Life as a Succession of Tweets

Okay, okay, so maybe we're headed down a road toward mindless, self-obsessed lives where every event is reduced to words and camera angles...

(Or tweets)

...Every moment imagined through the lens of a cinematographer...

(Or through your Facebook Newsfeed)

...Every funny or sad remark scribbled down for sale at the first opportunity...

(Which present themselves often, since you have both Twitter and Facebook Mobile on your Blackberry or iPhone)

...A world Socrates couldn't imagine, where people would examine their lives, but only in terms of movie and paperback potential. Where a story no longer follows as a result of an experience. Now the experience happens in order to generate a story. Sort of like when you suggest: 'Lets not but say we did.' The story--the product you can sell--becomes more important than the actual event.

These excerpts are pulled from Chuck Palahniuk's (Fight Club) collection of true stories Stranger than Fiction, specifically from the article "You Are Here." He's cast his lens on the hopeful masses at the Midwest Writers Conference (or Writers of Southern California Conference or the Georgia State Writers Conference) trying to hawk off their painful/inspiring stories to book publishers-slash-movie producers. This was the 1990s' brand of narcissism.

Now we have Twitter. As easy as it was back then to produce a "best of" NFL highlights of your life, "organizing and making all that flotsam and jetsam make sense," now it's even easier.

The last five years of your life (assuming you were an early-adopter) have been chronologically sorted for you on Facebook--you can scroll through the photos like a researcher flipping through reams of microfilm. You can look back on your bygone youth, and sigh with a bittersweet mix of nostalgic longing ("Besides, all our best adventures seem to be behind us.")

Everyone else can too. In a few minutes, I can keep pressing "next" until I've digested your entire life story, 1,000 words at a time. Bam! I know you as fast as it takes to scan your "About Me" section ("...loves Pulp Fiction and Winston Churchill quotes--me too!")

But not so fast! Recall that everything here has been packaged for the marketplace. Yes, this is not a profile page of 21-year-old John Doe, it is John Doe™. If John is savvy, he's framed his page to achieve a desired brand image, with maximum market penetration. If John is really savvy, he knows that pictures make the cyber-man. If John is really really savvy, he knows that it never happened if its not snapped and uploaded by his peer paparazzi the next day. So what does John Doe do?

Now the experience happens in order to generate a story.

John consciously pushes for that optimal crazy-sexy-cool moment, captured with impeccable timing (or luck) by a Sony Cyber-shot®. And that moment, that experience, is transformed into a profile picture. It is a highlight. It is a hot commodity now in the Economy of Attention. It was the whole purpose of the experience in the first place. Will it go viral? Will John get his 15 seconds of fame (15 minutes being a tad bit ambitious in the age of 140-word character limits).

If the ploy is successful, John will get the attention he craves. To what end? Perhaps in the beginning it was to enhance his actual, flesh-and-blood social life. These days, though, its an end in itself. Why get laid when all you need is to have everyone think you're getting laid? These days, one's social life apotheosizes to the level of Facebook hyperreality, or reality by proxy.

Hyperreality tricks consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation, and endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance. It is the simulation of something which never really existed. - Jean Baudrillard

Facebook is all appearance, a fast-food social life. No matter how many Facebook status updates, wall posts, messages, pokes, comments, or counter-comments you ingest, you aren't sustained. You don't get that essential holistic effect achieved by a good lunchtime conversation, or a hug, (or actually getting laid).

Twittering then is fast-food self-expression. Doubtless, each medium has its own elegant forms of mastery, and the inguistic economy of the "tweet" no doubt challenges the writer (viz haikus). However, the sheer volume and ease of Twitter publishing cheapens the output. Even worse, the medium is invading our everyday speech and thought.

When people start to think and communicate in texts and tweets over exchange and expression, well... it will be the sort of revolution that won't be televised, but it will be archived (on Ashburn- and Santa Clara-based internet servers).

