Friday, May 16
Fin
(editor's note: we the publishers of the site would like to apologize for this buzzer beater post. Fans of the team will note the last time this happened was when Tristan competed at the state tournament for soccer in African American Literature. To amend our error, we would like to offer this, a very special final edition of They All Just Fade Away, and Gurtler Blogs, Inc.)
Here's an idea: furries perfectly exemplify the postmodern age.
This post, we'll be taking one last look at the postmodern world around us. For those in the know, Mike Rugnetta, friend of the blog (ed. We wish), takes one idea every week and explores it, in great detail, on his Youtube production, the Idea Channel. Above, I've included a great speech Mr. Rugnetta delivered at the 2013 XOXO Festival, which celebrates "creativity and innovation in forms [...] considered alternative or disruptive to the prevailing social or professional context." Mr. Rugnetta's Youtube channel inspired many posts on this very blog, including its own title (check out the "If you have to ask, you're streets behind" page over on the sidebar for some vague explanation). But this speech is of particular interest to me because he spends some time talking about something he hasn't gotten to on the Idea Channel and something of a personal interest of my own.
I'll sum up the beginning half of the video like so: the Internet is a big deal. And the Internet's native format is to connect people in communities. Here's what Mike means: the Internet is, in so many ways, completely different from anything that came before it. Never before could people from so distant places connect so easily with each other. And why is this important? Well, now, people who before would have to travel great distances and go to great lengths in order to connect with others of similar, unusual interests (a la sci-fi conventions, etc.) can simply go to the relevant forum or subreddit or special community site in order to do... whatever it is that they do.
This, of course, is not hard to see from our own experiences. However, there's something about each of these communities that they share(d), even when they didn't have a home on the internet. Most communities like this, or fandoms as they also may be called, have some canonical media to be a fan of. "Trekkers" have Star Trek. DnD players have, well, Dungeons and Dragons. "Bronies," perhaps the most recent group, have My Little Pony. Because of this, although the Internet makes it easier for these people to connect, the Internet also did nothing to create them. Ante-Internet, these people would've shipped out to conventions, or found a meager few near themselves, or held these interests more or less to themselves in their garage or whatever.
The trick is, nowhere here did the Internet itself create a venue where any of these ideas could be cultivated. None of these fandoms are quite... postmodern enough. There is, however, at least one fandom that exists today that we could argue is, that, though it technically does predate the Internet some used the Internet to more or less create its own canon media to be fans of. They are furries.
Here's an idea: furries perfectly exemplify the postmodern age.
This post, we'll be taking one last look at the postmodern world around us. For those in the know, Mike Rugnetta, friend of the blog (ed. We wish), takes one idea every week and explores it, in great detail, on his Youtube production, the Idea Channel. Above, I've included a great speech Mr. Rugnetta delivered at the 2013 XOXO Festival, which celebrates "creativity and innovation in forms [...] considered alternative or disruptive to the prevailing social or professional context." Mr. Rugnetta's Youtube channel inspired many posts on this very blog, including its own title (check out the "If you have to ask, you're streets behind" page over on the sidebar for some vague explanation). But this speech is of particular interest to me because he spends some time talking about something he hasn't gotten to on the Idea Channel and something of a personal interest of my own.
I'll sum up the beginning half of the video like so: the Internet is a big deal. And the Internet's native format is to connect people in communities. Here's what Mike means: the Internet is, in so many ways, completely different from anything that came before it. Never before could people from so distant places connect so easily with each other. And why is this important? Well, now, people who before would have to travel great distances and go to great lengths in order to connect with others of similar, unusual interests (a la sci-fi conventions, etc.) can simply go to the relevant forum or subreddit or special community site in order to do... whatever it is that they do.
This, of course, is not hard to see from our own experiences. However, there's something about each of these communities that they share(d), even when they didn't have a home on the internet. Most communities like this, or fandoms as they also may be called, have some canonical media to be a fan of. "Trekkers" have Star Trek. DnD players have, well, Dungeons and Dragons. "Bronies," perhaps the most recent group, have My Little Pony. Because of this, although the Internet makes it easier for these people to connect, the Internet also did nothing to create them. Ante-Internet, these people would've shipped out to conventions, or found a meager few near themselves, or held these interests more or less to themselves in their garage or whatever.
The trick is, nowhere here did the Internet itself create a venue where any of these ideas could be cultivated. None of these fandoms are quite... postmodern enough. There is, however, at least one fandom that exists today that we could argue is, that, though it technically does predate the Internet some used the Internet to more or less create its own canon media to be fans of. They are furries.
