This post features some thunderous rants. But know that there’s usually a rainbow—or two—at the end of the storm.

• Apple iPad ad blows it

UNPLUGGING. That’s where it’s at…I write from my MacBook Pro while my iPhone buzzes beside me. But seriously, playing piano, reading a book on a hammock, creating art with your hands—these things are the REAL BreakAways that calm the nerves and soothe souls. Apple should embrace this.

Most folks have a love/hate relationship with Apple. But the loathing side hit a fresh low with the recent release of the iPad Pro TV ad. Just watch it. A hydraulic (that must represent iPad) crushes all kinds of creative and playful items: TV, camera, paint, games, guitar, record player, books… BOOKS!

The obvious message is if you buy a new iPad pro, you don’t need those things any more. In fact, let’s just destroy them. Pundits, professors, and celebrities have, well, crushed the ad. More attention for A? Yes. But, man, what a BAD look!

Sure, Apple makes creative tools, and owns that niche. But can you have too many toys and tools? Can Apple replace paint? Not to mention—retro is (as always) COOL! Smash record players and 35mm cameras at your own risk, cuz kids these days LOVE that stuff. They’re hotter than hula hoops—and probably the iPad, which represents only 6% of Apple’s sales.

6%! On a 1-100 scale, Professor Kirk would, charitably, give this ad about a 6. That = Failure.

• Voice messages gains popularity as option to text (burnout)

In another bite from the Apple tree, in 2014 Apple added the voice message as part of the text message menu. It didn’t catch on fast, but now gets increasingly more usage—and has become included in most SM and messaging platforms—according to a recent WashPost story by Tatum Hunter.

SOUNDS good to me. Texting, while initially cool and efficient, has become (for these eyes) a burden. An ever-growing responsibility that one simply cannot unplug. At least for long.

Some say the podcast revolution helped us remember we DO like the sound of human voices and harbor some attention span. And some of us remember when a (real) phone ringing—and the conversation with the person on the other line—was exciting, even sacred, sometimes scary.

The voice message can serve as an in-betweenie to the text and the phone call—which, for some, has become verboten and invasive. Travel much? Hope so—and that you TALK to strangers wherever you go. Heck, talk to strangers at the corner bar or supermarket!

And by all means, talk to your screen ‘friends,’ including via the voice message tool. You’ll enjoy the nuance, the deeper info, and the REALness that misspelled words and emojis usually fail to convey.

• Credit card debt reaches “severe” level

Debt is going through the roof. Too bad, because roofs are getting terribly expensive. Credit card debt has jumped to $1.12 trillion from ‘just’ $1 trillion only a year ago. Younger people are harder hit. And higher interest rates don’t help. OPINIONATED QUESTION: Why are credit card companies allowed to charge 18-28 percent interest? OPINION: That’s Mob-like extortion.

LOCK THEM UP!

Meanwhile, banks make big bucks. Folks go broke. Wall Street loves it. And the rich get richer, while the rest of us keep handing them bags of money. Cards make up only ~6.5% of consumer debt, but hit struggling people the hardest. Some say it’s a bubble, ready to burst. And you know who ends up paying for the mess when they explode? Probably not the CEO of Chase.

TIP: Shop carefully for your card(s). TRY to pay your balance in full every month. Focus on saving not shopping! And teach your children to practice the same fiscal fitness.

Yep, traditional higher-ed institutions will soon be graduating students with degrees in social media. It’s a million times more relevant than Shakespeare, so how could they not?

Within the last week or so, social media has become a headline in so many ways that social media itself can barely keep up.

In Minnesota, the U of M has announced plans to create a social media minor, and already has some classes; St. Thomas (across the river) has had a digital media arts major for some time. Meanwhile, the MN legislature appears close to some sort of ban on cellphones in the classroom (though school districts would create their own policy). And in faraway Washington DC, new legislation to ban TikTok in the USA just sped through Congress.

