And the world keeps happening
Jan. 7th, 2019 03:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo, apparently I went silent for the weekend. Didn't finish reading anything, just bounced between stuff. Though if I count 'finished one short story in a compilation' I have actually been reading a lot, it's just The Time Traveller's Almanac is huuuuuge. And I set out to finish the last three issues of Analog on my subscription I let end, but for the same reasons of vaguely boring that I let it end, that has... not happened yet.
I also watched some more Supergirl, and the Feelings Overload problem wears off when they're not dropping heavy things on children, mostly, but then I'm kind of... bored? Like, I wasn't invested in Kara's relationship, because I kind of think he's a jerk, so all that angsty emotional continuity happening now is just... not where I'm at, really. And Alex breaking up was so annoying? I can see how they did a good story to go with it, they just... they did that. And I'm annoyed without even shipping it. Just, now they've made her miserable, they should stop doing that.
And then it was the xover episode, and I detest what they did with Earth X and all of that, even though I can see how that is a story you could get to from Legends and wanting Drama. Just, some things are not for Drama, just... no.
Also it like fails to confront the stuff heroes are doing in their own universes if the only level of bad they're going to notice is that.
And crossovers are terrible for shows that don't connect any other time and have such different tones and emotional arcs going on. I mean, like, I can see how they connected them up via weddings, I can see how Leo and Sara and Alex are even part of that connecting to the objectionable bits of Earth X, but I watch the dvds of any one of these shows and it's just completely jarring to get dumped into a crossover and suddenly be meant to care about the other shows for one episode only.
... I realise they're all broadcasting at the same time and one would often watch them all every week, but I dont do that, I just get this. Boom! Here's a whole cast of people you weren't planning to think about until next year! Also the Legends and Flash, who are okay, but the story will treat Poorly.
Okay, so, being annoyed at last year's xover is apparently a way to make words happen.
But it didn't make me want to make the next episode happen so, Supergirl watching progresses slowly.
And I like the cast this year, Lena and Sam are great so far, though I miss Cat and the whole concept of mentors.
So I guess I'll watch more in a bit.
I've been thinking about an idea from cultural studies classes that unfortunately uses really ablist language in the version I can remember, that is basically saying that modern media, not even post internet but just tv and advertising walking down the street and radio and news and all that broadcast stuff, it makes it impossible to respond to the world in a sane way. (Bad phrasing.) Much worse now with media feeds being from so many more sources 24/7. Everything is disjointed, fragmented, connected by proximity but in no logical way. My Dash Did A Thing, but everything everywhere always. The world is loud loud loud, visually and in information density, but the signal to noise problem got weird and stayed that way. Because even with ad blockers and having everything be an actual signal an actual human wanted to pass along, it's almost always so much noise to you. But it doesn't have to be! We can pick up any old scraps and find meaning in them. We're humans, we're the storytelling ape, it's what we do.
And maybe once upon a time a brain was optimised for the amount of world that would be input at a time. Stories went one to many, sure, but campfire sized. Everything you heard about would be slowly and laboriously memorised and take effort to convey, so it was probably worth your effort to hear it. Sometimes. And if someone told you to Worry, it would be because something happened within walking distance, to one of a couple hundred people you could personally know.
Nowadays? We can find urgent and meaningful reasons to Worry about upwards of seven billion people on this planet, all of whom can convey messages to us that take one button click to pass on and can easily take longer to read than to send. The noise is overwhelming! And so is the signal!
But it's intercut and randomly cross connected with so much else. You get important human rights information floating past your eyes, sure, but you get it like, cat, kitten, Venom, there's a country killing people, flower, tree, here's a movie you might like, your vote made a Thing happen, this country is driving off a cliff, the planet has twelve years left, here's a picture of characters naked, oops no that's censored, isn't censorship terrible?
If I make a paragraph out of any random page of tumblr it will be far more meaningless confusion than what I just typed out. Not least because it will be like cat, kitten, Venom Venom Venom, gifs of that show you've seen twenty times now, gifs of a show you haven't seen for twenty years, cat cat, characters kissing ten times in three pages, that thing about Loki we've been saying since 2012, again, again, again.
And if this is the input, what the hell is the reaction?
I mean, I've been watching a bunch of youtube lately, and I almost only watch songvids for familiar shows and movies. That's it, my favourite bits set to music. The music tells me the mood and the pictures try and enhance it and connect it to familiar narrative. It is the poetry remix of my favourite things. I can watch these things once a day for the forseeable. They're great.
And I keep rewatching them in no small part because I know my reactions in advance. I want a Feels moment? I know which one does that! Controllable Feels are the best!
