Best seat in the house

I’m not entirely sure what I expected when I ordered my tickets for ArenaBowl XXIII for “STANDING ROOM ONLY.” Perhaps a corral where we would be led and allowed to roam around, like free-range chickens. “This is your pen, and this is where you must stay,” they’d say sternly, but we’d mill around and laugh and visit and generally enjoy ourselves.

I certainly didn’t expect to be renting my own little patch of airspace, all of 18 by 20 inches. The only indication of its existence was a one-row duct-taped grid, barely distinguishable from the concrete floor, with a little “1” scrawled in Sharpie.

But I was there to support the team, our Spokane Shock. My job, such as it was, revolved solely around screaming my lungs out while simultaneously sticking my fingers in my ears in an attempt to block out the steady low hum of the vuvuzelas so thoughtfully sold by the host team.

And so I stood in my box, eagerly.

The game got off to a bit of a slow start. I scanned the crowd, noticing some of the very same people who had stood out so conspicuously while waiting in line.

Most of the fans were properly outfitted in jerseys, official ArenaBowl shirts and other Shock-branded tees. Even among the less officially authorized clothing, some managed to nail the particular garish shade of Shock orange. They looked like human Cheetos, though decidedly of the “puffed” as opposed to “crunchy” variety.

Over there, a three-pack of neon redheads stood grinning in their sea-blue shirts like buzz-cut Troll dolls in policemen’s uniforms. And over there, next to the vuvuzela-clutching headache-in-waiting, a man who either tried to paint his face Avatar-blue and misplaced his hairline, or else applied his hair dye before going to sleep and passed the night in a frenzy of macking with his beloved pillow.

What I noticed about all of these fans was their location: in seats. Standing in front of their seats, to be more precise, as if taunting those of us who lacked accommodation for our posteriors. I shifted uneasily, trying to fend off a nice-looking middle-aged couple who unilaterally commandeered three squares, forcing me into a no-man’s land ungoverned by the duct tape.

And so I stood outside my box, warily.

There was still a game going on, I think — the Napa Auto Parts ArenaBowl XXIII. A thrilling sequence, that started with a “Toyota game ball in the stands” and was followed by a pair of “Dishman Dodge first downs,” culminated in a rather pedestrian “touchdown.” Fortunately, after the YMCA Kickoff Kid grabbed the tee — and on the heels of another Toyota game ball — the Shock defense managed a Papa Murphy’s takeaway, setting up the offense for some more Dishman Dodges and ultimately another … touchdown.

It was all terribly exciting. But it was getting to be around halftime, and my legs were starting to ache. I glanced around at my fellow standees, and most of them — though cheering — appeared to be preoccupied with alleviating pain: Doubled over to ease the strain, crouching, leaning against the wall …

I glared at the Sitters, who were of course standing. How dare they take their seats for granted? How we Standers longed for the gentle cupping of our buttocks by those plastic blue thrones, sinking in to those rigid, unforgiving slabs and literally taking the load off our backs. Where they could pile their hot dogs, their nachos and their taco salads on their knees, we set our popcorn on the floor and kicked over one another’s Bud Lights.

I fantasized a coup, a hostile takeover, in which we would remove from them their laps of luxury and line them up against the wall, just as they had done to us. But they were too numerous, and we too tired.

And so I stood in my box, uncomfortably.

The rest of the game passed in a blur. The paradox of the sports fan began to assert itself. Despite the outrageous lengths you may go to acquire a suit stitched from what can only be melted traffic cones and then wave around a bloated, grotesquely lifelike orange hand, you still must subordinate yourself to the team.

Though you wish to be recognized for your devotion, ultimately it’s not about you. And when your team is on the verge of winning it all, the arbitrary divisions between fans come down. Eight-year-olds and 80-year-olds beam alike, tripping in the heady haze provided by the proximity of champions. Standers and Sitters …

I have one small confession to make: I bailed at halftime. And though the fans at my next stop were more generous with their advice to the players (“Don’t talk to the press, get your head in the game!”) and loquacious in their constructive criticism of the referees (“I don’t even know what that call means, you encephalopathic zebra!”), they cheered all the same as we watched the clock tick down and the ArenaBowl trophy being trotted out. Whether at the Arena or miles away, a “championship atmosphere” formed wherever the fans congregated.

