Jersey Shore, Buckwild, Bad Girls Club, Mob Wives, Basketball Wives, Real Housewives of Wherever, any of the 'reality' television programs where someone's crappy attitude and poor people skills, ignorance and immaturity, are lauded as 'sassy', or 'real', and allowed to incubate into a new cult of personality, is a strong reason to live nebulously.
Far and away the most influential of the bunch, Jersey Shore is the paradigm example. I have been contending for quite some time that 'reality TV' is a ridiculous misnomer. The second the cameras get turned on, people stop being real and start performing. They are not themselves, especially in such a contrived environment as a television show intended to reach a national audience. Yes it's supposed to be candid, unscripted, I get it. I just don't believe it ever is. Precious advertising is on the line and nothing - nothing - is left completely to the whim of candor, for no other reason than it would likely prove painfully boring to watch. Something has to be made to happen, someone has to do something to avoid wasting time and resources. Make no mistake, the negative stereotypes being perpetuated for six seasons on Jersey Shore were very much part of the show's initial concept, and don't think for a second those kids were not told to 'Guido' it up as much as possible, to do a little song and dance, and plied with alcohol to ease the process.
Not that the Snookis and Situations of the world don't exist. They are at least a small part of Jersey culture; anybody who's ever been there knows this. And they have always existed. Some form of 'Snooki' ... or 'JWoww' or whatever...was barfing on Jersey boardwalks in 1941 and 1971 and 1991 just as they are today. The difference is behavior that once marginalized now ingratiates, and qualifies someone for a career in entertainment. The Situation winds up on Dancing With the Stars. Snooki is asked to wield her brainless smirk on the cover of countless magazines. She scores endorsement deals, blows up Twitter (enjoys a million-plus followers of every scrap iron thought she deems worthy of sharing), garners press, warrants, for some reason, attention as she hoists up her new baby like the baboon in The Lion King. There are clothing lines and perfume lines and new reality spin-offs to keep it all going. And it will keep it all going. Having no special talent whatsoever, bringing nothing to the proverbial party, contributing no verse to Whitman's powerful play that hasn't been burped, farted or swore out loud before, these individuals have eagerly assumed their places as bonafide celebrities, the 'best and brightest' amongst us, feeders of Zeitgeist.
Earlier this year, in the wake of Jersey Shore's success and finale and amidst the ongoing wash of the reality TV tsunami, came the most notable imitator, the hillbilly-themed, and ill-fated, Buckwild, another MTV creation geared toward kids who have no idea what the 'M' stands for. My heart goes out to the friends and family of Shain Gandee for his untimely death, but any outrage last spring over the cancellation of that show following the tragedy is way off base. The very wild and crazy behavior MTV producers sought to prostitute out was what killed him, and should not be getting 'brought to you by Pepsi' (or whatever...). That young man is dead because he was 'buckwild', and/or encouraged to be so for the sake of that program, and it's not entertainment, neither to be glorified nor remembered fondly, nor billed as a legacy for some up and comer to carry on.
But it was, and it is, and it will be in the future. The reality TV phenomenon is not about 'getting real', as the granddaddy of all reality TV shows - The Real World - has been purporting for over twenty years now, it's just (or surely has become) a noxious brew of artistic laziness and cultural jadedness. But it works; it sells advertising, it's what we all want to see...can't help but see.
Unless we strive to live nebulously.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Friday, June 21, 2013
Reason #6 To Live Nebulously: Ke$ha
From her vacuous sneer to her make-up smear, from her artless songs to the artless lurch of her hips (an attempt to manufacture sexy, but success only in suggesting a pimply-faced debutante's first awkward, and way over-compensatory, exploration), from her perpetuation of dysfunction to her contribution to the dumbing down of society, from her flaccid vocal chops to the dollar sign she's jammed into her name (and all that it implies...or tries to), Ke$ha's longevity, her staying power, her impact on the current Zeitgeist, is a reason to float away like a butterfly.
A butterfly who's lucky not to have had its nebulous wings ripped off...
A butterfly who's lucky not to have had its nebulous wings ripped off...
Friday, June 14, 2013
Reason #5 to Live Nebulously: Nothing is Left to the Imagination, and 'User Comments' are my Kryptonite
After the erosion of privacy, the worst part of our uber-connected society might be the erosion of wonder, due to an acute over-exposure to everything. We simply know too much these days. We've seen it all. Every possible thing that could happen has already been captured and posted on YouTube by more people than would ever seem necessary, and viewed by more people than is healthy.
