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Last month, Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) wrote an article for the New Yorker, discussing the role of social media in social activism, concluding that the social media “revolution”, as it were, is actually counterproductive with regards to actual revolution, or at least any lasting change.

I agree with Gladwell, based on my own personal experience with “activism”, or at least political dissent online. There are countless Facebook groups, blogs, and tweeters that I have followed who are in line with my personal politics, and yet none of them encourage me to really DO anything. At best I’ll sign a petition or write a Congressman.

Those passive forms of activism allow me to feel like I’m doing ~something~ without really committing, and not just because I’m lazy or disinterested, but because no physical initiatives ever seem to emerge from these groups. This is especially true of the Left – and by that I mean the real Left, not self-proclaimed “liberals”, who, incidentally, seem far more active.

It’s pretty clear that without any sort of formal leadership or organizational structure, that there will never be any sort of revolution, because that which keeps the status quo in place is a highly organized and well-oiled machine decades in the making.  A rowdy band of misfits, as well-intentioned or self-righteous and indignant as they can be from the comfort of their living rooms or offices, really aren’t doing much of anything to change anything.

Mind you, I count myself amongst those who are doing nothing, and I wish that wasn’t the case.

This is not to say that there are not people who are truly active, but that they go largely unnoticed by the general public, seen as a nuisance, or perhaps as asking for too much.  People said the same thing about the Civil Rights Movement, too.  And in the generations since, we’ve been increasingly conditioned to accept the status quo.

There has been a sense of powerlessness, mitigated to some extent by surges of political activity every two years, and even that is largely ineffective due to the tyranny of the two-party system.  Social media, though, is the new placebo, satisfying the desire to do at least something about all the things we know to be wrong in the world, without committing bodily or any real expectations of making a difference.

I haven’t been blogging on a regular basis lately because just using the internet opens the floodgates to all sorts of infuriating things going on in the world.  So I’ve been playing video games, writing fiction, and watching various TV shows – to provide myself a temporary (always only temporary) respite from the burden of being “aware”.  Aware of what?  Well, the list below is of 20 things going on in the world that are pissing me off, making me sad, frustrated, or feeling hopeless.  A mere 20 reasons for escapism out of hundreds.  In no ranking order:

1. BP CEO saying that the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is relatively tiny compared to the size of the ocean. By that logic, someone could argue that the over a million people killed in a war built on a false pretext is tiny compared to the 6 billion people in the world.  Oh, wait…
2. SB 1070 – more popularly known as the “Arizona Immigration bill”
3. Arizona banning ethnic studies
4. Texas conservatives working to revise history along Biblical/American exceptionalist/racist lines in textbooks
5. Corporations authorized to buy U.S. elections after the Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission case
6. The surge of people “tweeting” and “microblogging” about nonsense while remaining dormant on things that matter
7. People wasting their time talking about Jay-Z is a devil-worshiping Freemason.  Even if he is, who cares? There are bigger things to worry about.
8. Republicans and Democrats both screwing the public through bankrupt policy, while continuing to trick people into thinking there’s any substantive difference between them.
9. The fact that legally, BP may only be obligated to pay no more than $75 million in damages, which doesn’t even begin to cover it, and that they’re fighting even that.  You want to know what’s “tiny”?  $75 million compared to the hundreds of billions^PDF that BP makes every year
10. Open racism coming back in style
11. The mainstream media continuing to report on sensationalist bullshit, rather than covering the stuff that really matters – the corporate version of #6
12. Omar al-Bashir “winning” the election in Sudan, in spite of being convicted of war crimes and genocide by the U.N.
13. People chasing conspiracy theories, while doing nothing about evil acts being committed every day out in the open
14. How perfectly the “divide and conquer” social strategy is continuing to work
15. All this talk of Iran having nuclear weapons, while no one says anything to Israel
16. The betrayed promise of “change” from President Obama
17. How the people around me don’t know and don’t seem to care about what’s going on in the world
18. Facebook’s new privacy policy violations
19. Obama authorizing the targeted killing of a U.S. Citizen, setting a dangerous precedent
20. How people are pawns of their respective political parties, rather than thinking critically as individuals

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play some Torchlight, as an alternative to shooting myself in the head…

This was a statement made by famed movie critic Roger Ebert.

And it affirms something to which I’ve long attested:

…the film critic’s pathetic lot – to forever claw and scratch for recognition by other film critics, since no one else – namely those other film students who went on to actually make films – gives a damn.

What is art?

This question is one that has been debated perhaps since the beginning of human history – indeed I would venture a guess that even the cave painters Ebert mentions in his post argued the validity of those works, unaware as to how they would inform historians of the social context in which they were created.  It is only at the modern heights of arrogance that could one claim to be able to answer this age-old question with any certainty.  And it is hardly possible to be any more arrogant than making a universal truth claim, let alone one expected to hold for eternity. The whole thing is laughable.

I have argued in the past that video games are the ultimate form of expression, and what is art if not expression?  Indeed video games are a convergence of art from just about every medium – audio, visual, literary – and their social impact is ever-increasing.  Ebert makes his statement by observing video footage of a few games offered up as art, already prepared to deny the possibility.  Aside from the sheer fallacy of denying art as a form of expression, there is also the matter of his evaluation not being made from the proper standpoint.  As I argued in the above-linked essay, what sets video games apart from film, television, music, books, and other mediums is their interactivity.

