I've been wading through Spook Country for the second time -- it makes Pattern Recognition look accessible -- and I came across Bigend's reference to "Trope Slope," (Ch. 20, "Tulpa," p. 105 in the Putnam hardback.)

Am I to understand the Bigend inserted some sort of digital product placement/advertising into all the segments of the footage from PR ? That's how I interpreted that exchange -- and if correct, my feelings toward Bigend must swing from ambivalent disinterest to throbbing hostility.

Anybody have a different take on that bit?

I believe he inserted products into classic films, not the footage. Probably used the rendering farm of some such.

Trope Slope might be an inside joke on Gibson's own predilection for Byzantine word-corridors.

I think spook Country has the more accessible prose by far.

My take was that Trope Slope was simply a system/plan Blue Ant had set up to insert and track viral video in the same way that was used with the Footage, for the purposes of advertising, sort of like ilovebees, not that they had repurposed the Footage itself.

And as for accessibility, I think SC is, language-wise, about the same as PR. The thing that makes PR more accessible is that the characters are more resonant and likable. Hollis is a hipster writer for hipster magazines, and who likes or identifies with that? Cayce may be a cool hunter, but her first identity is as a participant in a cult internet forum. Plus she hates branding (or that's what people take from her actually somewhat more complex phobia), and just about everybody hates branding. (The number of people who posted here saying "Cayce is just like me!" based on this single point is astounding.)

Edit: One more thing. I doubt WG actually worked out what Trope Slope actually was. He just wanted to connect the two novels and show that Bigend/Blue Ant had figured out how to co-opt the Footage somehow, the actual how being not so important.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Hollis is a hipster writer for hipster magazines, and who likes or identifies with that?

(furtive look)

The above comments should be read with a slightly tongue in cheek tone.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Edit: One more thing. I doubt WG actually worked out what Trope Slope actually was. He just wanted to connect the two novels and show that Bigend/Blue Ant had figured out how to co-opt the Footage somehow, the actual how being not so important.

Page 105 Putnam:

"You did that? Put that thing in the background of all those old movies? That's fucking horrible. Pardon my French."

"It sells shoes." He smiled.

quote:

Put that thing in the background of all those old movies?

Nice and ambiguous. Just the way we like it.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Page 105 Putnam:

"You did that? Put that thing in the background of all those old movies? That's fucking horrible. Pardon my French."

"It sells shoes." He smiled.

For me, that was a really powerful paragraph, the perfect way to summarize the lot of PR events. We know Bigend, somehow, found a way to put all those broken dreams to work for the god of commerce. As it should always be : )

I agree, it really reveals his core. He's curious, smart and hyper aware, but at the end of the day his vision is rather pedestrian.

He is the guy waiting in the wings to monetize and brand the nascent subcultures before they are even discovered.

pattern recognition sells shoes.
spook country sells cars.
book three sells?

so much for sex, drugs and rock'n'roll?

but yeah, i agree with uber's take on it, bigend used the footage techniques to put shoe product placement into classic films, and it was fucking horrible.

but then, what would you expect from anything called "trope slope", the combination of words causes this black spot of horror and offence in my head. *shudder*

Thank you, Uberdog, that was the exact quote I was referencing.

After reading the replies and studying the quote more, I'm going to have to stick with my original hypothesis:
Bigend saw the Footage as a new marketing opportunity and digitally inserted ads for some brand of footware into it... probably as background advertising: billboards, wall posters, etc. I believe it's the F:F:F clips instead of classic movies because (allow me to quote Bigend):

quote:

Trope Slope, for instance, our viral pitchman platform, was based on pieces of anonymous footage being posted on the Net.

Then comes Hollis's line:

quote:

You did that? Put that thing in the background of all those old movies? that's fucking horrible. Pardon my French.

There's nothing inherently viral about old movies, even classic ones, but there is about the Footage. And the Footage would appear to a casual observer -- which Hollis appears to be -- to be an old movie.

But I'll freely admit there's enough Gibson ambiguity to leave room for doubt. If I ever see him on tour, I'll try to ask him.

