Contrary to popular sentiment in the US, Chinese readers don’t blindly trust the state-run media. Rather, they distrust it so much that they don’t trust any form of media, instead putting their faith in what their friends and family tell them.
the hyperreality TV star who became president
From a masterful polemic by Brian Phillips:
Authoritarianism wants to convince its supporters that nothing is true, that the whole machinery of truth is an intolerable imposition on their psyches, and thus that they might as well give free rein to their fantasies.
globalization
The shoe is Red, White & Blue. It’s called “The Plaza” and is named after the JKwon / Radio Korea plaza in Los Angeles. The skater, Tiago Lemos, was born in Brazil.
Hand painted message on the tailgate of an old white pickup truck
America’s only homeless certified public accountant
And I am a white American
the carnivalesque and Trump rallies
In addition to being campaign events for an institutional political party and its candidate for POTUS, rallies can also be carnivals.
links and citations below.
![[The Carnival is an] inverted world in which the powerful are not simply rendered powerless but humiliated.](http://josemarquez.com/etc/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/carnival-twitter-text-04.jpg)
1.
top left: Donald Trump on WWE (Screenshot/YouTube)
right: Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Richard M. Berrong
bottom left: Woman screams at press after Trump rally: “we’re mad at you!”
top left: Donald Trump on WWE (Screenshot/YouTube)
right: Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Richard M. Berrong
bottom left: Woman screams at press after Trump rally: “we’re mad at you!”
2.
top left: Donald Trump supporters are ready to fight, literally, for their chosen candidate (Photo By Elise Amendola/Associated Press)
right: The Burgundian Carnaval depicted by a follower of Jheronimus Bosch, c.160
bottom left: Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Chicago
3.
top left: “Deplorable Lives Matter”, Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
right: Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Richard M. Berrong
bottom left: Supporters of Donald Trump cheer for the Republican party candidate in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on July 29, 2016. PHOTO: AFP
4.
top left: Donald Trump shaves the head of WWE Chairman Vince McMahon (Screenshot/YouTube)
right: Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Richard M. Berrong
bottom left: Eileen Schilling (L) and Constance Gilligan, both supporters of republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, cheer during a campaign event where Trump spoke at Briar Woods High School August 2, 2016, in Ashburn, Virginia. / AFP
5.
top left: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
right: Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe by Peter Burke
bottom left: The Fight Between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
6.
top left: This is a shirt
top right: The Fight Between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
bottom: Carnival in the Netherlands From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
7.
left: Carnival and the Carnivalesque by Sharon Howard
top right: A protester, center left, and a Trump supporter, center right, scuffle during a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Saturday, March, 12, 2016, held at the I-X Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. (Michael Henninger/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP)
bottom right: After Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Bursts out into star-sprinkled space.
From Alien by Walter Hill, David Giler and Dan O’Bannon:
Outside the windows, clouds, clouds, clouds.
Another tremor runs through the ship.
The crews eyes riveted to their instruments.The ship clears the top of the cloud layer.
Bursts out into star-sprinkled space.
Trailing a wake of clouds.
later…
Kane lies slumped in his chair.
Very dead.
A huge hole in his chest.
The dishes are scattered.
Food covered in blood.
and…
She waits for a response.
But her expression shows that she expects none.
A long moment.
Expectations fulfilled.
Nightmare without end.
how much show, how much tell
an estimation of dialogue in a set of mostly thriller movies.
dialogue taken from popular subtitle files.
language, screenwriting
We are advised to not include Spanish language dialogue in an English language script. Rather, every character should, at first, speak English and then their words can be translated before production.
If only language and character could be so easily cleft.
If a character speaks English, she is thinking in English. If she speaks in Spanish she is often thinking through concepts that are distinct to Hispanic and/or Latin American cultures.
You may as well write a character as a man and then change him into a woman at the end. Her words, her self.
