User Comment Rodeo: Rocktoberfest

Listen well, for I know that reading internet user commentary is an unhealthy practice. Every day, many people are drowned in sorrow and rage by scrolling down on a YouTube video. The most vulnerable and fearful video posters have been known to disable commentary altogether – suspecting the wildest, dumbest, and most impassioned responses. User Comment Rodeo asks the rhetorical: why is internet commentary such a low thing? Has it any value? Who gains by it, and who are the principal commentators? Why is it largely hateful, negative, illiterate? Does it reflect on human society in the year 2013? What conclusions can we draw about the spitefulness of modern humanity? It is known the internet can have deleterious effects on health, especially mental health, and I believe that the biggest user comment posters are also the most mentally unwell.

For this instalment of User Comment Rodeo, I wanted to stray as far as possible from the usual set of questions and the usual set of very obvious samples and go a-huntin' for more specialized examples. The beauty of user commentary is that it is limitless: if it could be used to generate energy we could go some distance to solving the energy crisis. If only impotent rage held any value at all, we could even begin to trade it, bringing in an era of fantastic riches. Since it doesn't, I changed the parameters on the UCR 3000 and waited for a haul of brilliant material. Me, getting content farmed? Hah, I'm farming the internet every day and rolling in the 'lulz' like it's dirty money.

You will see above an example of the 'intentional double post'. User is 'raging' at a localized advertisement and revealing a rather high level of acrimony. If you didn't know about the problems of a New Zealand national on Youtube, you know. That has value: not as much value as an AD BLOCKER perhaps, but value nonetheless. Double posts are generally due to user error, but as you can see, they are very enjoyable and visceral when they are intentionally done to express some idea or other.

Here's another double post, which demonstrates the flip-side of 'double posting for emphasis'. It also demonstrates how searching for double posts is risky, because they're not so highly amusing if they're not New Zealots taking the piss out of corrupt businesses, biased governments, and the eternal problem of YouTube advertising.

This is an apologist double post. A big company was at risk of being called mean things, and someone had to stand up for them. Of course length has an inverse relationship to content and quality of communication, so I don't really know where this guy is coming from. "Yeah, you know, who cares if it's people like me who enable large corporations to skirt legal issues, hide from effective taxation, and blow up clouds of careless birds with impunity. They're good for the community, they're sincerely gracious to their employees, and they're not Pamela Wallin."

Let's get back to the relatively basic single post - in this set I'd like to cite one poster (you might have noticed them already) who manages to miss the point, be a buzzkill, and expose himself as a deviant square all at the same time. Also there's an Internet Drug Expert (very cool), and what I think is a tween hipster there in the middle (VICE Montreal or die, bro)... suffice it to say there is only one truly insufferable poster, and the quality of the rest of the comments was significantly higher than what I'd expect from Youtube Comment Sections. People spend their time doing this kind of thing, maybe in isolation, maybe while they ride public transit... scary, isn't it? You may never know who these posters are, but if you're lucky you'll never know who they are.

I decided to close this rather lazy UCR on a high note. Spam comments like this are everywhere, some newer ones are offering drugs but I do enjoy an old fashioned Pick Up Artist 'advertisement'. This guy is very subtly a spam bot, but you'd never know just by reading the blatant yet  comment. The internet... it only cares about the one thing it will never possess: sex.

Internet Video Masterpieces, Vol. 1: The Political Pet

A while ago I saw a strange and vaguely disquieting video. It is funny, vaguely exploitative, and borderline surreal. For a minute I didn't know if it was real or some viral satire. I know the video isn't new by even the laxest standards, but to be quite honest I still wonder if I will 'get over it', to borrow an approximate phrase. The first viewing was followed by a few more for verification and I am almost certain it is the Real McCoy. How foolish of me to doubt the reality of 2013 internet video.

Really, though, the above video is obviously too earnest to be hoax, which fact actually makes it slightly more worrisome than if it was a well-timed joke. Hello, yes, this is the sort of thing that is not considered insane or cruel in our reality. But, also, you have to admit it's quite a funny video – this thing could have wrecked America's Funniest Home Videos (and might've, I don't know). Finally, as a true event, and not even a particularly remarkable one, it probably speaks volumes about this era or dawning era of time.

Imagine that the American Bald Eagle in the video represents something important, like a country's economy, the possibility of freedom, the hope for world peace, or a large tract of unspoiled land. Maybe that crashing eagle represents hamburger joints, ecological protection, civil equality, animal rights, low gas prices, or legalized euthanasia to you. Maybe it even reminds you of America, The Beautiful (it is in fact supposed by many to be a national symbol of the United States). Fixed with a greater meaning or different perspective the clip can take on absurd or tragic overtones. Of course, the real tragedy is what happened, and it's a multifarious tragedy at that.

You may be thinking, 'Why not make a few casual video remixes of this eagle crashing and post that? You know, instead of writing a bunch of words like a dork? You know, a good edit or parody can get you into high places and big money.' For starters, I don't have the software for it, and I don't want to be hassled on the internet – but I've got at least three funny ideas already. I would love to see what sound bytes or song excerpts or hilariously slowed-down samples would do for that clip. It's OK to laugh and make fun because the eagle didn't die, though later it was made to pay with its life for damaging property.

In the wake of what is being called (somewhat laughably in my opinion) the Government Shutdown of America, the video gains so much poignancy that it could cut backwards in time, alerting everyone in 2005 of the recession. In the video, the eagle plays the part of whichever major political characters, parties, or concepts you wish to deride with regard to the Government Shutdown. Meanwhile, it is absurdly likely that the States will eventually Balkanize as a result of what is essentially political pageantry. Things are getting pretty surreal around the world, but in the United States one can still, after all these years, bear witness to many high-caliber amazing and surreal things.

