God, I wish they talked like that. Don't you? It would make things a little more blunt and clear, and we could move on to another conversation without having pointless arguments over whose local team is superior.
Unfortunately, this will never happen. Many sports fans, like many fans of really any genre, interest, or hobby (same goes for religion, political association, etc.), really don't know why they like what they do. Similar to those Applejacks cereal commercials from the 90s, they just "like it".
I think this robotic mindset was best expressed in George A. Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead' from 1978. In it, Fran says to her companions, while they stare out at a wall of zombies pounding against the glass, trying to get into the mall, "They're still here."
She's referring to the fact that, even after the companions locked the doors to the shopping mall and surrounded the entrances with trucks, the zombies still crawled under the vehicles and creeped around to get at the doors, where they restlessly claw and pound the glass.
"They're after us. They know we're still in here," Stephen, her lover says.
"They're after the place. They don't know why, they just remember - remember that they want to be in here," Peter butts in ominously, correcting Stephen's faulty assumption.
Like zombies, we too don't know why and just remember. I said last time that we do it because we're trained to do it. At some point in our little lives, a piece of software (software can be any idea, civic manner, interest, trend, religious indoctrination, partisanship, etc.) is programmed into our hardware (brains). There can be counter-software that comes into play that knocks the original programming out of sync, and there also are more powerful ways of programming than others. We'll get into those at some point.
When that software settles, whatever it pertains to begins to take effect and mold us a little bit. If we experienced that bit of knowledge with the right stimuli (something pleasing or warm-feeling), then that software has added impact. For many kids, teens and even adults, this can be something as simple as needing to go out and buy a certain designer shirt because the flashing lights on the screen relayed this mystique of acceptance, joy, friendship, and sex. Light beer commercials do it all the time, even though there are far darker, stronger, and therefore more manly beers on the market. Right? Don't we normally associate strength and power with masculinity?
Not lately. Gender roles are changing. Thanks in part to advertising.
If you drink this beer, you'll be able to SCORE with this chick.
ANYWAY-
Back in the 60's, a man named Marshall McLuhan bashed Western Society in the face with a little book about media and mass communication. Several little books, actually. He dove into how the human brain reacts to each particular media, discussing how it absorbs information and how the medium itself can fundamentally change the way the brain works. "The medium is the message," is a common slogan tossed about from his work, without many of its users really knowing the depth of what it means.
In it, McLuhan discusses how we change media, and then inevitably how media changes us. One of his first examples to express this idea was the lightbulb. The lightbulb has no content that it conveys to us, per say, but it does influence us. With the invention of the lightbulb, man could do more at different hours of the day and in the darkest of places. It revolutionized the way we exist as a species and our productivity, and society adapted to it, building around it.
That's only in the beginning of the book. From there, it delves into "hot" and "cold" media, which is reflective of how different forms stimulate the senses, engaging the audience in different ways. McLuhan also posits a depressing, dystopian future, but that's for self-exploration. It's not really the basis I'm looking for in this particular discussion.
YET. (Cue ominous, spooky overtones.)
What I want to focus on first is that lightbulb. With that argument McLuhan was trying to make, he was also trying to convey how content is seemingly needless. I would beg to differ, and I can cite tons of examples as to why, but that's for Part 3. For now, I want to focus on the idea that mediums manipulate society and mold it into something else.
Within the last few decades, I've noticed a lot of older people commenting on how different and strange the youth is - how attached they are to technology and how egocentric it's making these (us) young folks. Even amongst our mini-generations, there's a bit of a difference developing betwixt the kids who grew up in the early 90's and the boys and girls graduating high school right now.
With McLuhan in mind, it can be argued that our technology and media is mutating us into something different, into a species that has been altered by its own creations. Frankenstein builds a monster, and he is forever changed by it.
Most people get their media off of screens with flashing lights. They are stimulated by these screens in multiple ways. Sights. Sounds. Colors. All of these sensations are swirling about and pleasing the brain with wonderful arrays of stimuli saturating our gray matter in ways we can't even fathom.
The colors, Duke! THE COLORS!
And this stimulation happens all the time. We watch movies, TV, play video games, and surf the web all day long. The Internet, in itself, is a milestone in that not only do we have TVs, and blu-ray players, and sound systems all over our house, now we have this crazy link through a fiber cable that connects with the world entire! Everything we could have ever wanted - right at our fingertips.
As God is my witness, my senses will never be DEPRIVED AGAIN! Scarlett O'Hara said something like that, right?
Think about smart phones. Not only is that infinite access readily available, it's portable. And what does it do to us?
Ever have your i-Pod crash on you, and you lose all your tunes (something in the ball park of several thousand songs). Then, you have to spend hours reloading all those groovy tunes in before you can take that baby with you again on long car trips. Ever notice how angry and impatient you get? How stressed you feel? How it gnaws at you?
You're texting with someone, and you have a heated conversation, and they take several minutes to reply. Don't those several minutes feel like an eternity of seething frustration and anger? Each passing second just makes you angrier and more likely to "Hulk-out".
If you answered yes to this, or if you have any similar examples where an insane amount of stress and frustration overwhelms you when something doesn't happen quickly, technology has already changed you. It's gotten us all - Doktor nOnsensical himself included.
Chew on that tonight, and come back tomorrow where I wrap everything into a neat little package that I gave its own special label.
You're a Robot, Asshole!
Part 3: Rise of the Instant Gratification Class
Thanks for reading. Seriously. I appreciate it.
-Dok
