Our attention spans didn’t die they just changed shape, according to new thinking from social media guru Matt Locke at Channel 4. The Cassandras who predicted that media fragmentation and marathon idiot-fests like X Factor would lead to continuous partial attention, soundbite-size attention spans and our brains eventually sliding out our ears, were wrong. Instead Matt has identified several new attention shapes evolving from the new ways we consume media. These include ‘Cult shapes’ – the result of box-set binging; ‘Asynchronous shapes’ – bitesize content grazing such as Facebook game Farmville; and ‘Live shapes’ – big, live event viewing on TV such as X factor. Working with these shapes opens up new ways for brands to engage consumers. For big event viewing many people split their attention across two screens to connect to other viewers. Posting Twitter comments about Cher Lloyd’s face whilst watching X Factor on TV for example. Rather than a sign of reduced attention quality, this offers exciting opportunities in the form of second screen – designing interactive elements to sit alongside a TV show. Last month’s Million Pound Drop on BBC saw a 200% increase in viewers playing along at home compared to series 1. Second screen is the shape of things to come.

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56 hours. That is the amount of time you have to commit to watch this seasons extra mammoth X Factor. That’s longer than the average working week and it’s not even counting the continual Xtra Factor loop on ITV2. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy 56 hours of mindless pop programming just as much as the next man, woman and child. It’s just that I can’t help wondering what else I could have achieved with all that time. Learning basic Spanish, training for a marathon, swimming the channel twice? Moreover, what could we have collectively achieved as a nation if we had all pooled our 56 hours? 50 hours is the amount of volunteering time that the London 2012 Committee asked Gamesmakers to commit to help make the Olympic Games a success. Last week only 240,000 people applied. About 12m less than tune into X Factor each Saturday. If we are going to make this Big Society work we might need some smaller programmes.

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Thanks to Jessica Howling Thornley for this issue, a girl who is most at home dancing in a bush.

Skateistan is Afghanistan’s and the world’s first co-educational skateboarding school. It aims to engage growing numbers of urban and troubled youths in Afghanistan through skateboarding. It also teaches them about civic responsibility, IT, the arts, and languages – if they choose too. At this school, it’s the students who decide what they want to learn. The school then connects them with teachers who will enable them to develop the skills that they consider important. Since Skateistan has been active in Kabul, skateboarding has taken off as a mass youth culture. The movement has been turned into a film Skateistan – To live and skate Kabul, as part of the Diesel New Voices campaign. The film tells the story of two young Afghan skaters, a boy and girl. The beautifully shot documentary follows them through the streets of the city as they skate through the corridors of the battered and broken Darul Aman Palace, and play on their boards with other kids in the empty Russian swimming pool on Bibi Mahru Hill (which has never been filled with water and was used for executions under Taliban rule). Skateistan represents the power of skate culture as a means to bring kids together against a backdrop of war, violence and oppression. For Afghani girls in particular, being part of the Skatistan tribe has the potential to show them an altogether new kind of freedom.

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What is it with wheels and the knack they have for bringing people together? Skaters, petrol-heads, Hell’s Angels…the trusty wheel doesn’t just take us places, it takes us places together. And so it would seem that the magic of the wheel is doing just that for a collective of bike enthusiasts ‘Mixt Meat’ who recently launched a blog by that name to document their adventures, musings, bike skills and general ‘hanging outness’. Mixt Meat (the name refers to their mixed backgrounds and ‘meat’ is slang for mate) can be spotted in and around East London, are more than a bike “crew”. They are a family committed to making the bike community bigger and better. “Its not about whose better than whom, what kind of bike you ride or where you come from. We all share the same love for riding a bike and that’s really all it comes down to. If you ride a bike and you are not a dick then come hangout and that’s pretty much it,” said one Mixt Meat member in a story on La Lavinia Cycle Blog – words that stands in stark contrast with an article run in the Guardian this weekend entitled ‘The bike snob’s guide to cycling tribes’. And in an increasingly bike crazed London where 51% of people own at least one bike, there are 450,000 bike journeys made a day, and 60,000 bike thefts a year, Mixt Meat are just the kind of cool but caring bike gang you want hanging out in the city streets.

