The Interstitial Garbage Dump

Download the album automatically and don't listen to it at all and chuckle at the ensuing media firestorm sinking an irrelevant brand.

Pick a new role for yourself online, let the psychosis of the internet really get to you, really inhabit its odd corners, muttering constantly about incredible things with an awesome potential to alienate others while also alienating you. Get really huffy about something like everyone else is doing!

The newest sensation is a good way to get views and followers. Yet there is a way to do it properly and it may only be to create some bot account twitter, where you are the bot, retweeting an oblivious feed via buzzy logic and reimagining news stories in the naive or Socratic mode.

You ramble about the newest sensation. There is the Rob Ford Saga, pt. 6, and many others. Or work on the themes: What the Hell, vol. 1; Wild Internet XXI; My Fat Twitter Diary; Fail-o-sphere 2.5; LOLNET... the internet possibilities are endless. If you want success, stick to the sensations and try and become as media literate as you can in the broadest sense. Make a vid or two. Don't use memes stupidly and try not to play irrelevant or annoying ones unless you're really good, memewise.

No it doesn't need to make sense. It only needs to make sense interstitially and occasionally. The savvy user reads between the lines anyway.

Whatever happened to Nerd Culture? It got really quiet and samey, growing like a benign tumor on the cultural wasteland of 2014, a cyst overfull of information and inflated by its handlers. The newest game is all design and art, game be damned. The digital grindstone. "Only moonlighting in reality these days."

The dramatic currency wars. Fading economies. The thriving era of Cannibal Orphan Globalism. Violence signalling like flares in the dark that something is still terribly wrong and broken, help is needed, and the constant fear that everything else will get dragged in again leading to some monstrous cataclysm. Orphans of the species make further orbits for a couple of hardscrabble years, looking hungrily at a succession of pure nights.

We have a responsibility to do what we can and not let it get to us, try though it might. Is it our responsibility to look into things, risking mental corrosion and flights of fancy? Who can say? This blogger certainly can't. Casual self-reflection is probably a good habit unless it leads one too far inside. Introspection is only half the story at best. What seems impossible is always categorical: do all questions lead somewhere?

The internet provides a constant potential to feel extremely negative and anxious about everything, a literal bottomless pit that only exists insofar as what exactly? Personalized algorithmic experience, digital rat maze, the netscape, first and last frontier; possibly the end is in sight.

What the wreck of news journalism reveals is a world still running amok. Things are in some ways better, but things are worse at least existentially for all and are really not that great for most in any case. In the best case a global society awakens, ignores its differences, and forces the start of a new era divorced from as many of the ignorant sins of the past as possible. But realistically a continuation and intensification of the recent past is most likely, for at least a few more decades, by which time it may truly be too late.

The net decline of genetic diversity correlates to a net decline in the value of Earth, beyond merely a pruning of the tree of life as some non-alarmists would argue. If people were as carefree about their dollars everyone would be a millionaire, economists would be philosopher kings, and there would be no world hunger. Funny how more or less pure capitalism, either way, could solve a few problems. The law of mediocrity is by definition only fair to a small percentage. If we made it, could it rule us? What does it matter when the toxic cloud is already here, and has been for dozens of years?

The realist perspective is not individualistic, but there will always be the allure of a heroic self-narrative and/or other fantasies. There is not enough realism left, as if the horrors of the 20th century exhausted our ability or willingness to see things as they are. How will we advance beyond being troops of apes? Will we? Is the criticism even valid? We cannot truly say things are purely otherwise yet. The symbolists can prove it.

It is best to ramble about things awhile. Puzzle them over over a beer or so with a friend or friends who are looking to ruin your line of thought by thrusting their own into a collision with it. Whatever, anyways, right? Whatever...

User Comment Rodeo: Award Show the First

 I've been sleeping on User Comment Rodeo posts lately because I got very, very tired of reading them and also because I haven't seen a lot of good or juicy ones,. but mostly I've been too lazy to make another User Comment Rodeo post and there have been other interesting things to talk about. Prefab Sprout and the 80s pop debacle, for instance. That is some of my best blogging, right there. Timely, informative, helpful, and could even save you if you get cornered by a pack of label-wary musicoholics. 

