Just so I can step on everybody's feet...
So we finally got around to watching The Social Network (2010) last night, as I was poking at a game design problem, and it's left me with a bunch of thoughts. First of all, the movie was very good. Sorkin writes some very good dialogue and Fincher's a really great director. The cast was good (Justin Timberlake as the *armchair diagnosis* possibly bipolar founder of Napster was particularly entertaining).
Anyway, here are some thoughts.
1) First of all that Marx isn't any less wrong about the tools of production when it comes to intellectual property. You could have told me this about 10000 times before last night and I would have agreed with you, but, apparently, it would not have soaked in. If anything capital gets even more insidious, because, technically, no one should own your brain or your time but you, except...
There's a great deal buried in here. This is as far as we go on this one.
2) Something that angers me in fiction and in life is the characterization of any person who can sell a narrative to others as totally lacking respect in their fellow human being. I follow how this goes. A narrative is like wall-hacking people's minds, and most people, I would say, all people lack the skills and savvy to defend themselves when their enemy is coming out of the goddamned walls. Okay, back up and be clear - near the end of the movie, one of Zuckerberg's legal team is explaining to him why he's going to have to settle - she's an expert on voire dire and jury selection, so she knows quite well that the narrative is dead against him in trial. Someone who got rich on selling a narrative (which, actually did originate with the aristo-twins - funny that I should be talking about Marx in one paragraph and sympathizing with silver spoon bearing eaters in another) is now the victim of a narrative. Once the lawyer makes this clear to Zuckerberg, he makes the remark "Barnyard animals," to which the lawyer makes a sympathetic face. Really, fuck these people. Humans are humans, and there are dead simple, sentiment-shattering ways to manipulate humans (tribal creatures who require one another's support and approval at all times, always looking for a step up in the social order). On the one hand, it shows Zuckerberg (in all cases I am talking about the fictional character in the movie, not the actual CEO of Facebook) as incapable of understanding the power of narrative, (or like Dread Cthulhu to the Elder Gods, knowing it only dimly), and illustrates, I guess, Sean whateverhisnameis' contribution to Facebook as the guy who really understood narrative.
Anyway, if you get someone to believe a story - and it's painfully simple; it doesn't even need to be a good story and it can be totally counterfactual and spurious with damning evidence close to hand - you just need to repeat it often and loud enough - you can exploit their emotional reactions and only those who reject your story on its face and build a counter-narrative to protect themselves. I won't give you examples, but I think if you look everyone here can find an instance of an action that was subcnsciously guided by some stupid shit you don't believe, just because the narrative is so very pervasive.
I don't understand why so many people react to this vulnerability with contempt. No, I do, it's self-delusion, and the kind that annoys me the most. It's a protective incantation "I won't be fooled, I am wiser, I am stronger, I am better," well, you're not. I am not, and I fell kind of fucking bad for us that we are so both vulnerable and so willing to exploit one anothers' vulnerabilities with such cruelty and contempt.
3) I thought about the first consumer narrative I remember having, and I'm sure I had others (if I get this action figure, I will have more fun, frex), but this one strikes me because it was my first consumer impulse based on an aspirational image of myself. I wanted to get saddle bags for my bike, so I could put my copy of The Two Towers into it and ride somewhere, and read outside. This act of riding somewhere with a book and reading was going to make me cool, but it was not possible in my mind without these international orange saddlebags. This, of course, would not have made me cool. But it would have made me a little better exercised and better read, and if it lead to more biking and more reading, that might have helped. Cool, like any other kind of success, is either a gift from the Gods that comes with no regard to your prayers or from willful effort over time. What comes from the Gods is nice to have, but it's totally irrelevant.
4) Strategic thinkers really need to be quite good at strategy. They also need to shut the fuck up about the importance of strategy around people whose technical skills they need. This goes double for me. On my better days I am a fair strategic thinker. And nothing gets the backs of people with technical expertise up faster than dismissing their skills because the strategy is awesome. Also, if you're going to talk with technical experts, be a technical journeyman. Otherwise, you are going to be like the executives at Pratt & Whitney talking to the engineers, and you are going to hear nothing and sound like a douche.