And so I sat on my barstool, contentedly.

This story was originally published in the Aug. 26 issue of The Inlander. I’m republishing it here because I <3 it (and, by extension, myself) so much.

[Latest technology] is [expensive/confusing/worrisome]

Hoo boy! As a [technology writer/reporter without a story idea/old person], I’ve seen my share of changes in life. But [new product] is about to completely alter [area in which new technology will have extremely slight impact].

I was at [public place] the other day when I saw a young person extricate [latest technological obsession] from her purse. Now, I don’t disparage [Generation X or newer] their technological revolutions, but it seems to me that [outdated technology people don't use as much but is still prevalent] works just fine, for my purposes.

See, my generation, the [any generation older than X, whose name invariably invokes a more positive connotation than more recent ones], we didn’t need your fancy new [latest technological obsession] for [arduous chore made easier by modern advancements, but still possible to perform "the hard way"]. We were happy as [animals commonly presumed to be in a constant state of rapture] with [old technology] — it may have taken longer, but that was the way we liked it.

You see, with the [fancy new technology], people aren’t able to [incidental advantage of old technology no one noticed/cared about until new technology]. Why, when we wanted to talk to one another, we just [verb for specific type of communication]ed on our [technology two generations removed; old enough to be nostalgic about, but young enough to masquerade at least a passing interest in technological advancements].

[Obligatory reference to that goddamn Nicholas Carr article/book about about how the Internet is imploding our brains].

I don’t see why young people today feel the need to live their lives so quickly, or expensively. Sometimes, you just need to take the time to [verb indicating the activation of one of the senses] the [pages/roses/other noun that often evokes nostalgia or pleasure]. That’s why I refuse to buy [advanced technology]. I’m perfectly happy with [older technology that's itself a vast improvement over how things "used to be done"] — the way things used to be [until a newer version of the advanced technology comes out and I can bitch about that while upgrading to the previous generation without seeming hypocritical].

One day, when [generation too young to have a name yet] grows up, they won’t remember the feel of [physical object being replaced by technology], or the joy of browsing [physical store replaced by Amazon, et. al] to spontaneously find [physical object]. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think being [verbified formation of name of new technology] necessarily means [pun-ish play on verbified name of thing being replaced by new technology].

See the inspiration for this guide here.

From the Dept. of Irony

For almost all purposes, Iraq has no government. Almost six months after national elections, the country’s politicians remain unable to compromise and cut a deal, showing the persistent lack of maturity and vision that has earned the political class the justifiable contempt of the Iraqi public.

- George Packer, A Date That Will Live In Oblivion.

It’s easy to point out the darkness of coloring of the respective kitchen implements in this statement, but the more pressing question is why no one seems to think this is a problem at all in our country.

Realpolitik

Politics is a game. The only trouble is, the people playing it are the only ones who can win; the rest of us are just a bunch of losers. And yet, time and time again, we allow ourselves to buy into the notion that there are politicians out there who can (and will) do something that doesn’t solely benefit their state (and/or their chances at re-election).1

There’s been much ill-considered speculation and outright lies concerning Barack Obama’s spectacular fall from grace. From a lofty (and ridiculously inflated) 70 percent immediately following inauguration, he has crashed to a measly 46 percent approval rating2 in recent months. Most pundits will decry it as indicative of one thing or another — disapproval of health care, disapproval of the Democratic Party, disapproval of Michele Obama’s outfits — but it mostly comes down to the disconnect between expectations and reality. Frank Rich had a piece in the New York Review of Books3 on this very subject recently, and it’s a good framework at which to look at our political system.

The following example hits close to home in several ways, in that I not only live in the district mentioned, but I also wrote a piece about the race. Thus, some of the media criticism is directed inwardly as well, but I did my best to avoid the pitfalls mentioned.