If it’s just a word here and there, and the meaning is obvious in context, don’t bother translating it. An example is when a ubiquitous foreign bad guy shouts at his men to do something. Since it doesn’t really matter what he’s saying, just use the foreign word if you know it. Sometimes, this type of dialogue doesn’t even make it on to the dialogue line, and gets summarized in the action…
Emphasis mine.
maps, transport, migration, economy
Most of the cities serviced by the bus line below are in the top 10 counties for agricultural production in California.
down whence it came
The unconscious in Edward Albee’s writing process by Larissa MacFarquhar:
When the idea presents itself to him, he will turn it over in his mind once or twice, and think, Isn’t that interesting; and then he will push it back down whence it came, to let it grow and ripen. He will not make a note of it. This process can go on for years. Often, it is two or three years before he will write anything down.
If Albee feels that an idea is approaching maturity, he will test it: he will go for a long walk, often on the beach, and introduce his characters to a situation that is not part of the play. If they behave easily and naturally—if he is able to improvise dialogue for them without effort—then he will decide that he and they know each other well enough, and he will start to write.
epidemics, as seen in zombie movies
the victim becomes the victimizer. human contact – the very thing that makes us human – kills us. it’s a total and absolute threat to the human condition. without each other, we are no longer human. that’s what the threat of infection is about. it’s not the infected – they’re the signifier. the signified is that the survivors cease to be human. if we can’t come together, we are worse than dead. we are no longer human.
a monologue from 28 Days Later
A lyrical, precise monologue by Alex Garland, excerpted:
It started as rioting, and right from
the beginning you knew this was different.
Because it was happening
in small villages, market towns.
And then it wasn’t on the TV any more.
It was in the street outside.
It was coming through your windows.
It was a virus.
An infection.
You didn’t need a doctor to tell you that.
It was the blood.
There was something in the blood.
amazing
As the two shook hands on stage, the microphone picked up Pence telling Trump, “You’re amazing.”
amazing (adj.) early 15c., “stupefactive;” 1590s, “dreadful;” present participle adjective from amaze. Sense of “wonderful” is recorded from 1704. Related: Amazingly.
amaze (v.) early 13c., amasian “stupefy, make crazy,” from a-, probably used here as an intensive prefix, + -masian, related to maze (q.v.). Sense of “overwhelm with wonder” is from 1580s.
postscript
june 25, 2017
Matt Yglesias: “Trump has taught Republicans that even unsubtle, clearly false lies can be sound political strategy.”
those who look for a world war will find it
What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true. But the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are. Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history. In every historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse. Ours are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump has a chance to seize power.
American institutions have preserved political order and domestic peace for going on a quarter of a millennium with the very notable and brutal exception of four years of civil war 150 years ago. Those institutions can in all likelihood weather four years of his mental instability and toxic incitement. But not necessarily. Britain’s exit from Europe, Scotland’s exit from the United Kingdom, the increasingly militarized border between ‘Europe’ and Russia can likely all be managed. But maybe not. Violence and instability can build quickly on themselves…
Trump represents something quite different. And the kind of menace he represents is amplified by the rise of complacent instability and reckless behavior we see today in Europe, in the conflagration in the Middle East and the still distant but rising specter of great power confrontation on the borders of Russia and in East Asia. The belief that we can roll the dice with no consequences, that we can provoke and act out with no consequences is a dangerous illusion. We are indulging that illusion along with many other peoples across the globe. But there are consequences. And they can multiply and spin out of control quickly.
movies are magic tricks
magic tricks work when the audience is not fully aware of what they are seeing.
movies are the same.
when it works, the audience says: “i didn’t see that coming”
when it doesn’t, the audience says: “that came out of nowhere”
what you don’t see is as important (or more important) as what you do. the most impactful reveal is what was already hiding in plain sight.
keeping the hamsters alive: clickbait and the information market
google just served me up the following “news” without knowing my full identity:
this appears to be their default offering for an English speaker in Los Angeles.
we have two poltically neutral stories that will lead the user to the conservative Fox News site, a third from the conservative Daily Mail, a fourth from a conservative blog, a fifth devoted to the opinion of a conservative celebrity. this makes 50% of the options links to a conservative worldview.
