Before they kill all of the rest of us. There's been an ongoing crisis for the last ten or so years and you will be hearing about it soon. Anyone who pays attention to nature or depends on it for a living can tell you some things that will make you uneasy. Things that might even get you to rethink your casual, materially-prosperous, entitled and contented life in the Global Consumerist Utopia. Things like the decline of honeybees, songbirds, everything but rats and rodents, it seems. Of course it's all very far away from the sort of stuff the average person cares about, like earning enough to live, or, having succeeded at that, earning enough to prosper.
Yes, I don't mean to be snide or aggressive, but a lot of people in the world are living in a goddamn fantasy. Humanity as a whole is becoming a soulless horde of consumerists and apologists. Everyone remembers the clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh, right? Oh, that's right, it was swept under the rug by the inevitable march of time. But the apologists came out of the woodwork then, to protect the capitalist practices which 'create wealth and jobs' in the third world and 'victories for feminism'. Now, I'm not a card-carrying Feminist so I don't purport to speak for women, but I highly doubt that cheap labor and globalism are victories for women, or anyone besides executives and their slaves.
The scariest thing happening right now, besides the potential dawn of a long era of climate change, or the degradation of the environment, or the dawn of an invincible corpocracy, or even the total fucking of the world by trillion-dollar multinational corporations and their countless parasite offspring, or the emergence of well-funded self-deluded police states, or the fracturing of human society by internet individualism and sub/urban anomie... one of the scariest things happening is the collapse of honeybee populations. Google Colony Collapse Disorder for more information. Or ignore this information and go on running your mouth and taking everything for granted. Believe in the physically impossible unceasing growth of Capitalism.
I think it's one of the great ongoing stories of the last decade. I've been keeping a tally and I've seen exactly two bees in the last few days, and I am fairly sure it was the same bee both times. I have a cherry tree and this year's yield was tiny - probably because of the lack of bees and the fucked-up weather. You rarely hear anything about the bee situation, and you would have had to be paying attention to apply a good narrative to it. To be blunt about it: beehives are dying off, leading to potential food crisis and, worst case scenario, a cascade of extinctions. Lots of great, non-engineered foods are possible only because of the honeybee. Fruits and nuts and anything that eats them is directly endangered. Why? Any number of reasons, but a few are becoming more and more apparent: try agribusiness and their overuse of pesticides (which goes along nicely with the GMO Narrative, a pile of shit I will try to keep out of).
This story is fantastic because two groups of people I despise ignore it (and I'm not talking about the Consumerist Masses, even though they're despicable, dumb, and deranged): the pro-and-anti GMO people. Now, food production is very important in theory and practice. Anything that can feed more people using less land probably a good investment, but there is a bit of the old hubris in the practice of genetic engineering – at least it seems like there is. I'm sure there are good people working there, but good people have been pulled into every evil thing we have ever done as a species – without them the evil ones wouldn't be capable enough.
Hippies are annoying but corporates are just as shitty: and both are largely ignoring the bee crisis. I have no strong opinions on GMO crops, but I hate agribusiness, and I hate Monsanto, like any conscious person with a heartbeat. They always believe in fixing a problem with another problem, and they've never admitted to their faults. Caught in a powerful embrace with world governments, and too rich to be subject to the law, corporations have a mindset analogous to papal infallibility. That alone makes me hate them: they could feed the poor for a million years but there would still be suffering poor. Both sides go wet for politics, but they lose their rabid erections as soon as people insist on the truth.
You could argue agribusiness feeds us, but even in the first world people are going chronically hungry. The food supply is arranged for maximum additives, engineered products, and subsidies. Before food is wasted by the consumer, it is wasted by the restaurant, the supermarket, the factory, the government, or the farmer. People would tell you that this is bullshit spread by fatalistic idealists who don't really know what's happening. People who tell you these things are apologists, and they will also tell you that all is well in the third world, to trust in your local or federal police force, to keep a fixed address, and to make as much money as you possibly can. Because they don't want to be alone, and the people who pay them don't want to fall out of power, and those people you never meet end up with more of your money than you'd think.
I guess the story goes like this: we're humans and we have such big brains. We're so smart: we can't go wrong. We deserve our excesses, and we are close to the Most Prosperous Era in History, when all problems will fade away, but we have to keep believing in the capitalist, empirical, and statist precepts that brought us to this point. No abuse of science cannot be cured by another abuse of science. Nature needs our help. We can improve nature. We are smarter than billions of years. We are more powerful than the seasons. We can do anything. We can solve inequality. We can believe in hope and progress. We can buy anything, even health, even love, even happiness. In 20 years we will construct the first artificial souls. So who gives a fuck about declining bee populations? We can solve that with either more poison or robot bees, and nothing needs to change, and we're going to be alright: I bet you twenty thousand give-a-fuck-points that Monsanto already bought the solution to the problem they, aided by plenty of other short-sighted profiteers, created.
Who gives a fuck about traffic jams? Radioactive contaminants bouncing around for thousands of years, and millions of lifeforms? Who cares about an unstable, overleveraged, dangerous food supply? As long as there's food on the table, nobody will care about this one planet we have that we are pissing away. Think about that when you see some sweaty fuck in a car, getting angry at a traffic jam, burning thousands of units of energy just to be bored and frustrated. Then look at the next one, and so on, and so on, forever. Some day, our hungry and scarce distant descendants will look back to this era and wonder if we were even capable of feeling shame.
6/26/13
Existential Crisis Zone: I Used to be a Better Blogger
A couple of years ago I was in top form. Everything I wrote was going to get ignored by pretty much the whole internet and I still made it count. I look at myself recently and, dear reader, it is painfully apparent that I've lost the patience to craft outstanding prose and to keep a non-partisan balance. Yes, I've committed the cardinal sin of becoming political. I might've been the same a few years ago, but what is important is that I was doing it with grace, if at all. That's not everything I've been doing wrong, but it's a good portion.
So I apologize. I'm not going to put up another piece about Edward Snowden, how Bradley Manning is still ignored (and his connection to the repealing of Don't Ask/Don't Tell - a very interesting hypothesis), or how the two men are very similar even though Edward Snowden is a civilian. I won't post about the odds of Snowden getting nabbed, disappeared, or simply imprisoned for the rest of his life. I won't opine about what would be fair, or if what he did was right. Though I will say that it speaks volumes about society that even 'the good life' wasn't enough to silence him, and that he is being denounced as rotten traitor, and that a decade+ ago the things he recently brought to light would have be mocked as patently paranoid. And I will also say he is lucky that McCarthyism has worn off somewhat in the 'States, even though it lives on in spirit, as so many things do.
I really wanted to, of course. Why else have a blog if not to write about issues that one considers important? Well, the world doesn't seem to care very much what Snowden did. I haven't met a single person since the story broke out who gave a shit. I don't know if they're unsurprised at the totalitarian security state slowly caging them in, or if they are just anesthetized to it. Maybe the oversharing internet attention junkies have won, the concept of identity is permanently deformed and bureaucracized, and the privileged are smirking, and anyone who thinks differently is already a fool in the eyes of the world. Yes: the state looking inward is nothing new, but the implications have never been this clinical or far-reaching.
You can tell how tempted I am to write about it. I would continue to approach the topic as if it mystified me. I would slowly bring in the revelations that this, ironically, takes the modern world another step towards the supposedly obsolete and abandoned precepts of Stalinism. I would use the word totalitarian a bunch of times and I would put in a few choice burns at facebook's expense. I would not mention Orwell, because I'm not an idiot, but I could. I would point out that collusion between government and industry is never a good sign. Damn, it could've been a fine piece for the world to ignore. Another feather in my cap, but I don't want feathers in my cap and I don't want to say too much. Suffice it to say that the modern world has been making me more and more uncomfortable and uneasy.
[Oh, and I could go on...]
So I apologize. I'm not going to put up another piece about Edward Snowden, how Bradley Manning is still ignored (and his connection to the repealing of Don't Ask/Don't Tell - a very interesting hypothesis), or how the two men are very similar even though Edward Snowden is a civilian. I won't post about the odds of Snowden getting nabbed, disappeared, or simply imprisoned for the rest of his life. I won't opine about what would be fair, or if what he did was right. Though I will say that it speaks volumes about society that even 'the good life' wasn't enough to silence him, and that he is being denounced as rotten traitor, and that a decade+ ago the things he recently brought to light would have be mocked as patently paranoid. And I will also say he is lucky that McCarthyism has worn off somewhat in the 'States, even though it lives on in spirit, as so many things do.
