Waiting out "sitcom good"

As everyone in the startup world knows by now, the most successful ideas challenge our basic assumptions about how things might be done. Because they don't fit any existing standards for what counts as good when we first hear about them, by default we judge them as bad. For instance, Hewlett-Packard famously turned down Steve Wozniak's idea of an affordable computer to be kept at home for personal use. So if you're looking to invest in startups, or to find co-founders interested in starting one, it helps to keep in mind that startup ideas that sound plausible usually fail, while one that sounds awful might actually change history for the better.

In his latest essay, Paul Graham illustrates this point by imagining the kind of startup a sitcom character might start. If the underlying idea of the startup were truly daring and original, then the audience wouldn't understand it, or worse, they'd mistake it for one intended to sound laughably bad. So instead, the sitcom writers would probably choose to piece together elements of familiar successes from the recent past⁠— for example, a social network for pet owners⁠— to convey the impression of a daring and original idea. But of course, this is exactly the kind of startup that's least likely to succeed in real life. "Sitcom good," in other words, doesn't mean "real-life good."

Graham's point reminds me of the time I watched High Fidelity a while back. In the movie, Jack Black's character is always asking his friends to come to his shows, but each time they politely decline because his band has a terrible name. Towards the end of the movie, however, they finally go see him play, and he wows them all with a faithful rendition of a Marvin Gaye song. As it turns out⁠— to no one's surprise in the audience, of course⁠— his band is actually really, really good.

Except I was disappointed, because I was expecting "real-life good," not just "movie good." In other words, good enough to impress in real life the kind of music snob played by John Cusack in the movie. But then I realized I was being unfair. Had the screenwriters actually called for Jack Black's band to be "real-life good"⁠— as in daring and original for its time⁠— the audience wouldn't have understood it, or worse, they would've mistaken it for something intended to sound laughably bad. So instead, they had to call for something familiar to convey the impression of a band good enough to wow everyone present. "Movie good," in other words, doesn't mean "real-life good."

In the past decade or so, file sharing and streaming media have changed the nature of how we hear about and listen to new music. There's now a palpable feeling in the air that not only are we watching history being written in real time, but we're all helping to write it. So as history's screenwriters, we need to advance the plot every now and then with the discovery of new bands making daring and original music. What might such music sound like?

For starters, it can't sound like anything anyone would mistake for laughably bad. Black youth from the Bronx delivering spoken rhymes over scratched turntables and sampled beats, for instance, wouldn't have flown thirty years ago. Instead, the most plausible candidates would probably piece together elements of familiar successes from the recent past. So the key to finding them would be to stay alert and informed enough to know in advance what the next big thing will be, and then once we spot them, to single them out with surgical precision.

A perfect example might be this description of Bon Iver from a Pitchfork review: "There's something irresistible about the thought of a bearded dude from small-town Wisconsin retreating heartbroken to a cabin to write some songs." But of course it's irresistible⁠— it would be instantly recognisable in any sitcom or movie as the backstory for some mysterious, misunderstood character whom we all wish to be, or be with, in real life. And of course the music itself doesn't disappoint, hitting all the right tropes that convey beautiful and heartfelt to us. So Bon Iver is "sitcom good." Heck, he might even be "sitcom best."

This isn't to argue that it's cynical in its emotional appeal. Of course listening to Bon Iver is a genuinely moving experience, just like Jack Black's channeling of Marvin Gaye was a truly masterful performance. But we're being asked to take on faith that the bands we've chosen for our times aren't just good enough to be written into History (the script), but actually daring and original enough to be remembered by history (the actual thing). And that's where it gets problematic.

Because, as with startups, lowercase history recognises bands as good not because we say so and then root for them to succeed, but because market forces demand that they be reckoned with. These markets don't need to be financial, mind you; they can be cultural, intellectual, and social as well. After all, Reddit and Wikipedia don't make much profit, just like the Velvet Underground still doesn't sell many records. But people use Reddit and Wikipedia because their services are extremely useful, and people still talk about the Velvet Underground because there's so much to say about them. These are things we actually want, sometimes in spite of ourselves; we don't just want to want them.