Yet perhaps it was all too real, and the video (posted and likely videotaped in August 2013) actually was meant as a sort of warning. Of course if go into the past looking for warnings, you're liable to find them... maybe sometimes a Youtube video, no matter the consequences, is just a Youtube video. However chilling the context of a video, however wicked a reality it exposes, the world is of course what news and comics make of it: a big place that's not so dangerous as everyone says, but instead actually kind of funny. While we slide into chaos it's the small things that prove us to be small time idiots that are actually pretty good examples of things we could do, as a species (which includes American Humans whether you like it or not), to better ourselves before we slide entirely off into the deep end – if we're not already there.

Hell, I've gone and made the whole thing sordid. It started off with a funny video with numerous deeper meanings and then I was going to say how unfair it was to the eagle (not to mention frightening and disorienting) but I don't want to be taken as an animal rights nut (even though the eagle was being exploited and was specifically property in the situation in the video – which in metaphor could make the handler either China or Liberal Lefties depending on who you are – because then well meaning realists (and anti-animal jack-offs) would scoff at me. As a symbolic video it has some value, as a 'funny video' the view count speaks for itself, and as a warning – heed it and weep.

Twitter Success Stories

I have heard a lot of horror stories from Twitter. Apparently it's crazy on there: it's like the peanut gallery of the internet and the character limit must help to keep things sharp. People buy and sell followers, mores change in seconds, public figures are subjected to ridicule and blistering trolling, politics are dished out, sometimes people get fired for tweets. It is the people's battlefield of the 21st century, and everything is at stake.

Names and reputations, professional identities, personal legacies are all made and destroyed there - I am just now reading that some #breakdowns have actually happened. One wonders if the ever-looming specter of cyber-bullying has haunted Twitter, and to what terrible effect. I'm sure that people become #twitteraddicts just like people claimed to be addicted to Facebook because they were simply being dumb or extremely lazy.

With all this doom and gloom it is easy to get pessimistic about a world including Twitter, but there is also a brighter side to the social media darling. For instance, the guy who invented the #twitterjoke hashtag is now a few hundred thousand dollars richer. Of course he is richer due mostly to his well-paying upper-middle class tech job, but the good karma from his innovative Tweeting must have helped him feel better, thus upping his potential in the workplace, and ultimately his net worth as well (as well has his 'net-worth', too, eh? #twitterjoke).

There was once a street urchin from Calcutta who began to tweet one day, as the story goes, and found himself on television the next, getting interviewed by such industry giants as: Vice journalists, various mainstream media, and finally Oprah herself. This urchin is set to publish a book this November about the Twitter-launched journey, and immigration papers for the U.S. are pending. Talk about #heartwarming, right? But also #bootstraps.

Meanwhile in the United States, Seattle urban residents banded together to 'crowdsource' a recycling initiative that saved a local bookstore, reinvigorated a local park, as well as funded the gym of a new public housing complex. Talk about 'retweet' am I getting to you here? Does this not impress you? Serious things are happening.

I remember one story from the heyday of Twitter, when it was truly still the wild west, in which a band of libertarians managed to close a soup kitchen and shame its operators into leaving town. Truly, for activism of the slackiest kind, there is no better PR wing than a Twitter account and an opinionated but well-spoken Comm. graduate.

In another story, the guy who started Shit My Dad Says (which is very #2009, I know) became a minor sensation and also managed to capitalize quite well on his inherent ability to quote people for humorous sayings. I don't know much about him because I was TUNED OUT in 2009/2010 but apparently he became something like a 'W'-list celebrity. He got a book deal out of Twitter (and he's not the only one!), they made a TV show out of it (you can bet he got something out of that, too), and apparently he will soon release a highly-anticipated 'solo-project' (which, don't worry, will include his dad). Twitter has done more for comedy than the next three internet 2.0 social media outlets combined, and that's a #fact.

The best part is none of these people got anything by Tweeting angrily or negatively about anything. They never went 'on the attack', never sold out, never complained, they never shilled for anything or anyone, it was just pure Twitter savvy that got them anything. They kept their noses clean and didn't start tweeting about politics or anything, they didn't ever chase scandals or sensationalism – all they ever did was try to help society, or try to be funny so that society was a bit less terrible... there's hope for all of us who see Twitter as an occasionally funny pile of shit.

What's Probably Going On: I, Rambler

Well, dear reader, I've finally disconnected entirely from the world. If this is even posted it will be automatically uploaded via proxy FTP, probably forwarded by satellite. I wrote this on something called a Tandy (it reminds me of being young and has what looked like a full working copy of Doom 2 which I plan to try out), and I keep getting bothered by loud animal calls and rather large insects. Earlier this morning, while wondering if I had malaria or not, I accidentally killed a spider big enough to stand on my shoulders and still see over my head.

Yeah, I'm off the grid. I don't think I need to explain why, but I'll take a shot at it anyway because it's midday and too hot to do anything but type out a blog post. Firstly, after years of becoming more and more negative because I was surrounded by a society that was firmly up its own ass with its tongue in its cheek, I decided to make a life change. That life change was not to 'become more positive', 'find a way to fit in and make your place in the world', or 'surround yourself with healthy people' because those suggestions are made to finally kill the ailing souls of people who decide to 'stick it out' or 'fake it till you make it' in the cities, suburbs, and even rural paradises of the West.

No, not for me the puerile logic that something was wrong in my mind. I already knew I was sick, but what was going on around me was sicker and more depraved by far. I think what finally tipped me over the edge was the giant hype about something called 'twerking' (which seems like the 2013 version of Harlem Shake)... I mean it was a big deal, and reminded me how stupid the West has gotten, to the point where interesting problems and discussions (like alternative energy, the legitimacy of using force, the struggle for peace, and long-term human survival) are buried in mundane discussion about sport, celebrity, and dance fads. There is nothing essential anymore in western life, the material conquest of the world has created a society with no long-term value. There are no immediate problems anyone feels they can solve. There are no heroes, there is no innocence, and everyone is shouting inane shit at each other. With the forces of globalism rampaging, and the rest of the world hungry for 'first world lifestyles' it has suffered under, it seems as if there will be nowhere left to hide.

