"The hip, transparent and social media-loving Obama administration is showing its analog roots."
posted by Douglas McDaniel at 6:24 AM
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
De fine dishonor:
Artisticself-promotion
on Facebook
Trying to self-publish oneself is pretty much like trying to overcome the Tower, in a "nut sell" nutshell universe for the fleet of the damned. We are ahead by a century, the Tragically Hip once sang, and the disappointment is getting us down. But take heart, my friend. The nature of facey spacey is ever changing. A thing of nature, it is.
At first, it was high school sweethearts and stuff coming out of the closet ... and then a bunch of stupid apps to save the rain forest with numerous kinds of chirps basically saying hello. Then came the original prosumers, the purists, who had some kind of bullshit idea of this intranet as some kind of personal Zion, where self-promotion wasn't, hmmmm, PC ...
But the tendency here is toward those who speak from the tips of their fingers ... or those who simply lust ... mostly a combination of all things creative ...
And so I've been collecting my little list here ... a small town, if you will, of perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 people, if you count all of the other social media I use ... with the idea in mind that I was both seeking out the bleeding hearts and artists, but also acting like a bar bouncer letting the hot chicks in because, hey, that also brings the boys into the club, too.
Does anybody really believe that someone with more than 200-300 friends on Facebook is going to flag you like some cheap referee because you tried to link up with them with a random friend request? I mean, that's a good sized crowd at a night club, right?
What is most annoying to me, right now, are those who rail against Zeus, the overseer of FB, because they are wasting their time ... pissing in the wind, basically, of natural change ... those people need a license to go on the internet to begin with ... we arrive here naked as Adam and Lilith and Eve ... might as well go with who we are, develop our artistic avatars as unique voices, and let the idiots fall off the vine and rot in their private little corners if they don't get it ...
If I don't piss at least ten people off a day, anyway, what kind of an artist am I, anyway?
Due to the 5,000 friend ceiling, I finally learned that getting there, the road itself, is where the treasure is ... once you hit that point, you need to cull back people to keep growing, evolving your readership. Now I'm starting to look at all of these people who don't participate, or worse, those who are simply trying to piggyback on my paradigm ... just as I did to others on my own road, not realizing so much ... since I am a mad self-promoter ... any writer who isn't never understood anyone from Lord Byron to Norman Mailer to Hunter S. Thompson to Edward Abbey ... or even Stephen Colbert ... O shit, what was I saying? ... And Ronald Reagan? ...
Right ... anyway: To shut down the inner voice seems to be the secret mission of the media-maddened machine mind of mankind ... not that there's anything wrong with being maddened by the machine mind of Man, mind you ... makes about as much sense as anything else ....
~
For we are a freewheeling
impetuous army of draft dodgers,
poetic marchers, dreamers and archers,
who tempt the coin with one hand,
beg with the other; a speeding seed,
a galactic weed, full of lies
and sacred music ...
posted by Douglas McDaniel at 3:24 AM
Monday, February 07, 2011
- Here are today's stats from yesterday's Tweeter Bowl, sponsored by Big Sexy Beer
- Compiled and Completely Lacking in Any Editing as Also Written in Completely the Wrong Disorder by Our Static ... hmmm ... Tician ... Douglas McDaniel ... Who Was Never Near the Game Only Watching it From His Anxious Easy Chair Somewhere in Mythville, America Dot Calm ...
- Many elevens in the synchronicity tonight: With the mathematics in the score, I think I'll just wait for the most terrible beauty to be born
- @KeithOlbermann Blessed be thy jokester
- @KeithOlbermann They sure did bash liberals quietly in the disinfomercials
- Ziggyhood robbed from the rich, stole from the goods
- O, is the game still on?
- @Mythville @TheBradBlog @Editilla @DavidCornDC Teflon Ron ... Iran-Contra, arms for Iraq ... he who suffered mortal blow, flown to Miami ...
- @TheBradBlog @Editilla @DavidCornDC Yep, gotta do something about that deification of Reagan B.S., good call
- O glass beer bottles from hell ... I thought we were supposed to be investing in aluminum ... who changed the play!
- @DCdebbie No fair
- @thecreativepenn @namenick I endorse that message
- @youarefiredboss World covered in snow is my reason
- If there was a Cardinals defense on the field, I wouldn't be Googling up a pixilated singing Don Meredith hologram right now
- Yes Wisconsin, there is a Satan ... I mean, Santa!
