As we continue to hurl ourselves
into Idiocracy territory, I thought about the last 25 years of my
life. After all, my 25th reunion is this fall. Good
time to reflect. Look back on my adult life. Cry in the
corner a bit.
What I discovered is that for all the technological
innovation we’ve seen in the last two decades, we’ve become incredibly stupid
and selfish. If I could go back in time and change one thing, I
might actually make the ultimate sacrifice. I might try to prevent
the invention of the Internet.
I know.
I KNOW.
What madness is this? Why, on Earth would you
un-invent the Internet? Aren’t you
selling shirts, online? Aren’t you trying, and failing, to
produce YouTube videos? Yeah, but that doesn’t change the
truth. And, before you start clutching your routers and barking
madly, understand where I’m coming from on this. It’s
like Terminator 2. No matter how hard they tried to keep Skynet
from happening, it happened. Granted, it happened in a bad way, a la
Terminator 3, but it was inevitable. Now, I don't want to keep the
Internet from ever happening. I only wish to delay the process
until we are better equipped, mentally and emotionally, to handle it.
We were given fire by the Gods and we ended up torching
the world. We literally did not understand what we were
given. For awhile we just did silly things with the
Internet. Hell, we still do. Cats playing
keyboards, planking, Hadouken pics, Horse Head Mask videos, memes,
vines... But soon, it warped and became something
different. There was porn… so much porn. Then there
were cell phones and soon commercial WiFi. iPods.
Tidepods iPhones.
Facebook, Instagram, Elvis Presley, Disneyland.
It spiraled out of control. Slang (OMG,
WTF, ROTFLMAOBBQ)
We became addicted to technology. Our lives
revolved around little devices that did everything for us. A
phone replaced a pager, a camera, a gaming device, a laptop, watch, GPS, radio,
Walkman, and tons of other devices. It became the Swiss Army Lazy
Man. Texting gave way to sexting. Polaroids
gave way to selfies-in-a-bathroom-with-duck-face being Instagramed and put up
on Facebook. “Like, please!” (read: I have no self-esteem
and need constant and instant approval to maintain my shell of an
existence.) Soon, there was cyber-bullying. Hacking
phones, emails, the need for 24/7 news that may or may not even be accurate
spread like a wildfire. Hacking of elections and influencing voters'
minds.Fake News, trolls, and
bots. We have become unable to put the genie back into the bottle.
And, I don’t think we ever will. Isn’t
it odd that in the last 25 years we’ve invented things that bring us closer
together, more so than ever before, yet they put us farther apart in terms of
actually connecting with people. Used to be, if you wanted to reach
someone, you had to catch them at home, by phone. Now, you
call their cell. And, in a lot of cases, they want you to hang up
and just text. Also, isn’t it odd that in the last 25
years, so much technology has come about yet, what’s the last thing we
cured? Polio, I think. We’ve created a generation of
customers.
Our kids? Our kids have become over-privileged and
entitled.
“Well, Johnny has an iPod and he’s seven.” “Well, Johnny
is also a selfish brat that can’t wipe himself yet, but can send a
text. He probably still wets the bed.”
Nobody wants to work for anything. And I don’t
mean the entitled vs. the uneducated. I’m talking about
EVERYONE. Somewhere along the way, we lost our mission. Our
grandparents went to WWII. They sacrificed a lot of things in order
to keep the country running. Now, we’re asked to give up
something and suddenly, since 9/11, our government is either out to control
or enslave us. Take away our rights. Funny. Our
grandparents sacrificed a lot in order to give their family a better
life. Our parents, well, at least mine, gave up a lot of stuff
in order to make our lives better. They scrimped and
saved. They went without new clothes or fancy appliances. They
made ends meet and did what they could to ensure that we never had to live like
that, ever. And somehow, we thought, “Oh,
cool. Great. Thanks.” And that was
it. We accepted their generous offer. We watched as they
worked hard and bled for us and we just took that better life and continued to
not pay it forward, but instead we cheapened the thought.
We were given so much without having to ask for it and
yet, when it came to our children, or the next generation born into the
millennium, they didn’t understand what our parents did to provide, because we
were the end result. We didn’t continue the
trend. We didn’t have to work hard
anymore. Technology caught up and made it
easier. Hell, I am just as responsible. I
work in an office all day, but I also run a business where I don’t have to put
a lot of effort into it and am rewarded, monetarily. Granted,
I wish I could work more on it. I know the quality would
benefit, but at the end of the day, I get emails saying , “Congrats on your sale”
with no deserving of that praise. The Internet has done the work for
me.
