In the last installment of this series, I summarized many of 'the best posts' from the early period of this blog. Many of them are quite noteworthy – some are even almost excellent – but the truth of the matter is the best posts were yet to come. 2012, if my recollection is trusted, was the year of titanic posts in which the blog's appearance ceased to matter, I stopped worrying about everything but the words and content... it might've been the golden era.
Need proof? Early in the year I managed to conjure up a masterpiece that had even me convinced it would be a strong year in which sloppy blogging would be superceded by amazing work that would inspire only greater efforts in the future. It would become the most-viewed post I'd ever written, and has the least typos or fuckups of any article I've ever written. With it behind me, I was at least sure that good things were going to happen as long as I kept the faith.
Then I didn't post anything very noteworthy for months and kept pretty lax hours in addition to that. To be fair, on a personal level I was enjoying life and the crushing tedium of having a bottom-of-the-barrel blog was simply not something I wanted to engage too often. To be honest it was mostly a mess after that. There are probably decent posts but I don't feel like it's worth it. Essentially, that's the guiding principle behind lots of my forgettable posts – probably for the 8-23 people who read them for five minutes and move on – not worth it for me and they don't care. The... wait. List quotes again? Review of Publicato's 2012 most noteworthy posts inbound:
"The world's premiere first world country, hamstrung with voter apathy, political landslides, corruption, fraud, authoritarianism, paternalism, and every kind of stupid fucked up downright dangerous problem"
"This scathing, ignorant, and extremely stupid post basically reflects all the many things that are wrong"
"Pick your side and hold a fractious conflict against your opponents while the world withers."
I think it sounded a lot worse than it was. 2012 had a lot of User Comment Rodeos going on, which is okay with me. I somehow fooled myself into thinking it was the year of excessively good writing but my review didn't really bring up any nuggets of profundity. Seems pretty normal. It was a good year, honestly, and there were some gems, but the really fun or interesting things had gone out of it. My absolute favorite to write were the political junkie/Hunter S. Thompson style posts from 2011, they had a real sense of hustle and narrative to them that was as enjoying to craft as it is to look back on. 2012 did not provide a higher concept type of post and fell into a trend that you might be able to work out if you (and I don't expect anyone to) follow the thread of the posts of that year.
12/21/13
Publicato: A Review, A Reverie, A Reminiscence, Pt. 2
In the last part I described the humble beginnings of this still outrageously humble blog, and also that I began it with the less-than-noble intention of making a buck or two. Nevertheless the thing got done and survived long enough to see the year 2011... an exciting new time filled with possibility! Maybe I would get a mention on Twitter, or a shout out from a 'legit' and 'credible' internet personality/publication. Maybe I would be approached by CBS to make a really bad sitcom about my blog. I was dreaming big in those days, I tell you.
Mostly I was anxious and uncertain as to what would drive views. I would write something rather well paced and exciting (to me) with a great joke or two or a great sentence, and it would get 9 hits, and something I thought was much less qualitudinal would get 50+ hits and the next day I would go back to 4 hits and wonder what the hell I was doing. I figured it had a bit to do with maybe: 1) Self awareness issues on my part driving away traffic; 2) search term business beyond my simple pre-SEO understanding; 3) Life in the Content Farm; or 4) hits from automated crawlers or unlucky internet nomads Googling for information or high-power, hi-concept content. An alternative I still consider possible to this day is that I am simply incapable of getting any kind of reading on my audience, despite Google's pretty in-depth statistical records, and therefore cannot curate the content I write at all, since I am simply unsure about who reads Publicato and why.
I also took a very weak shot at embroiling this website in the twittersphere via a twitter throwaway account but I found it hard to tweet (of course now I've got some amazingly funny joke tweets, a basic understanding of twitter etiquette, and follow a number of pretty cool/inspirational/funny accounts) anything worthwhile and the plan #floundered like only the inspired failures of a lazy idiot can. Needless to say I remained firmly a sloppy blogger, and the slovenly appearance of my blog ("Templates, really? Fuck you Anonynimous Bosch...") kept me in the dark lands of the struggling writer trying out an anonymous blog – because blogging is a big joke, for morons who like words, that no respectable writer would do for any other reason than self promotion.
I watched a hell of a lot of TV in that time, it appears. I would be ashamed of the Survivor posts or even the attempts at getting more Conan buzz or maybe even a Conan mention (or a writing job in the show's fabled 'shoddy joke storage and hack room') if they weren't for the most part written well. In 2011 I wrote some of my favorite works, in retrospect, because I had a loose and easy style, was less afraid of swearing, and did some amazing pieces some of which will be included in the Best Of list nearer the end of the year. In a way, all this navel gazing is my gift to you, the reader. Maybe you missed my golden age (statistically probable)... now you can't.
Shit, I know most readers won't believe me. "Publicato never had a golden age," they'll say. I don't quite know about that... as a pessimist I would agree, but as the person who toiled on this site (okay, slacked around without often delivering fine work) I would disagree. It is true that the blog as a cultural medium is dead (Google it), and almost nobody reads this one, and if anything I should be ashamed (anonymity working as intended in this case), but I will continue doing something, anything, to prove I exist if only to myself at this point. Good moments used to happen all the time. Coming up are some of the greats, because I realize that a telling of the site's history is really not something anyone is interested in. 2011 was a quiet year, 2012 was as well, but heated up. 2013 is when I 'blew up' and the blog got about 80% of its total views (see paragraph 2 of this post to see how I feel about that). Right after I had burned out... here are some highlights from before that time, in roughly chronological order, linked via hypertext quotes:
"an otherwise great man who no doubt impersonates beggars in his spare time to help afford his suit habit"
"confrontation is the Achilles' heel of the misanthrope"
"Then again, what business do I have trying to equate reality with TV?"
"Today's "best years" are the teenage years, which makes sense, because when I was a teenager I had two shows convincing me that the best years were in later life"
"I must be doing something right, because I am not an internet millionaire by my blogging"
"the slightly toxic, slightly oily, slightly radioactive water of Canadian politics"
"a diseased time when I cared a little too much about what I listened to, and felt sharply any criticism of my musical taste"
"anything worse than using bandwidth to watch someone's clumsy hands fiddle with packaging for ten minutes while breathlessly talking about the gloss of the cardboard?"
"ideas are parasites"
"Viruses will outlive us all."
"maybe I'm a tin-eared bastard with a dumb, sloppy blog" 1*
"You'd have to be insane to look to the 80's and enjoy anything about the aesthetic"
"Then there are unpublished writers" 2*
That right there is a pretty much the definitive list of interesting and/or popular posts on Publicato from the years 2010 and 2011. Some of those quotes were chosen out of laziness, most of them seem completely audacious, but they represent my idea of the finest work of that time. Some of those articles are written in a jokey or derivative style which I have largely stopped doing, but they are all fantastique, man. There's also a Reviewing Fog article in which an online commentator just pwns the shit out of me but you have to search for something that good. As a sloppy blogger I reserve the right to let someone else do the work sometimes.
1* and 2* denote extreme quality and immense fondness on my part. Those are not links you want to miss if you have ever enjoyed reading this blog or if you are new to it and wonder why I keep on despite so obviously being a tremendous burned-out idiot. If any above links don't convince you, keep reading the blog in hopes I do post something good, or search this blog's history yourself. Note also: I would vouch for any of the above links as writing samples for not-too-serious interested parties. Well, that carries me all the way to 2012, and later I will finish this article series by summarizing 2012/2013 in a few snappy and very poignant sentences.
Mostly I was anxious and uncertain as to what would drive views. I would write something rather well paced and exciting (to me) with a great joke or two or a great sentence, and it would get 9 hits, and something I thought was much less qualitudinal would get 50+ hits and the next day I would go back to 4 hits and wonder what the hell I was doing. I figured it had a bit to do with maybe: 1) Self awareness issues on my part driving away traffic; 2) search term business beyond my simple pre-SEO understanding; 3) Life in the Content Farm; or 4) hits from automated crawlers or unlucky internet nomads Googling for information or high-power, hi-concept content. An alternative I still consider possible to this day is that I am simply incapable of getting any kind of reading on my audience, despite Google's pretty in-depth statistical records, and therefore cannot curate the content I write at all, since I am simply unsure about who reads Publicato and why.
I also took a very weak shot at embroiling this website in the twittersphere via a twitter throwaway account but I found it hard to tweet (of course now I've got some amazingly funny joke tweets, a basic understanding of twitter etiquette, and follow a number of pretty cool/inspirational/funny accounts) anything worthwhile and the plan #floundered like only the inspired failures of a lazy idiot can. Needless to say I remained firmly a sloppy blogger, and the slovenly appearance of my blog ("Templates, really? Fuck you Anonynimous Bosch...") kept me in the dark lands of the struggling writer trying out an anonymous blog – because blogging is a big joke, for morons who like words, that no respectable writer would do for any other reason than self promotion.
I watched a hell of a lot of TV in that time, it appears. I would be ashamed of the Survivor posts or even the attempts at getting more Conan buzz or maybe even a Conan mention (or a writing job in the show's fabled 'shoddy joke storage and hack room') if they weren't for the most part written well. In 2011 I wrote some of my favorite works, in retrospect, because I had a loose and easy style, was less afraid of swearing, and did some amazing pieces some of which will be included in the Best Of list nearer the end of the year. In a way, all this navel gazing is my gift to you, the reader. Maybe you missed my golden age (statistically probable)... now you can't.
Shit, I know most readers won't believe me. "Publicato never had a golden age," they'll say. I don't quite know about that... as a pessimist I would agree, but as the person who toiled on this site (okay, slacked around without often delivering fine work) I would disagree. It is true that the blog as a cultural medium is dead (Google it), and almost nobody reads this one, and if anything I should be ashamed (anonymity working as intended in this case), but I will continue doing something, anything, to prove I exist if only to myself at this point. Good moments used to happen all the time. Coming up are some of the greats, because I realize that a telling of the site's history is really not something anyone is interested in. 2011 was a quiet year, 2012 was as well, but heated up. 2013 is when I 'blew up' and the blog got about 80% of its total views (see paragraph 2 of this post to see how I feel about that). Right after I had burned out... here are some highlights from before that time, in roughly chronological order, linked via hypertext quotes:
"an otherwise great man who no doubt impersonates beggars in his spare time to help afford his suit habit"
"confrontation is the Achilles' heel of the misanthrope"
"Then again, what business do I have trying to equate reality with TV?"
"Today's "best years" are the teenage years, which makes sense, because when I was a teenager I had two shows convincing me that the best years were in later life"
"I must be doing something right, because I am not an internet millionaire by my blogging"
"the slightly toxic, slightly oily, slightly radioactive water of Canadian politics"
"a diseased time when I cared a little too much about what I listened to, and felt sharply any criticism of my musical taste"
"anything worse than using bandwidth to watch someone's clumsy hands fiddle with packaging for ten minutes while breathlessly talking about the gloss of the cardboard?"
"ideas are parasites"
"Viruses will outlive us all."
"maybe I'm a tin-eared bastard with a dumb, sloppy blog" 1*
"You'd have to be insane to look to the 80's and enjoy anything about the aesthetic"
"Then there are unpublished writers" 2*
That right there is a pretty much the definitive list of interesting and/or popular posts on Publicato from the years 2010 and 2011. Some of those quotes were chosen out of laziness, most of them seem completely audacious, but they represent my idea of the finest work of that time. Some of those articles are written in a jokey or derivative style which I have largely stopped doing, but they are all fantastique, man. There's also a Reviewing Fog article in which an online commentator just pwns the shit out of me but you have to search for something that good. As a sloppy blogger I reserve the right to let someone else do the work sometimes.
1* and 2* denote extreme quality and immense fondness on my part. Those are not links you want to miss if you have ever enjoyed reading this blog or if you are new to it and wonder why I keep on despite so obviously being a tremendous burned-out idiot. If any above links don't convince you, keep reading the blog in hopes I do post something good, or search this blog's history yourself. Note also: I would vouch for any of the above links as writing samples for not-too-serious interested parties. Well, that carries me all the way to 2012, and later I will finish this article series by summarizing 2012/2013 in a few snappy and very poignant sentences.
12/20/13
RIP: Winamp
December 20th 2013 was supposed to be the last day of Winamp (as a subsidiary/protectorate/whatever of AOL) and possibly of the whole thing altogether – I don't know how it could ever become abandonware, I was startled by the announcement. I still don't know what exactly will happen and it is causing me some mild anxiety. I got the latest release, though, and I plan to hold onto it and use it until I die or audio formats change too radically for Winamp to keep playing them.
I will forever remember Winamp as the definitive .mp3 player – I highly doubt the format will outlive the association in my mind. I've been using the program for as long as it has existed. For anyone not using iTunes, I assume it is the de facto media player, though I have seen the unironic use of Windows Media Player. Mp3 players and phones have also sort of reduced the need for a great audio player program, but I'll have the classic Winamp setup on a computer, because it's fantastic and not at all bullshitty and I like music enough to care.
Winamp is what I want in an audio player - low impact, versatile, plays all the usual formats without shitting itself or making a big deal about what it's doing. It is simple and basic in all the best ways. The playlist format is what I'm used to and I think it's fantastic, the newer and more modern Winamp is nowhere near as simple or painless to use. I hate browser style players, I don't need album art, and as long as I can use a keyboard shortcut to search I don't really need anything else, ever. It really whips the llama's ass even after more than a decade.
Fittingly enough, the Winamp community promises that plugin support will never die and that Winamp will continue to be functionally updated into the indefinite future. What would be best, of course, is if it was given to a not-for-profit developer (or back to its creators) and version 5.7 or 6 were to come out in a year or so. Personally I didn't like the AOL takeover and I wasn't at ease with how the installer was suddenly offering toolbars, paid versions, and free songs, but the program itself remained excellent, possibly without peer.
Frankly, I just hope it doesn't die. This is a sad day, regardless of the fact it wouldn't have happened if Winamp stayed purely independent. I don't think it will, to be honest, because it still has a sizable following. Its heartening to see that others feel the same way. Worst case scenario: it is over and everyone keeps using it for years before it inspires a modern remake. Best case scenario: it returns better than ever without corporate ties.
I will forever remember Winamp as the definitive .mp3 player – I highly doubt the format will outlive the association in my mind. I've been using the program for as long as it has existed. For anyone not using iTunes, I assume it is the de facto media player, though I have seen the unironic use of Windows Media Player. Mp3 players and phones have also sort of reduced the need for a great audio player program, but I'll have the classic Winamp setup on a computer, because it's fantastic and not at all bullshitty and I like music enough to care.
Winamp is what I want in an audio player - low impact, versatile, plays all the usual formats without shitting itself or making a big deal about what it's doing. It is simple and basic in all the best ways. The playlist format is what I'm used to and I think it's fantastic, the newer and more modern Winamp is nowhere near as simple or painless to use. I hate browser style players, I don't need album art, and as long as I can use a keyboard shortcut to search I don't really need anything else, ever. It really whips the llama's ass even after more than a decade.
Fittingly enough, the Winamp community promises that plugin support will never die and that Winamp will continue to be functionally updated into the indefinite future. What would be best, of course, is if it was given to a not-for-profit developer (or back to its creators) and version 5.7 or 6 were to come out in a year or so. Personally I didn't like the AOL takeover and I wasn't at ease with how the installer was suddenly offering toolbars, paid versions, and free songs, but the program itself remained excellent, possibly without peer.
Frankly, I just hope it doesn't die. This is a sad day, regardless of the fact it wouldn't have happened if Winamp stayed purely independent. I don't think it will, to be honest, because it still has a sizable following. Its heartening to see that others feel the same way. Worst case scenario: it is over and everyone keeps using it for years before it inspires a modern remake. Best case scenario: it returns better than ever without corporate ties.
12/19/13
Publicato: A Review, A Reverie, A Reminiscence, Pt.1
Three years and three months ago I started Publicato with dreams of click-jacking, SEO optimization, and AdSense pennies rolling in. I was unemployed, on my own, pretty cognizant of a dim future; my friends were either safely employed, studying, or hustling. I had some crazy and vague ideas about becoming a true internet personality, maybe doing some cross-promotion via Twitter, and getting into the thousands (re: readership) pretty quickly. Guest blogging my way up to a guest feature with a big name, like Vice or Cracked (which was still pretty legit in those days), or something even better (like a magazine website or maybe even print)... incredibly naive stuff, but I had my ambitions and what better way to pursue them than with Google Blogger?
Well, quite obviously, I should've made a hi-concept WordPress or Tumblr setup and done some mind-bending po-mo conceptualist shit. I knew about WordPress, but being a vaporwave blogger versus real Google monies was just too much. I had to make rent, I needed some better shirts and pants, maybe a third tie, something quantifiably adult that only true income or a career can provide. The internet was a different place in 2010 - there was less anxiety about content farming (which peaked and declined), it was less introspective, the 'blogosphere' was less of a joke term. Twitter was still kind of uncertain and it was easy enough to get by calling it a lifestyle service for people with goldfish brains and smartphones.