- Refs are starting to enjoy their 15 minutes of fame
- Who is Mike P.?, the Fox legal expert?
- @ZimblerMiller Language is a virus ... sayeth Laurie Anderson
- I've had affordable housing in Telluride with less space than this pizza box
- The Wicked Witch of the Midwest just asked why it was always her side that gets mushed?
- Told pizza guy that if he melted down the nickels he got for an extra tip, he made two cents more, then asked if he had a offshore account.
- @DavidCornDC That's what they are supposed to do during the week, maybe etch it on the bumper, as well
- How many people in Detroit can really afford a Chrysler, anyway?
- Simon X ... to meet the Wizard of Oz ... in celebrity death match!
- Meanwhile, Glenn Beck is checking for history lessons online at the University of Phoenix
- I just ordered a pizza from Paul Revere Raider Committee for Public Safety's Delivery Network
- Boy, Beethoven is hip ... Romantic era, as in revolutionary era chic ... Paine and Blake and Dr. Joseph Warren are turning in their graves
- @daveweigel @MCHammer I did the Disney version of "Scarecrow" for my alternative halftime show ... http://facebook.com/douglas.mcdaniel
- @daveweigel @MCHammer Missed U2. But hey, it was an amazing show
- I'm Gumby Dammit, and I approved this message
- Pittsburgh is really too cool of a city to have a victory riot, anyway ... I mean, they act like they've already been there, right?
- Good News: Folks, we got a game now!
- New from Troy: Big disparity in a time of disposession
- Glee this!
- Finally, I learn something I wished I didn't need to forget ASAP!
- Make note ... send resume to Daily.com
- I guess Glenn Beck's days really are numbered
- Hmmm, Chaatter.com has elephants and demo donkies dancing
- Wow, was fascist line dancing in the early 1990s prophetic or what?
- @Jason Orwell was right
- @officialhelene It flew the building for warmer climbs when they did the America as a Big Bag of Microchips before the game even started ...
- @JessicaLHansen Are you in a corner somewhere?
- Okay, get that guy in the game!
- At least the Black Eyed Peas give hope to everyone, like myself, who can't actually sing
- I miss U2 right now
- Alternative halftime show -- SCARECROW of ROMNEY MARSH http://soc.li/WToBhrM
- Alternative halftime show -- SCARECROW of ROMNEY MARSH http://t.co/niaY8uj via @youtube
- Check this video out -- SCARECROW of ROMNEY MARSH http://t.co/niaY8uj via @youtube
- Fox is a purveyor of more media violence ... but let's quote Lou Reed: "No age is reason is upon us, this is the age of video violence."
- Wow Howie Is America's Mixed Up Metaphor Artiste!
- How will these vehicles field ice ace conditions in North America: hilarious
- Gumby Damit seems to be injured on the field
- And the little people, standing outside the castle walls: Is that white smoke, or black smoke, leaking through the rooftop?
- The medium is the message
- OK, slapstick violence against liberals on Fox
- Wow, four games suspended for Big Ben ... and they said justice is just a human conceit
- Ty Cobb, the earliest of its investors, and one of the most psycho ballplayers ever, used to carry around wads of Coke stock in his suitcase
- Coca Cola used to have cocaine in it
- @harveyshepard I was thinking New Mexico could have an NFL team called the Aliens
- David Bowie sells luxury vehicles so sweetly, still ... ch, ch, ch ... no choo choo to choose in Mythville ... http://mythville.blogspot.com
- Sometimes words have two meanings, indeed, such as Big Troy Aikman on this: "And Roethelissburger gets out of trouble!"
- Check out "Big Sexy Beer" by Bards of Mythville - http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_4470245
- That was a terrible pass by Big Ben
- Good news ... Less chance for a victory riot in Pittsburgh is good for America
- And there's George "Crimes Against Humanity" Bush II supporting the troops while sitting in the luxury box with John Madden: priceless
- Mordor to come
- This is your mind on Ruppert Murdoch
- The Medium Gets the Message, Dos: African-American Girl Clocks blondie babe with a can of Pepsi and the black couple runs away ... gee whiz!
- Let's drown the planet with Big Sexy Beer and then dress the corpse in a Big Bag of Chips ... yes, the medium gets the message ... Go Bards!