And I'm not one of these black/white zealots who advocate for revolution or counter-revolution. I think most people aren't that bad at all, but the pity is they give into what they're told, then they believe it, and then they're lost causes because they're stubborn. One day I was verbally assaulted because I suggested that the middle class, and its beliefs and practices, is problematic. More and more I see a world in which simply living the life provided for you is a great sin, a meaningless cog in a vast machine built to make the rich richer while generating enormous amounts of waste and suffering. More and more I see a world that deserves reproach, but reproaching it makes you rather unpopular with lots of people.

I think western governments have failed, they've proven that democracy is just a short road to oligarchy, they've proven that capitalism is just as inherently flawed as communism, they've enabled an apathetic and stupid populace, they're in the pockets of big business and so are you, reading this, and so am I, posting this (via 56k modem, satellites, and an old Tandy in a science camp) on Google... there is nothing but the bottom line... the society reflects it. There is this scary pragmatism where someone might kill you to gain a YouTube following. Step outside of the race to get a nice place, a good spouse, a home, a good car, fair prices... step out and look around: what more is there for you, really? A fit and active lifestyle? Becoming cool? Physical pleasure? A (heavily material) search for meaning? The consolation of a job well done, of the fact that you haven't directly caused anyone suffering today? Friendships with people who are like you? Happiness when your political party takes office, constant pissy passive-aggressive bitching when they lose? The dream is to consume more, consume better, and become respectable by that consumption. Those poorer than you have similar but more modest dreams, and those richer than you are generally just dreaming of bigger numbers and more ostentatious ways to demonstrate them.

Meanwhile anyone in this gracious and plentiful society who dares question the affluence is branded a communist or anarchist, idealist, and deluded. People stand up for low minimum wages and applaud, people get huffy about 'political flashpoints' that are just overblown media braying while the real issues are quietly taken care of. Who cares about the emergence of a world-wide security apparatus or the degradation of freedom? Who wants to suffer or want for anything? It all made me so sick that I couldn't think anymore, in the end. I didn't want to live in the slick World 2.0 where everything is taken for granted, where money and status are the only things worth a damn. Then I realized that the whole world was getting worse every day. Obviously it's reality, and it's never so bad or so good as anyone is saying, but I am seeing a bland and sinister future based on the world I have experienced, and I don't want it.

I decided to empty my bank account and travel to a less fucked-up part of the world where not even ViceTV (BTW WTF VICE?) journalists dare to tread, but first I had some loose ends to tie up. I told my boss' boss that he was a worthless parasite, that I encouraged fellow workers to steal from him at every turn, and that his attitudes towards women would get him killed in a future (or very prehistoric) world. I beat the shit out of my boss, because he was middle management scum, and even though he was a nice guy, he had taken too many verbal liberties with me in the past before we were friends. The look of confused betrayal on his battered face was so satisfying that I worried about myself, but it was the only thing I could do. Nothing made sense that day, but I got out safely, and where I am now is a realm of natives, scientists, and anthropologists... and glorious, empty, unsullied nature, with no bike paths, no litter, no bums, no WiFi, only survival and suffering, only immediate reality with no substitutions and no possible excuses or niceties. Blood, bug juices, and an early death. It is hell, but compared to living in 2013 Earth, it is paradise and I feel free and almost happy for the first time since I was a child.

So I've decided to go deep, get the hell out, keep my head above water (literally – not meeting rent and banking a few hundred dollars a month), and come what may, I'll accept it. Death is just as meaningless as life in this world, there are no glories awaiting us as political pawns, collaborators of exploitation, or as gilded heroes. Escapism is the only human response left, not apologia. As rebels we are mocked ruthlessly if we are nonviolent, and considered rabid juveniles if we use the tools that only the state may rightfully use. A world of monopolies. There is just diversion, diversion, diversion and the endless stream of 'news' from god-knows-where. Even now it bothers me that nobody else sees how problematic and out-of-control everything is. Here's an idea: before we colonize space with our bad ideas, trashy suppositions, and hatreds, let's work on what we're doing here on Earth. I have a few good ideas for starters that don't include ethnic cleansing, chemical weapons, corporate sponsorship, military interventionism, intense religious/national exceptionalism, capital punishment, or nuclear holocaust.

Here's a list of things I think may be happening in the world today, which was meant to be funny, before I got into all that heavy shit like an idiot, but I mean it's hot as hell and I might not be thinking straight anymore:

• David Letterman has recently died and Craig Ferguson has NOT replaced him
• Britney Spears releases a comeback album and is involved with a twerking scandal
• The War in Syria ends when all 20+ sides agree to disagree, co-operate for economic revival
• However, a new War in Somalia causes the War in Syria to re-emerge
• Something something something China, something something something us.
• Wars on Drugs, Crime, Being Cool, Having Fun, Winning all renewed for another decade.
• The NSA admits it has known everything all along, even the conspiracies, but is just breaking down privacy so that 'the good guys continue to get paid'
• My Twitter account gets its first follower and also first retweet about something really funny and visionary I posted years ago
• In a shocking upset, Racism is defeated by Sexism as Most Pressing Social Issue - white women cheer in the streets, insist it will solve other problems as well
• Geopolitical fucking around defended by old white dude who worked for the government in 1960s
• Instead of simply paying interns nothing and working them to death, large firms begin to haze them as well - backing it with studies supporting hazing as 'character building exercises'
• During the rehearsal for the September 11th memorial programme, a Truther is violently murdered
• Workers Rights abuses in sweatshops ignored by pro-consumerist media
• Scientific advances make it all seem worthwhile, somehow
• Grumpy Cat gets lynched by mob
• Society continues to get more politically partisan and fragmented: each person in a secure castle of righteousness

I tried. Once I find the abandoned asylum I am looking for I will ECT myself until I get better. Maybe I will get back to light-hearted, timely, and entertaining updates about movies, song, and anything that does not actually matter instead of... ah fuck it. I tried. I did. When they find my body and hyperlink it to Twitter, RealNet, Facebook, or this blog - use the comment section to tell them I tried. I really tried. I was just as hopeless and confused as the rest, but I managed to stop eating shit and ultimately died like a human being, not a consumer.

