Month: August 2011

Stop this senseless violence!

Posted on by babemoby

Why are people entertained by violence so much?

I am not a violent person, but the Bride in Kill Bill is, and I enjoy watching her work.

Don’t worry, this is not going to be some self-righteous lame 65-year-old in a 27-year-old’s body telling you it’s evil to enjoy anything even depicting a remote hint of a pinch on the arm. Believe me, if you see my dvd and blu-ray collection, you’ll understand I don’t shy away from violence in entertainment.

But since you can’t see it, I’ll just tell you Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite directors, and you’ll get the picture. You may even call into question my sanity.

No, this is not what you were afraid of. I am just curious as to why humans choose to consume so much violent material, as a matter of curiosity.

Speaking of curiosity, I don’t doubt that’s one of the main reasons we were intrigued by violence when we were young. I would assume that tendency continues into adulthood. I don’t remember what grade they started teaching anatomy in school, but considering we were curious about what was inside of a person, a war movie, such as Saving Private Ryan may have served as a good introduction.

Now that you’ve wretched all over your keyboard just thinking of that film, I’ll let you clean up before you continue.

From a cursory perusal of the Internet (the most accurate of sources, I know), there are a few scientific thoughts on this.

One suggests violence is part of our evolutionary makeup. It would make sense. Up to the dawn of civilized society, violence was necessary to eat. It was also useful in protecting your stuff from animals or other humans. Then again, running away was useful in protecting your life from bears or other large things who would like to commit violence against you. FORGET THE STUFF, MAN, IT’S NOT WORTH IT!

Let Sasquatch have your beef stew! It's not worth dying over, you'll make more later!

This would assume our response to violence is primal, because it’s something we actually have a need for. Perhaps this is some truth to this.

But on the other hand, if you live in a first-world country, you’re rarely put in a position where you need to use your survival instincts (such as attending an Ohio State football game wearing any other team’s colors). Is our response to violence, merely pent up rage that we must unleash?

Obviously, any “adrenaline-pumping thrill ride” will likely do its job in releasing such adrenaline, which we find enjoyable.

But watching a movie (or reading a book, even) hardly produces a survival situation. I mean, maybe you identify with the hero or something, so you put yourself in that character’s shoes and it’s like a survival shout out to your fictional avatar.

But that wouldn’t explain why people watch the news for violent material. Working in the media, I am aware the media churns out violence regularly, because we know people will find it entertaining, and they will ingest it.

And that’s not just about being informed. Really, there’s little in those stories that is directly pertinent to any reader or viewer. It’s likely the violent event occurred in a different part of town, and it’s not like a single incident is going to raise awareness that many other incidents did not.

To take it a step further, why do people slow down when they pass a car accident? Believe me, they are not very entertaining. Steps are taken by police to make sure they aren’t. But people still have a morbid curiosity. And I wonder why?

I mean, if we have a tendency to respond to violence with survival instincts, then why wouldn’t we flee from it instead? Seeing a dead body would seem to remind people of their mortality, and who wants to think about that?

But we like to see the dead bodies. We like to see explosions. We are fascinated with morbid tales. Rotten.com exists for a reason.

One scientist basically says we like to see characters we hate get their comeuppance. He also argues people may not like violence as much as Hollywood may suggest we do. Whether or not that’s true, I’m going to have to disagree, because it would go against my point.

I’m sure we do want to see “bad” characters get horrifically, brutally murdered (and maybe form a connection between them and people they know in real life!). But you probably only form that sort of connection with one or two of the hundreds Arnold Schwarzenegger mows down, but every kill is still frickin’ awesome! And the horrible puns he spouts afterward are doubly awesome.

I sense a lot of dead dudes and dead puns headed my way from this part of the room.

One thing that is interesting to me is people who are not violent or aggressive still enjoy watching violent things. I consider myself a pacifist. Maybe I do a disservice to pacifists by taking in violent entertainment. But I’ve probably only a few times in my life had the urge to even push someone. So, I’m not exactly the most aggressive person in the world. But I still like watching Bostoners get shot in the kneecaps and heads in The Departed. Why is that?

I’m sure there are many reasons we enjoy violence, and there are many aspects of this topic to write about, which I will save for other times. I’ll continue writing about it next week sometime.

But until then, if you’ve got any ideas or theories of why we like violence, please let me know in the comment box below.

Disposability part 2

Posted on by babemoby

And it’s fitting that music has become disposable, because we live in a disposable society.