- Nobody needs to drive that fast anywhere but a NASCAR track in America
- Explains a lot
- Vince Lombardi! A beast of the 1960s era, if you asking me ... winning was the only thing ... Really?
- Neon!
- @MightyCasey Now, it, weep, defines creepy
- Okay, it's a game, not a first printing of the Magna Carta
- Don't drive while your friends are using their hand-held devices
- @nansen Not as bad as I was hoping for, though
- And then, the "don't fuck with us" flyover
- Kinda pitchy there
- Very throaty
- Goz, Cars, Trucks, Cannon, Drums ... I feel like I've been drafted by the Ford Motor Co.
- Hey, New York Times writers on tweeting away too ... imagine that
- @benkunz They are trying to get into Walmart with long lines right now
- For Walter Payton, winning wasn't the only thing
- Walter Payton was a cool guy
- @benkunz Vampire culture sucks
- All new House ... one of the worse, full of passionate intensity
- More apocalyptic movie shit!
- Selling trucks now ... is that the voice of Dennis Leary, selling out?
- Priceless
- Ah, the whore of Babylon of the week will sing the anthem
- O, the humanity!
- Fear and yes, loathing ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_on_the_Campaign_Trail_%2772
- American Gladiators of Ruuuuuuoooooaaaaam!
- The Wicked Witch is laughing her head off right now!
- Big Ben ... with police escort
- Sayeth Hunter S. Thompson ... http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/funnyquotes/a/huntersthompson.htm
- Meantime ... see why vampire culture sucks at http://mythville.blogspot.com
- No further layoffs in Mythville unplanned, until the fire marshal hits the ceiling diong again!
- Bout time in Cairo, lunchwise
- Celebrating Super Bowl freezend by being a personal Nocarmercial ...
- Today's E-Book: "23 Roads to Mythville," by Douglas McDaniel ... http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/23-roads-to-mythville/10639843
posted by Douglas McDaniel at 6:09 AM
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
In networked society, where a national pundit's demise on a network feels like an assassination attempt, a coup, or some other kind of lavish conspiracy, the departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC is trending on the web like a percolating master plan to which the players, and they only, have the decoder ring.
For example, is Keith Olbermann going into exile on Twitter? It would seem so. His activities over the weekend on Twitter.com include a few posts, but the promises to make sense of it all are being withheld, one might presume, so he can unpack his furniture and personal goods first on his very own private media island. Then, he'll marmelate on it a bit. Share tidbits. Milk it for what it's worth. That's smart. It's media savvy.
Then, once the buzz over the president's speech dies down a little, he might be doing this new form of pirate radio with more teasing on the edges about the drama by, say, this weekend?
That's the e-world we live in. His viewership nation may seem a bit fringe to you ... but it still ranges to the tens of thousands, if not millions. About as large as, say, Arizona or Iowa, in terms of the number of its viewerzens, even without the cable network plug in.
While President Barack Obama's State of the Nation address tonight may eventually carry the news cycle by midnight tonight, Olbermann and the media corpse (oops, I mean corps) are percolating about the drama mine, sleeplessly. In fact, far more interest is going into Olbermann's demise at MSNBC than what the president might have to say, even as the planetary insomnia turned and turned. The fired commentator's name, not Obama's pending memo to the world, was the trending search word on Yahoo.com early this a.m.
As a top search engine topic, Olbermann was at No. 1, and searches on obesity and sleep disorders closely followed, along with the sending of flowers, depression for a very dark January and so on ... Obama ranked a rather cold seventh or eighth behind those. Perhaps if Obama made national addresses five times a week on cable, the president might have a similar rating. But that would feel a bit like Iraq under Saddam, current Iran or Maoist China, and nobody wants that ... Except for perhaps, Glenn Beck. For himself, that is.
Around midnight, the Christian Science Monitor mused on it all ... Read Here.
Maybe if everybody already didn't know what they were going to say about the president's speech tonight before it has even been delivered, there might not be so much otherbuzzergeist on such distractions. But the word on e-street on Keith O., as a kind of opening act, well, that's what makes the national media horse race racier, doesn't it ...