But I also tried to watch Critical Role, which is freeform collaborative storytelling, and I just... I can't, I really can't, that is Too Much Tension. You don't even have episode structure reassuring you what will happen or for how long. It's just stuff, and more stuff, and you don't know. Any feels! At random!
... also people looking at me from the TV, which I cannot be having with, which is awkward.
But!
Most of the internet, most of the time? Random feels! On shuffle!
How do I even do this, it's awful?
... often by letting it pass in front of my eyes the way advertising does, skimmed only long enough to call it Noise.
But the rest of the time...
Life doesn't have a narrative structure. It doesn't have a rhythm or a theme. There's just input input input, all day every day, and anyone and everyone's problems can be brought urgently to your attention, regardless of your ability to do any damn thing about them.
It's the mental equivalent of having the Run button jammed on a game. Your stamina can never recover. There is no rest.
Unless you just don't look.
... I don't know about you all, but when I don't look I get all worried that the world has gone away.
So you are left with this state of constant random input, that might, maybe, possibly, be relevant, and you have one mark one human endocrine system and meat based processor to react to it all with, and there is no right way to do this. It doesn't work. You can attempt to optimise for a bunch of things, but the world will still be there, a screaming mess.
And like, Dreamwidth tends more towards coherence, I think? The people I choose to read here will say some things about their life, or provide links to stuff that interests them, but it's quieter and calmer and much less blinky.
Ao3 feeds curate your experience too, though obviously popular ones can be, like, everything happens so much.
But you flick between tabs and it's like, quiet evening at home, long plotty thing with fighting, here's the news and oh wow it's bad again.
Dividing it up by time of day, having a routine, only reading some sources at some times of day, that seems like it might help? But to read my email I get news headlines. So do I only check my emails certain times a day? Somehow the world sped up until that feels like it don't work.
But as soon as you're reading about, caring about, people all over the place, then there's problems all over the place too. I mean, obviously caring about each other is perfectly sensible. Reasonable people do that and then go about their day. ... which seems really puzzling when you can read about people you've met or are familiar with in proximity to any number of disasters daily.
Was the world always this scary and we just tried not to notice?
I mean, probably.
But everything happens so much, and it's loud, and it's random, and before you're done with one feeling the next input demands another.
And this is why scripted entertainment is really doing good work, except for the thing where I mostly end up complaining about scripted entertainment. But it's putting a frame and some limits on, giving us coherence and emotional continuity instead of all of this... all.
Which is really compelling, which is what makes it so annoying when what it chooses to do with these tools is all that.
So I have absolutely no conclusion
except there is a lot going on, always, and we are not built for this.
But here we are anyway.
... I'm going to go read some more.
I also watched some more Supergirl, and the Feelings Overload problem wears off when they're not dropping heavy things on children, mostly, but then I'm kind of... bored? Like, I wasn't invested in Kara's relationship, because I kind of think he's a jerk, so all that angsty emotional continuity happening now is just... not where I'm at, really. And Alex breaking up was so annoying? I can see how they did a good story to go with it, they just... they did that. And I'm annoyed without even shipping it. Just, now they've made her miserable, they should stop doing that.
And then it was the xover episode, and I detest what they did with Earth X and all of that, even though I can see how that is a story you could get to from Legends and wanting Drama. Just, some things are not for Drama, just... no.
Also it like fails to confront the stuff heroes are doing in their own universes if the only level of bad they're going to notice is that.
And crossovers are terrible for shows that don't connect any other time and have such different tones and emotional arcs going on. I mean, like, I can see how they connected them up via weddings, I can see how Leo and Sara and Alex are even part of that connecting to the objectionable bits of Earth X, but I watch the dvds of any one of these shows and it's just completely jarring to get dumped into a crossover and suddenly be meant to care about the other shows for one episode only.
... I realise they're all broadcasting at the same time and one would often watch them all every week, but I dont do that, I just get this. Boom! Here's a whole cast of people you weren't planning to think about until next year! Also the Legends and Flash, who are okay, but the story will treat Poorly.
Okay, so, being annoyed at last year's xover is apparently a way to make words happen.
But it didn't make me want to make the next episode happen so, Supergirl watching progresses slowly.
And I like the cast this year, Lena and Sam are great so far, though I miss Cat and the whole concept of mentors.
So I guess I'll watch more in a bit.
I've been thinking about an idea from cultural studies classes that unfortunately uses really ablist language in the version I can remember, that is basically saying that modern media, not even post internet but just tv and advertising walking down the street and radio and news and all that broadcast stuff, it makes it impossible to respond to the world in a sane way. (Bad phrasing.) Much worse now with media feeds being from so many more sources 24/7. Everything is disjointed, fragmented, connected by proximity but in no logical way. My Dash Did A Thing, but everything everywhere always. The world is loud loud loud, visually and in information density, but the signal to noise problem got weird and stayed that way. Because even with ad blockers and having everything be an actual signal an actual human wanted to pass along, it's almost always so much noise to you. But it doesn't have to be! We can pick up any old scraps and find meaning in them. We're humans, we're the storytelling ape, it's what we do.