We take to Facebook and instead of sharing our lives with
each other, we share half assed researched and cited examples of hate against
one group or another. I can count on at least one hand how
many friends I have on Facebook that never say a word, yet post CONTINUALLY
their disdain for one group or another in this world. And 9
times out of 10, they share from one subjective group that is not even factual
all the time. It’s just a funny picture, or what they claim to be
funny, slamming another person/group/religion/etc. They don’t
say “Hi”, or “How are you” they say, “Here’s why you’re all wrong and I’m
right” in graphic form. And for all that friending and sharing that goes
on, I believe we are more so divided than we ever were as a
civilization. Friends are not friends, they are an audience for our
amusement and our agendas. We don't connect, we try to redirect.
We do not deserve the Internet. If
aliens were to come here, looking for intelligent life, we’d be blown off the
face of the galaxy like we were a plague.
“For the love of Blurg! Zyphos, we must
eradicate this menace on Earth before it spreads and infects us.”
“How do you know that, Lishu?”
“I saw it on Reddit. And Grimjor saw a post
on Zarnbook that he shared from "I bet this Gorpcar can get more likes
than Firtarp.”
100 Andelorians like this. (Picture of a
tentacle in a thumbs up position.)
So, yeah. Let’s go back, blow the servers and
tell the geeks of the 90s to keep working on it and we’ll work on being better
humans, so that one day, we may be deserving of such an awesome power.
How infinitesimal will the legacy be of someone born in the 20th century. I often wonder about the effects of our lives and those who have come before us on this planet. Stonehenge. Easter Island. The Pyramids. The Nazca Desert drawings. Croatoan. These are all mysteries of history where we’re not sure what was the exact purpose of their design. In fact, what exactly was being discussed when those responsible stepped back and looked at their creations, now finished. Was it for the benefit of them to leave their mark or for us? Were they trying to simply say, “Killroy was here,” in some ancient fashion, or were they trying to tell future civilizations something important.
But what’s past is prologues and we are the new builders of a legacy that may never be realized. We’ve built structures on the beach, a testament to our ingenuity of molding sand. We leave monuments of our gritty labors for others to partake, some to take out with their feet. Hopefully, they take delight in our design for a brief moment in time. But, ultimately, the beach, like a giant Etch-a-sketch, shakes itself each day, wiping away our efforts. Once towering castles in the sand, a new resets the board and allows the next master builders a chance to impress the passersby. But what if no one glances our works in the sand? What if not one person wanders by before the tides reclaim the sand? Did it ever exist? Did it ever matter?
So what if we carved our initials into that tree or upon the steel beams of a rusted old bridge that spans a river. So what if we tag a water tower or train car? Someday that mighty maple may fall, a casualty of mother nature. Or that bridge may crumble due to the elements, only to be rebuilt anew, sans scratched in symbols of our defacement. The graffiti on an overpass may be painted over. And who really gets the chance to read all the tags on the boxcars as they roll by at the railroad crossing? Then what? Our monograms go unnoticed, forgotten in time. We lose a foothold on the past with our legacy erased.
Of course these acts are all destructive. They hurt nature. We should build things not deface them. But even then, over time, those structures could be wiped from memory with a wrecking ball or an evil plot. Our history books and the Internet preserve those images, indelible in our minds and hearts for generations to come, but still the memories get corroded and the history gets morphed into something different, a narrative told by one side to blame the other. Of course, this only matters to the legacies built by those with presence. Those items are on display for a reason and the knowledge of their dedication is made public. For us, the lowly, anonymous citizen, our legacy gets wiped quite often.
I hope, that one day, many, many years from now, a child puts on their father’s shirt. It’s faded design marks a time in the early 21st century, where a young man, no longer alive, decided to put funny images on a shirt, and perhaps a younger man bought that shirt, wearing it with pride And it held up, over the years, until he had a family all his own, and while the shirt no longer fits him, his young son can run around in the faded and cracked ink marked shirt, still giving the father a smile, remembering when he bought it so many years ago.
And one day, when a new generation comes up with a better idea for sharing content among viewers, and the servers of YouTube are wiped and scrapped, the last remnants of these videos will be lost to time. Even the raw footage and files from their recordings will no longer be able to be viewed as we move onto different, more efficient means of compression and storage of digital media. Today’s MP4s are yesterday’s 5 ¼ inch floppy disks. Centuries from now, an archaeologist may come across a box of these thin black squares and wonder what the faded words “Lemonade Stand” or “DOOM.EXE” means. What will be the legacy of Chocolate Rain or Keyboard Cat be when no one is able to view the videos in the 22nd century?
