Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

The rise of MOOCthulhu

The stars are right for the emergence of... MOOCthulhu!  Audrey Waters explains.

TIME wants you to fear the Web, once more

TIME returns to its cyberfear theme with this cover story on why you should dread the Web. Well, one part of it.

Things don't sound so bad at first:

The Deep Web is a specific branch of the Internet that's distinguished by that increasingly rare commodity: complete anonymity. As such, it is a vital tool for intelligence agents, law enforcement, political dissidents and anybody who needs or wants to conduct their online affairs in private — which is, increasingly, everybody.

But

And you knew there was a "but" coming up -

some prosecutors and government agencies think that Silk Road was just the thin edge of the wedge and that the Deep Web is a potential nightmare, an electronic haven for thieves, child pornographers, human traffickers, forgers, assassins and peddlers of state secrets and loose nukes.

That's one long, frantic sentence to read out loud.

Where to begin?

• pornographers hide online: "porn doesn't hide!" says one inhabitant of Infocult Towers.
• "thin edge of the wedge... Silk Road" - that's a fun metaphor combo.
• "potential nightmare" - is it potential or actual at this stage?  The article has fun sliding on both sides of that choice.

The rest of that entertaining article is locked behind a firewall.  Could it be speaking to us from the very Deep Web itself?

Zombie ebooks conquer the Amazon

Zombies keep on rising.  One recent datapoint is the number of Amazon Kindle ebooks with "zombie" in the title.

On Halloween night in 2011, there were 2,269 different Kindle ebooks with their word “zombie” in their title. But by 2012, that number had more than doubled, with 4,874 zombie ebooks there were now available on the Kindle. And this year? OMG! Amazon’s Kindle store now has 8,052 zombie ebooks!

Check that link for a wide-ranging catalog of titles.  For example,

The Zombie Attached To My Head
My Lovesick Zombie Boy Band
A Christmas Carol of the Living Dead: a zombie holiday tale. 
An Inconvenient Amish Zombie Left Behind The Da Vinci Diet Code Truth
Texas Biker Zombies From Outer Space
Jesus Camp Zombie Bloodbath
Nobody Wants to Play With Zombie Jesus
Diary of a Duct Tape Zombie
Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies
Attack of the Shark-Headed Zombies
Jailbait Zombie
Zombie Project Management

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Slenderman, the internet's organic horror myth

The Slenderman mythos gets a nice rumination in "How is Slender Man Internet Folklore?"  The PBS Idea Channel host frantically runs through a bunch of topics, from tulpas to SomethingAwful.

It's important to note the new media aspect of Slenderman: Web 2.0 videos, like Marble Hornets; discussion boards, where S. was spawned; social media, where the idea is shared.

Infocult has been stalking Slendy for your nightmarish benefit.

(thanks to Amanda!)

Gothic real estate continues to occupy America

Americans are still using Gothic monster terms to describe an ongoing real estate crisis.

Virginia, Nebraska, Alaska and Oklahoma have the highest rate of "vampire" property, referring to foreclosed homes that the banks took over but the homeowners still live there.

Missouri, Indiana, Oregon and Nevada had a higher percentage of "zombies," or homes that are still going through the foreclosure process but are vacant. The homeowner who is being foreclosed moved out, but the bank hasn't yet taken over the property.

The real lives of these properties recall other Gothic tropes, like modern ruins:

zombie homes are probably better known because they are more visible. These abandoned homes often aren't being maintained. Windows are broken. The lawn needs cutting. The properties are more likely to be vandalized.

Or the "looks innocent from the outside" trick:

from the outside, "vampire" properties often look like normal homes since people are still living in them.

We're almost in 2014, and still see the Great Recession in Gothic terms.

(thanks to Elena Clark)

Moving quickly through the chapel of bones

Speaking of the Sedlec Ossuary, the great filmmaker Jan Švankmajer made a very short movie about it.  "The Ossuary" (1970) is now available on YouTube, and embedded here for your edification:

More bone churches

Europe seems to be fond of decorating its churches with human remains.  Yesterday's post about a Polish bone chapel elicited helpful suggestions of more such architecture.

For example, the Chapel of Bones in Evora, Portugal.

rather than interring the bones behind closed doors, the monks, who were concerned about society's values at the time, thought it best to put them on display. They thought this would provide Evora, a town noted for its wealth in the early 1600s, with a helpful place to meditate on the transience of material things in the undeniable presence of death.

This is made clear by the thought-provoking message above the chapel door: "Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos," or: "We bones that are here, for your bones we wait."

The place is lined with human remains, apparently.

We can find a similar structure in the middle of the Czech Republic, the Sedlac Ossuary.  It welcomes visitors thusly:

The Wikipedia entry reads like a death metal fantasy:

Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault.

This is how you do an impressive coat of arms:

Infocult: your tour guide to the Gothic world.

Previously on Infocult: a Polish bone chapel.

(many thanks to James Caruso and Alan Wolf on Facebook)

One from the archives

Some real-life theatrical Gothic from 2008: an actor simulated cutting his throat in a suicide scene, only to find out the hard way that the fake knife had been replaced with a real one.

Daniel Hoevels, 30, slumped over with blood pouring from his neck while the audience broke into applause at the "special effect"...

It was only when he did not get up to take a bow that anyone realised something had gone wrong.

The actor lived, but we can only imagine the possible explanations (and stories).

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

A chapel made of human bones

The European interest in human bones reached an apex with this Polish chapel.  The interior is lined entirely with bones, and not those of saints and martyrs:

The skulls and leg bones of over 3,000 victims of wars and plagues cover the walls and ceiling

For example, 

Note that this wasn't a medieval project, but came straight from the last years of the Age of Reason:

Between 1776 and 1804, the local priest, Vaclav Tomasek, painstakingly gathered, cleaned and carefully arranged skeletons recovered from numerous, shallow mass graves left by the Thirty Years’ War, Silesian Wars and cholera outbreaks. Modeled off of similar ossuaries and catacombs in Rome, the chapel was intended as a shrine for the dead, as well as a “memento mori” for the living.

On the church’s altar, Tomasek placed the bones of important figures and curiosities, including the skull of the local mayor, skulls with bullet holes, a skull deformed by syphilis and the bones of a supposed giant. When the chapel's creator passed away in 1804, his skull was placed on the altar as well.

(thanks to Christel Broady on Facebook)

On Arabic Gothic

H-Net carried an interesting discussion about the state of Arabic horror literature.  There are pointers to horror movies from Egypt and one from the UAE.  There's a question about the appropriateness of certain horror tropes ("Zombies are commonly representative of various fears arising within affluent societies").

Ah, for the time to pursue that dream, the world Gothic project.

(thanks to Ed Webb)