Romantic Comedies: Porn for Women

I've been saying this for years:

"Romantic Comedies are Making Kids Miserable"

I will address the narrative fallacies of the romantic comedy genre, but first let me first shortly examine its male equivalent--pornography (slightly NSFW)...

Young men, from early adolescence on, are socialized for years on a steady diet of pornography, rendered easily accessible today via the internet. The imagery and archetypal mythology of pornography is tied inextricably to the male's sexuality, through years of Pavlovian conditioning. Each exposure is rewarded with orgasm, just as the experimental chimp is rewarded with banana when a certain button is hit. This, over time, forges robust connection between the pleasure-impulse and the particular semiotics of pornographic film. This must obviously color young mens' impressions of their female companions and of their sexuality, with predictable results.

The (often-cretinous) male lead in a porn plot is rapaciously pursued by one of the Cum-Craving Sluts! The sex act is decontextualized, and rendered as a predictable given, once an appealing young woman-object enters the orbit of the male lead (and by projection, the viewer). Erotic display, foreplay, and oral sex are rendered primarily for his benefit, and theatrical orgasmic gesticulations will erupt immediately from the woman-object without any obvious connection to actual pleasure or orgasms experienced by her. Her role is to project signals of the process of orgasm with suitable duration and intensity for him to achieve the event of his own orgasm. The sexual solipsism is breached only by occasional encouragements mechanically projected by the woman-object (usually along the lines of "Oh yeah, f*ck me harder!"). Since the characters usually enter the scene as strangers, and leave as such, there is little, if any room, for mutual sexual communication and exploration. Nor is this desirable.

Focus is given at the climactic moment to the male orgasm, emphasized by the visual emphasis of the "cumshot." Most often, orgasm is experienced by the male lead as a completely isolated experience, him having "pulled out" prior to ejaculation, and usually seizing the erotic reigns at the climactic moment (literally) with his own hands. The male does not touch the woman-object at the crescendo of orgasm, except by the propulsion of his ejaculate onto her supplicate body as a violent projectile.

Thus, the male lead subject seizes agency as the cause of his own orgasm. Never is he vulnerable or beholden to the woman-object. He has given, but "owes" for nothing (having facilitated his own orgasm). There is no post-coital embrace. The scene ends abruptly. The sex act remains decontextualized, an event unmoored from past or future. There are no consequences--emotional, spiritual, or physical--for either participant.

* * *

Nothing new; straight out of anti-porn feminist theory. What is less acknowledged is the malicious role the romantic comedy genre plays upon the romantic development of the adolescent female. As with porn, archetypal characters are presented as unrealistic stereotypes, designed to cheaply salve the audience's emotional impulses more than to reflect accurately real-life experience.

The male archetypal subject in porn is actively pursued by his fantasy woman-object, so too is the female romantic comedy archetypal subject wooed without obvious cause or merit. Her desirability is a given. The test of his worthiness is what grants the plot its narrative tension. He must along atone for his faults, labor against fate, and summon his sincerity for them to live happily ever after. Her agency is reduced to passive observation and judgment of his behavior. Her character is amoral, since it is not her redemption, but his which is a necessary prerequisite for romantic realization. The female lead is thus shorn of moral agency, and thus responsibility.

This leads to the Little Princess Complex--pretty girls can do no wrong. Also, it presupposes the Boys Will Be Boys Complex--cute boys are boisterous by nature, but ultimately endearing in their incorrigibility. The Little Princes Complex dehumanizes the female in two ways: by reducing her to her mere aesthetic value as a romantic object, and by absolving her of the need and ability for moral responsibility. The Boys Will Be Boys Complex grants the male more space for moral agency, characterization, and humanity, but still reduces him in an essential way.

Firstly, he is guilty until proven innocent, and cannot hold his female jury to the same standard applied to him. Secondly, in the end his moral conduct is immaterial. In a temporal twist on Christian mythology, his salvation is found in her grace. He must prove his love for her, more than he must prove his uprightness, and then she will extend her grace to him. Happily ever after...

