OK, so I’m off. First some Christmas celebrations (so close now it almost seems over…), then New Year’s off to Japan for some work.

Speaking of New Year’s, it is, of course, the perfect nextopian celebration. Nobody ever celebrates the year that just passed, everybody’s so excited because their visualizing the next to come. And we all stand there thinking “this next year is going to be the best ever”.

So, see you ’round the corner, in the best year ever!

Maybe I was wrong to dub Avatar the best movie franchise ever the other day. Fredrik Olsen posted a comment that pointed me to an even newer movie: Maybe the best movie franchise ever is actually “Ataque de Panico”?

At least, that has to be the fastest grossing movie, with the highest return on investment, in zip time:

A Thursday afternoon in November, Fede Alvarez uploaded his robot invasion movie on youtube. Come Friday, his mailbox was filled with offers from the hollywood studios. Fede settled for Sam Raimi’s offer to contract him to make a hollywood version of the movie, a job worth 30 million dollars.

Did I mention that Ataque de Panico cost Fede 300 dollars to produce? And of course, in true trailerism and warp consumption fashion, it’s only 5 minutes long.

Join the 4+ million viewers who’ve already seen it here

I’m pretty sure that today, the last doubtful Swede woke up and realized that we live in a new millennium, the yestermillennium is gone baby gone.

Today, Saab keeled over. That would never have happened in the old millennium, And until today, many people, still mental inhabitants of the yestermillennium, believed Saab couldn’t go down. “Old, established, gigantic brands never die”.

Well, now they do. It doesn’t even have to be the result of a scandal or a particular financial stupor. Established brands are simply not automatically invincible anymore, and age and experience need not count for anything.

Welcome to the new millennium.

I’ve been asked this question more than seven times now, and as we all know, everything that counts more than seven instances is a trend.

The question I’ve been frequently asked  is, is it true that this will be the best, most lucrative Christmas ever? The concluded trend: Belief that this upcoming Christmas will break all previous shopping and sales records.

Despite this year’s omnipresent recession, and a pretty bad last christmas, we’re all convinced – the next(opian) Christmas must be the best Christmas ever. I love it.

Merry Nextmas!

Not long after I wrote yesterday’s post about Avatar being the best movie franchise ever, I received news about the one piece that was missing to complete the Expectations society logic:

Director James Cameron promises there will be a sequel.

For anyone who hasn’t already bought into the hype and watched the trailer, pre-booked the movie tickets, there’s a new reason to get on the train – see Avatar now, to get the entry ticket to enjoy the even better movie then the next one, the one after that!

My only surprise is that they advertise only one sequel, instead of employing good ol’, wholesome, trilogy marketing! But my guess is, it won’t take long before Avatar III is pre-announced as well. Definitely not longer than ’til the first sign of movie ticket sales for Avatar (I) starting to slump…

You could not possibly have missed that the movie Avatar opens on Friday. Being the next movie, it is by Expectations society definition the best movie ever. And it is, by the same definition, already the best movie franchise ever.

The movie has been hyped for years, and really, seriously so since this summer. It is even alleged to be one of the driving forces behind the exploding twitter use this year, as so many people started tweeting about it after midsummer.

The hype culminated in late August, when the trailer premiered in 300 theaters across the globe, tickets were sold at prices ranging between 50-400 dollars, one pair was even sold on eBay at 1,000 dollars! Good old trailerism means big business! 

Shortly thereafter, Apple’s servers went down when they featured the trailer on iTunes.

Everybody’s crazy about the nextopian movie glimpse trailer. And now the tickets to the actual movie have been on sale for a while, as the industry around Avatar cashes in nextopian franchise style – everybody wanting and paying big bucks for the thing at the time it is most valuable – before the release. Beautiful.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while and have a keen memory (does anyone really have a keen memory, anymore?), you know my fascination with the new millennium’s transformation of identity into anydentity. In the yestermillennium, you looked a particular way, went by a specific name, followed a distinct path in life.  In the new millennium we can change our looks anytime (revisit the old post “YOU can be Michael Jackson” for some stats on how easy it is to alter any part of your body and your looks again and again), take on any persona we want (remember the old post “YOU can be Lindsay Lohan” about the ease with which we can take other people’s identities), and change partners or careers in the blink of an eye. Identity is not fixed, we all have anydentities that we can shape and form any way we want, anytime. 

This presents a whole new set of problems for people who are trying to take the leap from yestermillennium to the world of any. Maybe you remember my old post about the Japanese woman who furiously kidnapped a guy she met and married online because she found him cheating – online. The only time they ever met in real life was when she kidnapped him, he did not even recognoze her…

The other day I read about a 23 year old guy getting arrested in the UK – for theft, stealing other people’s character’s in the online game Runescape. 

First problem – would that be theft or kidnapping?

Second problem – how does one define and form exclusive rights for an identity in a world of anydentities?

Popular old guest-blogger Erik Nilsson tipped me about the guy who paused his own wedding to update his facebook account:

Check it out here

That’s gotta be the perfect combo of status listing - listing his new status and acquired wife the very microsecond they materialize – and freeze listing – too busy to update his list to even have the time to enjoy his own wedding as it happens.

It shouldn’t be too far a guess that the guests were busy, too, keeping their cell phone cameras high up in the air to record the wedding for later enjoyment.

In the yestermillennium, it was the booze that made people not remember yesterday’s wedding. In the new millennium, it’s the status listing and freeze listing that inhibit us.

Then again, he can always go back to that freeze list and relive the wedding. Or refresh his memory as to whom he married, if he wishes to avoid marrying her again the next time he marries…

In the old millennium, curiosity killed the cat. Anybody realizes that wouldn’t happen in the new millennium, the Expectations society thrives on curiosity.

In the Expectations society, cool killed the cat. With a window of opportunity equal to the infamous 15 microseconds of fame, there’s no time to chill.

Just ask Swedish hip-hop-jazz band Movits. When an American fan forwarded an English translation of one of the band’s songs to some friends this summer, it spread like wildfire becoming an instant hit that topped the American hip-hop chart and moved from #93,500 to #75 on Amazon in three days. Within 15 microseconds, they got a surprise call from Stephen Colbert who wanted the “sizzling hot new band” to play on his tv show. Taken totally off-guard, the band took their time to respond, and eventually the jazz cats went over to the States. Only to be met by a big “?” as their 15 microseconds had already run out… 

What took them so long? The other day, news broke that Seattle-based company MiKandi is setting up a Porn App Store on Android Market.

Isn’t that fascinating? I don’t mean the fact that Android is opening up for porn apps. I mean the fact that it has taken so long for porn to enter the arena.

In the yestermillennium, porn was considered the driving force behind breakthroughs and innovations in technology and in media and legal developments.

But not anymore. Ages after Apple’s and Android’s apps changed the way we communicate, navigate, and even start business, porn enters the arena. This is the new millennium, indeed.

Also, a poll published in one of Sweden’s major newspapers revealed that 70 percent of people think porn in the phone is ok. Not so barrier-pushing anymore. A new world, indeed…