Here's something that occurred to me today. I read a piece on Kotaku which talked about the rise of YouTube "drama".
The Kotaku piece kicked off after PewDiePie - you know him as The King of Internet Let's Play-ers, and the Internet's equivatent of the village idiot - published a video complaining about "drama".
Being an intellectual heavyweight, drama is something that PewDiePie "absolutely hates".
Do not misinterpret this: The Pewd isn't referring to the specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, that we see represented in performance art.
No. Mr Pie points instead towards YouTube channels which are now dedicated to discussing the latest YouTube drama and gossip, resulting in a climate where "everyone is on edge", where people are just poised to attack the next someone for "fucking up or doing something bad".
I can't say I'm a massive fan of PewDiePie, but he makes a fair point in the video. Exasperated, he suggests that everyone should stop using the Internet as a "platform for justice". Good luck with that, Pewdus. We're living in an Age of Global Puritans, with social media stonings and scarlet letters.
I'd go further still than PewDiePie's suggestion: let's just scorch the earth, and be done with that entire generation. I'm not even joking.
The Kotaku piece kicked off after PewDiePie - you know him as The King of Internet Let's Play-ers, and the Internet's equivatent of the village idiot - published a video complaining about "drama".
Being an intellectual heavyweight, drama is something that PewDiePie "absolutely hates".
Do not misinterpret this: The Pewd isn't referring to the specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, that we see represented in performance art.
No. Mr Pie points instead towards YouTube channels which are now dedicated to discussing the latest YouTube drama and gossip, resulting in a climate where "everyone is on edge", where people are just poised to attack the next someone for "fucking up or doing something bad".
I can't say I'm a massive fan of PewDiePie, but he makes a fair point in the video. Exasperated, he suggests that everyone should stop using the Internet as a "platform for justice". Good luck with that, Pewdus. We're living in an Age of Global Puritans, with social media stonings and scarlet letters.
I'd go further still than PewDiePie's suggestion: let's just scorch the earth, and be done with that entire generation. I'm not even joking.
THE JESTER
Actually, I am joking. I was just doing a "social experiment". Ha ha. Please like, share and subscribe. Stay tuned for my big announcement/reaction video.
But after a week-and-a-bit of thumbing my ineffectual parts into the Gamergate gloryhole I'm done with Internet drama. I honestly wonder whether I'm just too old for it all, whether bickering with one another online and shaming others is simply the Millennial version of free love or punk. If so... way to sock it to the man, kids! Your grandchildren are gonna be so proud of what you achieved.
I grew up in the 80s. You know what our version of all that was? No, neither do I. Probably acid house or something. Being cool, I was too busy playing Dungeons & Dragons to notice.
Instead, the accepted form of creative expression for young people now seems to be rampant narcissism. This is their rebelling. Staring at their own faces in the camera viewfinders 24-7, or trying to convince the world that they're good people, because they're capable of getting angry about A Thing.
Newsflash: you're not the centre of the known universe, stupid! You're not even the centre of your own borough. Or your own family. Most of your family probably hate you. I would if you were my child.
ANGRY OLD MAN
This might make me sound like an angry old man on his porch, waving my fist at those kids who keep skateboarding past my house... and I suppose I am.
But here's how I see it: there's an entire generation beneath me that has been raised on a diet of narcissism and - yes - drama. It's normal to them. They're not out forming a band, or taking drugs and dancing in a warehouse. Or going on a march to campaign for something they truly believe in. They're buying fucking selfie sticks and lighting rigs, and making videos bitching about one another.
They're vlogging about their soy lattes, and having with arguments with other vloggers over which of them is the most hardcore vegan. Well, fuck you and fuck your ethical lifestyle, child: be a vegan, but do it for the right reason, not because you want everyone to think you're the most compassionate human being on the planet.
If all you want to get from it is a reaction, then I hope your veganism gives you the runs and makes your backside collapse in your sleep.
I may not have lived through World War II like my grandparents and parents did, but having played Dungeons & Dragons I've got a pretty good idea of what being in a war would be like, and I didn't go through all that just so you lot can whinge and bitch about every last thing.
I mean... I can't remember the last time I actually fell out with someone, but let's say - for the purpose of this argument - that I didn't like the trees my neighbour planted in his front garden. The only time I'd consider making a video complaining about that would be if I became mentally ill.