A visit I took to the Minnesota Zoo over the weekend is a perfect example. In the bear exhibit, I shot video of two magnificent grizzlies tussling in front of spectators. The animals were just playing with each other, nobody was in any danger, but their roughhousing happened in close proximity, just on the other side of protective glass, and the baring of teeth, hostile sideways glances and sudden lunges through the water all contributed to an enticing illustration of their impressive size, fearsome power and potential danger. It was the kind of moment that makes reputable zoos worth keeping around. When or where else would most of us get a chance to see something like this up close, without grave risk?
I came away excited for having captured something special, but the reality is more than a dozen people were filming the exchange as I was, and doubtless will share their footage somewhere - Facebook, YouTube, etc. Many of them probably 'shared' it as they were standing there, because all the world lives in a single time zone these days - real time.
In and of itself, this isn't a big deal. I don't care at all that I don't have some exclusive. But the suddenness with which I was enlisted into that impromptu press corps, all of us simultaneously hoisting cameras up and filming these fantastic animals, started me thinking about overexposure, and the death of wonderment, of mystery, of intrigue. In a world that was already struggling to keep reading and imagination alive, it seems there's hardly a reason to do much of either these days. Videos like these, on just about any subject, are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, pouring in from all over the world. In real time.
And frankly, 'bears in a zoo' is pretty lame. There is far more compelling video to be found out there. What about wild bears charging across a stream in Alaska, disturbing a fishing camp? Or bison bumping heads with SUVs as a herd of them cross the road in Yellowstone? Or close encounters with sharks off Hawaii? Or crossing the equator in an S&S 34? Or rough seas? Or rough landings? How about flying over the North Pole on the way to Singapore? People have cameras with them constantly now, and are pulling them out at opportune moments and capturing fantastic, or simply cool, images and/or video, all day every day. Nobody is ever more than a Google search away from all of it - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The effect that the 'bad' and the 'ugly' have is obvious. There's no shortage of horrible things to witness on-line - a visual cacophony of the violent, cruel and vulgar, the childish, churlish and asinine. What were once off-color jokes that never achieved greater than nudge-nudge/wink-wink status, or fears that lurked only in the dark, musty closet of our imagination, are now readily available for viewing, and for some qualify as bona fide entertainment. At worst, they corrode the fabric of society, desensitize us, our children, by doing away with boundaries and sensibilities, making short work of both the illusion of hope and our sense of outrage when that hope seems threatened.
At best, they are just a waste of precious time.
But too much of the 'good' has a detrimental effect as well. People post every little 'special moment' in their lives - from their babies doing cute things to the smile on their dog's face, from the deer that strolled through their back yard to the train that passed in the night, from the thunderstorm that woke them up to the birds at their feeder in the morning - until there is no longer anything special about simple joys. Overexposure cheapens the good moments, trivializes them. My cat chasing a laser pointer pales a little - a lot, actually - if I know there are 50,000 videos of other people's cats chasing laser pointers on YouTube. And some people who have put their videos to music.
I have always been very moved by beauty in nature. It has influenced my moods, my writing, my ambition to write. Our natural world is astonishingly, astonishingly, complex, and yet perfectly ordered, with reassuring signs everywhere, for me anyway, that someone - something - had a hand in creating it, that this was not some cosmic accident.
But the next time I see a double rainbow, I don't want to be stuck thinking about this guy:
Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt this was a stellar moment. Had I been there, standing next to Paul Vasquez (the man filming), when it happened, I can't say I would not have been moved to tears myself. But while this video went viral shortly after being posted by Vasquez in 2010, and wound up with 37 million views, it was not on account of the rainbow. The camera really doesn't do the moment any justice. You get a sense of what he's seeing, but you're not going to feel it by watching this video, really feel it; it's essentially no different than being stuck watching someone's vacation slides. What turned this video into a meme was Vasquez's ridiculous over-reaction, forever linking a stunning affirmation of the beauty that exists in Nature, whether you believe in a divine Creator or not, with his sobbing like a mental patient.
Something cannot help but get lost in translation, and now I will never again see a double rainbow without thinking of 'double rainbow guy'.
As if the overexposure in our video world wasn't enough, every video post has to be accompanied by everyone's two cents in the user comment section. Seriously, 'user comments' have reduced the value of our two cents to about a sixpence. They are an abrasive reminder of how stupid 'people' are; how quick to trivialize or laugh inappropriately, how bent on instigating an argument without really knowing what's going on, how tribal and willing to perpetuate ignorance in the name of their tribe they allow themselves to become.
I know, you're supposed to ignore, dismiss or laugh off the user comments. But I'm a writer who believes it's impossible to write effectively without some faith in humanity, a belief if nothing else that everyone has something to say, something to contribute, a story to tell.
