Capability

Geek As Citizen: The Hate Is Built In

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Hashtag Confusion

So after spending a week or so discussing Boosting the Signal on good works, I want to cover something that inspired it, is part of it, and is part of Geek Citizenship. It is the role of criticism as part of our commercial, media, and technical systems – but mostly our media systems.

You’ve heard criticism of bad films, yet it seems we can make profitable Transformers films for decades to come (ending probably when someone does a porn parody with Orgasmus Prime*). You’ve heard how bad reality TV is, but the shows are still churning out even though everyone says how bad it is. The sameness of video games is a joke, and they keep selling, and we’re all busy on the forums complaining.

It’s almost to the level of a joke. The same arguments and criticisms are trotted out. The same Message Board posts ignite and Twitterrage spews. And it’s all alike time after time.

Let me humbly suggests that one of the problem with a lot of our commercial systems is simply that criticism isn’t coming from outside.

Criticism is part of the show. Including your comments and complaints.

Part Of The Spectacle

By now there’s a ritual of a new technology, new film, book sequel coming out, new game, etc. Inevitably flame wars and criticisms and outright attacks happen, the praise is predictable, everyone says what we expect, and then it dies down until the next time. In a few cases contrarianism kicks in and the hated thing becomes big or huge, or the loved things become hated.

After all, you can joke all you want about Twilight, but it was enormous, profitable, and is why we’re getting 50 Shades of 9 1/2 Weeks . . . er, Gray.

The complaining about how bad things are is part of the show. People get to yell, people get to listen, people get to argue with the yellers. However all the yelling and anger and laughing at how bad things are doesn’t seem to change much.

(Money seems to change things, as we’ve seen with reshuffling of films lately).

Complaining, criticizing, and outright whining and hatred is part of the whole of modern entertainment and culture. We’re used to snarky comments. Pundits make their entire living being jerks about things. In short, saying “this is bad” is just par for the course, expected, and lets us be part of the show.

It’s catharsis as critique.

That complaining about Transformers 4? Think of it as just a ritual and part of free publicity and morbid curiosity and it makes a lot more sense.**

The Psychology Of Helplessness

Feel helpless to improve things? Feel like the comics companies or media companies or whatever aren’t going to listen? That’s because yelling about how bad things are is expected, it’s part of the system, part of the show – even when legitimate it’s expected or tuned out due to the noise.

Is this intentional? No, I don’t think there’s some conspiracy or anything. It’s just the way things evolved in a fast-paced, connected world. Things are easily co-opted or normalized and culturally we’ve yet to adjust.

But it can make you feel helpless as hell because you’re saying things and nothing’s happening. But that’s not the kind of cultural system we evolved ñ we evolved a show.

To Beat The System Get Out Of The System

So one of the reasons I focused on Boost The Signal was the growing realization that all the complaining about things is built into our culture and media and is not designed to change things. It’s designed to entertain and allow catharsis.

Everyone wants to whine about how bad things are for money or attention. Some politicians base their careers on this, and they’re no different than people trolling message boards, they just get SuperPACs.

So, the best option for most people is to start Boosting The Signal. Make a difference by promoting things that are worth it. Yes, it may seem quite a mountain to scale, but the more people spend time with good media, good tech, the less time they spend with crap.

Now crap may be subjective here, but I’m going to trust your good taste.

Boosting the Signal gets you out of the system.

Boosting the Signal gets you active as opposed to complaining.

Boosting the Signal gives you a goal of having something happen as opposed to having something not happen – the former is far easier to measure.

Boosting the Signal might just give you or someone an idea to help us steer away from the spectacle of complaining.

So in short, shut up ad get to work. But first . . .

I Miss Good Critique

I’m not saying critique doesn’t have a role. A good critic is someone who can analyze, understand, and get you to think. It’s literally critique in the analytical sense not being critical all the time.

It’s just the good stuff is rare.

The late Roger Ebert is an example I often invoke in this case as he clearly thought about what he was seeing and talking about. He connected with you, he analyzed, he was thoughtful. In the business world he’ have been an Analyst, shuffling data and trends and processes and patterns to dig into what was really going on ñ and should be done.