As for gamers, we spend time and money on a digital footprint. On multiplayer servers, long since decommissioned, we built massive bases and farms in Minecraft, creating pixel art Mario or Pinkachu out of wool, so that a n00b on the server could pass by and see our art or architecture, marveling at the design and detail. Even I gave money to a server which no longer exists. I built many structures costing me countless hours only to have them wiped away after the mods went away and stopped hosting. The videos of these structures, while still on my channel, harken to a time when I was still early into the channel, not really knowing how to best present and edit content. In GTA, we built empires and acquired clothes and vehicles, but those were all temporary fixtures as newer titles were released and support for the old was removed. The money gamers spent on shark cards to amass all this material wealth, gone in a command line execution of finality. Angry Phisting will be no more as will Bob in the world of San Andreas. These are the legacies I’ve perhaps wasted my time on. Many hours, many dollars in maintaining storage and Players Plus accounts only to have everything blinked away. What purpose did it serve? What did I hope to achieve in them? Why do we continue to leave footprints where we know someone will later erase them?
It’s a perfect rabbit hole to climb down as you play a game like No Man’s Sky where in essence, the game wants you to be found. Perhaps not physically, or even maybe literally, but your mark on the game is left to be witnessed. Of course, as the game continues to morph and update and become something further away than what it initially started out as, our digital footprint on the universe is being wiped clean from the servers and one day, maybe a year or maybe decades from now, no one will ever see how you named your first discovery, Planet McPlanet Face. As the NEXT update gives us the option of building bases anywhere and in any quantity I am laughing as I come across the many footprints, little messages from other explorers, screaming out into the void. Their messages like little, “Killroy was here” moments as I pass through on my way to completing missions. And as new players wander by, they may see my half constructed, abandoned bases, a simple checkpoint for me to find my way back, along the landscape of some world I’ve marked up in an effort to cash in on the resources of a world until I find that perfect location in which to build my ultimate base, only to have it wiped away from existence by the next update… or perhaps one day gone forever when Hello Games turns down the servers.
What do we hope to accomplish by making marks in the dirt or on the sides of buildings which can be erased with ease? How do want to be remembered when our digital feats and discoveries can be wiped away with impunity. Why do we care? As we move further and further online we lose more and more of our past because we become more closed off to the outside, opting to bottleneck our interaction into a screen and a signal. There’s a real chance that if we were to digitize our entire history and all of our accomplishments we could lose them all if something happens. If the power goes out, we lose everything. If some kind of attack occurs that wipes our data, we could lose our entire past. No more “Killroy was here” and no more “Ask not what your country can do for you.”
I’ve worked in knowledge management. I know what it’s like to be in an organization where the greatest wealth of information is held close by a very few individuals. The tribal knowledge that could help solve today’s problems and prevent tomorrow’s is closely guarded because by giving up that ownership, the owners feel they become obsolete and no longer useful. We didn’t get to space by having a few mathematicians say, “It’s easier if I just do it for you.” But it’s even more than that. We, as a society, are unprepared for what happens when those who take care of us don’t pass on their knowledge of everyday things. Farming or basic maintenance or even how to function as an adult and manage finances.
Education is the most powerful legacy we can pass on to our next generations. And it’s taught word of mouth and written. Yes, technology can help mobilize and shape the message. It can even help deliver it, but it cannot be the system of record when it comes to our past. That we must write down and teach to the youth. We must cut through all the Fake News and partisanship and pass along those details and facts that will keep up from losing ourselves completely. That is the carving on the tree we need. That is the graffiti on the water tower we should embrace.
We need to have more than a legacy of binary dust to have blown away by the winds of ignorance and shortsightedness. We need to learn from our past or we will forever make the same mistakes.
I am forever late to the party when it comes to what people
are doing these days.I chalk it up to
my belief that, in a way, I was born too soon.I grew up in the 80s and still think it was the last best decade we ever
had.I am solidifying that argument in
my own mind after watching NatGeo’s The ‘80s, The ‘90s, and The 2000s
documentaries on binge mode.Maybe it’s
generational.Maybe my dislike or lack
of understanding of today is congruent with my parents or other baby boomers
lack of understanding of what it was like when I was growing up.In any case, here’s what I still don’t get.
I don’t get the appeal of today’s music.Ariana Grande might be a talented singer, but
for the life of me, her words are indecipherable and all run together.Now, that may be because I’ve developed
hearing issues over the years.I know
people that can listen to the same song as myself, at the same time, and can
pick apart the lyrics while I’m still stuck on the fact that I thought Elton
John was singing, “Hold me closer, Tony Danza.”I could concede that with Grande, but
Googling the thought pointed out that a host of other people can’t understand
what she’s saying either.Iggy Azalea?No clue what she’s about, either.What’s the issue with her and the public?I’m still stuck on the fact that I though
K-E-Dollar Sign-HA had a career.I
still like music from people who’ve been dead for years… except for Kurt
Cobain.I didn’t care for him in the
90s, and that hasn’t changed in 20 years.Any kid that comes up to me today and says, “Kurt Cobain is my greatest
influence” immediately has a “Get off my lawn” coming to them.And I don’t like it when someone takes
something from the era I like and tries to make it something of their own,
today.Blurred Lines was cool for about
a minute before I realized it was a pretty creepy thing and ripped off Marvin
Gaye.However, I do like Postmodern
Jukebox and stuff like David Garrett covering a bunch of rock tunes with a cello.That is kind of cool.What Kid Rock did with Lynyrd Skynyrd/Warren
Zevon a few years ago was not.
