THE MACHINE IS MANKIND'S MADNESS

Fake friend accumulator and glorified address book Facebook (also social networking, where I guess you network your socials. Mine is a lvl 73 Venusaur. LET'S DANCE.) has been on my mind lately, if only because it's become the latest useless, flailing appendage of my online persona (insert self-aware pause here). I scarcely use it anymore, save to upload embarrassing pictures of myself, red-faced and four sheets to the wind, at some dive bar with my disreputable pals; this phenomena is, in itself, worth analysis, though maybe later. I've got complaining to do. And did you know that 30 Rock is watchable, like, for free? And legal? THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD OR AT LEAST REALLY REALLY DISTRACTING.

Instant online communication, (OH LIZ LEMON YOU'RE SO FUNNY) whether it be through our own tawdry AIMing back and forth (Keep an eye open for the glorious return of chat transcript Fridays!) or the glorified note-passing that comes with Facebook and Gmail, is typically grounded in real life communication. At least anecdotally, all of the people I know solely from the internets have very little influence on my lifestyle - my fabulous lifestyle. Contrariwise, even with people that I know temporarily or, say, from High School, I tend to at least humor. The aggregation of social capital may be modified by online mediums, but it is still, gratefully, grounded in real life communication.

Which can be distressing for a young blog out on the mean streets of Technorati Town (the meanest part of Internet City), because with you, our reader, our influence is, at best, only third or fourth place in how you schedule your lives. The rapid access to communications from all around the world mean that someone from Zimbabwe can become a rabid devotee of beardo and ur-nerd Warren Ellis as easily as the next skinny pale kid (kaff kaff Zachary kaff). Social capital (OR IS IT CAPITULATION?) has become a global thing, then, when one weirdo can influence another from around the world! It's a mixed bag, of course - scientists (and their science) have seen that this becomes a normalizing force in small doses, i.e. that sure, students will do well in the areas of their focus in areas with high social capital, but also that deviance and creative endeavors will suffer. Culture spreads, and Ellis is suddenly effing everywhere.

Speaking of which (science, not Ellis), one prominent Scientician of the sociomological subcategory (IT'S IN THE WIKIPEDIA AM TOO LAZY TO LINK WAAAH WAAAH) stated his belief that this social capital is, in the United States, decreasing. As a whole. The ramifications for this are strange - does it mean that influence is more tangible than previously thought? Is it being disseminated about the rest of the world on strange trade winds of Myspace and Facebook? Or are we just becoming a nation of sociopaths, unable and unwilling to consider our fellow man as anything other than a walking meat puppet?

I can personally hope not. Scorn is the appropriate response to anyone who has 300 facebook friends but still has loneliness. They are treating online personae as cosmetics, a way of appearing healthier than they really are. It's not so much that the tangible measure of our friendliness is decreasing, says I, but rather a sign that the convenience of easy online contact has made us socially lazy (in addition to physically and mentally. Michelle Obama speaks sad truths sometimes.), and that has, in turn, made us kind of crazy. Crazy enough to say that we have 500 friends around the world when OMG wouldn't that make you insane? I can barely stand talking to three people per day, much less more than a dozen.

I am certain that more severe authors would make mention of the castration of modern mankind, but it's nothing so severe. Like so many things, we simply need to work at it, to do silly things, to like or like to hate (in a productive way, like how I feel for Zachary!) someone, and find other people who feel the same. While it is certainly callow to quantify your relationships with other people, on the other hand, it's naive (and arrogant) to presume that people will like you simply because of the your own sparkling personality; a happy balance in any relationship must be reached between giving and taking, as with all things. And while social networking websites are a nice and easy (and riddled with STDS DON'T BE FOOLED) way to meet new people, they still do not replace the quality work out there in the trenches of actually saying hello to strangers, and the giddy rush that goes along with it.

The internet is a marvelous tool, but it is far from a foundation upon which lives should be built. Go forth, then, gentle reader, and at least be more aware of balancing your life between sitting in front of a glowing screen and sitting before another human being. I mean, come on, I know we're pretty awesome here, but resisting the siren song will make you a more interesting person.

The Alchemy of Madness

I was going to make a post here.

A post about dreams, aspirations. New apartments and friend's cats. A new computer! A child born into this world, full of potential - 200 gigs to be filled up with my videogames and art and music.

BUT NO.

That child was born, yes, and I type onto it right now. Except that it is infected with a terrible virus called Windows Vista.

IMAGINE IF YOU WILL that you are a person. Your name is windows! You have to go down a flight of stairs. The first time your head collides with the stairs below you, producing a meaty thump, you become Windows 3.1. Your body has too much momentum! Your own weight, your own stupid inertia, push your face along the step, shredding your face. Next step! Windows 95! Blood and beaten, you bring your hands about, trying to slow your descent, succeeding not in slowing your momentum, but in ripping the flesh from your hands and forearms. Windows XP! You're still okay! But then your arms collapse from the searing pain of being ripped apart, collapsing beneath your helpless, gamine form, and propelling you, face forward into the next step. Another meaty thunk. The descent continues, unabated, but you are deeply concussed and bleeding.

WELCOME TO WINDOWS VISTA.

Another apt metaphor - you are debating with some kind of functioning-handicapped autistic jester in the dark ages for the keys to the cell in which you are trapped. You say something clever, something any rational person would acknowledge, but all that they do is shake their foolscap and recite a limerick. THIS CONTINUES FOR THREE DAYS UNTIL YOU DIE. And then they chant riddles at your corpse.