One thing about which there is no doubt: if Bigend digitally messed with either the Footage or classic movies, he deserves to be tarred and feathered.

even at its height the footage was an underground phenomena. what would the benefit be of adding adverts to the footage?

from your quotes "based on pieces of anonymous footage", suggests that the techniques for the viral platform were learnt from the footage. while "put that thing in the background of all those old movies" clearly doesn't mean footage, there is only at most 3 years between pattern recognition and spook country, so the footage is by no means "those old movies", that makes no sense. so the idea remains, that new adverts have been put into old films, because that makes sense. though of course, in real terms, old films are redundant, because they will all be replaced in the next 5 years by remakes, all of which will have the face of the minute with the brand of the minute. before they are remade in the next five years after that with the face of the minute with the brand of the minute.

edit: ok, in the context of the timeless feel of the footage you might get away with calling them old movies, but i don't buy that. makes no sense.

and as for tarring and feathering, to a degree bigend is the villain of the piece:

quote:

Bigend and his James Bond villain's car, his half-built headquarters
to match, his too much money, his big sharp curiosity and his bland
willingness to go poking it wherever he wanted. That was potentially
dangerous. Had to be.

I doubt Bigend would interfere with The Footage because it would only piss off all those cool people he wants to track - they are exactly the advertising averse types who would be most aggressively anti any interference. It's why he hired Cayce in the first place.

But dropping ads into old films would be no less than all the colorizing business Turner were messing around with for a while.

Simultaneous post! But yes, what remote said and also: there's the redundancy aspect. The footage already exists. Tampering with it would do no good unless all copies could be changed. And anybody who cared about it would already know where to get the originals from, so why even watch anything else?

quote:

Originally posted by Boomer1911A1:
Thank you, Uberdog, that was the exact quote I was referencing.

After reading the replies and studying the quote more, I'm going to have to stick with my original hypothesis:
Bigend saw the Footage as a new marketing opportunity and digitally inserted ads for some brand of footware into it... probably as background advertising: billboards, wall posters, etc. I believe it's the F:F:F clips instead of classic movies because (allow me to quote Bigend):

quote:

Trope Slope, for instance, our viral pitchman platform, was based on pieces of anonymous footage being posted on the Net.

Then comes Hollis's line:

quote:

You did that? Put that thing in the background of all those old movies? that's fucking horrible. Pardon my French.

There's nothing inherently viral about old movies, even classic ones, but there is about the Footage. And the Footage would appear to a casual observer -- which Hollis appears to be -- to be an old movie.

But I'll freely admit there's enough Gibson ambiguity to leave room for doubt. If I ever see him on tour, I'll try to ask him.

One thing about which there is no doubt: if Bigend digitally messed with either the Footage or classic movies, he deserves to be tarred and feathered.

I think what Bigend is saying is he took the viral nature, the rendering technology maybe, but at least the idea of recutting old film stock, and applied it to old movies whihc he distributed virally on something like YouTube.

I doubt you'd be watching Casablanca on TCM and see a Jimmy Choo advert on a frame shot of Ingrid Bergman's legs, say, but he likely did them up so you could go to YouTube and download it.

Keep in mind too, YouTube didn't exist in PR time, Gibson kind of "predicted" the emergence of that as well, what with people trading little clips of movies and what not.

So, Torp Slope is kind of the advertising precursor of a YouTube phenomenon.

And there's the very, very viral.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Keep in mind too, YouTube didn't exist in PR time, Gibson kind of "predicted" the emergence of that as well, what with people trading little clips of movies and what not.

he did say in paris that he had just timed it right, a little bit later and youtube would have caused real problems for pattern recognition.

Yeah, that's true, he was so on the cusp of it. I wonder what one would have done had YouTube popped up between the galleys and the printings?

From a very nitpicking angle, Youtube would have been a factor but the point is that the watermarking embedded in the clips' structure would have been lost if they were re-encoded.
The footage would still need to be those 'original' files stashed in random corners of the net. Uploading them to the Toob would be like xeroxing a drawing that has a hidden message in very fine print; that would be lost.

Excellent point.

It would have distilled the novelty I think. Although, when I read it in November of 2002 I didn't remember thinking it seemed new. I think I assumed this sort of thing was fairly regular on the net.

Not the mystery part per se, though there were ARG elements, but the trading of videos and posting about them.

It seemed natural even if it wasn't yet.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
The above comments should be read with a slightly tongue in cheek tone.

When I try a tongue-in-cheek tone, it sounds Down syndromish.