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As its Halloween this weekend, I feel it’s only right that we all salute (with an over-tanned hand) probably the most freakish, watched and written about subculture of the last couple of years, and my own guilty pleasure: Guido’s and Guidettes. The Guido phenomenon was released into the world just over the year ago with the arrival of MTV show Jersey Shore. We watched appalled and amused as the real-life cast brawled, cussed, bronzed, slept, ground (as in ‘grind’) their way into our living rooms. The only thing more distorted and questionable than their sense of style, was the vervour with which we became obsessed by and secretly fond of them.
In a world where Hipster has become the dirtiest word of all – Guido’s are a tribe distinctly different – they aren’t cool and they don’t care what you think – and perhaps they reminded us that there is actually something authentic and endearing in that. Guido’s will leave no redeeming cultural legacy for us in the way of music or style, they have no exixtential bone to pick with the world, just thuggish commitment to the Guido cause/code – aka trying to sleep with other Guido’s and Guidettes while looking the part doing it.
Watching an episode of Jersey Shore is like taking a basic anthropology class. Perhaps that is why, ironically, the Guido has become a topic discussed and dissected by academics and pop culture commentators the world over. Afterall, there is nothing like trying to dissect that which probably doesn’t need dissecting! Whatever you think of the Guido, he has staked his claim, and although I’m mildy relieved it’s not my grandkids who will be laughing about ‘Granny as a Guidette’, you’ve got to hand it to them. I mean, apparently in popculture terms, when you make it as a Halloween costume, well , you’ve really made it.

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There’s a lot of talk about ‘hipsters’ at the moment. From the YouTube hit ‘Being a Dickhead’s Cool’ to hipster hate forums, one thing is clear: it’s not about a tribe of hipsters anymore; it’s about a tribe of anti-hipsters. So I was intrigued to learn recently of an alleged new hipster on the block: The Christian hipster. This involves pastors looking to hipsters in a bid to keep the faith relevant, according to a new book by Bret McCracken When Cool and Christ Collide. McCracken says shock value is key to hipster Christianity, and explores the hipster influence on the religion, from services held in bars, to metrosexual pastors wearing tight Ed Hardy-esque tees and faux-hawk dos. Its “yoof” marketing at it’s most horrible. What Christian marketers don’t seem to get is that today’s twentysomethings want authenticity more than they want cool. If Christianity has any youth appeal, then it probably lies in its perceived integrity and heritage. As Scholar David Wells in his book The Courage to be Protestant says, ”Younger generations who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.”

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The Crimson Blood Wolf Pack is a furry-tail-wearing, mall-cruising gang of teenage girls from Texas. The girls have banded together around an Alpha Female they call Wolfie, 18-year-old Sara Rodriguez who claims to be part wolf. Discovered and captured on film by photographer Danielle Levitt, the gang hit the local headlines this year when their leader, Wolfie, was accused of killing and beheading a dog after photographs appeared online. Whilst she explains in this video that the dog had already died and she was merely removing its skull (!?) at a friend’s behest, Wolfie has since gained a cult teen following of self-declared werewolves and ardent fans. “I’ve had people come ask me for autographs or to take pictures or just beg to hug me, stuff like that,” Wolfie says. “And I don’t mind it, you can come up and hug me.” The story of the gang has been released this week in chapters by Dazed & Confused, and the footage is seriously compelling. Perhaps what’s most interesting is that this isn’t teenage rebellion against rules and authority, but about kids looking to each other for a sense of order and mothering. Photographer Levitt says, “The Crimson Wolf Pack functions as a family, they look to her (Woolfie) for guidance, and she tirelessly supports, mothers and leads. The kids in the pack need her, as she needs them, for they are sorts of outsiders and don’t necessarily feel like they fit in normative worlds.” Surely every shopping centre could use its own pack of “Mall wolves”?

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