Times certainly have changed, but enough of that good memory stuff. This article is about Publicato... now you know what I wanted it to be (a $10-100/mo income supplement with good as hell jokes, sharp satire, reviewish articles and a ladder to proper freelance writing) and what it became (pro-bono, introspective, distracted, weary, strident, kind of phoned-in at times [sorry]) but what never changed was the mission, which was detailed in the first ever blog post I made (Canned Soup) on September 20, 2010:
"... if you let me I will create spectacular vistas of invented and existing things ... maybe not, and I will just be a bitter, judgmental internet spectator..."
Very prescient and wise, I'd say. It was the unstable first step, when I didn't know what to do, really, but wanted a bit of everything. Lots of blogs specialize or self-promote (often both in some ratio) and I didn't really have anything worth specializing in. What followed were mostly unremarkable posts, as I sought a voice and some kind of sense of purpose beyond getting a good number of readers and then monetizing the hell out of the blog. Name was chosen, quite obviously, as a piss take of Politico... the brand motto (slogan?) was derived from a line of Juvenalian satire. Satire was and remains quite important to this blog, but the aggregation of the odd sincere article and natural disinclination (not going to compete with the Onion), corroded any sense of purity of purpose. For reference: canned soup is still incredibly bland to me and I haven't found any good brands or varieties, nor does seasoning really solve the problem.
In the first three months I got a grand total of 31 hits, putting my dreams of monetization in jeopardy and essentially sending me directly into a dark place from which I have never emerged, all the while unemployed and pissing money into rent and other things. Reflecting on times gone by, I have to say the original content is actually quite decent. I would encourage any interested reader (assuming I have an actual readership and not just spider/bot/crawler traffic) to check out the older stuff all the way to 2010. 'Midst the hack writing there are a few gems, and the germs of some later fixations. If you're lazy or disinterested, don't despair! I will, before the year 2014, go through myself and post a list and review format blog post about the cream of the crop.
My blogging fortune changed dramatically in December 2010, when my recap of a Conan O'Brien (newly on TBS then) episode drew an unprecedented 200+ visitors, and even the attention of the audience member at the core of that episode. I was extremely excited by how that turned out, and did a sequel post about my stupid excitation, and replied to the comments like an idiot, and possibly established a readership that may or may not still exist. After that post I could expect more hits in a month than the first three months combined, and December 2010's stats eclipsed the next four months combined. Anecdotally, it would take almost a full year before I would get another non-spam comment.
You bet the grand visions returned to me then, and promptly fell away as reality intervened. A number of hardscrabble months followed, in which I realized that 70-100 views a month were fantastic compared to my old numbers but hardly encouraging. I wondered what I was doing wrong (probably everything) and how I could fix it (hoping to have to do nothing). I think I redesigned some font colors, the background, and the spacing in the header title... then kept on plugging away. I hoped that hard work could be substituted for buzz, but if anything this blog stands for the fact that you can do amazing work (hahah – just go with it) and get a minimal amount of interest. That brings me roughly to the end of 2010... please note that I am planning a 'best of Publicato' review (I am told it WILL unearth some gems), as well as at least one more part of reminiscence/retrospective.
Well, quite obviously, I should've made a hi-concept WordPress or Tumblr setup and done some mind-bending po-mo conceptualist shit. I knew about WordPress, but being a vaporwave blogger versus real Google monies was just too much. I had to make rent, I needed some better shirts and pants, maybe a third tie, something quantifiably adult that only true income or a career can provide. The internet was a different place in 2010 - there was less anxiety about content farming (which peaked and declined), it was less introspective, the 'blogosphere' was less of a joke term. Twitter was still kind of uncertain and it was easy enough to get by calling it a lifestyle service for people with goldfish brains and smartphones.
Times certainly have changed, but enough of that good memory stuff. This article is about Publicato... now you know what I wanted it to be (a $10-100/mo income supplement with good as hell jokes, sharp satire, reviewish articles and a ladder to proper freelance writing) and what it became (pro-bono, introspective, distracted, weary, strident, kind of phoned-in at times [sorry]) but what never changed was the mission, which was detailed in the first ever blog post I made (Canned Soup) on September 20, 2010:
"... if you let me I will create spectacular vistas of invented and existing things ... maybe not, and I will just be a bitter, judgmental internet spectator..."
Very prescient and wise, I'd say. It was the unstable first step, when I didn't know what to do, really, but wanted a bit of everything. Lots of blogs specialize or self-promote (often both in some ratio) and I didn't really have anything worth specializing in. What followed were mostly unremarkable posts, as I sought a voice and some kind of sense of purpose beyond getting a good number of readers and then monetizing the hell out of the blog. Name was chosen, quite obviously, as a piss take of Politico... the brand motto (slogan?) was derived from a line of Juvenalian satire. Satire was and remains quite important to this blog, but the aggregation of the odd sincere article and natural disinclination (not going to compete with the Onion), corroded any sense of purity of purpose. For reference: canned soup is still incredibly bland to me and I haven't found any good brands or varieties, nor does seasoning really solve the problem.
In the first three months I got a grand total of 31 hits, putting my dreams of monetization in jeopardy and essentially sending me directly into a dark place from which I have never emerged, all the while unemployed and pissing money into rent and other things. Reflecting on times gone by, I have to say the original content is actually quite decent. I would encourage any interested reader (assuming I have an actual readership and not just spider/bot/crawler traffic) to check out the older stuff all the way to 2010. 'Midst the hack writing there are a few gems, and the germs of some later fixations. If you're lazy or disinterested, don't despair! I will, before the year 2014, go through myself and post a list and review format blog post about the cream of the crop.
My blogging fortune changed dramatically in December 2010, when my recap of a Conan O'Brien (newly on TBS then) episode drew an unprecedented 200+ visitors, and even the attention of the audience member at the core of that episode. I was extremely excited by how that turned out, and did a sequel post about my stupid excitation, and replied to the comments like an idiot, and possibly established a readership that may or may not still exist. After that post I could expect more hits in a month than the first three months combined, and December 2010's stats eclipsed the next four months combined. Anecdotally, it would take almost a full year before I would get another non-spam comment.
You bet the grand visions returned to me then, and promptly fell away as reality intervened. A number of hardscrabble months followed, in which I realized that 70-100 views a month were fantastic compared to my old numbers but hardly encouraging. I wondered what I was doing wrong (probably everything) and how I could fix it (hoping to have to do nothing). I think I redesigned some font colors, the background, and the spacing in the header title... then kept on plugging away. I hoped that hard work could be substituted for buzz, but if anything this blog stands for the fact that you can do amazing work (hahah – just go with it) and get a minimal amount of interest. That brings me roughly to the end of 2010... please note that I am planning a 'best of Publicato' review (I am told it WILL unearth some gems), as well as at least one more part of reminiscence/retrospective.
12/18/13
The Descent from Suspicion to Paranoia
I think it's something everyone suffers at least once, and the delusional cases will imagine otherwise and go on their way, so there is probably little to gain 'blogging' about this. The best things are of course suspicions one holds about one's own self, they are like gold nuggets in this context. I don't think enough people are paranoid about their goals and raison d'etre, and many of those that are should probably calm down a bit. That's right: the wrong people doubt their goals and dreams; the wrong people also embrace them. I find it all quite odd to be honest.
But also amusing. If you are mendacious enough you can of course turn people into paranoid wrecks with a bit of clever spitefulness and without 'too much effort'. Paranoid people cause all kinds of things to happen – outbursts and shit ranging from 'humorous', to 'disturbing', and all the way down into 'fatal and misguided'. Paranoia has contributed to or caused most of the greatest crimes in history, and at least as many wars and ideological conflicts as insecurity.
Fear is an important primal emotion. It has kept alive more animals than it has killed, but with the expansion of human culture, fear remained largely ubiquitous, creeping into each new facet of life and leading to all kinds of skullduggery and shenanigans. Add to that fear a good measure of anxiety, and you have the recipe for today's fearful, angsty environment... just waiting to see what or who betrays it, what or who is looking, what or who is next going to do a bad thing that justifies the fear and qualifies the anxiety as logical. The outcomes are everywhere but are epitomized in the rise of super surveillance culture. Yea, they did in the past worry about God's judgement, but now there are others who can count the hairs on one's head and the evil plans in one's heart, and judge one for it...
Most people cross the descent pretty quickly and find it incredibly uncomfortable, even in hindsight. Some people actually grow from it, though, and replace their saner selves with characters they actually admire. Thriving paranoids. I wouldn't pretend to know how or why this happens in some cases – probably related to some kind of dissociation or depersonalization – because I never pretend to be an expert. Have we descended to a point of cultural hallucinatory paranoia? Is it already schizophrenic? Do we care?
When the descent drags on it can really mess people up, but sometimes also provide them with moments of lucidity wherein change is possible. Generally there is a lot of suffering and anxiety, the ability to trust others is diminished, and in the final stages all kinds of the worst suspicions are confirmed without any resort to fact or reality. It is quite sad, and sometimes incurable.
So be safe: paranoia is the common cold of mental illnesses, and your contribution to it could upset the balance of the world you live in, to even your own detriment (until you disarm your perception of the world with willful ignorance, deceive yourself, etc). Ways of combating paranoia can include reassuring a paranoiac of the fallibility of all people, if they can handle it telling them about the basic uncertainty of life may also help. Society at large is kind of paranoid, and a lot of people get caught up in that, and mostly it's a waste of time that limits potential and enjoyment of life.
Hopefully this post helps someone who is piece-of-shitly considering messing with somebody. Decide against it. People are generally too dumb for hi-octane mind games without suffering a bunch. Your negativity spreads and has actual effects on the world. It's not worth it: you might win a few points, but you will compromise the game.
But also amusing. If you are mendacious enough you can of course turn people into paranoid wrecks with a bit of clever spitefulness and without 'too much effort'. Paranoid people cause all kinds of things to happen – outbursts and shit ranging from 'humorous', to 'disturbing', and all the way down into 'fatal and misguided'. Paranoia has contributed to or caused most of the greatest crimes in history, and at least as many wars and ideological conflicts as insecurity.
Fear is an important primal emotion. It has kept alive more animals than it has killed, but with the expansion of human culture, fear remained largely ubiquitous, creeping into each new facet of life and leading to all kinds of skullduggery and shenanigans. Add to that fear a good measure of anxiety, and you have the recipe for today's fearful, angsty environment... just waiting to see what or who betrays it, what or who is looking, what or who is next going to do a bad thing that justifies the fear and qualifies the anxiety as logical. The outcomes are everywhere but are epitomized in the rise of super surveillance culture. Yea, they did in the past worry about God's judgement, but now there are others who can count the hairs on one's head and the evil plans in one's heart, and judge one for it...
Most people cross the descent pretty quickly and find it incredibly uncomfortable, even in hindsight. Some people actually grow from it, though, and replace their saner selves with characters they actually admire. Thriving paranoids. I wouldn't pretend to know how or why this happens in some cases – probably related to some kind of dissociation or depersonalization – because I never pretend to be an expert. Have we descended to a point of cultural hallucinatory paranoia? Is it already schizophrenic? Do we care?
When the descent drags on it can really mess people up, but sometimes also provide them with moments of lucidity wherein change is possible. Generally there is a lot of suffering and anxiety, the ability to trust others is diminished, and in the final stages all kinds of the worst suspicions are confirmed without any resort to fact or reality. It is quite sad, and sometimes incurable.
So be safe: paranoia is the common cold of mental illnesses, and your contribution to it could upset the balance of the world you live in, to even your own detriment (until you disarm your perception of the world with willful ignorance, deceive yourself, etc). Ways of combating paranoia can include reassuring a paranoiac of the fallibility of all people, if they can handle it telling them about the basic uncertainty of life may also help. Society at large is kind of paranoid, and a lot of people get caught up in that, and mostly it's a waste of time that limits potential and enjoyment of life.
Hopefully this post helps someone who is piece-of-shitly considering messing with somebody. Decide against it. People are generally too dumb for hi-octane mind games without suffering a bunch. Your negativity spreads and has actual effects on the world. It's not worth it: you might win a few points, but you will compromise the game.
12/12/13
Uruguay Stays Strong: Prepares to get Stronger
Whether it kills brain cells or kills cancer cells; whether it's a gateway drug or an end-point drug; whether using it is moral or immoral – Uruguay did the only sane thing remaining after years of overblown rhetoric by anti-drug idiots versus pro-drug idiots, and we can only hope the rest of the world learns something.
For this I commend Uruguay, whatever else their problems and failings. Thanks for having actual human beings in your government and treating your populace like actual, rational, grown-adult human beings as well.
I honestly don't know why neither pro-nor-anti marijuana people in the rest of the world have become so humorless about the issue. What a bunch of stunted robot shits, maybe Bukowski was right when he said weed kills your soul – but he was a soulless drunk himself.
For this I commend Uruguay, whatever else their problems and failings. Thanks for having actual human beings in your government and treating your populace like actual, rational, grown-adult human beings as well.
I honestly don't know why neither pro-nor-anti marijuana people in the rest of the world have become so humorless about the issue. What a bunch of stunted robot shits, maybe Bukowski was right when he said weed kills your soul – but he was a soulless drunk himself.
12/11/13
Swiss Fail to Change Important Thing: Small Swiss Story
In Switzerland, often mentioned as one of the best places in the world to be born into (it's basically a super elite club even if you sweep the streets or are congenitally unemployable – but your German better be legible). It's the perfect blend of right wing nonsense (stolen Jewish wealth, mandatory conscription, high rates of gun ownership) with left wing nonsense (neutrality, direct democracy [non of the corrupt and apathetic representative shit], multilingualism, environmental awareness, and scientific aspiration) and stuff anyone can enjoy like a literate and well educated populace, wealth beyond measure, and low crime rates. It makes wealthy enclaves in otherwise first world countries look like rat holes for spiteful misers, and it makes one think it will take about a million years for the rest of the world to get anywhere near that point. Switzerland is roughly that good, so good it makes Germany look less perfect (but you're still pretty good, Germany, keep your head up, your most corrupt industries probably help Switzerland all the time) but because Switzerland is a human enterprise*, it's a damn ways away from perfect.
"But even we, the vaunted and legendary Swiss, will hold our well-to-do poor hostage for increased profit and an 'A+' grade by business fuckers like Forbes Weekly. "**
The most recent initiative, which was overturned by direct democracy, was to limit executive pay to only 12 times what the lowest earner in the company made. Seems pretty good, right? The man or woman sitting on his or her ass and occasionally sweating when tax season or investigators come around still gets to make waaaaay more than the person sweeping the floors and cleaning the toilets. And this is Switzerland, so the person cleaning the toilets is banking decent pay in a very stable currency. In many ways, had it passed, it would have set a precedent that agitators around the world could've used to influence their corporate/government complexes to perhaps setting a 1:50 or 1:100 cap. But capping max pay is not a free market thing, apparently, even though it frees up wealth to do other things than pay 30,000 dollar tabs and buy 25 million dollar yachts and drink 1000 dollar mineral waters and whatever the hell else good money is pissed away into these days.
Needless to say, the trickle-down crowd won a spiritual victory in Switzerland earlier this year.
Inequality is the cause celebre of anyone who gives a fuck about the poor right now. Incidentally, correcting this imbalance will probably also have good effects on other non-destitute levels of society around the world and only be moderately bad to luxury industries that are populated by assholes and cater mostly to exhibitionists, miser spendthrifts, borderline sociopaths, and their hopeless children. With opulence running out of hand while poor people openly starve (in the era when humanity can split the atom [and see beyond it] and use robots to land robots on the surface of Mars) it is pretty obvious that wealth inequality is a problem. It's too complex to solve via blog, I am certain of that much. In a repressive oligarchy like anything in the Americas one would not expect any rich person, from drug warlord to white collar criminal to CEO (most of these guys work together and sometimes all three are the same guy), to give up a cent of their millions/billions for the poor, but in Europe, that 'socialist' den, they actually don't go crazy for the idea either.
You're outta luck, poor people! Aha, but then you're used to that....
It was something like 65% to 34%. Turns out Switzerland could give a fuck what the USA thinks about being the most right and prosperous country, because Switzerland pretty much invented inhuman rightist corporatism and are too neutral to be proud even. Anyone else get a chill down their spine just now? The downtrodden of the world are still looking for a precedent while the rampant worship of fundamentalist extremist oligarchy continues unabated and without any checks on its progress. The small people can eat their hats, as usual, so don't get excited or anything.
(* - I'm beginning to doubt the Swiss even did anything about the poisoned dolphin situation)
(** - not an actual quote or intended to represent any actual Swiss oligarch)
"But even we, the vaunted and legendary Swiss, will hold our well-to-do poor hostage for increased profit and an 'A+' grade by business fuckers like Forbes Weekly. "**
The most recent initiative, which was overturned by direct democracy, was to limit executive pay to only 12 times what the lowest earner in the company made. Seems pretty good, right? The man or woman sitting on his or her ass and occasionally sweating when tax season or investigators come around still gets to make waaaaay more than the person sweeping the floors and cleaning the toilets. And this is Switzerland, so the person cleaning the toilets is banking decent pay in a very stable currency. In many ways, had it passed, it would have set a precedent that agitators around the world could've used to influence their corporate/government complexes to perhaps setting a 1:50 or 1:100 cap. But capping max pay is not a free market thing, apparently, even though it frees up wealth to do other things than pay 30,000 dollar tabs and buy 25 million dollar yachts and drink 1000 dollar mineral waters and whatever the hell else good money is pissed away into these days.