I really wanted to, of course. Why else have a blog if not to write about issues that one considers important? Well, the world doesn't seem to care very much what Snowden did. I haven't met a single person since the story broke out who gave a shit. I don't know if they're unsurprised at the totalitarian security state slowly caging them in, or if they are just anesthetized to it. Maybe the oversharing internet attention junkies have won, the concept of identity is permanently deformed and bureaucracized, and the privileged are smirking, and anyone who thinks differently is already a fool in the eyes of the world. Yes: the state looking inward is nothing new, but the implications have never been this clinical or far-reaching.
You can tell how tempted I am to write about it. I would continue to approach the topic as if it mystified me. I would slowly bring in the revelations that this, ironically, takes the modern world another step towards the supposedly obsolete and abandoned precepts of Stalinism. I would use the word totalitarian a bunch of times and I would put in a few choice burns at facebook's expense. I would not mention Orwell, because I'm not an idiot, but I could. I would point out that collusion between government and industry is never a good sign. Damn, it could've been a fine piece for the world to ignore. Another feather in my cap, but I don't want feathers in my cap and I don't want to say too much. Suffice it to say that the modern world has been making me more and more uncomfortable and uneasy.
[Oh, and I could go on...]
6/21/13
Cinema vs. Literature: The Case of Cloud Atlas
Hey I know it's a crazy debate that is considered tedious even by the people who engage in it and incredibly dull to the vast majority of people, but to me it's a somewhat important debate – also I've always wanted to get my piece in. In my life I have watched many movies that started out as books. I even watched a series of movies pull an entire genre out of leftfield and into the mainstream (the 'teenage girls + Lord of the Rings = Twilight' formula).
I never really want to do the research. One masterful post about 90's action movies Judge Dredd and Demolition Man is the one piece of film criticism I've ever attempted (I wouldn't even call criticism that by a mile), but the fact that it came together at all is a miracle and premised heavily on my understanding of the 1990s and action movies. I would never put on airs about film. I didn't study film, I am no expert, and if I couldn't write a decent bit about it I wouldn't even dare tangle with such heady stuff. Just kidding: nothing is sacred and film deserves an honest thrashing beyond my abilities.
But so do books, which brings me to today's post, which will take all of my faculties firing at once. Books and film. Easy target. Why not the Jurassic Park series? Why not the Harry Potter series? Well, both of those movie series are premised on books written in the 90s and I don't want to overplay my hand. I want to up the ante, though, so I'm taking it up to the 2000s and the 2010s. Cloud Atlas, the novel, was published in 2004 by an English author named David Mitchell. It was a rather engaging, spirited, and creative endeavor that consisted of six stories and their mysterious interplay throughout the novel. With no one narrative, or style, it was consistently engaging to read, and the nesting of the stories (like so: 1/2/3/4/5/6/5/4/3/2/1 ), and their content lent the final conclusion an epic sense. What a book, David Mitchell. Good work.
For years I had encountered brief allusions to the book, and some people I know had read it, but nobody had recommended it to me. Then I came across a trailer for the movie version and the race was on: I had to read the book before the movie came out. I was determined to do that and then also go see the movie. Naturally it took until this very week (8 months after release in my region) for me to actually see the movie. Life interceded, but I did find the book and read it.
Between a book and the film inevitably made about it there is a chasm so wide it cannot be imagined. A book can take a year to finish but a movie only has the audience's attention so long. Therefore, any attempt made to transcribe an entire book into a movie (even if the visual medium optimally condenses meaning and collapses the long-windedness of writing into digestible, filmable scenes) would fall completely flat or be ludicrous or run for 9 hours straight. Film buffs and hardcore book worms don't even have time for that: the two mediums are a world apart.
I never really want to do the research. One masterful post about 90's action movies Judge Dredd and Demolition Man is the one piece of film criticism I've ever attempted (I wouldn't even call criticism that by a mile), but the fact that it came together at all is a miracle and premised heavily on my understanding of the 1990s and action movies. I would never put on airs about film. I didn't study film, I am no expert, and if I couldn't write a decent bit about it I wouldn't even dare tangle with such heady stuff. Just kidding: nothing is sacred and film deserves an honest thrashing beyond my abilities.
But so do books, which brings me to today's post, which will take all of my faculties firing at once. Books and film. Easy target. Why not the Jurassic Park series? Why not the Harry Potter series? Well, both of those movie series are premised on books written in the 90s and I don't want to overplay my hand. I want to up the ante, though, so I'm taking it up to the 2000s and the 2010s. Cloud Atlas, the novel, was published in 2004 by an English author named David Mitchell. It was a rather engaging, spirited, and creative endeavor that consisted of six stories and their mysterious interplay throughout the novel. With no one narrative, or style, it was consistently engaging to read, and the nesting of the stories (like so: 1/2/3/4/5/6/5/4/3/2/1 ), and their content lent the final conclusion an epic sense. What a book, David Mitchell. Good work.
For years I had encountered brief allusions to the book, and some people I know had read it, but nobody had recommended it to me. Then I came across a trailer for the movie version and the race was on: I had to read the book before the movie came out. I was determined to do that and then also go see the movie. Naturally it took until this very week (8 months after release in my region) for me to actually see the movie. Life interceded, but I did find the book and read it.
Between a book and the film inevitably made about it there is a chasm so wide it cannot be imagined. A book can take a year to finish but a movie only has the audience's attention so long. Therefore, any attempt made to transcribe an entire book into a movie (even if the visual medium optimally condenses meaning and collapses the long-windedness of writing into digestible, filmable scenes) would fall completely flat or be ludicrous or run for 9 hours straight. Film buffs and hardcore book worms don't even have time for that: the two mediums are a world apart.
6/13/13
Language Crisis: part One Million, Sixty Three Thousand, Five Hundred and Eleven.
Real Talk: News Flash: 'Addicting' isn't a word.
The word you're looking for, under-23-year-old, is 'addictive', which is a real word that means what you think you mean when you use a nonsense word like addicting. I know that language and spelling aren't very cool and communication is for fags and noobs, but not even your whole generation using the same wrong words makes you any more right. Also, 'addicting' sounds stupid. Addictive: therefore you become addicted. The word you're searching for, that the education system or your own brain failed you on, is 'addictive'. You're welcome.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
And again, for clarity.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
Similarly, putting 'of' behind a word doesn't work. It doesn't mean anything except that, once again, the education system failed you or you failed yourself. Basically people who do this are phonetically sounding out a word like should've, (which is a contraction of should have) and turning it into should of, which, once again, sounds and looks stupid. For example and context, back in the 50s when people still gave a tiny fuck about education, even babies knew these kinds of things.
Now, in 2013, there are literal adults (the adult is a species in decline for three straight decades) who don't know things a 1950s baby would have taken for granted. This is what old people mean when they complain about youths. Take a goddamn minute and figure out what you're writing. Your grandfather got the shit beat out of him when he couldn't, and it made him into the debonaire, wise, smug, super-entitled person he deserves to be today. Do him proud, and don't go on running your dumb mouth and using imaginary words.
It's very tempting to think your corruptions of sensible English will change the language to the dumbfuck patios you would comfortable with, but over my dead body. I've let a lot of things slide for a long time. I've hung up my Grammar Nazi hat many a year ago, but sometimes things have gone on long enough. How the fuck did you graduate from Univeristy, you mentally-children, without knowing how to fucking spell?
It's good for you most people are dumb as fuck and lack even common sense. Sure, correct usage is an elitist thing. Fine, whatever. Continue fitting in with your degenerative world, but please don't turn 'addicting' into a word. It sounds bad. It looks bad. It's got nothing on 'addictive'.
The word you're looking for, under-23-year-old, is 'addictive', which is a real word that means what you think you mean when you use a nonsense word like addicting. I know that language and spelling aren't very cool and communication is for fags and noobs, but not even your whole generation using the same wrong words makes you any more right. Also, 'addicting' sounds stupid. Addictive: therefore you become addicted. The word you're searching for, that the education system or your own brain failed you on, is 'addictive'. You're welcome.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
And again, for clarity.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
Similarly, putting 'of' behind a word doesn't work. It doesn't mean anything except that, once again, the education system failed you or you failed yourself. Basically people who do this are phonetically sounding out a word like should've, (which is a contraction of should have) and turning it into should of, which, once again, sounds and looks stupid. For example and context, back in the 50s when people still gave a tiny fuck about education, even babies knew these kinds of things.