The Vat-Grown Future

I can understand the recent hullabaloo about vat-grown beef (even though the price of a few grams is tens of thousands of dollars): the current system used to raise and prepare a majority of beef is equal parts cruel and insane. You don't have to have a soft heart to lament the existence of factory farms and feedlots, unless you're the kind of person who pretends to be a total badass (maybe you were molested as a child, I don't know). If you think making animals stand for hours in ankle deep shit or live entire lives in tiny cages is cool you're probably also a psychopath or at least pro-prison sociopath. Vat-grown meat is a step in the right direction, since the idea of feeding the world with naturally-grown protein is getting to be really, really laughable. Still, it's kind of useless as a solution, and favors the armchair-ethicist over the realist: a counterproductive situation 'progressive movements' are often haunted by.

Fisheries are collapsed, hunting is no longer a way of life for the overwhelming majority, and factory farming is a soulless practice of agribusiness that stains the world in unhealthy shit, diseased blood, novel human/animal illnesses, and misery – not to mention fast food and all associated problems. Anyone who says differently is a corporate shill, an unapologetic ecocidal turd, a Scientific Optimist^TM , or plainly ignorant. So, basically, the idea of further separating the populace from its food  is the only one that wins out, and few people see the problem with it, as long as it prevents the cruel and bloody deaths of cute animals (which are often not that cute and generally die a sterilized, clinical death after a life of perfect, almost middle-class indolence and occasional active cruelty).

Meanwhile, we could source all of our protein, cheaply and very efficiently, from insects. We can still have a good cut of beef or chicken, but insect protein can cover, say, Monday to Thursday, and cheaply. It is a solution that has been staring us in the face since the dawn of time, but at some point our phobias overruled common sense and we stopped eating bugs. Now, in the 11th hour of a crisis hundreds of years in the making, we have once again proven that we can be smart, but never reasonable.

Easy living has eroded any sense of pragmatism we had, and instead of taking matters into our own hands we have pushed food further into the corporate fold and away from our own hands, which we are generally afraid to get dirty. Ethical neutrality is not worth the price, beyond which lies the fact that agribusiness is not going anywhere. Animals will continue to suffer for as long as they are profitable, agriculture will continue to desiccate and toxify the earth and 'pests', as well as anything nearby or downriver. A small cost to pay to ensure nature doesn't get anything intended for ourselves. But we're not selfish, and thinking otherwise is 'not realistic', sorry. Don't think about the dead lakes and rivers, or the dying oceans. Listen to the greenwashing machine and damn well heed how it is telling you not to worry. Or listen to the deafening silence of pop culture, I mean, who gives a fuck?

Then, when the rape of the earth has eliminated the chance of raising edible animals, food will move completely out of the reach of the populace and into the security of corporate production thanks to research potential generated today. Does it amplify the horror enough to know that not only are living creatures processed into competitively-priced foods, but that the process of raising the animal itself can be bypassed? Or is that ethical, to cut out the animal's contribution, while still eating of its flesh? Even the borderline sadistic systems in place today still have a beating heart, and the symbolic act is still committed, even though shrouded by the mystery of NDA contracts and secure facilities. Needless to say, vat-grown appeals to the people who can't stomach the current model. It stinks, though. If GMOs are freaky frankenfoods then Vat-Grown is undead zombiefood. No double standards.

However, that's life as an omnivorous mammal: you sometimes kill to eat. Then, because of a healthy omnivorous diet which includes hunting and foraging activity, you gain the mental acuity and leisure to reflect on the act of killing. You turn it into an art and thrive. Then, twenty thousand or more years later, you get to the point where the idea has been so over-thought, and the act so over politicized and perverted by industry, that it is no longer palatable or acceptable ('unless you stop worrying and start enjoying!'). Since it is the modern world, and a healthy respect for nature is not an option, the only cure remaining is to develop the technique of  growing meat in a bloodless, clinical way, so that it dies apart from any animal, so that the vast stocks of commercial livestock can go into the history books and possibly extinction while we grow our mega cities and hoard terabytes of data per second and eat our ethically sourced protein loaves. The only thing better than eating beef once a week, shutting down most fast food outlets, and finding better sources of living protein is to make an undead mockery of flesh in a lab because we're too infantilized to give up our excesses and face the reality of cost and value.

Madness is what it is. The plan seems to be to abolish the cycle of life or at least further commodify it. Plants are living things that we kill all the time, without seeming to care a bit, and we also gorge ourselves on their sex organs, and that's acceptable – but killing a dog to eat is cruel and/or worthy of mockery? Eating ants, roaches, slugs, spiders... any of the bountiful and varied insect species is crazy, absurd? When the oceans are emptied, the air is full of cow farts, and land covered in pig and chicken shit? Farming insects cheaply, each house producing a few dozen pounds a month, each apartment growing a few pounds, plus enriching soil... no that's crazy. It's as crazy as razing the suburbs and growing traditional food there. What we need, obviously, is bloodless, ethical, lab-grown meat – it's never going to play into corporate or political power fantasies.