Needless to say, the trickle-down crowd won a spiritual victory in Switzerland earlier this year.
Inequality is the cause celebre of anyone who gives a fuck about the poor right now. Incidentally, correcting this imbalance will probably also have good effects on other non-destitute levels of society around the world and only be moderately bad to luxury industries that are populated by assholes and cater mostly to exhibitionists, miser spendthrifts, borderline sociopaths, and their hopeless children. With opulence running out of hand while poor people openly starve (in the era when humanity can split the atom [and see beyond it] and use robots to land robots on the surface of Mars) it is pretty obvious that wealth inequality is a problem. It's too complex to solve via blog, I am certain of that much. In a repressive oligarchy like anything in the Americas one would not expect any rich person, from drug warlord to white collar criminal to CEO (most of these guys work together and sometimes all three are the same guy), to give up a cent of their millions/billions for the poor, but in Europe, that 'socialist' den, they actually don't go crazy for the idea either.
You're outta luck, poor people! Aha, but then you're used to that....
It was something like 65% to 34%. Turns out Switzerland could give a fuck what the USA thinks about being the most right and prosperous country, because Switzerland pretty much invented inhuman rightist corporatism and are too neutral to be proud even. Anyone else get a chill down their spine just now? The downtrodden of the world are still looking for a precedent while the rampant worship of fundamentalist extremist oligarchy continues unabated and without any checks on its progress. The small people can eat their hats, as usual, so don't get excited or anything.
(* - I'm beginning to doubt the Swiss even did anything about the poisoned dolphin situation)
(** - not an actual quote or intended to represent any actual Swiss oligarch)
12/5/13
Attack of the Unkillable Time Killer
Flash games are a pretty mixed bag. All the benefits of casual gaming paired with the feel-good impetus of wasting time. It's pretty great until you hit one of those bullshit games (and there are many) that are not just tough but potentially unbalanced... then your time killing comes to an end, because you're either not good enough or the game is just plain turd flavor bullshit. I've played plenty of games whose presentation was awful, whose gameplay was too simple and easy to be worthwhile, and whose English was execrable, but one game that manages to get all that right still manages to
I just got finished with what I consider an unbeatable level in a TD that otherwise seemed pretty cool. I tried all kinds of things to beat the level. I abused the powers, tried using different arrangements of towers, and in the final rounds wasn't even getting as far as on my first try. 'Bullshit' I thought, "Fuck this game, whoever made it are either savants at TD games, sadistic, had a very specific strategy in mind, or plain didn't test the fucking thing. Fucking little dinosaur shits." because I was quite angry that I couldn't kill time in as casual a manner as I am comfortable with. I don't want to just breeze through, but the difficulty curve can't spike all at once.
I've played games I'm fairly sure are broken before. Sometimes there's a good split of things that are broken in your favor and you can continue. Sometimes I blame the game for being broken when I can't beat it like when I'm getting hadoukened to death or other ridiculous things are happening like getting swarmed by bastards in a TD that was until that point fairly challenging but not ridiculous. Anyone who has played too many TDs knows automatically when they've lost long before it happens. I borderline hate that game right down to the cutesy graphics and absolutely wrong paleontological context. I actually hate nothing about it, but it has bested me and that makes me angry.
Listen, here's the challenge I want to lay down. If anyone can beat Dino Assault TD with a perfect rating (which I don't think is easy since it's got multiple pain in the ass levels) you win. I doubt anyone would willingly do so, since there is so much bullshit you need to overcome just to beat the second chapter (full disclosure: I never reached the third chapter). The towers all cost more than they're worth, the powers are outrageously useless and weak, and the enemies are plentiful and resilient. To the developers: you win. Probably you didn't balance the game enough, though, because it's hard as week-old shit. I generally stop trying when it's apparent you are scornful of your audience and actively want them to lose.
Dino Assault isn't even slightly close to the gold standards of flash TD games (Cursed Treasure series by IriySoft). It could be... it's got a difficulty curve that is appealing at first and then casually leaves you behind as if you're a dummy who should know the exact combinations of overpriced towers and split-second skill spamming required to win.
Whoever manages to achieve a perfect victory with evidence will be king of the loser online-TD time killer crowd, and I will crown them with a title so splendorous that it will almost not be shameful. Then again, I doubt many people exist who can do it and I seriously doubt those who can read this blog. The offer stands until 9 December 2013, 12:00 GMT. I gave up: I can't waste more than a half hour on level or I know I'm no longer killing, but instead wasting, time.
Update: I get drawn back in, anyway of course. The war against productivity is never truly won, and frequently makes me look (and feel) like a foolish idiot.
Second Update: While I was playing this I was ignoring Kingdom Rush 2, which is actually a great comparison point for non-bullshit difficulty curves and better game design. Note that I think Dino Assault is 'good' but far out of the league of officially recognized excellency.
I just got finished with what I consider an unbeatable level in a TD that otherwise seemed pretty cool. I tried all kinds of things to beat the level. I abused the powers, tried using different arrangements of towers, and in the final rounds wasn't even getting as far as on my first try. 'Bullshit' I thought, "Fuck this game, whoever made it are either savants at TD games, sadistic, had a very specific strategy in mind, or plain didn't test the fucking thing. Fucking little dinosaur shits." because I was quite angry that I couldn't kill time in as casual a manner as I am comfortable with. I don't want to just breeze through, but the difficulty curve can't spike all at once.
I've played games I'm fairly sure are broken before. Sometimes there's a good split of things that are broken in your favor and you can continue. Sometimes I blame the game for being broken when I can't beat it like when I'm getting hadoukened to death or other ridiculous things are happening like getting swarmed by bastards in a TD that was until that point fairly challenging but not ridiculous. Anyone who has played too many TDs knows automatically when they've lost long before it happens. I borderline hate that game right down to the cutesy graphics and absolutely wrong paleontological context. I actually hate nothing about it, but it has bested me and that makes me angry.
Listen, here's the challenge I want to lay down. If anyone can beat Dino Assault TD with a perfect rating (which I don't think is easy since it's got multiple pain in the ass levels) you win. I doubt anyone would willingly do so, since there is so much bullshit you need to overcome just to beat the second chapter (full disclosure: I never reached the third chapter). The towers all cost more than they're worth, the powers are outrageously useless and weak, and the enemies are plentiful and resilient. To the developers: you win. Probably you didn't balance the game enough, though, because it's hard as week-old shit. I generally stop trying when it's apparent you are scornful of your audience and actively want them to lose.
Dino Assault isn't even slightly close to the gold standards of flash TD games (Cursed Treasure series by IriySoft). It could be... it's got a difficulty curve that is appealing at first and then casually leaves you behind as if you're a dummy who should know the exact combinations of overpriced towers and split-second skill spamming required to win.
Whoever manages to achieve a perfect victory with evidence will be king of the loser online-TD time killer crowd, and I will crown them with a title so splendorous that it will almost not be shameful. Then again, I doubt many people exist who can do it and I seriously doubt those who can read this blog. The offer stands until 9 December 2013, 12:00 GMT. I gave up: I can't waste more than a half hour on level or I know I'm no longer killing, but instead wasting, time.
Update: I get drawn back in, anyway of course. The war against productivity is never truly won, and frequently makes me look (and feel) like a foolish idiot.
Second Update: While I was playing this I was ignoring Kingdom Rush 2, which is actually a great comparison point for non-bullshit difficulty curves and better game design. Note that I think Dino Assault is 'good' but far out of the league of officially recognized excellency.
12/3/13
Is Death Grips this Era's Rage Against the Machine?
[citation needed] Apart from the heightened requirements for being considered legit anti-corporate and the fact that Death Grips isn't that political, it almost seems possible. Time moves in cycles, and it has been a while since there was a Rage Against The Machine-esque group in or near the mainstream, that I know of, but Death Grips seem to be the perfect candidate. Behind the facade, they don't even have coherent words to get an agenda from... actually this whole thing is falling apart: the new Rage would obviously be a New Sincerity band.
However, I get this sense from Death Grips that they're projecting an even bigger identity than what they actually possess. It's like how Rage was part of the 'Che Guevara T-Shirt era' of counterculture, a largely corporate construction referencing or alluding to deep things like a Tibetan monk on fire or how bad racism was. Death Grips is the new counterculture, which may be more legit, but has even less coherence.
As far as I know only Death Grip's tendency to release their albums for free is solidly anti-corporate or at all activist, and they don't really project any leftism or rightism in their lyrics at all. They more exist in a great, drugged out realm where politics can't claim them for its own insidious purpose. The idea that they are not just dudes making music, and instead dudes getting paid a lot to make music for some kind of viral marketing project, is very tempting mostly because I'm a hugely cynical skeptic.
The machine has won. Rage was one of its products and the crowd that used to listen to them sincerely have all moved on, mostly towards being yuppies. Death Grips exists in the absence of hope or progress, an aesthetic the group wallows in, as if to prove there is nothing left – a statement powerful enough to put it on equal footing with the largest, least counterculture countercultural movement of the 1990s.
It all relies on the idea that maybe Death Grips is saying something by screaming incoherently about drugs and paranoia and lust, but I know for a fact the group's listeners do not wear Che Guevara shirts. I have my ideas about their fans, in particular I think a lot of them are anything but as hardcore and mentally unsound as the music suggests, and the music writes a bigger cheque than Rage ever did because it seems to mostly be balls-out insanity.
Note that both groups were signed to Epic Records Co. Death Grips is no longer with them due to self-releasing albums and other rebellious things that Rage never did at all. Rage did manage to get a very comprehensive listing as 'questionable music' in the wake of 9/11, when any actual radical had not listened to them for nearly a decade. Ultimately very idea of counterculture 1990s is either very scary or incredibly laughable so I would put the two groups in different categories at least temporarily. I don't think the distinction would help either band and to be honest I don't think they have anything in common at all.
However: this does not mean that Death Grips is not this era's Rage Against the Machine. Epic Records execs must have seen the same underground/indie/counterculture buzz in both bands in order to want to sign them. Nobody cares that much about either band right now, but Death Grips is alive at least. Death Grips did not get the over-mainstream cool people and instead nabbed the indie nerds who are too cool and self-aware for horrorcore but into something similar, to the eternal chagrin of the Execs, who then dumped DG after finding or making a suitable excuse. I know they were part of the corporate overlords' plans somehow. Just like Rage. More the fools us.[citation needed]
However, I get this sense from Death Grips that they're projecting an even bigger identity than what they actually possess. It's like how Rage was part of the 'Che Guevara T-Shirt era' of counterculture, a largely corporate construction referencing or alluding to deep things like a Tibetan monk on fire or how bad racism was. Death Grips is the new counterculture, which may be more legit, but has even less coherence.
As far as I know only Death Grip's tendency to release their albums for free is solidly anti-corporate or at all activist, and they don't really project any leftism or rightism in their lyrics at all. They more exist in a great, drugged out realm where politics can't claim them for its own insidious purpose. The idea that they are not just dudes making music, and instead dudes getting paid a lot to make music for some kind of viral marketing project, is very tempting mostly because I'm a hugely cynical skeptic.
The machine has won. Rage was one of its products and the crowd that used to listen to them sincerely have all moved on, mostly towards being yuppies. Death Grips exists in the absence of hope or progress, an aesthetic the group wallows in, as if to prove there is nothing left – a statement powerful enough to put it on equal footing with the largest, least counterculture countercultural movement of the 1990s.
It all relies on the idea that maybe Death Grips is saying something by screaming incoherently about drugs and paranoia and lust, but I know for a fact the group's listeners do not wear Che Guevara shirts. I have my ideas about their fans, in particular I think a lot of them are anything but as hardcore and mentally unsound as the music suggests, and the music writes a bigger cheque than Rage ever did because it seems to mostly be balls-out insanity.
Note that both groups were signed to Epic Records Co. Death Grips is no longer with them due to self-releasing albums and other rebellious things that Rage never did at all. Rage did manage to get a very comprehensive listing as 'questionable music' in the wake of 9/11, when any actual radical had not listened to them for nearly a decade. Ultimately very idea of counterculture 1990s is either very scary or incredibly laughable so I would put the two groups in different categories at least temporarily. I don't think the distinction would help either band and to be honest I don't think they have anything in common at all.
However: this does not mean that Death Grips is not this era's Rage Against the Machine. Epic Records execs must have seen the same underground/indie/counterculture buzz in both bands in order to want to sign them. Nobody cares that much about either band right now, but Death Grips is alive at least. Death Grips did not get the over-mainstream cool people and instead nabbed the indie nerds who are too cool and self-aware for horrorcore but into something similar, to the eternal chagrin of the Execs, who then dumped DG after finding or making a suitable excuse. I know they were part of the corporate overlords' plans somehow. Just like Rage. More the fools us.[citation needed]
11/19/13
Rob Ford is Not a Damn Thing Like Chris Farley
Yes it's pretty tempting if you're trying to hack out a monologue or are a pretty half-assed funny-person, but Chris Farley wasn't a Canadian and also was much cooler than Rob Ford. Moreover it is suggested by his death that Farley partied a damn sight harder than Rob Ford. People who remember their history or know something about drug abuse will agree. Crack use seems pretty bad but it's more or less just a variety of cocaine use, mixing cocaine and heroin (the notorious speedball) is next-level shit by comparison, a gift from twisted space angels that wish nothing but death on celebrities (and probably thousands of 'normal people' that you never heard of). I heard a few of these supposedly humorous comparisons and I have to say, I'm about as unimpressed as a Toronto homeowner or businessman.
Rob Ford obviously parties harder than the majority of people ever do, but it is... come on... it's a bit of a smaller league than Chris Farley. Crack cocaine has a certain wow factor that just makes the entire story that much more crazy and appealing to most people.
Anecdotally, in 2009 a Canadian conservative MP, Rahim Jaffer, was caught with powder cocaine and I swear to you now that it was not mentioned on probably all international media. [Is there an international CPAC that isn't also moonlighting as a propaganda front for the U.N.? Maybe they would carry it.] Even in Canada it was a small potatoes story that was quickly hushed away and forgotten. Most Canadians, if you asked them about Rahim Jaffer, would give you a blank stare. Meanwhile, around the world you can bring up Rob Ford for a quick talking point or laugh. The point is that crack is just a much bigger story than cocaine, despite being the same drug. Yeah, there's other factors which influence the size and longevity of this story, but...
There are better stories at this point, and the usual suspects are having a field day with Rob Ford when they could be doing more original or funnier jokes. Back in May it was a hoot, and we can't forget the absolute hilarity of everything since the crack use was proven, but the joke's probably run its course. It will fade from late night TV and remain as a sordid specter in Toronto, maybe drunk, maybe not, but still haunting the city.
I know lots of people who are tired about this. It's the sorry state of Canadian politics: the only mentions they seem to get are when wacky mayors get called out by Gawker for doing drugs, prompting a police investigation and media firestorm. It is a well known fact that Rob Ford was not well liked prior to the conviction, which makes the whole thing very satisfying for a lot of people, and now the damn thing should play quietly with less free press for Ford. It should be resolved by the city council...
Of course, now that the story is getting interesting (Rob Ford is attempting to clean up his image, and will continue to battle with opponents) the outside interest will dissipate like the smell of a fart, or the type of low-yield scandal that somehow seems to be dealt with very lightly. Then again, maybe the people who wrote the charter for Toronto mayoralty weren't expecting a seasoned crack smoker and drunkard. Very funny, because the public official in the story is a rather prominent man who uses drugs liberally, despises the downtown types, and sweats a bunch.
Meanwhile in Canada there are corruption problems, the question of who will lead the country out of an era of pseudo-stupor (currently it looks like a job nobody can accomplish, and I personally doubt Stephen Harper ever bothered himself for a minute about it), the oft-ignored First Nations issues, and best of all a highly resource-and-construction-based economy that could shatter at the whim of the markets, and which in any case is a carefully controlled game of gouging and despoiling Canada to try and fit in with the world economy clique.
Rob Ford obviously parties harder than the majority of people ever do, but it is... come on... it's a bit of a smaller league than Chris Farley. Crack cocaine has a certain wow factor that just makes the entire story that much more crazy and appealing to most people.
Anecdotally, in 2009 a Canadian conservative MP, Rahim Jaffer, was caught with powder cocaine and I swear to you now that it was not mentioned on probably all international media. [Is there an international CPAC that isn't also moonlighting as a propaganda front for the U.N.? Maybe they would carry it.] Even in Canada it was a small potatoes story that was quickly hushed away and forgotten. Most Canadians, if you asked them about Rahim Jaffer, would give you a blank stare. Meanwhile, around the world you can bring up Rob Ford for a quick talking point or laugh. The point is that crack is just a much bigger story than cocaine, despite being the same drug. Yeah, there's other factors which influence the size and longevity of this story, but...
There are better stories at this point, and the usual suspects are having a field day with Rob Ford when they could be doing more original or funnier jokes. Back in May it was a hoot, and we can't forget the absolute hilarity of everything since the crack use was proven, but the joke's probably run its course. It will fade from late night TV and remain as a sordid specter in Toronto, maybe drunk, maybe not, but still haunting the city.
