Won’t Get Fooled Again
The worst thing you can ever do to a cynic is prove him right. Cynics are really just secret romantics that don’t want to get hurt again.
Introducing The Memetic Footprint As A Concept
Today, when all ideas, whatever their worth, are freely available on the Internet, we ourselves have to be very savvy about weighing up divergent opinions, about which sources we trust and what who we choose to believe. Because the world is now so interconnected we have a situation where a YouTube video made in the Middle East can inspire someone across the other side of the world to stab their MP. Ideas, good, bad and indifferent, can travel further and faster than ever before. To a greater or lesser degree, we all need to be aware of our own “memetic footprint”; as well as developing the tools to deal with other’s ideas, we have to also take responsibility for the ideas we ourselves pump out. That goes double for designers and writers! As I say on the back of the book, “In the new democracy of ideas, cultural power is devolving to the creative individual. Soon, we will all have the means to create. We just have to decide whether it be art or bombs”.
- Rian Hughes, designer and writer of Cult-Ure, the book he references above and which I am eagerly awaiting to have delivered by Amazon as you read these very words.
I Hope You Don’t Either
Dan Harmon, creator of Community, a show I love very much, has been blogging about the break-up of his relationship. And that’s not really what I want to write about, because it’s his and I don’t know him or his ex and it’s none of my business, but. But in one post, he wrote the following line, which I love unconditionally:
Then again, I never know what I’m doing. I hope you don’t either.
I don’t know if I love it because of the reading of the last line that says “I hope you don’t know what you’re doing either,” the reading that says “I hope you don’t know what I’m doing,” or the fact that it can be both. Years and years ago – a decade, maybe? – I found a quote along the lines of “It feels so good to be lost,” and this is the same thing: Not only being okay with not knowing what you’re doing, but embracing that.
“The Opponents Of The System Are As Much A Function of The System As Its Defenders”
More Grant Morrison quoting:
Before you set out to destroy “the System”, however, first remember that we made it and in our own interests. We sustain it constantly, either in agreement, with our support, or in opposition with our dissent. The opponents of the System are as much a function of the System as its defenders. TheSystem is a ghost assembled in the minds of human beings operating within “the System.” It is avirtual parent we made to look after us. We made it very big and difficult to see in its entirety and we serve it and nourish it every day. Are there ever any years when no doctors or policemen are born? Why do artists rarely want to become policemen?
For every McDonald’s you blow up, “they” will build two. Instead of slapping a wad of Semtex between the Happy Meals and the plastic tray, work your way up through the ranks, take over the board of Directors and turn the company into an international laughing stock… What if “The System” isn’t our enemy after all? What if instead it’s our playground?
From here. I have always liked the “make friends with them until they beg for mercy” school of thought in terms of dealing with conflict, I have to admit. I am the enemy, etc.
“Maybe It’s Okay, Maybe You’re Just Part Of It All”
I think the co-opting is part of the process, of course. It’s not a fight, as I kept on saying. There is no fight here. It’s just a big organism with lots of little bits trying to make sense of what the fuck it’s been doing for the last 65,000 years. It’s an exchange, the whole thing’s an exchange… As soon as [everyone] saw the Matrix… they wanted to take drugs and they wanted bald heads and they wanted to fight insect monsters. They wanted our stuff, and for me that was the end of the counterculture. That was the moment when it was “okay, we’re now fucking the enemy, isn’t this interesting?”. There’s a lot things that go wrong with that, but the whole thing is about learning and changing.
and
Honest, I keep coming to: Why is it so fuckin’ Punk Rock to think it might be okay, that we might not be bastards, and everything might be okay? [Optimism is] not just unfashionable, it’s almost, like, heretical. You feel like you’ve said really bad things when you say: “maybe it’s okay, maybe you’re just part of it all, maybe you’re just too small and too short-lived to make sense of this.”
There’s something I love about both of these quotes from this interview with Grant Morrison.
“I Found Out What The Actual End Of The Rope Feels Like”
For the large part of this episode, I was in this room alone with Megan [Ganz]. I remember that experience very well because I was at my emotional wits’ end. I had been told numerous times before that, as early as episode seven, that I was at my wits’ end. People kept telling me to stop. They would say, “You’re at the end of your rope.” And I’d say, “Why are you saying that? That seems like a weird thing to wish on someone. I’m really happy. I love my show.” And they’d say, “No, no, you are exhausted, you need to cool out.” And I’d go home from those meetings thinking, “I think that they just wish that I wasn’t me.”
And it’s funny, because on that episode, I found out what the actual end of the rope feels like, because there is definitely no point in both seasons where I’ve been so terrified of my own failure. I’ve never been able to taste it like that. It was a combination of being that far behind schedule—there was no breaking the story, having a draft, table-reading, getting notes—and the episode obviously wouldn’t have existed if that had had to happen, because that process was designed to stop weird things from happening. And for good reason. There was too much risk and not enough reward. There is money being made and a business being transacted on every other network, and here we are on this little island of “Who gives a fuck?” But at some point, it doesn’t even matter. “Stop overthinking it; stop being weird. What’s the worst thing that could happen to your numbers if you go home and sleep a little bit?”
- Community creator Dan Harmon, talking about the “Critical Film Studies” episode. I don’t know why, but I responded very strongly to the idea of being “so terrified of my own failure” as a description of being at the end of your rope. The whole four part interview with the Onion is well worth a read, though, even if you don’t like the series (Although, if you don’t like Community, what is wrong with you?).
It’s Like Talking
I have to admit, I love this quote from writer Joan Didion:
Well, I don’t really understand blogging. It seems like writing, except quicker. I mean, I’m not actually looking for that instant feedback… It makes me uncomfortable. It’s an entirely different impulse, I guess. It’s like talking.
It at once touches on what I love and what I dislike about blogging; the immediacy and the instant feedback. Yes, both belong in both categories.
Oh, Internet
It sounds ridiculous – and more than a little pretentious – to talk about blog journalism actually making someone depressed, but between the Marie Claire “Fat people make me nauseous” blog post and Gawker’s appalling “My one night stand with Christine O’Donnell except we never had sex and I’m anonymous and ewww pubes” post, I’m just… sad. David Brothers said it best on Twitter earlier today:
Yeah. I’ve been in a capital M Mood for a week or so, and this is just a kick applied directly to my junk. This is what they want?
It depresses me that both posts gets shitloads of views, rewarding the sites for running them. It depresses me that the anonymous idiot who’s trading on a potentially entirely fictional story about his non-existent one night stand with a political figure will have been paid a ridiculous amount of money for his story (“low four figures,” apparently), and that that’ll be held up as an example of “good journalism” by Gawker at some point, just as the iPhone story was (Oh, alright; it’s held up as “brilliant packaging“). It depresses me that “This is what they want” can get applied to both the audience and the people providing the content equally, as well, because controversy = hits = success. And, as someone who works in blog journalism, as crazy and uneven and lazy and everything as it may be, the fact that that one fact remains King when it comes to all professional blogging is just… depressing. Mumble, gripe, moan, repeat.