There is a parallel to this in drone warfare. Pure logic founded on historical fact (hahahaha) would assume that if a global conflict was not worth risking a soldier's life, it was not a conflict worth engaging in (hahahaha). If it was not popular enough to sustain casualties, it was not popular enough to be conducted by a democracy. But, you see, take out the aggressor's wasted lives, and the populace no longer has the ethical high-ground it is used to enjoying. Now, having made war bloodless for your country (and even more infuriating and hopeless for another) you get to kill with impunity, and the rage you generate can be explained as the unenlightened reaction of religious fanatics. The dissenters, domestic or otherwise, can be explained away as "DISLIKED POLITICAL GROUP" or "BIASED RABBLE ROUSER" while the insane reality of the situation continues to make life unpleasant or untenable for the rest.

"Why drink water when you can have a tasty Coca Cola? Probably because you're a mindless consumer – the New Livestock. Have we got some fantastic new products for you!"


Textual Note:
Hi there, I've been a little shrill, I admit, though I don't apologize for it. If the future of where and how humanity sources its food does not matter to you, you won't understand why I take the tone of alarmism. Obviously the whole thing is a bit sensationalistic... but so is the 'sustainability is for faggots' crowd, who are a bunch of despicable, small-minded wretches. Also, I think I've proven I have a great affinity for hyperbole. But please do remember that there are actual problems and that the future is uncertain, and that the current model of a disinterested public eating food created in a vacuum away from their sight is kind of fucked up, and could be changed for the better. Sorry if it wasn't funny/insightful/verified enough - I admit I am off my game. That is all, thanks for reading as always, and stay true to the game.

How Long Till Facebook Is Irrelevant: The Answer May Surprise You

Facebook's story is pretty fun to tell. Before 2006 (or somewhere around there) you couldn't sign up for Facebook without a university email address. That ended. Then the media caught on, a while later the floodgates opened, and anyone was let in at a cost to exclusivity which might have kept the social media service relevant into 2010. However, things happened as they did, because the Kings of Facebook or whatever needed a way to turn a relatively hyped, useless, hackneyed service into a dividend-paying money-printing machine. That's why your little brother, your dad, and your aunt are all Facebook Friends with you.

Anyways, people used to freely put up pictures of themselves doing drugs, copulating, as well as excreting on and variously vandalizing private property, because nobody on the service was square enough to be A) an uncool employer or B) a rat fink. Nudity was the only thing out of bounds, but nobody needed the internet for that. It was the wild west, populated by stupid university students. That phase didn't last long, but it was truly a hopeful one. It's hard to understand at this point in time because nobody does it anymore. Even Facebook's dumbest, least-University-educated users manage to post mostly PG-Employment level material. It was generally the exhibitionists and show-offs who couldn't keep their borderline activities in private memory, which is fine, because they're the same people for whom nothing is ever good enough.

Then, with the advent of a growing user base, employers took full advantage of lax privacy settings to investigate their employees and, if the optics were wrong, fire them. Facebook made some noises about privacy settings (which advertisers, PRISM et al. overrule anyway) and most people realized that, with privacy settings set properly, and a non-compromising profile picture, they wouldn't be able to get bagged. Even more people realized that, as always, nobody cares and nobody needs to know anything, and why they were on Facebook is anyone's guess. Many are still there. With employers and other nosy squares using Facebook to essentially spy on people the end had begun, and the important phase had ended.

With children, parents, nosy bosses, moralists, the uneducated, and all manner of riff-raff inhabiting Facebook, the popularity exploded and it became the thing everyone knew about (including worthless 'social media experts' on TV). It was like Twitter, briefly, but maybe even hotter. By now, nearly every Western person between the ages of 20 and 35 has a majority of friends and contacts on Facebook, with 'friends' numbering far in excess of 150. Of course, the great upsurge in popularity also meant increased scrutiny. Many people thought it was incredibly low of employers to spy on and then fire or punish employees because they were pictured drinking a beer. I agree completely. If you want to spy on an employee, check their Linked In account, because Linked In is designed for squares with no concept of the separation of life and work.

Most of the best criticism of Facebook revolved around its user base and effect on users. If you have an account, you already know. People broadcast their dimwitted political stances, their gullibility, pictures of food, and way too much information. Users also tend to only upload content that reflects positively on them and their lifestyle, making Facebook an echo chamber and also a bizarre cycle of envy and envy-prompting. Certain people, putting too much stock in their internet friendship machine, can see the smiling photographs, the tans, the significant others and the happiness of others and become incredibly lonely, sad, isolated, and even more deluded. So it can be said that the service caters first and foremost not to narcissists, but to the self-centered and potentially to the sociopath as well. In essence it can be claimed that Facebook is unhealthy, perhaps moreso than the internet.

Hell, I have not even made mention of the inherent privacy problems which provided privacy options do not solve. In essence, by ever existing on Facebook you are already compromised and every detail you edit or add thereafter goes into the vortex. The police can see everything you've ever said without your knowledge. So can any government, entity, or corporation with the stature or power to make Facebook cooperate. Not to mention anyone with a certain level of know-how can probably have that stuff you willingly shared about yourself. The craziest part is how the service has tapped into the (unconscious) human desire to share and self-promote... the disburdening is done willingly so it's not even entrapment. It's just exploitation. The old crusty man in my mind wants to say it's the fault of the user for being appallingly stupid, but the angry young man wants to blame Facebook, Inc. for just about every misery and betrayal they have wrought.