User comments refute this, proving that a lot of people - most people? - have nothing good to say. User comments are my kryptonite, and reason enough to tear off down the highway, straight into the horizon, steering with my knees so I may clamp my hands protectively over my ears.
A visit I took to the Minnesota Zoo over the weekend is a perfect example. In the bear exhibit, I shot video of two magnificent grizzlies tussling in front of spectators. The animals were just playing with each other, nobody was in any danger, but their roughhousing happened in close proximity, just on the other side of protective glass, and the baring of teeth, hostile sideways glances and sudden lunges through the water all contributed to an enticing illustration of their impressive size, fearsome power and potential danger. It was the kind of moment that makes reputable zoos worth keeping around. When or where else would most of us get a chance to see something like this up close, without grave risk?
In and of itself, this isn't a big deal. I don't care at all that I don't have some exclusive. But the suddenness with which I was enlisted into that impromptu press corps, all of us simultaneously hoisting cameras up and filming these fantastic animals, started me thinking about overexposure, and the death of wonderment, of mystery, of intrigue. In a world that was already struggling to keep reading and imagination alive, it seems there's hardly a reason to do much of either these days. Videos like these, on just about any subject, are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, pouring in from all over the world. In real time.
And frankly, 'bears in a zoo' is pretty lame. There is far more compelling video to be found out there. What about wild bears charging across a stream in Alaska, disturbing a fishing camp? Or bison bumping heads with SUVs as a herd of them cross the road in Yellowstone? Or close encounters with sharks off Hawaii? Or crossing the equator in an S&S 34? Or rough seas? Or rough landings? How about flying over the North Pole on the way to Singapore? People have cameras with them constantly now, and are pulling them out at opportune moments and capturing fantastic, or simply cool, images and/or video, all day every day. Nobody is ever more than a Google search away from all of it - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The effect that the 'bad' and the 'ugly' have is obvious. There's no shortage of horrible things to witness on-line - a visual cacophony of the violent, cruel and vulgar, the childish, churlish and asinine. What were once off-color jokes that never achieved greater than nudge-nudge/wink-wink status, or fears that lurked only in the dark, musty closet of our imagination, are now readily available for viewing, and for some qualify as bona fide entertainment. At worst, they corrode the fabric of society, desensitize us, our children, by doing away with boundaries and sensibilities, making short work of both the illusion of hope and our sense of outrage when that hope seems threatened.
At best, they are just a waste of precious time.
But too much of the 'good' has a detrimental effect as well. People post every little 'special moment' in their lives - from their babies doing cute things to the smile on their dog's face, from the deer that strolled through their back yard to the train that passed in the night, from the thunderstorm that woke them up to the birds at their feeder in the morning - until there is no longer anything special about simple joys. Overexposure cheapens the good moments, trivializes them. My cat chasing a laser pointer pales a little - a lot, actually - if I know there are 50,000 videos of other people's cats chasing laser pointers on YouTube. And some people who have put their videos to music.
I have always been very moved by beauty in nature. It has influenced my moods, my writing, my ambition to write. Our natural world is astonishingly, astonishingly, complex, and yet perfectly ordered, with reassuring signs everywhere, for me anyway, that someone - something - had a hand in creating it, that this was not some cosmic accident.
But the next time I see a double rainbow, I don't want to be stuck thinking about this guy:
Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt this was a stellar moment. Had I been there, standing next to Paul Vasquez (the man filming), when it happened, I can't say I would not have been moved to tears myself. But while this video went viral shortly after being posted by Vasquez in 2010, and wound up with 37 million views, it was not on account of the rainbow. The camera really doesn't do the moment any justice. You get a sense of what he's seeing, but you're not going to feel it by watching this video, really feel it; it's essentially no different than being stuck watching someone's vacation slides. What turned this video into a meme was Vasquez's ridiculous over-reaction, forever linking a stunning affirmation of the beauty that exists in Nature, whether you believe in a divine Creator or not, with his sobbing like a mental patient.
Something cannot help but get lost in translation, and now I will never again see a double rainbow without thinking of 'double rainbow guy'.
As if the overexposure in our video world wasn't enough, every video post has to be accompanied by everyone's two cents in the user comment section. Seriously, 'user comments' have reduced the value of our two cents to about a sixpence. They are an abrasive reminder of how stupid 'people' are; how quick to trivialize or laugh inappropriately, how bent on instigating an argument without really knowing what's going on, how tribal and willing to perpetuate ignorance in the name of their tribe they allow themselves to become.