I don’t understand that niche of social media like tumblr,
reddit, and even Instagram, though I have an account.How do these things work and how do people
get sucked into tumblr?How does one
tumbl...r?Maybe I should learn so that
I can incorporate it into my YouTube or design stuff.Then again, I get on Tumblr and my head just
grinds like a shot clutch in a Ford.I
opened a tumblr account and I just don’t know what to do with it.Isn’t that what I was doing here?I’d say I need a teenager to help me figure
stuff out but that sounds a little too creepy to openly announce on the
Internet.
What exactly is reddit?And don’t get me started on subreddits.Am I even spelling that right?I
know a few YouTube producers who get a lot of conversation going and ideas from
reddit, but I don’t know what the hell reddit does.I know it was partially responsible for
hosting all of those leaked photos last year.I know celebrities go on and do “Ask my anything” posts but seems like a
lot of noise and craziness.And then
people vote up or down.I just don’t get
it.They even have hateful groups like
/r/rapingwomen and such.WTF?!?!
Instagram?People
take pictures, apply some snazzy filters, and voila, they’re…
photographers?Do you mean to tell me we
are going to hoist some kid with an iPhone onto the same mantle as Ansel Adams
or Annie Leibowitz?Oh, I just took a
photo of a plate of spaghetti… slapped Inkwell filter on it, adjusted the
contrast, and BAM, I’m Henri Cartier-Bresson!And people can make money selling their photos?!?!?How does that work?Who would buy an Instagram photo?Hell, some guy named Richard Prince took
people’s Instagram photos and hung them in a gallery and claimed it was
transformative and therefore fair use.Do businesses pay you for taking pictures of their stuff?
I don’t understand SEO.I don’t understand how it affects websites and why people are always
looking to hire people.Isn’t it just
tagging?And how is that a marketable
skill that people rave about on job boards?I spend a lot of time refining tags on videos and shirt designs and I do
not see any difference in the amount of traffic I get from before and
after.And furthermore, the old adage of
making money on a blog is crap… I’ve had this blog for almost seven years and
have yet to make a dime from just posting content.Have any posts directed people towards buying
something of mine from a shirt site?Yes.But the whole point was
delivering content, people clicking, profit!That hasn’t happened and I do not understand how that works.
The one thing I do understand is the idea of how to get rich
and I can share it with you for only five dollars.:)
In Part 1 I did a semi round up of 2014's biggest d-bags, glossing over some of the moments in order to not really do any damn research. What I came up with was somewhat of a generalization of what I feel is the biggest d-bag of the year. I think I've done it before but we win again, Humanity.
Call it a cop out.Call it what you will, but my pick for the biggest, most vile, hipster hat and non prescription glasses wearing douchebag of the year is Humanity via Social Media.
What is that you say?Did you just make up some weird nominee off the top of your head like some sub-sub-sub-genre of music like Mathcore or Lowercase…You’d kind of know what lowercase is if you ever sat and watched the DVD menu of The Social Network.It’s ambient music with a few notes scattered about with stuff like real life noise, people talking, traffic, clacking of keyboards, footsteps, etc.
Yeah, I just coined it Humanity via Media is the biggest d-bag of the year.I wanted to just say Social Media specifically, but there’s more to it which I will get to in a bit.
Why Media?
Social Media has been as pervasive in our lives.
We post, tag, comment, retweet, upvote, tumblr (sp?), Instagram, blog, film, and basically overshare everything.The problem is there is no governance in place to weed out the real, satirical, or fake information.To the point about Bill Cosby, both Kirk Cameron and Raven-Symone were reported to have been raped or assaulted by Bill Cosby sometime in their career.These stories were both false, posted by Onion emulating sites like HipHopHangover.But regardless of their incredulous nature, they were shared across the Internet via twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.The Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths promptly divided friends on Facebook, probably more so than the midterm elections because on one side you have the barrage of people tuned into the “Police State” conspiracy and abuse of police power theories, and on the other there is the contingent of people who stand behind the badge and say that if they were truly innocent victims they wouldn’t have been committing a crime and when an officer tells you stop, you stop.The problem lies in the dissemination of information via Media and how Humanity shows its colors when it shares or promotes those stories, real, satirical, or fake as it were. Look at the “fake” media accounts of Chris Rock and other Twitter celebs who were retweeted without any kind of verification of “Did they actually say it.”It’s akin to everything on Facebook being attributed to George Carlin or Sarah Palin whether they said it or not.The Media itself is wholly guilty because they sensationalize some things and no one site is truly objective in its portrayal of anything anymore.Fox is all right wing, MSNBC is all left.Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert piss everyone off because they get hoisted onto the pedestal of news when they are basically satire and entertainment.But the media feeds into social media and then we go back down that rabbit hole all over again.