~
Douglas McDaniel
Mythville On Demand
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/0125/Keith-Olbermann-unanswered-questions-may-be-coming-via-Twitter
posted by Douglas McDaniel at 2:51 PM
Sunday, January 23, 2011
And now for a few notes on trying to find a Fellini film in dumbed-down Mythoamericapotamia
Walking through the Family Video stores in southeastern Iowa, we notice a curious lack of something. There seems to be a narrowing down of the port of access to certain kinds of films. And if you look at what's going on in media outlets across the land, you'll notice the same things: If media were a stock market then, vampire films and movies are Bull market, so-called Liberal media, increasingly ... da Bears!
We could blame Comcast or G.E. for the firing of Keith Olbermann. We could blame Michael Moore for pissing off too many people. We could blame Fox News, the Bushes, the Cheneys. But mostly, we should blame ourselves for failing to seek out more electrifying entertainments than that which is more easy to digest, more easy to be blown up. For vampire movies that, quite frankly, suck ...
This isn't just a gripe about Iowa trip. It's happening all over Mythomericapotamia ... where a film about Cedar Rpaids is actually made in Michigan, and Orwell is right, always right ... and so on ...
In Phoenix, Arizona, outside the Hollywood Video Store recently in another annonomall in the Valley of the Shunned, a young brunette girl with a slightly goth look but intelligent eyes behind Sarah Palin specks was weeping. Stumbling up to her, I noticed she was leaning on the wall, smoking violently. "It's so sad," she said. "They are closing on Friday."
In the time since then I have done some small part to keep the remaining feeds of knowledge in general alive in northeast Phoenix. The local library is now closed. (Sheriff Joe needed the county funding, no doubt, to chase away all of the illegals trying to obtain citizenship paperwork in the place: It was a library with two twin tower meanies as library ladies, certainly a reflection of the kind of civic face you might meet in many corners of Arizona). But I fed the Red Box. And I fed the corporate video store. They both nourished me then, lacking the library. But the walls are closing in. Indeed, the entire social contract of consumer culture is collapsing before our eyes along Cave Creek Road.
In the week or so since the local strip mall has lost the Hollywood Video, the local postal outlet has closed. In addition, the bucket for cigarettes is missing in front of Albertsons. The parking lot is now more vacant, and thus, the homeless who sleep there in their vehicles overnight ... more obvious.
I first heard about the closing of the store when, while doing everything I could do to stay on top of the new angst by renting Michael Moore's new DVD, "Capitalism: A Love Story," I rushed down to Hollywood Video at the strip mall near my home in north Phoenix, only to find a new bulldozer-of-a-gal working at the counter. She was on the phone, apparently unimpressed there were customers standing in line. This seemed strange, considering even the most common standards for customer service in America. But she was at work, apparently, performing another completely over the counter action: She was preparing the gateway to closing the video store down.
In addition to this, agony of agonies, the store at Cave Creek and Union Hills, a key unit in the marvel of suburban convenience for many years now, in terms of being the so-called local picture show, had decided to choose the week after Oscar week to stop ordering new films. So Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: a Love Story," was not on the shelves. Nor were many of the movies that had just been celebrated as international shake-yer-moneymakers. Certainly, a lost opportunity for Hollywood Video.
Nevertheless, the woman at the counter was no longer engaged in the act of building a business, yes, even community that day. The place was going out of commission in a month or so. Like that famous old title, "The Last Picture Show," the Hollywood Video store was about to become a vacated retail space in brown-beige land. Despite having entered the social contract of actually being one of the key cogs for a fairly cohesive strip mall landscape, Hollywood is now, literally, both in the local and grander sense, just another piece of post-corporate retail wreckage.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the local community library hadn't closed down due to budget restraints for Maricopa County.
The mere act of tactile browsing of actual media bits seems to be drying in the sun. The ports for information are narrowing. The corporations are pulling out, and especially on the media side, drying out. The fascist architecture, as Bruce Cockburn might put it, is turning to ruins. And just as Moore's film might describe (I later rented the DVD at a Red Box, which offered absolutely no opinion on the film as I paid for it, something I'm really starting to miss), Phoenix is becoming, literally, another Flint, Mich.
All over the Valley, where such corporations as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video had convinced everyone that pasting their little stores all over the compromised plain would be good for everyone, their windows are going blank. They entered into the social contract, so to speak, to entertain everyone that way. But now that Banks That Bought America and the Bush boys have sucked the middle class dry, as Moore pretty much illustrates in his shockingly sad satire and documentary, the corporate nation-state is dissolving as well as each jauntily painted little plastic consumer hut goes dark.
