On Web Culture

In some respects I should be a classic example of someone who is at the high-use end of online computer games. After all, I’m competitive, I adore rich, immersive stories & I find interacting with people online to be fascinating. When I was in high school I played a lot of computer games; I was the target market: male, white, geeky, introverted. A rite of passage perhaps.

And in fact I always thought I would play computer games, I just enjoyed them so much. It seemed to me I would be able to play computer games until I died. The companies would find ways to meet me in the middle, I was busy but there would always be time.

Strangely, maybe sadly, it hasn’t worked out that way. I don’t think it is a comment on the games themselves, because occasionally I’ll read about them or see footage of gameplay online and think “Wow, that looks awesome”. I’ve found it seems to be more how I want to spend my time. There are a lot of things we can do with our time and the idea of investing my hours in a game, for fun, actually ends up feeling really indulgent. I get no sense of accomplishment and the return on investment, if you will, is absurdly low.

It’s kind of bewildering. After all, I know perfectly well the enormous satisfaction of completing a computer game or winning an online match against international opponents. Often the level of strategy & intensity played out in these online battles is epic. Online gaming is a compelling personal experience – it is no wonder computer games are bigger business than motion pictures now. But yet, here I am, not playing games and I’m fine with it.

Why? Well, partly it is that there are other things I find more interesting & important. And another part of me seems to feel some relief at having done away with “wasting my time” on computer games. That social stigma associated with computers games is not something I have completely shaken yet. But mostly, I just don’t see the point. What is making computer games so important that I should prioritise hours of my time towards them over everything else?

Now, like any argument, it is fair to point out some of positive uses of computer games: professional training, exciting entertainment, stimulating experiences for young children (or aging minds), social experiences unhindered by gender, race, body, etc. I have friends who play online computer games as a way of hanging out with friends or as an alternative to TV. There are bound to be lots more examples.

But my central point can be drawn from looking at computer games as an alternative to TV. Just being an alternative doesn’t make it better. And like TV, a lot of online games have “hooks” for you to tune in next week. The next level, the next unlocked power, the tuning out of those other things that are harder, more difficult or make you think & feel things you don’t want to. Indeed, when I was younger computer games were a way for me to use up my free time in an extremely monopolistic fashion that seemed an end unto itself. Games were also a way to shut out the world & control it on my terms.

We live in a world that doesn’t look kindly on mistakes. It is hard sometimes to get back up or to ask for help. But we need to encourage the makers of computer game entertainment to ask the question of what their products should ultimately do: improve the way we are or provide synthetic anaesthesia. Our worth is in who we are & what we will be become. That will never be properly contained or measured by online entertainment.

Transcript:

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I’d advise you to go ahead, because I’m sure going to. In fact I’m gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I’m going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

(Keep reading the full transcript)

Ref: David Foster Wallace – Commencement Speech at Kenyon University

Every day the same dream
A short, existential game about alienation and refusal of labour from molleindustria.

The full-screen works best: http://www.molleindustria.org/everydaythesamedream/everydaythesamedream.html

Source: molleindustria.org

At different times in my life I have done jobs that have been hard to do. Thinking back now the hardest thing was having to do something I hated & being told that it wasn’t that bad and I would get used to it.

In retrospect those experiences were valuable. You learn a lot from that stuff. And I do think sometimes things are hard for a reason. But I remember then thinking that it would drive me mad if the rest of my life was going to be like that. It seemed to me then that work, what we do with our days work, would need to be meaningful. It would have to matter otherwise I would struggle with it.

I have my suspicions where that idea originates. It is interesting to me that from pretty young I was interested in what people did for a job, what they did with their lives & I hoped that I would do something fulfilling.

For me, the hardest times at the worst jobs are touchstones of sorts. When I see people losing it in the supermarket car park after work on Friday I wonder if their jobs are like those I suffered through. But they’ve been doing it for years & years. How much is it reasonable for a person to go through?