We have no filter and we have social media muscle.
It’s kind of like beer muscles.You get drunk and think you are invulnerable to anything you try to punch, animate, inanimate, or otherwise.In the case of social media or even media, it’s the belief that we have no problem making a comment, vile as it may be, towards someone because we don’t have to say it to someone’s face.Think back to that Artie Lange Twitter rant.Go search over the ones tagged to the Adrian Peterson, Ray Rice, or even Hollaback.Do you think Artie Lange would seriously say, in person, to Cari Champion the things he tweeted?Have you ever read the comments section on any news article concerning anything polarizing like politics or human rights?It’s insane.Now, I joke about hating on PewDiePie as a YouTube content producer because I am one, too and my opinions are just that, my opinion.But he disabled the comments on his YouTube account, for good this time.His belief is that the comment section on his videos is just rife with spam, self-advertising, and fights among fanboys.With about 19 million subscribers, I guess there is a ton of comments.Well, it may be best for humanity but it’s only one of millions of places to see vinegar and hate on the Internet.I, myself, jumped into the ring early on, being online for certain things trying to drum up my social media profile after this little moment pushed me a small step towards Internet Fame Mediocrity by calling out John Travolta on Twitter during the Oscars. It was retweeted 1500 times and favorited by 1000 people. I admit it, I took a little pride in my humor and was continuing to try and make fetch happen throughout the rest of the year. Then again, I think John Travolta has dyslexia and I just laughed at someone with a disorder. But, he's famous and knows famous people, and he is musical and should have known that her name wasn't Adele Dazeem.
For every Social Media win there are millions of fails.
Everyone thinks that revolution will not be televised, it will be posted.We had countless videos of people dumping buckets of ice water on themselves, all for… charity?Was it really charity or attention?The Ice Bucket challenge was probably the most videoed moment of the year and people challenged each other to donate to ALS and film themselves being hit with a bucket of ice water, supposedly how it feels to have symptoms of ALS.But what started out as a way to donate to a worthy cause became a “look at me” moment as everyone posted videos of themselves but probably not everyone donated.And in doing so, did they actually fix anything?Social Media Cause of the Week Awareness comes off more like Evil Political/Business Figure Karma Washing by building libraries or parks in areas to offset their horrible practices or platforms.And while the initial ALS Ice Bucket challenge started off with a good message, it was polluted by the fails videos and other “Staged” event videos and copycat challenge videos that followed.And it didn’t just hit the everyday Joe, celebrities got in on the challenge as well.Glorification of the self outshone the message in the end.Another case of fail was that Hollaback video where after it went viral, tons of parody videos including everything from someone dressed as Princess Leia to a Lamborghini became the subject of catcalls or lack thereof.The Arab Spring was filmed on a cell phone and that lent a face to what was actually going on in the region.That was social media for the win.
We have no context or objectivity.
Recently, Sarah Palin tweeted out a picture of her son Trig, standing on the family dog to reach something on the counter. As a proud grizzly mom, she said her son was a problem summer, the tweet went viral and the Internet did what it does. She pointed out in a fiery article that Ellen Degeneres posted a similar picture in July of the same year.
A: Sarah Palin touts the problem solving skills of her son, Ellen says "Well, that's one way to reach the sink." Both are bad examples of how treat animals.
B: That's Sarah's kid and dog. The other is fan submitted to The Ellen show. Ellen can't stop someone else's bad behavior. Sarah could.
The difference is, one is Sarah Palin, and the other is Ellen. Righties, including Palin, will say "No one cared when Ellen did it." Well, they did. If you go to the Facebook post and look at the comments, A LOT of people called it out.
It's called context. They pulled that Ellen pic because she is a well known liberal and lesbian. It's a tactic of taking something that looks the same and then use it as a juxtaposition. The more visceral and equally non contextual comment would to be to say, "Obama ate a dog once."
We also look at things non contextually such as photos depicting a moment in time, free of whatever is going on before and after that moment. Someone's face say the Obama daughters looking disgusted. Then, media adds the context.
Or, as I did last month on Facebook to prove a point, "An armed white man killed three police officers in Pittsburgh, was in a long standoff with the law, and was taken into custody, alive." Immediately, my conservative friends accused me of trying to associate this event from a few years ago to the Michael Brown case. I did no such thing. I simply made a factual statement with no context. Everyone attached their own context based on their beliefs. It was a dick move but showed the nature of what I am speaking to.
We have no long term memory.