And the startup world now knows this. It recognises that history can't be written in real time. History is simply made, by people and events that no one expects, and to believe that greater awareness and more experience can help one get better at predicting the future is to completely misunderstand how innovation and progress work. By definition, we can't expect the unexpected. Instead, the key to preparing for the daring and original ideas of the future is to stay open-minded, dismiss nothing by default, and always diversify, taking enough smart risks so that many small failures can be offset by a few large successes. Much like how the major labels operated in their heyday, come to think of it⁠— minus the heartless part, of course.

But here's the depressing thing. It took the startup world decades to learn this lesson, and only after seeing numerous instances of smart, influential people not initially getting the point of personal computers, web-based email, micropayments, camera phones, and so on. Indie rock, by contrast, not only hasn't even taken a first step towards understanding this yet, but for the past few decades has been teaching itself the completely opposite lesson that tomorrow's pioneers can be anticipated and chosen in advance. So Bon Iver's entry into the mainstream, which wowed few outside this scene, has been tallied a roaring success, while Pitchfork's recent People's List⁠— in which indie rock kids overwhelmingly favoured a major-label band whose rise to critical acclaim could never have been anticipated or guided along by the indie labels⁠— doesn't seem to have inspired any real soul-searching here.

But even once indie rock finally does experience its definitive "Hewlett-Packard turning down Steve Wozniak" moment, most likely it will still be decades before people in this scene start to figure out how innovation and progress actually work, and that history just can't be written in real time. Until then, they'll continue to insist that the key to discovering daring and original music is simply to stay alert and informed enough to call it before it happens. Good in indie rock, in other words, is going to mean "sitcom good" for a long, long time to come.

So if you're interested in hearing the daring and original bands of our times, you might want to dust off some old vinyl records for now. Maybe take up knitting.

Because you're in for quite a wait…

Addendum, December 17, 2012: Yes, Bon Iver certainly has a market, but markets can be artificially inflated. When an indie band is granted exposure to the mainstream and wins a Grammy, only to then suffer an immediate backlash while failing to gain widespread support or recognition, it can probably be said to have had its cultural worth inflated somewhat by various insiders and press.

By contrast, the latest teen pop stars are not an artificially inflated market, because no major label signs them believing in their longevity to begin with. Releasing a few singles that sell millions before fading into obscurity is exactly what they were meant to do all along.

I'm not saying that Bon Iver can't eventually make history. The market for his music will now correct itself by deflating somewhat, yes, but he'll have the spotlight for a long time, along with multiple chances to get it right. And to be clear, I do agree that his music is beautiful. It's just that it isn't capable of maintaining cultural relevance on its own without the crutch of indie rock's hopes and values to prop it up.

Doing without such crutches, though, is exactly what needs to happen for any artist to be historically memorable. Today's mainstream and tomorrow's history might share few similar priorities, but the one thing they definitely do have in common is a complete disregard for what indie rock wants them to want.

Major labels not too shabby on the People's List…

In my last post while discussing privilege, I linked to an editorial that lambasts Pitchfork's recent People's List for being made up mostly of artists who are White and male. Plenty have discussed this aspect of it to death, so I won't. What I find interesting is that half the artists in the top ten debuted on a major label, including Radiohead, who occupy the first, second, and sixth slots. (The other three are the Strokes, Wilco, and Kanye West. Since Radiohead appears three times, there are only eight total.)

The fact that Radiohead makes the strongest showing by far is particularly noteworthy, given that few had any real faith in them when they were first signed. Remember, they were just a Nirvana clone like every other band of that era, all swept up by the major labels using the shotgun approach despised so much by indie rock kids to this day. And through the years, Radiohead themselves have tried hard to downplay this ignoble origin, along with the incredible resources afforded them because of it. But in doing so, they're doing us all a huge disservice, by obscuring the reality of where great music might come from and how it might be discovered.

The indie labels look for bands whose creative habits appear fully blossomed. This approach helps guard against nasty surprises, but it also ensures that a breakout phenomenon like Radiohead will probably never happen under their watch. And yet, Radiohead made the two best albums of the past fifteen years, according to the very subcultural demographic that most ardently supports these indie labels!

Isn't that weird? That's weird to me.