More bad news for anyone on the wrong side of the digital divide, I suppose, but one wonders what's to become of the suburbs as such media hubs as Borders Books and Music and Barnes & Noble continue to crash and burn, leaving empty big box shells across the land ... like a bunch of dead locust husks waiting for a new idea to take.
Without funding. Yes, you can be president of the United Tastes, as long as it doesn't take money. At any rate, believe Moore's "Love Story." His timing of events, how George Bush ended his regime by allowing the banking industry to raid the treasury in a moment of panic before the election of 2008, rings true. As far as the end of the love story with "Hollywood," feels more like a break up to me.
Instead, to the ring of this vampire's tune ... I bidded my time. Watched for signs. Once, there were bees at the local bank money box, and yellow tape around the device lodged into the wall, since nature had invaded. That's because you see, of all the things I found unique to Hollywod in the past year, it's special interest section was the more fascinatingly rented. That's because in the mid-to-late period of the Bush administration, an uncanny kind of mockumentary filmmaking, and flat out penetrating team documentary investigative journalism, all flourished.
So I waited as the prices dropped, continuing to inquire. Finally, on the last day, I bought shelves of this post-911 fodder so that, at least in my corner of the world, no one, if inquisitive enough and still having electricity freely available to them for DVD play devices, will ever forget this age of video violence, when the tail wagged the dog, the cows went oink, the pigs went moo and some very bright mice committed their minute to minute roars to film.
In the time since then I have done some small part to keep the remaining feeds of knowledge in general alive in northeast Phoenix. The local library is now closed. (Sheriff Joe needed the county funding, no doubt, to chase away all of the illegals trying to obtain citizenship paperwork in the place: It was a library with two twin tower meanies as library ladies, certainly a reflection of the kind of civic face you might meet in many corners of Arizona). But I fed the Red Box. And I fed the corporate video store. They both nourished me then, lacking the library. But the walls are closing in. Indeed, the entire social contract of consumer culture is collapsing before our eyes along Cave Creek Road.
In the week or so since the local strip mall has lost the Hollywood Video, the local postal outlet has closed. In addition, the bucket for cigarettes is missing in front of Albertsons. The parking lot is now more vacant, and thus, the homeless who sleep there in their vehicles overnight ... more obvious.
I first heard about the closing of the store when, while doing everything I could do to stay on top of the new angst by renting Michael Moore's new DVD, "Capitalism: A Love Story," I rushed down to Hollywood Video at the strip mall near my home in north Phoenix, only to find a new bulldozer-of-a-gal working at the counter. She was on the phone, apparently unimpressed there were customers standing in line. This seemed strange, considering even the most common standards for customer service in America. But she was at work, apparently, performing another completely over the counter action: She was preparing the gateway to closing the video store down.
In addition to this, agony of agonies, the store at Cave Creek and Union Hills, a key unit in the marvel of suburban convenience for many years now, in terms of being the so-called local picture show, had decided to choose the week after Oscar week to stop ordering new films. So Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: a Love Story," was not on the shelves. Nor were many of the movies that had just been celebrated as international shake-yer-moneymakers. Certainly, a lost opportunity for Hollywood Video.
Nevertheless, the woman at the counter was no longer engaged in the act of building a business, yes, even community that day. The place was going out of commission in a month or so. Like that famous old title, "The Last Picture Show," the Hollywood Video store was about to become a vacated retail space in brown-beige land. Despite having entered the social contract of actually being one of the key cogs for a fairly cohesive strip mall landscape, Hollywood is now, literally, both in the local and grander sense, just another piece of post-corporate retail wreckage.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the local community library hadn't closed down due to budget restraints for Maricopa County.
The mere act of tactile browsing of actual media bits seems to be drying in the sun. The ports for information are narrowing. The corporations are pulling out, and especially on the media side, drying out. The fascist architecture, as Bruce Cockburn might put it, is turning to ruins. And just as Moore's film might describe (I later rented the DVD at a Red Box, which offered absolutely no opinion on the film as I paid for it, something I'm really starting to miss), Phoenix is becoming, literally, another Flint, Mich.
