The Long Tail of Sexy by in Opinion / November 19th, 2007
It may not have hit home yet, but the writers’ strike in Hollywood is about to claim its first real victim. And despite his past accomplishments in this area, it’s going to take more than Justin Timberlake to fix it. Yes, my friends: Sexy is going away.
Think of it: your average TV show is, due to government regulations, stuffed full of extraneous dialogue and plotting, when in fact the only reason anyone tunes in is to see good-looking actors pose jauntily for the camera. Some shows work hard to disguise it (Law and Order), some embrace it (Las Vegas), and some think they’re cleverly doing both, but aren’t (Heroes, season 2). But the fact remains: you can’t legally make TV without a writer coming up with a reason for Kate Walsh to be dancing naked for five minutes.
Now, because those very scribes are on the picket lines, all these shows have ceased production, and come January we will be robbed of our flimsily-plotted primtetime soft-core porn. What are we to do? Luckily, Wired magazine’s intrepid editor, Chris Anderson, has provided us with the ultimate solution: the Long Tail. And no, it’s not quite as dirty as it sounds.
The theory goes like this: your average episode of Lost (where Kate inexplicably strips to her underwear to perform some menial task like fetching coconuts from a tree) is at the peak of the graph, where all the “hits” are. This is where we are used to getting our sexy. This peak is going away. Forget about it. Move on.
Instead, ask YouTube to show you the Sexy Long Tail, and you’ll find gems like these:
Love in the Stone Age
It’s not the narration or the mind-blowing soundtrack that pulls you in, it’s the lavishly-designed costumes! This is what Al Gore invented the internet for! Oh baby!
Crouching Tiger’s Tail
This excellent montage demonstrates how the web has evolved from a place where you look at hundreds of pictures of beautiful women on multiple web pages, to a place where a select few of those images are chosen by a stranger and crammed into an over-compressed video to help heighten your enjoyment. If only ABC could learn to do the same, we’d have been spared Brothers and Sisters.
Coconuts
And what list of “sexy” would be complete without this gem?
Yes, the Long Tail of Sexy has a wealth of opportunity for those willing to sacrifice the odd brain cell to the greater good. Don’t take this strike lying down! Take it sitting down, in front of your computer!
November 20th, 2007 at 10:18 am
[...] scandal surrounds a post Lexington made Monday night, entitled “The Long Tail of Sexy“. According to emails intercepted by PTTBT, it appears that the post was written at the [...]