I know lots of people who are tired about this. It's the sorry state of Canadian politics: the only mentions they seem to get are when wacky mayors get called out by Gawker for doing drugs, prompting a police investigation and media firestorm. It is a well known fact that Rob Ford was not well liked prior to the conviction, which makes the whole thing very satisfying for a lot of people, and now the damn thing should play quietly with less free press for Ford. It should be resolved by the city council...
Of course, now that the story is getting interesting (Rob Ford is attempting to clean up his image, and will continue to battle with opponents) the outside interest will dissipate like the smell of a fart, or the type of low-yield scandal that somehow seems to be dealt with very lightly. Then again, maybe the people who wrote the charter for Toronto mayoralty weren't expecting a seasoned crack smoker and drunkard. Very funny, because the public official in the story is a rather prominent man who uses drugs liberally, despises the downtown types, and sweats a bunch.
Meanwhile in Canada there are corruption problems, the question of who will lead the country out of an era of pseudo-stupor (currently it looks like a job nobody can accomplish, and I personally doubt Stephen Harper ever bothered himself for a minute about it), the oft-ignored First Nations issues, and best of all a highly resource-and-construction-based economy that could shatter at the whim of the markets, and which in any case is a carefully controlled game of gouging and despoiling Canada to try and fit in with the world economy clique.
11/15/13
Modern Tips for Investing your Identity
These days its not good enough to just exist and passively consume media. I mean, it is, if you exist in the lower tiers of society and not at all online. Even then you'll have to be around people who are either careless or completely uncool... what I am saying is its impossible if you care at all about your image. People will treat you differently based on your projected identity, and perhaps most importantly of all, in the absence of an identity you will be assigned one. People aren't often too kind when assigning you an identity, unless... many factors can intercede in your favor or your detriment.
Escape is unlikely. People who run from identity find themselves cornered and unmarketable to other human beings. No mass movement exists of people who spurn identity as an outdated, noxious concept. Individualism is still in vogue, denying it, even to the least aware person, will mark you as abnormal and potentially dangerous. On the other hand, lots of people get very invested in their identities, to the point where even the dumbest person can see they've taken it too far and judge them for it. With identity comes conflict, and identity fetishism, and a lack of real personal constitution – look at everybody who identifies as anything, too much. They're as odd and bland as the people who want no identity affixed to their name.
What is important is to have something outside of yourself to identify with. Not all identity can come from within, even if the best and most trustworthy kind cannot be bought. Hobbies, interests, activities, talents, peculiarities all are good starting points. Anything but the basic job/field of study/consumption habits can augment the identity you might have (or have not) developed since you were born. As soon as you start falling into the void of identity via consumption, or the chasm of applying various identities to see which you prefer... it becomes quite apparent to others that you are not comfortable enough with yourself.
It's tempting to say that experimenting with identity is something for teenagers. This is not true. Adults reinvent themselves all the time: sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail quite miserably and get mocked and look like total jackasses. The trick is what it has always been: to have a kernel of self, to hold true to it, and not sell it out for temporary gain.
In these largely soulless times it is easier than ever to find an extreme niche identity and invest heavily into it. Life is hard and lonely, and most of us are not exceptionally popular or easy to like. It's easy to become distracted from the struggle of 'being oneself' and buy into one of many processed, mass-appeal identities that will quell your feelings of alienation and disgust. Being a human isn't easy. It isn't a question of blending in. Most authentic people are pretty subdued and blend in easily. Often it's the identity fetishists who stand out the most... the ones who live by their t-shirt, hairstyle, loudly proclaimed philosophies... and even the least presumptuous and annoying among us can be inauthentic, quietly fetishizing their unremarkableness and stifling what or who they really are.
Therefore it's a question too big to answer in a blog post, sequence of blog posts, or even an entire blog. I won't pretend to even be knowledgeable about it, but I think I can draw up a list of helpful tips and insights for modern identity:
1. Never try too hard. People can sense this and almost none of them are impressed by it.
2. It's harder to be something than to look like something. There is living, and there is lifestyle.
3. It's not always worth it to have an identity. Others can be generous with their identification of you.
4. If you're trying to be on top of things, it can paint you into a corner. Be broad, be general, and profit.
5. This issue will never not be an issue. It will often be bothersome, so learn to keep your cool.
6. The harder you are to identify, the more offended you might get at how people see you.
7. The golden years differ for everyone: for most, it's easiest to have a fluid identity in their 20s.
8. Learn to roll with it: you may know what you really are, but you can't always make others see it.
8.1. Sometimes you will get spit on: sometimes you have to hold your pride, and sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.
9. There is an inverse rule about caring somewhere in there, but it has exceptions. Not getting started on it.
10. Baudrillardian concepts about authenticity, simulacra, etc. apply.
I didn't arrive at quite the point I wanted to, which was to say that most everyone fronts a little bit here and there - check out the game Majora's Mask for some insights into this tragic topic. Or gain some actual critical literacy (just don't get too caught up in identifying as culturally literate). For example, a majority of people and things related to entertainment media (music, film, TV shows, video games, mass market books, increasing amounts of political and philosophic content, even health) is insubstantial or faked, which is why people whose identity hinges on them are often either children, mentally unhinged, or totally mentally deficient.
Personally, at times I wonder if it's worthwhile to be anything at all. I certainly can't say at this point. The only thing granted is humanity, and some abandon even that. The internet, cultural appropriation, along with basic human prejudice, have helped make the issue more central than it ever ought to be and very complex. Don't invest too heavily because the market is a bit overheated and might collapse. Best of luck to you and your identity.
Escape is unlikely. People who run from identity find themselves cornered and unmarketable to other human beings. No mass movement exists of people who spurn identity as an outdated, noxious concept. Individualism is still in vogue, denying it, even to the least aware person, will mark you as abnormal and potentially dangerous. On the other hand, lots of people get very invested in their identities, to the point where even the dumbest person can see they've taken it too far and judge them for it. With identity comes conflict, and identity fetishism, and a lack of real personal constitution – look at everybody who identifies as anything, too much. They're as odd and bland as the people who want no identity affixed to their name.
What is important is to have something outside of yourself to identify with. Not all identity can come from within, even if the best and most trustworthy kind cannot be bought. Hobbies, interests, activities, talents, peculiarities all are good starting points. Anything but the basic job/field of study/consumption habits can augment the identity you might have (or have not) developed since you were born. As soon as you start falling into the void of identity via consumption, or the chasm of applying various identities to see which you prefer... it becomes quite apparent to others that you are not comfortable enough with yourself.
It's tempting to say that experimenting with identity is something for teenagers. This is not true. Adults reinvent themselves all the time: sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail quite miserably and get mocked and look like total jackasses. The trick is what it has always been: to have a kernel of self, to hold true to it, and not sell it out for temporary gain.
In these largely soulless times it is easier than ever to find an extreme niche identity and invest heavily into it. Life is hard and lonely, and most of us are not exceptionally popular or easy to like. It's easy to become distracted from the struggle of 'being oneself' and buy into one of many processed, mass-appeal identities that will quell your feelings of alienation and disgust. Being a human isn't easy. It isn't a question of blending in. Most authentic people are pretty subdued and blend in easily. Often it's the identity fetishists who stand out the most... the ones who live by their t-shirt, hairstyle, loudly proclaimed philosophies... and even the least presumptuous and annoying among us can be inauthentic, quietly fetishizing their unremarkableness and stifling what or who they really are.
Therefore it's a question too big to answer in a blog post, sequence of blog posts, or even an entire blog. I won't pretend to even be knowledgeable about it, but I think I can draw up a list of helpful tips and insights for modern identity:
1. Never try too hard. People can sense this and almost none of them are impressed by it.
2. It's harder to be something than to look like something. There is living, and there is lifestyle.
3. It's not always worth it to have an identity. Others can be generous with their identification of you.
4. If you're trying to be on top of things, it can paint you into a corner. Be broad, be general, and profit.
5. This issue will never not be an issue. It will often be bothersome, so learn to keep your cool.
6. The harder you are to identify, the more offended you might get at how people see you.
7. The golden years differ for everyone: for most, it's easiest to have a fluid identity in their 20s.
8. Learn to roll with it: you may know what you really are, but you can't always make others see it.
8.1. Sometimes you will get spit on: sometimes you have to hold your pride, and sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.
9. There is an inverse rule about caring somewhere in there, but it has exceptions. Not getting started on it.
10. Baudrillardian concepts about authenticity, simulacra, etc. apply.
I didn't arrive at quite the point I wanted to, which was to say that most everyone fronts a little bit here and there - check out the game Majora's Mask for some insights into this tragic topic. Or gain some actual critical literacy (just don't get too caught up in identifying as culturally literate). For example, a majority of people and things related to entertainment media (music, film, TV shows, video games, mass market books, increasing amounts of political and philosophic content, even health) is insubstantial or faked, which is why people whose identity hinges on them are often either children, mentally unhinged, or totally mentally deficient.
Personally, at times I wonder if it's worthwhile to be anything at all. I certainly can't say at this point. The only thing granted is humanity, and some abandon even that. The internet, cultural appropriation, along with basic human prejudice, have helped make the issue more central than it ever ought to be and very complex. Don't invest too heavily because the market is a bit overheated and might collapse. Best of luck to you and your identity.
11/11/13
The Rob Ford Scandal Saga: Refiring the Spotlight
The mayor of notable world-class city Toronto, Ontario (home of the Toronto International Film Festival, the Leafs, the Raptors, and the Blue Jays) had admitted to using crack cocaine, which he had previously (and very prominently) been alleged to have done. The story was very hot, leading to some Canada stories on all kinds of media around the world. It was close to being a circus, and with Rob Ford... well... it actually had been kind of a circus all along, hadn't it?
A large number of Torontonians had it in for Rob Ford since the moment he took office, and many of those rejected him before that point. The thing was primed from the start to be disastrous for Ford, but, bless his heart, he did go on as acting mayor. He did what Clinton did and denied it. The police followed up, and on Halloween Bill Blair, chief of police, held a press conference to confirm the allegations first put forward in May. Rob Ford had smoked crack cocaine, and the police had video evidence of it, and that's where the thing stood. What's insane is that there is apparently no mechanism in place for dealing with a mayor who might be compromised by use of illegal substance. At this late point in the story, Ford is dealing with a potential mandatory leave of absence.
An historical day for the Ford mayoralty, and the continuation of this spring's Crack Mayor Narrative. There were a couple of reasons to consider the allegations unproven back then: firstly, a large group of people wanted a character assassination and would've jumped on the opportunity anyway; second, Gawker are a bunch of fuck shits who never came up with the goods for shadowy reasons; third, the Toronto Star has 'had it in' for Ford for a long time; finally, it was only alleged at the time. Anyone would have agreed that Rob Ford was a bit screwed up, possibly a drunk, and probably had contacts with 'the wrong people'. The police, competently enough, decided to keep an eye on the situation. Maybe they even followed through with Gawker.
It's last week's news and I know that. I waited so that the frenzy had ended by the time I said anything. I had nothing to add while it was happening. It seems to me as if Rob Ford will continue to act as embattled mayor for a few more days. He evaded the topic because it was his last move in the doomed chess game of crack use and publicity. The Drunken Stupor line is a beauty, a real font of humor, but also the only legitimate way Ford could counteract the damage of Using Illegal Drugs... because you see, when you're already Intoxicated on a Legal Drug, it's more permissible to use an Illegal Drug, because you're not thinking clearly. Mostly it's a nod to the drug war mentality. Say what you want about him: he tried.
The media attention is burdensome to Canada, frankly speaking. After the bets cleared and the dust settled, me and a bookie had a serious talk about how odd it is that big stories about Canada go completely untold by the rest of the world, while all it would take for a Canadian revival would be more dumb scandals and graceless public officials. It was the first big story about Canada since Lac Megantic, or Chris Hadfield's Bowie cover in space.. and before that the big story was Rob Ford on crack cocaine allegations. Listen: Rob Ford is obviously kind of a troubled guy, he's apparently surrounded by shady dudes and fake friends who will videotape him in a private moment, but I doubt he's taken the reigns of Toronto City while high on crack. At least he didn't use taxpayer monies for personal reasons – so is he morally superior to Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy and the rest of the high-life crew in the Canadian Senate? Some would argue he is. Meanwhile there's talk of pipeline chicanery, a big topic for the United States and Canada, that is so quiet one can barely hear it.
How will Rob Ford be remembered? Does Toronto deserve better, and what does it mean to be Torontonian in light of a mayor who smokes crack? Has this changed how the world views Toronto? Rob Ford has gotten more global media coverage in a short few months than David Miller and Mel Lastman combined, does that put Toronto 'on the map'? Have you ever smoked crack, and if so did you feel like you were a mayor? Do you feel sorry for Rob Ford, knowing that underneath all the political grandstanding and posturing, he's a just a fat guy from a relatively privileged family? Do you hate him? Will he step down on Wednesday? Will Canada ever again become prominent in the news for good reasons? Are there too many questions and too few concrete answers?
But, uh, in actual serious world news that isn't sensationalism: the Phillipines just got hammered by a giant storm and is actually in a disastrous state, so the Rob Ford media shitshow can be allowed to end in relative obscurity. Also the McRib is back, gross. The war in Syria is still ongoing, as well, that's pretty important but since there isn't an easy solution it seems to be brushed under the rug again now the chemical weapons issue is sorted out. And in America there is hushed talk of a Tea Party/Republican schism. What a difference one week can make, but in the case of Rob Ford, it won't solve his problems..
A large number of Torontonians had it in for Rob Ford since the moment he took office, and many of those rejected him before that point. The thing was primed from the start to be disastrous for Ford, but, bless his heart, he did go on as acting mayor. He did what Clinton did and denied it. The police followed up, and on Halloween Bill Blair, chief of police, held a press conference to confirm the allegations first put forward in May. Rob Ford had smoked crack cocaine, and the police had video evidence of it, and that's where the thing stood. What's insane is that there is apparently no mechanism in place for dealing with a mayor who might be compromised by use of illegal substance. At this late point in the story, Ford is dealing with a potential mandatory leave of absence.
An historical day for the Ford mayoralty, and the continuation of this spring's Crack Mayor Narrative. There were a couple of reasons to consider the allegations unproven back then: firstly, a large group of people wanted a character assassination and would've jumped on the opportunity anyway; second, Gawker are a bunch of fuck shits who never came up with the goods for shadowy reasons; third, the Toronto Star has 'had it in' for Ford for a long time; finally, it was only alleged at the time. Anyone would have agreed that Rob Ford was a bit screwed up, possibly a drunk, and probably had contacts with 'the wrong people'. The police, competently enough, decided to keep an eye on the situation. Maybe they even followed through with Gawker.
It's last week's news and I know that. I waited so that the frenzy had ended by the time I said anything. I had nothing to add while it was happening. It seems to me as if Rob Ford will continue to act as embattled mayor for a few more days. He evaded the topic because it was his last move in the doomed chess game of crack use and publicity. The Drunken Stupor line is a beauty, a real font of humor, but also the only legitimate way Ford could counteract the damage of Using Illegal Drugs... because you see, when you're already Intoxicated on a Legal Drug, it's more permissible to use an Illegal Drug, because you're not thinking clearly. Mostly it's a nod to the drug war mentality. Say what you want about him: he tried.
The media attention is burdensome to Canada, frankly speaking. After the bets cleared and the dust settled, me and a bookie had a serious talk about how odd it is that big stories about Canada go completely untold by the rest of the world, while all it would take for a Canadian revival would be more dumb scandals and graceless public officials. It was the first big story about Canada since Lac Megantic, or Chris Hadfield's Bowie cover in space.. and before that the big story was Rob Ford on crack cocaine allegations. Listen: Rob Ford is obviously kind of a troubled guy, he's apparently surrounded by shady dudes and fake friends who will videotape him in a private moment, but I doubt he's taken the reigns of Toronto City while high on crack. At least he didn't use taxpayer monies for personal reasons – so is he morally superior to Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy and the rest of the high-life crew in the Canadian Senate? Some would argue he is. Meanwhile there's talk of pipeline chicanery, a big topic for the United States and Canada, that is so quiet one can barely hear it.
How will Rob Ford be remembered? Does Toronto deserve better, and what does it mean to be Torontonian in light of a mayor who smokes crack? Has this changed how the world views Toronto? Rob Ford has gotten more global media coverage in a short few months than David Miller and Mel Lastman combined, does that put Toronto 'on the map'? Have you ever smoked crack, and if so did you feel like you were a mayor? Do you feel sorry for Rob Ford, knowing that underneath all the political grandstanding and posturing, he's a just a fat guy from a relatively privileged family? Do you hate him? Will he step down on Wednesday? Will Canada ever again become prominent in the news for good reasons? Are there too many questions and too few concrete answers?
But, uh, in actual serious world news that isn't sensationalism: the Phillipines just got hammered by a giant storm and is actually in a disastrous state, so the Rob Ford media shitshow can be allowed to end in relative obscurity. Also the McRib is back, gross. The war in Syria is still ongoing, as well, that's pretty important but since there isn't an easy solution it seems to be brushed under the rug again now the chemical weapons issue is sorted out. And in America there is hushed talk of a Tea Party/Republican schism. What a difference one week can make, but in the case of Rob Ford, it won't solve his problems..