Indie rock is intelligent design

Mrs. K: Now, class, the big magic recital's coming up, so we're going to start with some basic toad-to-prince spells. Everybody get out their toads.
Lisa: Hocus-croakus!
(Her toad turns into a tidy prince.)
Mrs. K: Oh, excellent, Lisa. A-plus. (Aside to prince.) And we'll discuss your grade over breakfast.
Prince: (Gulps and chuckles nervously.) Yes, rather.
Mrs. K: Well, Bart, did you study your spell book last night, or did your fairy godmother die again?
Bart: I studied. (Waves wand.) Abraca… turn-into-a-prince-guy?
(His toad turns into a monstrous cross between a toad and a man that can't stop throwing up.)
Mrs. K: Sloppy work as usual. Lisa's casting spells at an eighth-grade level; you've sinned against nature.
Toad-man: Please kill me.
Bart: (To Lisa.) You think you're so great just because you have godlike powers.
Prince: (Walks between Bart and Lisa.) Stand away from milady!
Bart: (Picks up toad-man.) Get in there! Defend my honor!
Toad-man: (Throws up on Lisa's prince.) Every moment I live is agony!
—The Simpsons, in the episode "Treehouse of Horror XII."

Those who defend the theory of evolution often bristle to see religion asserting itself in a debate where it has no role to play. What tends to get overlooked, however, is that a very secular reason still exists for why some out there might prefer to see an omnipotent hand in life's creation: Natural selection is just mind-numbingly brutal. The random, unguided process of trial and error necessitates that innumerable creatures had to struggle in pointless existence, and entire branches and lineages had to be wiped out with nary a protest from the indifferent universe, just so that we could be here today.

The thinking goes like this: We don't have to give up on the technical processes of evolution completely, but wouldn't it be great to know that some conscience up there was in charge of the whole operation? Because if it was known all along that the goal was to steadily push towards humanity, then there would've been no need to branch out into countless detours and dead ends that could only result in widespread suffering and mass extinction. And the miracle of human life wouldn't have to rest upon past cycles of cataclysm and genocide after all.

When you think about it, the major labels in the '80s and '90s worked very much according to the evolution model. In their attempt to seek out the strongest and longest-lasting, they laid a claim on any and every aspiring contender they could find. There was no central, coherent vision, as exemplified by Geffen's signing of both Guns N' Roses and Nirvana, two bands that couldn't be more different in their ideals and temperaments. And every once in a while, a lackluster Pablo Honey today blew up into a world-changing OK Computer tomorrow. In fact, it was exactly such surprise successes that kept the wheels churning and justified every Material Issue that inevitably got trampled by the wayside. Survival of the fittest, after all, means that the unfit won't survive.

The major labels had no idea what they wanted, and therefore they simply looked everywhere, indiscriminately exploiting and tearing apart music scenes as they went. The indie labels vowed not to repeat this sin. Partly out of necessity and partly out of principle, they took the opposite course, choosing bands with great care based on predefined aesthetics, methods, and values. When you know in advance what you want, you need never unwittingly string anyone else along, allowing them to chase false hopes and empty promises down countless detours and dead ends. I think you know where this is going. Indie rock is based on the model of intelligent design.

Now, I support the theory of evolution myself, but it's not so essential to my argument which side of the debate you're on. Perhaps the amazing diversity of flora and fauna on this planet was brought about by random processes taking place on a global scale over billions of years, or perhaps it was guided along by an all-knowing and all-powerful entity. Either way, it definitely couldn't have been micromanaged by any one of us, and this is the flaw of the indie label model: They're human, so what comes next is only what they can readily envision. Now sure, if you're an indie label, it's quite possible to find and be charmed by something a bit off-kilter and completely unexpected, should it happen to land in your sights. But your fundamental assumptions regarding who, what, how, and why will remain unchallenged, and your scene will fail to evolve.

I'm not saying we need to go back to those uncaring days when the major labels threw everything against the wall to see what would stick and then tossed away the rest. But the indie labels have left us with a music scene that isn't committed to thinking differently so much as it just happens to think differently, in a manner no less fixed or rigid than the mainstream it sought to overcome. What makes it the worse scenario is that faith in their intelligent design allows us to revel in a feeling of progress, without actually having to endure the kind of woefully unfair and world-shattering upheaval that actual progress often entails.

Because, for better or worse, pain is an unavoidable part of making history.

