I have a love/hate relationship with the town that I live in. This is probably true for quite a lot of people, but seems especially relevant for me because I live in Norwich, a city that seems to provide everything I need.
Norwich is a sunny slice of nowhere that’s far out into the east of East Anglia, far enough that it takes two hours to get to London and at least three hours to get anywhere else in the world. It’s got no urban crime rate to speak of and when you smile at people in the street they often smile back, always a solid barometer of the locals’ mental state. It’s a lovely place to live, really it is. But it’s not exactly a happening town.
Unless you’re a student, in which case: Norwich is tupping mint. The entire city sometimes feels dedicated to higher education, so many places are there to better yourself through learning. Norwich is a small city with a tiny population base but it has a top 20 university, a university college of arts, and a couple of city colleges, all of which are prestigious in their own fields and specialities and all of which attract a thoroughly talented bunch of people.
Norwich also has as many pubs as there are days of the year, and some half decent clubs. It has some frighteningly awful ones too, but the drinks are always cheap and the girls’ skirts are short, and there is the aforementioned lack of street crime. If you are a writer, Norwich is also a fantastic place to reside. Notwithstanding the famous and talented authors who have come out of the city’s creative writing programs, there are myriad organisation promoting and publishing good writing in the city itself. Norwich and the Norfolk surrounds tend to turn up in the writing of any author who has spent any significant amount of time there.
So what’s my problem? Why aren’t I happy here? The first answer of course is: I am happy, I just like having something to moan about. Norwich has always, always been good to me. It has provided a safe, creative environment within which to grow, both as a writer and a person, over four (mostly pleasant) years. If that sounds a bit happy-clappy then good: I firmly believe that people deserve a chance for some happy-clappy personal development in their lives, and I have been lucky to find mine here.
I suppose part of my problem is that it is so safe, and so cosy. Nothing exciting ever happens here. The population is mostly white middle class, there are not that many people, and the music scene is developing quickly but can’t match that of larger urban areas. While I watched my friends move to exciting, vibrant cities, full of sex and drugs and waterfronts and skyscrapers and illegal street racing (possibly), I have spent the last four years living in a city that is the municipal equivalent of a nice hot bath and a hug.
Finally, it’s because my feet are itching. In four years a lot had changed. I have changed, perhaps majorly. Some of the things I considered to be a huge part of my life are over, some are just beginning. It’s time to look elsewhere for my adventures. It’s time to leave behind the person I was when I arrived, and only take with me the person I am now. I can’t sit on my heels forever.
In the meantime though, I give you this: my thoughts on living in a less-than-exciting metropolis, compiled over four years.
What to do if you live somewhere a bit boring:
1. Moan about it. Clearly. There’s no need to focus on the good parts, just complain to anyone that’ll listen about how boring the place you live is. It’ll help you cultivate that sense of existential ennui and detachment you’ve read so much about.
2. Leave. Obviously not for good (although if you do decide to leave, you don’t need to read to the end of this list if you don’t want to). Find what it is that’s missing in your city and go and do it somewhere else. Most people who complain about their town being boring are therefore looking for excitement, so the simplest thing to do is go and have an exciting time elsewhere. Again, for most people, an exciting time is directly linked to absorbing large quantities of alcohol and dancing like an idiot, and there are plenty of places that provide great opportunities to do so. The best thing about it is, you can leave all the consequences on someone else’s doorstep! Try and visit your friends in other cities regularly, wreck their place, and escape back to yours before the dust settles. Bring them a bottle of something (then drink it yourself) and leave them some vomit in their bath in exchange. Everybody wins! Well, everybody important wins!
3. Find yourself a filter. You can be louche and interesting anywhere, you know. You don’t need to be somewhere interesting first. Of course, if you were louche and interesting already you wouldn’t need this list, so we’ll have to find a stopgap measure. Drink and drugs can make everything seem a bit special, and will make you feel like Byron or Withnail or some other class-A fuckwit. It doesn’t matter what other people think of you, so long as you are having a jolly old time, so feel free to make a narcotic-fuelled nuisance of yourself until the wee smalls. One advantage of living somewhere boring is that the cold old world™ is less likely to start banging on your door the next morning (especially if you combine this option with the previous one, and leave your mates to sort through the detritus of the night out and their own hangovers, while you disappear to have your comedown privately in your nice clean house).