11/5/13
Let us Get Huffy and Rejoice in our Doomedness: I, Rambler II
Amidst the rise of surveillance/police states that are no longer just pre-Arab Spring/Classified/Cold War throwbacks (thanks Chelsea Manning) one gets the sense that, as a species, we have gotten no closer to regaining our collective shit than at any point since the Agricultural Revolution. I've become very well acquainted with the sensation of a rapidly accelerating crisis. It's a bit like the Fukushima Daiichi reactor 1 shortly after the tsunami smashed the facilities, when it lay destroyed, creeping by steady degrees out of control... the edifice of control revealed as the folly of unreal maniacs, watched by clueless and frightened idiots, the situation only tempered by the courage and knowledge of those who were once considered alarmist, disposable, and ignorable.
Nobody wants to curb the debilitating spread of convenience consumerism. There is lots of talk. Everyone seems stupefied about the political landscape. We waste our breath to summarize it. Nothing distinguishes our era more than waste. Businesses, governments, and shills are all absolutely overjoyed to be part of a world economy that is premised on the insane principle of unlimited growth on a shrinking planet, of the useless squandering of resources. Profit is king, and governments are its thrall. Moderates are toothless, the countercultures are all dead or miniscule, the relentless march of progress goes on, shitting where we eat and belching poison fumes into the air we breathe. Human potential is squandered and used up at the same rate: who can blame the junkies now? The capitalists stand unchallenged, they who were as evil and soulless as the communist exploiters they reviled and nearly destroyed the world to curb. In the most powerful country in the world, host to the most powerful multinationals you can't even begin to imagine, a corporation is legally equivalent to a person.
The junkies, at least, are honest in their self-destructive pursuits, and probably contribute less to wastage than the respectable classes of citizen-consumers, whose per capita throughput of plastic garbage is enough to bury an entire small property each and every year. Let's not even get into energy or food waste. The wealthy are smug and spit on the middle class, who smugly spit on the working class, who wearily spit on the working poor, who accidentally spit on the destitute. Respect is rarely earned or given to or from any of 'the little people'. Respect is a commodity. Self-interest in the age of individualism has led only to the abandonment of societal and individual progress. Self-denial is less than a relic: it is the ghost of an unheard-of type of human... all else is myth but gratification. We will become lower apes yet, at this pace, while the descendants of humanity spit on us, completing the cycle. Likely they will be too cruel and abstracted to actively exterminate our relict populations.
And in this atmosphere of toxic and vile and inhuman activity, is it really any wonder that cruelty and hatred grow freely? Is it any wonder that laws cannot protect people from themselves, or children from each other? The people who are surprised by the modern world are obviously blind to what it really is. I can't blame anyone for being a junkie, a consumerist whore, or willfully ignorant and distracted (three increasingly similar things) and there are not many who can lay blame for it. What is important is that the entire situation of the world is becoming too alarming, is growing too quickly, and is passing far too quickly out of the hands of common people (you know, the abused slaves and serfs of yesteryear, who stood to gain the most from modernity and progress). With technology as a crutch it is very tempting to see the next generations of humanity as nothing but unnecessary, mentally-truncated cripples ruled by a new aristocracy.
"There is bad, yes, but there is also good in the world." I never declared that hope was dead, I was suggesting that hope itself is currently as endangered as any crumbling, over-harvested species in any pillaged environment. Things like OWS just alienate hope from reality. There are not enough skeptics and too many cynics, but both are outnumbered by shills and apologists. I'd take the world's bitterest cynic over any shill apologist - I prefer honesty to optimism where my entire species, its homeworld, and its livelihood are in question. Nobody has successfully taught the lesson of unity without coercion... true moral and philosophic problems go unanswered while we charge into the minutest details of quantum physics. Values are changing, but you ought to get top value for your dollar. We should take something back, even at this late point, to prove to our doomed descendants that we were not just fickle, feckless, fussy cowards with fine words and utopian ideals.
We are shocked and offended that nature would take anything back that we gleaned from it. Yet, we come from it, and owe our all to it. This is absurd. We consider ourselves entitled to pillage not 'the environment' alone but in fact all of life which we commonly see as nothing but a means to wealth, contentment, and satisfaction. We do not treasure or honor life for its own sake and therefore we will not solve the pathological behaviors behind the ecological and social problems we claim to want to solve. Mostly we have failed to understand nature... we force it into models and theories instead of learning from it. We hate the idea of nature reclaiming its 10% so much that we will stop at no lengths, not even poisoning ourselves, to prevent a weed from growing or an insect from feeding. Meanwhile we make such noise about unborn babies that our callousness in other regards seems schizophrenic.
Why wouldn't I hide in a narcotic haze, or try to buy my way to peace of mind (irony!), or even kill myself? More and more I have no answer, can barely see around myself, and realize that awareness is no substitution for action, for a coherent response to an increasingly incoherent world. It's a pity that radicals are marginalized to the point where they have no alternatives and tiny audiences. It's a pity that the only moderates who are allowed to speak are the ones telling us that we have done no wrong, that we have nothing to regret and a bright future. It's a pity no side in any of the day's big arguments has any respect, any foresight, any capacity to entertain alternative world-views. I guess I should give in, and just passively wait to be subsumed in the coming wave of tech-oligarch globalist worthlessness and wretchedness, into the hopeless and shit hell we deserve, into the ongoing death of the world we barely knew. Lambs for slaughter: I tell you I wouldn't mind being a child again...
Nobody wants to curb the debilitating spread of convenience consumerism. There is lots of talk. Everyone seems stupefied about the political landscape. We waste our breath to summarize it. Nothing distinguishes our era more than waste. Businesses, governments, and shills are all absolutely overjoyed to be part of a world economy that is premised on the insane principle of unlimited growth on a shrinking planet, of the useless squandering of resources. Profit is king, and governments are its thrall. Moderates are toothless, the countercultures are all dead or miniscule, the relentless march of progress goes on, shitting where we eat and belching poison fumes into the air we breathe. Human potential is squandered and used up at the same rate: who can blame the junkies now? The capitalists stand unchallenged, they who were as evil and soulless as the communist exploiters they reviled and nearly destroyed the world to curb. In the most powerful country in the world, host to the most powerful multinationals you can't even begin to imagine, a corporation is legally equivalent to a person.
The junkies, at least, are honest in their self-destructive pursuits, and probably contribute less to wastage than the respectable classes of citizen-consumers, whose per capita throughput of plastic garbage is enough to bury an entire small property each and every year. Let's not even get into energy or food waste. The wealthy are smug and spit on the middle class, who smugly spit on the working class, who wearily spit on the working poor, who accidentally spit on the destitute. Respect is rarely earned or given to or from any of 'the little people'. Respect is a commodity. Self-interest in the age of individualism has led only to the abandonment of societal and individual progress. Self-denial is less than a relic: it is the ghost of an unheard-of type of human... all else is myth but gratification. We will become lower apes yet, at this pace, while the descendants of humanity spit on us, completing the cycle. Likely they will be too cruel and abstracted to actively exterminate our relict populations.
And in this atmosphere of toxic and vile and inhuman activity, is it really any wonder that cruelty and hatred grow freely? Is it any wonder that laws cannot protect people from themselves, or children from each other? The people who are surprised by the modern world are obviously blind to what it really is. I can't blame anyone for being a junkie, a consumerist whore, or willfully ignorant and distracted (three increasingly similar things) and there are not many who can lay blame for it. What is important is that the entire situation of the world is becoming too alarming, is growing too quickly, and is passing far too quickly out of the hands of common people (you know, the abused slaves and serfs of yesteryear, who stood to gain the most from modernity and progress). With technology as a crutch it is very tempting to see the next generations of humanity as nothing but unnecessary, mentally-truncated cripples ruled by a new aristocracy.
"There is bad, yes, but there is also good in the world." I never declared that hope was dead, I was suggesting that hope itself is currently as endangered as any crumbling, over-harvested species in any pillaged environment. Things like OWS just alienate hope from reality. There are not enough skeptics and too many cynics, but both are outnumbered by shills and apologists. I'd take the world's bitterest cynic over any shill apologist - I prefer honesty to optimism where my entire species, its homeworld, and its livelihood are in question. Nobody has successfully taught the lesson of unity without coercion... true moral and philosophic problems go unanswered while we charge into the minutest details of quantum physics. Values are changing, but you ought to get top value for your dollar. We should take something back, even at this late point, to prove to our doomed descendants that we were not just fickle, feckless, fussy cowards with fine words and utopian ideals.
We are shocked and offended that nature would take anything back that we gleaned from it. Yet, we come from it, and owe our all to it. This is absurd. We consider ourselves entitled to pillage not 'the environment' alone but in fact all of life which we commonly see as nothing but a means to wealth, contentment, and satisfaction. We do not treasure or honor life for its own sake and therefore we will not solve the pathological behaviors behind the ecological and social problems we claim to want to solve. Mostly we have failed to understand nature... we force it into models and theories instead of learning from it. We hate the idea of nature reclaiming its 10% so much that we will stop at no lengths, not even poisoning ourselves, to prevent a weed from growing or an insect from feeding. Meanwhile we make such noise about unborn babies that our callousness in other regards seems schizophrenic.
Why wouldn't I hide in a narcotic haze, or try to buy my way to peace of mind (irony!), or even kill myself? More and more I have no answer, can barely see around myself, and realize that awareness is no substitution for action, for a coherent response to an increasingly incoherent world. It's a pity that radicals are marginalized to the point where they have no alternatives and tiny audiences. It's a pity that the only moderates who are allowed to speak are the ones telling us that we have done no wrong, that we have nothing to regret and a bright future. It's a pity no side in any of the day's big arguments has any respect, any foresight, any capacity to entertain alternative world-views. I guess I should give in, and just passively wait to be subsumed in the coming wave of tech-oligarch globalist worthlessness and wretchedness, into the hopeless and shit hell we deserve, into the ongoing death of the world we barely knew. Lambs for slaughter: I tell you I wouldn't mind being a child again...
10/30/13
RIP Isohunt: You Are Missed
You will be missed by those people who, I suppose, enjoy acquiring/finding/sharing .torrents.
This was a bit of news that might have gone under your radar, but moderately popular torrent site Isohunt shut down about a week ago. Why? Because business cartels managed to utilize the courts to not only force the site offline but also sue its owner for more than one hundred million dollars in (USD most likely), because the music industry is hurting for money, and piracy is a pretty clear infringement on property, and most of all because it's a show of power that might remind torrent fans of the Napster Trials of the 2000s.
Isohunt was moderately useful to find things that Pirate Bay might not have had, as well as very useful whenever Pirate Bay was down. It was in my world and existed there as a respectable site, not particularly shady or anything. What else is there to say? There are some questions, I suppose.
Will the fight against media piracy be won or lost? Did the owner of Isohunt have Bitcoin among his assets? Will he be ruthlessly pursued as he tries to avoid reparations he will need to go into serious debt to afford? Wikipedia reports that the owner of Isohunt may only have 3 or 4 million to make repayments and live on. The owner also very righteously admitted that most of the torrents available on Isohunt were widely available... but it was that 5% that contributed to a healthy torrent ecology.
With each industry victory, the remaining .torrent players become bigger and the number of worthwhile torrent sites decreases. For, you see, Isohunt was forthright and not malicious, whereas a lot of .torrent sites are quite clearly crooked, shady, hard to use, and dishonest. Therefore I would like to thank Isohunt and its legally embattled owner for their service to the freedom of information and enduring human activity of piracy.
Bittersweet stuff. It was a good run, it was a good service, and people who want free data are still winning the war – until the RIAA and NSA co-operate to destroy freedom sometime in the corporate information/surveillance state future.
This was a bit of news that might have gone under your radar, but moderately popular torrent site Isohunt shut down about a week ago. Why? Because business cartels managed to utilize the courts to not only force the site offline but also sue its owner for more than one hundred million dollars in (USD most likely), because the music industry is hurting for money, and piracy is a pretty clear infringement on property, and most of all because it's a show of power that might remind torrent fans of the Napster Trials of the 2000s.
Isohunt was moderately useful to find things that Pirate Bay might not have had, as well as very useful whenever Pirate Bay was down. It was in my world and existed there as a respectable site, not particularly shady or anything. What else is there to say? There are some questions, I suppose.
Will the fight against media piracy be won or lost? Did the owner of Isohunt have Bitcoin among his assets? Will he be ruthlessly pursued as he tries to avoid reparations he will need to go into serious debt to afford? Wikipedia reports that the owner of Isohunt may only have 3 or 4 million to make repayments and live on. The owner also very righteously admitted that most of the torrents available on Isohunt were widely available... but it was that 5% that contributed to a healthy torrent ecology.
With each industry victory, the remaining .torrent players become bigger and the number of worthwhile torrent sites decreases. For, you see, Isohunt was forthright and not malicious, whereas a lot of .torrent sites are quite clearly crooked, shady, hard to use, and dishonest. Therefore I would like to thank Isohunt and its legally embattled owner for their service to the freedom of information and enduring human activity of piracy.
Bittersweet stuff. It was a good run, it was a good service, and people who want free data are still winning the war – until the RIAA and NSA co-operate to destroy freedom sometime in the corporate information/surveillance state future.
10/21/13
User Comment Rodeo: Rocktoberfest
Listen well, for I know that reading internet user commentary is an unhealthy practice. Every day, many people are drowned in sorrow and rage by scrolling down on a YouTube video. The most vulnerable and fearful video posters have been known to disable commentary altogether – suspecting the wildest, dumbest, and most impassioned responses. User Comment Rodeo asks the rhetorical: why is internet commentary such a low thing? Has it any value? Who gains by it, and who are the principal commentators? Why is it largely hateful, negative, illiterate? Does it reflect on human society in the year 2013? What conclusions can we draw about the spitefulness of modern humanity? It is known the internet can have deleterious effects on health, especially mental health, and I believe that the biggest user comment posters are also the most mentally unwell.
For this instalment of User Comment Rodeo, I wanted to stray as far as possible from the usual set of questions and the usual set of very obvious samples and go a-huntin' for more specialized examples. The beauty of user commentary is that it is limitless: if it could be used to generate energy we could go some distance to solving the energy crisis. If only impotent rage held any value at all, we could even begin to trade it, bringing in an era of fantastic riches. Since it doesn't, I changed the parameters on the UCR 3000 and waited for a haul of brilliant material. Me, getting content farmed? Hah, I'm farming the internet every day and rolling in the 'lulz' like it's dirty money.
You will see above an example of the 'intentional double post'. User is 'raging' at a localized advertisement and revealing a rather high level of acrimony. If you didn't know about the problems of a New Zealand national on Youtube, you know. That has value: not as much value as an AD BLOCKER perhaps, but value nonetheless. Double posts are generally due to user error, but as you can see, they are very enjoyable and visceral when they are intentionally done to express some idea or other.
Here's another double post, which demonstrates the flip-side of 'double posting for emphasis'. It also demonstrates how searching for double posts is risky, because they're not so highly amusing if they're not New Zealots taking the piss out of corrupt businesses, biased governments, and the eternal problem of YouTube advertising.
This is an apologist double post. A big company was at risk of being called mean things, and someone had to stand up for them. Of course length has an inverse relationship to content and quality of communication, so I don't really know where this guy is coming from. "Yeah, you know, who cares if it's people like me who enable large corporations to skirt legal issues, hide from effective taxation, and blow up clouds of careless birds with impunity. They're good for the community, they're sincerely gracious to their employees, and they're not Pamela Wallin."
Let's get back to the relatively basic single post - in this set I'd like to cite one poster (you might have noticed them already) who manages to miss the point, be a buzzkill, and expose himself as a deviant square all at the same time. Also there's an Internet Drug Expert (very cool), and what I think is a tween hipster there in the middle (VICE Montreal or die, bro)... suffice it to say there is only one truly insufferable poster, and the quality of the rest of the comments was significantly higher than what I'd expect from Youtube Comment Sections. People spend their time doing this kind of thing, maybe in isolation, maybe while they ride public transit... scary, isn't it? You may never know who these posters are, but if you're lucky you'll never know who they are.
I decided to close this rather lazy UCR on a high note. Spam comments like this are everywhere, some newer ones are offering drugs but I do enjoy an old fashioned Pick Up Artist 'advertisement'. This guy is very subtly a spam bot, but you'd never know just by reading the blatant yet comment. The internet... it only cares about the one thing it will never possess: sex.
For this instalment of User Comment Rodeo, I wanted to stray as far as possible from the usual set of questions and the usual set of very obvious samples and go a-huntin' for more specialized examples. The beauty of user commentary is that it is limitless: if it could be used to generate energy we could go some distance to solving the energy crisis. If only impotent rage held any value at all, we could even begin to trade it, bringing in an era of fantastic riches. Since it doesn't, I changed the parameters on the UCR 3000 and waited for a haul of brilliant material. Me, getting content farmed? Hah, I'm farming the internet every day and rolling in the 'lulz' like it's dirty money.
You will see above an example of the 'intentional double post'. User is 'raging' at a localized advertisement and revealing a rather high level of acrimony. If you didn't know about the problems of a New Zealand national on Youtube, you know. That has value: not as much value as an AD BLOCKER perhaps, but value nonetheless. Double posts are generally due to user error, but as you can see, they are very enjoyable and visceral when they are intentionally done to express some idea or other.
