omg

In this story from the Independent, we learn that sub-par box office receipts at the movies this summer are being blamed on text messaging. Seems that when teenagers see Hollywood crappy movies, they text their friends about it, often with bad reviews.

"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. "You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience."

If only those rotten kids weren't texting. It would have taken the nation 2-3 weeks to learn just how obscenely bad Gigli is, time enough for the salami factory to recoup its costs, and to make some profit by sending it abroad. Here's hoping that the major studios will have to start eating their gross, after feeding it to us year after year and pretending there's no alternative.

If nothing else, it's refreshing to see a story that doesn't simply oppose literacy (of the English class variety) to electracy (fill in the new technology). Instead, there are hints of an awareness of media ecology going on here, and some concrete implications of the shift in social dynamics that's emerging with new media. Yeah, that's my academic version of complimenting the Independent.

And did I mention, that on the same page as the story, there's an ad promoting the Independent's ability to download their content to your PDA? Delicious.