Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Ypsilanti Vampire May Day

Vampire politics continues in 2012, as we approach May 1 and the start of Dracula.  Today's example: a passionate, lyrical essay from the left, asking us to observe "Ypsilanti Vampire May Day". 

Here's a sample:

The situation does indeed resemble Count Dracula’s castle: the barred windows of banks; the impregnable battlements of securitization; the bolted doors of fi­nan­cialization; the endless corridors of credit default swaps; the twisting stairways of lost mortgages; the heavy portcullis of fiscalism. Every view is hemmed in by enclosure, and each citizen is watched over by the omniscient Evil Eye of surveillance cameras.  

Yes, Linebaugh namechecks the classic Goldman Sachs vampire squid line.  And Marx's powerful Gothic phrasing.  Along with 19th-century Greek history, Sulla, the history of Michigan, and far too many other items along a delirious way for me to summarize quickly.

The below image is from the Occupy Ypsi Tumblr:

(thanks to Tim Pendry)

Jazz vampire

Here's a sweet vampire song, really about jazz fandom.

(thanks to Jesse Walker; cross-posted to the Draculablog)

Viewing the asylum

Here's another look at that classic Gothic space, the abandoned scary place: "Asylum".

(thanks to J. Wolfe)

IDracula

Another take on Dracula and new media is iDracula.  Bekka Black takes key scenes and passages, transfers them to current digital platforms (iPad, phone, etc), and updates the content a bit.

For example:

From: Mina Murray

To: Jonathan Harker

Subject: Renfield slipping in and out

Sent: June 13 8:27 PM
Jonathan,
I miss you. I wish you could have come when we visited Renfield today. Am attaching a photo of the gates. Kinda cool looking, but only if you know you can get right back out.

He looks terrible. He’s lost about 20 pounds and his face is yellowish. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. I didn’t cry, but my eyes got full and I had to do that blinky thing you hate.

Lucy stared at him with her mouth open, like a bird at a snake, so I had to do the talking. Why do I always have to step in and do the yucky stuff? Here’s how it went:

Renfield: I must consume life forces to be strong. He decreed it. He has come to me even here. And He decreed it.

Me (keeping one eye on the door and wishing you were there): Randy, how are you?

Renfield: Weak. I must eat live meat. Could you get me a kitten? A soft little kitten?

Me: No. (Eww. Do you think he’d really eat one?)

Consider this the latest in a century+ tradition of translating Stoker's novel to new media.  It started with stage, then radio, then film.

(thanks to Elena Clark; cross-posted to Draculablog)

 

"The Day Yahoo Decided I Liked Reading About Child Murder"

Here is a fine story about creepy social media:

"The Day Yahoo Decided I Liked Reading About Child Murder"

Sarah Kendzior (archive) describes the Yahoo! portal's decision to feed her news stories about horrible things happening to chidren.  It must have been like being trapped in a car with one of the brothers Grimms' interlocutors.

Kendzior takes this in several directions, each noteworthy for our purposes.  First, she links this Gilles de Rais curation to Pariser's filter bubble argument. We should check to see if the bubble goes on to have a fearsome reputation, down the road.

Specifically she target's Yahoo!'s Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.).  That service currently tells me these are the most popular stories on the Web, unpersonalized as I haven't logged in:

Mystery jackpot winners step up

Huge unknown shopping site,

Ex-U.S. Olympic star dies

Star's breasts reduced in ad

Sigh.

Second, Kendzior compares Yahoo!'s John Wayne Gacyismo to other media:

Portals like AOL or Yahoo, with their mix of gossip and politics and recipes and celebrity death watch masquerading as "trending now" (Larry Hagman? Ernest Borgnine?), feel like a throwback to a time of inclusive, if dim-witted, media. 

Unfortunately, that is not just a historical comparison.  TV news continues to shower us frantically with that kind of torrent.  Again, this could be a sign of the classic way Americans apprehend new technology: by naturalizing if not romanticizing previous technologies.

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

Instagram moves against self-harm, pro-ana content

Instagram took steps to ward off self-harming content last week.  Specifically, this includes content celebrating cutting, suicide, and self-starving:

Going forward, we won’t allow accounts, images, or hashtags dedicated to glorifying, promoting, or encouraging self-harm...

