Twitter, Facebook, and the Diffusion of Responsibility

Kitty Genovese was a bar manager who lived and worked in Queens, New York. One night, just after 3:15 a.m., she was assaulted, raped, and murdered just outside her apartment building, and though she screamed for help, and though nearly 40 of the tenants in neighboring apartments heard her screams and even saw it happening, none of them called the police or otherwise attempted to help.

That’s the story anyway; the facts have been sensationalized to the point of becoming urban legend about the apathy of the public. None of the witnesses actually seem to have witnessed the attack in its entirety, observing only portions and not necessarily understanding the severity of the situation, and at least one of them did call the police. But the fact does remain that with so many witnesses, comparatively little action was taken.

“I just want a normal life!“

So superhero stories are the new black, apparently. It seems like you can’t turn around without tripping over some network’s drama series about people developing surprising powers. And they all have one thing in common:

Almost everybody in the show is upset about these powers.

Look, I didn’t fit in as a kid. If it weren’t for a serious cultural revolution that has made it genuinely hip to be square, I wouldn’t fit in as an adult. Are you kidding me? I’m gay, I don’t believe in God, and I know way too fucking much about Star Wars. I know what it is to occasionally wish I weren’t different. But I also know what it is to accept and embrace what makes me different.

And you know what kind of being different I wouldn’t have minded for one second? Fucking superpowers.

FFS. Do you have any idea how often I’ve daydreamed about superpowers? I bet you do, because I bet you have too. Man, what I wouldn’t give for the ability to read people’s thoughts, teleport, or for the love of shit soar through the air faster than a speeding bullet.^[1]

But no. The people in these shows and movies crave the mundane. Who the fuck is like that?

Hey look. I get it. It’s a metaphor for not fitting in. Being a mutant = being a queer, alright, that version of the symbolism is valid but it has been done. Can’t we just get characters acting like some goddamn human beings and being fucking thrilled to be special?

At least make other characters call them freaks and give them a complex about it, don’t start them off insecure about their awesomeness from square one. I promise you, no teenager wants to have a normal, cliched shitty high school experience. They would not rather do the tux-limo-prom Norman Rockwell thing than be able to melt things with their eyes.

They would not. This goes double for adults. Human beings are fucking crazy and you knock the balance of power out of whack for so much as a second, most people are not going to crawl back into their cages and wait for it to be over. They’re going to grab it with both hands and ride it out.

I know, I know. The refusal of the call is part of the archetypal hero’s journey. But eventually they ought to accept. Otherwise there’s no journey. I’m sick of characters too angsty to do anything. Make them do something they learn to regret. That’s much more interesting.

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1. Not to mention looking that good in spandex tights, but I digress.↩

The Grey Area

So I was watching G.I. JOE the other night.

This isn’t a review for G.I. JOE, because there’s not a lot to say. It’s pretty much idiocy, top to bottom. Characters are less than one-dimensional, dialogue made me flinch like I was being physically assaulted, bad guys’ motivations make no sense, VFX favor quantity over quality, and despite having a huge budget and Ray Park as Snake Eyes, the best action sequence was a flashback of two kids fighting in a small kitchen which was probably shot second unit.

I tweeted my opinion as I was watching it:

Watching GI JOE just for the hell of it. Sucks like a sumbitch, as anticipated. So, so dumb.

I got a number of responses, most of them agreeing and commiserating the loss of precious, precious life that was those two hours of it. But I got one response similar to what I’ve seen before:

I too, was surprised that no one re-enacted Shakespeare plays with their action figures as I did… Oh well. (@MattWBP)

I didn’t really follow up on what exactly he meant by that, but my interpretation of it is that it’s a more nuanced and sarcastic way of saying “What did you expect a G.I. JOE movie to be?”

Fuck this commercial

If you watched the Colbert clip from yesterday, you almost certainly saw the Chase Sapphire commercial. If not, here it is:

Chase has apparently broken the bank to get this ad on every streaming television show there is, at every commercial break. This is seriously one of the worst commercials I’ve ever seen, and I have to keep seeing it.

Before we go any further: I’m aware that by linking to and talking about this ad, I’m just giving the creators what they intended, which is attention. But it’s negative attention, so it should balance out. And I hate this ad so much I really just need to get this out of my system.