History does not exist for the characters in romantic comedies. All actions are forgiven once tension has served its narrative purpose, and all morality and practicality are sublimated to the teleology of Plot. The characters are prisons of our agenda for them: love or else! Their romantic connection is not born of mutual empathy or inner experience, but rather of a narrative fait accompli. Their duty is not of romantic edification, but rather to reconcile themselves to the fate rendered to them. This presupposes of course that the pairing was "natural" all along.

Certainly, sticking one's head in the ground to glaring deficiencies in the connections born of modern romance--characterized often by capriciously random encounters or mere convenience--does not offer promise as a long-term romantic strategy. Furthermore, the implication that only one party with have to "work at it" is bound to lead to heartache and resentment. Lastly, the alluring conception of human beings as emotional tabula rasas--impervious to past slights and patient in the wake of pain--is dangerously naive.

Most perilous, however, is the tragic-ironic place where the two media--porn and romantic comedy--meet. Their messages are diametrically opposed. Each partner will expect his/her opposite to play supplicant. Neither acknowledges their own personal moral responsibility. Furthermore, the two media divorce the two concepts of romance and sex into gendered spheres. Each becomes the total dominion of its respective gender. Sex belongs to men and is defined by them. Romance to women. Incongruity characterizes both. The connection between sex and romance is broken, and the different but complimentary roles played by the two genders in each sphere is disregarded in favor of a schizophrenic dualism.

With a whole generation of young men coming up convinced that the only proper connection with a woman is "doggy-style," and with their female peers wondering why their boyfriends don't take the night-flight from Paris just to ask how they're feeling, it's little wonder that...

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

BONUS! Free yourself from the grip of The Porn Machine (via N+1)

Yoga, Official Mystic Activity of Late Capitalism

yo⋅ga [yoh-guh] - noun: A ritual and regimen involving svelte blonds in stretchy black pants, tank tops, and roll-up rubber mats. It emphasizes breathing and flexibility. Great for stress. Everybody who does it seems skinny. Involves vague feelings of eco-consciousness, too.

Yep, lots of sex appeal in yoga.

I'll go out on a limb here and argue that the majority of yoga enthusiasts in trendy urban neighborhoods have never heard of the concept of Hatha Yoga--or of Yogi Swatmarama, its 15th Century originator. This is what most Westerners think of as "yoga." Yogi Swatmarama originally conceived of his physical regimen as a preparation for long periods of meditation, "a stairway to the heights of Raja Yoga" (enlightenment through meditation). In other words, "yoga" (as commonly mis-understood) is a means to a means to an end. It prepares the body in order to make possible the meditation that will itself make possible the eventual enlightenment.

Non-believers doing yoga to get skinny is kind of like appropriating the bend-and-kneel Islamic prayer to tone your buns and a thighs.


"Allaahu Akbar! Feel the burn!"

Ok fine, say our bendy patrons of lulumon atheltica ("a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company with over 100 locations in Canada, the United States, Australia and Hong Kong"), maybe our interests veer more towards the yuppie than the yogic. What's the harm? You can loose weight, "increase your range of motion," and purge all the stresses of modern living!

Here's the thing--all you mystical weekend warriors looking to get "Stronger, Better, Wiser, Lighter! ☮"--you have wrapped your pliable thighs in a tight embrace of the very source of your angst and malaise.

Yes, the moment you debited a hundred dollars to your Visa for that 100% recycled post-consumer content yoga mat, you lost it. When you entered that air-conditioned, hermetically-sealed, Windex-scrubbed glass box of a yoga studio, you lost it. When you looked around you and meditated either on how super-skinny you already are, or should be, you lost it. When you strutted your way to be seen purchasing an organic açaí protein smoothy, you lost it. And when you told all your friends how yoga has totally changed your life, you did so wafting a subtle air of faux humility barely able to cloud the self-righteous avarice of the fab yogic elect--and you lost it.

