Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Cyberbullying by cyberfans

This Slate article brings together cyberbullying, online abuse, with teen girl fandom.  Happily, we can blame Justin Bieber.

[Justin Bieber] is one of the first huge teen pop stars whose career is unfolding entirely in the digital age—and that adds an interesting new wrinkle to the hysteria.

Writer Rastogi emphasizes the computer-mediated enabling of textual abuse:

soldiers in the Bieber Army don't really have clear senses of their targets: They may feel they are spitting their venom at Esperanza Spalding directly, but none of them actually had to look her in the eye as they were doing so. None of them, I imagine, believe that they will face any real consequences for their actions.

Then Rastogi gets Gothic:

Add in the mighty, frightening force that is teenage emotion and the Internet's ability to turn a bunch of people at their computers into a Hydra-like mob, and you've got a pretty toxic soup.

Keep an eye on this latest fearsome media meme.  It might not go anywhere, if our current adoration of celebrity cults continue.  But things can change.

(thanks to Jesse "Not a Teenybopper" Walker)

Crisis of the Arab vampire state

Gothic metaphors have made their way to the great Arab Revolt, at least for Juan Cole.  Some classic vampire talk here:

The protesters put their fingers on the phenomenon of the vampire state and concluded that before anything important could change, they had to put a stake through its heart.

The article is excellent analysis.

Horrors on Everest

Dead bodies are accumulating on Mount Everest, as climbers die and their bodies rest unclaimed.  It's a grim spectacle, offering many moments of confrontation with corpses.

(via BoingBoing)

Ancient spaces beneath the ice

Caves under Antartica provide glimpses of the mountains of madness these gorgeous images:

(via MetaFilter)

Super-wolf packs swarming the Russian far east

Swarms of very powerful wolves have started attacking animals and people in the Russian far east: Russian Gothic continuing.  North of Yakutsk, something nightmarish is happening:

Four hundred bloodthirsty wolves have been spotted prowling around the edges of Verkhoyansk, in Russia, attacking livestock at will.

A pack of wolves this size is unheard of, with the animals usually preferring to hunt in smaller groups of just six or seven.The massive group is believed to be made from hundreds of packs and has left animal experts baffled.

Remember how dark it is at that latitude in winter.  "'Once the daylight increases, the hunters will start shooting predators from helicopters.'"

And how cold.  Which might explain this weirdness:

Dr Valerius Geist, a wildlife behaviour expert, said the harsh Siberian winter - where temperatures plummet to minus 49C - had killed off the animal's usual prey.He said: 'It is unusual for wolves to gather in such numbers of hunt large animal like horses.

(thanks to jason kielbasa)

The pope's organs are different, and shouldn't migrate

The pope should not donate organs, says the Catholic church.  Quite the problem for body parts and the Gothic.

To explain: in case you weren't wondering about this problem, the current pope had registered for organ donation during his pre-papal career as Ratzinger.  Would those donations kick in, when he dies as pope Benedict XVI?  No, opined "the pope's secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein", over Vatican Radio.

Here's where the Gothic bit kicks in:

Vatican officials say that after a pope dies, his body belongs to the entire Church and must be buried intact. Furthermore, if papal organs were donated, they would become relics in other bodies if he were eventually made a saint.

Think about all the ways this could fall out.  Pope dies, and his liver ends up in some Milanese lad's torso.  Pope becomes canonizes - what to do about the now holy body part, currently in use?  Should the Vatican arrange for a new donation, say?

Or what if too much time goes by, and the body part molders in someone else's grave.  Should papal agents dig up the corpse, pry loose the precious part, then reinter the remains?

Gothic lit, in its British form, has often been keen on an imagined Catholic world of fear and perversity.

(thanks to Alison); photo from FaceMePLS)

Chernobyl, or atom age Gothic

This recent Chernobyl tour is rich in atomic Gothic horror and beauty.

"Nuclear sarcophagus": what a phrase.

We move on, now were at the Red Forest. So called because on the night of the accident, the whole forest glowed red. The forest was cut down, and buried under 6 meteres (or feet, im not sure) of earth. The only problem being, the trees they planted on top of them, are now dragging the radiation up through their roots, meaning radiation here is going UP instead of down. This is one of the most toxic places on earth.

More atomic terrors:

(thanks to Tony Frederick)

The dark side of autocorrect

"Autocorrect leads to stabbing": perhaps you thought that software function was entertaining.  But now autocorrect has entered our haunted spaces world of fearsome media:

Brook told police he'd sent Witkowski a text message asking "What are you on about mutter?", "mutter" being "a local colloquialism for a person who behaves in an antisocial or vulgar manner." But thanks to the predictive text on his phone, "mutter" was corrected to "nutter," a slang term meaning "deranged."

From such tiny seeds do vast, poisoned trees grow:

Witkowski apparently took offense at this, leading to an exchange of increasingly heated and hostile messages. Finally, Witkowski decided he'd had enough and went to pay Brook a visit. Brook sensed that trouble was in the offing, however, or maybe his idiot friend told him he was coming to get him; whatever the case, Brook taped a large kitchen knife to the back of his front door and stashed another one near his bathroom...

 

Turns out autocorrect was right: he was a nutter after all.

Perhaps we should expect more examples, at least like this one:

(thanks to Tombs Brains)

Fox wants you to fear a new computer game

A new computer game is coming, and you should be very afraid!    "Parents had better beware", begins the article.

Why?  Well, it's violent, and people swear.  Yes, we might expect a game called "Bulletstorm" to be violent, but that's why we rely on journalistic analysis.  And look, the article begins with a soothing visual:

Ah, worse than that, though, the game will encourage kids to rape.  

Carole Lieberman, a psychiatrist and book author, told FoxNews.com that sexual situations and acts in video games -- highlighted so well in Bulletstorm -- have led to real-world sexual violence. “The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” she said. 

Interestingly, the game doesn't have any sex scenes.  And rapes are actually decreasing in the US.  But pay that no mind - an expert has spoken.

What's the point of this kind of article, beyond boosting the game's appeal?  Several different types of censorship are discussed at the end.

So, to sum up, we have a gory image, incorrect information about various topics, topped off with calls for censorship.  What kind of headline graces this shambling fear-mess?  Will we be gently led into such a passionate text?

Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?

Ah.  Readers will not be surprised to see that headline's entertaining question addressed in any way.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Robots to get own network, humanity doomed yet again

Today's sf nightmare real-world project is a robots-only network.

it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones.
Researchers behind it hope it will allow robots to come into service more quickly, armed with a growing library of knowledge about their human masters.

Human masters, eh?

And yes, the current name is RoboEarth.  "Granddad, what did we call this planet before The New Order was established?"  "Why, just plain ol' Earth, I think."

(thanks to Ed Webb, Rasputin to the Diigo court)