Death by Misclick

Have things gotten to the point where this is possible? It seems funny to me, like a bit Charlie Chaplin would have done in a silent film send-up of the Internet. It's probably not possible yet, I have to say... yet when that PR lady tweeted about AIDS her job ended and she faced the scorn of both the twittersphere and the blogoverse, not to mention the brutal comment board nebulae. Could the death of her relations with the cyber-public been caused by a simple misclick? Is it safe to laugh at her now that the dust has settled? What was her favorite album of 2011?

Here's my wild idea: she was typing out the post as some sort of perverse joke, and instead of properly screenshotting it for transmission to a few friends, she brushed the screen with her manicured pinky, inadvertently tweeting it. I know, it's so outrageous to think that someone wouldn't tweet ridiculous or hateful things that this particular example has no real value at all. Maybe it was part of a rebellious act after years of PR repression had tangled the psyche, and something offensive and sharp was needed to express frustration. A cry for help.

Well in any case it is easily possible a misclick can cost someone their job, since there are actual employers who are hysterical enough about indiscretion and deviance to fire or discipline you for shit they dig up about you on facebook, let alone the things you actually mean to showcase. This is why in real life there is the unspoken code of workplace civility, or workplace confidentiality (common in livelier, uninhibited workplaces): why people usually only express ignorant or fucked up ideas in speech, a safe distance away from recording devices, the offendable, and awkward or unexpected silences. You lose your job, next thing you know your credit is dead because you were too depressed about burning your own digital effigy to find a new job (plus the internet ruined your social credit and made you borderline unemployable, and you didn't capitalize on your pariah status), then your social life is dead because you have no money and are either couch surfing or on the street, or maybe at your parents' house. Next thing you know you're dead.

Death by misclick, but then you awaken from death as an online-only ghost, or get reincarnated as a future Social Media Expert. Really, I bet misclicks have cost a lot of people something over the years, and I'm not just talking about rounds of near-professional-level Starcraft. Of course nobody should use a misclick as an excuse, because it's a poor one, but outside of crazy hypothetical situations I am certain there is plenty of danger in them Worse on some level than a social misstep or faux pas or gauche seizure. And it's kind of crazy to think that something as small as the twitch of a finger could ruin your life, without even killing you or getting you pregnant. Or I guess that's crazy and says something about the internet era. I don't even know. I don't misclick. Not even when I post this article, or when I go most of a month without posting one. I've got to keep the reader hungry for new Publicato 'shzzt' and never admit that I am drying out, failing the exercise of writing and maybe worst of all... my faith in blogging shaken to the core.

I haven't read CJR for a while and then return to read this: a timely and concise collection of regrettable headlines. I do get a bit of a kick out of jokes sometimes, I have to say – and these are some fine, amusing headlines. For instance:

"173 animals seized; 2 face cruelty charges"

That sounds like a really nice group of animals, why would they ever get arrested? Did the innocent ones get set free? Were there at the minimum fair trails? What kind of cruelty charges? In reality it's probably some sort of crazy neglect story which makes it, somehow, even more disturbingly funny than ever.

And it's not even the best one; the best one, predictably enough, is about a shark.

The Fate of the Book

So much very subtle and quiet hype about the end of the bound stack of paper sheets known as 'the book'. There have been many books over the years, and I think everyone can agree that they were not always perfect, nor ever had an overwhelming reputation for improving the world. But there's a certain something to books and even if they are dying, take heart: our generation will be able to come by books cheaply for the duration of our existence, unless they begin burning bales of books.

If the global stock of books is significantly destroyed in the next twenty years, or publishing is severely repressed by economic or colluded forces, then at the very least books will have predicted that. Basic reading and communication skills will not likely be replaced, so language will continue, and the flow of ideas will merely take on another, potentially better form. Or our eyes will atrophy from an unmitigated hegemony of digital screens, flashing lights, and confused information.

Maybe there will be a tidal-wave of information in the future which will overwhelm us. Maybe it will get the better of us. We could be changed forever.

Or the book could go on well into the future, as some type of elitist symbol that nobody understands. Probably this view of the book's future is already some cliche that has been analyzed and exploited in hundreds of books. Maybe the book will suffer a renaissance in a few years, or maybe all the news sensationalism and existential dawdling will come to naught, and the book will be as ubiquitous and burdensome as ever – perhaps forever.

In the end, if it goes, the memory of the book will either be exterminated, merely forgotten, or enshrined by some freakish bibliophilia committee as the centerpoint of some futurist, knowledge-based cargo cult. And however it goes, the book will remain as at least a symbol.

But in the meantime there is all kinds of mawkishness about books and print media in general. It seems that the publication industry gets more fatalistic while the technology industry fills with empty hype. There is no real confrontation between the two industries. Largely, the recent history of the matter is that the print industry has had to accept and learn to work with tech, gadget, and electronics industries. It's not really the same as the music industry and the internet, though there are similarities.

So these publishers and maybe even some bibliophiles are very worried and the internet is very unconcerned. That's basically the gist of the story. In my mind television, the postal service, and radio are the real danger zones, and they're still around more than ten years after the internet. Writing killed or perverted most oral tradition anyway, so whatever happens at this point is fair and not unprecedented.

State of the Internet

There was a glorious time when lots of TV series were freely available on YouTube, and there weren't just nonsense links. That era peaked maybe four years ago, at this point in time. Piracy is obviously still rampant, but when you could rustle up a genuine, entire series on, at last resort, a Chinese or French video site – happier days.  Now you look around and your feet start kicking rebelliously at the leash. Unboxings, music videos, shout outs, 'viral videos': the entire goddamn world's PR department, is what this nonsense is. Oh look, some Minecraft videos, failblog videos, LPs, bro? Rants? No, YouTube is still of some definite worth.

I have been following at some distance The Young Turks' channel on YouTube; they always play a good hand at the stories they go after. Then there's the University of Nottingham's chemistry channel which is a nice blend of theory and sci-porn (mostly the former, obviously). There are also about 20 channels, each with three or four subsidiaries, which show up regularly (daily) in the top 100 - which as a rule I mistrust. Those view numbers are scary things, when you start thinking about the raw amount of time they represent. More or less, though, right?

Russia Today is always worth watching if you're in the habit of watching news and analyzing things as they are reported: I find that, between all the sources you are given as options, you get some shadowy idea of events, but very sharp impressions from the camera. That sounds in theory like a bait and switch scenario, right? I'm not trying to say anything that's just a consequential thought. Valid question I suppose.

And there are lots of niche channels that could appeal to you on YouTube and a fair bit of actually interesting or informative or pirated (good luck to the cyber detectives) material that can be found with the investment of a few minutes' thorough work.

Clearly, every wise person on earth would've thrown out their books if the internet was really the summit of civilization, so I think that book-apocalyptics stories about the internet, while dismally abundant, are still kind of a trite narrative device. So many noxious books have been printed and sold and hoarded and worshiped that, even counting the good ones, you have a general argument that a lot of paper was wasted and a lot of dirty solitary habits created. Some public habits, entire modes of thought, dependencies: you could go and talk about it.

But I recommend you read about it somewhere, instead.