Incorrectomundo

According to Drudge and the left-wing dishrag, the Associated Press is trying to make inroads among 18-to-34 year olds by offering new services in multimedia. Stephen Green rips apart the AP's effort to be cool, in typically hilarious form...

Look. By the time someone has reached the age of 18, studies show they've been exposed to an average of 18 kazillion minutes of advertising. By the time they're 34, they have TiVo and don't see any ads at all. The 18-34 demographic is just as immune to "hip" ads as a Norwegian is to sickle-cell anemia.

I'll go on record right now and say that the AP's attempt at hipness will prove just as misguided and sadly humorous as that long ago summer I spent wearing my blue jeans pegged. 18-34 year-olds define what's hip, and their immunity to advertisements – in addition to their youth - explains why.

And yet the AP wants to be all cool, by giving their new service a no-caps-lock name like "asap" and giving those hep cats all the multimedia news they can handle.

Young people aren't told what's hip, they are what's hip. They don't read cool blogs – they write them. They don't download internet videos – they upload them. They don't download audio from "trusted" sources – they find it via P2P programs. They don't get wireless text from the AP – they send it to one another.

When the AP tries to be hip, it's like Richie Cunningham stealing the Fonz's leather jacket. And I know unhip when I see it – I'm a 36-year-old who thought it'd be cool to use a "Happy Days" reference.

I won't pretend that I'm any cooler -- I still think references to Happy Days are cool.