I know, you're supposed to ignore, dismiss or laugh off the user comments. But I'm a writer who believes it's impossible to write effectively without some faith in humanity, a belief if nothing else that everyone has something to say, something to contribute, a story to tell.
User comments refute this, proving that a lot of people - most people? - have nothing good to say. User comments are my kryptonite, and reason enough to tear off down the highway, straight into the horizon, steering with my knees so I may clamp my hands protectively over my ears.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Reason #4 to Live Nebulously: Whether we like it or not, privacy is a thing of the past
While everyone is understandably appalled by recent revelations that our government spies on us in the interest of national security, they really shouldn't be too surprised. Our government's involvement certainly elevates the discussion, but spying on us through windows in the on-line community has been going on for years. We are being 'spied' on - in one form or another - all the time, every day of our lives. Our information is being mined from every move we make on the Internet - every keystroke, every mouse click, every e-mail verification - and made public by data gatherers. I have lived a fairly normal, uneventful life, all things considered, but Google my name, and one of the results will be, from 'Mylife.com': 'Jared M. Glovsky is 40 Years Old and Lives in Wisconsin.'
Is this super private information? Do I care? No, but 'my life' is a funny choice of words, seeing as I took no part in this listing whatsoever; I did not place it, or contribute to it in any way. I didn't even know 'Mylife.com' existed until I came across it in a Google search, and it's wholly unnerving to think someone's out there compiling these little bits and pieces into a dossier, a kind of unauthorized biography.
It'd be a great title for a memoir, though: 'Jared M. Glovsky is 40 Years Old and Lives in Wisconsin!'
And it surely doesn't stop at our public record lives. More malicious hackers abound on-line. Smarter than most law enforcement agencies, always staying a step or two ahead, they unleash computer viruses into cyberspace that can do everything from erase specific files to purge hard drives to remotely activate webcams so they can watch you without your realizing (I keep a piece of masking tape over my webcam lens; you truly never know...). For better or worse, we live in our computers, our tablets, our smart phones these days, and they are not nearly as safe and secure as they should be, we want them to be or assume they are.
Even more sinister is when our on-line habits are turned over to some marketing database, from which a disturbingly accurate consumer profile emerges. I'm not down with this at all. In fact, if I had to choose, I'd say I'm much more comfortable with the NSA spying on me trying to foil a terror plot than I am advertisers spying on me hoping to inculcate my thoughts with sudden fancies for dark beer, dark chocolate, dark sunglasses or a low-interest consolidation loan. That behavior is far more insidious and invasive in the long run.
'Jared M. Glovsky is 40 Years Old, lives in Wisconsin, and prefers to drink Newcastle beer.' Who knows, that listing might very well exist somewhere, and it's this stranglehold Madison Avenue keeps, or tries to, that should have us all outraged.
Our entire financial lives are far too 'connected' these days as well. All the major financial institutions and banks are on-line, and that's where more and more of us engage them. We deposit, withdraw and transfer on-line, we purchase on-line, we pay all our bills on-line. It's quick and it's convenient, but it has the potential to be a financial suicide mission. We live in a world where paper money will likely become a thing of the past the way paper letters have; someday there might be only direct deposit and debit cards, no greenbacks, no coinage, nothing of physical property whatsoever, no paper trail. And if we presume that there is some kind of digital cord running between all the banks, this should make us nervous. A current Vanity Fair article talks about the world's first cyber war, between countries, with (notably) banks caught in the crossfire, going on right now. Where is our money? What is our money? Are we comfortable with our finances being merely a file on a computer? As annoying as the commercials are, maybe buying gold is a good hedge against the threat of just one well-placed bank virus.
To be perfectly honest, outside of finances, I don't operate in any capacity on-line or in my phone without the assumption that someone's going to see it. Not give a rat's behind necessarily, but see it. I assume someone's looking at my e-mails, just as a matter of course, some Google employee if nothing else, pulling a Sunday night shift, bored to tears and sifting through random e-mails just for a laugh.
It it actually happening? I don't know, probably not. SHOULD it be happening? Absolutely not. I just assume it is. Text messages too. This is because at the dawn of the Internet as we know it today - way back in 1995 or '96 - someone told me that every move we make on-line is forever. Every message that gets sent, 'transmitted' anywhere, remains out there forever, in stasis in some ISP's metadata history. I'm not entirely sure how true that is, but I accepted it as truth seventeen years ago and it's colored my on-line habits ever since.
