The Serpent's Wisdom

I'm happy to continue reading your posts if you crosspost them here (and I hope you will) but I do not have plans at present to set up an account there, so I am unable to offer any feedback if commenting is closed here.

A week ago I put in a support request about poor performance on LiveJournal. So far there's been no satisfactory resolution. Does anyone know a way I can force an escalation of some sort? Performance on this site has been abysmal for me (and apparently for the whole Steaksauce Weaksauce cluster) the last two weeks.

Godwin's Law: As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Godwin's Law, expanded: As an internet discussion thread grows longer, the probability of the following approaches 1:

• a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler
  
• a reference to Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law, expanded, 2009 edition: As an internet discussion thread grows longer, the probability of the following approaches 1:

• a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler
  
• a reference to Godwin's Law
  
• a LOLCAT
  
• a Monty Python quote
  
• a proclamation that someone has "won the internet"
  
• a .gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn (from the "Thriller" video)
  
• someone exclaiming that they just lost "the Game"

I've been noticing that a lot of people who have been long-time readers of my journal have been unfriending me, so i decided to look at my journal as if seeing it for the first time... and dang, i haven't written about anything interesting in months.

Part of the problem is that i hate repeating myself, and i have blah blah blahed at grrrrrreat length on religion and politics. Anything i write these days which is halfway profound consists to an alarming degree of links to previous posts. I've already made that point, why repeat it? And more and more, silence just feels like the wisest commentary i have to offer on things. Half the time i feel like all that's left to do now is cheer as the great religious and hegemonic institutions of the past and present crumble one by one, and mumble with an air of cranky self-righteous vindication. And what's the fun in reading that?

My journal hasn't been fun or innovative or creative in probably half a year. The fun, innovative, creative part of my brain has been in restful hibernation while it ruminates the next stage of my visionary evolution. It's not a rut i'm in, i swear.

Actually that kind of expression has been a cyclical thing in my life. I have periods of creativeness followed by a season of fallow, towards the end of which i flip through the pages of crackpot notes i kept during the last outburst, marvel that such thoughts were ever uttered by moi; and then slowly, the creaky old joints get moving again. Like the Tinman, with his can of oil just an arm's length away, but his arm's immobile.

I haven't written any fiction since November. I haven't made any music in years. Time to kick myself in the ass a little.

Pet peeve of the day: referring to posts or entries as "blogs" or "diaries" instead of "blog entries" or "diary posts," e.g. "I like that blog you posted today."

It seems this is becoming the standard usage so i'll probably have to get over myself, but in the meantime, i'll grumble in a curmudgeonly manner.

Hey, how about this? It is no longer possible to create a basic LJ account. Now, you either pay or see ads.

I'm still here. As i wrote last week, i just haven't felt like i have anything new to say. All the news is SSDD, there's nothing new to say about any of it. My philosophical views have not progressed or evolved in the last month. No topic has grabbed my attention long enough to be worthy of a rant. And my personal life... well, remains private, mostly.

I have toyed with the idea of writing a post about how much i have to shut down my meta-Marxian sensibilities to play video games like Civilization or The Sims, but i couldn't muster enough interest to write it.

So what have i been up to? Dealing with lingering stress from the move and a long commute to pick up the kid at day camp every day. My creative attention has gone towards WoW fanfic and RP, and plot work and conceptualization for my novel, which is finally starting to shape up. I've had a hot date or two as well. ;)

I did see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with cowgrrl last weekend. I quite liked it, much more than the last movie. It felt less "by the numbers" to me.

I can't see my friend's page or my own journal, but i can see the main page and even the "edit entry" screen. Does anyone know what's going on? Is this an S2 problem? This went on for half the day yesterday and i'm tired of this.

If i had spent $150 for a permanent account i'd be really ticked off right about now...

ETA: On the Support Page i see several people from the same cluster (Steaksauce) reporting the same problem.

After being invited to do so, i've set up a blog at Transadvocate. Via the magic of RSS i am going to set it up so that my posts there mirror over here. You can also follow it at sabrinastar but if i can get the crossposting to work it will probably look better over here.

The other day i posted this link to a video of the Mooninite guys refusing to talk to the press about anything other than haircuts. There's a lot to learn from this, not from what they're saying but from what this event represents on several levels.

The first is the nature of advertising in the future. The 'paid spot' in media presentations -- commercials during TV programs and ads in magazines and newspapers and on billboards, and that sort of thing -- is becoming a thing of the past. They'll still be there in abundance, of course, but mostly as reinforcement more than anything else. The thing is, they just aren't effective anymore; we go around them on TiVo and simply ignore them when we can.

What advertisers want now is to embed their message into the viral information networks of the internet, into the culture itself, so that you cannot have a cultural experience or interchange without receiving a paid advertising message. They've already been doing product placements in movies, TV shows, and video games for some time now. And now, i've seen the future and the future is 'guerrila marketing.'

See, for advertisers the holy grail is getting their product widely seen as 'cool.'

In fact, i've been pondering the nature of what it means for a person or thing to be 'cool' or 'not cool' for quite a while, and i keep coming back to the relationship between popular culture and advertising. Most attempts to brand a product as cool are just darn predictable: a cartoon character with sunglasses and a leather jacket telling kids to buy a particular brand of cereal, that sort of thing. Every now and then, though, an advertiser hits paydirt and product awareness takes on a life of its own. When this happens, the promoter just has to sit back and watch consumers gleefully do their product placement for them. If people are posting in Myspace and YouTube and Livejournal about how great and cool they think a product is, their work is done.

By that measure, the success of this Mooninite thing in Boston is immeasurable.

The other thing i saw in that video was the first stirrings of a new form of dissent against the news media. I don't know if it was a genuine display of youthful rebellion or whether it was a contrived attempt to simulate youth rebellion (i kinda lean towards the latter) but either way i sense a large and growing current of discontent and distrust among young people for the mass news media.

And who can frickin' blame them? The news media are polished, professional manipulators and liars. Anyone who has ever been to an event -- especially a protest -- and then watched news coverage of the event afterwards knows what i mean. They've been spouting crap for years, and in the name of "getting both sides of a story" have been lending credence to discredited ideas that otherwise would have died out years ago, like Intelligent Design and global warming doubt.  The news media rely on the fiction that they are without agenda, when a critical examination of their viewpoint shows a distinct tendency to reinforce the corporatist, classist, white supremacist agenda.

The thing is, nothing happens very far from a blog these days. People who witness or experience events firsthand are writing in their blogs about it -- or, even more impressively, posting cellphone video of it -- and this news spreads virally. Speaking from direct experience brings a dimension of meaning lost in accounts by the news media. The Mooninite guys didn't need sympathetic coverage by the news media (you can clearly hear threats from reporters of unfavorable coverage if they didn't take the conference 'more seriously,' by which they meant, going along with the reporters' script) because they knew every kid with a Myspace was going to post a link to the video -- and that THIS form of information exchange is what really counts these days.

There is always a place for objective coverage, but we are finally balancing this out with a much needed infusion of subjectivity. (For the record, i wouldn't want only subjective news to spread either, but we've really needed this.)