There are really (at least) two stories to come out of last week's Aqua Teen Hunger Force marketing bomb scare: one has to do with the over-reaction of the police and the media, and artists playing the mainstream press for the bunch of chumps that they are. The other is the conflict between the profit motive and the security motive. This second story may turn out to be the more lasting and significant one.
I find that story more compelling because it pits one side of the ideological split in the US against itself. Granted, I'm writing and reasoning broadly here, but its not too much of a stretch to say that conservative America is for unrestrained capitalism as well as strong homeland security. This is a more compelling conflict than ideological conflicts between conservative and liberal American cultures (say, the conflict between security and privacy). In those cases, there is no internal conflict. People are either one way or the other. The two groups essentially operate independent of one another, watching their own news, investing in their own funds or companies, socializing with like-minded people, and flirting with the idea of actual debate by watching a bit of FoxNews/The Daily Show to angry up their blood before returning to the safety of their own belief system. Its wrong to think of these two Americas as geographically separate. They're neighbors, co-workers, spouses, etc. But in terms of their philosophy, they feel neither the overwhelming need to convert the other side nor be converted themselves.
But let's say you're of the conservative persuasion. You own shares in a multi-national media conglomerate, and you'll be damned if Uncle Sam tries to regulate any aspect of said company's attempts to maximize profits. If this company you invested in needs to put wacky signs underneath bridges and in subways to reach that coveted 18-34 male demo, well then you'd better not prevent them from doing so. At the same time, you can't believe that these weirdo artists have put us all in grave danger (and are laughing about it!) by putting bomb-like devices underneath bridges. But sooner or later, these two forces - the profit motive and the security motive - will come into conflict. And now they have. In this particular case, you could argue that Turner Broadcasting isn't as right-wing as most corps, but as a corp, I'm sure it has a lot of gung-ho Republicans sitting on its board.
This conflicts between unrestrained capitalism and a government's attempts to keep the country on lock down are bound to butt up against one another as long as there is a strong conservative bend to the leadership in this country. This isn't to say that every ideology isn't without its inner conflicts. But, since this one has to do with the limits of advertising, I thought it was worth pointing out here.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
24, the Terrorist Threat, and Err
First off, you have the image of Err giving the finger alongside stern faced officials, and Shepard Smith saying, “their god is an Indian…that turns into a wolf.” There’s something so absurd, so satiric about these images and sounds that its hard to move beyond them. But, for the sake of argument, let’s consider another facet of this event: the two people on trial at the center of this. They could be cast as tools of a multinational corporate advertising behemoth or as artists with ties to Boston’s beloved academic community.
Really, I can’t see the parent company (either Comedy Central or Turner Broadcasting) as an enemy in the court of public opinion. The two likely enemies are (if you’re on the right) the long-haired, smirking artists who don’t realize how serious the terrorist threat is and need to be taught a lesson or (if you’re on the left) the incompetent authority figures (police, govt) that are trying to outlaw art via the war on terror.
As in most cases, people’s existing beliefs determine their reaction. But, for a moment, I won’t be so jaded, and I’ll believe that there are some people who haven’t made up their minds and would consider new information. What information might we consider?
To start with, you’ve got an box-like object that looked to be about 2’x1’ that had wires and possibly duct tape on its exterior OR you’ve got a lite-brite. The debate hinges on this visual, which cannot help but advertise ATHF, and also is proof that even if there is visual evidence, those who are passionately disposed one way or the other will see two different objects: one sees a lite-brite, the other sees a box with wires and duct tape. One sees an object that has been there for 3 weeks and has appeared in many other cities in similar locations, another simply sees that it is under a major bridge where there may have been graffiti but no protruding objects or devices.
Its impossible to ask everyone at all times not to do anything that might look suspicious to someone else. You can reduce the odds of someone setting off a bomb in a city by asking people to report suspicious packages or behavior, but if people report too many false alarms, then it makes the city less safe. So the crux of this argument becomes: what constitutes suspicious behavior or packaging? What could a bomb look like? Where would it be placed?
Each of our individual beliefs on this matter has to do with how great a threat we believe terrorism to be. The government and various corporations have an incentive to exaggerate the threat, while other groups (artists, terrorists, libertarians) have an incentive to see less of a threat than the one that truly exists. Some people may acknowledge the threat, but may feel that the actions taken in this case reveal our inability to detect false positives, thereby revealing how vulnerable we are on a very public stage, thereby making us more vulnerable (especially when the authorities cannot admit they made a mistake because they don’t want to lose face).
Its interesting that people have been bringing up 24 on the blogs, suggesting that the show has some influence over our perception of a terrorist threat. Its good that people are beginning to acknowledge the effects of fictional media on our perception of reality. The next step might be that each of us spend more time gathering information about the relationships between large states and those fighting against large states using violent tactics throughout history (Israel and Ireland seem like good places to start), the technology typically employed by these people, basic human psychology, the nature of insurgent movements throughout history, global politics, and encourage others to do the same. This holistic approach towards gathering information seems like the only way to recalibrate our individual or collective perception of “suspicious” behavior or packaging.
Really, I can’t see the parent company (either Comedy Central or Turner Broadcasting) as an enemy in the court of public opinion. The two likely enemies are (if you’re on the right) the long-haired, smirking artists who don’t realize how serious the terrorist threat is and need to be taught a lesson or (if you’re on the left) the incompetent authority figures (police, govt) that are trying to outlaw art via the war on terror.
As in most cases, people’s existing beliefs determine their reaction. But, for a moment, I won’t be so jaded, and I’ll believe that there are some people who haven’t made up their minds and would consider new information. What information might we consider?
To start with, you’ve got an box-like object that looked to be about 2’x1’ that had wires and possibly duct tape on its exterior OR you’ve got a lite-brite. The debate hinges on this visual, which cannot help but advertise ATHF, and also is proof that even if there is visual evidence, those who are passionately disposed one way or the other will see two different objects: one sees a lite-brite, the other sees a box with wires and duct tape. One sees an object that has been there for 3 weeks and has appeared in many other cities in similar locations, another simply sees that it is under a major bridge where there may have been graffiti but no protruding objects or devices.
Its impossible to ask everyone at all times not to do anything that might look suspicious to someone else. You can reduce the odds of someone setting off a bomb in a city by asking people to report suspicious packages or behavior, but if people report too many false alarms, then it makes the city less safe. So the crux of this argument becomes: what constitutes suspicious behavior or packaging? What could a bomb look like? Where would it be placed?
Each of our individual beliefs on this matter has to do with how great a threat we believe terrorism to be. The government and various corporations have an incentive to exaggerate the threat, while other groups (artists, terrorists, libertarians) have an incentive to see less of a threat than the one that truly exists. Some people may acknowledge the threat, but may feel that the actions taken in this case reveal our inability to detect false positives, thereby revealing how vulnerable we are on a very public stage, thereby making us more vulnerable (especially when the authorities cannot admit they made a mistake because they don’t want to lose face).
Its interesting that people have been bringing up 24 on the blogs, suggesting that the show has some influence over our perception of a terrorist threat. Its good that people are beginning to acknowledge the effects of fictional media on our perception of reality. The next step might be that each of us spend more time gathering information about the relationships between large states and those fighting against large states using violent tactics throughout history (Israel and Ireland seem like good places to start), the technology typically employed by these people, basic human psychology, the nature of insurgent movements throughout history, global politics, and encourage others to do the same. This holistic approach towards gathering information seems like the only way to recalibrate our individual or collective perception of “suspicious” behavior or packaging.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Blogs and Comments: reacting to news (plus a few notes on controversial advertising)
Its just a few hours after a bomb scare here in Boston, one that happens to have a particularly absurd bend to it. Initially, I saw the images of traffic stopped and the bomb crews under bridges on TV, and reports that it was not a genuine threat but a hoax. Then a friend told me that he had heard on NPR that the "suspicious packages" that were causing all the hubbub were lite-brite images of Err. This sounded too ridiculous to be true, so I didn't really believe it until I got home and looked it up on the web. Most of the articles in online newspapers are of the same sort: simply reporting what happened, which is what I'd want from them. But I wanted more than that. I wanted opinions. I wasn't so much interested in the event as the public reaction to the event. Would it just blow over really quickly? Will most people side with the Mayor and the Governor against the network and the advertisers, or will most people side with Comedy Central et al?
