Good Grape Wine Company

February 22 2007

Postscript Pt. II: A Final Word

As a final, final postscript to the WineX story from yesterday, a story that received more wine blogosphere notice than any other story I can recall over the last year aside from the resveratrol angle, I was forwarded this story about being in the waning years of the 18-34 demographic.

We’ll soon return to normal wine related items, things of interest to most, but this article especially resonated because I too am in the last year of the 18-34 demo, the demo that WineX alleged to appeal to, and it hits the mark on a couple of notes.  And, as well, I feel connected to WineX in a dysfunctional relationship kind of way, having followed the magazine for the last seven or eight years, fraught with frustration.

Well, it’s now 2007 and the generation who rages together ages together. We are now older, in managerial positions—but still creating companies aimed at driving forward the growth and adoption of technology and knowledge. Of course, we also embrace terms like “viral marketing” and “social networking,” all of which are slightly ambiguous terms used to explain the daily occurrences of life in an online environment where things are out of our control, and yet we still want to take credit for them. We try to harness the power of the consumer and use it for the “greater good” which basically means we pawned off the creative responsibility for 50% of what we do and called it “user-generated content.” We even convinced Time magazine to give “You” the award for Person of the Year in 2006, primarily because we couldn’t figure out if there was anyone who stood out and did something more important than the rest of us. No; our enthusiasm for the future is actually quite strong, because we keep finding ways to make our jobs fun and create new opportunities for us to sell ourselves to the world at large.

In particular, the one thing that really sticks out about WineX, especially in the autopsy phase, is that it provoked strong feelings—mostly vitriolic feelings—completely in contrast to warm fuzzies of social communities on the Internet.  Rare is the time when people proverbially call out the son of a bitch at his funeral.  Unfortunately, Darryl Roberts is getting that kind of flack online.  Simply, he never was able to sell himself or his magazine to the industry, not too mention the world at large.

The second notion is a truism related by the esteemed Lloyd Dobler from the movie “Say Anything,” excerpted from the post:

Of course, now my mind drifts off into space and I recollect the famous words of one Lloyd Dobler, from the movie “Say Anything”: “A career? I’ve thought about this quite a bit, sir, and I would have to say, considering what’s waiting out there for me, I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career…” and so on and so on.

Like I said, tomorrow we’ll return to normal programming, but for one last moment let’s reinforce the point that Generation X doesn’t want to ‘sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed.”  Ultimately, the plaintive wail of a lack of industry support from Darryl Roberts is an industry renouncement of not only his magazine, but also his demographic processing. 

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