"Hey, did you hear the one about the price of gas when a certain President took office vs what they are now? Blame so and so!" "Hey did you hear how so and so is giving all these illegals clemency?"
Chances are, you have seen your friends share something on social media, touting their political leanings. Usually, it's bashing the person they didn't vote for. Chances are, they didn't do any research into the subject and just re-posted or re-tweeted something from a site or feed that uses these little subjective posts as click bait for traffic. What usually occurs in some of these situations is that people cling to the notion that this country is going to implode because of the people in charge and nothing like this has ever happened before in anyone's lifetime. Let's face it, nothing is new anymore. Policy and political strategy is about as fresh as Hollywood script ideas. The problem lies in that people tend to have short term memory when these things occur. They tend to forget that other administrations and other environmental influences recur, like the seasons. Gas prices fall in the winter, and rise in the summer, so when someone points out that the price of gas was lower in the January of an inaugural year vs. the Memorial Day of a midterm, everyone grabs torches and pitchforks. Moreover, Presidents have no direct influence on the price of gas. The market fluctuates based on fear and speculation and time of year. But social media, and by proxy, we tend to wear our hate right out on our sleeves and feed the trolls of viral mud slinging because why? See the next point.
We are despicable human beings.
Everyone wants to see the train wreck.There are far more disasters and fires started on social media and media outlets than good feel, faith in humanity stories.Everything is hashtagged for social media glorification.#NotAllMen#YesAllWomen #NotAllPolice #NotAllBlacks #AlexFromTarget #BlackLivesMatter #PoliceLivesMatter #GamerGateBut, you cannot change the world with a hashtag.Let’s face it.We are not Gandhi, Maya Angelou, The Dalai Lama, or Whatevertheirnames are like Bukowski or Poindexter.Slacktivism is not helping fix problems.If it were, we wouldn’t need a name attached to a social media account.It would be anonymously attached to a building or a billboard.Stop the glorification of yourself in the name of some cause.In a more despicable note, GamerGate was a form of victim blaming in that someone posted something, maybe true, maybe not, about a female gamer who released a game and then she and her family received threats by misogynistic people on social media. People came to the defense of Person A and were threatened as well. Others criticized Person A and they were threatened. The funny thing is, I wonder if those same people who sent death threats would ever, ever follow up on them if they were face to face. It's the Social Media Muscle at work. "Yeah, I'll kick your ass from behind my firewall." But, in person, you're peeing your pants at actually following through. If it actually happened, it'd be like this... (NSFW - Language)
Fear sells better than cheer.
When Ebola entered the country, pundits went nuts saying "CLOSE THE BORDERS!" and "OBAMA IS TRYING TO KILL US!" First of all, Ebola was already in Atlanta at the CDC. The level of spreading of Ebola in the US vs. Africa is ridiculously disparate. We are a first world country with better than average healthcare. And quite frankly, how the hell do you close the borders to air traffic? Ebola isn't just walking over the Rio Grande. We had an outbreak of mumps in the NHL this past fall, did anyone, ANYONE start yelling to close the border to Canada? Ebola is a dangerous disease if you don't have the capacity to deal with it. But it's a lot easier to get people glued to their sets when you have that newscast with the scary music, biohazard graphics, and fear than it is to give out good news. We are a society that likes Schadenfreude.
We are ALL the problem.
Was the iCloud hacks a sexual crime? Maybe. I am not a lawyer. I am not a woman, either. But, those involved did steal private images and videos. They did re-post them and that, in itself, is probably worthy of some investigation. If anything, digital theft or invasion of privacy, breaking and entering if that applies to digital environments. And not as if I am downplaying the severity of what Jennifer Lawrence went through, but to say that anyone who viewed the images are also committing a sex crime, that is a stretch. OK, I admit it. I saw the images. I wanted to know. And I'm not claiming Pete Townsend "research" as reasoning, but really, is it a crime. The sites that host the images, yeah, probably guilty of something, but best you can do is say, "Take it down or face litigation" over copyright. What happened to the people who had their cloud accounts invaded is awful and this victim shaming/blaming mentality is horrible, but quite honestly, if you're using your digital accounts to store naked images and videos of yourself then you shouldn't be surprised that this is going to happen. Not to say it's apples to apples but if I walk down the street in a bad neighborhood with $100 bills hanging out of my pockets, I don't deserve to be mugged, but it's probably going to happen eventually and I can be pissed off about it and say it's wrong and it is, but it's still something that can be prevented. Flame me all you want, but the same goes for the cloud. And yes, the hackers are the worst in humanity, but the victims calling it something it probably isn't doesn't help. It is what it is, wrong and unfortunate.
So, there it is. As cliched as a wrap as that is, and pretty much ever word I say, "That's That" We have a lot of cleansing to do in 2015. To quote Neal Sampat from The Newsroom, you embarrass me.