'Facebook isn't an echo chamber, and echo chamber is a nebulous term used by out-of-date critics to describe viral and meme-based behaviour', you say. I disagree, and urge you to shut up and stop being an apologist: Facebook often functions as an echo chamber devoid of consciousness or critical thought. For every stupid food picture, statement of outrage, birthday wish, and TMI infodump, there are a dozen re-shared memes, propaganda, or internet links. It's an echo chamber that shows you just what your acquaintances are wasting their time with, and invites you to also read top tens, read unsourced and biased articles, look for cute pics, and post shallow, heart-on-sleeve political and social rhetoric. Yeah, that shit's pretty awful, and in this writer's humble opinion, far worse than the self-promotion and the mindless sharing of private moments with no real purpose.

Facebook is already irrelevant: savvy people know this, hip people know this, even tweens know this. I suspect that its last year of relevance was 2010. At this point users see it as either 'Facebook!' or 'depressing friend directory', and increasingly, not even the gullible youth are excited about Facebook anymore. Some even use Twitter to engage in such discussions as #noneofmyfriendsonfacebook and to broadcast that they're getting out of the Facebook game. With the userbase growing older, lamer, and reposting more and more shitty content from the internet, and generally doing nothing important, it is no surprise that hardly anyone considers an account a meaningful or exciting thing, except for people who are promoting themselves, their business, or their art. In the end Facebook will only be useful for them, but its complete irrelevance means that there will be no further scandal because the user base is complacent and the service fulfills its duty quite well.

With a stable share of users and corporate status, it is unlikely that Facebook will disappear in less than five years. Ff a better service steals its users it may dwindle, but in Web 2.0 and beyond, computer/internet-literate users are too insignificant a group. The odds of a better service emerging are also low, since Facebook is part of the establishment and can likely take infringing parties to court and bankrupt them even with frivolous litigation. Facebook itself isn't novel enough anymore to create 'addicts' in the 2006-era sense: remaining power users are generally students, stay-at-home-parents, or retirees. With every baby picture, family portrait, and unnecessary political diatribe, the service makes itself less remarkable and more profitable... with every deleted user account, Facebook continues to hold private data in digital escrow, as if preparing for a blackmail war... with every day, as it fades into irrelevance far away from the beating heart of the internet, Facebook becomes more of a fact of the internet, here to stay and inflict social suffering on untold thousands.

An Addendum To 'Wikipedia Style Guide': RoboCop Remake

During my brief research for the Wikipedia Style Guide article (which could've been better) I discovered that there is a planned release of a new RoboCop in 2014. Let the wrongness of a fucking RoboCop remake sink in for a moment. It doesn't feel good, does it? I mean, the RoboCop sequels were themselves inexcusable but inevitable, given the era in which they were made. The remake is even more inevitable, really, by the same ratiocination. I shouldn't be surprised in the least, except I rarely see movies at theaters, let alone the multiplexes that screen the impressive trailers of the next generation of big and dumb or deep and profound who-gives-a-fucks*.

I suppose I'm an idiot to object, but the remaking of a solid 80's masterpiece in the corporate wasteland of the 21st century which it was originally set in seems wrong to me on a fundamental level. It's almost a twisting of physical laws, as if a yottoscopic black hole passed through my mind while I had a perverse thought about how weird a relation it would be, and then via singularity that thought manifested itself as part of reality, or as possibility in minds close to the film industry. It's that weird to me. It's like the manifestation of a nightmare – but that's essentially what the world has been, behind the scenes at least, for my entire life and probably all other humans as well... which is the point of entertainment.

Overstatement. It's more fun than saying that a bunch of hacks want to release a new movie based on an old concept, as if they have anything meaningful to add to a concept they're borrowing for lack of inspiration. Profit trumping history. I guess that's what it is to live in 2013. Detroit is actually declaring bankruptcy (check out RoboCop 2 if you think I'm schizoid) and cocaine is as big a problem in America as ever, to the point where they either need to construct many real-life RoboCops (as well as a small army of ED-209s) to stop the trafficking or just let it win and stop making a fuss.

I don't want to be the wanker who says that a movie was 'eerily prescient' about 'modern society' because RoboCop was eerily contemporary about 80's culture and eerily great in every possible way, but movies aren't prophets and that particular one was only proven right because of the sheer amount of subliminal and/or retrograde insight the movie possesses. I bet the remake will make multiple references to drones. I am told that's a bet I'm not allowed to make. Mark my words: fuck RoboCop 2014, that shit ain't right.  

"Get ready for a hip, new RoboCop who understands EDM music and doesn't mind a bromance... or two!"

It boggles my mind, and then along comes this fucking remake which I'm sure can safely be judged on what kind of car the new RoboCop drives. Probably written by committee, guided by fuckers, and destined to be a grave insult to the spirit of the original in every possible way. Corporate slickness, top-40 EDM song in the trailer, GFX up the ass, possible box-office hit, dialogue from idiot hell, blood-curdlingly dumb and sensationalistic in every way... I'd buy that for a dollar and so will you!

**** I suppose they more commonly go by the colloquialism 'movies' or 'films', but when intelligent people band together and overthrow the world order they will be referred to as who-gives-a-fucks, I have it on good authority, since they generally function as soulless propaganda, socially acceptable narcotic, profit-motive, and distraction. Various cinema will still be allowed, for obvious reasons, but it is hoped calling them who-gives-a-fucks will be humbling to the industry.

Wikipedia Style Guide

If there was a style guide for Wikipedia (I didn't check) it would above all recommend 'the clinical tone of impartial record/sterile chronicle', which is an understandable and even commendable tone for a project that aims to encompass and provide the sum of human knowledge via the internet. However there are moments in which one can discern a personality beyond the dry Wikipedia tone ^{[citation needed]}. Sometimes it's a vandal or prankster, and those always lead to the greatest moments of Wikipedia, or the lowest, really. Most of the time it's just the earnest work of the tireless Wikipedian.