Now, in 2013, there are literal adults (the adult is a species in decline for three straight decades) who don't know things a 1950s baby would have taken for granted. This is what old people mean when they complain about youths. Take a goddamn minute and figure out what you're writing. Your grandfather got the shit beat out of him when he couldn't, and it made him into the debonaire, wise, smug, super-entitled person he deserves to be today. Do him proud, and don't go on running your dumb mouth and using imaginary words.
It's very tempting to think your corruptions of sensible English will change the language to the dumbfuck patios you would comfortable with, but over my dead body. I've let a lot of things slide for a long time. I've hung up my Grammar Nazi hat many a year ago, but sometimes things have gone on long enough. How the fuck did you graduate from Univeristy, you mentally-children, without knowing how to fucking spell?
It's good for you most people are dumb as fuck and lack even common sense. Sure, correct usage is an elitist thing. Fine, whatever. Continue fitting in with your degenerative world, but please don't turn 'addicting' into a word. It sounds bad. It looks bad. It's got nothing on 'addictive'.
6/7/13
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.
6/4/13
The Gezi Park Protests And The Delayed Media Response
Any time there is a big ado and it is in spirit against corporatism or authoritarianism there is one easy media conclusion to make if you live in the West: you aren't going to hear a goddamn thing about it. Coverage of Occupy Wall Street was spotty enough and it happened in the West's back yard. But don't worry: when the internet isn't being creepy or fighting about fucktarded opinions, it is accumulating data and 1:10000 of its population is presenting information with as little bias as possible.
To be honest, the Gezi Park Protests are much more supportable than Occupy Wall Street. Why? I mean, sure, both protests had legitimate issues, but only in Turkey has it become egregious enough to erupt in violence. Occupy Wall Street, if you'll remember, was pretty tame. Innocent teenage girls getting pepper-sprayed, drum circles, the mildest police brutality since a drunk white dude got arrested after a hockey game, and the list goes on. Nobody was impressed. The media largely skipped and told the basics, so that apologists and the uncaring middle class could infer it was a bunch of a dumb goddamn hippies (while their 800 billion dollars in tax monies had long gone up the noses of the financial industry).
Turkey, however, is lit up with Mediterranean passion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sinister leader figure around whom these protests center, is sort of a hard-line 'Right-Wing Traditional Values Politician'. In the West he would be seen as a creepy, sinister vampire with a hidden agenda - the Right would generally hail him as Reagan Reborn or something nonsensical. In Turkey, a much more serious populace suffered Erdogan's fuckery quietly until he took a step too far and okayed a plan to turn the last park in downtown Istanbul (or Constantinople if you've been living under a rock for the last 600 years) into a goddamn mixed-use shopping mall.
Shopping malls are absolutely the devil, but they're not properly Satanesque until they eat up scarce greenery. I understand the irony of a Traditional Values Muslim Politician (who hates kissing, beer, and young people) destroying a natural place of peace, but that's the oldest game in the West, where so-called conservatives have bulldozed forests and pillaged history with such acumen that the general populace doesn't even care. In the West, however, no matter how powerful our corporate overlords, the last park in a city would never be bulldozed for a goddamn mall/condo construction project based on a preexisting militaristic building. Despicable.
So, quite rightly, ordinary Turks went apeshit and did their best to stop the destruction of an innocent park. The police responded harshly, shooting tear-gas everywhere and blasting people with water cannons. There were reports of civilians getting shot with bullets as well, in case things weren't bad enough. The military sided, unofficially, with the protestors. That was back on 28 May 2013. Since then the western media have made roughly 5% of a big deal about this news, probably in deference to stubborn Erdogan, who is 'our friend in Turkey' and likely portrayed as some kind of nonsense 'bulwark against radicalization'.
This struggle could overturn the Erdogan political dynasty, with unknown effects for Turkey, a vibrant up-and-comer in the world. Erdogan has done what all Traditional Values Politicans do: he has attempted to white-wash the past while getting rich on corporatism and brutally enforcing his country. He is afraid of bad press, freedom, and pre-marital sex, but if he's a true Conservative Traditional Values Politician he is right now engaging in sex-tourism in a midwest-America bathroom stall – while signing away resource rights to a multinational corporation that promises to subsidize his police force. But, hey, 'police are heroes' so maybe this story should be kept on the backburner awhile.
When there are reports in the West, they are brief and vague. Nobody wants to say 'too much', it seems. It is almost as if censorship in Turkey has spread into North America. Imagine how crazy that would be. What would it mean about North American and Western media if they kept silent about the abuses, threats, and brutality Erdogan has caused in his decade-plus of rule? But then, this isn't the first time mass media have been slow on the uptake. In Turkey itself is the only case of 'true' censorship, wherein television news reports completely ignore the protests. For the rest: enjoy your scraps of information while 'fair and balanced' reporters and organizations figure out their shit.
What if spurned environmentalists could start similar movements in the West? There are certainly abuses of power, and huge problems with the establishment that will not recede peacefully, but instead worsen every year. I bet you that profits would win at the end of the day, protestors or not. Or, worse: another OWS. What matters about Turkey is the theme: if the fight is lost there then the 21st century will look grimmer for the anti-corporatist and brighter for the career politician and the politician's masters (be they religious or business). That's probably why the Western Media is so mum about this story: they already know the answer. Plus it's Shark Week and tornado season has begun.
Of course reporting will open up when censorship is broken, or a reliable narrative can be applied to the story that will not alienate Turkish political elites, or when the story is over. It's not about a park, and it's not the fault of protestors: the Gezi Park protests are ultimately about resisting authoritarianism. The actions of Turkish police have proven it. At this point a few in-depth reports have probably been published. My sympathies absolutely lie with the protestors, and I wish them victory, because if they win, Turkey will be that much better for it.
To be honest, the Gezi Park Protests are much more supportable than Occupy Wall Street. Why? I mean, sure, both protests had legitimate issues, but only in Turkey has it become egregious enough to erupt in violence. Occupy Wall Street, if you'll remember, was pretty tame. Innocent teenage girls getting pepper-sprayed, drum circles, the mildest police brutality since a drunk white dude got arrested after a hockey game, and the list goes on. Nobody was impressed. The media largely skipped and told the basics, so that apologists and the uncaring middle class could infer it was a bunch of a dumb goddamn hippies (while their 800 billion dollars in tax monies had long gone up the noses of the financial industry).
Turkey, however, is lit up with Mediterranean passion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sinister leader figure around whom these protests center, is sort of a hard-line 'Right-Wing Traditional Values Politician'. In the West he would be seen as a creepy, sinister vampire with a hidden agenda - the Right would generally hail him as Reagan Reborn or something nonsensical. In Turkey, a much more serious populace suffered Erdogan's fuckery quietly until he took a step too far and okayed a plan to turn the last park in downtown Istanbul (or Constantinople if you've been living under a rock for the last 600 years) into a goddamn mixed-use shopping mall.
Shopping malls are absolutely the devil, but they're not properly Satanesque until they eat up scarce greenery. I understand the irony of a Traditional Values Muslim Politician (who hates kissing, beer, and young people) destroying a natural place of peace, but that's the oldest game in the West, where so-called conservatives have bulldozed forests and pillaged history with such acumen that the general populace doesn't even care. In the West, however, no matter how powerful our corporate overlords, the last park in a city would never be bulldozed for a goddamn mall/condo construction project based on a preexisting militaristic building. Despicable.
So, quite rightly, ordinary Turks went apeshit and did their best to stop the destruction of an innocent park. The police responded harshly, shooting tear-gas everywhere and blasting people with water cannons. There were reports of civilians getting shot with bullets as well, in case things weren't bad enough. The military sided, unofficially, with the protestors. That was back on 28 May 2013. Since then the western media have made roughly 5% of a big deal about this news, probably in deference to stubborn Erdogan, who is 'our friend in Turkey' and likely portrayed as some kind of nonsense 'bulwark against radicalization'.
This struggle could overturn the Erdogan political dynasty, with unknown effects for Turkey, a vibrant up-and-comer in the world. Erdogan has done what all Traditional Values Politicans do: he has attempted to white-wash the past while getting rich on corporatism and brutally enforcing his country. He is afraid of bad press, freedom, and pre-marital sex, but if he's a true Conservative Traditional Values Politician he is right now engaging in sex-tourism in a midwest-America bathroom stall – while signing away resource rights to a multinational corporation that promises to subsidize his police force. But, hey, 'police are heroes' so maybe this story should be kept on the backburner awhile.