The furry fandom, as well as anybody can date anything, was begun in the year 1980, as a "funny animal" sci-fi discussion group inspired by the art of Steve Gallacci that met at various conventions. Of course, it is predated by a variety of anthropomorphic media (Disney's Robin Hood, for example), but this is seen as, more or less, the first time anybody met to discuss such media. What you may notice, though, is that it started with a canon media: Albeda Anthropomorphics, Gallacci's work.
With this beginning, though, it was not long before the fandom grew in an entirely different way. MUCKs, Multi User Content Kingdoms, are a sort of text-based MMORPG (like World of Warcraft) where fans morphed from discussing anthropomorphic art to performing it, acting as various anthropomorphic animals in chat and action. Now, there was more than Gallacci's art; there was the beginning of something bigger.
In the time since the 80s, various other forms of communication have arisen between members of this fandom. Though MUCKs have fallen by the wayside for the most part, now there is an increasing presence in IRCs, a variety of forums, and most importantly, social media-like art communities. The largest of these is FurAffinity, begun in 2005 and has already collected millions of submissions. Submissions consist of drawings, writings, music, and anything else that users want to share with a like-minded audience. However, most importantly, these drawings are, largely, original content. They don't relate to any strict canonical media (though there does exist a significant amount of cross-fandom activity between Bronies and Furries). They only are joined together by an idea, a general structure to follow.
Even that is tenuous. Nowhere will you find a hard and concrete definition of what a furry, or furry media is. Generally speaking, it's somebody or something that relates to art (not just visual, but written and so on) involving anthropomorphic animals. BUT, not all art that does this is furry. Is Robin Hood, a piece created before a formal furry fandom even existed, furry art? How about TwoKinds, a webcomic created by Tom Fischbach using animals and humans as allegory for racism and, at least according to Tom, not intended to be anything related to a furry fandom? Nobody can tell you explicitly. On the /r/furry subreddit, one of the most frequent posts are questions of whether individuals are furries. The answer? "What do you think?" The fandom as a whole is an ever-changing, ever-whirling maelstrom where the edges are never constant but the center always is. Nothing can be stated resolutely but this; those who identify as furries enjoy art of anthropomorphic animals.
The trick is, this really couldn't exist in quite the same state without the Internet. For one thing, just gathering these people together would be difficult. But what's more compelling about this is the way people can change how they represent themselves on the Internet. Whereas in person, to those they know they are bound by their known character, and to those they don't they are still bound by their bodies and appearance. But, on the internet, none of this applies.
With this beginning, though, it was not long before the fandom grew in an entirely different way. MUCKs, Multi User Content Kingdoms, are a sort of text-based MMORPG (like World of Warcraft) where fans morphed from discussing anthropomorphic art to performing it, acting as various anthropomorphic animals in chat and action. Now, there was more than Gallacci's art; there was the beginning of something bigger.
In the time since the 80s, various other forms of communication have arisen between members of this fandom. Though MUCKs have fallen by the wayside for the most part, now there is an increasing presence in IRCs, a variety of forums, and most importantly, social media-like art communities. The largest of these is FurAffinity, begun in 2005 and has already collected millions of submissions. Submissions consist of drawings, writings, music, and anything else that users want to share with a like-minded audience. However, most importantly, these drawings are, largely, original content. They don't relate to any strict canonical media (though there does exist a significant amount of cross-fandom activity between Bronies and Furries). They only are joined together by an idea, a general structure to follow.
Even that is tenuous. Nowhere will you find a hard and concrete definition of what a furry, or furry media is. Generally speaking, it's somebody or something that relates to art (not just visual, but written and so on) involving anthropomorphic animals. BUT, not all art that does this is furry. Is Robin Hood, a piece created before a formal furry fandom even existed, furry art? How about TwoKinds, a webcomic created by Tom Fischbach using animals and humans as allegory for racism and, at least according to Tom, not intended to be anything related to a furry fandom? Nobody can tell you explicitly. On the /r/furry subreddit, one of the most frequent posts are questions of whether individuals are furries. The answer? "What do you think?" The fandom as a whole is an ever-changing, ever-whirling maelstrom where the edges are never constant but the center always is. Nothing can be stated resolutely but this; those who identify as furries enjoy art of anthropomorphic animals.
The trick is, this really couldn't exist in quite the same state without the Internet. For one thing, just gathering these people together would be difficult. But what's more compelling about this is the way people can change how they represent themselves on the Internet. Whereas in person, to those they know they are bound by their known character, and to those they don't they are still bound by their bodies and appearance. But, on the internet, none of this applies.