I wrote this because I don't believe there is a style guide for Wikipedia at all. There should be a set of loose recommendations and perhaps an editor. I can't blame a non-profit organization for not hiring a full time editor and I can't imagine anyone would particularly want the job (except hungry washed-out writers and editorial staff currently retraining out of Journalism into promising careers like banking, plumbing, or manual labor). Still, it would help a bit. I'm sure that individuals with a highly developed sense of grammar or the English language at large could find spelling and grammar errors at a ratio of .79 : 1 per Wikipedia page.

I know there's not a style guide because articles vary so wildly. Many are written in a serviceable and innocuous style. In the best articles there is no digression and very little error. In the worst, well, you find some surprising laziness. I don't know who exactly the wikipedia editors are – and I'm sure many of them are very well-intentioned,  knowledgeable, and capable people – but I get the sense they all have a musty internet smell about them ^{[citation needed]}. If they are the standard model for the librarians of the future, we may be doomed, for they will push the business of information right into the private market and/or entertainment industry. Maybe that prediction is a bit pessimistic, but we have no way of knowing whether it was something I wrote with an ironic smirk or caustic dismissal.

Unemployed university graduates, well-intentioned but 'eccentric' private citizens, and pedants make up probably 60% of Wikipedia editors, according to my highly amusing mental image of the average Wikipeditor. The other 40% is probably a remarkable melange of humanity, but I like to focus on the imaginary majority. They are all selflessly promoting the encapsulation and easy retrieval of verified, unbiased, correct information. It's a goal so lofty and impressive it makes me tender-hearted. I wish to offer my sincere thanks for the service, which has absorbed many of my spare hours and to which many more will doubtless be sacrificed, as long as the quality and tone do not spiral out of control.

Am I ridiculous? Allow me to demonstrate my point about Style and Usage, and a further point about the Illiteracy of the Internet Person. I will visit a prominent page of high stature (RoboCop, the 1985 Paul Verhoven movie) and traffic and look around innocently enough for some awkward constructions, grammar violations, and whatever else I deem fucked enough for notice.

Ah. These are the excerpts that inspired me. A pair of beauties. Shall I? I don't particularly want to, you understand: I get no pleasure from this, it's just part of the thing I'm writing a blog post about and nothing personal. I don't know if the RoboCop article gets the Wikipedia Writing A-Team, and if it doesn't, as stated above ^[where?] I understand that it's not professional copy or anything jesus christ leave an old man alone!

Anyways, 'having come off doing the special effects' as a construction is bad even for the 'first year University student's first hungover all-nighter' level. It's a special blend of missing prepositions and hazy colloquialism. I think it stinks, quite honestly. Shit. If this was written by a person with a post-secondary degree, any degree at all, they can fuck off and get schooled about how to write or leave their helpful insights out of the mix ^{[citation needed]}. Even done right ('Having come off of doing the special effects') the phrase is an inefficient abortion. The green line serves to indicate the thrust of the sentence, which asserts (via the erratic grammar of an illiterate) that the studio deciding about Bottin was itself coming off of doing the special effects for John Carpenter's The Thing. Where Bottin is even involved is impossible to discern, unless of course you're not a grammar machine and understand context. However, the lazy error stands, and goddamn it.

As for the inclusion of the second excerpt, I believe you know why I included the second excerpt. Redundancy is wasteful even at the level of the miniscule amount of bytes it takes to write a redundant element into a sentence. It also makes reading anything suck more than it has to, and in that way encourages illiteracy. Unacceptable. I'm not offended or outraged, I'm just having a bit of a laugh ^{[oh yeah?]} because 1) I want to have fun, and 2) I think that impeccable content is impossible in Wikipedia, which means the amount of awkward sentences and poorly disguised opinion (which I didn't even get into at all, but might at a later date) is potentially limitless! It's kind of fun, to me at least, and could be funny to others as well! Yeah, jokin' about Wikipedia. Good stuff.

Under the Dome: The Newest, Dumbest TV Adaptation Miniseries

I haven't read the Stephen King book Under The Dome, but I got the idea it was like The Stand in length and mildly interesting in its content. Mind you, I haven't so much as read even the critic blurbs about the book, so I'm really guessing what it is like. Recently a miniseries adaptation of the book premiered. I watched the first episode and almost immediately it was apparent that this would be a great study in TV as the Dumbest Form of Entertainment (which I know is particularly a Cantankerous Old Fellow and Pessimist discipline, but I do concur with it on many points). Within five minutes, a hyped sequence involving The Dome coming down around the small town of Chesterfield or whatever leads to a cow being split in half... the best part is that the cow is depicted as being a mass of undifferentiated flesh, as if your given cow in a field were made of 100% American AA grade steaks, and little else. This is basically the execution and guiding philosophy behind the show, as I understand it, and its greatest symbol. Send the anatomists!

I don't know if it was pure stupidity, pure laziness, or pure necessity which led to this hilariously maladroit example of cartoon special effects, but it gets better. The writing is atrocious. The characters are like what you'd expect in a Stephen King novel if he were currently a self-publishing erotica/mystery/fanfic author – or in really bad television. The plot, if it is reasonably close to the novel's (I hope not for King's sake) is itself a good barometer that Under the Dome as a novel is 1000+ pages of tedium: a mini-dome for your mind to suffer in while you fill the time between plot developments and intrigue. This miniseries is going to be a third-or-fourth-rate Lost, except as a miniseries it will waste less of everyone's time.

In television miniseries adaptation the book works out to this: little bit of characterization, then plot device is introduced, then show sputters about trying to create action and tension... then it becomes a huge bottle episode. A massive bottle episode, possibly the biggest and dumbest one ever attempted. In a way, one might even consider this art, not in a sneering 'populist vein' way – but as a true statement from this weird consumeristic world, where a cow being made entirely of ground beef is just this side of believable, and won't get an FX artist fired, or anger the censors (who as always are right on point: what really matters in a show where a guy's pacemaker explodes out of his chest is that the cow being split in two doesn't get too realistic or gruesome for primetime, but somehow remain cartoonish enough to get views).