When there are reports in the West, they are brief and vague. Nobody wants to say 'too much', it seems. It is almost as if censorship in Turkey has spread into North America. Imagine how crazy that would be. What would it mean about North American and Western media if they kept silent about the abuses, threats, and brutality Erdogan has caused in his decade-plus of rule? But then, this isn't the first time mass media have been slow on the uptake. In Turkey itself is the only case of 'true' censorship, wherein television news reports completely ignore the protests. For the rest: enjoy your scraps of information while 'fair and balanced' reporters and organizations figure out their shit.
What if spurned environmentalists could start similar movements in the West? There are certainly abuses of power, and huge problems with the establishment that will not recede peacefully, but instead worsen every year. I bet you that profits would win at the end of the day, protestors or not. Or, worse: another OWS. What matters about Turkey is the theme: if the fight is lost there then the 21st century will look grimmer for the anti-corporatist and brighter for the career politician and the politician's masters (be they religious or business). That's probably why the Western Media is so mum about this story: they already know the answer. Plus it's Shark Week and tornado season has begun.
Of course reporting will open up when censorship is broken, or a reliable narrative can be applied to the story that will not alienate Turkish political elites, or when the story is over. It's not about a park, and it's not the fault of protestors: the Gezi Park protests are ultimately about resisting authoritarianism. The actions of Turkish police have proven it. At this point a few in-depth reports have probably been published. My sympathies absolutely lie with the protestors, and I wish them victory, because if they win, Turkey will be that much better for it.
5/24/13
Whispers of Doom: Opinionated Media, The Age of Indifference, and The Death of Thought
There is nothing original about how opinionated news coverage is. It's tempting to say 'how opinionated the media has become' but it's an old story. Even in the best cases there's a subtle angle or two going on in a story; at worst: well you don't have to look far or read deeply. It used to be that only advertisements and special interest messages or full page buy-ins blended message and content into a delicious slurpee of fact and fantasy. Nowadays there is editorializing run amok. A story can't rest, a tragedy can't be digested, before it is processed into agenda and counter-agenda.
As if there were not enough conflict in the world, and as if easy conclusions were not bountiful [and cheap] enough already, there is the great fight in mass media. No wonder the narrative of the contemporary is blurry: it is being constantly retouched by a cabal as neurotic and sinister and widespread as 40's Stalinist revisionists. They are your friends and your enemies, and they have your neighbor's ear if not yours. You will hear what they say, one way or another, and it may occur to you that it can't matter anymore what you think.
Naturally there is still room to read between the lines. For the claustrophobic, it is not recommended to try: the story there is generally not encouraging either. Everything surrounding it is manic, fallacious, and consistently problematic. User Comment Rodeos are a good joke but really, what an exercise in futility – in the name of some laughs, hopefully. There has to be an 'at least', and that is that we can watch the corrosion of debate and solidification of mistruth, and at least laugh about it.
I am late to that party, but even I can tell it contains some excellent observations by noteworthy members. Stephen Colbert, for one: host of the Daily Show for the 21st century. Generally the news isn't jokeworthy, and turning it into something laughable takes direct confrontation of its most negative features. Held only in context, it's kind of macabre to laugh when 'people are dead/dying'... but if you follow that rabbit hole all the way down you will lose your mind. What matters about Colbert, for instance, is that his stance is based on perspective as well as overwhelming satire. Still, I admit I am no expert, so it could be something else with his show.
What does a politics/satire late night show have to do with news media, worldwide? Only very little: an example of the brighter side. Mostly the news media that exists is corporate in nature and consumerist in action. Generally, Western media is overwhelmingly capitalistic as well, but even to bring that up anecdotally is grounds for suspicion and/or derision, which only makes it truer. When the Rana Plaza Building collapsed in Bangladesh it didn't take long for the apologists and exceptionalists to hurl their agendas into the fray. 'It's a recession, so you know what? The solution is a growing global market, stupid hippies, and that requires affordable labor.' or 'Before you pontificate about these 500 dead garment workers, just remember that many were working women – an economic and feminist victory for that country.' or 'If you think you should feel guilty about that 29 dollar t-shirt made by a worker paid pennies an hour think about these even poorer places where subsistence farmers aren't even exploited by billion-dollar multi-national corporations!'
These are the kinds of things that develop from an overly opinionated media. The story itself was buried in the rubble of a society scrambling to indemnify itself against all charges of complicity. The careful thoughtfulness which can only come from an understanding of things is ever eclipsed by the need to feel strongly about things, to feel superior to or protected from problems, and [for 'a lucky few'] to exploit strong feelings for profit or power. This is nothing new, and is probably a fundamental limit on any possibility of a human solution to the problem. What plagued us as suspicious tribes slaughtering each other in the Neolithic will plague us with nuclear weapons, drone strikes, surveillance, social unrest, and terrorism in the present.
Yeah, I'm getting all of this from a handful of unqualified public user internet commentary, some TV shows, and the odd newspaper. I sometimes cover user comment posts - it seems like a frightening low, come to think of it. Still, all of these things say something about contemporary society. Even the agendas, approached critically, sometimes reveal a little about their motivations. Still, it is not the done thing to wonder about the world. All minds bog down with immediate concerns: on that account there is either no blame to spread or too much to imagine. However, it is and has always been important to open one's eyes now and again, to accept the surprise of being wrong, and there are [in the media alone] too many entrenched positions for that to be true.
As a lowly member of the public, I feel from the media world little other than indifferent contempt – with few exceptions. I don't understand how everyone doesn't feel that way. Companies/governments/media outlets talk down to me all day, in advertisements and productions in every form of media, their lackeys on the street, the social mores they've normalized, the behaviors they encourage, police, cause, and propagate. If I think differently than I ought to, things will seem grimmer than they have to, and maybe that's unhealthy. 'Being happy is being healthy, so even in inclement times, you should focus on you, and be happy!'
Of course, feeling uncomfortable about this situation is absurd, abnormal, or paranoid. The cues are everywhere and they tell me to continue to consume the media, maintain or improve my standing in society, and that things are getting better every day. 'The future is coming, along with the following exciting products and services...'
There will always be 'incidents' and your betters and heroes in politics, business, and the media will cover those. You will know what to think the minute you hear any story, without hesitation or reflection. You might have overblown fights with complete strangers about something trifling you disagree on, but you'll never question why. The irrelevance of opinion [and opinions' sources] is the only thing in doubt. There might be opinions published in and around the news that are unacceptable because they are one-sided and/or myopic, but at least they're only kinda presented as truth, in the sense that they are argued convincingly but never based on facts.
Oh well. Agree to disagree. The headlines will confirm what you were thinking anyway. Whatever you do: don't search for cures - your old friends are waiting for you.
As if there were not enough conflict in the world, and as if easy conclusions were not bountiful [and cheap] enough already, there is the great fight in mass media. No wonder the narrative of the contemporary is blurry: it is being constantly retouched by a cabal as neurotic and sinister and widespread as 40's Stalinist revisionists. They are your friends and your enemies, and they have your neighbor's ear if not yours. You will hear what they say, one way or another, and it may occur to you that it can't matter anymore what you think.
Naturally there is still room to read between the lines. For the claustrophobic, it is not recommended to try: the story there is generally not encouraging either. Everything surrounding it is manic, fallacious, and consistently problematic. User Comment Rodeos are a good joke but really, what an exercise in futility – in the name of some laughs, hopefully. There has to be an 'at least', and that is that we can watch the corrosion of debate and solidification of mistruth, and at least laugh about it.
I am late to that party, but even I can tell it contains some excellent observations by noteworthy members. Stephen Colbert, for one: host of the Daily Show for the 21st century. Generally the news isn't jokeworthy, and turning it into something laughable takes direct confrontation of its most negative features. Held only in context, it's kind of macabre to laugh when 'people are dead/dying'... but if you follow that rabbit hole all the way down you will lose your mind. What matters about Colbert, for instance, is that his stance is based on perspective as well as overwhelming satire. Still, I admit I am no expert, so it could be something else with his show.
What does a politics/satire late night show have to do with news media, worldwide? Only very little: an example of the brighter side. Mostly the news media that exists is corporate in nature and consumerist in action. Generally, Western media is overwhelmingly capitalistic as well, but even to bring that up anecdotally is grounds for suspicion and/or derision, which only makes it truer. When the Rana Plaza Building collapsed in Bangladesh it didn't take long for the apologists and exceptionalists to hurl their agendas into the fray. 'It's a recession, so you know what? The solution is a growing global market, stupid hippies, and that requires affordable labor.' or 'Before you pontificate about these 500 dead garment workers, just remember that many were working women – an economic and feminist victory for that country.' or 'If you think you should feel guilty about that 29 dollar t-shirt made by a worker paid pennies an hour think about these even poorer places where subsistence farmers aren't even exploited by billion-dollar multi-national corporations!'
