In-Jokes Die Hard.
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Culture, Rant, blog, opinion, snackfoam
Last night, following an impromptu tweet to an “old” friend, I ended up staying up till after 3am; typically out of charcter for me currently, discussing the typical things you do when you catch up with pals that have not been spoken to in a while as well as about philosophy and past antics; old jokes in particular.
I’m no professor of humour but it seems clear to me, and I’m sure most people, that humour relies upon, primarily, both the performer and the audience both being brought up in the same culture and both having the same general frame of reference. It’s obvious that if I have no comprehension of a given subject matter that it will be hard, ney, impossible to understand a joke based on it as it requires active negotiation between the subject and its connotations for humour to develop. I’m going to insinuate that the closer the relationship, in terms of frames of reference, between the audience and the performer, the more intensified the laughs and the humour will be. Take this idea to its logical conclusion, the best form of humour are the “in-jokes; regardless of how infantile or banal they may be, that have been negotiated and developed, often unwittingly, between close groups of friends and therefore they are the pinnacle of humour.
Recalling these In-Jokes that have developed over the years between my “old” friends; a term I don’t particularly like but is apt for the purpose of this, last night was a real laugh and, terms of a post-modern/baudrillard inspired viewpoint, it made me come to the conclusion that humour which has not naturally developed between friends is a simulation of humour, the true nature of real humour is not the joke and the punchline but its the experiences and memories that are associated with the exisitense of the joke, it is here where the “real” humour lies. What comedy products serve to do is present you with a simulatation of this negotiated shared joke creation process, but it ultimately fails to live up to the original, it is a simulation of humour, and in many ways we as a society of come to prefer it, as with most simulations, which is a real shame. Of course this is not to say in-jokes no longer exist, far from it, it’s just they are often vastly under-appreciated due to there relatively small scope.
I did not intend actually to write a blogpost harping on about humour like this, but in the often stream of consciousness nature of some of the blogposts on this here badly maintained blog it has happened, and I have no intention of going back and making it sound more coherent; it is what it is. It must be said that in the nice wether we’ve had in recent days I’ve ended up reading some of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, and this has cleary shaped this blogpost somewhat. Just gonna end on a quote from the book which I really liked, although it’s not actually from Debord himself, its in-fact a quote from the philosopher Feuerbach, taken from the start of the copy of the book which I own, it true origin is from the book entitled “The Essence of Christianity”
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy of the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence… truth is considered profane and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”
Tags: comedy, Debord, Feuerbach, Friends, Humour, Jokes, Philosophy, Reality, Simulation
Facebook Groups
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Media, Rant, Web, opinion
I’ve never been too much of a fan of social network sites but neither do I have any particular objection to them; that said I am rather fond of twitter. Facebook is the arguably the largest social network site online at the current time, and I myself am a member. The main reason for this membership is that Facebook does seem to be the easiest way to contact real-world friends online; e-mail for personal communication appears to be all but dead. People use Facebook for all sorts of reasons, mine is basically a communication tool for people I actually know, and its also in someways a bit of a blog.
Anyway, the one thing that has always annoyed me with Facebook is the prevalence of the Facebook group. These groups allow people that are not “friends” with each other on the site the ability to communicate with each other in a mini-forum based on a shared topic of interest. These groups generally to fall in two categories: Banal Statements or Extreme Views. The Banal, for example: “Can this sausage roll get more fans than Cheryl Cole”, can get tiresome but are bearable, and then their are extreme groups such as “Bring back the hangman for acts of terrorism, treason, murder, paedophilia” and “Lock Jon Venables up for Life and Throw Away the Key”. The posts on the pages are just are no more charming than the titles themselves, for example one person wrote on the latter group:
“kill the bastard very slowly so he can feel the pain that little boy felt when he didnt give a fuck what he and his mate was doing to poor james, torchure the bastards and then kill them slowly causing them every bit of pain possible like they caused james let the public know the new names, see how long they last on the streets rip james they will get what they derserve evenually”
The most shocking thing about Facebook is not that these groups exist, but its finding out how many of your friends hold these sort of views and are actively trying to recruit others to join. I’m of course not saying that people shouldn’t be able to have a debate on such topics as capital punishment but the prevalence of extreme views on Facebook is startling; and this isn’t something that is a new phenomenon to Facebook, I remember discussing it a few years ago with my sixth-form sociology teacher.