Artistic invention needs top-down models

I made a Kickstarter page to help create buzz for my upcoming Rosalind Franklin comic book and album, and now it's looking pretty likely that it will fail, having reached only 25% of my stated goal of $2000. I didn't ask my friends and family for pledges beyond sending just a casual email, for the same reasons I hate badgering them to come to my shows. This ultimately hurt me, I think, not just by denying me visible momentum, but because earnest self-promotion is probably the kind of thing that Kickstarter's crew looks for before considering a project worthy of further endorsement. I bring none of this up out of resentment or disappointment. Rather, I've been thinking lately about top-down versus bottom-up models for music distribution and exposure, and what it all means for artistic inventors. My thoughts on Kickstarter happen to tie in rather nicely with this subject.

At any given time, there are eight projects being promoted on the Kickstarter main page, and twelve for each individual region and category. Click to see more, however, and the results immediately grow too numerous for any one person to reasonably sift through. And since each search is based on only one criterion, it's not really possible to narrow the choices down any further. I don't think this is an accident. There are too many truly amazing projects out there, and not enough donors to fund them all. If each of us were able to find the one project out of hundreds that speaks to us the most, our money would be spread too thin, and few projects would meet their goals. The present layout is probably the optimal way for the highest number of projects to be successfully funded.

Don't get me wrong, I'm confident that Kickstarter does its best to shine a spotlight on the most interesting and unique projects out there. But as more and more projects pour in, this role of curator becomes increasingly difficult, forcing them to step further aside and let things run their natural course. This seems to give the advantage to three categories of projects: inventions that serve an immediately useful purpose, works by professionals and established artists, and those by amateurs with enough friends and family who support their efforts. Not coincidentally, all three hold a natural advantage in the real world as well. So the more projects there are, the more Kickstarter becomes an impartial forum for conducting transactions between creators and consumers. Like CDBaby a decade earlier, its early adopters might remember it as a true game-changer, but for most of us from here on out, its reputation will be that of a trusted facilitator.

My aim isn't to criticise either of these fine resources for artists and creators. They just serve to illustrate my point that every top-down system ultimately settles into a bottom-up one, regardless of original intent. Now, I'm naturally predisposed towards top-down models myself, given my own artistically inventive tendencies. My music just isn't accessible enough on the surface to build grassroots momentum from the bottom up; it needs to be validated first from the top down by music writers and distribution agreements. So I recognise that my perspective on this matter might be biased. Even so, I believe this argument is perfectly reasonable: We all have to concede that history is the final judge, and history is very much a top-down affair. Historians ultimately have the final say over who gets remembered and which works are deemed relevant, with or without the consent of the general public.

So why is it so difficult to preserve top-down institutions, given their greater accordance with history? I think there are four reasons. First, as evinced by the Kickstarter example, bottom-up is really just the default situation in the absence of any input from a curator. The top-down mindset seeks to impose a value system, but extracting order from entropy requires constant effort; at some point it slips or gives up, and then everything returns to the default manner of ranking. Second, we all want to belong to the elite, yet none of us wants to be an elitist. (The English language, incidentally, is a beautiful example of bottom-up design!) So it isn't rare to see some of the biggest beneficiaries of top-down thinking in bygone years turn around to become its loudest critics today. (One word: Radiohead.)

The third reason is that one person's top-down might be another's bottom-up, and vice versa, so it's easy for one to be given the other's credit or blame. For example, which one aptly describes the major labels? If I understand today's indie rock scene correctly, the accepted narrative is that the corporate bigwigs shoving their generic music down our throats represent the top-down model, while those bands working hard to win over one new fan at a time represent the bottom-up. But for me as a college student in the 90s, it was the opposite: the music of the masses was what you heard on the radio. Meanwhile, I wanted to be like the snooty record store clerks who told me I had to check out Tortoise and Mogwai, just because. Good music wasn't determined by vote back then; it was decreed by a mysterious league of enlightened insiders. And I wasn't alone in feeling this awe.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realise that neither of these viewpoints captures the bigger picture, which is that both major labels and indie labels began as top-down systems, and both eventually subsided into bottom-up ones, just like Kickstarter. And there's no parity between top-down and bottom-up: The former turns into the latter, and never the other way around. So regardless of which approach anyone favours, I think one point is indisputable: Top-down systems are much more rare, and may even be extinguished long before new ones arrive to take up their mantle. This is worth pondering because each privileges a slightly different subset of the creative population. I mentioned earlier that certain projects hold a natural advantage in the real world. Technological invention makes our lives easier, for example, and we all crave artistic beauty, so we're inclined to reward creative pursuits in either of these directions. This is where top-down and bottom-up thinkers are in complete agreement.