Obviously, the sites that people comment and blog on are not representative of the public reaction, but in just 30 minutes, I was able to find a wide range of reactions to the events that brought up a lot of good points that I would've never thought of and that TV news probably wouldn't have broadcast (generally, TV just parrots the same facts over and over, or presents one highly-opinionated viewpoint): that the placement of the signs (under bridges) combined with the fact that if they were not lit up and viewed from a distance they wouldn't look like Err giving the finger as much as a box with wires sticking out of the back make the alarmist claims somewhat understandable; that Shepard Smith said, "their god is an indian...that turns into a wolf"; that Bill O'Reilly suggested that a cartoon character be arrested; that the signs had been there for 3 weeks, etc.
You have to sift through a lot of erroneous, opinionated information while trolling blogs, but when something like this happens, they're more satisfying than traditional media simply because they moves faster. That's what I came to realize: the pace of information on blogs. This makes me all the more interested in blog or comment filtering (a la digg's system of making the most-recent, most-read, most-approved comments more visible than the others). Or perhaps the thing to do is find a community of bloggers or commenters that you've come to trust and go to those sites when big events happen. I'd guess that its this sped-up information that is largely responsible for the shortening of the news cycle. Cable news and legit press are just trying to keep up.
This event could also be proof of the point I made in a previous post about the unintended effects of advertising. There's no doubt that this particular situation had more to do with poor judgment on the part of the police and government than it does with advertising, but it does bring up an interesting point about the limits of advertising. Although, if this does, in fact, create buzz for the film (which it almost certainly will), and thereby generate more revenue for the parent company, then this would be considered effective advertising, and therefore should be mimicked in the future, no? It will be incredibly difficult to draw correlations between the profitability of the Aqua Teen franchise and this controversy. But as much as this might drive up their revenue, its an impossible thing to plan or duplicate. I'd argue that its precisely the perceived unintended nature of the publicity that makes it appealing to consumers. They're drawn to the product only b/c they believe the ad agency and the network when they say "we had no idea this would happen." And really, buying something related to Aqua Teen at this point (say, an Err shirt) isn't so much a vote for headline-grabbing controversy and police-bating as much as an assertion that the police, homeland security, and the FBI need to handle potential terrorist threats in a different manner.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
On Distracting Advertising
I'd originally intended this blog to be strictly about blogging, the idea being that focused writing is better writing. But I don't see the harm in making this blog about media in general, so here are some thoughts on advertising.
First, there are motives. Let's assume that some advertising annoys people every now and then, or at least isn't as entertaining as most other forms of entertainment. Maybe it isn't annoying enough to make you change the station/website, but given the choice to go without it, you would. The economic incentives that more and more websites are offering for ad-free versions of sites are evidence of this demand. Let's also assume that companies want to sell as many products as possible while spending as little as possible on advertising. Advertising companies, on the other hand, would rather have these companies that actually produce things to pay for MORE advertising, therefore they will try to justify their existence and will try to expand advertising in whatever ways possible.
So, wouldn't a minimalist ad campaign benefit the consumer and the company that produces the goods? Is a 30-second TV spot or a flashing banner the most effective way to get people to buy your goods? Why couldn't one company create a 10 second ad or a slender, unadorned banner ad that says to consumers, "if you want less distracting advertising and the better entertainment experience that would result from that, then buy our product. If you don't buy our product, you are, in effect, voting for more distracting advertising and shittier content." If this worked, then other companies would follow suit.
Getting the consumer's attention is good. Getting them annoyed is bad. There's no distinction being made between attention and distraction in a lot of web advertising. Perhaps the web allows companies that produce goods to do an end-run around the advertising companies to go directly to the consumers. Much the same way the web rendered old-school record companies obsolete via social networking sites. Companies and the indivuals who work for them will fight for their livelyhoods by insisting that they're indispensible. But this refusal to evolve is to be expected, and has nothing to do with the effectiveness of ads or the economic necessity of a billion dollar ad industry.
As more and more websites tinker with how to generate revenue, the future of entertainment looks to be less like films and HBO and more like the shitty network TV everyone loves to dump on. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions to this rule, but still, I would argue that there is a correlation between the lasting entertainment value of any cultural object and whether or not it is created for ad-supported media.
Perhaps this will encourage more...insidious forms of advertising, namely viral marketing, and maybe that's not such a good thing. Maybe our future will involve trying to deduce whether or not any conversation we're having with anyone is an attempt to sell us something, and so the distractions of our entertainment experiences will invade our social lives (spam is just the beginning). I'm willing to debate this point. I honestly don't have a strong opinion about it right now. Maybe this is the future and maybe its shittier than our present. But I just can't accept the horrible obsolescence of advertising as it is.
It also might make for more entertaining ads, and one could argue that since the inception of TiVo, this has already started to happen. Here's the easiest way to tell: if you give people the technology to easily bypass ads, are they still watching them? I have no problem with entertaining ads, and there are plenty of them. The real problem, as I see it, is the distraction factor. If you have a half-hour lunch break to go to your favorite online video website, you'd rather not spend most of those 30 minutes trying to filter through information deciding what's an ad and what's not. You just want to relax and be entertained. Perhaps you'd like to be informed of products that you might want to buy, but that is NOT the same thing as spending time filtering through distracting information looking for useful nuggets, which is what many of us spend countless hours doing.
I'm actually trying to watch football while writing this, and I've seen about 30 car ads even though I have no intention of buying a new car in the next 5 years. Yes, I accept the premise that these ads have some subliminal effect on subsequent purchasing decisions. Because I've seen so many Chevy ads, I'll think of them instead of Saturn (who doesn't advertise as much on the programs/websites I go to) the next time I'm considering buying a car. Ads serve a purpose in our economy. They are not worthless. But their worth has to be weighed against the cost they exact on our ability to function otherwise.
First, there are motives. Let's assume that some advertising annoys people every now and then, or at least isn't as entertaining as most other forms of entertainment. Maybe it isn't annoying enough to make you change the station/website, but given the choice to go without it, you would. The economic incentives that more and more websites are offering for ad-free versions of sites are evidence of this demand. Let's also assume that companies want to sell as many products as possible while spending as little as possible on advertising. Advertising companies, on the other hand, would rather have these companies that actually produce things to pay for MORE advertising, therefore they will try to justify their existence and will try to expand advertising in whatever ways possible.
So, wouldn't a minimalist ad campaign benefit the consumer and the company that produces the goods? Is a 30-second TV spot or a flashing banner the most effective way to get people to buy your goods? Why couldn't one company create a 10 second ad or a slender, unadorned banner ad that says to consumers, "if you want less distracting advertising and the better entertainment experience that would result from that, then buy our product. If you don't buy our product, you are, in effect, voting for more distracting advertising and shittier content." If this worked, then other companies would follow suit.
Getting the consumer's attention is good. Getting them annoyed is bad. There's no distinction being made between attention and distraction in a lot of web advertising. Perhaps the web allows companies that produce goods to do an end-run around the advertising companies to go directly to the consumers. Much the same way the web rendered old-school record companies obsolete via social networking sites. Companies and the indivuals who work for them will fight for their livelyhoods by insisting that they're indispensible. But this refusal to evolve is to be expected, and has nothing to do with the effectiveness of ads or the economic necessity of a billion dollar ad industry.
As more and more websites tinker with how to generate revenue, the future of entertainment looks to be less like films and HBO and more like the shitty network TV everyone loves to dump on. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions to this rule, but still, I would argue that there is a correlation between the lasting entertainment value of any cultural object and whether or not it is created for ad-supported media.