4. Become boring yourself. Try limiting your options in any given situation. Cultivating a taste for microwaveable food will remove the need for restaurants, saving you both money and the hassle of ordering. Watch what the people around you are talking about and then limit you conversations (and if you can manage it, your thoughts) to those subjects. Only watch telly between the hours of 12pm and 7pm. Only read publications with one-word, noun-related titles like Chat or Heat.
5. Become more interested. The human condition, en masse, is so stupendously vibrant and interesting that anyone with a working brain and a definite drive should be able to find endless amusement in even the most mundane situation. Unfortunately to do so requires quite a lot of thought, and thinking is pretty time consuming, especially with all the drink and drugs and whatnot. Actually, forget I mentioned this one, it’s rubbish. Go back to moaning instead.
Updated only when you aren't looking.
Saturday 26 June 2010
Tuesday 15 June 2010
Fresh
Ooh, a new layout!
Welcome to the new look Verbal Slapstick. You have ten seconds to guess what my favourite colour is.
Welcome to the new look Verbal Slapstick. You have ten seconds to guess what my favourite colour is.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Spike.
This blog is supposed to be funny, or at least, humorously themed. It would be inappropriate for me to provide concrete social and moral directives to my readers because I lack both the insight and the right: I am hardly perfect myself. The messages I try to convey through Verbal Slapstick are more the ‘after school special, just try and be nice to everybody’ clap-trap you can find inside any Sunday paper or fortune cookie.
This post is different, then, because it seeks to explore a particular crime, and speak out against it. I will make no effort to be balanced in my argument, nor will I attempt to justify said crime by anticipating mitigating circumstances, because I believe there to be none. It is a social issue that I feel comfortable discussing in some depth because I have both seen it firsthand and because it largely affects people of my age and broadly, my social background. It’s drink-spiking, by the way. I don’t know why I didn’t say that before.
Statistics are unnecessary, as is a Wikipedia description or similar. You spike someone’s drink by introducing a substance that they did not expect or want in it. Most drinks are spiked with chemicals that have tranquilising effects, ones that often either compound or mimic the effects of alcoholic intoxication.
I cannot ‘put myself’ into the mind of someone who spikes drinks. I can imagine, if I try really hard, a scenario in which I might murder someone. If I were the last of my species, doomed to wander the universe alone, and I confronted the being responsible for humanity’s demise in some sort of climactic battle (lightsabers, maybe) then perhaps I might, in a justified rage, kill him or her. Perhaps I can imagine, if my circumstances were lowered to miserable levels, stealing to provide for myself or my loved ones. I cannot imagine spiking someone’s drink. Nuh-uh, nothing doing.
The next thought exercise, therefore, might seem a little redundant, but let’s run with it. I’ll go through my own perception of drink spiking, and try and get as close as I can to the mentality of someone who commits this act.
Item 1: Drink spiking is an intended prelude to a sexual act. I find it patently unlikely that someone might get their drink spiked and then wake up in the middle of a long conversation about Kierkegaard with a stranger. People who spike drinks do so with the intent of initiating sexual relations with the person they spike.
Item 2: Drink spiking is the tipping factor in an act that would not otherwise have occurred. If you spike someone’s drink, it is because you don’t think you’ll be able to have sex with them without it. Again, I find it unlikely that one would want to have sex with someone who cannot reciprocate affection due to their own intoxication when an alternative exists.
Conclusion: Drink spiking is a prelude to rape. Obviously not a particularly difficult conclusion to reach, but one that should be stated. They didn’t want to have sex with you. You spiked their drink. This did not make them want to have sex with you, yet it allowed you to have sex with them anyway. Drink spiking allows individuals to circumvent the sexual consent of another. Sex without consent is rape.
Let’s go again. I’m getting a bad taste in my mouth, but I’m not done yet
Item 1: Drink spiking mimics the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. That’s how it works. You don’t spike a stranger’s drink in a teashop and watch them collapse into their sticky bun. Drink spiking occurs in places where excessive alcohol consumption might occur anyway, and masquerades as such.
Item 2: It is understood that excessive alcohol consumption may lead to bad decision making, and the occasional amorous encounter that might otherwise not have taken place. People do, occasionally, fuck people they might not otherwise have when they’re drunk. They do it because they are horny and their inhibitions are lowered.
Item 3: Lowered inhibitions or not, people still have the right to consent. Even if they’re extremely drunk, people can still say no.
Conclusion: Drink spiking legitimises sexual assault by disguising it as the accepted lowering of inhibitions that occurs with the consumption of alcohol.