Actually, I am joking. I was just doing a "social experiment". Ha ha. Please like, share and subscribe. Stay tuned for my big announcement/reaction video.
But after a week-and-a-bit of thumbing my ineffectual parts into the Gamergate gloryhole I'm done with Internet drama. I honestly wonder whether I'm just too old for it all, whether bickering with one another online and shaming others is simply the Millennial version of free love or punk. If so... way to sock it to the man, kids! Your grandchildren are gonna be so proud of what you achieved.
I grew up in the 80s. You know what our version of all that was? No, neither do I. Probably acid house or something. Being cool, I was too busy playing Dungeons & Dragons to notice.
Instead, the accepted form of creative expression for young people now seems to be rampant narcissism. This is their rebelling. Staring at their own faces in the camera viewfinders 24-7, or trying to convince the world that they're good people, because they're capable of getting angry about A Thing.
Newsflash: you're not the centre of the known universe, stupid! You're not even the centre of your own borough. Or your own family. Most of your family probably hate you. I would if you were my child.
ANGRY OLD MAN
This might make me sound like an angry old man on his porch, waving my fist at those kids who keep skateboarding past my house... and I suppose I am.
But here's how I see it: there's an entire generation beneath me that has been raised on a diet of narcissism and - yes - drama. It's normal to them. They're not out forming a band, or taking drugs and dancing in a warehouse. Or going on a march to campaign for something they truly believe in. They're buying fucking selfie sticks and lighting rigs, and making videos bitching about one another.
They're vlogging about their soy lattes, and having with arguments with other vloggers over which of them is the most hardcore vegan. Well, fuck you and fuck your ethical lifestyle, child: be a vegan, but do it for the right reason, not because you want everyone to think you're the most compassionate human being on the planet.
If all you want to get from it is a reaction, then I hope your veganism gives you the runs and makes your backside collapse in your sleep.
I may not have lived through World War II like my grandparents and parents did, but having played Dungeons & Dragons I've got a pretty good idea of what being in a war would be like, and I didn't go through all that just so you lot can whinge and bitch about every last thing.
I mean... I can't remember the last time I actually fell out with someone, but let's say - for the purpose of this argument - that I didn't like the trees my neighbour planted in his front garden. The only time I'd consider making a video complaining about that would be if I became mentally ill.
CONCRETE SCHOOLYARD
I have three adult daughters, and the sorts of schoolyard dramas that they dealt with growing up are now being writ large across the entire Internet by people who should know better.
Too often it's kidults thinking their stuff should matter to everyone, roping in supporters to join them on the bitchiness merry-go-round. It's the sort of stuff most of us grow out of after puberty.
Like most things people do, gossip, drama, whatever you want to call it, is a social tool. It unites communities.
Philosopher Julian Baggini described it as a "moral appraisal of other people" and "the judgement of what people are doing and whether it's right or wrong, good or bad".
The "drama" PewDiePie talks about has always been with us, from the earliest hunter-gatherer tribes, villages, and borders. It reinforces social connection. It ties us together. Strength in numbers. Link arms and form a wall.
"I hear that Ug from the Bongwonga Tribe stole some bananas".
"No way!"
"Yes way. You should totes do a cave painting about it. What a cuck."
But because of the nature of our connected world now, it is reaching near hysterical proportions, where whining, entitled, brats insist that their petty bickering and meaningless lives are meant to matter. And when that doesn't work... well, just shout even loud or join a mob! That'll make you feel like you're making a difference, right? All your voices harmonising in a cacophony of privilege.
Jon Ronson - whose recent interview with Monica Lewinsky is well worth a read - wrote a brilliant book called 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed', which deals with all of it in greater detail than I could ever manage here.
He once said: "Social media gave voice to the voiceless, so I think it's a sad irony that a way to survive social media now is to go back to being voiceless".
I don't know if that's the only way to survive... but it's certainly an option for getting through it without wanting to smash your face to a pulp against a rusty grate.
SUPER FRY GUY
The thing I despair at the most is that, because we all exist in a connected, multimedia, social media world, there's no way for those of us who want to opt out to escape it entirely.
