After nearly a decade of establishing himself within the standard bad-boy narrative (putting out a cigar in a teammate’s eye, doing jail-time for assault, normal bad-boy stuff), Barton’s begun to calm down a bit, at least off the field. Where once he was picking bar fights and assaulting teammates, he’s now quoting philosophers (and Morrissey) on Twitter, and while he may always be considered too hot-headed to play for the English national team, his recent signing by Queens Park Rangers (a newly promoted Premier League underdog) has led to his being designated as their new team captain.

Of course, he was only let go from his last team as the result of the constant barrage of criticism he directed at his old bosses (via Twitter, naturally), so it’s safe to assume that he hasn’t entirely changed his tune just yet. Either way, it will be interesting to see how this new, respectable role suits him as the Premier League season progresses.

Guardian journalist, Melissa Bradshaw’s article titled, “How Kwaito became a global force” has been the subject of dissent amongst South African’s on twitter, since it was published on Thursday 11th of Aug 2011. The shortcoming of the article is that musician, Spoek Mathambo is used as the main subject of the piece on kwaito, yet in a tweet two days after the article was published, Mathambo announces ” I did the interview without knowing that the piece would have a kwaito focus. I was doing an interview about my work, which is very much not”.

The consensus in South Africa is that Mathambo cannot be classified as Kwaito.   The Fader magazine’s understanding of Mathambo’s music is consistent with this as they describe Mshini Wami (Mathambo’s debut album) not as kwaito but as “gleaming electronic rap tracks”.

There is no doubt that Mathambo has a connection with kwaito. Gwababa (Don’t Be Scared) – the first track on Mshini Wami can easily be labeled a kwaito track but to caption an image of Mathambo with the words, “King of Kwaito” is misinformed. Most pioneers of kwaito are still actively involved in the industry, producing music and selling records. M’du Masilela, the man considered as the “godfather of kwaito” was one of many pivotal characters that were not mentioned in Bradshaw’s article.

The article did however touch on the significant debate on what kwaito is? and what characterizes kwaito as a genre? These questions arose when Big Nuz introduced their brand of “Durban Kwaito” in 2007. The trio presented a more energetic, up-tempo style of kwaito, which was extremely popular and influential around the country.

The debate remains somewhat unresolved as the definition of Kwaito remains a bit blurred. With this being said, there is still a clear distinction between Spoek Mathambo and the evolved kwaito produced by Big Nuz, L’vovo Derango, Dj Clock, Fisherman and Professor.

For three years my Twitter account has been a photo of me and one my my dearest pals Mike Haliechuk from here. All it read was “Twitter is for fucking nerds”. When Osama Bin Laden was “killed” by the Navy Seals I woke at 5am that day and turned on every single kind of media I could get my hands on to follow the story. And so it transpired, the best one was the guy who lived around the corner from his Abbotobad mansion, who’d tweeted the fact that a helicopter had crashed and there’d been bombs and stuff around the corner from his pad, and since then became hounded by every twitterer and news agency in the world. It was funny at the time. Since then I’ve posted more stuff on twitter . It’s mostly links from Vice but they’re all SOLID GOLD.

He’s symbolic of a groundswell of young entrepreneurs who are using social media and cheap plane tickets to further their names/brands/businesses without the need of the backing of cumbersome, creaky old company structures to back them up.

He’s used this freedom to work for Nike, Coca-Cola, Vogue, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Reebok, K-Swiss and is now being talked about to shoot the next campaign for Audemars Piguet, the luxury watch brand that has overtaken Rolex as the rapper’s favourite choice of watch. The Florida rapper Rick Ross even has a shout out to the watch in his song B.M.F (Blowin’ Money Fast), which is a song that the generation of Ben Rayner and his fellow young entrepreneurs have adopted as their theme tune of sort s. It is a song dedicated to the imprisoned Atlanta cocaine dealer Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory and his expanding Black Mafia Family empire which is swelling in African American jail populations up and down the United States.

Why do Ben Rayner and his thousands of Twitter followers often refer to this song during the rare times when they stop working and take a little time out to drink and dance? Well because it represents the rebel entrepreneurial spirit that he and his generation embody themselves. When Rick Ross talks about being “Self-made”, he talks of an intense working class pride in building his own brand “ground-up” without leaning on traditional company structures or looking for handouts in creating his business.

As well as being an internationally renowned photographer, Rayner has also created his own publishing company Rayner Books, which he uses to publish the art, photography and essays of similar-minded talented young people such as the renowned photographer, Sandy Kim. They employ a DIY aesthetic which corporate America is ploughing millions of dollars into every day in support to make their corporate products appear more attractive to young people.

Making money is one thing but why do this kind of thing if it was purely for the dollar? Well, there are several non-commercial entrepreneurial initiatives also available for people such as Ben. The initiatives go by the names of things like “partying”, “meeting new friends”, “having fun” and “discovering the world and finding out lots of cool stuff about things”.

That might sound glib, but this new wave of entrepreneurs, which Ben is symbolic, of have built their brand / businesses around such “tent poles” and to me that’s one of the most inspirational things about this whole scenario.

If you were to ask me what were his initial motivations and inspirations then I would say that the above “tent poles” were pretty high up on the list, with “brand building” and “money making” a lot further down the list than being able to sing karaoke really loud at a bar with all your best friends while spraying the whole room with beer.

What would Ben and his peers like to achieve when this whole shitshow is done? Well I think in the long run, that not only the main objective, but the electrical current that runs throughout their lives and their worldview can be summed up by one word: Happiness.