The 6th Legislative District in Washington state is known for being pretty evenly split. In 2006, the state Senate seat flipped parties for the first time in 40 years, and the second Legislative position (the one being discussed) was decided by a grand total of 47 votes in 2008.

When the 2010 primaries rolled around, both candidates from the last go-round — Republican John Ahern, who held the seat for eight years prior to losing it in 2008, and incumbent Democrat John Driscoll — signed up for a repeat performance. But Ahern was challenged on the right side by one Shelly O’Quinn, running for her first political office.

It’s difficult to discern precisely what is the worst-kept secret in politics, as very few secrets are ever kept. One of the most often-discussed but least worried about statistics regards incumbency: Nationally, about 90 percent of elected officials retain their seats every election, with significant drops (such as the Republican takeover of 1994) barely dipping below 80 percent since 1940.

In O’Quinn’s case, as she put it, she essentially squared off against two incumbents — both with name recognition and, one would hope, public knowledge of their stance on the issues.

So how does a political neophyte go about trying to get herself elected? O’Quinn did it the hard way, knocking on more than 16,000 doors (her count), standing on sidewalks, curbs and street corners waving signs, and generally just trying to be visible. Though more moderate than Ahern4, she was younger than both candidates by far — a better demographic fit for a district with a median age of 35.

But baby-shaking and hand-kissing will only get you so far in a modern race. You still need your Facebook, your Friendsters, your MySpace and — regrettably — your mainstream media. Especially in a city like Spokane, whose “Wi-Fi network” has spottier coverage than AT&T, the printed rag remains king. Even if absolutely everyone I’ve spoken with complains about the horrendous decline a certain austere daily paper has suffered.

Aside from announcing her candidacy, there were three big stories covered by local news outlets in regards to this race. The first involved a video posted to YouTube on May 4. The video, which appears to have been shot from below the level of a table the videographer sat at (and thus invisible to O’Quinn), shows O’Quinn making a speech at the Friday Morning Republican Breakfast Club, a get-together for like-minded red-heads. It appears to be heavily edited, focusing on two stances: O’Quinn’s position on river set-backs5, and abortion.

Leaving aside the fact that state legislators have almost zero impact on the question of whether abortions can be performed6, the video highlights what, to the extraordinarily conservative mind, can be viewed as an abrogation of doctrine. O’Quinn puts forth the — quite reasonable — idea that perhaps not all cases are black and white. In her example, she postulates that no one outside of her family (namely, her and her husband) should be able to decide her medical options if she were pregnant but the baby posed a serious threat to her health. In her words, “who gets to decide if my other two children have a mother?”

One of the local political agitators blasted the video out to his listserv, attaching to his email a document that included various accusations of personal and professional activities that, again, when viewed through an ultra-conservative lens, might appear somewhat unsavory. (I will not repeat any of the accusations nor provide a link to the original document. I have not verified the information, nor do I find it all germane to the discussion of whether she is qualified to represent the 6th District.) This managed to elevate everything into the “spat” category, with accusations, counter-accusations and generally a whole lot of noise on personal and Spokesman blogs.

The second campaign incident involved the self-same Spokesman campaign blog. The Spokesman came up with the idea to videotape candidates being asked questions in a one-on-one format, interviewer and interviewee. Ahern and Driscoll both agreed. O’Quinn, expressing a — legitimate, under the circumstances — fear of having her answers videotaped and edited, refused.

The League of Women voters scheduled a televised debate for a number of local races, including the 6th District Legislative position. O’Quinn, of course, accepted, because it’s not like she could have lost anything from it. Ahern originally accepted as well, but pulled out when he discovered Driscoll had never agreed to debate. He then proceeded to question whether O’Quinn would have even shown up for the debate, citing her refusal to participate in the video interviews.

The problem is the subsequent Spokesman article, which not only included Ahern’s (asinine) statement, but allowed it to pass unchallenged.