Here's another double post, which demonstrates the flip-side of 'double posting for emphasis'. It also demonstrates how searching for double posts is risky, because they're not so highly amusing if they're not New Zealots taking the piss out of corrupt businesses, biased governments, and the eternal problem of YouTube advertising.
This is an apologist double post. A big company was at risk of being called mean things, and someone had to stand up for them. Of course length has an inverse relationship to content and quality of communication, so I don't really know where this guy is coming from. "Yeah, you know, who cares if it's people like me who enable large corporations to skirt legal issues, hide from effective taxation, and blow up clouds of careless birds with impunity. They're good for the community, they're sincerely gracious to their employees, and they're not Pamela Wallin."
Let's get back to the relatively basic single post - in this set I'd like to cite one poster (you might have noticed them already) who manages to miss the point, be a buzzkill, and expose himself as a deviant square all at the same time. Also there's an Internet Drug Expert (very cool), and what I think is a tween hipster there in the middle (VICE Montreal or die, bro)... suffice it to say there is only one truly insufferable poster, and the quality of the rest of the comments was significantly higher than what I'd expect from Youtube Comment Sections. People spend their time doing this kind of thing, maybe in isolation, maybe while they ride public transit... scary, isn't it? You may never know who these posters are, but if you're lucky you'll never know who they are.
I decided to close this rather lazy UCR on a high note. Spam comments like this are everywhere, some newer ones are offering drugs but I do enjoy an old fashioned Pick Up Artist 'advertisement'. This guy is very subtly a spam bot, but you'd never know just by reading the blatant yet comment. The internet... it only cares about the one thing it will never possess: sex.
10/8/13
Internet Video Masterpieces, Vol. 1: The Political Pet
A while ago I saw a strange and vaguely disquieting video. It is funny, vaguely exploitative, and borderline surreal. For a minute I didn't know if it was real or some viral satire. I know the video isn't new by even the laxest standards, but to be quite honest I still wonder if I will 'get over it', to borrow an approximate phrase. The first viewing was followed by a few more for verification and I am almost certain it is the Real McCoy. How foolish of me to doubt the reality of 2013 internet video.
Really, though, the above video is obviously too earnest to be hoax, which fact actually makes it slightly more worrisome than if it was a well-timed joke. Hello, yes, this is the sort of thing that is not considered insane or cruel in our reality. But, also, you have to admit it's quite a funny video – this thing could have wrecked America's Funniest Home Videos (and might've, I don't know). Finally, as a true event, and not even a particularly remarkable one, it probably speaks volumes about this era or dawning era of time.
Imagine that the American Bald Eagle in the video represents something important, like a country's economy, the possibility of freedom, the hope for world peace, or a large tract of unspoiled land. Maybe that crashing eagle represents hamburger joints, ecological protection, civil equality, animal rights, low gas prices, or legalized euthanasia to you. Maybe it even reminds you of America, The Beautiful (it is in fact supposed by many to be a national symbol of the United States). Fixed with a greater meaning or different perspective the clip can take on absurd or tragic overtones. Of course, the real tragedy is what happened, and it's a multifarious tragedy at that.
You may be thinking, 'Why not make a few casual video remixes of this eagle crashing and post that? You know, instead of writing a bunch of words like a dork? You know, a good edit or parody can get you into high places and big money.' For starters, I don't have the software for it, and I don't want to be hassled on the internet – but I've got at least three funny ideas already. I would love to see what sound bytes or song excerpts or hilariously slowed-down samples would do for that clip. It's OK to laugh and make fun because the eagle didn't die, though later it was made to pay with its life for damaging property.
In the wake of what is being called (somewhat laughably in my opinion) the Government Shutdown of America, the video gains so much poignancy that it could cut backwards in time, alerting everyone in 2005 of the recession. In the video, the eagle plays the part of whichever major political characters, parties, or concepts you wish to deride with regard to the Government Shutdown. Meanwhile, it is absurdly likely that the States will eventually Balkanize as a result of what is essentially political pageantry. Things are getting pretty surreal around the world, but in the United States one can still, after all these years, bear witness to many high-caliber amazing and surreal things.
Yet perhaps it was all too real, and the video (posted and likely videotaped in August 2013) actually was meant as a sort of warning. Of course if go into the past looking for warnings, you're liable to find them... maybe sometimes a Youtube video, no matter the consequences, is just a Youtube video. However chilling the context of a video, however wicked a reality it exposes, the world is of course what news and comics make of it: a big place that's not so dangerous as everyone says, but instead actually kind of funny. While we slide into chaos it's the small things that prove us to be small time idiots that are actually pretty good examples of things we could do, as a species (which includes American Humans whether you like it or not), to better ourselves before we slide entirely off into the deep end – if we're not already there.
Hell, I've gone and made the whole thing sordid. It started off with a funny video with numerous deeper meanings and then I was going to say how unfair it was to the eagle (not to mention frightening and disorienting) but I don't want to be taken as an animal rights nut (even though the eagle was being exploited and was specifically property in the situation in the video – which in metaphor could make the handler either China or Liberal Lefties depending on who you are – because then well meaning realists (and anti-animal jack-offs) would scoff at me. As a symbolic video it has some value, as a 'funny video' the view count speaks for itself, and as a warning – heed it and weep.
Really, though, the above video is obviously too earnest to be hoax, which fact actually makes it slightly more worrisome than if it was a well-timed joke. Hello, yes, this is the sort of thing that is not considered insane or cruel in our reality. But, also, you have to admit it's quite a funny video – this thing could have wrecked America's Funniest Home Videos (and might've, I don't know). Finally, as a true event, and not even a particularly remarkable one, it probably speaks volumes about this era or dawning era of time.
Imagine that the American Bald Eagle in the video represents something important, like a country's economy, the possibility of freedom, the hope for world peace, or a large tract of unspoiled land. Maybe that crashing eagle represents hamburger joints, ecological protection, civil equality, animal rights, low gas prices, or legalized euthanasia to you. Maybe it even reminds you of America, The Beautiful (it is in fact supposed by many to be a national symbol of the United States). Fixed with a greater meaning or different perspective the clip can take on absurd or tragic overtones. Of course, the real tragedy is what happened, and it's a multifarious tragedy at that.
You may be thinking, 'Why not make a few casual video remixes of this eagle crashing and post that? You know, instead of writing a bunch of words like a dork? You know, a good edit or parody can get you into high places and big money.' For starters, I don't have the software for it, and I don't want to be hassled on the internet – but I've got at least three funny ideas already. I would love to see what sound bytes or song excerpts or hilariously slowed-down samples would do for that clip. It's OK to laugh and make fun because the eagle didn't die, though later it was made to pay with its life for damaging property.
In the wake of what is being called (somewhat laughably in my opinion) the Government Shutdown of America, the video gains so much poignancy that it could cut backwards in time, alerting everyone in 2005 of the recession. In the video, the eagle plays the part of whichever major political characters, parties, or concepts you wish to deride with regard to the Government Shutdown. Meanwhile, it is absurdly likely that the States will eventually Balkanize as a result of what is essentially political pageantry. Things are getting pretty surreal around the world, but in the United States one can still, after all these years, bear witness to many high-caliber amazing and surreal things.
Yet perhaps it was all too real, and the video (posted and likely videotaped in August 2013) actually was meant as a sort of warning. Of course if go into the past looking for warnings, you're liable to find them... maybe sometimes a Youtube video, no matter the consequences, is just a Youtube video. However chilling the context of a video, however wicked a reality it exposes, the world is of course what news and comics make of it: a big place that's not so dangerous as everyone says, but instead actually kind of funny. While we slide into chaos it's the small things that prove us to be small time idiots that are actually pretty good examples of things we could do, as a species (which includes American Humans whether you like it or not), to better ourselves before we slide entirely off into the deep end – if we're not already there.
Hell, I've gone and made the whole thing sordid. It started off with a funny video with numerous deeper meanings and then I was going to say how unfair it was to the eagle (not to mention frightening and disorienting) but I don't want to be taken as an animal rights nut (even though the eagle was being exploited and was specifically property in the situation in the video – which in metaphor could make the handler either China or Liberal Lefties depending on who you are – because then well meaning realists (and anti-animal jack-offs) would scoff at me. As a symbolic video it has some value, as a 'funny video' the view count speaks for itself, and as a warning – heed it and weep.
9/13/13
Twitter Success Stories
I have heard a lot of horror stories from Twitter. Apparently it's crazy on there: it's like the peanut gallery of the internet and the character limit must help to keep things sharp. People buy and sell followers, mores change in seconds, public figures are subjected to ridicule and blistering trolling, politics are dished out, sometimes people get fired for tweets. It is the people's battlefield of the 21st century, and everything is at stake.
Names and reputations, professional identities, personal legacies are all made and destroyed there - I am just now reading that some #breakdowns have actually happened. One wonders if the ever-looming specter of cyber-bullying has haunted Twitter, and to what terrible effect. I'm sure that people become #twitteraddicts just like people claimed to be addicted to Facebook because they were simply being dumb or extremely lazy.
With all this doom and gloom it is easy to get pessimistic about a world including Twitter, but there is also a brighter side to the social media darling. For instance, the guy who invented the #twitterjoke hashtag is now a few hundred thousand dollars richer. Of course he is richer due mostly to his well-paying upper-middle class tech job, but the good karma from his innovative Tweeting must have helped him feel better, thus upping his potential in the workplace, and ultimately his net worth as well (as well has his 'net-worth', too, eh? #twitterjoke).
There was once a street urchin from Calcutta who began to tweet one day, as the story goes, and found himself on television the next, getting interviewed by such industry giants as: Vice journalists, various mainstream media, and finally Oprah herself. This urchin is set to publish a book this November about the Twitter-launched journey, and immigration papers for the U.S. are pending. Talk about #heartwarming, right? But also #bootstraps.
Meanwhile in the United States, Seattle urban residents banded together to 'crowdsource' a recycling initiative that saved a local bookstore, reinvigorated a local park, as well as funded the gym of a new public housing complex. Talk about 'retweet' am I getting to you here? Does this not impress you? Serious things are happening.
I remember one story from the heyday of Twitter, when it was truly still the wild west, in which a band of libertarians managed to close a soup kitchen and shame its operators into leaving town. Truly, for activism of the slackiest kind, there is no better PR wing than a Twitter account and an opinionated but well-spoken Comm. graduate.
In another story, the guy who started Shit My Dad Says (which is very #2009, I know) became a minor sensation and also managed to capitalize quite well on his inherent ability to quote people for humorous sayings. I don't know much about him because I was TUNED OUT in 2009/2010 but apparently he became something like a 'W'-list celebrity. He got a book deal out of Twitter (and he's not the only one!), they made a TV show out of it (you can bet he got something out of that, too), and apparently he will soon release a highly-anticipated 'solo-project' (which, don't worry, will include his dad). Twitter has done more for comedy than the next three internet 2.0 social media outlets combined, and that's a #fact.
The best part is none of these people got anything by Tweeting angrily or negatively about anything. They never went 'on the attack', never sold out, never complained, they never shilled for anything or anyone, it was just pure Twitter savvy that got them anything. They kept their noses clean and didn't start tweeting about politics or anything, they didn't ever chase scandals or sensationalism – all they ever did was try to help society, or try to be funny so that society was a bit less terrible... there's hope for all of us who see Twitter as an occasionally funny pile of shit.
Names and reputations, professional identities, personal legacies are all made and destroyed there - I am just now reading that some #breakdowns have actually happened. One wonders if the ever-looming specter of cyber-bullying has haunted Twitter, and to what terrible effect. I'm sure that people become #twitteraddicts just like people claimed to be addicted to Facebook because they were simply being dumb or extremely lazy.
With all this doom and gloom it is easy to get pessimistic about a world including Twitter, but there is also a brighter side to the social media darling. For instance, the guy who invented the #twitterjoke hashtag is now a few hundred thousand dollars richer. Of course he is richer due mostly to his well-paying upper-middle class tech job, but the good karma from his innovative Tweeting must have helped him feel better, thus upping his potential in the workplace, and ultimately his net worth as well (as well has his 'net-worth', too, eh? #twitterjoke).
There was once a street urchin from Calcutta who began to tweet one day, as the story goes, and found himself on television the next, getting interviewed by such industry giants as: Vice journalists, various mainstream media, and finally Oprah herself. This urchin is set to publish a book this November about the Twitter-launched journey, and immigration papers for the U.S. are pending. Talk about #heartwarming, right? But also #bootstraps.
Meanwhile in the United States, Seattle urban residents banded together to 'crowdsource' a recycling initiative that saved a local bookstore, reinvigorated a local park, as well as funded the gym of a new public housing complex. Talk about 'retweet' am I getting to you here? Does this not impress you? Serious things are happening.
I remember one story from the heyday of Twitter, when it was truly still the wild west, in which a band of libertarians managed to close a soup kitchen and shame its operators into leaving town. Truly, for activism of the slackiest kind, there is no better PR wing than a Twitter account and an opinionated but well-spoken Comm. graduate.
In another story, the guy who started Shit My Dad Says (which is very #2009, I know) became a minor sensation and also managed to capitalize quite well on his inherent ability to quote people for humorous sayings. I don't know much about him because I was TUNED OUT in 2009/2010 but apparently he became something like a 'W'-list celebrity. He got a book deal out of Twitter (and he's not the only one!), they made a TV show out of it (you can bet he got something out of that, too), and apparently he will soon release a highly-anticipated 'solo-project' (which, don't worry, will include his dad). Twitter has done more for comedy than the next three internet 2.0 social media outlets combined, and that's a #fact.
The best part is none of these people got anything by Tweeting angrily or negatively about anything. They never went 'on the attack', never sold out, never complained, they never shilled for anything or anyone, it was just pure Twitter savvy that got them anything. They kept their noses clean and didn't start tweeting about politics or anything, they didn't ever chase scandals or sensationalism – all they ever did was try to help society, or try to be funny so that society was a bit less terrible... there's hope for all of us who see Twitter as an occasionally funny pile of shit.
9/10/13
What's Probably Going On: I, Rambler
Well, dear reader, I've finally disconnected entirely from the world. If this is even posted it will be automatically uploaded via proxy FTP, probably forwarded by satellite. I wrote this on something called a Tandy (it reminds me of being young and has what looked like a full working copy of Doom 2 which I plan to try out), and I keep getting bothered by loud animal calls and rather large insects. Earlier this morning, while wondering if I had malaria or not, I accidentally killed a spider big enough to stand on my shoulders and still see over my head.
Yeah, I'm off the grid. I don't think I need to explain why, but I'll take a shot at it anyway because it's midday and too hot to do anything but type out a blog post. Firstly, after years of becoming more and more negative because I was surrounded by a society that was firmly up its own ass with its tongue in its cheek, I decided to make a life change. That life change was not to 'become more positive', 'find a way to fit in and make your place in the world', or 'surround yourself with healthy people' because those suggestions are made to finally kill the ailing souls of people who decide to 'stick it out' or 'fake it till you make it' in the cities, suburbs, and even rural paradises of the West.
No, not for me the puerile logic that something was wrong in my mind. I already knew I was sick, but what was going on around me was sicker and more depraved by far. I think what finally tipped me over the edge was the giant hype about something called 'twerking' (which seems like the 2013 version of Harlem Shake)... I mean it was a big deal, and reminded me how stupid the West has gotten, to the point where interesting problems and discussions (like alternative energy, the legitimacy of using force, the struggle for peace, and long-term human survival) are buried in mundane discussion about sport, celebrity, and dance fads. There is nothing essential anymore in western life, the material conquest of the world has created a society with no long-term value. There are no immediate problems anyone feels they can solve. There are no heroes, there is no innocence, and everyone is shouting inane shit at each other. With the forces of globalism rampaging, and the rest of the world hungry for 'first world lifestyles' it has suffered under, it seems as if there will be nowhere left to hide.
And I'm not one of these black/white zealots who advocate for revolution or counter-revolution. I think most people aren't that bad at all, but the pity is they give into what they're told, then they believe it, and then they're lost causes because they're stubborn. One day I was verbally assaulted because I suggested that the middle class, and its beliefs and practices, is problematic. More and more I see a world in which simply living the life provided for you is a great sin, a meaningless cog in a vast machine built to make the rich richer while generating enormous amounts of waste and suffering. More and more I see a world that deserves reproach, but reproaching it makes you rather unpopular with lots of people.
I think western governments have failed, they've proven that democracy is just a short road to oligarchy, they've proven that capitalism is just as inherently flawed as communism, they've enabled an apathetic and stupid populace, they're in the pockets of big business and so are you, reading this, and so am I, posting this (via 56k modem, satellites, and an old Tandy in a science camp) on Google... there is nothing but the bottom line... the society reflects it. There is this scary pragmatism where someone might kill you to gain a YouTube following. Step outside of the race to get a nice place, a good spouse, a home, a good car, fair prices... step out and look around: what more is there for you, really? A fit and active lifestyle? Becoming cool? Physical pleasure? A (heavily material) search for meaning? The consolation of a job well done, of the fact that you haven't directly caused anyone suffering today? Friendships with people who are like you? Happiness when your political party takes office, constant pissy passive-aggressive bitching when they lose? The dream is to consume more, consume better, and become respectable by that consumption. Those poorer than you have similar but more modest dreams, and those richer than you are generally just dreaming of bigger numbers and more ostentatious ways to demonstrate them.