Now that the price of going to the multiplex cinema for two people with snacks and drinks is pushing nearly half my monthly wage, I have to choose carefully of what I go and see. So we took a risk on Scream 4 and it totally paid off. I hadn’t read any of the pre-press but I know how Wes Craven operates so I predicted before the film that the killer would be female, that the words “Twitter” and “Facebook” would be mentioned very early on in the film and that the plot would examine themes like self-obsessions through new media and thorny questions like: “just how much is too much?”. I was correct on all counts. The next thing I’m going to the cinema to watch is “Let’s Talk About Kevin”, starring Tilda Swinton and directed by Lynne Ramsay who’s last film “Morvern Callar” was great and has tone of the most realistic ecstasy scenes ever shot; up there with “Enter The Void”, but totally different.

Chicago’s DJ Duo The Hood Internet is back at it again with the fifth volume of their mixtape series, and it does not disappoint. This time around they do everything from mashing up Sleigh Bells and Usher to Cee-Lo Green and Sir Mix-a-Lot, and even throw in a little Flock of Seagulls. It’s always interesting to see how these work, but they always do.It’s been more than a year since their last mixtape, which I also wrote about, but it was well worth the wait. And, true to my word of them exploding soon, when they’re not busy coming up with some of the most interesting mashups of artists you’d never imagine together, they are busy throwing tacos into album art with their blog, Album Tacos, which recently won editor’s choice for Best New Single-Topic Blog from Urlesque.

Speaking of music meme-making, the latest craze to pop up in the last few days is Who is Arcade Fire??!!?? The blog was made after the Arcade Fire beat out Eminem, Lady GaGa and others for a Grammy. People went nuts on Twitter, and the rest is beautifully screen-capped history. It’s just a shame Arcade Fire won for The Suburbs, which IMO was the weakest album they’ve put out.

What are we seeing? Finding information is rarely a challenge anymore. The challenge is finding the right information: the most interesting and personally relevant pieces of news, art, or entertainment.  Hunger for highly curated experiences is growing rapidly alongside a surge in sites and shows that find the newest, most unique items in a category, and present them in engaging ways. Interweb3000, a website in Berlin, delivers the “nerdiest” examples of art and entertainment, while The Vice Guide to Everything, an MTV show, selects obscure but informative current issues and devotes six-minute news segments to them. Escape into Life, an art website, introduces visual art and goes a step further by pairing it with prose.  At its core, Twitter functions as a prime curation device, filtering to people the exact information they crave.  Curating is as old as the gallery, but the web has allowed it to become much more specific and far-reaching.

“The Interweb 3000 is run by the ominous Dr. Katze, who trawls the internet day after day in search of the most nerdy, cool, arty stuff that you can’t come across on Google.” – Felix, Berlin

Why is it happening? With so much information available these days,  being constantly hip to the latest thing—even the obscure—is expected.  Curated experiences allow people to easily stay relevant with the unique information that builds on their individuality, a key motive for today’s younger generations. Curators themselves can even become a sort of rock star, achieving celebrity for their ability to find and deliver just the right niche content.

The Opportunity: Curated experiences will be a dominant theme in the future of media, and it presents a great opportunity for brands to increase their relevancy – and in turn become a part of a highly personalized experience.  Brands also can become curators themselves, effectively shaping the attitudes and direction of their category.  They can ensure they’re featured regularly in the curated sites their forward-minded audience follows.  The celebrity curator also presents a new personality for a brand to align with, support, or organically create as a brand spokesperson.

Because of this, the most intrepid self-promoters, and even some publicists, would track me down on Facebook to send me an individual pitch. While this could be a little annoying — it’s a personal, private page — I admired the effort taken to track me down.

Lately, though, these have dropped off — and they’re finding me on Twitter instead. This is particularly true of hip-hop artists and industry types, who seem to be particularly active on Twitter.

The direct Tweet pitch is a crap shoot, because not everyone checks their @ mentions regularly, and you’re obviously limited by the information you can provide in 140 characters. Still, if a local act randomly tweets me a song or video link, I’m often more likely to click it than if it was buried in a longer pitch message. If I’m checking Twitter, I’m probably not super-busy … so while it’s a very informal strategy, it’s one that works sometimes.

Strange happenings have been abuzz lately. The founder of Wikileaks has been arrested and has threatened the world with a “poison pill” of information should he or his organization be harmed. Mastercard and Visa’s websites were taken down by the 4chan group Anonymous. Gawker was hacked and millions of members’ passwords were revealed. Tumblr went down for less than 24 hours and millions of people were forced to be productive for a day.It’s interesting how much we rely on the internet in nearly every aspect of our lives these days. Most people have done away with balancing checkbooks because they can log in and see their account at their bank’s website. People (myself included) are watching more TV online than in front of the TV itself, or at the same time. People are meeting on the internet and ending up married. Iranians showed us that the government can silence the media but Twitter helps their voices get out to the world.

I often think about what the world would be like without the Web. How much more productive I would be without Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and instantaneous news at my fingertips 24/7? Sometimes I think I could do it. Mainly in the summer, though, when I can ride my bike to work and on the weekends. When I’m not stuck inside because the frozen tundra that is Chicago could kill me in a matter of minutes.

Then I think about everything that we wouldn’t learn if the internet were to explode a la the financial institutions at the end of Fight Club. In a way, I feel like the internet is almost a lifeform itself. It’s strong, but very fragile. If a bank site was to be attacked, it might erase tens of thousands of peoples’ life savings with the click of a button. Without Wikileaks, governments might not be held accountable for things they surely will be now that it has come out.

These are the kinds of things that scare me, but I could probably go on with life without LOLcats.