One can argue O’Quinn’s reason for not participating in the interviews was not valid, but consider the circumstances. There was no reason for her not to appear in the videos aside from her fear of having her answers manipulated — something that had already happened once. Name recognition, being placed on an equal footing, both of these were good reasons for her to agree to the interviews. Her refusal makes sense only if we take her reasoning at face value.

So that became the second story of the campaign. The candidates would not participate in a head-to-head debate, because Ahern was afraid O’Quinn wouldn’t show up. That also meant her refusal to participate in the videos became a story as well, because it had to be explained what Ahern was talking about. Additionally, at the top of each video, it mentions that O’Quinn “declined to participate.”

The third event is perhaps the most cynical, though at this point that’s a bit like saying Jimmy Fallon is the least funny comedian on NBC: the degrees of separation are so close as to be almost nonexistent. Apparently, O’Quinn’s campaign manager had been sending out emails that included sentences like the following:

“Recent polling data shows that Shelly O’Quinn is blowing the competition away…”

“Recent polling is also showing that Shelly is beating the competition…”

These sentences are obviously ridiculous, if not out-and-out lies. No one polls in a state representative race; not only is it prohibitively expensive, but it’s completely useless. They’re in it until the primaries, so there’s no reason for a campaign to commission a study to find out how well they’re doing.

If someone merely wanted to bring up the inaccuracy of these statements, I could understand it. Instead, Chuck Skirko Jr., president of the Spokane County Young Republicans, decided the O’Quinn campaign must be conducting secretive polling and not reporting on campaign expenditure reports. So he filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Again, no one’s questioning that the campaign manager lied. But by filing the complaint, it paints O’Quinn not only as a liar but also unethical. In the Spokesman article, Spokane County Republican Chairwoman Cindy Zapotocky was quoted as saying the party asked for the specific polling data.

“I asked him to show us (the poll), and he didn’t do it,” Zapotocky said.

Why this quote is included in the story is baffling, because at that point it’s already been established no polling exists. It’s not that polling data was withheld, it’s that it existed only in the campaign manager’s imagination.

 

If you were a voter in the 6th District, these are things you would likely know about the candidates: The incumbent, John Driscoll, is a Democrat; John Ahern, an arch-conservative Republican, held the seat for eight years before losing to Driscoll in 2008; Shelly O’Quinn, a newcomer Republican, has questionable commitment to conservative ideals (from the video), refuses to articulate her views (because of the Spokesman videos), and had a PDC complaint filed against her for campaign finance irregularities.

However:

Driscoll essentially coasted through the primary on the virtue of being a Democrat in a race against two Republicans. I mentioned it in passing in my story, but there’s only so much you can say along the lines of “he’s just playing it safe until he has to wade into the fray.”

Ahern’s campaign mantra focused on three things: “privatize, privatize, privatize.” I couldn’t find anyone to go on the record with exact, but my notebook calculations of the direct impact privatizing the three things (state liquor, state ferries and the Department of Printing) would reduce the total amount of money spent by the state, but the revenues taken in by those industries exceeds expenditures by something in the neighborhood of $300+ million.

Both Ahern and Driscoll said their “experience” was what made them best-suited for the job. Both have owned small businesses, and said the day-to-day operations and knowing how to “create jobs” would serve them well. You’ll forgive my confusion in puzzling out how running a copier-and-printer supply business or a career in “medical service delivery, medical practice management, and physician recruitment” qualifies you to write laws.

But O’Quinn’s not a perfect candidate by any stretch of the imagination. When pressed on specifics for helping heal the state’s gaping budget wound, she deferred, saying decisions could be only be made after proper study. “If we’re looking at reducing health care inefficiencies, we should not have a government-run health care system,” she said. Even though health care reform includes only an expanse in an existing governmental operation (Medicare) that’s almost universally supported. Again, not that she has the power to do anything about it.

These are all things voters in the 6th District should know. Whether they care about them is another point entirely, but these are the leadership abilities and substantive questions upon which we should be basing our decisions for who we’re electing.

Instead, we get the political equivalent of Paris Hilton journalism. Who’s bad-mouthing who, what the candidate said in an insidious “gotcha!” video, and who’s the centerpiece of the manufactured scandal.