People can represent themselves however they like. Sherry Turkle, in her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (from 1995), talks about the way people use and, to some, misuse communicative technology on the Internet. Specifically, she argues that misrepresenting oneself, whether by gender or by personality or, in the case of furries, by species can be therapeutic, where people can gain insights into the lives of others by pretending to be them, where there are no consequences. Of course, this also can lead to catfishing (what happened to Manti Te'o) and predatorial relations, but Turkle sought instead to look at the positive. But, ultimately, this is an act restricted to the Internet, where every girl's a guy and every kid's an undercover FBI agent.
So, furries, love them or hate them, are nothing if not interesting to talk about. More than just freaks in suits, they embody a whole principle of ideas about the world we live in today. Can you say the same?
"The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing" - Socrates, according to some guy on Yahoo! answers
"The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others" - David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that manifests in two ways. Firstly, those who lack skills in a subject perceive themselves to be significantly better than they really are, attributed to a metacognitive inability to recognize one's own ineptitude. Secondly, those who have considerable skill in a subject may suffer from weak self-confidence, attributed to their possible assumption that those around them share said skill. We all know of people who are not good at something, but constantly claim to be amply good. Some of us may also know people who are good at things, and don't realize that others aren't too. This effect is loosely related to the quote in the title, attributed to Socrates though possibly it's from Aristotle and more probably neither of them said it explicitly, they just said something vaguely like that.
It's particularly interesting to me that we can talk about the action of knowing something as precluding further knowledge. What a thought that is! Really though, what we're saying is not nearly so concrete. After all, there are experts in fields for reasons. They didn't all just make stuff up to gain popularity. Rather, those who know a lot about a subject know that they know a lot about said subject. They also know, however, increasingly more about the parts of the subject they don't yet know about; questions raised by research designed to answer questions raised by earlier research, and so on.
So what does this have to do with Libra? Well, I think when I talked in class earlier about this concept, it became an impromptu implicit proof of the maxim that we may never know what exactly happened in the JFK assassination. And to that, I say, well, maybe? But don't be so sure. The thing is, we still learn about subjects. We still gain knowledge. We still make narratives. It is easier to complicate a narrative today, surely. It is easier to find evidence that points toward an incorrect conclusion as well. But, the whole aim of science is to be able to do better with this, and make statements with greater and greater confidence. There is, naturally, no such thing as saying all but a precious few things are undoubtedly true. Even criminal courts can only require proof "beyond reasonable doubt." There is no way we could force lawyers to argue against unreasonable doubt, even if they were at a later date proven not as unreasonable as originally thought. And, certainly, there may or may not be reasonable doubt in the case for Lee as the lone gunman of November 22, but with more and more successful ways to interpret data (notice that I focus on interpreting, not creating), we can push doubts to be more or less reasonable.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that manifests in two ways. Firstly, those who lack skills in a subject perceive themselves to be significantly better than they really are, attributed to a metacognitive inability to recognize one's own ineptitude. Secondly, those who have considerable skill in a subject may suffer from weak self-confidence, attributed to their possible assumption that those around them share said skill. We all know of people who are not good at something, but constantly claim to be amply good. Some of us may also know people who are good at things, and don't realize that others aren't too. This effect is loosely related to the quote in the title, attributed to Socrates though possibly it's from Aristotle and more probably neither of them said it explicitly, they just said something vaguely like that.
It's particularly interesting to me that we can talk about the action of knowing something as precluding further knowledge. What a thought that is! Really though, what we're saying is not nearly so concrete. After all, there are experts in fields for reasons. They didn't all just make stuff up to gain popularity. Rather, those who know a lot about a subject know that they know a lot about said subject. They also know, however, increasingly more about the parts of the subject they don't yet know about; questions raised by research designed to answer questions raised by earlier research, and so on.
So what does this have to do with Libra? Well, I think when I talked in class earlier about this concept, it became an impromptu implicit proof of the maxim that we may never know what exactly happened in the JFK assassination. And to that, I say, well, maybe? But don't be so sure. The thing is, we still learn about subjects. We still gain knowledge. We still make narratives. It is easier to complicate a narrative today, surely. It is easier to find evidence that points toward an incorrect conclusion as well. But, the whole aim of science is to be able to do better with this, and make statements with greater and greater confidence. There is, naturally, no such thing as saying all but a precious few things are undoubtedly true. Even criminal courts can only require proof "beyond reasonable doubt." There is no way we could force lawyers to argue against unreasonable doubt, even if they were at a later date proven not as unreasonable as originally thought. And, certainly, there may or may not be reasonable doubt in the case for Lee as the lone gunman of November 22, but with more and more successful ways to interpret data (notice that I focus on interpreting, not creating), we can push doubts to be more or less reasonable.
