Sun in an empty blog.

Is something truly viral marketing when it is marketed to and promoted by one single website?

This question's been on my mind for the past few days after the whole supposed "viral marketing campaign" debuted by Fall Out Boy to (I guess) announce their new record, Folie A Deux through a website called CitizensForOurBetterment.com. The curtain's been revealed now and at that website you'll find a free, downloadable "mixtape" with a number of FOB demos as well as some other goodies (I'm partial to the incredibly terrible/awesome cover of Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" by Cobra Starship), but I really have to wonder what the whole point was. The only place I ever saw any clues or hints as to what this whole thing was about was absolutepunk.net (and trust me, I read that site so you don't have to). They were obviously somewhat in on the whole thing, at least to the point where someone on the inside was leaking them clues to post, but then things got even crazier when Copeland weaseled their way into the whole thing by making mirrors of the viral sites but for their own album, the absolutely terribly titled You Are My Sunshine. (Seriously, I like Copeland, but they tend to have horrendous album titles.) Tons of "news" blurbs were posted with cryptic messages linking to even more cryptic websites that may or may not have had an overall purpose, and it kept a small amount of people probably busy for a few hours.

But here's the thing: I didn't see a single thing for this "viral marketing campaign" anywhere besides absolutepunk.net. According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, viral marketing is generally agreed upon as being "a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily," that "may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages."

Can someone explain to me how anything that either one of these bands did related in any way to what viral marketing actually is? I mean, someone like Nine Inch Nails totally got it right with last year's Year Zero -- hiding flash drives in bathrooms in Europe, creating dozens of fake websites with tons of hidden goodies, having a Cleveland-area phone number with an automated message regarding "the resistance" if you called it, hidden messages on tour T-shirts; this is how you properly create interest in something. But with this pseudo-viral marketing for the FOB record, it's almost like the thing was over before it even got off the ground, and was essentially centered around the Mos Eisley Cantina of music websites. (Y'know, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." What, are there no Star Wars fans reading this?) As smart a businessman as Pete Wentz is, you'd think something like this would've had a bit more oomph to it to be properly pulled off. As it is, it's just a small blip on a few thousand peoples' radars, most of whom will never bother to see if anything new ever develops with it (instead just waiting for the aforementioned cantina to spoon-feed it to them).

Are we really this ADD-addled? Is a Fall Out Boy fan's attention span really that much shorter than that of a Nine Inch Nails fan? Has our culture really forced itself into an "instant gratification or I'm moving on" mindset?

This is me sighing.