Who’s to blame? Everyone. A one-man demolition derby would be pretty boring; everyone needs to get involved in order for a truly calamitous experience. Driscoll, Ahern, O’Quinn herself, the Spokesman, the Inlander, political blogs, everyone. We’ve confused image for substance, as we have in so many other aspects of our lives, but this is an area where it gets dangerous.

More than that, we’ve become so polarized as a populace that it almost wouldn’t matter if voters did have that information at hand. They vote for the letter next to the name in parentheses, rather than the person. Candidates who lose in the primaries routinely endorse the very people they vilified two days prior.

I’m not saying O’Quinn should have advanced past to the general. In fact, her conduct after the primaries suggests that her claims to “integrity” were nothing more than posturing. Despite being disparaged by Ahern’s campaign, despite disagreeing with him on (stated) legislative priorities and any number of issues, she was still willing to sit down with Ahern for lunch, where he will “encourage her to run for another office.”

She claimed that because of her job at Greater Spokane (the chamber of commerce for the region), she was unable to endorse candidates. This highly dubious claim7 aside, why should she? Clint Didier, a Republican/Tea Party candidate for Patty Murray’s Senate seat, withheld his endorsement from Rossi until he changes some of his opinions to those deeply held by Didier. Agree with him or not, at least he had the integrity to stick to his issues.

O’Quinn claims she can’t endorse Ahern. God forbid she go public with the decision not to endorse anyone at all. As with Monopoly (another game involving almost incomprehensible sums of money), it seems the only way to win in politics is not to play at all.

 

 

Notes:

  • 1. The lone exception I have to this theory personally is the Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota. He’s repeatedly taken up the mantle for Net Neutrality at a time when very few other senators have bothered, and I have yet to see anything indicating a compromise of his strong (as portrayed through his numerous political books) moral compass. I hold out hope this will continue to be the case, but like baseball players and steroids, am always prepared in the back of my mind for disappointment.
  • 2. Rasmussen
    There’s a good argument to be made such metrics are about as meaningful as the attractiveness of a performer at a strip club: failure to receive a majority of the crowd’s approval doesn’t mean anything, as somebody’s going to be up there doing it.
  • 3. Which includes perhaps the strangest picture I’ve ever seen in a nationally syndicated publication. If the piece is ostensibly about Obama, why are the only discernible faces not his? Is it indicative of his primacy in the minds of the voters? His inscrutability? Or is that the only picture that’s been taken of Obama that hasn’t been overused to the point of inducing nausea?
  • 4. Ahern referred to O’Quinn as “in-between moderate and liberal,” which is accurate only if your idea of the political center is somewhere to the right of Sen. Joe McCarthy.4.1
    • 4.1 I’ve always felt bad for the esteemed Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who I feel must get confused with his altogether more repulsive McCarthian counterpart quite often. Since the end of the election of 2008, I’ve often hoped that Sen. John McCain would have similar homophonic difficulties, but alas I don’t think “McCarthian” is quite the epithet in Arizona as it is in civilized places.
  • 5. A “controversy” I could not possibly begin to care about, let alone explain.
  • 6. Though I’m aware of the power state legislatures have to curtail abortions and regulate requirements for getting one, the overarching question is ultimately Constitutional and thus in the hands of the Supreme Court.
  • 7. There are two possible reasons for this: 1) GSI, as a nonprofit, could get in hot water if it endorses a candidate, or 2)GSI has a policy against its employees privately endorsing candidates. The first is ridiculous, because O’Quinn wouldn’t be endorsing anyone in an official capacity — the IRS said (I asked) that employees can endorse whoever they want in the primary. The second is possible, I guess, if GSI actually cared enough to have thought out a policy that preserves their “nonpartisan” status by pretending their employees have no political opinions of their own at all. This, however, seems unlikely.

This Postmodern Life

Every once in a great while, people think the same way I do. This is at once both heartening (external validation of my sanity!) and annoying (“Hey, that’s mine!”). Which is why my first instinct upon reading this New York Times piece by Peggy Ornstein was to roll around the floor and hold my breath until my face turned blue. The same sort of idea had been lolling around in my head for weeks, ever since I immersed myself in the mind-numbingly droll world of cultural theory.