Last week I read a opinion piece in the Guardian making this sort of point and it was this prompted me to write this little rambling piece, but its certainly worth mentioning. I recommend you have a little look at the article; because from what I can see, on the whole, itsn’t too face from the truth “Facebook groups are the new lynch mobs: These reactionary campaigners confuse the concept of ‘justice’ with ‘vigilante vengeance’”
Tags: Banal, blog, Cheryl Cole, Daily Mail, Extreme, Facebook, Groups, Jon Venables, opinion, Social networks, Twitter
Written without Review.
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Media, Rant, blog, blogging, opinion
Despite loving blogs, blogging and the blogosphere there are two things that often hold me back posting , if they didn’t there would be many more posts on this site.
Firstly, Self-Review. I think small blogs; such as this one, work better when people write there opinions in a bit of a rant form and instantly post the result. However, I will often find myself reviewing my posts over and over again and as a result watering them down. Now, I know this is not necessarily bad practice, but it often leads to me not posting things that may be of interest. The reason I trash these posts leads onto point two (in essence there both interrelated)
Secondly, Knowledge. I often scrap posts due to many of them not being readily linkable to anything to support them; as is the nature of ranting. This again is not necessarily a bad thing because sometimes blogs; particularly small blogs, work due to their scattergun approach. The majority of online communication encourages us to be spontaneous and to think and interact without thought… and while this does lead to some interesting content it should not dominate the intellectual exchange of ideas between individuals online. If it does the legitimacy of new media as a source of information could be undermined. There should be a happy balance between the two. Which I try and aim for.
So, as I’ve said before I’m going to add a disclaimer somewhere on this blog that states that some of the content on this blog is my opinion only… or something along those lines. And hopefully as a a result I will start posting some more interesting “off the cuff” posts, that is not to say they will dominate.
But what does seem to dominate on here is youtube videos, and that isn’t gonna change with this post. Here are a couple of comedy clips regarding the opinions of the public both in old and new media.
Tags: blog, blogging, New Media, Posting, Self-Review
Lets Talk Books: Celebrity Literature
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under Books, Culture, opinion
Being in my final year at university; and potentially going on to postgraduate education, I’m naturally starting to accumulate a large amount of books. In fact I even find myself being unnaturally drawn into the second hand book stand that occasionally appears in Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun shopping centre; I’m literally (by which of course I mean metaphorically) like a bee attracted to honey (ok, that was a simile)
So recently while I belatedly tried to locate a science section within a local WHsmiths store; while waiting for someone else within the store, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of celebrity tush that was being peddled. Usually when I purchase books I tend to do it online, more often than not from amazon, and this is the reason the amount of celebrity “so called” literature that is being pushed had escaped my knowledge. From what I could see, the shop was; on the whole, nothing more than a temple praising the vacuous cult of celebrity, presumably Jordan, Kerry Katona and Cheryl Cole make up the Holy Trinity. But while these books appear to be spawned by satan himself, they actually play a vital role in keeping books alive.
Without actually going into the marketing figures yet, I can only assume that celebrity books are most probably single handedly keeping the book industry; as we currently know it, alive. So while the books are soulless and evidently appear to have a more elevated importance that science in mainstream stores, I’m willing; unlike many likeminded people I’ve spoke to, to accept that they could in fact be price worth paying. In a world where the choices for consumption of information and knowledge are ever growing and diversifying books should continue to play an important role, be them in traditional or digital form (a topic for a future blogpost perhaps).
So maybe rather than slating people for reading this celebrity rubbish, we should in fact be praising them for at least entering a book store and giving reading a go. Possibly we should thank them for keeping the industry alive for the time being. For I’m sure that many if not all of you will agree that books still have a vital role to play in shaping our knowledge of the world.
Edit: Perhaps I need to read even more, cannot believe I mis-spelt the word literature in the title, doh. Mistake has been corrected.
Tags: Biography, Books, Celebritiy, Cheryl Cole, Jordan, Kerry Katona, Knowledge, Literature, Media, Science
Distractions = Creative Productivity?
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under News, Technology, opinion
For me, this Monday didn’t turn out to be the productive day I wanted it to be, due to various electronic distractions, but despite this I don’t believe that social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, amongst other various Internet delights, are in fact leading us to be less productive.
On Sky News last Sunday, they reported that a study from the University of Northampton suggests that people are becoming addicted to there gadgets.
The scenarios they give are worryingly familiar.