That one thing [that sets video games apart from other media] is interactivity. You can rip a page out of a book in frustration as a story takes an unfavorable turn, or you can yell your lungs out at movie screen as the stupid teenage girl wanders down the dark hallway alone towards the lurking killer, but chances are that you’re not going to change anything. In a video game, however, a person is given a measure of control over the characters and environment presented.

To evaluate any video game without playing it is as dubious as evaluating a piece of music by only reading the lyrics or reading the sheet music, or evaluating the merits of a film based on – insert laughter here – a critic’s review. (more…)

Someone – not naming any names – created a Facebook account for conservative political pundit Michelle Malkin. Within no time at all, the account amassed hundreds of friends, countless comments, and “Michelle’s” inbox was flooded with messages from people who actually thought “she” might actually care about what they had to say.

The purpose was not to antagonize or slander Malkin herself – although she is deserving of every attack leveled at her – but to gain some insight into how run-of-the-mill conservatives think, and the kinds of conversations they have amongst themselves.

In a rather hilarious twist, “Michelle” posted a status message about how quickly people will jump on one bandwagon or another, if only someone uses the right buzz words. In no time at all, the facebook followers rallied behind “her”, blissfully unaware that “she” was talking about them.

Time will tell how many of the followers will recognize that they’ve been deceived.  For now, the experiment continues…

Another Twitter Success Story

I ordered Qwest internet service on Monday, 1/11.  I was told at that time that it would take 3 business days for the order to be completed.  3 days in itself is too long to wait for new service.  I have had the internet regularly for the past 10 years and never have I had to wait so long for new service.  Cox Communications, Verizon, Comcast, AllTel, and Cavalier Telecom all were able to set up service the next day.  As anyone who uses the internet on the verge of excess will tell you, 3 days is a LONG time to wait.

But fine.  The tech was scheduled to arrive between 8am and 12pm. He called around 8:30 to let us know that he would arrive between 10 and 12.  Come 12:15 we haven’t heard anything, so we call him back and he tells us that the work was already done and that he forgot to call us back to inform us.  Minor mistake, it seemed. (more…)

A Twitter Success Story

On Christmas my girlfriend gave me an iPhone – my first – and imagine my excitement. Until two days later when I dropped it on the carpet in an art gallery and the screen cracked. I was pissed, naturally, but not devastated, because the phone had been purchased with Best Buy’s Black Tie Protection Plan.

It was the second iPhone my girlfriend purchased in a month, and like she did the first time, she expressed an interest in the protection plan, because she had enrolled in it for multiple items in the past (such as the two flat screens we bought from BB in August). The BB representative gave her all of the documentation and went through the “recommendation” checklist, also writing down that she would be getting the Black Tie protection. At no time was it mentioned that there were different levels of coverage – particularly that accidental damage – the one we’d be most interested in since the standard warranty covers most other things – wasn’t included in the standard plan. (more…)

Why is it that cases of Attention Deficit [Hyperactivity] Disorder are increasing dramatically with each passing year? Given that there are no clearly identifiable genetic causes, we must assume that the reasons behind it are social. Since diagnoses of ADHD are not more prevalent in any particular setting, be it cultural or socioeconomic, it is reasonable to suggest that the increase in diagnoses corresponds to some larger social shift.

My hypothesis is that ADHD is not a disorder at all, but one manifestation of a shift in global consciousness. I am not suggesting anything metaphysical here, rather that the proliferation of technology – particularly that which allows access to information and/or stimulation – has dramatically changed human behavior and interaction.

That the increasing prevalence of ADHD is most visible amongst the youth population only reinforces this possibility, as children have not merely been acclimated to this new technological climate, but are being born into it. A correlation has already been drawn between the mass proliferation of television and the increased need for immediate gratification. Before television, or even radio, the only way to acquire information privately was to read, which for anyone takes considerably longer than receiving the same information from electronic media. If one becomes accustomed to acquiring and accessing information at high speeds, they will have little patience for slower content delivery methods.

This shift from delayed to immediate gratification can occur in a short span of time. Consider the ease and complacency with which we once surfed the internet using a dial-up connection. Slow as it may have been, it allowed us access to a great deal of information much faster than reading a book, and faster still than searching a library for the particular books containing the information we sought. For those of us who have moved on from dial-up to DSL or Cable or even T-1 internet connections, going back to dial-up is unconscionable. We might even feel more inclined to read a book than to wait minutes for a single web page to load. (more…)

I have this sort of lazy interest in transhumanism – which in short is the set of ideas about improving humanity through all sorts of scientific enhancements, such as genetic engineering and technological augmentation. When I say lazy interest I mean that I’ve been thinking about it in passing, like the plot of a science fiction novel, not investigating it like an academic. Some questions immediately came to mind – and I’m sure they’re already being discussed between advocates and detractors. Would a transhuman world would create a society stratified by the different levels to which people were willing to “augment” themselves? We already have stratification on the basis of things such as race, wealth, or level education.

Would one’s willingness to completely “transhumanize” their body give them excessive advantages over those who found it unpalatable? And who would have the most access to these augmentations if not – by default – the wealthy? Would it only widen the socioeconomic gap? It occurs to me, also, that these very ideas of transhumanism are probably only seriously discussed amongst those who have the luxury to even consider such options – the social, economic, or academic elite who are completely out of touch with the rest of humanity. But maybe I’m wrong.