Meanwhile anyone in this gracious and plentiful society who dares question the affluence is branded a communist or anarchist, idealist, and deluded. People stand up for low minimum wages and applaud, people get huffy about 'political flashpoints' that are just overblown media braying while the real issues are quietly taken care of. Who cares about the emergence of a world-wide security apparatus or the degradation of freedom? Who wants to suffer or want for anything? It all made me so sick that I couldn't think anymore, in the end. I didn't want to live in the slick World 2.0 where everything is taken for granted, where money and status are the only things worth a damn. Then I realized that the whole world was getting worse every day. Obviously it's reality, and it's never so bad or so good as anyone is saying, but I am seeing a bland and sinister future based on the world I have experienced, and I don't want it.
I decided to empty my bank account and travel to a less fucked-up part of the world where not even ViceTV (BTW WTF VICE?) journalists dare to tread, but first I had some loose ends to tie up. I told my boss' boss that he was a worthless parasite, that I encouraged fellow workers to steal from him at every turn, and that his attitudes towards women would get him killed in a future (or very prehistoric) world. I beat the shit out of my boss, because he was middle management scum, and even though he was a nice guy, he had taken too many verbal liberties with me in the past before we were friends. The look of confused betrayal on his battered face was so satisfying that I worried about myself, but it was the only thing I could do. Nothing made sense that day, but I got out safely, and where I am now is a realm of natives, scientists, and anthropologists... and glorious, empty, unsullied nature, with no bike paths, no litter, no bums, no WiFi, only survival and suffering, only immediate reality with no substitutions and no possible excuses or niceties. Blood, bug juices, and an early death. It is hell, but compared to living in 2013 Earth, it is paradise and I feel free and almost happy for the first time since I was a child.
So I've decided to go deep, get the hell out, keep my head above water (literally – not meeting rent and banking a few hundred dollars a month), and come what may, I'll accept it. Death is just as meaningless as life in this world, there are no glories awaiting us as political pawns, collaborators of exploitation, or as gilded heroes. Escapism is the only human response left, not apologia. As rebels we are mocked ruthlessly if we are nonviolent, and considered rabid juveniles if we use the tools that only the state may rightfully use. A world of monopolies. There is just diversion, diversion, diversion and the endless stream of 'news' from god-knows-where. Even now it bothers me that nobody else sees how problematic and out-of-control everything is. Here's an idea: before we colonize space with our bad ideas, trashy suppositions, and hatreds, let's work on what we're doing here on Earth. I have a few good ideas for starters that don't include ethnic cleansing, chemical weapons, corporate sponsorship, military interventionism, intense religious/national exceptionalism, capital punishment, or nuclear holocaust.
Here's a list of things I think may be happening in the world today, which was meant to be funny, before I got into all that heavy shit like an idiot, but I mean it's hot as hell and I might not be thinking straight anymore:
I tried. Once I find the abandoned asylum I am looking for I will ECT myself until I get better. Maybe I will get back to light-hearted, timely, and entertaining updates about movies, song, and anything that does not actually matter instead of... ah fuck it. I tried. I did. When they find my body and hyperlink it to Twitter, RealNet, Facebook, or this blog - use the comment section to tell them I tried. I really tried. I was just as hopeless and confused as the rest, but I managed to stop eating shit and ultimately died like a human being, not a consumer.
Yeah, I'm off the grid. I don't think I need to explain why, but I'll take a shot at it anyway because it's midday and too hot to do anything but type out a blog post. Firstly, after years of becoming more and more negative because I was surrounded by a society that was firmly up its own ass with its tongue in its cheek, I decided to make a life change. That life change was not to 'become more positive', 'find a way to fit in and make your place in the world', or 'surround yourself with healthy people' because those suggestions are made to finally kill the ailing souls of people who decide to 'stick it out' or 'fake it till you make it' in the cities, suburbs, and even rural paradises of the West.
No, not for me the puerile logic that something was wrong in my mind. I already knew I was sick, but what was going on around me was sicker and more depraved by far. I think what finally tipped me over the edge was the giant hype about something called 'twerking' (which seems like the 2013 version of Harlem Shake)... I mean it was a big deal, and reminded me how stupid the West has gotten, to the point where interesting problems and discussions (like alternative energy, the legitimacy of using force, the struggle for peace, and long-term human survival) are buried in mundane discussion about sport, celebrity, and dance fads. There is nothing essential anymore in western life, the material conquest of the world has created a society with no long-term value. There are no immediate problems anyone feels they can solve. There are no heroes, there is no innocence, and everyone is shouting inane shit at each other. With the forces of globalism rampaging, and the rest of the world hungry for 'first world lifestyles' it has suffered under, it seems as if there will be nowhere left to hide.
And I'm not one of these black/white zealots who advocate for revolution or counter-revolution. I think most people aren't that bad at all, but the pity is they give into what they're told, then they believe it, and then they're lost causes because they're stubborn. One day I was verbally assaulted because I suggested that the middle class, and its beliefs and practices, is problematic. More and more I see a world in which simply living the life provided for you is a great sin, a meaningless cog in a vast machine built to make the rich richer while generating enormous amounts of waste and suffering. More and more I see a world that deserves reproach, but reproaching it makes you rather unpopular with lots of people.
I think western governments have failed, they've proven that democracy is just a short road to oligarchy, they've proven that capitalism is just as inherently flawed as communism, they've enabled an apathetic and stupid populace, they're in the pockets of big business and so are you, reading this, and so am I, posting this (via 56k modem, satellites, and an old Tandy in a science camp) on Google... there is nothing but the bottom line... the society reflects it. There is this scary pragmatism where someone might kill you to gain a YouTube following. Step outside of the race to get a nice place, a good spouse, a home, a good car, fair prices... step out and look around: what more is there for you, really? A fit and active lifestyle? Becoming cool? Physical pleasure? A (heavily material) search for meaning? The consolation of a job well done, of the fact that you haven't directly caused anyone suffering today? Friendships with people who are like you? Happiness when your political party takes office, constant pissy passive-aggressive bitching when they lose? The dream is to consume more, consume better, and become respectable by that consumption. Those poorer than you have similar but more modest dreams, and those richer than you are generally just dreaming of bigger numbers and more ostentatious ways to demonstrate them.
Meanwhile anyone in this gracious and plentiful society who dares question the affluence is branded a communist or anarchist, idealist, and deluded. People stand up for low minimum wages and applaud, people get huffy about 'political flashpoints' that are just overblown media braying while the real issues are quietly taken care of. Who cares about the emergence of a world-wide security apparatus or the degradation of freedom? Who wants to suffer or want for anything? It all made me so sick that I couldn't think anymore, in the end. I didn't want to live in the slick World 2.0 where everything is taken for granted, where money and status are the only things worth a damn. Then I realized that the whole world was getting worse every day. Obviously it's reality, and it's never so bad or so good as anyone is saying, but I am seeing a bland and sinister future based on the world I have experienced, and I don't want it.
I decided to empty my bank account and travel to a less fucked-up part of the world where not even ViceTV (BTW WTF VICE?) journalists dare to tread, but first I had some loose ends to tie up. I told my boss' boss that he was a worthless parasite, that I encouraged fellow workers to steal from him at every turn, and that his attitudes towards women would get him killed in a future (or very prehistoric) world. I beat the shit out of my boss, because he was middle management scum, and even though he was a nice guy, he had taken too many verbal liberties with me in the past before we were friends. The look of confused betrayal on his battered face was so satisfying that I worried about myself, but it was the only thing I could do. Nothing made sense that day, but I got out safely, and where I am now is a realm of natives, scientists, and anthropologists... and glorious, empty, unsullied nature, with no bike paths, no litter, no bums, no WiFi, only survival and suffering, only immediate reality with no substitutions and no possible excuses or niceties. Blood, bug juices, and an early death. It is hell, but compared to living in 2013 Earth, it is paradise and I feel free and almost happy for the first time since I was a child.
So I've decided to go deep, get the hell out, keep my head above water (literally – not meeting rent and banking a few hundred dollars a month), and come what may, I'll accept it. Death is just as meaningless as life in this world, there are no glories awaiting us as political pawns, collaborators of exploitation, or as gilded heroes. Escapism is the only human response left, not apologia. As rebels we are mocked ruthlessly if we are nonviolent, and considered rabid juveniles if we use the tools that only the state may rightfully use. A world of monopolies. There is just diversion, diversion, diversion and the endless stream of 'news' from god-knows-where. Even now it bothers me that nobody else sees how problematic and out-of-control everything is. Here's an idea: before we colonize space with our bad ideas, trashy suppositions, and hatreds, let's work on what we're doing here on Earth. I have a few good ideas for starters that don't include ethnic cleansing, chemical weapons, corporate sponsorship, military interventionism, intense religious/national exceptionalism, capital punishment, or nuclear holocaust.
Here's a list of things I think may be happening in the world today, which was meant to be funny, before I got into all that heavy shit like an idiot, but I mean it's hot as hell and I might not be thinking straight anymore:
- David Letterman has recently died and Craig Ferguson has NOT replaced him
- Britney Spears releases a comeback album and is involved with a twerking scandal
- The War in Syria ends when all 20+ sides agree to disagree, co-operate for economic revival
- However, a new War in Somalia causes the War in Syria to re-emerge
- Something something something China, something something something us.
- Wars on Drugs, Crime, Being Cool, Having Fun, Winning all renewed for another decade.
- The NSA admits it has known everything all along, even the conspiracies, but is just breaking down privacy so that 'the good guys continue to get paid'
- My Twitter account gets its first follower and also first retweet about something really funny and visionary I posted years ago
- In a shocking upset, Racism is defeated by Sexism as Most Pressing Social Issue - white women cheer in the streets, insist it will solve other problems as well
- Geopolitical fucking around defended by old white dude who worked for the government in 1960s
- Instead of simply paying interns nothing and working them to death, large firms begin to haze them as well - backing it with studies supporting hazing as 'character building exercises'
- During the rehearsal for the September 11th memorial programme, a Truther is violently murdered
- Workers Rights abuses in sweatshops ignored by pro-consumerist media
- Scientific advances make it all seem worthwhile, somehow
- Grumpy Cat gets lynched by mob
- Society continues to get more politically partisan and fragmented: each person in a secure castle of righteousness
I tried. Once I find the abandoned asylum I am looking for I will ECT myself until I get better. Maybe I will get back to light-hearted, timely, and entertaining updates about movies, song, and anything that does not actually matter instead of... ah fuck it. I tried. I did. When they find my body and hyperlink it to Twitter, RealNet, Facebook, or this blog - use the comment section to tell them I tried. I really tried. I was just as hopeless and confused as the rest, but I managed to stop eating shit and ultimately died like a human being, not a consumer.
8/27/13
The Vat-Grown Future
I can understand the recent hullabaloo about vat-grown beef (even though the price of a few grams is tens of thousands of dollars): the current system used to raise and prepare a majority of beef is equal parts cruel and insane. You don't have to have a soft heart to lament the existence of factory farms and feedlots, unless you're the kind of person who pretends to be a total badass (maybe you were molested as a child, I don't know). If you think making animals stand for hours in ankle deep shit or live entire lives in tiny cages is cool you're probably also a psychopath or at least pro-prison sociopath. Vat-grown meat is a step in the right direction, since the idea of feeding the world with naturally-grown protein is getting to be really, really laughable. Still, it's kind of useless as a solution, and favors the armchair-ethicist over the realist: a counterproductive situation 'progressive movements' are often haunted by.
Fisheries are collapsed, hunting is no longer a way of life for the overwhelming majority, and factory farming is a soulless practice of agribusiness that stains the world in unhealthy shit, diseased blood, novel human/animal illnesses, and misery – not to mention fast food and all associated problems. Anyone who says differently is a corporate shill, an unapologetic ecocidal turd, a Scientific OptimistTM , or plainly ignorant. So, basically, the idea of further separating the populace from its food is the only one that wins out, and few people see the problem with it, as long as it prevents the cruel and bloody deaths of cute animals (which are often not that cute and generally die a sterilized, clinical death after a life of perfect, almost middle-class indolence and occasional active cruelty).
Meanwhile, we could source all of our protein, cheaply and very efficiently, from insects. We can still have a good cut of beef or chicken, but insect protein can cover, say, Monday to Thursday, and cheaply. It is a solution that has been staring us in the face since the dawn of time, but at some point our phobias overruled common sense and we stopped eating bugs. Now, in the 11th hour of a crisis hundreds of years in the making, we have once again proven that we can be smart, but never reasonable.
Easy living has eroded any sense of pragmatism we had, and instead of taking matters into our own hands we have pushed food further into the corporate fold and away from our own hands, which we are generally afraid to get dirty. Ethical neutrality is not worth the price, beyond which lies the fact that agribusiness is not going anywhere. Animals will continue to suffer for as long as they are profitable, agriculture will continue to desiccate and toxify the earth and 'pests', as well as anything nearby or downriver. A small cost to pay to ensure nature doesn't get anything intended for ourselves. But we're not selfish, and thinking otherwise is 'not realistic', sorry. Don't think about the dead lakes and rivers, or the dying oceans. Listen to the greenwashing machine and damn well heed how it is telling you not to worry. Or listen to the deafening silence of pop culture, I mean, who gives a fuck?
Then, when the rape of the earth has eliminated the chance of raising edible animals, food will move completely out of the reach of the populace and into the security of corporate production thanks to research potential generated today. Does it amplify the horror enough to know that not only are living creatures processed into competitively-priced foods, but that the process of raising the animal itself can be bypassed? Or is that ethical, to cut out the animal's contribution, while still eating of its flesh? Even the borderline sadistic systems in place today still have a beating heart, and the symbolic act is still committed, even though shrouded by the mystery of NDA contracts and secure facilities. Needless to say, vat-grown appeals to the people who can't stomach the current model. It stinks, though. If GMOs are freaky frankenfoods then Vat-Grown is undead zombiefood. No double standards.
However, that's life as an omnivorous mammal: you sometimes kill to eat. Then, because of a healthy omnivorous diet which includes hunting and foraging activity, you gain the mental acuity and leisure to reflect on the act of killing. You turn it into an art and thrive. Then, twenty thousand or more years later, you get to the point where the idea has been so over-thought, and the act so over politicized and perverted by industry, that it is no longer palatable or acceptable ('unless you stop worrying and start enjoying!'). Since it is the modern world, and a healthy respect for nature is not an option, the only cure remaining is to develop the technique of growing meat in a bloodless, clinical way, so that it dies apart from any animal, so that the vast stocks of commercial livestock can go into the history books and possibly extinction while we grow our mega cities and hoard terabytes of data per second and eat our ethically sourced protein loaves. The only thing better than eating beef once a week, shutting down most fast food outlets, and finding better sources of living protein is to make an undead mockery of flesh in a lab because we're too infantilized to give up our excesses and face the reality of cost and value.
Madness is what it is. The plan seems to be to abolish the cycle of life or at least further commodify it. Plants are living things that we kill all the time, without seeming to care a bit, and we also gorge ourselves on their sex organs, and that's acceptable – but killing a dog to eat is cruel and/or worthy of mockery? Eating ants, roaches, slugs, spiders... any of the bountiful and varied insect species is crazy, absurd? When the oceans are emptied, the air is full of cow farts, and land covered in pig and chicken shit? Farming insects cheaply, each house producing a few dozen pounds a month, each apartment growing a few pounds, plus enriching soil... no that's crazy. It's as crazy as razing the suburbs and growing traditional food there. What we need, obviously, is bloodless, ethical, lab-grown meat – it's never going to play into corporate or political power fantasies.
There is a parallel to this in drone warfare. Pure logic founded on historical fact (hahahaha) would assume that if a global conflict was not worth risking a soldier's life, it was not a conflict worth engaging in (hahahaha). If it was not popular enough to sustain casualties, it was not popular enough to be conducted by a democracy. But, you see, take out the aggressor's wasted lives, and the populace no longer has the ethical high-ground it is used to enjoying. Now, having made war bloodless for your country (and even more infuriating and hopeless for another) you get to kill with impunity, and the rage you generate can be explained as the unenlightened reaction of religious fanatics. The dissenters, domestic or otherwise, can be explained away as "DISLIKED POLITICAL GROUP" or "BIASED RABBLE ROUSER" while the insane reality of the situation continues to make life unpleasant or untenable for the rest.
"Why drink water when you can have a tasty Coca Cola? Probably because you're a mindless consumer – the New Livestock. Have we got some fantastic new products for you!"
Textual Note:
Hi there, I've been a little shrill, I admit, though I don't apologize for it. If the future of where and how humanity sources its food does not matter to you, you won't understand why I take the tone of alarmism. Obviously the whole thing is a bit sensationalistic... but so is the 'sustainability is for faggots' crowd, who are a bunch of despicable, small-minded wretches. Also, I think I've proven I have a great affinity for hyperbole. But please do remember that there are actual problems and that the future is uncertain, and that the current model of a disinterested public eating food created in a vacuum away from their sight is kind of fucked up, and could be changed for the better. Sorry if it wasn't funny/insightful/verified enough - I admit I am off my game. That is all, thanks for reading as always, and stay true to the game.