All over the Valley, where such corporations as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video had convinced everyone that pasting their little stores all over the compromised plain would be good for everyone, their windows are going blank. They entered into the social contract, so to speak, to entertain everyone that way. But now that Banks That Bought America and the Bush boys have sucked the middle class dry, as Moore pretty much illustrates in his shockingly sad satire and documentary, the corporate nation-state is dissolving as well as each jauntily painted little plastic consumer hut goes dark.
More bad news for anyone on the wrong side of the digital divide, I suppose, but one wonders what's to become of the suburbs as such media hubs as Borders Books and Music and Barnes & Noble continue to crash and burn, leaving empty big box shells across the land ... like a bunch of dead locust husks waiting for a new idea to take.
Without funding. Yes, you can be president of the United Tastes, as long as it doesn't take money. At any rate, believe Moore's "Love Story." His timing of events, how George Bush ended his regime by allowing the banking industry to raid the treasury in a moment of panic before the election of 2008, rings true. As far as the end of the love story with "Hollywood," feels more like a break up to me.
Instead, to the ring of this vampire's tune ... I bidded my time. Watched for signs. Once, there were bees at the local bank money box, and yellow tape around the device lodged into the wall, since nature had invaded. That's because you see, of all the things I found unique to Hollywod in the past year, it's special interest section was the more fascinatingly rented. That's because in the mid-to-late period of the Bush administration, an uncanny kind of mockumentary filmmaking, and flat out penetrating team documentary investigative journalism, all flourished.
So I waited as the prices dropped, continuing to inquire. Finally, on the last day, I bought shelves of this post-911 fodder so that, at least in my corner of the world, no one, if inquisitive enough and still having electricity freely available to them for DVD play devices, will ever forget this age of video violence, when the tail wagged the dog, the cows went oink, the pigs went moo and some very bright mice committed their minute to minute roars to film.
posted by Douglas McDaniel at 11:54 AM
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Let Glenn Beck Slink Away from This Somehow ...We in the media criticism business, who often analyze events off of the top of the roofs of our dirty little mouths that roar, are all twin engines of the same double-edged word-swords ... I did the same thing myself right after the Tucson Massacre ... even if I still believe I was right about the suicide cultists are who are pouring gas on this fire, this failure by Fox News, and the Republican plutocratic right, to live in good faith, in term of the American social contract to simply "let us be" ... But my sense of the new call for civility in social discourse, which always should have been there to begin with, shouldn't be allowed to disarm the media, too, which still needs to do its job of speaking truth to power .. or, in this case, when misplaced power is actually this guy Beck, a kingpin, like Limbaugh, of hate speech ... They need to be put in a ring, to duke it out, or just sit looking at a mirror to listen to their own voices for a while ...
~ Douglas McDaniel
http://mythville.blogspot.com
posted by Douglas McDaniel at 10:20 AM
Sunday, January 16, 2011
'The Social Network'
Hot type, cold blood and greed
on the singed, if golden globe
In reviewing the new DVD of the brilliant, fast-paced film, "The Social Network," one can dispense with the actual activities in the movie, other than to say, yeah, it's fine, it's a great film, but more importantly, it's a fine effort in the art of inter- (and outer-) contextuality. Also, you could simply write a review of Facebook life, since it's about that, too. Also, you could simply just say that Facebook is America, the weird and sick and sad and saintly and generally freewheeling and just plain helpful face of it, and also be right on about all, as if there were any difference. But at first, I'd have to critique Facebook itself as the only internet worth being on, has been for a long time, because it's about life and death and all of our masks, and the world's, too, in all of the social media out there: and also this, it's a virtual see-and-say toy.
Anyway, before my idea of the neighborhood called Facebook is forever changed by the reviewing of this movie, I thought I'd make a point or two about important, really really serious things I need to say Facebook and, therefore, modern problems, as well as the challenge to exist in networked life, in general. Such as, boy, you really get an idea of what Marshall McLuhan, the famed media critic, was intending when he wrote, in many, many different ways, that we can't understand our world until we understand our media better ... on how, as an extension of ourselves, we all need to get better educated on the whole electronic trip, or we will be swallowed whole by the same.
Facebook, like all social media functions, are our masks, unveiled, unleashed, driving crazy mad or way too slow, on the information superhighway of both innocence and experience. So then, when we use it, we are completely naked to everyone, or, with a little more effort, insanely hidden from view. We need to get wise, maybe even get licenses, training even, before we go out and use it. Because it's like fire, a Promethean thing, and we better understand it better, or else. We may be victimized by sticking our necks out to give a glimpse of our lives, and most certainly give everyone our personal information, when we should have known better, or, doing just that better. Not sure yet.