Perhaps this will encourage more...insidious forms of advertising, namely viral marketing, and maybe that's not such a good thing. Maybe our future will involve trying to deduce whether or not any conversation we're having with anyone is an attempt to sell us something, and so the distractions of our entertainment experiences will invade our social lives (spam is just the beginning). I'm willing to debate this point. I honestly don't have a strong opinion about it right now. Maybe this is the future and maybe its shittier than our present. But I just can't accept the horrible obsolescence of advertising as it is.
It also might make for more entertaining ads, and one could argue that since the inception of TiVo, this has already started to happen. Here's the easiest way to tell: if you give people the technology to easily bypass ads, are they still watching them? I have no problem with entertaining ads, and there are plenty of them. The real problem, as I see it, is the distraction factor. If you have a half-hour lunch break to go to your favorite online video website, you'd rather not spend most of those 30 minutes trying to filter through information deciding what's an ad and what's not. You just want to relax and be entertained. Perhaps you'd like to be informed of products that you might want to buy, but that is NOT the same thing as spending time filtering through distracting information looking for useful nuggets, which is what many of us spend countless hours doing.
I'm actually trying to watch football while writing this, and I've seen about 30 car ads even though I have no intention of buying a new car in the next 5 years. Yes, I accept the premise that these ads have some subliminal effect on subsequent purchasing decisions. Because I've seen so many Chevy ads, I'll think of them instead of Saturn (who doesn't advertise as much on the programs/websites I go to) the next time I'm considering buying a car. Ads serve a purpose in our economy. They are not worthless. But their worth has to be weighed against the cost they exact on our ability to function otherwise.
Friday, November 10, 2006
What kind of a sucker do you take me for?
Lonelygirl15 doesn't seem to be a fluke, in the sense that many other vlogs are posted by ambiguously "real" personalities. Its impossible to tell to what degree people are putting on an act. Perhaps part of what keeps viewers coming back to such videos is the game of trying to figure out who the poster REALLY is - a bit like the pleasure of watching a mystery. They watch the videos, look for cracks in the facade, and try to figure out the motives of the poster. Its not a black-and-white "are they confessing or are they acting" question, but rather - what aspects of the poster's persona are real, which ones are fake, and WHY is the poster being fake in that way. Presumably, they are being fake in that way to boost their ratings, or perhaps to feel superior to the viewers ("ha ha, I fooled you" type of thing). To try to figure out one of these could-be-real-could-be-fake vloggers is to try to understand how creators view their audiences. If they think they can fool us, how are they trying to fool us? Its a bit of a competition between creator and audience, and I don't see this game ending anytime soon.
Blogs as conversation and lasting art
After reading some of my students' blog entries about blogs they had read, I was reminded about something intriguing about blogs in general: they're ambiguous status as personal conversation/confessional OR as a lasting statement about life, akin to a novel. Granted, most blogs are of the former kind - gut-spilling for the benefit of a select few (usually real-world friends), but I like the fact that there could be profound writing hidden among these entries, and that they are not explicitly marked as "literature" or "art." It could be one particularly interesting, well-written entry in an otherwise self-indulgent confessional blog - great writing is great writing, and to me, its almost "greater" or perhaps somehow more authentic when its not in a published anthology or in a well-known novel. Its the ambiguous status of personal blogs that keeps the blogosphere interesting to me. For this reason, I hope that people don't just see blogs as a way to refer people to interesting news sites on CNN.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Today's desperate artist's only choice: to masquerade as Truth.
Systematic, prolonged deception is not only possible on the Internet, but it has become increasingly easy and inexpensive. Every single one of the blogs on this site or any other site could have originated from a single source or a souce that holds the opposite opinions of those expressed in the posts. Like message boards, online video distributors (e.g. YouTube), and pretty much every other participatory website, this site allows a single user to impersonate any number or variety of other people.
We can be reasonably sure the news we receive on the web is real, NYTimes, CNN, and all the rest being longstanding, reliable sources with a lot to lose if their reputation is besmirched. The Internet as news source is not what’s at stake, but rather the Internet as a social space. You can “triangulate” the truth by looking at many different website’s accounts of a news event. You cannot do this with the intimate lives or opinions of individuals. There are plenty of old fogies who do not use the Internet as a social space who would like to dismiss identity play as unimportant merely b/c it doesn’t effect them or anyone they know. But last time I checked, there were millions of young people all over the world using the Internet as a social space.
It may not take much $ to deceive people on the Internet, but it takes time and creativity, both in short supply for most. You’ve got to have something to sell to make it worth the time, unless you’re just trying to prove a point. It is this apparently motiveless mass deception that is the true new art form that lonelygirl15 portends. Think of it as experimental theater, as the next big step in the erosion of the barrier between art and life.
For those who continue to doubt the relevance of this, consider the obvious political implications of phony personas. If personas are easier to fake, then the grassroots democratic nature of the Internet could be partially or completely illusory.
Normally, I wouldn't quote something at great length, but this post is buried amongst others:
emjo on NYTimes Screens blog:
"Rewind to the 17th century, and the birth of the novel in the Christian west. In its early manifestations, the form relied on the popular convention of make-believe truthfulness — “found” Arabic manuscripts in Don Quixote, “discovered” correspondences between dead lovers in any number of epistolary novels, and so on. Back then, fiction was lies, and lies were immoral — but everyone new these books weren’t really the real truth. It was originally perhaps a symbolic, but obligatory, nod to the atmosphere of religious censorship, plus there is that extra shivery bit of pleasure from imagining that a story MIGHT be true. See also more contemporary examples — Nabokov’s “Lolita,” for example. Enter reality T.V., and, shortly after, literary identity scandals like James Frey and J.T. LeRoy. This is a little bit different–the assumption is that audiences will be more interested (will perhaps ONLY be interested) if they REALLY BELIEVE that the stories they’re hearing/seeing are true...[For those who doubt the revelance of LG15 and the like], do we really not care anymore about anything but the material facts of our world–particularly those facts that put us in bodily danger? Is imagination a waste of time? Is fiction immoral?
Maybe on our journey back towards the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, we are finding new ways to push art to the margins. Global terrorism, by god! We have no time to waste on childish make-believe! I can understand how artists desperate to get our attention might feel that their only choice is to masquerade as Truth. Unfortunately, this compromise is dangerous and demeaning. So what to do? Do the narrative arts continue to become more polarized — either popular, soothing, and meaningless, or powerful, brilliant, and obscure? Do more and more theater, film, and fiction artists turn to fake reality? Or do we as audiences give the imagination the space it deserves, to interpret and represent aspects of experience that can’t be fought with wars and bombs?"
http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=77#comment-935
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17zeller.html?ref=weekinreview
We can be reasonably sure the news we receive on the web is real, NYTimes, CNN, and all the rest being longstanding, reliable sources with a lot to lose if their reputation is besmirched. The Internet as news source is not what’s at stake, but rather the Internet as a social space. You can “triangulate” the truth by looking at many different website’s accounts of a news event. You cannot do this with the intimate lives or opinions of individuals. There are plenty of old fogies who do not use the Internet as a social space who would like to dismiss identity play as unimportant merely b/c it doesn’t effect them or anyone they know. But last time I checked, there were millions of young people all over the world using the Internet as a social space.
It may not take much $ to deceive people on the Internet, but it takes time and creativity, both in short supply for most. You’ve got to have something to sell to make it worth the time, unless you’re just trying to prove a point. It is this apparently motiveless mass deception that is the true new art form that lonelygirl15 portends. Think of it as experimental theater, as the next big step in the erosion of the barrier between art and life.
For those who continue to doubt the relevance of this, consider the obvious political implications of phony personas. If personas are easier to fake, then the grassroots democratic nature of the Internet could be partially or completely illusory.