[A]ny account found encouraging or urging users to embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or to cut, harm themselves, or commit suicide will result in a disabled account without warning...hashtags that actively promote self-harm, such as “thinspiration,” “probulimia,” and “proanorexia,” are no longer searchable. 

They were careful to scope this out:

It is important to note that this guideline does not extend to accounts created to constructively discuss, or document personal experiences that show any form of self-harm where the intention is recovery or open discussion.

From the fearsome media perspective, we can view Instagram's move as an attempt to prevent accruing a reputation for supporting such often-scary materials.  Pinterest took similar steps last month.

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

Sinkhole devours Chinese girl

The sinkhole campaign against humanity opened a new front in China:

The schoolgirl was strolling down a sidewalk in the northern Chinese city of Xi'an, when she suddenly fell through a hollow section to the bottom of a six-meter-deep pit below.

Watch:

Isn't it fascinating how we're not surprised that this was captured on video, from several vantage points?

(thanks to Tony Frederick)

iDictator apps for your hands to hold

iOS users can now download apps devoted to their favorite tyrants, thanks to the work of some pro-authoritarian developers and the approval of Apple's gated apps store. iMussolini, iStalin, and Hitler (formerly iHitler)

“iHitler,” an encyclopedic offering, didn’t make it through Apple’s vaunted approval process (it’s now called, simply, “Hitler”); but apps named “iStalin” and “iMussolini” did. 

I could listen to over 100 speeches from il Duce. Since I don’t know Italian, I opted for the “songs of Fascism” section, where I read the lyrics to the hymn “Battaglioni M” in English accompanied by an Italian recording: “Duce’s battalions/ Death’s created for life battalions/ … Without hatred there’s no love around.” “Adolf Hitler ST,” an encyclopedia of Hitler’s life, presented me with categories that included Architecture, The Occult, Hitler’s Women, and Dead [sic]. The Holocaust was not listed. The app was available in English and German, at a cost of 99 cents. It was filed under Education.

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Killer shoots up a crowd; gaming must be responsible

A killer opens fire on a crowd, murdering and wounding many.  Clearly, computer games must have played a role.

So far the case of Anders Breivik has followed several fearsome media patterns quite clearly.  First, there's the association with some aspect of the digital world: here, gaming.  

Breivik... went through a period of playing the online fantasy game "World of Warcraft" up to 16 hours a day, he testified.

Next, we need to know that said gaming helped shape a loveable innocent into a mass murderer.

[H]e "trained" for the attacks he carried out in Norway last summer using the computer game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The 33-year-old said he practised his shot using a "holographic aiming device" on the war simulation game, which he said is used by armies around the world for training. "You develop target acquisition," he said. He used a similar device during the shooting attacks that left 69 dead at a political youth camp on the island of Utøya on 22 July.

The picture is now complete: two famous, not quite savory games + young male = tons of violence.  As the Times of London apparently shrieked,

“Breivik played video games for a year to train for deadly attacks”

With that framing, we're free to theorize quite imaginatively about toilet training, order vs chaos, globalization, work problems, and more. 

The case doesn't hold, unsurprisingly.  Rock Paper Shotgun takes it apart very neatly. Breivik mentioned gaming very rarely, but news media skipped what he emphasized (conspiracies and material). And eventually CNN climbed down from its fear-the-gaming, Gothic world perch.

(thanks to Todd Bryant, Alexander Knorr, and Tomak; images via Call of Duty Wikia and Wikipedia)

PTSD in the uncanny valley

The United States creates a virtual therapist program aimed at PTSD-afflicted veterans.  And the results are either comforting or creepy, depending on your take:

Is this an uncanny valley trip, or a decent attempt by the Pentagon to do right by ailing soldiers?

A soldier could walk into the clinic, enter a private kiosk, and log on to a computer where his or her personal simulated therapist — yes, you can pick from an array of different animated docs — would be waiting. Using Kinect-like hardware for motion sensing, a microphone and a webcam, the computer’s software would take note of how a patient moved and how they spoke.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)