I recently saw the movie Superbad at my local AMC theater establishment. The movie features two lifelong friends at the end of their senior year of high school. Superbad is a pretty funny movie overall and is actually quite chillingly (and pathetically) accurate. I say pathetic because the movie is primarily about the social importance of a boner and/or two friends who probably are merely in the closet about their attraction to each other. I realize saying this may turn you off from watching the movie (unless you have an undeniable sapidity for boners), but thats not my intention at all. I am not really intending to sway your decision on the viewer ship of Superbad in anyway, merely point out the significance of its content to how much we well… Suck.

The entire movie our two heroes continually discuss intercourse and how they intend to bed each person’s respective chick. They discuss every aspect down to the effects of the use of spermicidal lube and wither they will actually need this useful tool or not. Needless to say these dudes have their shit covered. They seem to know sex in and out, every aspect of laying a girl is eerily plotted out to the final detail. These dudes have been studying and discussing sex for a long time… Either that or they just really, really like porn (which is probably just as likely).

At the end of the movie, both our heroes blow it in a sense. Neither actually ends up “doing the deed” and both in fact realize this isn’t actually what they wanted all along. I think this is extremely important because this says a lot about American culture in general. This is why our heroes are a metaphor for the common man and Superbad is a metaphor for the road to the American Dream.

We run into this same problem daily in American society. So often people completely understand a topic that they actually don’t understand in any way. Many are able to maintain a working conversation on a topic and can probably help troubleshoot basic aspects of said topic, but in reality have absolutely no idea how the topic in fact works. I run into this problem every day in my line of work. VERY few New Media people in the music industry actually have working knowledge of how the internet works. They can talk the talk and know the sites to go to, but have no idea how to implement even simple tasks on their own.

This is very interesting because it poses a huge problem for the music industry. This is also a big reason why the industry has so far been unable to effectively monetize the internet and is still scratching at the surface of an extremely profitable avenue. The vast majority of people in these jobs understand words like “widget” or “web 2.0″ and probably use them in everyday conversation, but actually have no idea how either works. This is a huge problem, because how much can you actually understand a topic if you have no grasp on its working knowledge? We see this problem in Superbad, because our heroes at the end of the day have no idea how to finish the deed with these girls because they have never actually done it. They don’t have the correct moves and in the end even realize it isn’t what they wanted. This is important because up until that point, they would never have questioned their dedication to their copulations.

Here is the point. How can any industry or person set goals on a topic they don’t even understand? Our heroes set a goal that they wanted to have sex with these girls and yet realized when they tried that in the end that wasn’t what they wanted. We are an entertainment industry that continues to say we want to screw and yet have never screwed a thing in our lives. We are setting ourself up for failure with our lack of intimate knowledge for what it is we are actually developing.

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