These are the kinds of things that develop from an overly opinionated media. The story itself was buried in the rubble of a society scrambling to indemnify itself against all charges of complicity. The careful thoughtfulness which can only come from an understanding of things is ever eclipsed by the need to feel strongly about things, to feel superior to or protected from problems, and [for 'a lucky few'] to exploit strong feelings for profit or power. This is nothing new, and is probably a fundamental limit on any possibility of a human solution to the problem. What plagued us as suspicious tribes slaughtering each other in the Neolithic will plague us with nuclear weapons, drone strikes, surveillance, social unrest, and terrorism in the present.
Yeah, I'm getting all of this from a handful of unqualified public user internet commentary, some TV shows, and the odd newspaper. I sometimes cover user comment posts - it seems like a frightening low, come to think of it. Still, all of these things say something about contemporary society. Even the agendas, approached critically, sometimes reveal a little about their motivations. Still, it is not the done thing to wonder about the world. All minds bog down with immediate concerns: on that account there is either no blame to spread or too much to imagine. However, it is and has always been important to open one's eyes now and again, to accept the surprise of being wrong, and there are [in the media alone] too many entrenched positions for that to be true.
As a lowly member of the public, I feel from the media world little other than indifferent contempt – with few exceptions. I don't understand how everyone doesn't feel that way. Companies/governments/media outlets talk down to me all day, in advertisements and productions in every form of media, their lackeys on the street, the social mores they've normalized, the behaviors they encourage, police, cause, and propagate. If I think differently than I ought to, things will seem grimmer than they have to, and maybe that's unhealthy. 'Being happy is being healthy, so even in inclement times, you should focus on you, and be happy!'
Of course, feeling uncomfortable about this situation is absurd, abnormal, or paranoid. The cues are everywhere and they tell me to continue to consume the media, maintain or improve my standing in society, and that things are getting better every day. 'The future is coming, along with the following exciting products and services...'
There will always be 'incidents' and your betters and heroes in politics, business, and the media will cover those. You will know what to think the minute you hear any story, without hesitation or reflection. You might have overblown fights with complete strangers about something trifling you disagree on, but you'll never question why. The irrelevance of opinion [and opinions' sources] is the only thing in doubt. There might be opinions published in and around the news that are unacceptable because they are one-sided and/or myopic, but at least they're only kinda presented as truth, in the sense that they are argued convincingly but never based on facts.
Oh well. Agree to disagree. The headlines will confirm what you were thinking anyway. Whatever you do: don't search for cures - your old friends are waiting for you.
5/18/13
The Character Assassination of Robert B. Ford
It was, all in all, a great week for Toronto. The possibility of a downtown casino had been quashed by the premier, another condo development had been announced (this one will replace the aging, unsightly, and low-density Fort York), and the numbers proved what citizens had known for ten years: public transit was highly popular, perhaps too popular. All the city needed was another news story or an influx of tourists, and the golden summer of 2013 could begin.
Nobody could have expected that the greatest news story of all time would descend, causing a vortex of mad news that would spread across the world. A truly world-class story would emerge from the general rubbish of Toronto news (three parts middle-class entitlement to one part crime/poverty stories) and take the world by storm – even better: it would lead to worldwide news coverage.
Noteworthy Rob Ford hater and inveterate populist newspaper The Toronto Star had been at the forefront of research into the newest Rob Ford Media Fiasco. However, when the story became too hot for the Canada/US border it was broken by a New York based internet company, Gawker. One gets the impression of a sweating editorial meeting at the Star, shirtsleeves and pantsuits, the editor in chief wearily smoking a cigarette and shaking her head - 'They scooped us, Jesus Christ, that was our story! One more fuck up like this and we're done!' Never mind, of course, that if the Toronto Star had reported on the story first it would never have become a world-class piece of news.
It was the hottest piece of Canadian hearsay since that fuddle-duddle about Laureen Harper, which many still do not know and got to be so hot it involved the RCMP. Even the Laureen Harper rumors failed to capture the world's attention – most likely since they only existed in Ottawa, where they were firmly proved, before the media was scared with warnings about tangling with the Prime Minister's Office and the RCMP. Well, move along, old story. Here's a golden one: Rob Ford smokes crack. Allegedly, because the drug dealers who have the video aren't letting it go for less than $100,000 at least, and double that for U.S. media outlets. Nobody's bought it yet, but those young entrepreneurs are proving that you don't need education or ethical high ground to make the news! Truly they are sending a good message in the Recession Era for self starters everywhere.
What do you think of that? That's absolutely world class, and the media is acting like it's shameful. In a country where senators are getting away with fraudulent misuse of taxpayer money, and the government generally looks down on the populace, the private enjoyment of privately-funded crack cocaine by a family man and Mayor of Toronto seems to be the Goliath of news. In reality it isn't even that newsworthy at all: Canada is a real country and things happen outside of Toronto. However, there is an element of schadenfreude in all this: Canada hates Toronto and the most vocal parts of Toronto hate Rob Ford. Everyone wins with a story like this.
Toronto should embrace this man, but establish firm limits on his ability to gut downtown or mass transit. Rob Ford is a brilliant statesman in the new mode: what matters is politics as a game. Promise the people what they want and then go forth, and do what you want. Words to live by. In America he would be a millionaire CEO, a Senator, or a Governor. Since it's America, he probably wouldn't have strayed far from powder cocaine. In Canada he is a Michael Bloomberg - a Canadian Billionaire and a Mayor, and possibly a Man Who Smoked Crack. This is truly world class, and Toronto owes him for his services, for the media exposure, and for the good times.
Most importantly, Rob Ford is a tenacious fighter and a winner. He has faced incredible backlash since before he was Mayor. He was the dissolute son of a rich man, they said, and just another byproduct of the broken North American Democracy. They thought he wasn't built of the right stuff, but as it turns out, Rob Ford is. Every failure of optics has been overcome, from the anger management issues, to the balance issues, to the aggressive cameraman issues. Nobody in Canadian politics is man enough to deal with Ford, and that fear is what contributes to the largely biased and negative coverage.
In a daring show of solidarity with the poor addicts of the world, Rob Ford smoked crack. He is rich enough to enjoy powder cocaine, but he wanted to let the world know that rich people can get down with rocks too, we're all generally the same - some of us are just rich enough to govern the rest. Isn't that the American Dream come to life in Center-Right Socialist Canada? Rob Ford is truly a contender in politics, unlike generally all other politicians, he isn't afraid of crime, drugs, or poor people. If his people are smart enough to spin this story the right way, he will be Prime Minister in ten years, and then the fun can really begin!
Nobody could have expected that the greatest news story of all time would descend, causing a vortex of mad news that would spread across the world. A truly world-class story would emerge from the general rubbish of Toronto news (three parts middle-class entitlement to one part crime/poverty stories) and take the world by storm – even better: it would lead to worldwide news coverage.
Noteworthy Rob Ford hater and inveterate populist newspaper The Toronto Star had been at the forefront of research into the newest Rob Ford Media Fiasco. However, when the story became too hot for the Canada/US border it was broken by a New York based internet company, Gawker. One gets the impression of a sweating editorial meeting at the Star, shirtsleeves and pantsuits, the editor in chief wearily smoking a cigarette and shaking her head - 'They scooped us, Jesus Christ, that was our story! One more fuck up like this and we're done!' Never mind, of course, that if the Toronto Star had reported on the story first it would never have become a world-class piece of news.
It was the hottest piece of Canadian hearsay since that fuddle-duddle about Laureen Harper, which many still do not know and got to be so hot it involved the RCMP. Even the Laureen Harper rumors failed to capture the world's attention – most likely since they only existed in Ottawa, where they were firmly proved, before the media was scared with warnings about tangling with the Prime Minister's Office and the RCMP. Well, move along, old story. Here's a golden one: Rob Ford smokes crack. Allegedly, because the drug dealers who have the video aren't letting it go for less than $100,000 at least, and double that for U.S. media outlets. Nobody's bought it yet, but those young entrepreneurs are proving that you don't need education or ethical high ground to make the news! Truly they are sending a good message in the Recession Era for self starters everywhere.