When I get that figured out, I'll let you know.
Also, sorry if anybody was hurt in the making of my social media empire, my little fleet of the damned, all of you former high school buddies, lost loves, poets, artists, bleeding hearts, all of those who say they "like" or "dislike" me, who posted on my wall ... as I posted on theirs ... and so on. After that, the mind tends to wander. The mind is your father's Buick on Fox News. The mind is your child getting into trouble, or, simply learning how to type and co-exist in the global village. On Facebook, the mind becomes and extension, into cyberspace, of the promised land where no guns explode, and there's nothing to get hung about. No, that still happens in real spacey spacey, folks. Love is shared, as it exists, in the land of touching things, in the land of flesh, as opposed to dreams (see Facebook), after you have shed all of your post-traumatic stress disorder anxieties on whatever you believe socially, politically or spiritually, artfully or clumsily, in feminine or masculine in hiding of, or screaming out, about all or the above, in that sharp difference between what you do online, and what you do in the real world.
Are you weeping yet? I'm not. See: That's Facebook. And the film did not make me cry. It made me cringe. Because the story about the people who came up with the idea, a bunch of horny males in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is pretty much America, too. If viewed in its upper strata, that is. Nope. It's not. And that's America, too. It's the gun-toting militia and it's the lady in Dubuque who thinks women should be able to preach more often in churches than they have previously been allowed. It's a rant, I want my bottle, toy. But it will never actually pour out milk. It's a way to say, please play with my kitty so I can get bonus points, it's a way to push your rock band through a total stranger's ears. It's a way to give you a glimpse of some cool cat's photos of Nepal, or, your best shot at showing everyone how living way too well is the best revenge of all. So they can fully resent you. Hate you. Then, flame you, in four words or less. Maybe one or two, even.
Are we weeping yet? I'm not. That's because, well, after thinking about all of the millions of dollars I might have been crawling to if I had learned of this history of Facebook, subjective and somewhat tainted as it is, in the eye of the filmmaker, I didn't get to see it in the theater, instead. Therefore, I am behind a very fast wave, indeed. I missed the boat. The real-time cycle has washed over me. The guys who came up with the idea. Incredibly brilliant, originally fun-loving blokes, spoiled as they already were, have either eaten each other alive, or, cashed out, to the tune of about $25 billion. All because, hey, you didn't study hard enough in school because, hey, while they were slinging all of this code, you were on Facebook, or, whatever it was called back then, or, you were out in the weather, or, out watching football in your shorts, while these geeks were slinging such said code.
And now, dear reader, the wave is passing over and under you. And while you, dear reader, may or not believe in the importance of social media in your lives, believe me, the moon's rotation around the earth doesn't need to be believed-in, either, to have a mega serious impact on our little lives.
Are you weeping, yet? I'm not. So let me digress. Maybe even rest. Let me tell you the story of the brain damaged girl from high school who contacted me and said, hey, I remember you. We "talked" on chat. We chatted, for a while. And we came to an understanding. She understood me. I understood her. And then we went on with our lives with a better understanding: She of me; I of her, and the whole earth turned a little bit more, hmmm, what is the operative term this week, "Kumbya," with a better grasp of how it actually spins.
I'm weeping, perhaps, just a little. Punch that in as "like," in the parlance of social media. What we often don't like is found in the ranting of little Marcie Marble of Miami Beach, Florida (if that's where she really lives), who tells us to join in her crisis call to keep Facebook from dissuading she, her (quote) "friends" from posting pornographic photos of herself and her dog; asking her fans (readers, if they can read more than a line or two), to join in her cause against the machine run by the guys, for better or worse, featured in the film, "The Social Network."
The film, "The Social Network," is as hip and cool, as hot and visionary, as the subject matter. It turns on a dime. It's difficult to follow. It's horrifying. It's amazing. It's everyone else wondering this: It could have been me making that thing go viral. Or, wow, I sure am glad I decided to stay outside and train horses, instead, for a living.
