Blip (pronounced blip)
(1) A spot
of light on a radar screen indicating the position of a plane, submarine, or
other object (also as pip); any similar use on other electronic equipment such
as an oscilloscope.
(2) By
adoption from the use in radar (and applied very loosely), any small spot of
light on a display screen.
(3) In
any tracked metric (typically revenue, sales etc), a brief and usually
unexpected.
(4) In general use, an aberration, something unexpected and (usually) fleeting (often in the expression “blip on the radar”).
(5) In
electronic transmissions (audible signals), a pip or bleep (also both
onomatopoeic of short, single-pitch sounds).
(6) By
extension, any low level, repetitive sound (rare).
(7) In
the slang of software developers, a minor bug or glitch (retrospectively dubbed
blips if promptly fixed (or re-labeled as “a feature”)).
(8) A
specific data object (individual message or document) in the now defunct Google
Wave software framework.
(9) In
informal use, to move or proceed in short, irregular movements.
(10) In
automotive use, briefly to apply the throttle when downshifting, to permit
smoother gear-changing (the origin in the days of pre-synchromesh gearboxes,
especially when straight-cut gears were used) and still used in competition to
optimize performance but most instances by drivers of road cars are mere
affectations (used as noun & verb).
(11) In
informal use, abruptly to change a state (light to dark; on to off etc),
sometimes implying motion.
(12) In
broadcast media (and sometimes used on-line), to replace offensive or
controversial words with a tone which renders them inaudible (a synonym of
“bleep”, both words used in this contexts as nouns (a bleep) and verbs (to
bleep out). In live radio & TV, a
junior producer or assistant was usually the designated “blipper” or “bleeper”.
1894:
An onomatopoeic creation of sound symbolism, the speculation being it may have
been based on the notion of “blink” (suggesting brevity) with the -p added to
bli- as symbolic of an abrupt end, the original idea to capture the experience
of a “popping sound”. The use describing
the sight and sound generated by radar equipment was first documented in 1945
but may have been in use earlier, the public dissemination of information about
the technology restricted until the end of World War II (1939-1945). The verbs (blipped & blipping) came into
use in 1924 & 1925 respectively while the first documented use of the noun
blipper dates from 1966 although “bleeper” appeared some fifteen year earlier
and the role was acknowledge as early as the 1930s. Blip is a noun & verb, blipped &
blipping are verbs and blippy, blippier & blippiest are adjectives; the
noun plural is blips.
The
blipster
One
unrelated modern portmanteau noun was blipster, the construct a blend of
b(lack) + (h)ipster, used to refer to African-Americans (and presumably certain
other peoples of color (PoC)) who have adopted the visual clues of hipster culture. Whether the numbers of blipsters represent
the sort of critical mass usually associated with the recognition of
sub-cultures isn’t clear but as in medicine where a novel condition does not
need to be widely distributed (something suffered even by a single patient can
be defined and named as a syndrome), the coining of blipster could have been
inspired by seeing just one individual who conformed to being (1) African
American and (2) appearing in some ways to conform to the accepted parameters
of hipsterism. Labeling theory contains reservations
about this approach but for etymologists it’s fine although there is always the
risk of a gaboso (generalized observation based on single observation). Predictably, there is debate about what
constitutes authentic blipsterism because there are objections by some
activists to PoCs either emulating sub-cultures identified as “white” or taking
self-defining interest in aspects of that culture (such as those associated
with hipsterism). What seems to be
acceptable is a stylistic fusion as long as the fashions are uniquely identifiable
as linkable with traditional (ie modern, urban) African-American culture and
the cultural content includes only black poets, hip-hop artists etc.
The Blipvert
The
construct of blipvert (also historically blip-vert) was blip + vert. Vert in this context was a clipping of advertisement (from the
Middle French advertissement
(statement calling attention)), the construct being advertise + -ment. The
-ment suffix was from the Middle English -ment,
from the Late Latin -amentum, from -mentum which came via Old French -ment.