• Phones are ruining us

The BreakAway board has, for years (decades?) railed against c-phone/tech addiction, and the ways they have ruined communication, civility, and sanity. These issues have now become so omnipresent that, well, we rarely comment or preach the gospel of Unplugging of late. So while it’s terrific to see the world sorta catching on, let us be the first to say: TOO LATE!

• Try teaching to plugged-in students

Having taught at two art colleges—during the years that phones and nonstop tech were gradually gaining ground and taking over brains—I can tell you this: It’s not easy. Policies rarely worked, and students were so clever they could practically text with their toes. As a guest speaker in other classes, I’d wander and see most of the students were NOT taking notes on their computers; they were shopping Amazon or perusing the latest posts from Nikki Minaj.

Yet, my writing class incorporated social media writing. (I called the course ‘Contemporary Marketing Writing,’ though the official title was an inherited, tired tangle of verbiage.) The challenge persisted always: Professor Kirk insisted the students write with traditional grammar and punctuation, if only cuz this is college, even though SM rarely bothers with such. At some point, I had to give up! And in truth, my approach was probably dated, if appropriate. #whatevs

• Will TikTok go away?

In a word, NO. The owners (who are Chinese) can fight the ban in courts. For years. Should it go away? Yes. China is accessing our data, spying on our people, and successfully spreading bogus information to harm our country. This culture critic tires of conspiracy theories. But this is no theory. Even the dunderheads in DC have finally figured that out.

Anyway, polls of kids confirm that if TikTok goes away (which would be toats Debby Downer), they’d just shift to other platforms. And other platforms would probably get better at mimicking TikTok.

• Ancient Chinese secret

People often quote the ancient allegedly Chinese proverb: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ Well, we do. So interesting that 49% of 15-17 year-olds have experienced cyberbullying within the last year (Pew). So fascinating that excellent teaches are quitting because they can’t compete with phones. So intriguing that our state and national governments are trying to control the chaos through a myriad of laws that will have little or no policing or power.

There’s so much more to say, and maybe we will, someday. But just now, we just wanna ditch this tedious writing nonsense and check our latest Facebook feeds.

Keep the faith.

Lovely murky sunset over Lake Okoboji, courtesy of Canada and their wildfires.

Are we living in the end times? Hell, yeah. I thought that those of us of a certain age would take a spaceship to Heaven before all that. But any more, it’s hard to find any good news about planet destruction slowing down. It’s too damn bad. Cuz this place was Eden, and bazillions of innocent species do not deserve to be wiped out. Humans do, though; we’re the intelligent ones. And look what we’ve done with all them smarts.

My personal thanks to those who still think global warming (a better label than ‘climate change’) is a hoax. And to the cultures who don’t give a hoot about overpopulation. But let’s minimize the anger, enjoy the pretty sunsets that vital getaways provide, and drink a toast to, well, Planet Toast. While we still can.

Cheers!

Magazines, once thriving lifestyle and status tools, are now headed toward extinction.

Welcome to Marketing Monday (MM), our periodic dive into all things design, branding, advertising, wily wordsmithing, and more. Your site host (one Kirk Peter Horsted) once taught and still works in these fertile fields, and just can’t keep his keyboard shut any longer. Please enjoy, ponder, and feel free to disagree!

We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.

~ Marshall McLuhan

• Where have you gone, Mrs. Tastefulness?

Martha Stewart Living got killed off last spring. Along with 7 other magazines published by Des Moines-based Dotdash Merideth (including EW, Health, and Parents—what will people page through in doctors’ waiting rooms?).

The rationale for shuttering these iconic brands is, as usual, peppered with bloviated boasts of upping the game toward new! improved! websites. That’s the future, which clearly ain’t what it used to be. Picture short, bad-grammar tidbits targeted to frenetic web searches. With lame stock photos. Surrounded by obnoxious ads and contrived verbiage punched out by underpaid blurb-slaves.