General conclusion 1: People who spike drinks are rapists.
General conclusion 2: People who spike drinks are seeking to legitimise the act of rape in their own mind.
That’s about as far into it as I can go. Either people who spike drinks are rapists pure and simple, or they are trying to disguise the moral reprehensibility to themselves and the outside world but, and here is the thing, they are still rapists. Man, I’m getting sick of typing that word.
So what is to be done? How to curb the worrying spread of this crime? Well, the simplest way is to make people more cautious with their drinks, and this is what I see all around me in clubs and bars. Signs flash up on the mounted TV screens telling people to watch their drinks. Unattended drinks are cleared away by staff. Specialised straws and caps prevent access to peoples’ beverages.
All good ideas, each one effective in its way. But it strikes me that if the second of my general conclusions is true, then we are going about this the wrong way. Instead of protecting potential victims from the crime of drink spiking, we should be forcing potential perpetrators to confront the enormity of their actions. Shame is a powerful weapon in the enforcement of moral law. You’re less likely to drink drive if your friends express a low opinion of it. You might be less likely to kill someone in anger if a bystander called you a murderer. And anyone who spikes drinks and doesn’t consider themselves a rapist should be corrected. That’s what the signs in clubs should say. That’s what we should all be saying to ourselves, all the fucking time.
Everybody knows people. Everybody has parents, neighbours, colleagues. So everyone who spikes a drink is known to SOMEBODY. And that somebody ought to express their opinions on it. Drink spiking legitimises nothing.
Maybe I’m naive. In fact, I’m certain I am naive: perhaps even in this post I’m exploring an issue I know too little about. But I’m tired of taking precautions. I’m tired of hearing horror stories. I’m tired of seeing it happen to people I know. If I saw a sign in a club that read: ‘Drink spikers are rapists’ then at least I’d know they’d seen it too, and that at least they know what crime they’re committing.
I posted this largely because it’s been on my mind a lot recently. Now, hopefully, it’s off again, and we can get back to funny lists and alliteration next week. Look after yourselves till then.
This post is different, then, because it seeks to explore a particular crime, and speak out against it. I will make no effort to be balanced in my argument, nor will I attempt to justify said crime by anticipating mitigating circumstances, because I believe there to be none. It is a social issue that I feel comfortable discussing in some depth because I have both seen it firsthand and because it largely affects people of my age and broadly, my social background. It’s drink-spiking, by the way. I don’t know why I didn’t say that before.
Statistics are unnecessary, as is a Wikipedia description or similar. You spike someone’s drink by introducing a substance that they did not expect or want in it. Most drinks are spiked with chemicals that have tranquilising effects, ones that often either compound or mimic the effects of alcoholic intoxication.
I cannot ‘put myself’ into the mind of someone who spikes drinks. I can imagine, if I try really hard, a scenario in which I might murder someone. If I were the last of my species, doomed to wander the universe alone, and I confronted the being responsible for humanity’s demise in some sort of climactic battle (lightsabers, maybe) then perhaps I might, in a justified rage, kill him or her. Perhaps I can imagine, if my circumstances were lowered to miserable levels, stealing to provide for myself or my loved ones. I cannot imagine spiking someone’s drink. Nuh-uh, nothing doing.
The next thought exercise, therefore, might seem a little redundant, but let’s run with it. I’ll go through my own perception of drink spiking, and try and get as close as I can to the mentality of someone who commits this act.
Item 1: Drink spiking is an intended prelude to a sexual act. I find it patently unlikely that someone might get their drink spiked and then wake up in the middle of a long conversation about Kierkegaard with a stranger. People who spike drinks do so with the intent of initiating sexual relations with the person they spike.
Item 2: Drink spiking is the tipping factor in an act that would not otherwise have occurred. If you spike someone’s drink, it is because you don’t think you’ll be able to have sex with them without it. Again, I find it unlikely that one would want to have sex with someone who cannot reciprocate affection due to their own intoxication when an alternative exists.
Conclusion: Drink spiking is a prelude to rape. Obviously not a particularly difficult conclusion to reach, but one that should be stated. They didn’t want to have sex with you. You spiked their drink. This did not make them want to have sex with you, yet it allowed you to have sex with them anyway. Drink spiking allows individuals to circumvent the sexual consent of another. Sex without consent is rape.