It's become a constant thrum in the background of modern life - no, not a noise; a smell... like a handful of manure wrapped in a rotting scrotum. Whether it's the pillorying of Stephen Fry by the Twitter pitchfork brigade, or another One Million Moms crusade, or someone trying to guilt-trip you on Facebook into sharing some cause that means nothing to you personally, it's always there.
Guilt. Anger. Outrage. Whine. Poor me. Repeat ad infinitum.
It really does feel, as Pewdus says, like they're poised, waiting, for another mess-up to wander into their sights. It could be you, it could be me. Hunting season is 365 days a year now. We're all stumbling around in their hunting ground; you just have to upset the wrong group, wander in front of the wrong hunter with a taste for innocent veal.
It doesn't matter whether you say the wrong thing, or the right thing, so long as you say a thing that they can spin. Hell, even if you say nothing they'll probably find some sort of implicit guilt in it. Watch as they destroy another life, then go back to their playground bickering, their vlogging the contents of their metaphorical handbags, and their shrilly hollow, take-no-prisoners, ethical standing.
Drama. It's all hollow drama.
I might say that the Milliennial generation's punk or free love might be narcissism. Thinking about it more... maybe they're just a generation of dicks. And I'm sick of all of them. Are you listening, kids? You're idiots.
Now get off my porch.
I have three adult daughters, and the sorts of schoolyard dramas that they dealt with growing up are now being writ large across the entire Internet by people who should know better.
Too often it's kidults thinking their stuff should matter to everyone, roping in supporters to join them on the bitchiness merry-go-round. It's the sort of stuff most of us grow out of after puberty.
Like most things people do, gossip, drama, whatever you want to call it, is a social tool. It unites communities.
Philosopher Julian Baggini described it as a "moral appraisal of other people" and "the judgement of what people are doing and whether it's right or wrong, good or bad".
The "drama" PewDiePie talks about has always been with us, from the earliest hunter-gatherer tribes, villages, and borders. It reinforces social connection. It ties us together. Strength in numbers. Link arms and form a wall.
"I hear that Ug from the Bongwonga Tribe stole some bananas".
"No way!"
"Yes way. You should totes do a cave painting about it. What a cuck."
But because of the nature of our connected world now, it is reaching near hysterical proportions, where whining, entitled, brats insist that their petty bickering and meaningless lives are meant to matter. And when that doesn't work... well, just shout even loud or join a mob! That'll make you feel like you're making a difference, right? All your voices harmonising in a cacophony of privilege.
Jon Ronson - whose recent interview with Monica Lewinsky is well worth a read - wrote a brilliant book called 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed', which deals with all of it in greater detail than I could ever manage here.
He once said: "Social media gave voice to the voiceless, so I think it's a sad irony that a way to survive social media now is to go back to being voiceless".
I don't know if that's the only way to survive... but it's certainly an option for getting through it without wanting to smash your face to a pulp against a rusty grate.
SUPER FRY GUY
The thing I despair at the most is that, because we all exist in a connected, multimedia, social media world, there's no way for those of us who want to opt out to escape it entirely.
It's become a constant thrum in the background of modern life - no, not a noise; a smell... like a handful of manure wrapped in a rotting scrotum. Whether it's the pillorying of Stephen Fry by the Twitter pitchfork brigade, or another One Million Moms crusade, or someone trying to guilt-trip you on Facebook into sharing some cause that means nothing to you personally, it's always there.
Guilt. Anger. Outrage. Whine. Poor me. Repeat ad infinitum.
It really does feel, as Pewdus says, like they're poised, waiting, for another mess-up to wander into their sights. It could be you, it could be me. Hunting season is 365 days a year now. We're all stumbling around in their hunting ground; you just have to upset the wrong group, wander in front of the wrong hunter with a taste for innocent veal.
It doesn't matter whether you say the wrong thing, or the right thing, so long as you say a thing that they can spin. Hell, even if you say nothing they'll probably find some sort of implicit guilt in it. Watch as they destroy another life, then go back to their playground bickering, their vlogging the contents of their metaphorical handbags, and their shrilly hollow, take-no-prisoners, ethical standing.
Drama. It's all hollow drama.
I might say that the Milliennial generation's punk or free love might be narcissism. Thinking about it more... maybe they're just a generation of dicks. And I'm sick of all of them. Are you listening, kids? You're idiots.
Now get off my porch.
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