,500 clothing items were donated by runners to a local charity.

Why was did this event succeed so well?

1) Shared Cause + Open Cause   The restrictive, conservative nature of Utah's politics was a banner to rally around, but Undie Run 2011 let people own the event, inviting them to bring their own personal cause

2) Breaking a Taboo  Running around in your underwear is scandalous, sexy and silly all rolled into one. Offering Utahns a chance to break the rules without breaking the law worked.

3) Financial Support   The Porters connected their event to like-minded businesses, receiving the financial support necessary for Undie Run 2011's framework to rise.

4) Massive Media Attention   A Guinness Record is catnip to journalists. A Guinness Record of people running around in their underwear is crack cocaine (maybe even brown-brown). It titillates to see people in their underwear, whatever culture you come from. And the increased coverage would have helped increased participation. And so on...

Undie Run 2012 has already been set for August 25, 2012. Are you interested in taking a trip?

After all, you can pack light.

You Are What You Eat

The first record of this beaten-to-death phrase appeared in Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's treatise on the Physiology of Taste in 1826, where he wrote (in sexy French), "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." [Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are]."

I've heard various twists. "You are what you read" "Show me your friends and I'll show you who you are." "Don't eat that Matt, that's disgusting." For today's blog, let's broaden the definition of "eat" as far as it will stretch.

"You are what you consume." Which is more or less true. Yes, you can believe you have a soul, that there is a unique bit of you that never changes. But it's pretty undeniable that your upbringing - the combination of what you've seen/heard/experienced - shapes who you are.

Which makes me wonder who I'm becoming. My twitter feed draws from comedians, news sources, friends, family, industry pros, companies; I receive about 40 tweets a minute (and I'm only following 541 feeds). I'm reading newspapers from around the world, watching "tv stations" (that term is so outdated) streamed from nearly every continent (still waiting for PenguinTV... oh no wait, it exists). I played an online game from a company in New Zealand last night. The list goes on.

And I feel anxious that I'm not consuming enough media. In the morning when I wake up, the second thing I reach for (right after whacking my long suffering alarm clock) is my iPod touch, to catch up on the news. The radio is seldom off in my house - silence now makes me twitchy.

It's an anxiety that I think ties back to, "You are what you consume." With individual messages losing any sort of authoritative standing as they get swallowed by the deluge. keeping up-to-speed on what's happening now seems to like the best chance to becoming a complete person. Identity now lies on the Cutting Edge of the Information Age. Which makes me wonder:

• As we increasingly share the same media streams with the rest of the world, is humanity becoming homogenous?
• How can I become a complete person when I can't possibly keep up with all the media?
• Are we losing or gaining by consuming the same information?

Thoughts?

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Thanks to my classmate Chantal Verrier, who told me that the title to Anthelme's treatise "Meditations de Gastronomie" translates to "Meditations on Transcending Gastronomy." I find that comforting for some reason...

Page One... is turning over...

PAGE ONE: Inside The New York Times

Andrew Rossi's love-letter to The New York Times played at Cinematheque this past week. Partly a behind-the-scenes look at the daily workings of The Times, mostly a battle cry in its defence, PAGE ONE: Inside The New York Times is an articulate summary of the problems facing traditional papers today - migration of advertising revenue away from traditional media, hijacking of content by aggregate sites and the unwillingness of readers to pay for information they can get somewhere else for free.

The spectre of death hangs over not just a loved paper (whose investigative reports have helped topple administrations), but also it's driven, insightful staff - blogger turned reporter Brian Stelter, former editor Bill Keller and the hilariously inspired media reporter David Carr.

The documentary answers a number of questions: are traditional papers loved (yes), do we need accountable, professional journalists to give context to an increasing flood of information (yes), do we need financially/legally backed reporters to hold the powerful accountable (yes). What PAGE ONE doesn't answer - because right now no one has an answer - is how to help journalistic outlets survive the e-revolution. As The Guardian review of the PAGE ONE puts it "good writing and good journalism don't happen naturally; they have to be nurtured."

A few ideas are floating in the air these days regarding journalism's future. Government funded models (such as CBC and NPR) exist but are consistently the targets of cutbacks (click here for David Carr's take on that model). Private fundraising is being explored by some papers. And a morphing of traditional medium from ink on dead tree to interactive apps offers traditional outlets a chance to compete with their twitter/aggregate/blogger competition.

A great comfort is taken, throughout the film, that media outlets have survived transformations and previously predicted doomsdays (to quote Emerson "Can anyone remember when the times were not hard and money was not scarce?" geddit?). And our love for trusted news sources like The New York Times hasn't gone away - it has only increased as the world wide waters get increasingly murky.

For example: in a true demonstration of impartiality, The Times movie critic panned PAGE ONE.


Yet another reason to love The Times.