Normally, I wouldn't quote something at great length, but this post is buried amongst others:
emjo on NYTimes Screens blog:
"Rewind to the 17th century, and the birth of the novel in the Christian west. In its early manifestations, the form relied on the popular convention of make-believe truthfulness — “found” Arabic manuscripts in Don Quixote, “discovered” correspondences between dead lovers in any number of epistolary novels, and so on. Back then, fiction was lies, and lies were immoral — but everyone new these books weren’t really the real truth. It was originally perhaps a symbolic, but obligatory, nod to the atmosphere of religious censorship, plus there is that extra shivery bit of pleasure from imagining that a story MIGHT be true. See also more contemporary examples — Nabokov’s “Lolita,” for example. Enter reality T.V., and, shortly after, literary identity scandals like James Frey and J.T. LeRoy. This is a little bit different–the assumption is that audiences will be more interested (will perhaps ONLY be interested) if they REALLY BELIEVE that the stories they’re hearing/seeing are true...[For those who doubt the revelance of LG15 and the like], do we really not care anymore about anything but the material facts of our world–particularly those facts that put us in bodily danger? Is imagination a waste of time? Is fiction immoral?
Maybe on our journey back towards the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, we are finding new ways to push art to the margins. Global terrorism, by god! We have no time to waste on childish make-believe! I can understand how artists desperate to get our attention might feel that their only choice is to masquerade as Truth. Unfortunately, this compromise is dangerous and demeaning. So what to do? Do the narrative arts continue to become more polarized — either popular, soothing, and meaningless, or powerful, brilliant, and obscure? Do more and more theater, film, and fiction artists turn to fake reality? Or do we as audiences give the imagination the space it deserves, to interpret and represent aspects of experience that can’t be fought with wars and bombs?"
http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=77#comment-935
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17zeller.html?ref=weekinreview
Friday, September 15, 2006
Fake Blogs, Fake Vlogs, and Verisimilitude
More on Lonleygirl15...
Many artists aspire to create the most realistic art they can. Many see the arts on a steady tragectory towards art that is indistinguishable from reality. So, is Lonelygirl15 and other blogs or vlogs that are fictional the next step towards verisimilitude? Do those who fee lied to have any more of an ethical beef than people who were originally tricked into believing early films were "real?" As I recall, Lonelygirl15's creators never explicitly claimed to be non-fiction. They simply took advantage of an audience's preconceived notions of a medium.
Many artists aspire to create the most realistic art they can. Many see the arts on a steady tragectory towards art that is indistinguishable from reality. So, is Lonelygirl15 and other blogs or vlogs that are fictional the next step towards verisimilitude? Do those who fee lied to have any more of an ethical beef than people who were originally tricked into believing early films were "real?" As I recall, Lonelygirl15's creators never explicitly claimed to be non-fiction. They simply took advantage of an audience's preconceived notions of a medium.
Friday, September 08, 2006
the birth of a new art form
call me crazy, but I believe "The Creators" when, after the (apparent) revelation that Lonleygirl15 is not "real," they declared the birth of a new art form. In terms of medium specificity, I think they have a point (although its dopey to think of the Internet as a single medium at this point, as it fulfills so many different fuctions for so many different people) - one of the walls that the internet was destined to break down, along with the walls between public/private and public/celebrity, was the wall between fiction and realtiy.
I guess you could draw parellels to "War of Worlds" or "Quiz Show," mass media deceptions on a much larger scale. Like everything online, this only affects a minute portion of the public. But still, the same principles apply. And so we might think that, just as War of the Worlds was to radio and the quiz show that inspire the movie Quiz Show was to TV, this is to the Internet (or at least autobiographic blogging, vlogging, and podcasting). In other words, there comes a time in the evolution of any medium where the audience is forced to confront the fact that the medium can be used for mass deception. They are forced to become critical of it. Again, this only applies to aspects of the Internet (primarily those that ape aspects of "traditional media" like YouTube does to TV. But the same can be said about autobiographic blogs.
loneleygirl15 is real in the sense that the person who is on screen is almost certainly real, and she is real in the sense that the sentiments that she expresses, the motives that inform those sentiments, are both from another real person (or perhaps several real people) - the Creators. It is possible that The Creators is just a computer program that analyzes autobiographic blogs, pulls recurring themes, sentiments, and motives and weaves those into a story (unlikely considering how unsophisticated AI is rright now, but in principle, such a program, with minor human assistance, could exist soon).
Is lonelygirl15 any less real than the coached personalities on Laguna Beach? What if those personalities weren't coached? Would that, then, be real? By "real," I suppose we mean that the actions of a person are motivated by only them, and not other forces, or that at least those other forces pass through the filter of that person. It would be better if Bree was "real" in the sense that she, like the characters on Laguna Beach and the Hills, had a pre-existing life that was dicovered by producers and then shaped to suit dramatic needs. There could never be any definitive unmasking. There would never really be any lying. It would be impossible to fix the line between reality and fiction. They (or she) might have been coached, and her behavior might have been altered, but it is impossible to say to what degree and in what way.
We all put on some sort of a performance to garner attention, in our writings and our behavior. What makes us real?
So this is all some combination of Andy Kaufman and Andy Warhol. And at least for now, it feels new.
I guess you could draw parellels to "War of Worlds" or "Quiz Show," mass media deceptions on a much larger scale. Like everything online, this only affects a minute portion of the public. But still, the same principles apply. And so we might think that, just as War of the Worlds was to radio and the quiz show that inspire the movie Quiz Show was to TV, this is to the Internet (or at least autobiographic blogging, vlogging, and podcasting). In other words, there comes a time in the evolution of any medium where the audience is forced to confront the fact that the medium can be used for mass deception. They are forced to become critical of it. Again, this only applies to aspects of the Internet (primarily those that ape aspects of "traditional media" like YouTube does to TV. But the same can be said about autobiographic blogs.
loneleygirl15 is real in the sense that the person who is on screen is almost certainly real, and she is real in the sense that the sentiments that she expresses, the motives that inform those sentiments, are both from another real person (or perhaps several real people) - the Creators. It is possible that The Creators is just a computer program that analyzes autobiographic blogs, pulls recurring themes, sentiments, and motives and weaves those into a story (unlikely considering how unsophisticated AI is rright now, but in principle, such a program, with minor human assistance, could exist soon).
Is lonelygirl15 any less real than the coached personalities on Laguna Beach? What if those personalities weren't coached? Would that, then, be real? By "real," I suppose we mean that the actions of a person are motivated by only them, and not other forces, or that at least those other forces pass through the filter of that person. It would be better if Bree was "real" in the sense that she, like the characters on Laguna Beach and the Hills, had a pre-existing life that was dicovered by producers and then shaped to suit dramatic needs. There could never be any definitive unmasking. There would never really be any lying. It would be impossible to fix the line between reality and fiction. They (or she) might have been coached, and her behavior might have been altered, but it is impossible to say to what degree and in what way.
We all put on some sort of a performance to garner attention, in our writings and our behavior. What makes us real?
So this is all some combination of Andy Kaufman and Andy Warhol. And at least for now, it feels new.
Monday, April 10, 2006
My Death Space cont
So I guess they do have murderers and suicides on this site. The random deaths (e.g., car crash) are interesting at first, sort of poignant. But this is different.
I can't imagine that this will last. Do family members of the victims/suicides have any recourse? Can they tell myspace.com to take the site down, or do they just not want to do that? I feel like a huge chunk of the private world just became public. This happened long ago to sex, in some incomplete way. Ultimately, the motives of murderers and suicides (along with sex) were always accessible, but it was difficult to get to that information, so the Internet just makes it considerably easier, and that makes more people give in to that curiousity and that makes it more acceptable.
So I guess I'm filtering through these murderers and suicides, playing amatuer psychologist, but feeling somehow guilty about it. Is it rubbernecking?
I can't imagine that this will last. Do family members of the victims/suicides have any recourse? Can they tell myspace.com to take the site down, or do they just not want to do that? I feel like a huge chunk of the private world just became public. This happened long ago to sex, in some incomplete way. Ultimately, the motives of murderers and suicides (along with sex) were always accessible, but it was difficult to get to that information, so the Internet just makes it considerably easier, and that makes more people give in to that curiousity and that makes it more acceptable.
So I guess I'm filtering through these murderers and suicides, playing amatuer psychologist, but feeling somehow guilty about it. Is it rubbernecking?
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
blogging and death
http://www.myspace.com/aznsilkyboxers69
www.mydeathspace.com
I'd thought a bit about journals or blogs or social networking profiles like MySpace as something that would live on after you die, but in sort of an abstract way, but now, thru mydeathspace, I've found entries from people who have died.