But now, after an hour of heavy breathing and narcissism, cells bathed in oxygen and antioxidants, you're feeling pretty good. These days, you simply have to come back every week, or every other day, to "decompress."

And you might be addicted to therapy. Or maybe even heroin, too.


"For the love of God, I neeeed to perform the down dog pose!"

After each respective dosage of therapy, yoga or heroin, you'll feel pretty good (in the case of the latter two, you'll feel pretty slim, too). But then after a while, the Crisis creeps back into your life. Sobriety makes you feel frazzled again. Threadbare. Stressed. So, you head back to the studio to sweat a little--to wash out your soul like you wash your clothes. But there is no solution, only maintenance.

Oh ye bendy Seekers, realize that yoga is the new Opium of the Masses! That old-time religion was just too involving, it turns out. Plus, it didn't do much for those embarrassing love handles. So why not distill some Hindu wisdom, containing the highest possible concentration of marketable content? A 90 Proof shot of spirituality. A high-potency multivitamin for the soul.

In shooting up just enough therapy into your beleaguered veins, you've perpetuated your spiritual demise. In making a creeping madness "manageable," you've assured the insanity's ultimate success. All that stress that you pursue yoga to expurgate is normalized and its ultimate cause ignored. It is responded to like a routine hunger easily satiated by a nice lunch.

Even worse, you've intensified the Crisis by becoming even more of a consumer--of yoga, its image (spiritual skinniness!), and related "essentials" (Nike Dri-Fit™ high-performance tank!). But your life remains, as in the suburban dystopia of Revolutionary Road, filled with "hopeless emptiness." An existential drift sweetened just enough with an relentless torrent of consumer items and experiences, of which yoga is just another example. By cheapening yoga with consumerist commodification, you've vexed another route of potential escape (what the old-time Yogis called moksha) for yourself and others.

The word "yoga" was derived from the Sandskrit yuj, meaning "to control." Ask yourself, the next time you are standing in line for salads with a flock of other identically-attired Yuppie Yoginis, just who is controlling whom?

Blue Gold, Revisited

An article in New Scientist about the emerging importance of aquifers as freshwater sources, the potential for conflict when such aquifers cross national boundaries, and a new UNESCO map of underground water worldwide.

Migration as Development, Revisited

The Economist on urbanization, migration, and development.

Short version: The world is getting more urbanized. Cities grow larger because they provide economic benefits. Governments can capitalize on the benefits of boom towns by linking them infrastructurally with lagging areas, to facilitate migration from rural poverty (as China is scrambling to do in its impoverished west).

On Cocaine and Kazaa

Fascinating article in Wired about the true nature of the "shadow internet" of media piracy.

Short version: It's not a "sharing network," but rather a highly sophisticated, hierarchical distribution network modeled on criminal narcotic syndicates. And it has the power to change media distribution forever.

Speed and the Modern Condition

"I wanted to freeze time. I wanted to savor that moment, to live in that moment for a week. But I couldn't stop it, only slow it." --Cashback (2006)

There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting...In existential mathematics, the experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting." --Milan Kundera, Slowness (1995)

Today, by serendipitous circumstance, I delved into two excellent, and complementary works of art. One a movie. The other a novel.



Speed and modernity. It is a subject that has enthralled artists since the early 20th Century, when the pace of the human condition suddenly accelerated with the first sputtering automobiles, and the realization of the elusive dream of heavier-than-air flight in Kitty Hawk, NC.



Geography was flattened and foreshortened. Man's reach broadened. His pace quickened. The future grew closer. The past further away. Time, always relative, became shorter. And so too, did memory...

Is this why we continue to stumble into the same mistakes, over and over? Can we slow life down for a moment, to reflect, to remember? Hopefully we can, because our future depends on it.

"The bad news is that time flies. The good news... is that you're the pilot." --Cashback (2006)