What do you think of that? That's absolutely world class, and the media is acting like it's shameful. In a country where senators are getting away with fraudulent misuse of taxpayer money, and the government generally looks down on the populace, the private enjoyment of privately-funded crack cocaine by a family man and Mayor of Toronto seems to be the Goliath of news. In reality it isn't even that newsworthy at all: Canada is a real country and things happen outside of Toronto. However, there is an element of schadenfreude in all this: Canada hates Toronto and the most vocal parts of Toronto hate Rob Ford. Everyone wins with a story like this.
Toronto should embrace this man, but establish firm limits on his ability to gut downtown or mass transit. Rob Ford is a brilliant statesman in the new mode: what matters is politics as a game. Promise the people what they want and then go forth, and do what you want. Words to live by. In America he would be a millionaire CEO, a Senator, or a Governor. Since it's America, he probably wouldn't have strayed far from powder cocaine. In Canada he is a Michael Bloomberg - a Canadian Billionaire and a Mayor, and possibly a Man Who Smoked Crack. This is truly world class, and Toronto owes him for his services, for the media exposure, and for the good times.
Most importantly, Rob Ford is a tenacious fighter and a winner. He has faced incredible backlash since before he was Mayor. He was the dissolute son of a rich man, they said, and just another byproduct of the broken North American Democracy. They thought he wasn't built of the right stuff, but as it turns out, Rob Ford is. Every failure of optics has been overcome, from the anger management issues, to the balance issues, to the aggressive cameraman issues. Nobody in Canadian politics is man enough to deal with Ford, and that fear is what contributes to the largely biased and negative coverage.
In a daring show of solidarity with the poor addicts of the world, Rob Ford smoked crack. He is rich enough to enjoy powder cocaine, but he wanted to let the world know that rich people can get down with rocks too, we're all generally the same - some of us are just rich enough to govern the rest. Isn't that the American Dream come to life in Center-Right Socialist Canada? Rob Ford is truly a contender in politics, unlike generally all other politicians, he isn't afraid of crime, drugs, or poor people. If his people are smart enough to spin this story the right way, he will be Prime Minister in ten years, and then the fun can really begin!
5/9/13
Has the Golden Era of Adblockers Passed?
Recently I tried to watch some online video on a television channel's website. The video applet failed to load completely and it didn't take long for me to develop the correct suspicion. I disabled my adblocker and reloaded the page. No fucking video. So I open the page in a vanilla browser and it loads, a wild contrast from what I had, up till that point, been used to. On the vanilla browser there is a banner and large square add. Then the video starts and I am subjected to extra-loud advertising, TV style, with a vengeance. In addition to the other adds. Another advertisement plays, and a third, before my content is loaded.
Adblockers, with the advent of hijacked banner ads and unscrupulous marketing, to say nothing of the paranoid or political users of the internet, are not simply a tool entitled users employ to rid themselves of annoyances. Ad-blockers are legitimately a way of keeping your computer clean, of preventing your oft-used technological distractions from compromise. The fact you don't have to watch commercials (which are basically always: manipulative, insulting, indoctrinating or some shameful combination of all three) is an added bonus to not having your internet-accessing-device fucked with.
I am not a poweruser but I've been adblocking for years - since I discovered it was possible. I understand that advertising revenue drives some smaller sites, and, yes, I'd agree they deserve their due - assuming they police their advertisements for some level of quality. Fine, whatever, have your .005 cents per impression. You deserve it, plucky little website. However, the worst offenders are often large media sites – sometimes even those which already use paywalls. Let me present a brief overview of the galloping trend of online advertising.
In the early 90's during the second wave of the internet, when things became graphical enough that advertisement in the classic sense became possible, it was largely internet entities that advertised for themselves, and certain forward looking companies often related to the tech-sector. It was a simpler time. By late 1999 basically everyone who wasn't under a rock or a dinosaur was getting into online advertisement. 'Hey, check out our website at http://www.geocities.SonnysPizza/index.htm for some coupons' and other types of hilarity abounded. Whatever, wherever you got advertised to, it took a slice of your pitiful bandwidth and generally wasted time and resources, but you had to face it. Eventually MSN Messenger (R.I.P) becomes huge, and eventually it begins to advertise to you.
Side banner; top banner; .gif flames - all of these things were familiar. Between then and now the internet has grown up and come of age to the point where a huge section of people use it. All the troglodytes, termites, attractive well-adjusted people, and infants came out of the woodwork and the internet is full of everyone now. Whatever, other people will tell you about it, and some gigantic nerd could probably make a convincingly venomous deal about it... all I'll say is it drove a wave of advertising intensity that eventually rivaled the notorious realm of television adverts.
Fucking pop-ups were one thing, but there came layers of advertising that would jump into existence around key-words. Video sidebars that glitched out your browser and had to fling their audio payloads into your ears. 'Interactive' commercials made by committees of dullards and shills. YouTube videos became clogged with side, top, and skippable pre-video advertisements for every user account considered important enough to waste your time for their profit. What was once dumb, became even dumber, amen. So it goes, right? Absolutely. Yet there were additions to your browsers that would kill all advertising.
True to form, adblockers were free. They worked, and nobody who adopted them ever looked back. Surfing without them was like going back in time. It sucked, you were exposed to all the reprehensible shit that barely existed in your ideal internet experience. Going back to ads is like hitting yourself in the face with a shoe. Beautiful adblocking programs, released by benevolent and right-minded developers, worked on classic print ads, video ads, and even ads played in video content. It is like a magic balm that drives mosquitoes far, far away. For those who use adblockers, the internet just is that much less shitty. It's less claustrophobic and it can seem like the terminal cash-in state of the world has been opposed.
So of course, it comes to an end, by hosted content ('hosting ain't free, yo') which a profitable broadcaster puts online. Until very recently I had never been blocked for anything but geographical reasons (though nationalization of the internet is another ugly recent phenomenon) but a week or two ago I was denied a show I had been following online. I imagine in a year it will be impossible to skip video-advertisements everywhere, and only the smug power users will know what to do about it. Hopefully the same people who did the good work of blocking online advertising will keep up and their programs will not lapse into irrelevance due to some frightening and monstrous online advertising epidemic.
Because what the hell? You're running a profitable business already, and why not add some more revenue? Why not even more? Why not three advertisements every five-and-a-half minutes on video content? Why not have it be 30% louder than actual content, like on TV? Who cares is the commercial is ideologically loaded or bankrupt of all value? Who cares if it's annoying? 'I like money, gentlemen, and nobody gets a free lunch!'
A browser without an adblocker is a sign of a pitiable person trapped in the commercial arena, a hopeless square, a submissive lackadaisical fuck, a worthless shit hyperbole rapist. This is one fight the internet should not lose.
Adblockers, with the advent of hijacked banner ads and unscrupulous marketing, to say nothing of the paranoid or political users of the internet, are not simply a tool entitled users employ to rid themselves of annoyances. Ad-blockers are legitimately a way of keeping your computer clean, of preventing your oft-used technological distractions from compromise. The fact you don't have to watch commercials (which are basically always: manipulative, insulting, indoctrinating or some shameful combination of all three) is an added bonus to not having your internet-accessing-device fucked with.
I am not a poweruser but I've been adblocking for years - since I discovered it was possible. I understand that advertising revenue drives some smaller sites, and, yes, I'd agree they deserve their due - assuming they police their advertisements for some level of quality. Fine, whatever, have your .005 cents per impression. You deserve it, plucky little website. However, the worst offenders are often large media sites – sometimes even those which already use paywalls. Let me present a brief overview of the galloping trend of online advertising.
In the early 90's during the second wave of the internet, when things became graphical enough that advertisement in the classic sense became possible, it was largely internet entities that advertised for themselves, and certain forward looking companies often related to the tech-sector. It was a simpler time. By late 1999 basically everyone who wasn't under a rock or a dinosaur was getting into online advertisement. 'Hey, check out our website at http://www.geocities.SonnysPizza/index.htm for some coupons' and other types of hilarity abounded. Whatever, wherever you got advertised to, it took a slice of your pitiful bandwidth and generally wasted time and resources, but you had to face it. Eventually MSN Messenger (R.I.P) becomes huge, and eventually it begins to advertise to you.
Side banner; top banner; .gif flames - all of these things were familiar. Between then and now the internet has grown up and come of age to the point where a huge section of people use it. All the troglodytes, termites, attractive well-adjusted people, and infants came out of the woodwork and the internet is full of everyone now. Whatever, other people will tell you about it, and some gigantic nerd could probably make a convincingly venomous deal about it... all I'll say is it drove a wave of advertising intensity that eventually rivaled the notorious realm of television adverts.