So I was browsing the CBC news website, as usual, and found a rather well-written user comment with an actual structure (!) and some focus, plus it was written interestingly. It was in response to a story about oil prices or oil politics or something usually bitched about relentlessly but which is of considerable significance. Rarely do I find a level-headed, nonpartisan comment on CBC. If you read the old User Comment Rodeo posts, you can see a few descriptions of the archetypal comment posters. The rarest thing of all is that I found this post before anybody had voted for it, so it was in an ineffable state where nobody is opining or telling you what to think about the comment. 

For those reasons and more I consider the following user comment worthy of an honour. The first User Comment Rodeo award of excellence, given only to comments of outstanding value, insight, and entertainment. I doubt I will go into ecstatics, but to be safe I will show the post before I discuss it:

Look at that beautiful 'zero' rating. Untouched, unsullied by idiots, fresh from the poster. And what a post. Goddamn Latin phrase indicating which group is unpleasant? Goddamn Latin phrase indicating the entire 'user comment' mentality and existence, man! But we can't be too surprised that intelligent or educated people use the CBC website. 

Note the non-partisan appraisal of the situation. Harper is not at fault for oil prices. Goddamn right he isn't. If he had that much control all Canadians would be nerve-stapled cyborgs by now, and pulling him around on a sleigh. See the awesome dismissal of Harper, somewhat partisan, but seemingly more personal. That is beautiful commentary right there. If this was putting down a troll it would be a true masterpiece.

But this post doesn't need to put down trolls, because the Latin opening already takes care of the entire internet's population of trolls. Look at that unerring perspective, that perfect disclosure of chemical ignorance and naivete: the punctuation, grammar, and structure. Even the odd statistical fact is great.  This user comment is like Vonnegut coming down from the heavens and blessing the illiterate and subliterate with pure bleak satire they'll never understand.

Sure there are a few misspellings. Sure the perspective is perhaps even a little too truthful for anybody who's grown up on lies and self-entitlement. Sure the metaphor is upper-brow and probably flawed, and even a little offensive to Monster Truck Enthusiasts... but it's true. That's good imagery even though it doesn't make one bit of sense. I value that kind of honesty that does not pick sides, does not preach, but rather says a thing straight up as it is.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Takes in This an Interest

My unaccountably small audience, YouTube has become self-aware!

You can imagine how painful the internet is for anyone who is not YouTube or Facebook. Go ahead, imagine, and I bet it feels good. That's good pain right there. Wait! This is a disaster! In my bombastic, semi-Colbert-semi-internerd style, I warn you that this new self-inflating digital economy is actually a bubble, and may burst!

I just made that discovery, when I was as usual researching the decline of my era on the internet, on YouTube itself. I realized that my sources could be improved a little, but more importantly I learned that:

No wise body on earth can watch the next two complete videos in sequence. I have prepared them as a perfect deathtrap. To even attempt to complete the watching of either (let alone both) will probably result in an exploded head, internet's Homestar Runner-style. I watched a bit of either, and I'm not going to review the experience here – YouTube's comment sections, here I come!– but this is basically the sort of challenge that is a long, subtle joke about the world right now. What makes it a challenge is not finishing it, even, but comprehending the exact style of your death this entails.

The first sequence in this challenge will serve, at most institutions, as an introduction to internet politics.

Now, the second is an advanced choice, doubles as internet politics 1102, and is a reckless move on my part; I feel a certain duty to the internet so am forced to post it in sequence, with a long introduction link sentence.

In an alternative YouTube Video Sequence, you may laugh harder – but you will learn less, and your mind will be less damaged. Feel free to comment about your general sense of dread, bigoted sense of superiority, or experience with the challenge! As a scientist, I may be able to make some use of your otherwise pointless generosity.