Meanwhile, many excellent, experienced, educated writers in NYC and beyond just became unemployed. We wish them well on their unscheduled Sabbatical.

Who needs real writers anymore? Who reads? What does these mag closings signify, anyway? Please read on…

• What this means: 1. Perusing publications no longer pleases an impatient public

Remember lounging on your bed (on the beach or patio) with a fave mag? The reverie from reading and scheming offered a short mental vacation, rather like a Calgon “take me away” bath. Pages got ripped out for future ref. Dreams and ideas took root; maybe that’s why you painted a nightstand, purchased an album, or vacationed in Venice. Above all, the bright pics and shiny pages were…palpable.

Now, we stare at tiny phone screens with blank, fried eyes. Clearly, we prefer a smaller, and (dare I say) more manipulative presentation of ever-fleeting information. Glance, click, swipe, move on. As Martha Stewart Living dies, so does our attention span.

• What this means: 2. Our curiosity for organic learning is rotting

Allow me to admit a bias: I made my living, and a rewarding one at that, for years as an advertising sales manager in magazines. One of my secrets for making my staff perform smartly (literally)? They had to read every issue. Yes, we had quizzes. Yes, we had sales meetings where we sat around talking about editorial details. If you disliked an article or thought a new direction hurt ad sales, no problem. Opinions welcome; ignorance NOT.

Is ignorance where our culture is heading…and magazine readership just another sign of it? Well yeah. Duh! Not to say you can’t read on your phone but…do you? We know books are on the endangered media list; next to expire on the verbal brain chain must be mags, newspapers, and more. And words in general. Soon, the in-use English language may decline to, oh, 2,000-5,000 words, many misspelled. And 55,000 emojis.

• What this means: 3. Aesthetic sensibility will get simple-minded, and if not mindless

Every detail in mags like MSL goes through rigorous layers of criticism, collaboration, and refinement. Those movie scenes where media perfectionists are up all night getting everything just right? It’s true. And they’re back at it (in fresh, dressed-to-impress outfits) in the morning.

Martha (and so many more mags) delivered savvy headlines, articles, captions, and more—surrounded by cool and creative images that sparked the brain to new concepts. It’s called design. It used to determine how you lived, who your customer would be, and how you’d present yourself to a watchful world.

Moreover, and if nothing else, such impressive design offered readers a sumptuous release into inspiration, entertainment, and escapism. The experience was often learning lite, of course, but that made it brilliant. Hey, when college and Shakespeare are over, it’s time to turn the page to novels, self-improvement guides, publications, and a world of possibilities.

Nowadays, do people even know how to turn the page?

• RIP, information society

Without getting political, or disparaging the infranets, let’s just agree that the manipulation of information has replaced the search for knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, even common interests.

These ruthless market forces always win, and will continue to mow down Martha and much more. And deprive us of the tactile, lush-papered, colorful WOW that was part of our personal diet, development, and dreamscape.

• A random, charming memory

Not to be TOO nostalgic, BUT…We still have memories, right? Like this one…At my publishing company, when the freshly-printed box of the new monthly edition burst into the office, everyone ran to the lobby, greedily grabbed one, and ravenously pored through every page.

Did the 4-color black-and-white cover idea pop as hoped? Did the 2-page spread with the tough gutter picture and bleed off the sides align impressively? Did the mix and placement of ads and editorial work for all parties—especially the reading audience?

That feeling, that just-inked smell, that nervously hypercritical eye. That miracle of competitiveness, teamwork, and talent made all the fights and angst and deadline stress worthwhile.

Countless subscribers knew a parallel sensation of their own when opening their mailbox to discover the gift of a sexy magazine glowing like a promise amid the detritus.

• And now, for the good news…

Before finishing this praise of the page, let’s acknowledge the good news: Some people still love magazines. And books. And reading and learning and…comfortable BreakAways into glorious verbal and pictographic escapism. Long live print, please! And thank you!

Keep reading. Keep your standards high. And keep your ideas open.