I embarrass me, too. I am just as bad.
Since 2008, I've pretty much dedicated 98% of this blog to pointing out what's wrong with the world through the pop culture lens. The last two years have been particularly crass or depressing depending on the day. And while I am probably going to continue to uphold the "Angry" moniker since it is my brand. I want to be different. I got old real quick in my late 20s and 30s and I will be starting a new decade of my life. I gave up a lot of what made me... me. I still haven't given up all of my snark as a resolution but I do plan on making substantial changes in my life starting now. So, let's see if I can get back to being a little more like who I used to be before Mongo took over. Hopefully, I can bring some of you along with me.
What the hell, Internet?Did I become lazy?Did I get a
life?Did I actually do work?
20 blog posts last year.TWENTY!
That’s abysmal.I did
123 in 2008 and averaged close to 95-100 a year, until I hit a creative or
ambitious wall with 2014.Granted, 2013
and 2014 were pretty much bad years as my content will attest to.
In any case, I couldn’t close the book on 2014 without doing
my annual D-Bag of the Year Award.And if you’ve been keeping score, I kind of mailed
it in the last two years as it is.
In years past, I would go through this tournament consisting
of several rounds matching like nominees such as The Grim Reaper vs. Mother
Nature.
2014 has had its fair share of celebrity deaths like Mike
Nichols, Richard Attenborough, Joan Rivers, Lauren Bacall, James Garner, Mickey
Rooney, James Garner, Ruby Dee, Bob Hoskins, Sid Caesar, Casey Kasem, Shirley
Temple, and Eli Wallach.That was some
of the Hollywood Old Guard.The notable
names connected to a younger generation of entertainment consumers included David
Brenner, Bob Hoskins, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Meshach Taylor, Harold Ramis,
Jan Hooks, Maya Angelou, Christine Cavanaugh, Edward Herrmann, and Robin
Williams.That’s nothing compared to the
lives lost through tragedies like what happened with airplanes overseas disappearing
or crashing, deaths in Ukraine and the Middle East from war and strife, and
deaths of police officers and/or alleged criminals like Ferguson, New York, Cleveland,
or even my own backyard Pennsylvania with Eric Frein going all Rambo in the backwoods of PA after killing police officers.
But Mother Nature gave as good as she got plunging us into
stretches of subzero temperatures with Polar Vortices, a late fall snowstorm in
the Pacific Northwest and New England, cyclones, earthquakes, mudslides,
landslides, and eruptions as well.
I’ve also recounted in past years how various businesses promoted
themselves with such great audaciousness, like Apple infuriating some of its
consumer base with an automatic download and install of U2’s new album via
iTunes, whether they wanted it or not. There was also Hobby Lobby and the
controversial Christian values trumps the ACA for contraception case before the
Supreme Court.Probably the biggest and
most forgotten story was the NFL’s domestic abuse problem and how it quickly
faded once the season got into full swing.
Then the business of politics always took a lot of the focus
as nominees in the category would include people like Congress for constantly
being a blight on the Democratic process.Republicans for the ridiculous amount of time and energy wasted on
trying to overturn the ACA, and immigration, and women’s rights.The Democrats could not escape themselves as
they completely dismantled themselves from doing anything during the midterm
elections because they just didn’t care and it showed at the polls when they
got walloped by the GOP.
But, I always found it easy to pick apart the individuals in
my round up.Chris Brown was an easy
target as he was constantly finding himself being a royal d-bag, but this year
he seemed to take a backseat to others.2014 probably would have had me compare nominees like James Franco for
being a creepy bastard with that underage girl over texting.Shia
LeBeouf would have been up there with his Joaquin Phoenix level meltdown, had
that been real, declaring he was not famous, became the unknown comic, cut his
own face for Fury, claimed he was raped during the filming of a movie, plagiarized
a graphic novelist, and tried to mug a homeless man of Mickey D’s.It could all be a stunt or he’s just drunk
and off the reservation.
NFL and the NBA all have players, owners, and commissioners
who love to be douches.The NBA had LeBron
James, who went back to Cleveland, which made Cleveland look like such a whipped
city because they welcomed him back with open arms.Donald Sterling made the list this year
after his much publicized remarks caught on tape by his “female friend” V
Stiviano.The NBA gave him a lifetime
ban and forced him to sell the team which he fought.In the end, justice kind of prevailed but the
means to the end involved Ms. Stiviano being pretty much a d-bag in her own right.