Thursday, May 15
The Art of Persuasion
The trouble with fate is that it messes with causality. Lee began his work in the Depository before JFK was even scheduled to kill JFK, let alone drive right past the building. Yet, if Lee is fated to kill JFK, as Ferrie supposes, then that fact, occurring after the events that led to it, is whagt causes JFK to give Lee an opportunity. As The Doctor, of Doctor Who fame, puts it, "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." If anything, Ferrie seems to be in tune with this non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint. He taps into the consciousness surrounding Libra itself to know that things we may call coincidence because we have no better term for it are anything but. Why does Lee see a sign from the universe when his boss buys a few rifles immediately following his discussion with Ferrie?
And for that matter, why does Lee start "reading between the lines" of the leftist periodicals he receives? Of course Cuba and Russia are sending him secret, coded messages, aren't they? Really, Lee is close to delusional in the hype and excitement leading up to the culmination of the plot. Ferrie, likely unintentionally, feeds into Lee's latent narcissism and self-importance, convincing Lee to finally get out and do it. Never mind that Lee doesn't know there's plans behind his back, a second shooter, a bullet with his name on it in the dark theater. Neither does Ferrie, after all; these things aren't so paramount to "fate" as Lee's presence in the window on November 22.
So, if Lee is convinced to go through with his portion of the plot by fate and delusion, what makes Jack Ruby step up to the plate? We could talk about his fervent patriotism, the idea that people will love him for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. But, I think that's merely a subtext. Karlinsky is speaking without speaking in his conversation with Ruby. He mentions the people that want Lee Harvey Oswald dead outright, but he's more concerned about the people that want Lee dead, who don't want Leon to give up the game. Ruby, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any passion in the killing of Oswald that one might think goes with killing a man patriotically. On his way to the event, he has to stop and wire one of his dancers money. He's running late. He's nervous. It all happens in a rush. The forces that be had set it in motion, and Ruby was just along for the ride.
Jack Ruby is concerned for his financial affairs. He is concerned for his future beyond the murder. Lee, on the other hand, may be concerned for his future, but that is the future of the assassination. He doesn't have plans for what he'll do following killing Kennedy. Ruby's first concern is what the state of his club will be while he's in prison (because, he knows he will go to prison, at the very least). We talk about Ferrie convincing Lee, but really Lee convinces Lee, and Ferrie is just there to see it happen. When we look at Ruby, Karlinsky is fully the one to convince Ruby to do the act. Ruby has no reason to be the man who kills Oswald other than Karlinsky has given him a good offer for what will happen afterwards. Talking about the patriotism, the love Ruby will receive for his act, is inconsequential. Fate doesn't direct his actions quite like it does Lee's.
And for that matter, why does Lee start "reading between the lines" of the leftist periodicals he receives? Of course Cuba and Russia are sending him secret, coded messages, aren't they? Really, Lee is close to delusional in the hype and excitement leading up to the culmination of the plot. Ferrie, likely unintentionally, feeds into Lee's latent narcissism and self-importance, convincing Lee to finally get out and do it. Never mind that Lee doesn't know there's plans behind his back, a second shooter, a bullet with his name on it in the dark theater. Neither does Ferrie, after all; these things aren't so paramount to "fate" as Lee's presence in the window on November 22.
So, if Lee is convinced to go through with his portion of the plot by fate and delusion, what makes Jack Ruby step up to the plate? We could talk about his fervent patriotism, the idea that people will love him for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. But, I think that's merely a subtext. Karlinsky is speaking without speaking in his conversation with Ruby. He mentions the people that want Lee Harvey Oswald dead outright, but he's more concerned about the people that want Lee dead, who don't want Leon to give up the game. Ruby, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any passion in the killing of Oswald that one might think goes with killing a man patriotically. On his way to the event, he has to stop and wire one of his dancers money. He's running late. He's nervous. It all happens in a rush. The forces that be had set it in motion, and Ruby was just along for the ride.
Jack Ruby is concerned for his financial affairs. He is concerned for his future beyond the murder. Lee, on the other hand, may be concerned for his future, but that is the future of the assassination. He doesn't have plans for what he'll do following killing Kennedy. Ruby's first concern is what the state of his club will be while he's in prison (because, he knows he will go to prison, at the very least). We talk about Ferrie convincing Lee, but really Lee convinces Lee, and Ferrie is just there to see it happen. When we look at Ruby, Karlinsky is fully the one to convince Ruby to do the act. Ruby has no reason to be the man who kills Oswald other than Karlinsky has given him a good offer for what will happen afterwards. Talking about the patriotism, the love Ruby will receive for his act, is inconsequential. Fate doesn't direct his actions quite like it does Lee's.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)