My most favorite albums I didn’t really care for at first.

Coheed and Cambria is perhaps my favorite current band. But I hated them for a long time just because I didn’t get it. I bought a few of their CDs at the behest of one of my former coworkers, and I still didn’t get it. After listening to them over and over and over, (I was determined!) I still didn’t get it.

Eventually something clicked between me and them, like lighting striking a primordial ooze and a large hispanic man with an enormous mane of hair and the guitar skills of a god tromping out of it, both hands in the form of devil horns. It was when I saw one of the Allman brothers come on stage with them on one of their DVDs that made me realize, if he had respect for this crazy band, then maybe it’s something worth paying attention to.

They would have never gotten my attention had I first listened to them on Spotify. Because my approach to music has changed in the week since I started listening. That is, if I don’t like it, I turn it off and probably don’t listen to it again.

That’s one thing if I check out something popular that I’m still going to hear on the radio and in commercials and movies because I’ll probably be hearing it again ad nauseum. On the other hand, the best music doesn’t make it to commercial radio, so you indie bands better impress me quick, or I’m pulling the sad sack plug.

That’s the mark of disposability. I work 40 hours a week. I live by myself. If I’m going to pay attention to you, you had better make it worth my while.

Disposability, unfortunately has been creeping into music, but it’s leaving its mark on society as well.

Of course, we live in a world where you can fuse a spoon and fork, it becomes completely ordinary and then you throw it away after you use it. That’s nothing new.

But as disposability creeps into other areas of life, such as art and relationships, it becomes a little frightening.

Movies have been disposable for quite a while. But when critics, who are likely college educated and paid to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, start praising movies for being ridiculous summer fun, when the same movie five years ago would have been panned as the same old drivel, there’s something wrong. Not that there’s anything wrong with enjoying fun movies, it’s more that when people are paid to critique and they don’t, you begin to wonder why they’re getting paid in the first place.

Not only that, but after a movie, you’re quickly ushered out of the theatre without leaving you time to digest what you just witnessed. Thus, the ideas quickly leave your mind, and movies become disposable, like a spork.

When Barnes and Noble has an entire section called “Paranormal Teen Romance,” you start to think books are not what they used to be.

What am I talking about? Who goes to book stores anymore? With the NookBook threatening to shut down Barnes and Nobles, the last major book store chain, we will turn to electronic reading. The price of books will drop because the material cost will be virtually nothing. I saw one person with a Kindle who had received a huge pack of pirated books. It was seriously whatever you wanted, totally for free. Once this becomes legalized, like music has with Spotify, books become disposable.

Reading a book is a major time investment for a working person. But sometimes good books start slow. Sometimes they’re very long. If a person starts into a book and decides they don’t want to finish it, well, it only cost them $1.99, so there is some monetary investment into it, but it’s very small, almost negligible. Reduce that to nothing and the monetary investment goes away.

Social media is the other major area where life has become disposable.

I already have to wade through people wanting me to buy them radishes on Farmville or whatever Facebook games people play, and that sucks.

When this is what social media tools become, it’s frightening.

It’s already hard enough to keep up with all of my 200 friends on Facebook. Really, how can anyone keep up with that many people?

The reality is, you can’t. I understand that to any savvy opportunist out there, social interaction is always a networking tool.

I realize 200 friends is towards the low end to most people (though my Dad has like 10, which I think is amazing), but I reasonably seriously communicate with maybe 20 of them. That leaves 180 people, most of whom I’ve met (aside from those weird people who you’ve never met who friend you out of nowhere. Not that I don’t appreciate them!) who kind of form a social media white noise in my Facebook news feed. I wouldn’t say that I wouldn’t pay attention to these people or help them if they were in need or whatever humanitarianish thing I could come up with. Then again, these people really don’t mean much to me in my daily life if I’m truly honest.

Have these people become disposable to me? I guess if they were truly disposable, I could just delete them all and reduce my friends list to my Cabinet of 20. But when my main interaction with those 180 throughout the year consists of me wishing them happy birthday not because I remembered it, but because Facebook told me it was, I start to wonder how much I really value them. I realize it’s nice to get a ton of messages on your birthday because it feels like people remembered you, but if I really cared as much as I’d like to, I could probably at least give them a phone call.

As a side note, I think it’s funny that social media tools seem to be becoming disposable as well. Now that we have Google+ to add to form an Axis of Evil between that, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention metasocial sites like WordPress and all those perimeter sites like FourSquare, it just seems silly that we have so many means of communication that we no longer use for communication.