there are no options for liberal commentary nor any blurbs that point to politically liberal news sites; e.g., the times, the guardian, talkingpointsmemo, msnbc, etc.
i’m certain that Google’s algorithms chose these offerings because they have a higher clickthrough rate (engagement rate). i’m fairly certain that this CRT is based on conservative sites being more effective at evoking the feelings of the demographic that still gets its news from TV and newspaper sites.
computers are like slot machines. people click, swipe, tap until their brains release chemicals that make them feel. anger and fear are strong feelings. they are exciting. by contrast, problem-solving is energy-intensive; it’s literally hard on the brain and not exciting.
most people get their “news” from facebook and google. while alphabet (google) has recently funded news innovation in europe, it’s because the EU has repeatedly fined them. to the best of my knowledge, facebook has funded no such effort – if anything, they’ve taken a rather different stance towards journalism.
neither newspapers nor television news bureaus are faring well.
some people in silicon valley believe that a coming techno-utopian society will make work obsolete and guaranteed minimum income will provide humans with the time to spend all day clicking, swiping and tapping.
i don’t know the odds for that scenario coming true but, based on the 100% failure rate of the Marxist techno-utopia, i’m going to guess there’s a better than 0% chance our future will not be so pleasant.
instead, it’s possible that a society of clickbait-heads will increasingly make bad decisions that feel good in the short-term but feel very bad in the long-term. this cause and effect has been studied under the rubric of impulse control. the result is that our current networks abet groupthink and it’s bad news for all involved.
manias are recurring and often cataclysmic. Brexit is a walk in the park compared to a Donald Trump presidency.
our history suggests that human survival is “hard”. it stands to reason that “hard news” is essential for survival.
hard news is difficult to consume. it requires that the recipient understand a problem that does not have an easy solution – otherwise, it would have been solved.
hard news is also difficult to produce. someone has to identify which facts are relevant, gather them, test them for their veracity and then present them in an easy-to-understand narrative – let alone one that is exciting.
there is no computer that can do this job and the likelihood of such an artificial intelligence in our lifetimes is equivalent to the likelihood of singularity: slim. assuming we survive the century.
facebook in particular has done quite well with its slot machine / “mousetrap.” it might improve its long term fortunes (i.e., keeping the mice alive) if it learns how to funnel the neurochemicals it so effectively elicits towards problem-solving. in the forseeable future, such innovation will require that it spend money on people. specifically, on journalists.
postscript july 15, 2016
unrelated / related:
postscript august 27, 2016
Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine:
On July 31, a Facebook page called Make America Great posted its final story of the day…
Readers who clicked through to the story were led to an external website, called Make America Great Today, where they were presented with a brief write-up blended almost seamlessly into a solid wall of fleshy ads. Khan, the story said — between ads for “(1) Odd Trick to ‘Kill’ Herpes Virus for Good” and “22 Tank Tops That Aren’t Covering Anything” — is an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood and a “promoter of Islamic Shariah law.” His late son, the story suggests, could have been a “Muslim martyr” working as a double agent. A credit link beneath the story led to a similar-looking site called Conservative Post, from which the story’s text was pulled verbatim. Conservative Post had apparently sourced its story from a longer post on a right-wing site called Shoebat.com.
…Then, of course, there’s the content, which, at a few dozen posts a day, Nicoloff is far too busy to produce himself. “I have two people in the Philippines who post for me,” Nicoloff said, “a husband-and-wife combo.” From 9 a.m. Eastern time to midnight, the contractors scour the internet for viral political stories, many explicitly pro-Trump. If something seems to be going viral elsewhere, it is copied to their site and promoted with an urgent headline.
postcript august 29, 2016
Facebook Purges Journalists, Immediately Promotes a Fake Story for 8 Hours
postscript october 20, 2016
What’s Missing From Mark Zuckerberg’s Memo on Peter Thiel
postscript november 11, 2016
Mark Zuckerberg denies that fake news on Facebook influenced the elections
[edit: internal documents contradict this claim as of sep 6, 2018: “Facebook knew about the Russian disinfo campaign DURING the 2016 election, but didn’t take action because of organizational dysfunction.”]