Fucking pop-ups were one thing, but there came layers of advertising that would jump into existence around key-words. Video sidebars that glitched out your browser and had to fling their audio payloads into your ears. 'Interactive' commercials made by committees of dullards and shills. YouTube videos became clogged with side, top, and skippable pre-video advertisements for every user account considered important enough to waste your time for their profit. What was once dumb, became even dumber, amen. So it goes, right? Absolutely. Yet there were additions to your browsers that would kill all advertising.
True to form, adblockers were free. They worked, and nobody who adopted them ever looked back. Surfing without them was like going back in time. It sucked, you were exposed to all the reprehensible shit that barely existed in your ideal internet experience. Going back to ads is like hitting yourself in the face with a shoe. Beautiful adblocking programs, released by benevolent and right-minded developers, worked on classic print ads, video ads, and even ads played in video content. It is like a magic balm that drives mosquitoes far, far away. For those who use adblockers, the internet just is that much less shitty. It's less claustrophobic and it can seem like the terminal cash-in state of the world has been opposed.
So of course, it comes to an end, by hosted content ('hosting ain't free, yo') which a profitable broadcaster puts online. Until very recently I had never been blocked for anything but geographical reasons (though nationalization of the internet is another ugly recent phenomenon) but a week or two ago I was denied a show I had been following online. I imagine in a year it will be impossible to skip video-advertisements everywhere, and only the smug power users will know what to do about it. Hopefully the same people who did the good work of blocking online advertising will keep up and their programs will not lapse into irrelevance due to some frightening and monstrous online advertising epidemic.
Because what the hell? You're running a profitable business already, and why not add some more revenue? Why not even more? Why not three advertisements every five-and-a-half minutes on video content? Why not have it be 30% louder than actual content, like on TV? Who cares is the commercial is ideologically loaded or bankrupt of all value? Who cares if it's annoying? 'I like money, gentlemen, and nobody gets a free lunch!'
A browser without an adblocker is a sign of a pitiable person trapped in the commercial arena, a hopeless square, a submissive lackadaisical fuck, a worthless shit hyperbole rapist. This is one fight the internet should not lose.
4/25/13
Sim City 5 and The Future of Video Games
The following rule is one you will never be taught in business school, but it stands: franchises should sometimes be allowed to die. Krispy Kreme, American Idol, Star Wars, and now Sim City. Say what you want about any of these IPs/businesses, they've fallen on hard times and their only relevance seems to come from apathy. Krispy Kreme for example built a highly profitable business empire on sweet and fatty doughnuts, but even the ignorant serfs who regularly eat such things as doughnuts are beginning to understand that healthy food can help improve quality of life as well as exercise little-known taste buds which are not related to grease or sugar. Unhealthy industries, eh? Well I've got one of the best under my microscope right now...
In the often boring, sexist, shallow world of video games and video game culture –"a fantasy realm where nerds rule!"– franchises are the only safe bets. Who wouldn't bankroll a new Mario game? Which executive wouldn't give the go-ahead to a new multiplayer FPS? Everyone can see the dollar signs when World of Warcraft comes up - so lets make everything an MMO from now on. Many franchises stem from much-beloved games from the comparative stone age of video gaming. No, not the 70s - my bad. To be clear: the copper age of video gaming, the 1990s. It is an era which is reviled by the current generation of gamers, and old gamers who enjoy modern games (AKA: stunted adults), as the era of 'rose-tinted glasses'.
Age of Empires, Call of Duty, Sim City, Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Mario 64, TLoZ: Ocarina of Time, System Shock, Civilization, Aliens vs. Marines, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, Mortal Kombat... the list goes on, but the point stands: the 90s produced an overwhelming amount of remarkable computer games which were part of or formed the basis for highly profitable franchises. Eventually all of these were bought up by a couple now-monolithic publishers and developers. To put this in perspective, imagine all the mortgages that were packaged into junk bonds in the Financial Crisis of 2008 were sound before they were bought, gutted, and packaged into toxic assets by the monolithic banks and sold to incredibly loyal and gullible customers. This is essentially what happened to most beloved video game franchises in the last ten or fifteen years.
The specifics are open to debate, the pillaging of each franchise is also arguable, but in the contemporary scene all you really get is cutting-edge graphics, a semblance of a story, and shallow treadmill mechanics that dare you to find a reason to play for more than a month. You get quality without substance. Games with the addictive potential of crack cocaine and with exactly the same intoxication profile, creating users and addicts that are indistinguishable from the real thing in their disgusting, annoying race to the bottom. World of Warcraft, it's your move.
All of this is old news, however. I want to focus on one game which was recently released to great fanfare after building up a considerable amount of hype. It is the newest entry in a venerable franchise which was begun in 1989 - Sim City 5. If you haven't heard of it you pay no attention to video games at all because it is the biggest story of the year. Unfortunately, it is a story that has become far too common. But enough words, allow a picture to do the talking:
Metacritic never lies, but as an aggregate it can blur the truth. Video game journalism is instrumental in the downfall of gaming. Even nixing all the outliers (too positive or negative), critical response is completely away in fantasy land compared to user reviews (people who have paid to play the game and were not paid to review a potentially free copy). If you ever want to see what happened, simply compare a modern video game magazine (like PC Gamer for instance) to an issue from ten or more years ago. Not only is there less content than ever, but there are more ads, weaker reviews, and a typical lack of insight. All journalism falls down from time to time, but in a less critical market like Video Game Culture Magazines you can see how far it can fall.
Nintendo Power is over, though. This is the era of Sim City 5000, by EA Interactive. The game that arrived amidst thunderous applause and then faced an immediate backlash over: always-online gameplay, resulting server overload, dumb simulation design, and bugs. Lots of bugs. The game looks really pretty and that's the nicest thing you can honestly say about it. I feel bad for the people who made this game. It seems like they didn't have enough time to finish making it. But it looks really good, and the marketing was top notch.
Sim City 5 lacks many features people took for granted in earlier games in the series, and the features it has substituted for them don't work well or don't work at all. Sim City 4 was doing the same thing but managed to work as a game that people liked. Sim City 3 even ditched some of Sim City 2000's best concepts - the series peaked in the mid 90's and almost twenty years later: here we are. Well, I don't know why games are getting worse and dumber every year, and I don't think it matters, so I'll leave that to the experts. Games were never smart, but god damn remember how Duke Nukem used to be fun? Remember the wide variety of games that used to exist? Remember how they took a long time to master? I don't hate casual gaming and I don't hate modern gaming (per-se) I just want to point out some other, more successful, notorious sequels:
Heroes 4: it was a great design decision to drop everything that made a Heroes game a Heroes game and borrow heavily from other turn based strategy games. It looks and plays like a shitty version of Age of Wonders 2, except it doesn't even have hexes, which makes it so unbearable that even longtime defenders of the series say 'It's an interesting take on the genre.' The series (5 and 6!) is now a graphical powerhouse with dumbed down everything and it holds your hand while you play, making cooing noises to sooth your mind.
Call of Duty 4?5?/Modern Warfare/Black Ops: It's always cool to play games online where you shoot other players while the world goes to shit around you. Single player games in this era should be expected to complete themselves and introduce core concepts so that gamers can move into multiplayer.
Battlefield: The good ol' days of 1942 are gone, and in its place are dozens of futuristic mechanics lifted from the Call of Duty series! It's really cool to play with 12 year olds and shoot guns, guys! It's still cool! Adults do it, so don't feel bad about yourself! Graphics are really good. Sound is good. Talk about smoking weed while shooting people on the internet!
Diablo 3: The mother of all hack 'n slash gets overdeveloped. Plays smooth, looks really good, professional and it works. Gameplay and story that hold your hand and never let you go, like helicopter parents, except worse. Story literally gets in the way of gameplay. Takes away player agency and control with 'fear' mobs - multi-million dollar design at work. Revolutionary skill system is boring, advantageous skills are patched into the ground, play for 30 hours to get to the endgame, which is doing the same thing over and over. Campy, dumb bosses from hell. Always online. Play with friends (but no more than three at a time with no significant interaction). Good equipment has to be bought and sold for maximum profit on an auction house that should but doesn't form a community. Drop rates are worse than Vegas. Items are boring: required level 52 for a ring that has a socket in it and nothing else. Stats and crits and nothing else. There is nothing else. Soulless, hackneyed, cliched cash-in that manages to make its hackneyed cash-in older brothers look like cool adults. People who defend this game are the same people who have ruined gaming - they are responsible for Sim City 5. Real Money Auction House! Brilliant! 'Blizzard, O Blizzard, what has become of ye? I remember ye best in 2001, after nearly a decade of fun.'