In a way, a blog becomes more important after you die. While you're alive, you can modify people's judgment of who you are by replying to comments or by meeting them in person. But once you die, all of that blog (or journal or myspace page) is you. You can't supplement it or contradict it.
The people who really loved you probably don't care that much about your blog. Perthaps it would just be casual acquaintances who would go to your myspace page after your death, or strangers. The whole point of blogging and myspace seems to be social networking, and so they become pointless in death, or become repurposed.
There are blogs by people who committed suicide, probably blogs by those who commit murder. If (god forbid) someone committed many murders (a la Columbine), I can only assume the police would take down that person's blog. Would that be the "right" thing to do, and if not, is that out of respect for the people that died? If that's the case, then why leave up the blog of a suicide, or someone who died in some other way?
Its very easy to say, "of course a murderer's blog should be taken down out of respect for the victims. Don't be sick!" But does the murderer gain anything by having the blog up there? Do we, the public, lose anything by not having it up there? I remember when blogs first started out, thinking that this would be the ultimate tool for learning about a large number of people, how they felt, how they thought. Soon afterwards, I discovered how banal so many people (including myself) were. If blogs are a way of learning about human nature and behavior, doesn't it make sense to keep the liminal people's blogs intact and public? Would you prefer they just be viewed by the police?
If you're going to be offended by the presense of a blog, I would think it would be these blogs that stay up after people die, rather than the ones that stay up after a person commits murder.
Being overly ironic in one's blog or myspace page seems like a bad move if only for this reason. It can all be a joke while you're alive, but if you die, it can become the only facet of you that lives on in the public sphere. Then again, you're dead, so what do you care, right?
Even weirder, I read a blog entry by a guy whose daughter had been killed that day (there's no way to prove the veracity of this, but it seems believable). I read a blog by someone who had been hospitalized and died days later. Its one thing to blog when you've gotta blow off steam, or blog to be noticed, or blog to stay in touch with people. But to blog right after your only daughter has been murdered? What is driving that person to do that? I can only guess that he feels some sort of very real connection to his readership. But his readership is...almost illusory. It could be everyone and it could be no one. It could be curiousity seekers or people who actually care. There's something significant about the internet playing a role in these emotions, these moments in people's lives. I guess the internet has been a part of sex and love for years now, so why not death? Its one thing to use the internet for casual conversation or business. But these core emotions and events...
It sounds as though I'm totally opposed to it, which I'm not. In fact, I kinda enjoy this sensation of things evolving so quickly, faster than our ability to theorize about them, to even begin to figure them out. The way we define friend or loved one seems to be changing, maybe even the way we define love or death.
www.mydeathspace.com
I'd thought a bit about journals or blogs or social networking profiles like MySpace as something that would live on after you die, but in sort of an abstract way, but now, thru mydeathspace, I've found entries from people who have died.
In a way, a blog becomes more important after you die. While you're alive, you can modify people's judgment of who you are by replying to comments or by meeting them in person. But once you die, all of that blog (or journal or myspace page) is you. You can't supplement it or contradict it.
The people who really loved you probably don't care that much about your blog. Perthaps it would just be casual acquaintances who would go to your myspace page after your death, or strangers. The whole point of blogging and myspace seems to be social networking, and so they become pointless in death, or become repurposed.
There are blogs by people who committed suicide, probably blogs by those who commit murder. If (god forbid) someone committed many murders (a la Columbine), I can only assume the police would take down that person's blog. Would that be the "right" thing to do, and if not, is that out of respect for the people that died? If that's the case, then why leave up the blog of a suicide, or someone who died in some other way?
Its very easy to say, "of course a murderer's blog should be taken down out of respect for the victims. Don't be sick!" But does the murderer gain anything by having the blog up there? Do we, the public, lose anything by not having it up there? I remember when blogs first started out, thinking that this would be the ultimate tool for learning about a large number of people, how they felt, how they thought. Soon afterwards, I discovered how banal so many people (including myself) were. If blogs are a way of learning about human nature and behavior, doesn't it make sense to keep the liminal people's blogs intact and public? Would you prefer they just be viewed by the police?
If you're going to be offended by the presense of a blog, I would think it would be these blogs that stay up after people die, rather than the ones that stay up after a person commits murder.
Being overly ironic in one's blog or myspace page seems like a bad move if only for this reason. It can all be a joke while you're alive, but if you die, it can become the only facet of you that lives on in the public sphere. Then again, you're dead, so what do you care, right?
Even weirder, I read a blog entry by a guy whose daughter had been killed that day (there's no way to prove the veracity of this, but it seems believable). I read a blog by someone who had been hospitalized and died days later. Its one thing to blog when you've gotta blow off steam, or blog to be noticed, or blog to stay in touch with people. But to blog right after your only daughter has been murdered? What is driving that person to do that? I can only guess that he feels some sort of very real connection to his readership. But his readership is...almost illusory. It could be everyone and it could be no one. It could be curiousity seekers or people who actually care. There's something significant about the internet playing a role in these emotions, these moments in people's lives. I guess the internet has been a part of sex and love for years now, so why not death? Its one thing to use the internet for casual conversation or business. But these core emotions and events...
It sounds as though I'm totally opposed to it, which I'm not. In fact, I kinda enjoy this sensation of things evolving so quickly, faster than our ability to theorize about them, to even begin to figure them out. The way we define friend or loved one seems to be changing, maybe even the way we define love or death.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
bloggies (or movlogs)
OK, so, here's my idea.
PHASE 1: Using existing rudimentary Flash animation and language translation technology, I create a program that can "translate" text into stick-figure animated short films. Most sentences that people write use a limited assortment of combinations of subjects and verbs, settings and people. Much the same way you copy a paragraph of text in English and paste it into babelfish, so too would you paste a block of text into the text-to-movie translator. Of course, the text would have to be a narrative of sorts, e.g. I got outta bed this morning, blew my nose, and blood came out.
PHASE 2: I get the program to randomly access publicly available blogs and recognize narratives within these blogs (as opposed to rants, raves, etc). The program translates people's blogs into bloovies, bloggies, movlogs or perhaps blilms.
PHASE 3: After working up this prototype, I get some funding and make the graphics and translation a bit better. No more stick figures. Something more along the lines of Grand Theft Auto.
PHASE 4: As an add on, I install "filters" that allow the user to render a block of text in a certain cinematic style. For instance, if you wanted to see "What I Did Last Saturday Night" as directed by Gaspar Noe, or Speilberg, or Scorsese, or whomever, you could. You could see "What I Did Last Saturday Night" as an art film, or as a Martin Lawrence vehicle.
PHASE 5: Rather than tell people what you did last night, you can show them by sending them a link. Or perhaps we'll all have Video Ipods, only w/ bigger retractable screens, so when I'm all, "whaddyou do last Saturday night," you'll be all, "well, let's take a look." And you'll whip out your VIPod, show me what's what, and we'll all have a laugh.
possible objections:
#1 Realism - The human faces and voices have been the biggest stumbling block (see The Polar Express and voice simulation software ). It seems no matter how crisp the detail in CGI images of faces are, we can still detect the differences, and they still seem ultra creepy. So, at first, we're going to have to make due w/ "What I Did Last Saturday Night," the animated series. But maybe that's more fun than the real thing anyway. As far as voice goes, you can do your own voice over of events, and do imitations of your friends for the dialogue.
#2 "We're losing the human touch, this is the death of storytelling, what will we talk to each other about, wa wa wa!" Yes, yes, we've all heard this objection before. When we tell stories, we're more in dictation mode than interaction mode. Nothing wrong w/ using motion pictures to communicate more than we do now. Humans will always have to create content for motion pictures, and those pictures will only have meaning if they relate to our social lives. If you don't like it, then stop watching TV, films, etc.