Let’s go again. I’m getting a bad taste in my mouth, but I’m not done yet
Item 1: Drink spiking mimics the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. That’s how it works. You don’t spike a stranger’s drink in a teashop and watch them collapse into their sticky bun. Drink spiking occurs in places where excessive alcohol consumption might occur anyway, and masquerades as such.
Item 2: It is understood that excessive alcohol consumption may lead to bad decision making, and the occasional amorous encounter that might otherwise not have taken place. People do, occasionally, fuck people they might not otherwise have when they’re drunk. They do it because they are horny and their inhibitions are lowered.
Item 3: Lowered inhibitions or not, people still have the right to consent. Even if they’re extremely drunk, people can still say no.
Conclusion: Drink spiking legitimises sexual assault by disguising it as the accepted lowering of inhibitions that occurs with the consumption of alcohol.
General conclusion 1: People who spike drinks are rapists.
General conclusion 2: People who spike drinks are seeking to legitimise the act of rape in their own mind.
That’s about as far into it as I can go. Either people who spike drinks are rapists pure and simple, or they are trying to disguise the moral reprehensibility to themselves and the outside world but, and here is the thing, they are still rapists. Man, I’m getting sick of typing that word.
So what is to be done? How to curb the worrying spread of this crime? Well, the simplest way is to make people more cautious with their drinks, and this is what I see all around me in clubs and bars. Signs flash up on the mounted TV screens telling people to watch their drinks. Unattended drinks are cleared away by staff. Specialised straws and caps prevent access to peoples’ beverages.
All good ideas, each one effective in its way. But it strikes me that if the second of my general conclusions is true, then we are going about this the wrong way. Instead of protecting potential victims from the crime of drink spiking, we should be forcing potential perpetrators to confront the enormity of their actions. Shame is a powerful weapon in the enforcement of moral law. You’re less likely to drink drive if your friends express a low opinion of it. You might be less likely to kill someone in anger if a bystander called you a murderer. And anyone who spikes drinks and doesn’t consider themselves a rapist should be corrected. That’s what the signs in clubs should say. That’s what we should all be saying to ourselves, all the fucking time.
Everybody knows people. Everybody has parents, neighbours, colleagues. So everyone who spikes a drink is known to SOMEBODY. And that somebody ought to express their opinions on it. Drink spiking legitimises nothing.
Maybe I’m naive. In fact, I’m certain I am naive: perhaps even in this post I’m exploring an issue I know too little about. But I’m tired of taking precautions. I’m tired of hearing horror stories. I’m tired of seeing it happen to people I know. If I saw a sign in a club that read: ‘Drink spikers are rapists’ then at least I’d know they’d seen it too, and that at least they know what crime they’re committing.
I posted this largely because it’s been on my mind a lot recently. Now, hopefully, it’s off again, and we can get back to funny lists and alliteration next week. Look after yourselves till then.
Thursday 3 June 2010
Feed and grow
Yo. At the suggestion of the savvy and sexual Joe Williams I have (hopefully) sorted out an RSS feed with which to subscribe to Verbal Slapstick. You can find it over there on the right, underneath my profile picture. For all you technically minded folks out there it might be just what you need. It also means you won't have to keep checking back when I inevitably disappear of the radar for weeks at a time.
If you do subscribe, well, cheers. I really mean that: you keep this odd little ego boost on track. Peace.
If you do subscribe, well, cheers. I really mean that: you keep this odd little ego boost on track. Peace.
Grief and upgrades
I learnt a new word the other day. Well, actually I try and learn a new word every day, to infuriate and patronise my friends, but this word was a little different, as it hinted at a concept – and beyond it a subculture of sorts – that I never knew existed.
The word was ‘griefer,’ and I doubt very much that it’s in the OED. I ran into it on the fun and informative website TVTropes, a place where any writer of fiction can easily while away a deadline or three learning about the cultural archetypes that help stories work (if you haven’t already clicked on the hyperlink I recommend postponing it until you have no pressing engagements, appointments, workloads or meals that you need to get through. The website is high-octane procrastination fuel).
A griefer is, in the simplest terms, someone who gains enjoyment from ruining other people’s experience in organised play. Basically, they fuck up videogames for their own pleasure. A police artist's sketch:
The term exists mostly in online videogame forums and chatrooms, where its existence is much debated and derided. The TVTropes page has an incredible list of observed ways that a griefer might muck about with your videogame experience.
