• by Jack Feuer , April 2, 2008

Over omelets and chilaquiles at Sagebrush Cantina, Feuer the Younger announced that he no longer believes the Illuminati secretly run the world. Apparently, the kid's slow morph into maturity has reached a new stage. Most parents would welcome this. It pissed me off.

When the boy was all wild-eyed and ranting about corporate cabals and ads on MySpace, he burned with passion and determination. But now, conformity dampens the flame of his oratory. In other words, he's getting boring. And that regression perfectly mirrors what's happening in media and marketing.

I've used the word "boring" a lot in recent columns, most disturbingly to describe industry gatherings convened to ponder what tomorrow may look like. I've been uneasy, as if something had suddenly slowed down. And it has--the new world has gotten old.

The digital frontier has been tamed. We're civilizing cyberspace, stringing the electronic equivalent of barbed wire across the Internet. Even the asinine commentators on the ad blogs now seem more like backwards townspeople in a John Ford Western than citizens of a new technological order--albeit a lot more foul-mouthed.

Folks, if you're still talking about the future in terms that you've already explored ad nauseum--like integrated communications, cellphones and social networks--the revolution is over.

See, I expect vaporware from agency wingtip lickers who pore over Malcolm Gladwell or "The Art of War" for bullshit to use in new-business presentations. I don't expect digerati and venture capitalists to tell me, as they are, that the most exciting development on the marketing horizon is the ability to send a $1 pint of virtual beer to Joe Mandese's Facebook page on his birthday. (You're welcome, Joe.)

In English sci-fi author Simon R. Green's marvelously bloodthirsty "Deathstalker" series, the antagonist is a sadistic galactic empress nicknamed The Iron Bitch whose hobby is torturing people, humans or otherwise, by the thousands. She's opposed by a colorful band of revolutionaries, including an aging professional rebel named Jack Ransom who long ago stopped believing in justice. But he fights on regardless, because it's better to die spilling authority's blood than survive by licking its wingtips.

You guys used to be like that--filled with revolutionary fire. That's when you changed everything and rose up to bring down the Iron Bitch of mass-media convention. Look, I don't expect Richard Beaven to run around with a bloodied broadsword in his fist, screaming "Vengeance!" and chasing DraftFCB executives down West 33rd Street. But I fear we are entering a long period in which digital rules all and you, my furry little activators and planners, will find yourselves once again in thrall to dominant communications technology that abuses you at every turn.

As for Feuer the Younger, I have a plan to rekindle his anti-establishment fervor. Next Saturday at Sagebrush, I'm going to tell him that a vast advertising conspiracy runs the world out of Miami and Boulder. And by God, somebody needs to stop them before we all end up as comic relief in a Burger King commercial.