postscript november 13, 2016
Mark Zuckerberg vows more action to tackle fake news on Facebook
postscript january 11, 2017
Facebook says it’s going to try to help journalism ‘thrive’
postscript february 17, 2017
The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism
postscript april 17, 2017
postscript may 25, 2017
APPLE NEWS IS GETTING AN EDITOR IN CHIEF
Morning Media has learned that Apple has given the job — a new position at the Cupertino-based company — to Lauren Kern, one of New York magazine’s most high-ranking editors and a former deputy editor at The New York Times Magazine. It’s unclear what exactly the role will entail, and Kern declined to comment.
postscript oct 6, 2017
Ex-Google strategist: “The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine the human will.”
and:
All of which, Williams says, is not only distorting the way we view politics but, over time, may be changing the way we think, making us less rational and more impulsive. “We’ve habituated ourselves into a perpetual cognitive style of outrage, by internalising the dynamics of the medium,” he says.
It is against this political backdrop that Williams argues the fixation in recent years with the surveillance state fictionalised by George Orwell may have been misplaced. It was another English science fiction writer, Aldous Huxley, who provided the more prescient observation when he warned that Orwellian-style coercion was less of a threat to democracy than the more subtle power of psychological manipulation, and “man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”.
postscript #this-is-fine-everything-is-fine sep 6, 2018
Six months after FB re-engineered news feed to promote “broadly trusted” news sources, the top 10 stories on the network include an aggregated Daily Caller story, a Snopes-debunked Nike hoax, and 3 Ladbible posts.
postscript sep 10, 2018
somehow, i missed this when it came out, approx. 15 months after this post was first published. former Facebook executive: “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”
postscript nov 18, 2018
“As content gets closer to the line of what is prohibited by our community standards, we see people tend to engage with it more,” – FACEBOOK MOVES TO LIMIT TOXIC CONTENT AS SCANDAL SWIRLS, Wired
Eli Saslow, Washington Post:
“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”
postscript dec 11, 2018
After Sundar Pichai’s day of Q&A with members of the US Congress, what Ben Collins said:
“Algorithms are predisposed to surfacing combativeness, feel-good vitriol and provincialism. It’s fixable but complicated, and it’ll make you no money.”
postscript jan 15, 2019
“Why Facebook is giving $300 million for local journalism”
postscript mar 15, 2019
One user’s experience:
Today I opened my first YouTube video on my brand new work computer. I have no stored browsing history. Look at the videos the “algorithm” recommended. This is the second time I’ve seen this happen. I’m disgusted and horrified
postscript mar 16, 2019
A year after the big algorithm change that Zuck said would focus on “time well spent,” Facebook’s dominated by the “angry” reaction (?), Fox News, and stories designed to scare people or work them up… More than a third of the most-engaged stories on the platform are false but hey engagement is up 50% so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
postscript mar 25, 2019
I’m sure Apple News+ will be fine, but man is it weird to hear a tech company describing “human-curated news” as some high-concept innovation, and not the way news was selected and distributed for 400 years before the sorted feed era.
postscript may 11, 2020
Big Tech Has Crushed the News Business. That’s About to Change
“The digital platforms need media generally, but not any particular media company, so there is an acute bargaining imbalance in favor of the platforms. This creates a significant market failure which harms journalism and so, society.”
postscript and counterpoint may 15, 2020
Media, Regulators, and Big Tech; Indulgences and Injunctions; Better Approaches
visionary leadership
the stories that win
To get people to turn out and vote in your favor, you also have to give them something positive to rally behind. The Leave campaign, for all its lies and disinformation, provided just such a lure. It claimed that liberating Britain from the shackles of the E.U. would enable it to reclaim its former glory. The Remain side argued, in effect, that while the E.U. isn’t great, Britain would be even worse off without it. That turned out to be a losing story.