Luckily, the piece is more masturbatory than elucidating. The age-old conundrum of column-writing rears its ugly head yet again: Tell someone their mellifluous words are interesting, and pretty soon they’ll start believing their witty remarks on humdrum, everyday experiences are fascinating to the rest of us.1 You mean YOU JUST STARTED using Twitter yet aren’t abandoning it on the basis of your contrived quasi-history of participation? Color me a satisfied reader.

To me, the interesting aspect of social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook is not the psychological aspect of the area from which you derive joy (which was an utterly insipid fulcrum to balance a column on; it is in fact possible to enjoy the same thing for multiple reasons). These sites are merely extending and, in some ways, clarifying a profound shift that has been slowly making its way through our culture.

It’s difficult to imagine, I know, but once upon a time not everyone could gather around the magic glowy box and partake in 20 minutes of nonsense from everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic sponge. Instead, it was plays, political speeches or sporting matches (traditionally football) that formed the basis for an audience. You had performers over here, the audience over there, and a great big (societal as well as physical) chasm separating the two. They danced, you watched. There was a ceremony to things, a proper decorum respected by thespian and theatergoer alike (unless you were John Wilkes Booth, that play-ruining bastard). In a sense, the audience’s role was as scripted as the actors’; shush when the house lights dim, clap perfunctorily at the end of a movement, stifle giggles when your neighbor’s kid playing Peter Pan throws up all over the Lost Boys as they hoist him in the air for the flying sequence. This is known as a simple audience.2

But then came radio, with its retarded half-brother television following along in its wake (who in this metaphor is more Lenny from Of Mice and Men than Sloth from The Goonies3). The ability to transmit performances around the country meant that people no longer had to suffer the indignities of the cummerbund or corset when they wanted some entertainment. The experience was mediated through the magic of radio waves or satellite dishes (or, for the very poor, shadow puppets), allowing them to pick and choose what horrible drek disguised as entertainment they wanted to shove down their brain holes. The rules for conduct among audience members slackened considerably, though the distance (again, both socially and in the physical sense) between performer and watcher increased considerably. Even though distribution method allowed for one person to influence a large number of people, the consumers themselves experience it individually — sitting in their underwear in unswerving faithfulness to their hi-def TVs, munching Cheetohs. This is the mass audience.

With the advent of the internet, omnipresent advertising and the explosion of media sources, the audience model changed again. To put it quite frankly, the media became a pervasive influence in everyday life; from bus stop to when you close your eyes at night, you’re assaulted by media. The audience, therefore, became selective about which media it chose to focus its attention on, while letting the others recede into the background. In essence, we are all an audience all the time. This is called the diffused audience.

 

This is where the audience model ends. But to take that last point to its logical conclusion, if everyone is always an audience, then there must always be a performance going on. And while one can hardly argue against the notion that media is everywhere, the fact that the producers of media have changed alters the traditional compact. Where once the performance featured Jim Carrey getting made up and speaking out the wrong end of his body for the camera, our consumption of media has shifted to include amateurs as well: friends, family and the guy you met at a party that one time

Ornstein’s citation of sociologist Erving Goffman’s assertion that all life is a performance is correct; the problem lies in her ascribing its usage as a metaphor. Posting to Twitter and Facebook is not metaphorically putting on a performance; it is literally play-acting. In fact, the idea goes back much further than the 1950s. From Simnel, 1898:

In the same sense … in which we are poets and painters, we are also play actors; i.e. CULTURE endows every aspect of life with this characteristic. Without being in any sense false or hypocritical, the personal existence of the individual is metamorphosed into some predetermined guise which is of course di out of the resources of his own life, but is nevertheless not merely the straightforward expression of his own life. The possibility exists for us to assume such appearances, even strange ones, and nevertheless remain consisten with our own nature.