It was used to form nouns from verbs, the nouns having the sense of
"the action or result of what is denoted by the verb". The suffix is most often attached to the stem
without change, except when the stem ends in -dge, where the -e is sometimes
dropped (abridgment, acknowledgment, judgment, lodgment et al), with the forms
without -e preferred in American English.
The most widely known example of the spelling variation is probably
judgment vs judgement. In modern use, judgement
is said to be a "free variation" word where either spelling is
considered acceptable as long as use is consistent. Like enquiry vs inquiry, this can be a handy
where a convention of use can be structured to impart great clarity: judgment
used when referring to judicial rulings and judgement for all other purposes
although the approach is not without disadvantage given one might write of the
judgement a judge exercised before delivering their judgment. To those not aware of the convention, it
could look just like a typo.
As both word and abbreviation “vert” has a number of historic meanings. One form was from the Middle English vert, from Old French vert, from Vulgar Latin virdis (green; young, fresh, lively, youthful) (syncopated from Classical Latin viridis) In now archaic use it meant (1) green undergrowth or other vegetation growing in a forest, as a potential cover for deer and (2) in feudal law a right granted to fell trees or cut shrubs in a forest. The surviving use is in heraldry where it describes a shade of green, represented in engraving by diagonal parallel lines 45 degrees counter-clockwise. As an abbreviation, it's used of vertebrate, vertex & vertical and as a clipping of convertible, used almost exclusively by members of the Chevrolet Corvette cult in the alliterative phrase "Vette vert", a double clipping from (Cor)vette (con)vert(ible).
Vette vert: 1967 Chevrolet Corvette L88 convertible which sold at auction in 2013 at Mecum Dallas for US$3,424,000, a bit short of the L88 coupé which the next year realized US$3,850,000 at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale; that remains the record price paid for a Corvette at auction. The L88 used a 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 with a single four barrel carburetor, tuned to produce between 540-560 (gross) horsepower although for official purposes it was rated at 430, slightly less than the advertised output of the L71 427 which, with three two barrel carburettors was the most powerful version recommended for “street” use. The L88 was essentially a race-ready power-plant, civilized only to the extent cars which used it could be registered for road use but, demanding high-octane fuel available only in a limited number of locations and not offered with creature comforts like air-conditioning, it really was meant only for race tracks or drag strips. For technical reasons, L71 buyers couldn’t order air-conditioning either but were at least allowed to have a radio, something the noise generated by the L88 would anyway have rendered mostly redundant.
A blipvert is a very brief advertisement (a duration
of one second or less now the accepted definition although originally they
could three times as long). The concept first
attracted widespread attention in the 1980s when it was an element in the popular
television show Max Headroom, a
production interesting for a number of reasons as well as introducing “blipvert”
to a wide audience. In Max Headroom, blipverts were understood
as high-intensity television commercials which differed from the familiar form in
that instead of being 20, 30 or 60 seconds long, they lasted but three, the
line being they were a cynical device to discourage viewers from switching
channels (“channel surfing” not then a term in general use). The character Max Headroom (actually an actor
made up to emulate something rendered with CGI (computer generated imagery))
was said to be pure software which had attained (or retained from the downloaded
“copy” of the mind taken from a man killed after running into a “Max Headroom” warning
sign in a car park) some form of consciousness and had decided to remain active
within the television station’s computer network. In this, the TV show followed a popular trope
from science fiction, one which now underpins many of the warnings (not all by
conspiracy theorists) about the implications of AI (artificial intelligence). Although a creation of prosthetics rather
than anything digital, the technique was made convincing by using a background
generated on an Amiga 1000 (1985), a modest machine by today’s standards but a
revelation at the time because not only was the graphics handling much better than
on many more expensive workstations but even by 1990, despite what IBM and
Microsoft were telling us, running multi-tasking software was a better experience
on any Amiga than trying it on a PS/2 running OS/2.