#3 "Who wants to read someone's shitty life (see My Bloody Nose above), let alone watch it and listen to it?" Good point. But I'd watch shit on TV that I wouldn't have the patience to read. Maybe I'm lazy like that, but I think I'm in good company. Moving pictures are fun. Someone recently made the point to me that 'Reality TV' fulfills a different desire than fictional TV - the desire to survey. It doesn't have to be "good" b/c its real. We'll always want to know more about our fellow humans. I, for one, would rather watch your Saturday night as directed by David Lynch than read about it. Or at least I'd like the option of that.
At the very least, something in this vein would be of use to funders or executive producers (for turning screenplays into rudimentary versions of the finished product, sort of a halfway step between storyboarding and the final cut). If you're poring millions into a big-budget action film, then you'll want as good of an idea of how things are going to go as you can get. Sure, there will always be un-simulatable x-factors like actor performances, but the less unknowns there are, the happier producers will be. I'd imagine CGI films already work something like this.
PHASE 1: Using existing rudimentary Flash animation and language translation technology, I create a program that can "translate" text into stick-figure animated short films. Most sentences that people write use a limited assortment of combinations of subjects and verbs, settings and people. Much the same way you copy a paragraph of text in English and paste it into babelfish, so too would you paste a block of text into the text-to-movie translator. Of course, the text would have to be a narrative of sorts, e.g. I got outta bed this morning, blew my nose, and blood came out.
PHASE 2: I get the program to randomly access publicly available blogs and recognize narratives within these blogs (as opposed to rants, raves, etc). The program translates people's blogs into bloovies, bloggies, movlogs or perhaps blilms.
PHASE 3: After working up this prototype, I get some funding and make the graphics and translation a bit better. No more stick figures. Something more along the lines of Grand Theft Auto.
PHASE 4: As an add on, I install "filters" that allow the user to render a block of text in a certain cinematic style. For instance, if you wanted to see "What I Did Last Saturday Night" as directed by Gaspar Noe, or Speilberg, or Scorsese, or whomever, you could. You could see "What I Did Last Saturday Night" as an art film, or as a Martin Lawrence vehicle.
PHASE 5: Rather than tell people what you did last night, you can show them by sending them a link. Or perhaps we'll all have Video Ipods, only w/ bigger retractable screens, so when I'm all, "whaddyou do last Saturday night," you'll be all, "well, let's take a look." And you'll whip out your VIPod, show me what's what, and we'll all have a laugh.
possible objections:
#1 Realism - The human faces and voices have been the biggest stumbling block (see The Polar Express and voice simulation software ). It seems no matter how crisp the detail in CGI images of faces are, we can still detect the differences, and they still seem ultra creepy. So, at first, we're going to have to make due w/ "What I Did Last Saturday Night," the animated series. But maybe that's more fun than the real thing anyway. As far as voice goes, you can do your own voice over of events, and do imitations of your friends for the dialogue.
#2 "We're losing the human touch, this is the death of storytelling, what will we talk to each other about, wa wa wa!" Yes, yes, we've all heard this objection before. When we tell stories, we're more in dictation mode than interaction mode. Nothing wrong w/ using motion pictures to communicate more than we do now. Humans will always have to create content for motion pictures, and those pictures will only have meaning if they relate to our social lives. If you don't like it, then stop watching TV, films, etc.
#3 "Who wants to read someone's shitty life (see My Bloody Nose above), let alone watch it and listen to it?" Good point. But I'd watch shit on TV that I wouldn't have the patience to read. Maybe I'm lazy like that, but I think I'm in good company. Moving pictures are fun. Someone recently made the point to me that 'Reality TV' fulfills a different desire than fictional TV - the desire to survey. It doesn't have to be "good" b/c its real. We'll always want to know more about our fellow humans. I, for one, would rather watch your Saturday night as directed by David Lynch than read about it. Or at least I'd like the option of that.
At the very least, something in this vein would be of use to funders or executive producers (for turning screenplays into rudimentary versions of the finished product, sort of a halfway step between storyboarding and the final cut). If you're poring millions into a big-budget action film, then you'll want as good of an idea of how things are going to go as you can get. Sure, there will always be un-simulatable x-factors like actor performances, but the less unknowns there are, the happier producers will be. I'd imagine CGI films already work something like this.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Recording disasters, personal or otherwise
Last night, I had the worst nightmare I've had in ages. Part of it involved some sort of supernatural disaster, some storm-to-end-all-storms Rapture, probably prompted by my listening to "Left Behind" on audiobook a couple of weeks ago. My first instinct in this incredibly realistic dream was to gape. Then, my next thought was, "I've gotta record this somehow, take a picture or get it on tape," which I imagine is what I would think in real life. After taking a picture or two, I began to realize that I shouldn't worry about recording it; I should worry about getting the fuck out of there.
But there's something to be said for the instinct to record disasters. Every time I see one of those reality videos of some disaster taking place, I think, "how can this person just STAND there?" or, if they are going to stand there, how can they have the poise to videotape it? How far ahead is that guy who sees the plane headed for the skyscraper and goes digging in his closet for his handicam thinking? Is he, on some level, imagining selling the rights to his video, is he thinking that this will prevent people from forgetting how horrible a tragedy this was, or is it all just some unconcious gut reaction (prompted by what?). After this dream, I'm beginning to think more about this instinct; it may not be that dumb after all. It may be closer to the instinct to survive (collectively and individually) than we'd imagine.
Maybe we record to learn how to prevent disaster in the future, to analyze what went wrong. But more than that, I think we want to record that which doesn't happen that often, that which is normally hard to see or hear or experience, and whether its incredibly good or incredibly bad doesn't even enter into it. Whether we watch it (or how many times we watch it) is another matter.
But there's something to be said for the instinct to record disasters. Every time I see one of those reality videos of some disaster taking place, I think, "how can this person just STAND there?" or, if they are going to stand there, how can they have the poise to videotape it? How far ahead is that guy who sees the plane headed for the skyscraper and goes digging in his closet for his handicam thinking? Is he, on some level, imagining selling the rights to his video, is he thinking that this will prevent people from forgetting how horrible a tragedy this was, or is it all just some unconcious gut reaction (prompted by what?). After this dream, I'm beginning to think more about this instinct; it may not be that dumb after all. It may be closer to the instinct to survive (collectively and individually) than we'd imagine.
Maybe we record to learn how to prevent disaster in the future, to analyze what went wrong. But more than that, I think we want to record that which doesn't happen that often, that which is normally hard to see or hear or experience, and whether its incredibly good or incredibly bad doesn't even enter into it. Whether we watch it (or how many times we watch it) is another matter.
Monday, June 06, 2005
blog as column vs. blog as memoir
I'm still wading through my past, editing hundreds of pages and 10 years of journal entries into...something, maybe some early version of a memoir. These journal/blogs take on a new usefulness once they get big enough, b/c then you can search for things, words, emotions, people, movies, places, and see these patterns that you didn't know were there. I guess the data mining folks know this already, know that our identities are in these numbers and letters if you know how to find them. All I'm saying is its fun (if not unhealthily narcissistic, perhaps masturbatory) to mine your own data.
Blogs that are more like columns, more about other people's lives (heads of state, etc), or those that include links to other blogs or sites seem geared towards present-day usefulness. Not that they aren't of lasting value (what isn't?). But I guess I'm just partial to the ones that chronicle your everyday life.
Maybe I've gotten too wrapped up in recording my life to prevent my death. Maybe I shouldn't have done such a half-assed job of it for so long. I should just have sections of my life that go unchronicled. There's just something maddening about how fleeting a really great day is.
Blogs that are more like columns, more about other people's lives (heads of state, etc), or those that include links to other blogs or sites seem geared towards present-day usefulness. Not that they aren't of lasting value (what isn't?). But I guess I'm just partial to the ones that chronicle your everyday life.
Maybe I've gotten too wrapped up in recording my life to prevent my death. Maybe I shouldn't have done such a half-assed job of it for so long. I should just have sections of my life that go unchronicled. There's just something maddening about how fleeting a really great day is.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Internet as Feeder System for TV
Granted, this is a bit of a departure from my blog about blogs.