And maybe once upon a time a brain was optimised for the amount of world that would be input at a time. Stories went one to many, sure, but campfire sized. Everything you heard about would be slowly and laboriously memorised and take effort to convey, so it was probably worth your effort to hear it. Sometimes. And if someone told you to Worry, it would be because something happened within walking distance, to one of a couple hundred people you could personally know.
Nowadays? We can find urgent and meaningful reasons to Worry about upwards of seven billion people on this planet, all of whom can convey messages to us that take one button click to pass on and can easily take longer to read than to send. The noise is overwhelming! And so is the signal!
But it's intercut and randomly cross connected with so much else. You get important human rights information floating past your eyes, sure, but you get it like, cat, kitten, Venom, there's a country killing people, flower, tree, here's a movie you might like, your vote made a Thing happen, this country is driving off a cliff, the planet has twelve years left, here's a picture of characters naked, oops no that's censored, isn't censorship terrible?
If I make a paragraph out of any random page of tumblr it will be far more meaningless confusion than what I just typed out. Not least because it will be like cat, kitten, Venom Venom Venom, gifs of that show you've seen twenty times now, gifs of a show you haven't seen for twenty years, cat cat, characters kissing ten times in three pages, that thing about Loki we've been saying since 2012, again, again, again.
And if this is the input, what the hell is the reaction?
I mean, I've been watching a bunch of youtube lately, and I almost only watch songvids for familiar shows and movies. That's it, my favourite bits set to music. The music tells me the mood and the pictures try and enhance it and connect it to familiar narrative. It is the poetry remix of my favourite things. I can watch these things once a day for the forseeable. They're great.
And I keep rewatching them in no small part because I know my reactions in advance. I want a Feels moment? I know which one does that! Controllable Feels are the best!
But I also tried to watch Critical Role, which is freeform collaborative storytelling, and I just... I can't, I really can't, that is Too Much Tension. You don't even have episode structure reassuring you what will happen or for how long. It's just stuff, and more stuff, and you don't know. Any feels! At random!
... also people looking at me from the TV, which I cannot be having with, which is awkward.
But!
Most of the internet, most of the time? Random feels! On shuffle!
How do I even do this, it's awful?
... often by letting it pass in front of my eyes the way advertising does, skimmed only long enough to call it Noise.
But the rest of the time...
Life doesn't have a narrative structure. It doesn't have a rhythm or a theme. There's just input input input, all day every day, and anyone and everyone's problems can be brought urgently to your attention, regardless of your ability to do any damn thing about them.
It's the mental equivalent of having the Run button jammed on a game. Your stamina can never recover. There is no rest.
Unless you just don't look.
... I don't know about you all, but when I don't look I get all worried that the world has gone away.
So you are left with this state of constant random input, that might, maybe, possibly, be relevant, and you have one mark one human endocrine system and meat based processor to react to it all with, and there is no right way to do this. It doesn't work. You can attempt to optimise for a bunch of things, but the world will still be there, a screaming mess.
And like, Dreamwidth tends more towards coherence, I think? The people I choose to read here will say some things about their life, or provide links to stuff that interests them, but it's quieter and calmer and much less blinky.
Ao3 feeds curate your experience too, though obviously popular ones can be, like, everything happens so much.
But you flick between tabs and it's like, quiet evening at home, long plotty thing with fighting, here's the news and oh wow it's bad again.
Dividing it up by time of day, having a routine, only reading some sources at some times of day, that seems like it might help? But to read my email I get news headlines. So do I only check my emails certain times a day? Somehow the world sped up until that feels like it don't work.
But as soon as you're reading about, caring about, people all over the place, then there's problems all over the place too. I mean, obviously caring about each other is perfectly sensible. Reasonable people do that and then go about their day. ... which seems really puzzling when you can read about people you've met or are familiar with in proximity to any number of disasters daily.
Was the world always this scary and we just tried not to notice?
I mean, probably.
But everything happens so much, and it's loud, and it's random, and before you're done with one feeling the next input demands another.
And this is why scripted entertainment is really doing good work, except for the thing where I mostly end up complaining about scripted entertainment. But it's putting a frame and some limits on, giving us coherence and emotional continuity instead of all of this... all.
Which is really compelling, which is what makes it so annoying when what it chooses to do with these tools is all that.
So I have absolutely no conclusion
except there is a lot going on, always, and we are not built for this.
But here we are anyway.
... I'm going to go read some more.