This isn’t my first encounter with a completely new cultural concept on the internet, but it’s not like I’m at the bleeding edge of online memes. I’d do better in a 4chan message board than, say, my dad, but I’m hardly a huge presence on the information superhighway, or whatever they call it now. But I’m interested in the concept of a ‘griefer’ because it might be a completely new way of expressing oneself.
My first point is this: what exactly did griefers do before the opportunity to spoil other peoples games existed? Online gaming provides the twin buffers of distance and anonymity; annoying someone over the net might result in hurled obscenities, threats, or at most in a ban from the game being played. Beyond that, the person you’ve pissed off is stymied; they’re unlikely to show up and egg your house, for example. In ‘real life’ no such buffer exists: if you deliberately puncture someone’s football there’s nothing to stop them from pounding the snot out of you in retaliation. At the very least, you won’t be allowed to play, and here another difference from online games becomes apparent: because there are millions of games on thousands of servers, beginning and ending all the time, once a griefer has messed up one group of people’s online experience he or she can simply move onto the next one. Even if they are caught, booted or banned they can always begin again elsewhere.
Did this desire to seek gratification by spoiling other’s enjoyment always exist, or is it a new development? Are these the same people who knock over litterbins and smash peoples windscreens in the dead of night?
I personally do not think that it is a new phenomenon, rather an old one in a new garb. The online videogame revolution certainly did not ‘create’ the potential for griefers among the population; instead it provided a new and (mildly) destructive outlet for a certain type of person. And clearly if it occurs enough to have a TVTropes page dedicated to it, there are more of these people than might immediately be imagined.
This train of thought reminded me of a conversation I had nearly a year ago, not long after I started Verbal Slapstick. I was having dinner with my step-mother, and was trying to explain the purpose of this blog to her. This was quite difficult, partly because I was on my third glass of wine, but mostly because this blog has no real purpose, beyond my own vanity. It isn’t a diary, and it’s not really about things that happen in my life (save the things that happen in my head). I’m not reviewing anything, and I’m not, as many of my friends and colleagues do, gatekeeping my own media experience by posting photos or videos or anything like that. I get the occasional piece of free crit for my creative writing which is cool and much appreciated, but beyond that this whole platform is simply me hurling my own badly formed musings and self-deprecations into an indelible public sphere. Why do I do it? Because I’m an unremitting egotist and I think I know best, obviously. And if I didn’t have a blog, if the opportunity to blog didn’t even exist?
What my step-mum really wanted to know related to the apparent readiness of my generation to transcribe their experience for all to see. She pointed out that when she was my age, there wasn’t the readiness or desire to constantly communicate with friends and acquaintances, either by phone or online. People her age (and she is not, in truth, that old) are far less comfortable with keeping everyone they know posted on their likes, dislikes and movements. If, as has been argued, a blog is just a diary that you show to everybody, why the sudden need to show each other our private lives? Why, in short, was my generation so self-consciously media savvy?
My answer? Because we can be. It is my firm belief that human beings have a desire to communicate their experience and feelings that is so strong they will wholeheartedly adopt any new method with which to do so. Until we finally all learn telepathy and are able to instantly and accurately experience and empathise with everybody, we will boldly take up any new technology or concept that allows us a greater glimpse of ourselves and each other. Maybe, and this is mere conjecture, we always wanted the world to read our diaries. Like griefers, the potential is within us already: all things like the internet are doing is giving us new ways to realise this potential. Mobile phones have not created a desire for constant contact. We always wanted to be in touch with one another all the time. Now we have a way to do it. Is it any wonder that these new media forms become so quickly integral to the fabric of our existence?
All this leads to one final, obvious question. If the potential for mass media uptake, for instant and gregarious communication, even for the sadistic inversion of organised play, all already reside fully formed within us, waiting for an outlet, what other strange and novel patterns of behaviour exist in our collective psyches? A whole raft of behaviours, some which could become integral to the way we act as a species, might be restrained by a gap in our technological development, waiting for a bridge to to flow across, out into the world. It’s a potentially scary concept, la, but it sure is exciting.
The word was ‘griefer,’ and I doubt very much that it’s in the OED. I ran into it on the fun and informative website TVTropes, a place where any writer of fiction can easily while away a deadline or three learning about the cultural archetypes that help stories work (if you haven’t already clicked on the hyperlink I recommend postponing it until you have no pressing engagements, appointments, workloads or meals that you need to get through. The website is high-octane procrastination fuel).