One of the greatest examples of his work I think, ironically, was his take on “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” A seemingly un-noteable comedy, he felt it to be charming and interesting and sweet with a surprising hero. I was shocked at the positive statements in his review, and saw the movie only because of it – and I and my roommates were surprised at what a charming, fun, enjoyable,human movie it was.

Maybe you’re not the next Ebert – or maybe you are (in your own sphere). We could use good critics who know critique. So as much as I want people to Boost The Signal, this could be your path as well – which lets you Boost The Signal, Question The Signal, and Analyze the Signal as well as recommend people just turn the Damn Signal Off.  Just do it right, do it well, and don’t get trapped in the usual spectacle.

Moving Forward By Moving Forward

So, remember, good critique is rare, criticism and complaining are just part of the sideshow in our modern media, and too often a distraction or a co-opting of our time. I think we’re far better served these days in Boosting The Signal on good works, and if possible, being true critics when valuable and able.

In closing, let me tell a personal tale. Nearly a decade ago some friends and I were discussing bad films, and I came up with a film that parodied action movies. The idea was two stars would sabotage a corrupt studio by getting them to make the ultimate failed action move that was only a pile of overdone tropes. However they quickly discovered that it was almost impossible to make a failure if you went over-the-top stupid, that critique only fired morbid curiosity or even morphed into knowing contrarianism. Our heroes would be in terrible danger of succeeding as you could never be truly dumb or bad enough to fail intentionally.

It was a parody.

By now, I’m not sure it is.***

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

* Please, don’t do this.

** I hope this isn’t part of the ritual, but I’m willing to be suspicious of myself.

***Hollywood, call me, we can out-cynical each other.

Way With Worlds – More On Main Characters

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Crowd

As a worldbuilder, your world is a vast, interlinked creation, it stands there whirling in your head or your codebase or your notes. However few people want to hear the story of your world, they want to hear the story of people in it. Indeed there’s a chance your world came about out of a desire to tell a character’s story.

Either way, at some point, you have to tell a tale about what’s going on. A tale requires someone or someones to tell the tale about. In short, no matter your goals in making the world, you have to settle down and tell the stories in it.

This means a main character or characters. It may seem odd to discuss this since so many of us have our main characters in mind, but it’s not as simple as it may seem. I wanted to return to some of my previous discussion and go over main characters.

What Is A Main Character or Characters?

As I’ve stated earlier, a main characters are like lenses on a world. It is through them that people experience your setting, including the characters themselves. The viewpoints of these characters are gateways to understanding what’s going on and experiencing it.

I find this perspective very helpful because:

  1. It makes you immediately think of a focus for your storytelling, gamebuilding, etc.
  2. It gives you someone you and your audience can relate to and helps you (and them) develop empathy and connection. This is necessary to experience the story and the world.
  3.  It helps you do even more worldbuilding by climbing inside someone’s head and seeing how things look. You don’t just walk a mile in someone’s shoes, you walk that mile in their mind.
  4. It helps you admit you can’t write or tell everything.

Now who is your main character?  Well, that may be more challenging than you think.

Zooming In

As noted, the truth of a lot of writing is that many games, tales, and so on are created with a given main character or characters in mind. People already have their characters chosen, and some fleshed out, and the world is created to let their stories come to life. The worldbuilding may go far beyond them and make their stories only one of many to be told (which I think should be the case), but it often starts with them.

Of course you may think you know your main characters since you started with them – but this isn’t always the case. As you build your setting, there may be better choices. Your hero’s tale may not be as interesting as her sidekick, the villain’s perspective turns out to be heroicc, and that throawaway character is actually more relatable. A good look at “Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” is a fine example of perspective switching – and one I agree with as the cast of ‘Hamlet’ is a bunch of basket cases.

The main character you started with may not be the one you need.

Or maybe you really build a world with so much going on and now you want to tell the tales and you aren’t sure where to start. You’ve got a potential cast of hundreds, or you have a world so detailed you could just whip up someone new to tell your stories. Where do you start?