This is a follow up on an idea I was kicking around before - internet as a feeder system for TV. There's a website called Current TV that accepts uploaded digital video shorts, lets people vote, and allows the winners air time on a cable network launching in August. Its the model for a new system. Seriously, screw film festivals, and screw the TV studio system. It seems that if this takes off, 'focus groups' will be a thing of the past. This is a cheaper, more accurate way to guage public opinion on a show/film. Whether this suceeds or fails, it'll be worth keeping an eye on.
http://www.current.tv/studio/index.php
Maybe it'll be to TV what blogs are to legit news: it won't KILL TV, but TV producers would do well to watch what the "people" are saying, just as legit news writers would do well to keep an eye on blogs. Maybe video-blogs will catch on - somewhere between web-cams and reality TV. As long as yer skilled at editing and storytelling (which not many people are), then you've got something worth watching.
Then again, isn't this essentially what local cable-access is: a venue for the people to put there stuff on TV? And doesn't pretty much everything on local cable access suck?
This is a follow up on an idea I was kicking around before - internet as a feeder system for TV. There's a website called Current TV that accepts uploaded digital video shorts, lets people vote, and allows the winners air time on a cable network launching in August. Its the model for a new system. Seriously, screw film festivals, and screw the TV studio system. It seems that if this takes off, 'focus groups' will be a thing of the past. This is a cheaper, more accurate way to guage public opinion on a show/film. Whether this suceeds or fails, it'll be worth keeping an eye on.
http://www.current.tv/studio/index.php
Maybe it'll be to TV what blogs are to legit news: it won't KILL TV, but TV producers would do well to watch what the "people" are saying, just as legit news writers would do well to keep an eye on blogs. Maybe video-blogs will catch on - somewhere between web-cams and reality TV. As long as yer skilled at editing and storytelling (which not many people are), then you've got something worth watching.
Then again, isn't this essentially what local cable-access is: a venue for the people to put there stuff on TV? And doesn't pretty much everything on local cable access suck?
Monday, April 11, 2005
Losing context
I'm sorry this is so boring. But I'm having trouble making it readable without spilling too much of my private guts. This is b/c I don't put the time and energy (nor do I possess the innate talent) to write something interesting that isn't intensly personal. Isn't that what blog-culture cultivates - this sloppy-but-salacious confessional mode of writing? I don't have anything against others doing this (other than the fact that eventually I tire of reading about who you have a crush on), but after taking this "Technologies of Identity" class, which deals primarily w/ privacy policy & online surveillance, I'm done spilling my guts.
"That compartmentalization (of identity) is both necessitated and made difficult by the user’s ignorance of the online context in which he performs. One never knows who else is present and ready to catch the online wink. There is no ability to assess or manage the context of revelation."
The key is that we're performing social interactions online that we performed for millions of years in the real world. In the real world, we could get feedback about where this info was going and what it would be used for. And its life was as long as people's memories (not very long). Digital recording also freaks me out in this respect. The connection between this context management and having a stable, secure sense of who you are isn't something that you're conscious of, but that doesn't mean its not there. If you really stop and think about how much of your identity is a performance, and how much that performance is altered by positive/negative feedback, you start to realize how much context/feedback matter.
But I refuse to be one of those paranoid souls who won't get his digital picture taken, nor will he have anything to do w/ the internet. Tons of people have taken the plunge into this confessional blogging world. I just think that the technology is so new that no one has really found an effective, efficient way to take advantage of it and use it for large scale slanderous purposes, but it wouldn't be surprising if they did soon. The groundwork is there - all this shit that used to have context doesn't anymore. The dangers of this are so subtle and abstract; hard to tell if they're even there. The danger is less in getting arrested and more in a vague alienation of friends or potential employers. It'd be so hard to track or prove. But interesting to think about.
"That compartmentalization (of identity) is both necessitated and made difficult by the user’s ignorance of the online context in which he performs. One never knows who else is present and ready to catch the online wink. There is no ability to assess or manage the context of revelation."
The key is that we're performing social interactions online that we performed for millions of years in the real world. In the real world, we could get feedback about where this info was going and what it would be used for. And its life was as long as people's memories (not very long). Digital recording also freaks me out in this respect. The connection between this context management and having a stable, secure sense of who you are isn't something that you're conscious of, but that doesn't mean its not there. If you really stop and think about how much of your identity is a performance, and how much that performance is altered by positive/negative feedback, you start to realize how much context/feedback matter.
But I refuse to be one of those paranoid souls who won't get his digital picture taken, nor will he have anything to do w/ the internet. Tons of people have taken the plunge into this confessional blogging world. I just think that the technology is so new that no one has really found an effective, efficient way to take advantage of it and use it for large scale slanderous purposes, but it wouldn't be surprising if they did soon. The groundwork is there - all this shit that used to have context doesn't anymore. The dangers of this are so subtle and abstract; hard to tell if they're even there. The danger is less in getting arrested and more in a vague alienation of friends or potential employers. It'd be so hard to track or prove. But interesting to think about.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Nothing really ends, and its all subject to revision
I'd estimate that nearly half of my existing journal is made up of "bitchy" entries, in which I complain about some emotional/mental/physical pain I'm in. I'd always regarded these entries as useful in their creation (they purge these thoughts, keep them from running around in circles in my head) but utterly useless reading material, the very definition of self-indulgence.
But now I'm starting to use them as a way of learning more about how I deal with shitty situations or how I've changed/not changed as a person. Sometimes I use them as guidance as to how to feel about something. How did I reacte to similar trouble 2 years back, 6 years back? Perhaps the most heartening aspect of looking back is realizing how utterly hopeless you were at one point, and how unwarranted that hopelessness was. Better days were on the way; you just didn't feel that they were.
I'm really interested in the ways that we impose narrative structures on our formless lives. I wonder if many people, now or ever, saw only the One Big Story - their own life, instead of the thousands of stories that I see my life as. Each time I'm in one, I feel that its THE story of my life, but it never ends up that way. I feel fortunate and somewhat immortal in this respect, as if I've been allowed to lead multiple lives, just out of curiousity. What could possibly bind that night camping on the mountain with my trip to Quebec City? At best, its a serial. Franzen was right; "the only real story, in the end, is that you die".
This is what I do when I go back and read those bitch sessions: locate my old self in a narrative, and identify w/ that old pre-comeback self, thus manufacturing hope for my current self. But I sound more detached from my life than I really am. Perhaps I aspire to be detached. I aspire to laugh (as a detached watcher would laugh) during the sad parts, but be deadly serious (pious, even) about the happy parts. That's the tone of my favorite authors/films, and that's the tone I wish to impose on my personal narrative.
(months later...)
After having watched the ending of 'Before Sunset,' I've a revision to make. We don't even live a full story. Even the snuffing out of my consciousness doesn't end what I think of as the plot of my life. In fact, its very unlikely that any of our deaths will coincide with any sense of closure. It'll probably be just like the end of this movie, just fading out while the narrative keeps going. It's maddening to consider this, but that's why I divide my life into many individual, overlapping stories - so I can get some closure. Its possible that my appetite for closure comes from watching/reading so many stories w/ beginnings and endings. Supposedly we spend more time in fictional universes, watching movies, reading novels, than anyone else in history, to correspond to the multiple lives we live (multiple marriages, multiple groups of friends, multiple "homes.")
But now I'm starting to use them as a way of learning more about how I deal with shitty situations or how I've changed/not changed as a person. Sometimes I use them as guidance as to how to feel about something. How did I reacte to similar trouble 2 years back, 6 years back? Perhaps the most heartening aspect of looking back is realizing how utterly hopeless you were at one point, and how unwarranted that hopelessness was. Better days were on the way; you just didn't feel that they were.
I'm really interested in the ways that we impose narrative structures on our formless lives. I wonder if many people, now or ever, saw only the One Big Story - their own life, instead of the thousands of stories that I see my life as. Each time I'm in one, I feel that its THE story of my life, but it never ends up that way. I feel fortunate and somewhat immortal in this respect, as if I've been allowed to lead multiple lives, just out of curiousity. What could possibly bind that night camping on the mountain with my trip to Quebec City? At best, its a serial. Franzen was right; "the only real story, in the end, is that you die".