What the hell is wrong with people

The very first sign of the seriousness of the question I’m asking is the fact that I bet at least three things popped into your head as candidates for what I could be referring to.

I’m not going to be talking about any of the things you probably just thought of, though. I’ve got the chupacabra on my mind.

The chupacabra, if you happen not to know (international readers will probably be unfamiliar) is a cryptid, a legendary creature the existence of which is entirely unconfirmed and the evidence for which is wholly anecdotal (see also: Loch Ness Monster, Sasquatch, Compassionate Conservative).^[1]

Its name literally means “goat sucker” because, apparently, it sucks on goats. It’s supposedly an animal vampire that bites into its prey — usually goats, natch — and drains its prey’s blood, typically without tearing into the flesh other than one or two puncture wounds in the neck. It’s a Latin America thing, although over the years tales of the chupacabra have started to sprout up around our borderlands, particularly in the Texan outback.

Has anyone actually seen the thing? Well, no. What they’ve seen is the remains of dead animals drained of their blood and gone, “huh, that’s fuckin’ weird. I have no idea what would have done that.”

The problem is that, of course, they don’t stop there even though they should. The full thought process becomes “I have no idea what would have done that. It must have been a dog-like reptilian creature with a pronounced spinal ridge that hops like a kangaroo.”

It’s an all-too-common absurdity to assert the properties of something you admittedly know nothing about — not just in spite of the fact that you admittedly know nothing about it, but somehow following from your lack of knowledge — but that’s also not what the post subject is referring to.

What caught my attention is this news item, in which the appearance of a weird-ass animal carcass has people declaring that it’s a dead chupacabra.^[2] What it is (a dead coyote or coyote-dog hybrid, most likely) is, to me, beside the point. What makes me sit up in my chair is this excerpt:

“I don’t believe in the chupacabra,” Ayer said, adding that he’s been in the midst of a “media blitz” — receiving 50 phone calls from media outlets and citizens, as well as death threats late at night — since word got out about the strange beast.

What the fuck? Death threats? How does that even make sense? It’s not like the guy birthed this thing. It’s not like this is going to make people pay for healthcare or accept gay marriage. This isn’t a political or moral issue. There’s nothing you could possibly be outraged about. What about this situation of a taxidermist receiving a dead carcass could even make someone angry, let alone lead to “death threats late at night?”

What the hell is wrong with people?

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1. When I was in middle school, and early into high school, I considered a career in cryptozoology. Over time I became a little jaded with the fact that these guys never seemed to find anything that they were looking for, just stories about them and maybe a vague and inconclusive picture of something kinda sorta. Although I still picked up a career of making shit up as I go along, at least I know that’s what I’m doing. If we lived in a world where these things had a reasonable rate of actually existing, though, chasing ‘em down would be my next choice of career.↩
2. It’s actually previous carcass finds like this, in addition to sightings of “strange” animals, that have given the chupacabra its particular properties. In other words, the stories started with a very off-the-wall description that was slowly altered to match the description of things that people think they have seen. Eventually the chupacabra may actually exist, simply by virtue of people applying that moniker to some other animal entirely.↩

A terrible tragedy

I kind of don’t know what to say about this other than that it’s a horrible tragedy. But I, and the person who uploaded this video, can’t help but notice the cruel irony of someone so on fire for da Lawd, someone so obsessed with the notion that atheists are “angry,” committing such a heinous act. 

I’m not saying that his religion necessarily led him to do this. But I think it’s important to note that his god did nothing to stop it. A loving god would have every reason to prevent a madman from carrying out these kinds of criminal acts in his name, a vested interest in protecting his reputation and even demonstrating that he loves and cares for all people. That’s what he wants us to believe, isn’t it? That’s the faith we’re supposed to have. 

Instead, nothing. Nothing. If a god is watching, then he is an accessory in this crime if not the perpetrator. He may even be malevolent, he may have wanted this to happen and enjoyed it as it did. 

Or, the most likely case, there is nobody watching, and that’s why nobody acted from on high. 