If you have to evaluate a current main character for a demotion, a side character for a promotion, or figure where to start, I find these are good rules:

  1. A good main character or characters is in position for enough of the story to be told from their viewpoint (or viewpoints). They don’t have to see everything, but enough to tell the story you want to tell.
  2. A good main character knows enough for the audience to understand what’s going on via their perspective – of course it doesn’t have to be everything or even the majority of things. Jut enough.
  3. A good main character is relate-able for the audience. They don’t have to be like the audience, just someone the audience “gets”. A good writer/game designer/etc can make characters that are vastly different than the target audience but are still characters people understand.

Use this checklist to evaluate your main character or characters for the story you’re telling. You just might be surprised at who can tell your tale and how – and who can’t.

More Thoughts on Characters Before The World

If you’re the kind of person who created may characters before the setting (as happens the majority of the time in my opinion), then the checklist above is quite important. There’s good chance the world you made has gotten far more complex and populous and your story might not be best served by the perspective you wanted initially.

However, an additional danger you face is that our world may not be fleshed out enough in that you only created enough to tell the tale of your original chosen character or characters. You’ve got enough to tell their story, but their story is all that’s going on – the rest of the setting is just a cardboard cutout, a Potemkin universe.

Frankly, this happens a lot, as I’m sure we’re all aware. There’s a story, there’s a main character, but it’s happening a peculiarly dead setting, the story equivalent of on-rails video games. It may even be a decent or a good story – but it really doesn’t involve much worldbuilding.

I find a great way to avoid this is a simple rule – do you know your world well enough that, if all your main characters couldn’t be written for some reason, you have characters or potential characters that could tell interesting tales. They may not be the ones you wanted, but they could still be told. That’s always a good measure of the world’s completeness – especially if you started with specific main characters in mind.

We All Want To Be Someone

So when you tell your tales, sit down and make sure you’ve got the right perspective or perspectives. You build a huge world and you want to make it work, make people experience it.

If you can’t find the right characters, well, create some more! After all if you build a good setting, it can produce even more ways to tell the tale there . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Geek As Citizen: Boost The Signal – The Basics

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Paper And Stars

So as noted, if you want to Boost The Signal on good works (as opposed to complaining about the bad), you need to take an Ambassador mindset. You have to choose to represent good works or a good work in a human, connecting, conscious way – as opposed to evangelizing or being annoying.

But, what do you do as this newly self-designated ambassador? I’m glad you asked because I’m happy to order people around. Here’s the basics.

Leave A Review. Seriously, we’re often bad at this. Leave a review on a website about the work in question so people can see it. It takes a few minutes and its worth it. I know I could do this more myself.

Leave A Review II. There are sites like Goodreads or Yelp or LinkedIn that let you review, comment, or recommend books, things, and people. Leave a review there. That artist you met who did some work for you could use a LinkedIn reference, that great indie bookstore needs a Yelp review. Also keep in mind there are multiple review sources.

Tell People. Don’t be annoying (remember: Ambassador) but take a moment to tell people about the work when appropriate. You might be worried about overdoing it, so use your common sense. An example for me is that when a co-worker decried bad science fiction, I told him about Flight of the Vajra (and now that you’re reading this, I told you).

Tell People 2. Just found a great anime, bookstore, comic, etc.? Take time to tell people on social media. Again, don’t spam, but go out of the way to mention it and tag things properly. You never know how far a message can spread.

Gift Time. If something is good, and you want to share it, share it with others. That great manga series is a perfect birthday present. That fantastic movie in the Criterion collection is something you can toss to a friend who wants something to read.

(also notice I just plugged the Criterion collection)

Donate. Donate some of the media you want to promote if possible. Give it to libraries, schools, bookshops, use as prizes, etc. Some people promote themselves this way; you can promote others as well – again, just don’t overdo it.

Tell the Author. Liked a book or series? Tell the author. Write them. Let them know you care. They probably need the feedback and would like the boost, especially if they’re a bit obscure. Always offer to help give them a nudge or a boost.

These are basic things you can do now that you decided to be an Ambassador. But there’s more you can do if you really want take it far, and I’ll cover that next . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.