Interrupted from our primary task by a pop-up alerting us to an email, we stop what we are doing to read the email.
That then directs us elsewhere, perhaps to another link on the internet.
We may then check other emails stacked up behind the new one. A quick look on Facebook, Twitter or something else, and it may be half an hour before we’re back to that primary task.
“You can not any more do effectively the task you were originally doing, even if it was routine,” Professor Kakabadse said.
“You will suddenly feel low energy, you become clumsy and you have a spatial disorder. You become exhausted,” she said. (Sky News)
This sort of reporting regarding technology hardly new, neigh it is expected, take for example the scares around televisions. In relation to this story, which is nothing special; it seems to have only got coverage due to the PR department at the University of Northampton, I would suggest that you can find addiction in almost anything from cheese to stamp collecting from computer gaming to knitting.
It is of my opinion, and partly that of Russel M Davies from Wired magazine UK, that distraction may infact aid productivity. We were not designed to work solely on one task, as Davies points out, “we’re easily distracted creatures, evolved to be continually scanning for new stimuli…” I personally find that when doing creative work. i.e. not reading, it is much easier to do it with the occasional look at YouTube, the occasional bit of tweeting on twitter and the occasional stumble on stumble-upon. This personal affirmation seems to be proved plausible by a study pointed out by Davies who states that:
A study from the universities of Harvard and Toronto suggests that people with reduced latent inhibition are more likely to have original thoughts than the rest of us. Latent inhibition is “the capacity to screen from conscious awareness stimuli previously experienced as irrelevant”. I think this means that imaginative people are worse at screening out the world than you and me. Or better at being distracted. So maybe we mortals can increase our originality by deliberately and purposefully using distracting and unfocused tools. (Wired Magazine UK)
I must now end this blog post and get some work done, well, I’m going to have a quick look at facebook first, naturally.
Tags: Evolution, Facebook, Internet, News, Productivity, Reporting, Social networks, Study, Stumble Upon, Technology, Twitter, University, Web 2.0, work, youtube
An early start to Christmas, just like usual.
Posted by unluckydip | Filed under News, Rant, opinion
Every year, without fail, as another disappointing summer begins to fade, news outlets of all kinds, without fail; it seems to me, produce stories about christmas starting early. As far as I can tell, the award for the first story in this catagory this year goes to The Sun, who on 21st of August published the story entitled “Christmas lights put up in August (For, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Pagans)”
“Rochdale Council say the lights in Milnrow, Lancs, will be used in seasonal celebrations for several faiths – starting with the Muslim festival of Eid on September 20. Other holy days include the Hindu festival of Diwali in October, the Jewish holiday of Hannukah in December – and even the Wicca festival Yule celebrated by white witches and pagans on the winter solstice. Yet the town’s decorations are traditional Christmas symbols including a giant Noel sign, an image of Santa Claus – and even a penguin on skis.”
It does seem a little odd, to say the least, that other relgions would want so called Christian symbols put up to celebrate there religious holidays. But the notion I find funny is that Santa Claus, holly, and in particular a penguin on skis are considered “traditional Christmas symbols” Maybe what I know about the story of birth of Jesus is wrong, but I don’t recall any refference to skiiing penguins or santa. Besides the penguin; although I’m sure you could make an argument for it, despite it being a bit odd, many of the symbols are in fact of pagan/old religion origin.
Two things erk me with this story; and admittedly being annoyed by such a trivial story is, I of course know, trivial in itself, are that firstly such stories come up every year, and I’m pretty sure news outlets have a template ready and waiting, but more “importantly” is the descirption of the decorations as being tradtionally associated christmas, they have become symbols of christmas, but they are most defenatly not traditional; assuming you see christmas as a christian festival soley, which this article obviously does and I would go on to guess is the overriding discourse regarding christmas in general, surely examples of tradional christmas symbols would be the manger, the star and the three wise men amongst other such things.
I’m not religious at all, but things such as this do annoy me at times. I’m sure The Sun, when publishing this story, wanted the reader to be annoyed at political correctness and the like, and without fail such comments have been provided. I’ll leave you with one, posed by “Dingley”
“I thought you can’t use the word CHRISTMAS. It has to be called interfere. Now these other faiths want to intrude on our religion and/or beliefs. Also our Christmas celebration. Why. We are not aloud to interfere with there tradition or faiths. Why should they with ours?”
Tags: Christmas, decorations, lights, News, pagan, rochdale, the sun, trends