Here he makes the case that not only do we mediate our own experiences when conversing with others, but we also can do so without being inconsistent in regards to our own inner nature. The first thrust is undeniable; who has never posted a Facebook status that was, at least in some way, untrue? Even something so small as faking composure after breaking up with a significant other counts. On the same page, even though it seems impossible to believe (given the number of “I ate a sandwich!” or “On the crapper” tweets), Twitter is not actually a full accounting of everyday life. We can create personas, if not on the same level as WoW character, then at least one that — even to people who would consider themselves “friends” — might be unrecognizable.

This ultimately boils down to the point that, in order to agree with those suppositions, then everything short of telling someone EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED during your day (down to the “after the cessation of urination, I lingered over the toilet bowl for a few seconds, staring deep into the shallow blue waters, lost in thought”-level of detail) is in fact mediating your own life through performance.

Exactly.

Without rising to the level of Humpty-Dumpty-esque word games, every relationship you have with someone else (be it through Facebook, over the phone, working alongside them or some combination thereof) involves some level of performance — they cannot know precisely what it means to be you. There’s always some amount of self-censorship that goes into conversations, even innocuously. After all, you wouldn’t want to tell Brandi about the horrible wheat-threshing accident that cost you your thumbs when she just got a promotion, would you? In that case, not only is your action a performance in the sense that you’re feeding a selected amount of information to someone in order to influence their opinions/actions, you’re also setting up a narrative storyline (from the joy of celebrating one’s accomplishments to comforting a friend who has undergone tragedy, in itself an act that usually brings about warm feelings).

This, to say nothing of the passive-aggressive Facebook posts and tweets that always show up.4 You know the type. The “OMG I am so MAD right now. Why can’t people just learn to accept that I ate the goddamn gorgonzola?” Though clearly directed at one person or group of persons (presumably the person who’s gorgonzola was consumed), it’s posted where the message can be viewed by anyone. This not only has the desired effect of letting your feelings be known to the offending party, it also allows the creator to a) play the part of aggrieved victim, and b) suss out who may or may not be on his/her side. It’s by definition a performance: staging something (that should be private) in order to elicit a reaction from those assembled, whether virtually or in real life.

Facebook and Twitter serve only to make the performance phenomenon more pronounced. Indeed, certain settings within these web applications underscore that fact. On Twitter, for instance, you can choose not to have your thoughts made public; perhaps wary of job-related repercussions, or simply because you don’t want that asshole Robby to know you and Diane are back together. To choose this method makes a statement not only to the people who can access your feed (this is the unfiltered version that is decidedly NSFW) as well as those left on the outside: This feed is very secretive, and only the trustworthy may gain access. A bit overdramatic, yes, but nevertheless true.

Facebook doesn’t do nearly as good a job of cloaking your status as a performer. Originally, privacy options were almost nonexistent; everything you did could be viewed by everyone, almost the penultimate example of a mass audience (albeit in a slightly different social situation). Once everyone got sufficiently outraged5, they changed it so you could choose who could see want. They essentially handed over the reins of distribution to the individual user. Don’t want your church friends to know you go out drinking dressed as Marilyn Monroe on Fridays? No problem. Want to keep mom and dad out of the loop on everything save your dire financial straits? Easily done. Even the act of restricting who can view what you do is itself a reflection of the performance you’re putting on.

 

But what, then, of postmodernism? It’s a lot like irony in many respects, in that there are innumerable definitions for it and everyone who thinks they know what it means, doesn’t. Technically, postmodernism is merely the movement that followed modernism6; it sets itself apart from modernism in that it rejects the notion of absolute truth, focusing on the upheaval of traditional power structures.

In practice, however, postmodernism means absolutely nothing. Postmodern art (usually) means the rejection of the traditional notions of what art is; it separates itself from “modern art” because the latter uses something like splattered paint on canvas, whereas to be postmodern one could hurl a computer through a wall and frame it — the convention being defied is that art can even be restricted to a medium. See Duchamp’s fountain for the ultimate expression of such.