Fisheries are collapsed, hunting is no longer a way of life for the overwhelming majority, and factory farming is a soulless practice of agribusiness that stains the world in unhealthy shit, diseased blood, novel human/animal illnesses, and misery – not to mention fast food and all associated problems. Anyone who says differently is a corporate shill, an unapologetic ecocidal turd, a Scientific OptimistTM , or plainly ignorant. So, basically, the idea of further separating the populace from its food is the only one that wins out, and few people see the problem with it, as long as it prevents the cruel and bloody deaths of cute animals (which are often not that cute and generally die a sterilized, clinical death after a life of perfect, almost middle-class indolence and occasional active cruelty).
Meanwhile, we could source all of our protein, cheaply and very efficiently, from insects. We can still have a good cut of beef or chicken, but insect protein can cover, say, Monday to Thursday, and cheaply. It is a solution that has been staring us in the face since the dawn of time, but at some point our phobias overruled common sense and we stopped eating bugs. Now, in the 11th hour of a crisis hundreds of years in the making, we have once again proven that we can be smart, but never reasonable.
Easy living has eroded any sense of pragmatism we had, and instead of taking matters into our own hands we have pushed food further into the corporate fold and away from our own hands, which we are generally afraid to get dirty. Ethical neutrality is not worth the price, beyond which lies the fact that agribusiness is not going anywhere. Animals will continue to suffer for as long as they are profitable, agriculture will continue to desiccate and toxify the earth and 'pests', as well as anything nearby or downriver. A small cost to pay to ensure nature doesn't get anything intended for ourselves. But we're not selfish, and thinking otherwise is 'not realistic', sorry. Don't think about the dead lakes and rivers, or the dying oceans. Listen to the greenwashing machine and damn well heed how it is telling you not to worry. Or listen to the deafening silence of pop culture, I mean, who gives a fuck?
Then, when the rape of the earth has eliminated the chance of raising edible animals, food will move completely out of the reach of the populace and into the security of corporate production thanks to research potential generated today. Does it amplify the horror enough to know that not only are living creatures processed into competitively-priced foods, but that the process of raising the animal itself can be bypassed? Or is that ethical, to cut out the animal's contribution, while still eating of its flesh? Even the borderline sadistic systems in place today still have a beating heart, and the symbolic act is still committed, even though shrouded by the mystery of NDA contracts and secure facilities. Needless to say, vat-grown appeals to the people who can't stomach the current model. It stinks, though. If GMOs are freaky frankenfoods then Vat-Grown is undead zombiefood. No double standards.
However, that's life as an omnivorous mammal: you sometimes kill to eat. Then, because of a healthy omnivorous diet which includes hunting and foraging activity, you gain the mental acuity and leisure to reflect on the act of killing. You turn it into an art and thrive. Then, twenty thousand or more years later, you get to the point where the idea has been so over-thought, and the act so over politicized and perverted by industry, that it is no longer palatable or acceptable ('unless you stop worrying and start enjoying!'). Since it is the modern world, and a healthy respect for nature is not an option, the only cure remaining is to develop the technique of growing meat in a bloodless, clinical way, so that it dies apart from any animal, so that the vast stocks of commercial livestock can go into the history books and possibly extinction while we grow our mega cities and hoard terabytes of data per second and eat our ethically sourced protein loaves. The only thing better than eating beef once a week, shutting down most fast food outlets, and finding better sources of living protein is to make an undead mockery of flesh in a lab because we're too infantilized to give up our excesses and face the reality of cost and value.
Madness is what it is. The plan seems to be to abolish the cycle of life or at least further commodify it. Plants are living things that we kill all the time, without seeming to care a bit, and we also gorge ourselves on their sex organs, and that's acceptable – but killing a dog to eat is cruel and/or worthy of mockery? Eating ants, roaches, slugs, spiders... any of the bountiful and varied insect species is crazy, absurd? When the oceans are emptied, the air is full of cow farts, and land covered in pig and chicken shit? Farming insects cheaply, each house producing a few dozen pounds a month, each apartment growing a few pounds, plus enriching soil... no that's crazy. It's as crazy as razing the suburbs and growing traditional food there. What we need, obviously, is bloodless, ethical, lab-grown meat – it's never going to play into corporate or political power fantasies.
There is a parallel to this in drone warfare. Pure logic founded on historical fact (hahahaha) would assume that if a global conflict was not worth risking a soldier's life, it was not a conflict worth engaging in (hahahaha). If it was not popular enough to sustain casualties, it was not popular enough to be conducted by a democracy. But, you see, take out the aggressor's wasted lives, and the populace no longer has the ethical high-ground it is used to enjoying. Now, having made war bloodless for your country (and even more infuriating and hopeless for another) you get to kill with impunity, and the rage you generate can be explained as the unenlightened reaction of religious fanatics. The dissenters, domestic or otherwise, can be explained away as "DISLIKED POLITICAL GROUP" or "BIASED RABBLE ROUSER" while the insane reality of the situation continues to make life unpleasant or untenable for the rest.
"Why drink water when you can have a tasty Coca Cola? Probably because you're a mindless consumer – the New Livestock. Have we got some fantastic new products for you!"
Textual Note:
Hi there, I've been a little shrill, I admit, though I don't apologize for it. If the future of where and how humanity sources its food does not matter to you, you won't understand why I take the tone of alarmism. Obviously the whole thing is a bit sensationalistic... but so is the 'sustainability is for faggots' crowd, who are a bunch of despicable, small-minded wretches. Also, I think I've proven I have a great affinity for hyperbole. But please do remember that there are actual problems and that the future is uncertain, and that the current model of a disinterested public eating food created in a vacuum away from their sight is kind of fucked up, and could be changed for the better. Sorry if it wasn't funny/insightful/verified enough - I admit I am off my game. That is all, thanks for reading as always, and stay true to the game.
8/14/13
How Long Till Facebook Is Irrelevant: The Answer May Surprise You
Facebook's story is pretty fun to tell. Before 2006 (or somewhere around there) you couldn't sign up for Facebook without a university email address. That ended. Then the media caught on, a while later the floodgates opened, and anyone was let in at a cost to exclusivity which might have kept the social media service relevant into 2010. However, things happened as they did, because the Kings of Facebook or whatever needed a way to turn a relatively hyped, useless, hackneyed service into a dividend-paying money-printing machine. That's why your little brother, your dad, and your aunt are all Facebook Friends with you.
Anyways, people used to freely put up pictures of themselves doing drugs, copulating, as well as excreting on and variously vandalizing private property, because nobody on the service was square enough to be A) an uncool employer or B) a rat fink. Nudity was the only thing out of bounds, but nobody needed the internet for that. It was the wild west, populated by stupid university students. That phase didn't last long, but it was truly a hopeful one. It's hard to understand at this point in time because nobody does it anymore. Even Facebook's dumbest, least-University-educated users manage to post mostly PG-Employment level material. It was generally the exhibitionists and show-offs who couldn't keep their borderline activities in private memory, which is fine, because they're the same people for whom nothing is ever good enough.
Then, with the advent of a growing user base, employers took full advantage of lax privacy settings to investigate their employees and, if the optics were wrong, fire them. Facebook made some noises about privacy settings (which advertisers, PRISM et al. overrule anyway) and most people realized that, with privacy settings set properly, and a non-compromising profile picture, they wouldn't be able to get bagged. Even more people realized that, as always, nobody cares and nobody needs to know anything, and why they were on Facebook is anyone's guess. Many are still there. With employers and other nosy squares using Facebook to essentially spy on people the end had begun, and the important phase had ended.
With children, parents, nosy bosses, moralists, the uneducated, and all manner of riff-raff inhabiting Facebook, the popularity exploded and it became the thing everyone knew about (including worthless 'social media experts' on TV). It was like Twitter, briefly, but maybe even hotter. By now, nearly every Western person between the ages of 20 and 35 has a majority of friends and contacts on Facebook, with 'friends' numbering far in excess of 150. Of course, the great upsurge in popularity also meant increased scrutiny. Many people thought it was incredibly low of employers to spy on and then fire or punish employees because they were pictured drinking a beer. I agree completely. If you want to spy on an employee, check their Linked In account, because Linked In is designed for squares with no concept of the separation of life and work.
Most of the best criticism of Facebook revolved around its user base and effect on users. If you have an account, you already know. People broadcast their dimwitted political stances, their gullibility, pictures of food, and way too much information. Users also tend to only upload content that reflects positively on them and their lifestyle, making Facebook an echo chamber and also a bizarre cycle of envy and envy-prompting. Certain people, putting too much stock in their internet friendship machine, can see the smiling photographs, the tans, the significant others and the happiness of others and become incredibly lonely, sad, isolated, and even more deluded. So it can be said that the service caters first and foremost not to narcissists, but to the self-centered and potentially to the sociopath as well. In essence it can be claimed that Facebook is unhealthy, perhaps moreso than the internet.
Hell, I have not even made mention of the inherent privacy problems which provided privacy options do not solve. In essence, by ever existing on Facebook you are already compromised and every detail you edit or add thereafter goes into the vortex. The police can see everything you've ever said without your knowledge. So can any government, entity, or corporation with the stature or power to make Facebook cooperate. Not to mention anyone with a certain level of know-how can probably have that stuff you willingly shared about yourself. The craziest part is how the service has tapped into the (unconscious) human desire to share and self-promote... the disburdening is done willingly so it's not even entrapment. It's just exploitation. The old crusty man in my mind wants to say it's the fault of the user for being appallingly stupid, but the angry young man wants to blame Facebook, Inc. for just about every misery and betrayal they have wrought.
'Facebook isn't an echo chamber, and echo chamber is a nebulous term used by out-of-date critics to describe viral and meme-based behaviour', you say. I disagree, and urge you to shut up and stop being an apologist: Facebook often functions as an echo chamber devoid of consciousness or critical thought. For every stupid food picture, statement of outrage, birthday wish, and TMI infodump, there are a dozen re-shared memes, propaganda, or internet links. It's an echo chamber that shows you just what your acquaintances are wasting their time with, and invites you to also read top tens, read unsourced and biased articles, look for cute pics, and post shallow, heart-on-sleeve political and social rhetoric. Yeah, that shit's pretty awful, and in this writer's humble opinion, far worse than the self-promotion and the mindless sharing of private moments with no real purpose.
Facebook is already irrelevant: savvy people know this, hip people know this, even tweens know this. I suspect that its last year of relevance was 2010. At this point users see it as either 'Facebook!' or 'depressing friend directory', and increasingly, not even the gullible youth are excited about Facebook anymore. Some even use Twitter to engage in such discussions as #noneofmyfriendsonfacebook and to broadcast that they're getting out of the Facebook game. With the userbase growing older, lamer, and reposting more and more shitty content from the internet, and generally doing nothing important, it is no surprise that hardly anyone considers an account a meaningful or exciting thing, except for people who are promoting themselves, their business, or their art. In the end Facebook will only be useful for them, but its complete irrelevance means that there will be no further scandal because the user base is complacent and the service fulfills its duty quite well.
With a stable share of users and corporate status, it is unlikely that Facebook will disappear in less than five years. Ff a better service steals its users it may dwindle, but in Web 2.0 and beyond, computer/internet-literate users are too insignificant a group. The odds of a better service emerging are also low, since Facebook is part of the establishment and can likely take infringing parties to court and bankrupt them even with frivolous litigation. Facebook itself isn't novel enough anymore to create 'addicts' in the 2006-era sense: remaining power users are generally students, stay-at-home-parents, or retirees. With every baby picture, family portrait, and unnecessary political diatribe, the service makes itself less remarkable and more profitable... with every deleted user account, Facebook continues to hold private data in digital escrow, as if preparing for a blackmail war... with every day, as it fades into irrelevance far away from the beating heart of the internet, Facebook becomes more of a fact of the internet, here to stay and inflict social suffering on untold thousands.
Anyways, people used to freely put up pictures of themselves doing drugs, copulating, as well as excreting on and variously vandalizing private property, because nobody on the service was square enough to be A) an uncool employer or B) a rat fink. Nudity was the only thing out of bounds, but nobody needed the internet for that. It was the wild west, populated by stupid university students. That phase didn't last long, but it was truly a hopeful one. It's hard to understand at this point in time because nobody does it anymore. Even Facebook's dumbest, least-University-educated users manage to post mostly PG-Employment level material. It was generally the exhibitionists and show-offs who couldn't keep their borderline activities in private memory, which is fine, because they're the same people for whom nothing is ever good enough.
Then, with the advent of a growing user base, employers took full advantage of lax privacy settings to investigate their employees and, if the optics were wrong, fire them. Facebook made some noises about privacy settings (which advertisers, PRISM et al. overrule anyway) and most people realized that, with privacy settings set properly, and a non-compromising profile picture, they wouldn't be able to get bagged. Even more people realized that, as always, nobody cares and nobody needs to know anything, and why they were on Facebook is anyone's guess. Many are still there. With employers and other nosy squares using Facebook to essentially spy on people the end had begun, and the important phase had ended.
With children, parents, nosy bosses, moralists, the uneducated, and all manner of riff-raff inhabiting Facebook, the popularity exploded and it became the thing everyone knew about (including worthless 'social media experts' on TV). It was like Twitter, briefly, but maybe even hotter. By now, nearly every Western person between the ages of 20 and 35 has a majority of friends and contacts on Facebook, with 'friends' numbering far in excess of 150. Of course, the great upsurge in popularity also meant increased scrutiny. Many people thought it was incredibly low of employers to spy on and then fire or punish employees because they were pictured drinking a beer. I agree completely. If you want to spy on an employee, check their Linked In account, because Linked In is designed for squares with no concept of the separation of life and work.
Most of the best criticism of Facebook revolved around its user base and effect on users. If you have an account, you already know. People broadcast their dimwitted political stances, their gullibility, pictures of food, and way too much information. Users also tend to only upload content that reflects positively on them and their lifestyle, making Facebook an echo chamber and also a bizarre cycle of envy and envy-prompting. Certain people, putting too much stock in their internet friendship machine, can see the smiling photographs, the tans, the significant others and the happiness of others and become incredibly lonely, sad, isolated, and even more deluded. So it can be said that the service caters first and foremost not to narcissists, but to the self-centered and potentially to the sociopath as well. In essence it can be claimed that Facebook is unhealthy, perhaps moreso than the internet.
Hell, I have not even made mention of the inherent privacy problems which provided privacy options do not solve. In essence, by ever existing on Facebook you are already compromised and every detail you edit or add thereafter goes into the vortex. The police can see everything you've ever said without your knowledge. So can any government, entity, or corporation with the stature or power to make Facebook cooperate. Not to mention anyone with a certain level of know-how can probably have that stuff you willingly shared about yourself. The craziest part is how the service has tapped into the (unconscious) human desire to share and self-promote... the disburdening is done willingly so it's not even entrapment. It's just exploitation. The old crusty man in my mind wants to say it's the fault of the user for being appallingly stupid, but the angry young man wants to blame Facebook, Inc. for just about every misery and betrayal they have wrought.
'Facebook isn't an echo chamber, and echo chamber is a nebulous term used by out-of-date critics to describe viral and meme-based behaviour', you say. I disagree, and urge you to shut up and stop being an apologist: Facebook often functions as an echo chamber devoid of consciousness or critical thought. For every stupid food picture, statement of outrage, birthday wish, and TMI infodump, there are a dozen re-shared memes, propaganda, or internet links. It's an echo chamber that shows you just what your acquaintances are wasting their time with, and invites you to also read top tens, read unsourced and biased articles, look for cute pics, and post shallow, heart-on-sleeve political and social rhetoric. Yeah, that shit's pretty awful, and in this writer's humble opinion, far worse than the self-promotion and the mindless sharing of private moments with no real purpose.
Facebook is already irrelevant: savvy people know this, hip people know this, even tweens know this. I suspect that its last year of relevance was 2010. At this point users see it as either 'Facebook!' or 'depressing friend directory', and increasingly, not even the gullible youth are excited about Facebook anymore. Some even use Twitter to engage in such discussions as #noneofmyfriendsonfacebook and to broadcast that they're getting out of the Facebook game. With the userbase growing older, lamer, and reposting more and more shitty content from the internet, and generally doing nothing important, it is no surprise that hardly anyone considers an account a meaningful or exciting thing, except for people who are promoting themselves, their business, or their art. In the end Facebook will only be useful for them, but its complete irrelevance means that there will be no further scandal because the user base is complacent and the service fulfills its duty quite well.
With a stable share of users and corporate status, it is unlikely that Facebook will disappear in less than five years. Ff a better service steals its users it may dwindle, but in Web 2.0 and beyond, computer/internet-literate users are too insignificant a group. The odds of a better service emerging are also low, since Facebook is part of the establishment and can likely take infringing parties to court and bankrupt them even with frivolous litigation. Facebook itself isn't novel enough anymore to create 'addicts' in the 2006-era sense: remaining power users are generally students, stay-at-home-parents, or retirees. With every baby picture, family portrait, and unnecessary political diatribe, the service makes itself less remarkable and more profitable... with every deleted user account, Facebook continues to hold private data in digital escrow, as if preparing for a blackmail war... with every day, as it fades into irrelevance far away from the beating heart of the internet, Facebook becomes more of a fact of the internet, here to stay and inflict social suffering on untold thousands.
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