creep street, frosted flakes

Today I went to Digital Hollywood. I learned a few fascinating tidbits, like: For day and date releases (that's studio speak for when they release a movie on the same date globally) the studios can estimate with 90% accuracy by noon EST on the release date exactly how much money the movie will gross including all its downstream products (e.g. DVD, related video game sales, etc.)! Isn't that crazy? Now, I woulda been happy keeping my new-found knowledge to the realm of interesting but impersonal tidbits, but unfortunately I stumbled into a panel in which the VP of Marketing for MySpace was a panelist. *Something* Gold was his name and he off-handedly mentioned, "you would not believe the volumes of user data we're able to mine [from MySpace profiles]." All those Favorite Movies, Favorite Bands, Favorite Books, etc. in your profile? Ad agency ammunition. You might be thinking, UMM DUH... and you'd be right for thinking that. Truth is, I never thought about it. That is until he said it -- and then I was totally creeped out. I kept givin him the stink eye even though I still don't have the balls to break up with MySpace.

So this begs the question -- is there anything wrong w/ being little petri dishes for ad agencies? Does it really matter? Is privacy an illusion anyway? Is the trade off for having a "free" online profile worth it? I don't know -- I am equally as creeped out by the Match.com ads I see when signing in or out of MySpace. They feature some supposedly hot guy who's like, um, *staring*. He looks like he's trying to strike up a conversation with me, but I always have the volume turned down. I feel like I'm being stalked. Anywhoo, as you can prob guess, I'm not a big fan of the advertising.

Speaking of, here's the future of entertainment programming. Enjoy.

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I really wanted to write something uplifting today, but it's just not in me right now.