Netflix is planned mediocrity is planned obsolescence. Netflixification of the internet. We can’t “save” the “internet”. No one can “save” the world, no one can save anything. But we can accurately describe it so we know what where doing and can orient ourselves better.
A funny pattern I have noticed in my surveillance stats of your interactions with my posts:
One in four people will click on the email to read the post,
One in four people will click on a link to another thing in the post.
assuming this is a constant, and by doing a bit of numerology magic you could write a series of links which mathematically it would be impossible for anyone to ever read. Or you could be nice and make it so only one human being ever would. A message in a bottle for the internet age.
You have just described 90% of podcasts. Subscribe for the biting discussion of x, stay for the camaraderie of the hosts and the communion of similarly-minded listeners.
very very good, very much correct. art that glorifies god, i was going to email you about this exact subject, on how we can begin to approach it. most of my short stories are either some sort of critique, a "negation", a no saying, even if its completely hidden, even if theres a yes in there somewhere - or they are too vague, too narcissistic, too much "l'art pour l'art".
i think, and i say this tentatively, that we need to create art that is "play" or "dance" - effortless being, as you said - it requires a certain leap of faith, and its linked to the revelatory, it would be art that reveals how we live and how we could live - but not art with a plan, not a "philosophical novel" like dostoyevsky would write, it has to be light, it cannot be heavy. fundamentally, at the very bottom, this kind of art requires learning again how to forget - nietzsche talks of this, nietzsches child in zarathustra
Also, I forgot who it was that wrote about the driving model for all media going forward is the theme park. Whoever it was, did so unironically and with several tips for how ad execs could get in on the trend and turn their brands into digital theme parks too (by partnering with Roblox or Fortnite). I think the theme park goes beyond the digital, into the all-pervasive realm of our daydreams and nightmares.
Disney doesn't care about its individual movies or shows anymore, they are just, as Martin Scorsese accurately put it, "amusement park rides". The point is world-building, to create a fantasy that feels so real, we never want to leave. It's David Foster Wallace's vision of the "Infinite Jest" movie, which viewers find so entertaining they keep watching until they die, only Disney wants to keep monetizing, so while the movie "ends" in the theater, it plays on through every material surface possible outside it.
It's piped into our heads through endless Youtube clips over our meals, smartphone games during work breaks, podcasts while we work out, and Spotify playlists during our chores. You don't need a headset to experience VR, you can be simultaneously here driving an Uber and on Endor piloting the Millennium Falcon. You can be punching in data points while mentally punching out Hydra henchmen.
And when your day is over, you can fire up the Avengers game (which doesn't have to be good or even finished, it just has to deliver on the basic requirements of allowing you to do the shit you would be able to do alongside the characters you'd be able to do it with if you lived in the Marvel-verse), or get a fresh dose of narrative from The Mandalorian on Disney+.
Just like theme park rides, these "experiences" deliver the thrills but very little of the meaningful substance of the original works (I don't even mean Star Wars, but "Dune" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" from which George Lucas cribbed the visuals but discarded the ideas). Instead of pointing to something else, something higher as you say, it merely points back at itself. The Hindus would call this "maya", "that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal".
Perhaps this is another reason why we're so compelled to critique it. In addition to trying to fill in what would actually make it worthwhile to engage with by breaking it down and rebuilding it with our words, we are also just doing a version of what most bored suburban teens did during their summer breaks: Wandering the same tired Six Flags with their buddies while making snarky comments about the costumed goons, plastic backdrops, and overly-eager staff, trying to establish some semblance of a real identity outside the Matrix with what little subversion we can muster.
Netflix is planned mediocrity is planned obsolescence. Netflixification of the internet. We can’t “save” the “internet”. No one can “save” the world, no one can save anything. But we can accurately describe it so we know what where doing and can orient ourselves better.
A funny pattern I have noticed in my surveillance stats of your interactions with my posts:
One in four people will click on the email to read the post,
One in four people will click on a link to another thing in the post.
assuming this is a constant, and by doing a bit of numerology magic you could write a series of links which mathematically it would be impossible for anyone to ever read. Or you could be nice and make it so only one human being ever would. A message in a bottle for the internet age.
#yeah
You have just described 90% of podcasts. Subscribe for the biting discussion of x, stay for the camaraderie of the hosts and the communion of similarly-minded listeners.
very very good, very much correct. art that glorifies god, i was going to email you about this exact subject, on how we can begin to approach it. most of my short stories are either some sort of critique, a "negation", a no saying, even if its completely hidden, even if theres a yes in there somewhere - or they are too vague, too narcissistic, too much "l'art pour l'art".
i think, and i say this tentatively, that we need to create art that is "play" or "dance" - effortless being, as you said - it requires a certain leap of faith, and its linked to the revelatory, it would be art that reveals how we live and how we could live - but not art with a plan, not a "philosophical novel" like dostoyevsky would write, it has to be light, it cannot be heavy. fundamentally, at the very bottom, this kind of art requires learning again how to forget - nietzsche talks of this, nietzsches child in zarathustra
Also, I forgot who it was that wrote about the driving model for all media going forward is the theme park. Whoever it was, did so unironically and with several tips for how ad execs could get in on the trend and turn their brands into digital theme parks too (by partnering with Roblox or Fortnite). I think the theme park goes beyond the digital, into the all-pervasive realm of our daydreams and nightmares.
Disney doesn't care about its individual movies or shows anymore, they are just, as Martin Scorsese accurately put it, "amusement park rides". The point is world-building, to create a fantasy that feels so real, we never want to leave. It's David Foster Wallace's vision of the "Infinite Jest" movie, which viewers find so entertaining they keep watching until they die, only Disney wants to keep monetizing, so while the movie "ends" in the theater, it plays on through every material surface possible outside it.
It's piped into our heads through endless Youtube clips over our meals, smartphone games during work breaks, podcasts while we work out, and Spotify playlists during our chores. You don't need a headset to experience VR, you can be simultaneously here driving an Uber and on Endor piloting the Millennium Falcon. You can be punching in data points while mentally punching out Hydra henchmen.
And when your day is over, you can fire up the Avengers game (which doesn't have to be good or even finished, it just has to deliver on the basic requirements of allowing you to do the shit you would be able to do alongside the characters you'd be able to do it with if you lived in the Marvel-verse), or get a fresh dose of narrative from The Mandalorian on Disney+.
Just like theme park rides, these "experiences" deliver the thrills but very little of the meaningful substance of the original works (I don't even mean Star Wars, but "Dune" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" from which George Lucas cribbed the visuals but discarded the ideas). Instead of pointing to something else, something higher as you say, it merely points back at itself. The Hindus would call this "maya", "that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal".
Perhaps this is another reason why we're so compelled to critique it. In addition to trying to fill in what would actually make it worthwhile to engage with by breaking it down and rebuilding it with our words, we are also just doing a version of what most bored suburban teens did during their summer breaks: Wandering the same tired Six Flags with their buddies while making snarky comments about the costumed goons, plastic backdrops, and overly-eager staff, trying to establish some semblance of a real identity outside the Matrix with what little subversion we can muster.