Skyrim/Oblivion: Super-duper graphics, uninspiring story that holds you by the hand, bland gameplay. Hack, slash, loot for unexciting items. Monsters level with you. No learning curve. Typos, bad writing. Less skills, less uncertainty, less quests, less fun - more scripted events, more voice actors, more polygons, more limits. Doing less with more. Inventory systems so terrible that playing is never not a chore. No reason to follow series after Morrowind: which was a chore to play but somehow a worthy chore. Rest in boring, complacent success The Elder Scrolls.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: A game that is relentless about never letting the player think or reason a solution. Holds your hands to the Nth degree. Emblematic of modern video games: no player agency, nothing is open: products for children that assume a level of stupidity that manages even to annoy children. Hold my hand, railroad design, pop up messages every minute.
Duke Nukem Forever: Boring, plastic, lifeless... there's a joke in there somewhere - and that's just the game! Emblematic of what happens to every franchise in this brave new world.
There are many more senile series out there. I don't know if developers are getting lazy, or if they actually think they're doing anything more than sober, diligent, professional work. Probably they don't care: get your paycheque, do your work, keep your head down, follow the money. Creativity is being starved out of the industry, and indie games are not going to save the day. Well, whatever, I suppose it was time for me to grow up anyway, and put away such childish, M-rated things.
In the often boring, sexist, shallow world of video games and video game culture –"a fantasy realm where nerds rule!"– franchises are the only safe bets. Who wouldn't bankroll a new Mario game? Which executive wouldn't give the go-ahead to a new multiplayer FPS? Everyone can see the dollar signs when World of Warcraft comes up - so lets make everything an MMO from now on. Many franchises stem from much-beloved games from the comparative stone age of video gaming. No, not the 70s - my bad. To be clear: the copper age of video gaming, the 1990s. It is an era which is reviled by the current generation of gamers, and old gamers who enjoy modern games (AKA: stunted adults), as the era of 'rose-tinted glasses'.
Age of Empires, Call of Duty, Sim City, Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Mario 64, TLoZ: Ocarina of Time, System Shock, Civilization, Aliens vs. Marines, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, Mortal Kombat... the list goes on, but the point stands: the 90s produced an overwhelming amount of remarkable computer games which were part of or formed the basis for highly profitable franchises. Eventually all of these were bought up by a couple now-monolithic publishers and developers. To put this in perspective, imagine all the mortgages that were packaged into junk bonds in the Financial Crisis of 2008 were sound before they were bought, gutted, and packaged into toxic assets by the monolithic banks and sold to incredibly loyal and gullible customers. This is essentially what happened to most beloved video game franchises in the last ten or fifteen years.
The specifics are open to debate, the pillaging of each franchise is also arguable, but in the contemporary scene all you really get is cutting-edge graphics, a semblance of a story, and shallow treadmill mechanics that dare you to find a reason to play for more than a month. You get quality without substance. Games with the addictive potential of crack cocaine and with exactly the same intoxication profile, creating users and addicts that are indistinguishable from the real thing in their disgusting, annoying race to the bottom. World of Warcraft, it's your move.
All of this is old news, however. I want to focus on one game which was recently released to great fanfare after building up a considerable amount of hype. It is the newest entry in a venerable franchise which was begun in 1989 - Sim City 5. If you haven't heard of it you pay no attention to video games at all because it is the biggest story of the year. Unfortunately, it is a story that has become far too common. But enough words, allow a picture to do the talking:
Metacritic never lies, but as an aggregate it can blur the truth. Video game journalism is instrumental in the downfall of gaming. Even nixing all the outliers (too positive or negative), critical response is completely away in fantasy land compared to user reviews (people who have paid to play the game and were not paid to review a potentially free copy). If you ever want to see what happened, simply compare a modern video game magazine (like PC Gamer for instance) to an issue from ten or more years ago. Not only is there less content than ever, but there are more ads, weaker reviews, and a typical lack of insight. All journalism falls down from time to time, but in a less critical market like Video Game Culture Magazines you can see how far it can fall.
Nintendo Power is over, though. This is the era of Sim City 5000, by EA Interactive. The game that arrived amidst thunderous applause and then faced an immediate backlash over: always-online gameplay, resulting server overload, dumb simulation design, and bugs. Lots of bugs. The game looks really pretty and that's the nicest thing you can honestly say about it. I feel bad for the people who made this game. It seems like they didn't have enough time to finish making it. But it looks really good, and the marketing was top notch.
Sim City 5 lacks many features people took for granted in earlier games in the series, and the features it has substituted for them don't work well or don't work at all. Sim City 4 was doing the same thing but managed to work as a game that people liked. Sim City 3 even ditched some of Sim City 2000's best concepts - the series peaked in the mid 90's and almost twenty years later: here we are. Well, I don't know why games are getting worse and dumber every year, and I don't think it matters, so I'll leave that to the experts. Games were never smart, but god damn remember how Duke Nukem used to be fun? Remember the wide variety of games that used to exist? Remember how they took a long time to master? I don't hate casual gaming and I don't hate modern gaming (per-se) I just want to point out some other, more successful, notorious sequels:
Heroes 4: it was a great design decision to drop everything that made a Heroes game a Heroes game and borrow heavily from other turn based strategy games. It looks and plays like a shitty version of Age of Wonders 2, except it doesn't even have hexes, which makes it so unbearable that even longtime defenders of the series say 'It's an interesting take on the genre.' The series (5 and 6!) is now a graphical powerhouse with dumbed down everything and it holds your hand while you play, making cooing noises to sooth your mind.
Call of Duty 4?5?/Modern Warfare/Black Ops: It's always cool to play games online where you shoot other players while the world goes to shit around you. Single player games in this era should be expected to complete themselves and introduce core concepts so that gamers can move into multiplayer.
Battlefield: The good ol' days of 1942 are gone, and in its place are dozens of futuristic mechanics lifted from the Call of Duty series! It's really cool to play with 12 year olds and shoot guns, guys! It's still cool! Adults do it, so don't feel bad about yourself! Graphics are really good. Sound is good. Talk about smoking weed while shooting people on the internet!
Diablo 3: The mother of all hack 'n slash gets overdeveloped. Plays smooth, looks really good, professional and it works. Gameplay and story that hold your hand and never let you go, like helicopter parents, except worse. Story literally gets in the way of gameplay. Takes away player agency and control with 'fear' mobs - multi-million dollar design at work. Revolutionary skill system is boring, advantageous skills are patched into the ground, play for 30 hours to get to the endgame, which is doing the same thing over and over. Campy, dumb bosses from hell. Always online. Play with friends (but no more than three at a time with no significant interaction). Good equipment has to be bought and sold for maximum profit on an auction house that should but doesn't form a community. Drop rates are worse than Vegas. Items are boring: required level 52 for a ring that has a socket in it and nothing else. Stats and crits and nothing else. There is nothing else. Soulless, hackneyed, cliched cash-in that manages to make its hackneyed cash-in older brothers look like cool adults. People who defend this game are the same people who have ruined gaming - they are responsible for Sim City 5. Real Money Auction House! Brilliant! 'Blizzard, O Blizzard, what has become of ye? I remember ye best in 2001, after nearly a decade of fun.'
Skyrim/Oblivion: Super-duper graphics, uninspiring story that holds you by the hand, bland gameplay. Hack, slash, loot for unexciting items. Monsters level with you. No learning curve. Typos, bad writing. Less skills, less uncertainty, less quests, less fun - more scripted events, more voice actors, more polygons, more limits. Doing less with more. Inventory systems so terrible that playing is never not a chore. No reason to follow series after Morrowind: which was a chore to play but somehow a worthy chore. Rest in boring, complacent success The Elder Scrolls.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: A game that is relentless about never letting the player think or reason a solution. Holds your hands to the Nth degree. Emblematic of modern video games: no player agency, nothing is open: products for children that assume a level of stupidity that manages even to annoy children. Hold my hand, railroad design, pop up messages every minute.
Duke Nukem Forever: Boring, plastic, lifeless... there's a joke in there somewhere - and that's just the game! Emblematic of what happens to every franchise in this brave new world.
There are many more senile series out there. I don't know if developers are getting lazy, or if they actually think they're doing anything more than sober, diligent, professional work. Probably they don't care: get your paycheque, do your work, keep your head down, follow the money. Creativity is being starved out of the industry, and indie games are not going to save the day. Well, whatever, I suppose it was time for me to grow up anyway, and put away such childish, M-rated things.
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