Artistic invention, however, doesn't solve any problems; on the contrary, it makes things more complicated. And rather than work with familiar notions of beauty, it strives to create exotic and alien ones. So no one needs it, and understandably, most don't want it. History does reserve a high seat on its totem pole for artistic inventors, though, and top-down thinkers are more likely to consider the bigger picture of how the present fits into history. So they'll readily champion the tendency towards artistic invention, even if, like everyone else, they're not always enthusiastic about the results. This is the one issue, and perhaps the only issue, on which top-down and bottom-up thinkers disagree. But it's big enough to give us the fourth reason why top-down models are so difficult to sustain: Top-down thinking will always reserve the right to give the world what it neither needs nor wants. And that, to nearly everyone's sensibilities, is just plain crazy.

So what is there for artistic inventors to do? I don't know, but as we walk the earth in search of unspoiled top-down pastures, I think it's important to remember that we did sign up for this. Even if we never did read the fine print, this was always part of the agreement. Beyond that, I'm afraid there's probably not much else to do but sit back, keep trying out our half-baked ideas, write some long blog posts, and wait for history to give us our big break.

Update, August 10, 2011: The Kickstarter campaign failed. Again, I want to make it clear that I didn't write this post in bitterness or frustration. I just care deeply about the future of music, so I'm always contemplating how this business model or that social ideal will shape its progress. Up until now, I've been treating this blog as more of a repository for talking points. It's not that I've intentionally kept mum about it; rather, I've just been lackadaisical about making it public⁠— the same attitude I harbour towards anything not directly related to creating music. However, this carries the disadvantage and danger of keeping my thoughts locked inside an echo chamber. So, in the next few days I'm going to be more proactive about promoting this blog. Feel free to leave comments, especially if you think any of my ideas might warrant a rebuttal.

Indie rock's place in music history

Let's say you know nothing about classical music, and you ask me to recommend a good composer for you. Suppose I were to respond, "Well, there was this guy two hundred years ago who was really well liked by everyone in the Hamburg scene. He was always promoting upcoming shows, and he would always stick around for hours afterwards, signing autographs and chatting with fans. Oh, and get this: He started his own music publishing company, because he wanted to empower himself and others as independent artists!" If I were to say all that, I think you would look at me like I had sponge cake for brains. These aren't traits we typically value in long-dead composers.

And yet, it's openly acknowledged and celebrated that building up a following and being self-reliant in matters of promotion is precisely what gets a band noticed and respected in the indie rock scene. The kind of priorities which set indie rock proudly apart from the popular mainstream, in other words, are also counterintuitive to music history as a whole. If a band aspires to get signed to an indie label, they're expected to expend enormous amounts of time and energy on doing things, and being things, that really don't matter much to the greater world of people who listen to and appreciate music across oceans, generations, and ideological divides.

It's not that actual music is incidental to indie rock; rather, the goodwill that a band naturally generates by being out and about invariably carries over into our assessment of their music. Objective standards provide a mechanism to counter this tendency, but a scene like indie rock that rejects such standards will grow to cheer it on instead, comfortable in its assertion that a band's artistic worth is inextricable from its likability. So if one runs an indie label, and one likes Band A better than Band B as individual people, then one will attend more of their shows, one will hear and like their music more, one will judge them to be the better band, and one will ultimately sign them over Band B. And since supporting indie labels is how bona fides get earned, we're left with relatively few past instances in which these judgments have been openly called into question.

But how long can this kind of support last before it finally begins to erode? After all, the difference between Band A and Band B is still a blind taste test for the general public. We'll always choose Band A over the Band B we know nothing about since they didn't get signed, of course, but we don't live in a vacuum; all of us know some amazingly talented Band B working our local scene. Overall, they probably number in the tens of thousands. Check out the most recent addition to any indie label's roster, though, and chances are it won't be readily obvious what advantages their music possessed to have vaulted them over the tens of thousands of other bands equally worthy of consideration. Don't get me wrong, they're almost always pretty good. But the same could be said about all the forgotten bands snapped up by the major labels in the heady 90s. Remember Chalk FarM?