On
television, the stand-alone blipvert never became a mainstream advertising form
because (1) it was difficult, (2) as devices to stimulate demand in most cases
they appeared not to work and (3) the networks anyway discouraged it but the
idea was immensely influential as an element in longer advertisements and found
another home in the emerging genre of the music video, the technique perfected
by the early 1990s; it was these uses which saw the accepted duration reduced
from three seconds to one. To the MTV
generation (and their descendents on YouTube and TikTok), three seconds became
a long time and prolonged exposure to the technique presumably improved the
ability of those viewers to interpret such messages although that may have been
as the cost of reducing the attention span.
Both those propositions are substantially unproven although it does seem
clear the “video content generations” do have a greater ability to decode and
interpret imagery which is separate for any explanatory text. That is of course stating the obvious;
someone who reads much tends to become better at interpreting words than those
who read little. Still, the blipvert has
survived, the advertising industry finding them especially effective if used as
a “trigger” to reference a memory created by something earlier presented in
some form and those who find them distasteful because they’re so often loud and
brash just don’t get it; that’s the best way they’re effective.
The
concept of the blipvert is sometimes attributed to US science fiction (SF)
writer Joe Haldeman (b 1943) who described something close to the technique in
his novel Mindbridge (1976) and it’s
clearly (albeit in longer form) used in the deprogramming sessions in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962) but use predates
both books. In 1948, encouraged by their
success in countering the Partito
Comunista d'Italia (PCd'I; the Communist Party of Italy) in elections in
the new Italian republic (the success achieved with a mix of bribery,
propaganda, disinformation and some of the other tricks of electoral
interference to which US politicians now so object when aimed at US polls), the
newly formed US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) turned their attentions to
France where the perception of threat was even greater because the infiltration
of the press, trade unions, universities, the military and many other organs of
state was rife. The US was well-placed
to run effective propaganda campaigns because, uniquely in devastated,
impoverished Europe, it could distribute the cubic money required to buy advertising
space & airtime, employ cooperative journalists, trade union leaders &
professors and even supply scarce commodities like newsprint and ink. To try to avoid accusations of anything
nefarious (and such suggestions were loud, frequent and often not without
foundation) much of the activity was conducted as part of Marshall Plan Aid,
the post-war recovery scheme with which the US revived post-war European
economies with an injection of (what would in 2024 US$ terms) be something like
US$182 billion. As well as extensively
publicizing the benefits of non-communist life compared with the lot of those
behind the iron curtain, the CIA published books and other pieces by defectors
from the Soviet Union. One novelty of
what quickly became an Anglo-American psychological operation (the British
Political Warfare Executive (PWE) having honed successful techniques during
wartime) was the use of 2-3 second blipverts spliced into film material
supplied under the Marshall Plan. The
British were well aware the French were especially protective of what appeared
in cinemas and would react unfavourably to blatant propaganda while they might treat
something similar in print with little more than a superior, cynical smile.
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.
The blipvert
is sometimes grouped with subliminal advertising and that’s convenient but they’re
different both in practice and definitionally and the rule of thumb can be
expressed as (1) if it can (briefly) be seen it’s a blipvert and (2) if it can’t
be seen it’s subliminal. No doubt media
studies academics (of which there seem now to be many) could punch holes in
that and cite a dozen or more exceptions but as a definition it at least hints
in the right direction. What subliminal
advertising involves is the presentation of understandable information (which
can be images, sound or text) at a level below the conscious awareness of the
viewer, the idea being (unlike the confrontational blipvert) to bypass
conscious perception. The extent to
which subliminal messaging is an effective way to influence consumer behaviour is
debated (as is the notion of whether it’s manipulative and unethical) but the
continued use of the technique in political campaigns does suggest that in that
specialized field of consumer behaviour, there must be many convinced of the efficacy. Certainly it appears to work although the
less subtle forms are quickly deconstructed and critiqued, such as the sudden adoption
in sports, almost as soon as tobacco advertising was banned, of color schemes triggering
memories of cigarette packets.