A griefer is, in the simplest terms, someone who gains enjoyment from ruining other people’s experience in organised play. Basically, they fuck up videogames for their own pleasure. A police artist's sketch:
The term exists mostly in online videogame forums and chatrooms, where its existence is much debated and derided. The TVTropes page has an incredible list of observed ways that a griefer might muck about with your videogame experience.
This isn’t my first encounter with a completely new cultural concept on the internet, but it’s not like I’m at the bleeding edge of online memes. I’d do better in a 4chan message board than, say, my dad, but I’m hardly a huge presence on the information superhighway, or whatever they call it now. But I’m interested in the concept of a ‘griefer’ because it might be a completely new way of expressing oneself.
My first point is this: what exactly did griefers do before the opportunity to spoil other peoples games existed? Online gaming provides the twin buffers of distance and anonymity; annoying someone over the net might result in hurled obscenities, threats, or at most in a ban from the game being played. Beyond that, the person you’ve pissed off is stymied; they’re unlikely to show up and egg your house, for example. In ‘real life’ no such buffer exists: if you deliberately puncture someone’s football there’s nothing to stop them from pounding the snot out of you in retaliation. At the very least, you won’t be allowed to play, and here another difference from online games becomes apparent: because there are millions of games on thousands of servers, beginning and ending all the time, once a griefer has messed up one group of people’s online experience he or she can simply move onto the next one. Even if they are caught, booted or banned they can always begin again elsewhere.
Did this desire to seek gratification by spoiling other’s enjoyment always exist, or is it a new development? Are these the same people who knock over litterbins and smash peoples windscreens in the dead of night?
I personally do not think that it is a new phenomenon, rather an old one in a new garb. The online videogame revolution certainly did not ‘create’ the potential for griefers among the population; instead it provided a new and (mildly) destructive outlet for a certain type of person. And clearly if it occurs enough to have a TVTropes page dedicated to it, there are more of these people than might immediately be imagined.
This train of thought reminded me of a conversation I had nearly a year ago, not long after I started Verbal Slapstick. I was having dinner with my step-mother, and was trying to explain the purpose of this blog to her. This was quite difficult, partly because I was on my third glass of wine, but mostly because this blog has no real purpose, beyond my own vanity. It isn’t a diary, and it’s not really about things that happen in my life (save the things that happen in my head). I’m not reviewing anything, and I’m not, as many of my friends and colleagues do, gatekeeping my own media experience by posting photos or videos or anything like that. I get the occasional piece of free crit for my creative writing which is cool and much appreciated, but beyond that this whole platform is simply me hurling my own badly formed musings and self-deprecations into an indelible public sphere. Why do I do it? Because I’m an unremitting egotist and I think I know best, obviously. And if I didn’t have a blog, if the opportunity to blog didn’t even exist?
What my step-mum really wanted to know related to the apparent readiness of my generation to transcribe their experience for all to see. She pointed out that when she was my age, there wasn’t the readiness or desire to constantly communicate with friends and acquaintances, either by phone or online. People her age (and she is not, in truth, that old) are far less comfortable with keeping everyone they know posted on their likes, dislikes and movements. If, as has been argued, a blog is just a diary that you show to everybody, why the sudden need to show each other our private lives? Why, in short, was my generation so self-consciously media savvy?
My answer? Because we can be. It is my firm belief that human beings have a desire to communicate their experience and feelings that is so strong they will wholeheartedly adopt any new method with which to do so. Until we finally all learn telepathy and are able to instantly and accurately experience and empathise with everybody, we will boldly take up any new technology or concept that allows us a greater glimpse of ourselves and each other. Maybe, and this is mere conjecture, we always wanted the world to read our diaries. Like griefers, the potential is within us already: all things like the internet are doing is giving us new ways to realise this potential. Mobile phones have not created a desire for constant contact. We always wanted to be in touch with one another all the time. Now we have a way to do it. Is it any wonder that these new media forms become so quickly integral to the fabric of our existence?
All this leads to one final, obvious question. If the potential for mass media uptake, for instant and gregarious communication, even for the sadistic inversion of organised play, all already reside fully formed within us, waiting for an outlet, what other strange and novel patterns of behaviour exist in our collective psyches? A whole raft of behaviours, some which could become integral to the way we act as a species, might be restrained by a gap in our technological development, waiting for a bridge to to flow across, out into the world. It’s a potentially scary concept, la, but it sure is exciting.
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