I say again, I’m not accusing his religious beliefs of inciting him to homicide, but it goes back to some questions in recent comments: why didn’t his god work in his heart to prevent him from doing such a thing as this? Why doesn’t religious belief have a statistical effect on its adherents for moral behavior if it is supposed to be so intricately tied to the source of morality? 

This is not an emotional appeal regarding my lack of belief in a god, though it does impact me emotionally. My point is: even granting you that a god does exist, if you ask me to believe that he is good and kind and loving, if you ask me to apply faith where it really counts, I can only point to this.

I would say I’d laugh in your face, but I don’t feel like laughing about anything at the moment. 

Secular Sunday: Won’t somebody think of the children?

No CFAC today. I’m sick and I don’t have the strength, so I’ll talk really briefly about a recent news story. 

It can really be summarized in two sentences, and conveniently they are the heading and subheading of this MSNBC article. 

Headline: Brazil girl, alleged rape victim, aborts twins

Subheading: The procedure on the 9-year-old girl draws complaints from Catholic church

That really just says it all, doesn’t it?

A 9-year-old Brazilian girl was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant with twins. Every medical professional who got involved determined that she was physically incapable of carrying the fetuses to term, much less deliver them. Her attempts to do so would result not only in her death, but the death of the offspring as well. 

So basically you have a test case in abortion rights that meets all the criteria of having a “good reason” to have an abortion. Rape victim, health of the mother at risk, fetuses aren’t ultimately viable. 

And so of course, because the Catholic Church loves dogma and hates people, they denounce the procedure. They denounce it so strongly that they excommunicated everyone involved in the abortion — except for the child and, of course, the rapist stepfather.

And lest you try to fool yourself into thinking it was a rogue bishop in Brazil, the Vatican has his back. 

I’m glad they excommunicated them. Maybe the people who have been excommunicated will realize that it was a shitty club to be a part of in the first place. And maybe the Catholic Church will excommunicate so many people that it will only accelerate its own irrelevance. But the fact that the Church can dare to get indignant over a necessary procedure to save a little girl’s life — well, that gives the lie to “pro-life” right there.  

These so-called “pro-life” people seriously put fetuses before children. A fetus, they say, is a “potential person.” But once they become an actual person, fuck ‘em, apparently.

A culture of life? A religion of compassion? Yeah, right.

Dear Fox: Eat All the Dicks

So for those of you not following the Watchmen legal saga, the short version is this:

Fox optioned the rights in the 80s. DC thought that the option had lapsed, and took it elsewhere. Warner Brothers made the film, and once the film was made, Fox stood up and say “Hey, we think we still own that.”

And a few days ago, the judge in the case ruled that Fox was right.

No one is arguing that they weren’t in their rights to do so, but they might have said something before Warner Bros. spent hundreds of millions of dollars making and promoting the film, considering it’s not like the production was shrouded in secrecy.

My thoughts on this are best expressed by Dan O’Brien’s blog over at Cracked.com. So I’ll just be one of many auxiliary blogs linking to that one.

“Watchmen” Fan Cordially Invites Fox to Eat Several Dicks

Orson Scott Card is an Asshole

I was going to write a whole long thing telling Orson Scott Card to go fuck himself, but I realized that going through it point by point is not worth my time.

So I’ll keep it brief: I haven’t read the Lexicon, so maybe Rowling’s lawsuit IS groundless, but Card’s argument is complete horseshit and I can barely stand it; as part of the article, he brings up court cases that found in favor of Rowling (as in the case of Nancy Stouffer, whose case was dismissed and who was fined for committing fraud against the court), peppers in little self-promotional “the brilliance of MY work…” comments, and takes credit for a story structure that predates the ancient fucking Greeks in drawing the comparison between the broad strokes of Ender’s Game and those of Harry Potter.

Orson Scott Card is a pompous jackass, Ender’s Game was completely predictable and self-indulgent, and his work will be a footnote in literary history at best, when Rowling’s is venerated by each new generation.

Oh, and also, basing stories on the same general literary structure — a literary structure made famous in the work of Joseph Campbell, not yours — is not the same as actively plagiarizing your work verbatim, republishing it, and reselling it for profit. You moron.

And that’s all I have to say about that.