After some
years of prevarication, in 2005 the European Union (EU) banned tobacco
advertising “in the print media, on radio and over the internet” at the same prohibiting
“tobacco sponsorship of cross-border cultural and sporting events”. Making unlawful the promotion of a known carcinogen
responsible over a lifetime of use for shortening lifespan (on average) by just
under a decade sounds now uncontroversial but at the time it had been bitterly
contested by industry. Of interest to
some was that despite the introduction of the laws being known for some two
years, only couple of months earlier, Ferrari had signed a fifteen year, billion
dollar sponsorship deal with Philip Morris, best known for their Marlboro cigarette
and “Marlboro Man” advertising campaign which featured a variety of men photographed
in outdoor settings, five of whom ultimately died of smoking-related diseases.
Variations on a theme of red & white. Ferrari Formula One cars: F2007 (2007) in Marlboro livery (left), F10 (2010) with "bar code" (centre) and F14 (2014) in post bar-code scheme.
Ferrari’s lawyers took their fine-toothed legal combs to the problem and came up with a way to outsmart the eurocrats. The Formula One (F1) cars Scuderia Ferrari ran began to appear in what had become the traditional red & white livery (the same combination used on Marlboro’s signature packets) but in the space where once had been displayed the Marlboro logo, there was instead a stylized “bar code”. In response to a number of accusations (including many by those in the medical community) that the team was guilty of “backdoor advertising” of cigarettes, in 2008 a statement on the company website said it was “baffled”:
"Today and in recent weeks, articles have
been published relating to the partnership contract between Scuderia Ferrari
and Philip Morris International, questioning its legality. These reports are based on two suppositions:
that part of the graphics featured on the Formula 1 cars are reminiscent of the
Marlboro logo and even that the red colour which is a traditional feature of
our cars is a form of tobacco publicity.
Neither of these arguments have any scientific basis, as they rely on
some alleged studies which have never been published in academic journals. But
more importantly, they do not correspond to the truth. "The so-called barcode is an integral
part of the livery of the car and of all images coordinated by the Scuderia, as
can be seen from the fact it is modified every year and, occasionally even
during the season. Furthermore, if it was a case of advertising branding,
Philip Morris would have to own a legal copyright on it. "The partnership between Ferrari and
Philip Morris is now only exploited in certain initiatives, such as factory
visits, meetings with the drivers, merchandising products, all carried out
fully within the laws of the various countries where these activities take
place. There has been no logo or branding on the race cars since 2007, even in
countries where local laws would still have permitted it. The premise that simply looking at a red
Ferrari can be a more effective means of publicity than a cigarette advertisement
seems incredible: how should one assess the choice made by other Formula 1
teams to race a car with a predominantly red livery or to link the image of a
driver to a sports car of the same colour? Maybe these companies also want to
advertise smoking! It should be pointed
out that red has been the recognised colour for Italian racing cars since the
very beginning of motor sport, at the start of the twentieth century: if there
is an immediate association to be made, it is with our company rather than with
our partner.”
When red & white was just the way Scuderia Ferrari painted their race cars: The lovely, delicate lines of the 1961 Ferrari Typo 156 (“sharknose”), built for Formula One's “voiturette” (1.5 litre) era (1961-1965), Richie Ginther (1930–1989), XXIII Grosser Preis von Deutschland (German Grand Prix), Nürburgring Nordschleife, August 1961.
The
suggestion was of course that this was subliminal marketing (actually unlawful
in the EU since the late 1950s) the mechanics being that Ferrari knew this
would attract controversy and the story was that at speed, when the bar code was
blurred, it resembled the Marlboro logo; racing cars do go fast but no evidence
was ever produced to demonstrate the phenomenon happened in real world
conditions, either when viewed at the tracks or in televised coverage. It was possible using software to create a
blurred version of the shape and there was a vague resemblance to the logo but
that wasn’t the point, as a piece of subliminal marketing it worked because
viewers had been told the bar code would in certain circumstances transform
into a logo and even though it never did, the job was done because Marlboro was
on the mind of many and doubtlessly more often than ever during the years when
the logo actually appeared. So, job done
and done well, midway in the 2010 season, Ferrari dropped the “bar code”,
issuing a press release: “By this we want
to put an end to this ridiculous story and concentrate on more important things
than on such groundless allegations.”
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