I don't know why I am watching. Part of me thinks you need to eat a lot of shit (a.k.a - consume lots of mass media entertainment) before you can try selling your own. You got to get the spirit of the times right, and TV is still a grand social barometer, if a bit sterilized. It beats the internet, which can warp a person's perception of reality in bizarre and monotonous ways. But, to continue with the matter at hand, I am watching Under the Dome, and it is fucked. It's going to go down in history as a dumb bastard and, sometimes, amidst the ridiculous dialogue and illogical plot points, I enjoy it. (Eating shit. Gross. I really ought to rethink some things.)

My favorite part so far happens in the fourth episode, where a character who is supposedly a doctor or person with creditable medical knowledge tells a boy that an EEG machine "measures the electronic activity in your brain". A statement so broadly incorrect and dumb, so baldly and ridiculously wrong, that it got me to make this blog post about a TV miniseries in 2013. This show must be written by the texts of high school drop-outs. Fact-checking must have been outsourced to Antarctic Gerbils. It's insane. It sets a great tone for a show which may, despite its best intentions to be generic and dull, become a sleeper comedy of errors. If I look at it just right, it's the best comedy on a mainstream network all year: it got me to laugh out loud. There are all kinds of social commentary going on in this show: like how kids use smartphones (but only to take pictures of themselves right!?), or how everyone is secretly cripplingly irrational. This show has the self awareness of an invisible teenager and the attention span of a troubled child. It will never be glorious. Alas, we hardly knew it...

'Ok, Johnny Kidd, your brain is showing normal levels of electronic activity, what this means is that we don't know about this mystery of the dome at all, but we don't yet know if it even IS the dome so stay tuned while we whittle the device down into something underwhelming so we can keep telling human stories, like yours, getting your electronic brain activity levels checked, by me: a lesbian woman trapped in Small Town America with my wife and child all because of a Mysterious Dome...'

Thanks Internet: Wierd Groups You Fixate On

They were somehow innocent, immune to shame, and their positivity was as naive as it was indestructible. The world was laughing at them. I was a jaded person, I had wasted my innocence, and the part of my life where I would see them as acceptable was over. In other ways, perhaps, but for me there would be no great passion in a harmless, consumer-oriented fandom. If I had ever been close, it had been just before the Star Wars reboot, but that fizzled out for me. So I considered the modern scene amusing at first, and then detestable, and then settled into an indifferent apathy. It was the hands-in-pockets crowd and their best friends from the internet, how could it ever pay off?

The whole internet was like a moth to flame regarding these people: they were like furries and straight-edge kids combined, not such a 'thing' yet that people over 35 had any idea about their existence. Hot property. It was a movement for people who didn't want to grow up. They had managed to get a lot of attention from the indulgent denizens of the internet, who loved to mock and worry about them. It was a movement beyond mockery, in many ways, because it was earnest (if twisted in 50%+ of cases) and simple. It was a worst case scenario for New Sincerity, which is where the blame squarely lay. Some participants were actual children, not just mentally child-like; it was bizarre, and impossible not to get bad vibes from. It was cringe-worthy.

In the course of their mockery I was introduced and re-introduced to the movement. The base users of the internet were enthralled, I think, with the possibility of a group more pathetic than themselves. It was hilarity potentiated by an odd sense of pathos. Lots of good laughs were had at the expense of these stupidly earnest, mentally-ill, immature individuals, but also good money was being made on them. Not that I was a capitalist, and if anything it was their collective identity as consumers that made them beneath scorn. They were, in a word, jokes. Unnervingly awkward, questionable jokes.

Everyone wanted identity and belonging, though. That was the less funny part. The existence of this group was evidence of pathological issues in modern society. It was a symptom of a sick world. Even so, they were having fun, believed in something or everything, and they cared – all of which was drily amusing of course. They were not the ones engaging and propagating the sick society which was eating away human potential and leaving us with manic-depressives, borderlines, and headcases of all sorts. They were harmless eccentrics, 'nice guys', outcasts, and all truly bizarre. To me it was borderline unacceptable, but I didn't want to throw stones and laugh spitefully: that's too close to caring.

Some of them were undoubtedly sick. There was no other explanation. It was bizarre: a combination of tweens, teenagers, twenty-somethings, all the way up to the usual extreme cases: sad and lonely men in their forties and fifties. Not that they were exceptional among modern movements and identity groups, or even particularly embarrassing in that field. The internet was full enough of shit to ruin anyone's mind, victims were plentiful. Their position was defensible in that way and many others, even though it was tone-deaf and ignorant and, essentially, very creepy in a way which does not misuse the word.

They preached fun, acceptance, peace, caring. They were clad in various baggy ill-fitting garments, liked gaudy colours, and especially products which broadcast their love of the entertainment product which they consumed in togetherness. They could be any group of youth, really. I suppose I hated them most for their consumerism, because their cry for identity was not particularly remarkable, nor their lack of critical perspective. In the modern era of disposable society vs. unbending self-righteous fundamentalism there wasn't a single place to stand. It made one nihilistic, which made funny groups attractive to mockers and adherents alike. The rise of the dubstep generation. Heh.

It was all insane. It was best to just laugh and not question any of it, but not questioning it seemed wrong. Same as it ever was, too. Maybe they were historically unique for record levels of meek nebbishism, little else. They would grow, was the problem, and create and kinds of morbid counter-mentalities. Shit like that was going to ruin everything, contribute to ongoing lost generations, influence the future... which made it less funny to watch a mawkish convention mentality spastically going its way in an oblivious, unforgiving world. Less funny; deeper humor, and darker. So if you want to know if there are worse things: of course there are worse things – the rest are all warning signs.