It seems to me that things shouldn’t have to be like that. That kind of awfulness is not fated or destined. It is like when they say on TV “…and the markets bounced back today after consumers embraced the long weekend”. That’s not consumers, that’s me, that’s you, that’s us! And when we buy stuff we make decisions, choices.

Recently I read something about how we can agonise & preach and be very vocal about the merits of a certain type of cellphone or mp3 player but we go strangely silent on the bigger topics. Well, that makes sense, how do you talk about those topics in everyday conversation? But I wish we would. Somehow I think if we were better connected to people around us, and talked to them, we would find it harder to shaft the people we don’t know or haven’t met.

I just want to acknowledge that the Spice Girls reforming and playing to sold out shows goes well beyond beating a dead horse. This is kind of like hybrid cars: look, here’s something that is a bad thing dressed up to feel good in new marketing! New marketing! Oh man, now that makes it suddenly all better.

That the Spice Girls are playing a sold out 17 night run of shows at the O2 Arena in London speaks to the indoctrination of many young girls during the Spice Girls first run as living Barbie Dolls regurgitating manufactured production-line pop on demand. It was crap then and it is crap now. They are not important, useful or nostalgic. May they harvest the masses for their gullible dollars one last time and cease to exist.

Seeing the Spice Girls in their push-up bras singing about “girl power” is far from empowerment and much more about selling out all over again a generation of women to their right to liberation.

Dear Friend,

The ballot has come in and I’m sorry, your number did not come up. That means you have not won, do not try again, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Recent surveys have suggested customers feel a sense of detachment from the Company when receiving these letters and we have tried to remedy this by supplying the popular phrase: Life’s A Bitch Ain’t It. We hope this improves your state of being and provides some positive emotions at this time.

That said, we ask you refrain from entering again and to ensure this have issued a standard 30-day cease and desist against your estate. Surveys indicate you should refer to the popular phrase Life’s A Bitch Ain’t It and if this does not improve your view of the Company we recommend the following popular phrase: Build A Bridge And Get Over It.

A number of customers have responded well to this phrase.

Please realise the Company is not a relational entity per say and as such is unable to respond to your direct correspondence outside of normal channels on issues within classes 4a to 4g. In this circumstance your number has not come up and as such your criteria is applicable. Your circumstance is categorised:

Class 4b

There are a number of reasons you have not been successful in this instance:
– the numbers were not good
– you were unavailable at our time of calling
– we require a personal connection as filed through Forms 19, 20 and 27. This process may have been incomplete (Form 20 can be filed later)
– anathema

The Company has stated customers outside of the accepted number range must comply with the terms accepted at the beginning of your trial period. Please note at this time refunds are not available.

Thank you for your business.

wishing won’t make it so

I found this in the files from last year in November:

Last night was a fusion of Pulp Fiction, Guitar Hero and the throb of recent surgery. I woke up in the middle of the night somehow confused I was going to get shot/killed/die, that I had been wounded and that my wide-open wardrobe was a gate to a dark void.

I must have lain there for about 5 minutes, head spinning, trying to work out why I needed to be playing Guitar Hero, why I was convinced I was going to get shot and why I hurt in so many places…my toe, my shoulder, my back? I didn’t even get operated on my back…why the…?

Unfortunately I can’t recall events of the witching hour with great clarity so the exact reasons for me being convinced I was in serious trouble will remain a mystery. It is interesting though how real pain segues into dreams and is then explained…my toe was throbbing because it had been blown off by John Travolta.

Pretty soon you’ll be an old bastard too

Source: CoffeeIceCream

Newmarket is the richest vein of despair we have in Auckland. It doesn’t matter the time of day or my frame of mind, it gets under my skin and makes me feel queasy. Was it something I ate? While in fact all Newmarket should be is a collection of shops sitting in the shadow of the motorway and down the hill from the Auckland Museum, it is an oily slide that pools outside Supre. A slick shopping precinct you climb out of with a pair of faded hipster jeans between your teeth.

Source: markwp