On top of all this, we are simply being watched, monitored and recorded visually, either by closed circuit television in public buildings and on public streets, or by people we don't even know, who fancy themselves photags or budding cinematographers and at any moment might upload to Instagram and Reddit our candid moments they've decided are worthy of a world-wide audience.
It's fricking horrendous really, the over-exposed world we live in today, and the only adequate response to the ongoing erosion of our privacy just might be living off the grid entirely. Not just a nebulous life on the road, but a nebulous life period.
I may never be able to live off the grid, I may never want to, but for those sweet few months during 1/48/50, I will surely disappear into the horizon, and as much as possible, maintain radio silence.
So 'MyLife.com' doesn't know where I am!
Is this super private information? Do I care? No, but 'my life' is a funny choice of words, seeing as I took no part in this listing whatsoever; I did not place it, or contribute to it in any way. I didn't even know 'Mylife.com' existed until I came across it in a Google search, and it's wholly unnerving to think someone's out there compiling these little bits and pieces into a dossier, a kind of unauthorized biography.
It'd be a great title for a memoir, though: 'Jared M. Glovsky is 40 Years Old and Lives in Wisconsin!'
And it surely doesn't stop at our public record lives. More malicious hackers abound on-line. Smarter than most law enforcement agencies, always staying a step or two ahead, they unleash computer viruses into cyberspace that can do everything from erase specific files to purge hard drives to remotely activate webcams so they can watch you without your realizing (I keep a piece of masking tape over my webcam lens; you truly never know...). For better or worse, we live in our computers, our tablets, our smart phones these days, and they are not nearly as safe and secure as they should be, we want them to be or assume they are.
Even more sinister is when our on-line habits are turned over to some marketing database, from which a disturbingly accurate consumer profile emerges. I'm not down with this at all. In fact, if I had to choose, I'd say I'm much more comfortable with the NSA spying on me trying to foil a terror plot than I am advertisers spying on me hoping to inculcate my thoughts with sudden fancies for dark beer, dark chocolate, dark sunglasses or a low-interest consolidation loan. That behavior is far more insidious and invasive in the long run.
'Jared M. Glovsky is 40 Years Old, lives in Wisconsin, and prefers to drink Newcastle beer.' Who knows, that listing might very well exist somewhere, and it's this stranglehold Madison Avenue keeps, or tries to, that should have us all outraged.
Our entire financial lives are far too 'connected' these days as well. All the major financial institutions and banks are on-line, and that's where more and more of us engage them. We deposit, withdraw and transfer on-line, we purchase on-line, we pay all our bills on-line. It's quick and it's convenient, but it has the potential to be a financial suicide mission. We live in a world where paper money will likely become a thing of the past the way paper letters have; someday there might be only direct deposit and debit cards, no greenbacks, no coinage, nothing of physical property whatsoever, no paper trail. And if we presume that there is some kind of digital cord running between all the banks, this should make us nervous. A current Vanity Fair article talks about the world's first cyber war, between countries, with (notably) banks caught in the crossfire, going on right now. Where is our money? What is our money? Are we comfortable with our finances being merely a file on a computer? As annoying as the commercials are, maybe buying gold is a good hedge against the threat of just one well-placed bank virus.
To be perfectly honest, outside of finances, I don't operate in any capacity on-line or in my phone without the assumption that someone's going to see it. Not give a rat's behind necessarily, but see it. I assume someone's looking at my e-mails, just as a matter of course, some Google employee if nothing else, pulling a Sunday night shift, bored to tears and sifting through random e-mails just for a laugh.
It it actually happening? I don't know, probably not. SHOULD it be happening? Absolutely not. I just assume it is. Text messages too. This is because at the dawn of the Internet as we know it today - way back in 1995 or '96 - someone told me that every move we make on-line is forever. Every message that gets sent, 'transmitted' anywhere, remains out there forever, in stasis in some ISP's metadata history. I'm not entirely sure how true that is, but I accepted it as truth seventeen years ago and it's colored my on-line habits ever since.
On top of all this, we are simply being watched, monitored and recorded visually, either by closed circuit television in public buildings and on public streets, or by people we don't even know, who fancy themselves photags or budding cinematographers and at any moment might upload to Instagram and Reddit our candid moments they've decided are worthy of a world-wide audience.
It's fricking horrendous really, the over-exposed world we live in today, and the only adequate response to the ongoing erosion of our privacy just might be living off the grid entirely. Not just a nebulous life on the road, but a nebulous life period.
I may never be able to live off the grid, I may never want to, but for those sweet few months during 1/48/50, I will surely disappear into the horizon, and as much as possible, maintain radio silence.
So 'MyLife.com' doesn't know where I am!
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