I don't need this! I had a dream! There were airships and whores and trains! And a floating island kingdom, of which I was prince! But now, all of that is bitter ash!

Now, it may just be because Dark Side of the Moon is playing at the behest of some verbose Baristas in the coffee shawp where I EVEN NOW slurp my Red Rose Tea, but Linux seems like a good idea. Does this make any sense? Only hippies and those weird kids who get bar codes tattoo'd on the backs of their necks use Linux!

Whatever.

I'm looking for apartments on the Pittsburgh Craigslist postings, and they are daily, almost hourly spammed by some company who posts in all capital letters. At first it was annoying, and then I just ignored it. But now it seems like a good idea! I see these advertisements, and I'm like, WOW THAT IS THE BEST DEAL I'D BETTER HURRY!!!!

I distinctly remember having a life before the internet. I think I filled it with cartoons.

Deleriously long post, AHOY!

I've had a lot of time to naval gaze lately, if only because finding out that the cool kids are all hanging out roughly a block from where I'm living has driven me into a misanthropic spiral from which there may be no return. Omg Jay Mccarroll! Do you think he saw me? Omg!

Anyway, I realize that my last post (about bums, and not the kind that you sit on... I mean, not the kind that you throw money at so they go away... I mean, not the kind that are made of you ass) was a little grim, but it was a pretty grim time. I've had a decent sum of time to naval gaze since then, and I've wasted most of it thinking about Blogging as a cultural phenomenon. I posted a lengthy rough draft of my ideas on my dusty old Livejournal some days ago, and I've realized that 95% of what I think is entirely different from worthwhile deduction, so whatevs. Anyway. One of the reasons why I like Elevennames is because it is, at least nominally, of more professional quality than livejournal. We have a title! Dammit! And neat backgrounds! In the end, I suppose I'm really just trying to justify some kind of imagined gentrification of the effing internets. Like the myspace vs. Facebook conflict that's older than the internet (roughly two months ago), the distinction is entirely arbitrary, yet I cannot deny the sheer potency of it's subconscious tidal pull. I am driven to think that one is better than the other, because my brain is, on a very fundamental level, broken.

Or, if you'd like, it's because I'm an all-or-nothing 'Merican.

Anyway. I basically approve of blogs, provided they are the children of effort and desire, and not just something that information is thrown at every so often. Note that these two things can look remarkably similar sometimes. But blogging is nothing more than publishing a Zine for the lazy - there's nothing more inherintly shameful or Harmful To Culture about the activity than there is in, say, posting that you want to sell your couch on myspace. Or that you are looking for someone to do nasty things to your orifices. Whatever floats your particularly sticky boat. The thing that old people don't like about it is the sheer rapidity that it takes culture to. Instant accessibility to any and everyone means that things accelerate at a truly ludicrous pace, and that, like all truly doomed temporal paradox experiments*, the slower paced participants are going to be passed by the faster ones.

*Wherein a number of creatures, initially the same species, eventually evolve into entirely different species based upon their personal predilections, including one that wants nothing more than TO HUNT MAN.

This is not really an apt metaphor. My own mandibles have woefully underdeveloped venomous pouches, so it is all entirely theoretical. Actually, this was a dream I had last night, and it had vampires in it, too! So wait, what?

In the end, it's not a matter of evolution at all - like all things* it's just an illusion, a matter of perception. To say that culture has a speed is to imply that it's something that can be measured, or that one can consciously see culture falling apart, when the entire proposition is basically madness. The only reason pissy Victorians didn't spend all their time posting images of themselves at Jenny's 21st birthday bash is because of a lack of resources.

*So sayeth Buddha.

It's not a matter, in other words, of us being the maintainers of society at large - rather, it's about our participation in it. To say that it's simply materialistic and shallow and that you don't want to participate in it is basically admitting that this thing of ours, our cosha nostra of the Halo set, has become something that you don't identify yourself with. Hence, it's something that, while you are intrinsically a part of it, you refuse to do anything to help it out, other than, say, level a bundle of pointlessly litiginous lawsuits or protest some chubby, overly pale fellows who make games about guns and aliens.

The natural (and sometimes good! Though often not!) narratives that accompany these games of alien ge-no-ciide are handily ignored, as are the blogs which encompass the full range of human emotion and experience, dealing with all of our pettiness and nobility, our wit and our grief. Of course no one wants to read On The Road anymore - it's superfluous (didn't I already use that word?) to our understanding. There are a hundred different author who interpret events in different ways. Certainly, Kerouac is to be praised for being at least a decent writer, but the parts about only liking the mad ones, the people burn through the sky like brilliant white spiders etc. etc.? Poignant poetry, but who's he kidding? There's no one around anymore who spends equal amounts of time in the library and in jail - it's a dead breed, like the Tazmanian devil, hunted to death by our parent's generation. Just like gentleman explorers or vikings, society changes.

And wearing suits and swing dancing every night does not make you evocative of a more refined age, it makes you look like a jerk.

Blogging is, in one form or another, incorporated into society, in the same way we've adapted ourselves to mass transit and television cameras - it's a young art, as is everything that we do as part of society, and they need work and study before their objective value can be determined, and what's successful is discernable from what's pointless and trite. But until then, it's a great rush, yes?