This is what I do when I go back and read those bitch sessions: locate my old self in a narrative, and identify w/ that old pre-comeback self, thus manufacturing hope for my current self. But I sound more detached from my life than I really am. Perhaps I aspire to be detached. I aspire to laugh (as a detached watcher would laugh) during the sad parts, but be deadly serious (pious, even) about the happy parts. That's the tone of my favorite authors/films, and that's the tone I wish to impose on my personal narrative.
(months later...)
After having watched the ending of 'Before Sunset,' I've a revision to make. We don't even live a full story. Even the snuffing out of my consciousness doesn't end what I think of as the plot of my life. In fact, its very unlikely that any of our deaths will coincide with any sense of closure. It'll probably be just like the end of this movie, just fading out while the narrative keeps going. It's maddening to consider this, but that's why I divide my life into many individual, overlapping stories - so I can get some closure. Its possible that my appetite for closure comes from watching/reading so many stories w/ beginnings and endings. Supposedly we spend more time in fictional universes, watching movies, reading novels, than anyone else in history, to correspond to the multiple lives we live (multiple marriages, multiple groups of friends, multiple "homes.")
Monday, March 07, 2005
Call me "gramps"
Just got involved in this new social networking site www.memetika.com. I'm glad to hear the word "meme" getting more mainstream use. But still, the site doesn't seem to do anything this site/friendster doesn't.
Searching the internet for someone who has the same interests as me just ain't cutting it. I guess its fun to know that most people who like the Sopranos don't like the Gilmore Girls, and that apparently no one has read or likes "The Moral Animal". I want some site that can connect me with someone who is thinking approximately what I'm thinking right...now! And we're not too far away from it.
But what then? Would I even want to talk to those people? I just never got into the whole chatting-w/-someone-you've-never-met-in-person. Could it really be that entertaining/pleasurable? God, I'm sounding like an old fogey, but seriously, I just want some sort of passive info (a movie, a book, an interview) or the physical presence of a conversation with someone. In other words, if I want info, I'll go to the pros, those who have studied making movies/writing/whatever and practiced it until they've become damn articulate. If I want social interaction, I'll talk to someone in person (hell, I don't even like phones all that much). I know in principle that the internet makes it easier to find like-minded people who would make better conversation-mates or, well, mates than we stumble across thru sheer chance in real life. I think with real life relationships, we have more incentive to meet people half-way, to alter our likes/dislikes. What we're after isn't someone similar to us necessarily. We're after people who care about us, and in real life, people adjust to those around them so that they can get/give this, so that they can be social.
These people who can lose themselves in the social fabric of the internet searching for someone more similar to them than those in close physical proximity - don't you think they'll end up with the same pleasures and problems as those who socialize w/o it? Perhaps I've been extrodinarily lucky in that I've found people offline whom I care deeply about, and those who are less lucky need online social networking. Or perhaps I'm just too damn old for this "internet" thing.
harumph
Searching the internet for someone who has the same interests as me just ain't cutting it. I guess its fun to know that most people who like the Sopranos don't like the Gilmore Girls, and that apparently no one has read or likes "The Moral Animal". I want some site that can connect me with someone who is thinking approximately what I'm thinking right...now! And we're not too far away from it.
But what then? Would I even want to talk to those people? I just never got into the whole chatting-w/-someone-you've-never-met-in-person. Could it really be that entertaining/pleasurable? God, I'm sounding like an old fogey, but seriously, I just want some sort of passive info (a movie, a book, an interview) or the physical presence of a conversation with someone. In other words, if I want info, I'll go to the pros, those who have studied making movies/writing/whatever and practiced it until they've become damn articulate. If I want social interaction, I'll talk to someone in person (hell, I don't even like phones all that much). I know in principle that the internet makes it easier to find like-minded people who would make better conversation-mates or, well, mates than we stumble across thru sheer chance in real life. I think with real life relationships, we have more incentive to meet people half-way, to alter our likes/dislikes. What we're after isn't someone similar to us necessarily. We're after people who care about us, and in real life, people adjust to those around them so that they can get/give this, so that they can be social.
These people who can lose themselves in the social fabric of the internet searching for someone more similar to them than those in close physical proximity - don't you think they'll end up with the same pleasures and problems as those who socialize w/o it? Perhaps I've been extrodinarily lucky in that I've found people offline whom I care deeply about, and those who are less lucky need online social networking. Or perhaps I'm just too damn old for this "internet" thing.
harumph
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Ow + blogging as local news
Still a bit enervated from last night, but not so much that I don't remember a thought I had about blogs yesterday.
there was some sort of a brou-ha-ha outside the library on campus around noon. I'd heard something about a campus conservative group, Texas-shaped cake, and counter protests - sketchy details at best. I rubber-necked for a minute or two, but didn't really get any new info. There was some dude from the campus paper there, trying to get info for a piece in tomorrow's paper. The thing is: I wanted to know what the hell was going on right then, and just asking people, "hey, what's going on?" was going to get me a lot of shrugged shoulders. I've gotten this expectation from reading online papers like NYTimes or cable news networks to just get immediate news. But there's no reason for any huge establishment to give a shit about our campus doings. That's where blogs step in.
Blogger should have some sort of feature where you can search for people who have blogs in your geographic area and get a sense of what public opinion is about a certain local event. Definately more practical than asking some dude next to you "what's going on?" (though arguably more anti-social).
there was some sort of a brou-ha-ha outside the library on campus around noon. I'd heard something about a campus conservative group, Texas-shaped cake, and counter protests - sketchy details at best. I rubber-necked for a minute or two, but didn't really get any new info. There was some dude from the campus paper there, trying to get info for a piece in tomorrow's paper. The thing is: I wanted to know what the hell was going on right then, and just asking people, "hey, what's going on?" was going to get me a lot of shrugged shoulders. I've gotten this expectation from reading online papers like NYTimes or cable news networks to just get immediate news. But there's no reason for any huge establishment to give a shit about our campus doings. That's where blogs step in.
Blogger should have some sort of feature where you can search for people who have blogs in your geographic area and get a sense of what public opinion is about a certain local event. Definately more practical than asking some dude next to you "what's going on?" (though arguably more anti-social).
Sunday, February 20, 2005
editing
Is the key to using blogs (or journals for that matter) to chronicle your life knowing how personal to get, how much of yourself you reveal? My mother told me that she has just finished writing her autobiography. If it were extremely personal, I don't think I would want to read it. Yet I would want it to be somewhat personal, or else it might just be very boring. You want there to be a voice, an opinionated voice, not just a record of events.
And I don't think I feel this way just b/c its my mother. I try to imagine what it would be like to read an autobio from someone living 150 years ago in Texas. If they went on about who they had a crush on, etc...well, maybe that would be interesting. Its not only sex life that has gotten left out of so much personal history over the centuries; its emotional life. So maybe you do want to leave in some of the personal stuff.
Ultimately, blogs are like any art, maybe even like any conversation you have - its not whether its personal or not that makes it of value. Its your ability to convey your conscious experience of life without being trapped inside your own head. All communication, like our consciousness, is editing - there are a billion experiences every instant. Our minds weed out the irrelevant information about the physical world (sound & light not audible/visible to humans). Artists/bloggers/conversationalists extend that process to their own experience, to the social world.
And I don't think I feel this way just b/c its my mother. I try to imagine what it would be like to read an autobio from someone living 150 years ago in Texas. If they went on about who they had a crush on, etc...well, maybe that would be interesting. Its not only sex life that has gotten left out of so much personal history over the centuries; its emotional life. So maybe you do want to leave in some of the personal stuff.
Ultimately, blogs are like any art, maybe even like any conversation you have - its not whether its personal or not that makes it of value. Its your ability to convey your conscious experience of life without being trapped inside your own head. All communication, like our consciousness, is editing - there are a billion experiences every instant. Our minds weed out the irrelevant information about the physical world (sound & light not audible/visible to humans). Artists/bloggers/conversationalists extend that process to their own experience, to the social world.
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