Another Gothamist story appears to be brewing. A journalist there tweeted to someone who posted a video over the weekend, to get a quote from him about the kiosks. He seems to be a skeptic of the kiosks, from what little else he has posted, questioning the pat response that it is an “old-fashioned phone prank”. I don’t think it’s old-fashioned at all but I shan’t take offense. If it posts in time I might make Hacker Radio again. Triumphs await.
It’s always been feast-or-famine with this stuff. I went out every single day for about 3 weeks, scoring nary a mention on social media, and what mentions were made were somewhat opaque. Then, over this weekend, I got two mentions in a row on Instagram, which has not seen a mention in months, and the next day another mention from someone who had encountered the noise in Astoria one day, and then again in midtown the next. That has a waY OF MAKING THIS LOOK FAR MORE WIDESPREAD THAN IT REALLY IS, BUT IN A WAY THAT SOCIAL MEDIA CAN’T REALLY do — sorry, not going to go back and retype all that accidental upper case. I mean this is all a textbook case of social media doing what social media does, which is make singular and inconsequential incidents like this look way more widespread and tormenting than they really are.
For as often as I see people making video of these things after I set them off it’s amazing how infrequently any of it washes up online in a way I can distinguish. What surprised me about the weekend video posting was how it only got 4 views from Saturday to Monday, but after I retweeted it on Monday night, when the post-holiday crowds returned to Twitter, it has since scores a view count nearing 2,000. It’s not like I have any particular social media prowess or visibility but I guess I can take some of the credit for that.
One new oddity of late has been the number of people deleting their posts. I don’t remember that ever happening, and as someone who deletes his tweets and postings with regularity I can’t comment with any sense of chagrin. But it does make me ask if there has been some sort of request made through direct messaging, a scenario that is unlikely but still intriguing.
I am taking today off from the kiosks, for essentially the first time in months. It’s been my job since February, when a comment by one of the Linksters really teed me off, and it still does, but I’ve been at this in one form or other since these kiosks first appeared in early 2016. I don’t anticipate it with great thirst but I am looking forward to what Gothamist has to say this time around, for its fourth installment in the Softee saga. Maybe they will issue a plea for me to identify myself. WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOUR DEMANDS?
I met up with a millennial couple last night, for the first time in 3 or 4 weeks. They say they’ve encountered my kiosks numerous times, which kind of surprised me but was gratifying nonetheless. They remain seriously impressed by the project, or maybe they were just loaded on beers.
Going to go home and write about the kiosks. Have not done that lately. It’s of limited compelling urgency since so few people know what they are, and a majority of those who do know what they are either don’t care or simply shrug and say it’s wonderful without every actually using them. Kinda like payphones. What a world of stale subject matter I’ve inhabited.