Back then, the major labels were casting a wide net, signing every band out there who'd worked hard to build up a regional following, hoping to find just a few who could make it big and recoup all their investments, with a tidy sum added to boot. The rest had their fins sliced off before being thrown back into the sea. The majors were hoping to make a killing; by contrast, the indies in these uncertain times are simply trying to make a living. Signing bands who signal a can-do spirit towards self-promotion minimises their risk of losing money. So it's easy to sympathize with their struggles to stay afloat; nobody will be penning an indie-label counterpart to Steve Albini's rant against the major labels anytime soon.

And yet, their respective criteria for choosing which bands to sign aren't really all that different, are they? And as such, couldn't the same be suggested about their respective places in music history?

The indie label signaling game is broken

The major labels have plenty of money to throw around, so it's no big deal for them to snatch up any and every band out there that can demonstrate a shred of artistic potential. If a band is successful, the payoff is enormous; if not, they're held in permanent indenture. Either way, the decision to sign is relatively straightforward and painless for the labels, since it involves little risk for them. In its heyday, this system was foolproof.

By contrast, the indie labels don't have unlimited resources at their disposal. Thus, they can't invest in unrealised potential; they invest in working bands. The decision to sign can be agonisingly difficult: who can really say that one band is intrinsically better than another, out of the tens of thousands of bands out there? In the end, local buzz and a history of touring make all the difference; from the perspective of the labels, this kind of proven track record conveniently signals a band's seriousness and competence. And in its heyday, this system was pretty effective as well.

We all know that thanks to the Internet, the major label system has been broken for quite some time now. Few seem to have noticed that the indie label signaling game has been no less compromised, however. I would argue that a signaling game is broken once those sending the signals are: a) aware of its rules, and b) able to affect the outcome based on that awareness. In this age of the self-empowered artist, these two conditions are increasingly the norm. Bands today have both the incentive and the wherewithal to cultivate their signaling devices directly, while cutting corners on improving the artistic skills that such signals are meant to signify. To be fair, these efforts are almost always sincere, not cynically manipulative; they simply follow the wisdom of our day, after all. And the difference is so subtle and the change has been so gradual that few of us even notice.

Look at touring, for example. In the past, with nothing else at stake, bands used to tour only once they believed they were either good enough or popular enough to recover the exorbitant costs involved. Plus, it's easier to develop as a songwriter and musician when one isn't under constant pressure to tour. Doing things in this order just makes sense. Nowadays, though, bands barely half a year old willingly go on tour at a loss, playing to empty bars and clubs in cities where no one has heard of them, hoping that such efforts will signal that they're good and popular enough.

And it's hard to argue with this wisdom when the indie labels receiving these signals haven't bothered to modify their interpretations. But they will soon enough. I'm reminded of the emergency exit doors in the subway stations here in New York, which emit a high-pitched siren when opened. They also double as service doors for large carts, strollers, and anything else that can't fit through the turnstiles, in which case a station agent will deactivate the alarm. But due to budget cuts, many stations are no longer manned by an agent, so people are constantly streaming out the doors every other minute; as a result, the emergency siren is now just more background noise to tolerate and ignore. It no longer signifies anything; it's useless as a signal.

And since any band with a whole lot of free time can jump aboard a tour van, or badger their friends with emails about upcoming shows, the results obtained by these measures are now useless as signals of artistic worth; they've become just more background noise to filter out. Someday soon, the indie labels will have to acknowledge that their signaling game is broken. And then what? What will all that time and effort spent sharpening one's signals be worth then? I'd imagine it would feel like maxing out your credit card to buy leather pants the week before grunge broke.

So this is why I'm spending the next few months working on a comic book to go along with the upcoming Rosalind Franklin album. I enjoy drawing, I think the album will benefit artistically from it, and I believe there are enough people out there who can appreciate it. I'd like to get better at creating outstanding works, not worry about bringing those works to a wider audience, so that's where I'll concentrate my focus. It's a lousy mindset for getting signed to a label, yes, but a great strategy for being worthy of one. And it's only a matter of time before this observation becomes too painfully obvious to ignore.

So my advice to anyone out there interested in something beyond just transitory recognition, whether in the arts, academia, relationships, or anywhere else, follows this line of thinking: Invest in your talents, not in signaling devices. It doesn't benefit you in the long run to play anyone's signaling game. (Of course, only time will tell whether my advice is actually any good!)