All this is not to say things like Spotify and Facebook have no upside. They are truly useful and amazing tools when used with the proper attitude and context.

Like when TV journalist Edward Murrow said of television, “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.”

So there’s proof that even the boob tube can be useful in the right context. If we use these tools for the purpose they were created, they can be something amazing. Speaking of which, when are they going to start making designer sporks?

Disposability part 1

Posted on by babemoby

So has anyone else tried Spotify yet?

For the uninitiated, Spotify is a new music service that allows the user to stream music for free. This sounds like nothing new. But the catalog is incredibly extensive. With the exception of a few older artists, like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Metallica, all of whom were slower to jump on the iTunes bandwagon as well, everything is here.

And when I say everything, I mean it’s basically God’s iPod. I’m assuming God is a Mac user because no deity would stoop to accepting a blue screen of death.

And just a few days before I found out about Spotify, I was coming to the realization that there was so much good music out there and then lamenting the fact that I would neither have the time (nor the bank) to track it all down and listen to it. Because I wish I could know everything there is to know in the world. That’s one of my goals in life. Maybe it seems a bit unrealistic.

But then I checked out Spotify and was astounded by its wondrous library. This was almost literally an answered prayer. While it’s not exactly free (basically after the first six months, then it’s five bucks a month), it’s reasonable. Unlimited use and an an entire world of music available for my listening pleasure? Yeah, I’ll do a second trip through the buffet line for that.

But while it appears as though this may be my audition for an advertising gig at Spotify, that’s actually not the reason I’m writing (though if someone there likes my work, I’ll be more than happy to talk about future employment with you).

I’ve noticed that when listening to Spotify, my listening habits are much different than my habits with music I own. The library is so incredibly massive there isn’t time to listen to it all. And there is a lot of good music out there. I need Duran Duran’s entire catalog!

But seriously, I haven’t actually spent much time in my life listening to Duran Duran, and naturally being curious about things, I feel the need to try and listen to it. Realizing now that doing that is like seeing the big red button and wondering what it does, pressing it and causing it to launch nuclear bombs at Russia, figuratively, but literally launching them at your ears! But that’s just my opinion.

And as it’s my opinion, I don’t listen to Duran Duran anymore. I’ve crossed them off the list. No more Duran for me!

The difference is, ten years ago, to listen to Duran Duran, I would have had to go to a store and purchase a cd.

Now, I know ten years ago, I wouldn’t have purchased a Duran Duran cd, I would have just found it on Napster and downloaded it.

But even then, it’s the same idea. Ten years ago, music was an investment. You heard a song on the radio or on the Internet you liked and you purchased it or took the time to download it. Now that you had it, you were doing to listen to it and enjoy it, dammit! Even if at first you didn’t like it, you would force yourself to listen to it until you got your 10 bucks’ worth. And at the end of the day, or week, or month, or however long it took you to learn to like whatever garbage in the form of pressed optical plastic you bought, you learned to like it.

To take it a step further, before cds, and even tapes, you couldn’t even listen to music in your car. You would have to buy a vinyl record, take it home, sit down and listen to it.

Moreover, you used to have to buy a whole album of songs from one band. If you heard a song on the radio you liked, you couldn’t just download it on iTunes for 99 cents.

Or before records, you would actually have to go to a music venue and listen to it there.

Imagine that! In a world where you can even have groceries delivered to your door, so you never have to leave your house, having to go mingle with the commoners just to listen to music sounds totally unreasonable. I would personally ask for my money back, as long as I didn’t have to literally talk to someone to get my introverted refund.

I know YouTube was already here, and you could find a lot of music on there. But Spotify takes that and blows it up like Aunt Marge, then condenses it into a single app.

But when you use Spotify, music is no longer an investment. As soon as you don’t like something, a song or an album, even within seconds, you just turn it off. A listen is no longer a contract. It is free and legal to listen to something once and never again. It would be like buying all the cds at your local record store (do those still exist?) burning them onto your computer and returning all of them for a full refund.

Music is now disposable.

I’ll write more on disposability another time. In the meantime, download and enjoy Spotify if you haven’t already, or just enjoy it if you already have.

I like it when bloggers ask their readers questions, so I’m going to try to start doing that myself.

So I basically called Duran Duran a nuclear bomb of music. What music causes a mushroom cloud to develop above your head?