foursquare.com - the enemy of Authentic

We've just got back in from a great afternoon gig by Nick Thorpe and the new wave/ country/ rock Prayerbabies at the Union Hotel in Brunswick. I am Melbourne hot, but still burning enough to unleash 'mental of Middle Park' on the world being created and enhanced by the socially transmitted disease foursquare.com. And their ilk (you know who you are).

As I surveyed the rocking, family-heavy crowd having a fine time in a small pub in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, a recent tweet from @venessapaech ("I'll say it, foursquare is just plain silly") popped back into my brain and I couldn't help but consider how suckingk it would be to impose a yelping foursquare dot com culture on this treasure.

It's time we made some 'no foursquare' stickers with the slash through their logo, before it's too late.
Foursquare (for those who have been asleep for the last 6 months) is a 'social network' that enables you to show off to your friends as to how cool you are, gather repeat visitor badges and perhaps even become the 'mayor' of the nearest coffee shop, with resulting retail discounts for you and all your friends. It reminds me of a digital strain of herpes in some ways.

I did not want your store loyalty card in exchange for my email address in 2001, and I don't want your gimmicky digital equivalent in 2010.

Naturally it's got all the vulture capitalist buzzwords du jour - cloud, lbs (not leg before stumps, location based services), social network, platform... (blogger feellinnnnggggg slleeeeeeeepppyyyyy...). And naturally it's worth more than the GDP of New Zealand.

It is about creating a world like Friends, the TV show, on your iPhone. And we know how real that was.

During the week I listened to an impassioned plea for the avoidance of temptation to join the current zombie economy, a great term describing the massive brainwashing people are getting this century into thinking that if you don't have a 50" flat screen Sony TV, XBOX, surround sound, $10,000 on your credit card, an iPhone 3GS, 2,000 Facebook friends, the new Commodore and a 6 figure mortgage, you are not actually living.

Fortunately the equal and opposite force of the zombie economy is a desperate rush for authenticity. As things get more fake, buying local produce, riding a bike (not a hipster fixie though) or going to live music becomes a life-enhancing thing. As it was for us this afternoon with the Prayerbabies.

I didn't need my dog food online in 2000, I don't need dozens of facebook friends, and I don't need to know where you all are this afternoon drinking your free Pabst Red Label that you got for checking in 10 times already this year. That ain't real.

Now I think about it, the whole lbsn idea (location based social network, I made that up by the way, can I have some vulture capital now please?) was quite possibly founded on the Australian Kath and Kim social principle of 'Loogamoi, loogamoi', and it comes to mind they missed a real chance to launch loogamoi.com, an LBS plotting your movements around Fountaingate shopping centre. Instead some upstarts with a product called Fastmall beat them to it.

Make no mistake, I'm not an utter misanthrope - I was absolutely thrilled to run into Travis, Jason and Mel, there with kids in tow, but the thrill was in the coincidence and the spontaneity.

As luck would have it, the only foursquare action at the Union was the dancing going on (average age 4, main dance move, the square). Long may that be so.