In literature, the postmodern ideal is one that is not restricted to form or idea. In addition to the rejection of traditional notions7 of what a novel’s supposed to look like, postmodernism has also come to encompass the idea of the self-aware novel: The character know they’re performing a story.

This is perhaps the best analog to postmodernism writ large, especially when ascribing it to person as performer. We are all aware — if dimly — of the concessions and decisions we make that allow us to operate as our own creations. We may not consciously realize it as a performance, but there is a very real moment when you ultimately decide what to tell and what not to tell.

A more interesting thing to ponder is where this urge comes from. It’s easy to blame Twitter or Facebook for this, but it’s a bit like blaming guns for shooting people — they may function as facilitators, but there has to be someone actually choosing to use these tools. Similarly, the urge to blame “celebrity culture” is a strong one, but must be resisted. No one is forced to DVR Entertainment Tonight or surf Perez Hilton’s site obsessively.

That said, celebrity culture should not be pushed aside entirely, either. Where once people turned inward to find tranquility and ponder their life’s existence, they now turn outwardly because it’s easier. Attaining true inner peace sounds a lot more difficult than racking up a few thousand Twitter followers, and there’s a much more quantifiable method of tracking your success with the latter.

Ultimately, the question will boil down to whether this is a “good” thing or a “bad” thing8. Not to sound too postmodern, but such an arbitrary distinction kind of goes beyond what we can know. It simply is. We cannot judge the innate goodness of the endeavor because there is no method of capably measuring its worth. As with most things humans create, be it abstract concept or physical thing, its value is entirely dependent on how we choose to use it.

Notes

  1. This, in itself, is horribly post-modern. And likely hypocritical. This note, however, is so post-modern as to reflexively bend back in on itself, to emerge Victorian.
  2. Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst, Audiences (University of Michigan, 1998). All of the audience bits germinated from this book.
  3. Though both are rather unassuming, Sloth eventually comes to redeem himself and to assist when called upon, even if the people he’s helping were his tormentors. Lenny, on the other hand, is kind-hearted and means well, but isn’t aware of his own capability for destruction. Ultimately, it’s better that Lenny not stick around.
  4. The analog passive-aggressive note is a masterful stroke, most commonly found in the workplace or in roommate squabbles. It’s the perfect way to gauge the level of support for an idea if someone is unsure of its popularity. Tacking up a “NO POOPING IN THE BATHROOM. BE COURTEOUS TO OUR GUESTS” sign allows the sign-maker to not only advance an agenda, but also to ascribe it motives that — if done in-person — would be much easier to see through. If someone brought up the topic in casual conversation, it would be difficult for them to say “well, it’s for the guests” without everyone thinking “Bullshit. You just hate having the closest desk.” But in an unsigned note, there’s no way to cast aspersions of personal bias. Though it’s decidedly less effective as a method in a situation with only two people — something most roommates don’t discover until one is holding a butter knife to the throat of the other.
  5. It remains eternally baffling that people don’t comprehend the concept that things put on the internet can be viewed by other people. This incredulity enjoyed particular usage during the early days of LiveJournal and MySpace; teenagers used these services like they were private journals, then professed outright outrage that others were reading, commenting and making fun of them for it. Most of the ones who didn’t get angry were those that quickly discovered the “make private” option, thus implying that they actually did expect their journals to be private. The rest were just bloviating because they had nothing better to do (this was before the widespread availability of pornography).
  6. You’d think English majors could come up with something more inventive than “after the thing we just did.”
  7. David Shields’ Reality Hunger — A Manifesto is almost book as performance art. Derived from the ethos of remix culture, it takes bite-sized chunks of other works to craft a cogent narrative of its own. His original manuscript did not include notations, but the publisher forced their inclusion. He compensated by putting a dotted line along the inner edges of those pages, to better facilitate their cutting and removal.
  8. Of course, the only sane way to resolve such a weighty and important dispute is via cable television. Talking heads will blather on, refuting evidence not presented and presenting evidence not existing, until Jon Stewart eventually appears miraculously on a white horse and runs them through with his blade. His breastplate, naturally, will be gleaming.