But if horses could type, their communications would no doubt be a kind of psychic Facebook. Also due to such tools, the world spins faster, or seems to, people talk faster, or seem to. And if we all stare at each other in shock and shame, in this place called the global village, this little spinning web where we can dial up a friend or two in Paris or Nigeria or London or Dubuque, then so be it. A better understanding of each other arcs us all toward liberty and better understanding. No bombs go off there, and in the land of the suffering and the forgotten and the typically daily lonely, it's one fine place to be.
And if the puppeters on this electronic highway of greed can be thanked, by a slick and snarkey film such as "The Social Network" seems to indicate, the mind, once a midget turned inside a cave wondering about all of those horrible sounds out in the world indicating large and vicious creatures trying to eat them alive, well, folks, with such tools, in the hands of the right people, with the right kind of healthy ideas in mind: Well, those folks, yeah, right on, thanks for your suffering, your madness; and thank you for your greed; you have given us some brilliant space, a city of light and dark, where we can all safely comprehend our mutual loneliness, our goodness, or desperate need to be heard, our own vision of ourselves, so that we can be more apparently captured, better hearded and heard. The next big thing? Who knows? Ask yourself. When you travel, where does your mind go?
posted by Douglas McDaniel at 10:00 AM
About Me
- Name: Douglas McDaniel
- Location: Meteor Crater, Arizona
mythville@gmail.com
http://myspace.com/mythville
http://lulu.com/mythville
Mythville Book Store
Previous Posts
- Somewhere Over the Technophobe Need a News Story N...
- De fine dishonor: Artistic self-promotion on F...
- Here are today's stat...
- In networked society, where a national pundi...
- And now for a few notes on trying to find a...
- Let Glenn Beck Slink Away from This Somehow ...Fo...
- 'The Social Network' Hot type, cold blood and ...
- With no apologies to Marshall McLuhan...
- Bees at the Bank, Hollywood Hung, Let Me Sing of...
Archives
- 12/30/2001 - 01/06/2002
- 08/29/2004 - 09/05/2004
- 09/12/2004 - 09/19/2004
- 02/19/2006 - 02/26/2006
- 02/26/2006 - 03/05/2006
- 03/05/2006 - 03/12/2006
- 04/30/2006 - 05/07/2006
- 07/02/2006 - 07/09/2006
- 09/10/2006 - 09/17/2006
- 10/08/2006 - 10/15/2006
- 06/29/2008 - 07/06/2008
- 02/21/2010 - 02/28/2010
- 02/28/2010 - 03/07/2010
- 03/07/2010 - 03/14/2010
- 03/14/2010 - 03/21/2010
- 03/21/2010 - 03/28/2010
- 03/28/2010 - 04/04/2010
- 04/25/2010 - 05/02/2010
- 05/16/2010 - 05/23/2010
- 01/09/2011 - 01/16/2011
- 01/16/2011 - 01/23/2011
- 01/23/2011 - 01/30/2011
- 02/06/2011 - 02/13/2011
- 04/24/2011 - 05/01/2011
ShareThis
Get 'Forty Days of Fire, Forty Days of Rain,' a living novel by Douglas McDaniel
William Blake in Cyberspace
Amazon.com
23 Roads to Mythville
Amazon.com
The Road to Mythville
Amazon.com
Announcing the release of "The Mythville Series"
Mythville: One
Godz, Cars & Cannon Experiential author Douglas McDaniel launches himself into a real-life search for the so-called Da Vinci code, driving into the networked thickets of American life, looking for signs of myth and romance in the age of automotive machines. Read moreMythville: Dos
Human Search Engine The journey continues as the quest for myth in an age of information overload leads to online life as an editor for Access Internet Magazine. A story about all human search engines as they chase the ghost in the machine. Read moreMythville: Tres
William Blake in Cyberspace Experiential author Douglas McDaniel takes on the visionary art and poetry of William Blake, comparing an otherworldly worldview to that revolutionary, romantic era to our own wild, wired, mythic world. Read moreThe Bards of Mythville
The Kachina's Son Poems about the Four Corners area written while author Douglas McDaniel was living in Telluride, Colorado. Read moreIpswich at War A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, poet and essayist Douglas McDaniel moved to Ipswich, on the North Shore of Massachusetts. A collection of poems from that period of fear and anxiety, as well as the polemic essay, "Media Arts and War." Read more
The Road to Mythville A collection of poems on the new millennium in America, drawing from decade of bouncing across the country as a journalist and Kerouac-style poet, from the Southwestern deserts to the shores of New England and back again. Read more
