User Comment Rodeo: One Very Stupid Internet Conspiracist (and Some Other Dummies)

This won't surprise anyone, but the internet is a proven haven for the undesirables of the world. More importantly, it is a place where legitimate discussion falls into disrepair - a great new arena where populism can continue to strangle the truth. The whole NeoPatriot Act debacle unfolding (as if it hadn't been reported on or a known factor since 2005) in the USA has brought out many of the stupidest users of comment systems. Firstly, since it's public record published on known narc/rat Google: surveillance culture is getting out of hand, it's shitty and regressive and will not solve the problem of terrorism. However I think I wrote about surveillance culture before, NSA agents will do the sifting and perhaps, if they're nice enough, will tell me where. 

In any case what matters to me at this moment is not the potential erosion of a so-called democracy or the blatant transformation of North America into some kind of paranoid, military-industrial, authoritarian, police state, corporatist plutocracy. That's old news. You either know it's true or delude yourself with happy feelings of consequence-free freedoms that don't really exist. Society is pretty... well it's boned right now. However, it doesn't feel like that on the street. You can go out, get drunk, pick up drugs, protest the system. Generally you don't get beaten up too badly, and you don't disappear.

What matters to me at this moment is what the public at large is thinking. As usual, the public at large is making me want to side with the plutocrats, because the public at large has some really, really odiously stupid people in it who are maybe not capable of independent thought. I wonder is the public even taking this seriously? Are they all joking when they use the comment boards? Sometimes, a very special individual with a loose grip on reality will post some interpretation of events that absolutely wipe away accumulated feelings of unease and doom. Some people are so out of it that I can't get angry at them. It would be like getting angry at a special needs person. No, all I can do is laugh and wish I saw the world so naively... then I could stop worrying and start hating.

It goes without saying that this man (no woman ever would be quite so proud of being so stupid as to publicly assert it) is an overblown idiot. Ignoring the 2008 recession and the bail-out of the finance industry (aka 'upperclass americans') and the ultimate reasons for the decline of the middle class (somehow the middle class hasn't figured out the giant, decades-long joke that is still being played on them and their complacent sense of entitlement) this guy out and out imagines that the IRS, NSA and Obama Socialists are plotting against their own. People like 'NoMoMaggots' should... write books? Work in Hollywood? Their fantasyland version of reality is too good for politics.

Bookishness Reloaded

50 Shades of Grey and its ilk have been on the bestseller lists all year. Really long now and I'm wondering about it. They've basically made it a place for them to hang out. I don't know how any serious watchers of the bestseller list feel about it. I don't even know if there are serious watchers of the bestseller lists. I suppose, ultimately, there should be a few, and none of them should be surprised by what generally hangs out there. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with what hangs out there.

The whole 50 Shades debacle is the latest of an entire series of its kind. The ecosystem of modern publishing doesn't strike one as exclusively healthy – but there's nothing wrong with it, per se. Or so one thinks, ultimately the nonfiction lists aren't really super hopeful either. But there's also sometimes interesting stuff. Whether or not it's brewed by committee, exploits the zeitgeist, and has 'buzz' and 'word of mouth' and 'traction' are the great indicators of sales. Commercial success nullifies critical success and proves the naysayers wrong, inept, and out of touch. Or it should/might/doesn't, depending on how you feel about unlimited free market, incorporated.

The funny thing is, in this era dictionaries have actually created entries on mots célèbre that have no longevity or ultimate worth. I'm looking at you, 'frenemy'. The news crowed joyously about frenemy and friends getting into Webster and Oxford for the better part of a week, probably more than 12 months ago now. What increases the hilarity factor is that the conservative book set (most publishers, consumers, etc) actually sees the potential for twitter literature as a good thing. They might shit if it was considered to switch to a pure paperless market (which is sort of a scary idea when one considers it), but they will fill their own pages with the sort of meaningless colloquial twaddle that has no fundamental role in language. The white noise of language and of literature, and the much hyped 'echo chamber' effect of Twitter is involved somehow. Publishers bank on books that are too big to fail and they go to town whenever some book becomes so important that everyone needs a copy right now. They aim to remain relevant as opposed to fundamental. Language skills and general output are fucked enough without a neoliberal approach to neologisms.

So if you really think about the situation as it stands, the publishing ecosystem is a bit like every other large-scale market ecosystem: some smaller companies, independent organizations, and identities cling to the vestiges with varying success; by and large it consists of gigantic entities producing essentially a monoculture. So what? The incredible size and awesome power of these entities is something that should inspire us, their offerings are delivered with unthinkable force to vast numbers, on a scale that was relatively recently unthinkable. This is no minor business, even this allegedly 'dying' publishing industry.

There exists more written word than can be reliably processed by any one person. This condition is hardly new or revelatory, but it seems worth mentioning no matter how many thousands of years it's been true. Seeing as the human world still exists, and written word is still very essential to its development and even survival, the immense pile of written work should not merely be considered refuse. Some of it obviously stinks, but it's necessary.

Still. At this advanced stage the offerings aren't always on the level. The fact that one book hangs onto a bestseller list for months, in one country, means that not enough books are being shared, or that the market isn't dynamic enough, or anything because its actual value cannot be the ultimate monetary sum represented by its time on the bestseller lists. All of which is beside the point, I know.