The NFL produced great d-bags this year like Adrian Peterson
and Ray Rice, who were suspended for domestic violence, and supposedly Roger
Goodell has “top” men investigating it.Saying Roger Goodell is handling the situation when it comes to bad
behavior in the NFL is like saying Wyle E Coyote is this close to catching the
Roadrunner with whatever ACME gadget Amazon Prime just delivered him.Also
with bad behavior, Pittsburgh’s LaGarrette Blount and Le'veon Bell kicked off
the season with a rollicking ride in Pittsburgh, while high, missing the team
flight and getting pulled over by the police. It seems a moot point when Bell has been one
of the biggest play makers for the Black and Gold, and Blount, after getting less
than an acceptable amount of touches, walked off the field and into the locker room, finally
being cut by the team and resigned with his former employer, The New England
Patriots.He was happy to be home and
Pittsburgh was happy he was, too, I guess.Still, it’s a move that could be interesting IF and ONLY IF the Steelers
are forced to face down their only playoff demon left in the Patriots.Still, Blount was a d-bag for being a whiny
bitch and pretty much a problem child that needed spanked.If Blount rolls over Pittsburgh in a playoff
rout, it isn’t enough to call for the heads of Haley and Tomlin in
Pittsburgh.Christ, people have been
calling for them in week 1 and now the own the AFC North. By the end of the season, another famous
d-bag, Ndamukong Suh, finished out his year by stomping on Aaron Rodgers,
leading to a suspension, which was appealed and turned over in another great
moment by Roger Goodell’s mantra of cleaning up the league.But then again, I have watched all of five
minutes of NFL football this year, taking a much needed breather from all the
hypocrisy and thuggish behavior that product has included.So, it’s really a tossup in sports, but
there are no losers in that division.
Much has been made about women’s rights and the treatment of
women this year.The constant
politicizing of women’s right to use contraception took center stage with the
Hobby Lobby debate and springing off the Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice stories
was the catcalling video “10 Hours of Walking In NYC as a Woman”.It showed the “reality” of what a woman goes
through walking around and being accosted by men of color in “various” NYC
neighborhoods.I use quotes because the
10 hours of footage was not presented in full for viewing.When taken to task by Slate, the producer
said (paraphrased), “White Men catcalled her too, but they were too far off
camera or the sound was ruined by a siren.”That footage was somehow not included. So, I include the producer of this, not for
pointing out the reality of what women go through, but because he did it
piecemeal, contextualizing it.And
speaking of being a d-bag towards women, how about Artie Lange and his tweets
about Cari Champion?Or, better yet, the
allegations and retraction (apology) by Rolling Stone over the story about
campus rape at UVA.And how about this,
as innocuous as this is against women, Justin Bieber managed to piss all over
women and the holocaust by writing “Anne Frank Was A Great Girl, Hopefully She
Would Have Been A Belieber” in the guest book at the Anne Frank House in
Amsterdam.That is far worse than those
two cancer kids snogging and GETTING APPLAUSE for it in the same house from The
Fault In Our Stars.I jest because I
loved the book and the film and thought it was a bit of a WTF moment which made
me laugh.Finally, the invasion of
privacy, and sexual crimes against female celebrities due to iCloud hacks calls
out a more philosophical question of what constitutes a sex crime?
But no individual’s d-bag story could have topped the one
that pretty much crushed a lot of us 70s and 80s kids’ childhood memories when
it was reported… A LOT, that Bill Cosby has had a long history of drugging and
sexually assaulting women.Since there
have only been allegations and no actual charges filed (I Think) against Cosby and
I wish it not true because I have adored the career of Cosby from his stand up to
Fat Albert, from Picture Pages to the Cosby Show.But,
there is a hell of a lot of smoke to not think that maybe we should call the
fire department.
In the last segment I usually throw a giant generalization
towards something like Me or the Media or Humanity to truly level the playing
field in who I think is the biggest d-bag of the year. But one d-bag seems to
challenge the faceless nameless category and this year it’s Hackers.Hackers have been all over the place this
year.First off we need to realize that
none of our information is safe.Hackers
hit every category this year.We have
business with all of our credit card and banking information hacked from Home
Depot and Target, and NYC Taxi and Limo company.The cloud was hacked and tons of pictures
and videos were stolen from famous and non-famous account holders in what was called
The Fappening and The Snappening.Sony
was hacked and emails detailing everything from pay inequality to what people
really think of Angelina Jolie was shared.Online gaming sites like XBOX Live and SONY’s PSN were hacked and
kiddies opening up their new PS4s and XBOX Ones on Christmas morning couldn’t
go online and shoot each other in the face, leaving them to face the brave new
world of actually interacting with people face to face.And then there is the supposed Sony hack by
Kim Jong Un and his legion of TRS-80 hackers a la WarGames who threatened
terrorism if The Interview was released.Frankly, that movie should get its own award this year because I think
this was an inside job by somebody looking to boost the hype over watching this
film, not actually North Korea.
So, where does that leave us?We’ve talked about sports and politics and
business and celebs and technology in regards to who is the biggest d-bag of
the year.But what could possibly trump
all those nominees?
