culture

They Don’t Care, I Don’t Care

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

The modern media sphere is a strange space. We’re overwhelmed with some great stuff on way-too-many streaming services. Potential hits like “Coyote Vs. ACME” are being killed by tax purposes. AI art controversies are everywhere, to the point where “bad AI” is an insult.” Some once-beloved figures are revealed on social media to be complete numpties (my new favorite insult). When you just want to watch something for fun, it all seems a bit weird.

What I find is that, more and more, I feel like I care less about media.

There’s so much B.S. that it feels like all media executives and no small amount of other people just don’t give a damn about making neat stuff. It’s tax writeoffs and script changes to extend a season and sudden cancellations and number tweaking. Look, I’m not going to act like a lot of media has been high art, but it feels like the amount of people in media who don’t care is high or has always been higher than we’d like.

Then it makes me hard to care either.

This feels weird. My fiancee recently watched Resident Alien which, though I didn’t get into, was a delightful mix of Northern Exposure and My Favorite Martian – if the Martian was really sort of a jerk. She also started Ripley, which has a compelling film-noir-meets-Bergman vibe that surprised and delighted me. This is just the last few weeks, there’s great things out there in the media.

But any of these wonders could vanish in a moment because of some bad executive decision. They could be archived because of obscure tax codes. Someone might get recast with an “edgy” actor who will then drown in scandal like everyone predicts. Without things on hard media, good things can disappear.

It’s just hard to care when so many people with power and money don’t, or even seem actively hostile to what they’re supposedly doing (Warner Brothers). Why care when they don’t and might destroy something to get a stock bump?

At the same time, I look at zines I read, obscure films and up-and-coming mad geniuses like Mike Cheslik. These are made by people who care and that leads me to care, because there is something about enjoying media that requires both parties to give a damn. I think one reason people will enjoy even sleazy exploitation flicks and bad b-movies is the people behind them cared in some relatable way.

Someone who wants to pay the bills and slam out a film with the proper percent of explosions and dinosaurs I can at least get, you know?

So here I am, surrounded by truly great things I take time for – Dune II, Delicious In Dungeon – but I wonder how many other people care less now, or who’s interests have changed. Reach out to me and let me know your experiences.

Steven Savage

How Deep Does the B.S. Go?

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Lately I was speculating on the role of B.S. in our economy, politics, and technology. I’d spell it out (and swear more probably) but I do have some discretion!

We’ve normalized the idea that some people are honestly, lying to us. We expect that we’re being lied to be marketing forces, by the latest trends, and by politicians. It’s honestly so normalized, it seems we can’t imagine a less deception-free world.

(It also makes me realize how people can get blaise about COVID.)

In turn, we’ve also normalized that people we like are lying. Yeah, that famous tech guy is hyping stuff, but we like his product. Sure the politician we voted for is spouting demented nonsense, but they’re our politician. We go to see a movie we know we’ve been sold on in the negative sense or a restaurant whos food is just “OK” but you know, advertising and familiarity.

What’s struck me lately, is that we are probably too used to lying as well.

When I’ve seen people rallying to the defense of people, media, and so on that they like you an hear them repeat talking points. You can tell with just a bit of empathy that many people don’t really or exactly believe what they say. But to defend what they like for whatever reason,

I even found myself tempted to do it (which tells me I do do it, I just didn’t catch myself).

I’m wondering how deep the B.S. in our media-saturated, pundit-heavy, social media culture goes by now. I mean yes humans have always lied to others and themselves, but it feels pretty amplified and survival-adverse in my experience. How much of our lives, as individuals, is just lying about stuff?

I think some of it is definitely internet and media culture. Say the right things, do the right things, and you get money, attention, and might even become some kind of Influencer or Pundit. You can lie for a living if you play your cards right! Whatever B.S. problems we had in the past, you can do it faster, giving less time for experience and other people to provide restraining feedback.

In a time of chaos and climate change, this is even more disturbing. We’ve got a lot of problems to solve, or at least survive, and if we’ve all internalized outright deception to an extent, it’s going to be much harder. When everyone is busy not telling the truth, it gets harder to tell the truth, and even when a bunch of people do, too many might not out of various motivations.

I know at least I’ll be watching myself closer. But this is going to haunt me.

Steven Savage

Into The Nothing That’s Everywhere

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I observed a discussion of AI art online, and someone made a chillingly accurate comment. They said people were using AI art to get clicks on message boards. Using a tool to make “art” that you didn’t make, to post to a board of people you don’t know, so they click on the post so you feel good. Nothing actually happens or means anything. It’s just automation wearing the clothes of human interaction.

I began asking just how much of modern interaction, infused by market-driven technology, is just meaningless clicks. How much is nothing.

Not much later, I was listening to a podcast on game and game development, and how some people courted controversy. You could make an utterly crappy game, but get the right people to scream about how great it is, cite culture war B.S. and you’d sell your game. You’d get “reviews” yes, but the reviews wouldn’t be about the game you made, just who you annoyed. The tools to make a game, the social media to discuss it, the ways to distribute it, but the game itself means nothing.

Doing something to get something else to happen over something else, while everyone pretends something meaningful is going on. Human interaction as a Mousetrap-style game to get clicks, sell adds, or just annoy someone you’ll never meet. Meaningless. Nothing.

These experiences helped me get a feel for the profound alienation that seems to have settled on many in our high-tech supposedly connected world. The system of clicks, views, reviews, etc. means something else than it says it is, if it’s about anything else anymore. Yes, some – a great deal – is about ad revenue, but that’s you doing something so someone else pays you to shill an unrelated product. Even then it’s still so abstract from what you say is going on.

The Enshittification of human interaction. People can’t even hate each other properly without worrying about follower count and ad revenue.

The thing is we expected the Internet to connect us – it can and it has. Yes, it lets you build a bubble, but humans always do that. As I look over this phenomena of human abstraction and clicks and numbers, I think a way to look at it is that we’ve added middlemen.

Ad revenue companies, many big tech companies, etc. Even crypto is really a kind of middleman, an unregulated stock market of the imagination that you eventually have to cash in for real money. All of it is inserting yourself into the human experience to charge a toll and getting people to click, maybe paying them in a cut or just giving them a number to watch go up.

And now, nothing means anything except clicks and who’s getting paid. Sometimes no one is getting anything but is hoping to or doing it out of habit. Worse, so much started pretty good.

Now I wonder how sustainable it all is – and I honestly don’t know. We’re in unexplored territory at scale while the climate changes and the world careens forward. But wherever we are now, I don’t think it’s going to solve our problems. You can’t solve anything with nothing, and there’s a whole lot of nothing right now – a complicated nothing.

We need less of this nothing.

Steven Savage