It is sometimes incumbent on someone who is looking at strategy to get someone who is looking at technical to see beyond the series of technical problems that need to be solved. I've got no prescription on how to do this; it probably has a lot to do with the person in question, but I am thinking that leading questions that show some level of technical savvy would work pretty well on me when I am thinking of the technical.
5) Something that I am learning to do in game design, visual art and in wiritng, and probably will still be learning on my dying day: looking at the success and failures of others and really trying to analyze why something successful works (in this case I was trying to dream up effectively scary monsters and figuring why the Creeper is more frightening to me than Pyramid Head), and trying to figure out what people who failed were trying to envision as success.
None of these are world chattering insights. To a certain extent, I am probably just catching up with some of you and just catching up with places you were a long time ago, but I wanted to get all this down before it sieved out of my head for good.
Anyway, here are some thoughts.
1) First of all that Marx isn't any less wrong about the tools of production when it comes to intellectual property. You could have told me this about 10000 times before last night and I would have agreed with you, but, apparently, it would not have soaked in. If anything capital gets even more insidious, because, technically, no one should own your brain or your time but you, except...
There's a great deal buried in here. This is as far as we go on this one.
2) Something that angers me in fiction and in life is the characterization of any person who can sell a narrative to others as totally lacking respect in their fellow human being. I follow how this goes. A narrative is like wall-hacking people's minds, and most people, I would say, all people lack the skills and savvy to defend themselves when their enemy is coming out of the goddamned walls. Okay, back up and be clear - near the end of the movie, one of Zuckerberg's legal team is explaining to him why he's going to have to settle - she's an expert on voire dire and jury selection, so she knows quite well that the narrative is dead against him in trial. Someone who got rich on selling a narrative (which, actually did originate with the aristo-twins - funny that I should be talking about Marx in one paragraph and sympathizing with silver spoon bearing eaters in another) is now the victim of a narrative. Once the lawyer makes this clear to Zuckerberg, he makes the remark "Barnyard animals," to which the lawyer makes a sympathetic face. Really, fuck these people. Humans are humans, and there are dead simple, sentiment-shattering ways to manipulate humans (tribal creatures who require one another's support and approval at all times, always looking for a step up in the social order). On the one hand, it shows Zuckerberg (in all cases I am talking about the fictional character in the movie, not the actual CEO of Facebook) as incapable of understanding the power of narrative, (or like Dread Cthulhu to the Elder Gods, knowing it only dimly), and illustrates, I guess, Sean whateverhisnameis' contribution to Facebook as the guy who really understood narrative.
Anyway, if you get someone to believe a story - and it's painfully simple; it doesn't even need to be a good story and it can be totally counterfactual and spurious with damning evidence close to hand - you just need to repeat it often and loud enough - you can exploit their emotional reactions and only those who reject your story on its face and build a counter-narrative to protect themselves. I won't give you examples, but I think if you look everyone here can find an instance of an action that was subcnsciously guided by some stupid shit you don't believe, just because the narrative is so very pervasive.
I don't understand why so many people react to this vulnerability with contempt. No, I do, it's self-delusion, and the kind that annoys me the most. It's a protective incantation "I won't be fooled, I am wiser, I am stronger, I am better," well, you're not. I am not, and I fell kind of fucking bad for us that we are so both vulnerable and so willing to exploit one anothers' vulnerabilities with such cruelty and contempt.
3) I thought about the first consumer narrative I remember having, and I'm sure I had others (if I get this action figure, I will have more fun, frex), but this one strikes me because it was my first consumer impulse based on an aspirational image of myself. I wanted to get saddle bags for my bike, so I could put my copy of The Two Towers into it and ride somewhere, and read outside. This act of riding somewhere with a book and reading was going to make me cool, but it was not possible in my mind without these international orange saddlebags. This, of course, would not have made me cool. But it would have made me a little better exercised and better read, and if it lead to more biking and more reading, that might have helped. Cool, like any other kind of success, is either a gift from the Gods that comes with no regard to your prayers or from willful effort over time. What comes from the Gods is nice to have, but it's totally irrelevant.
4) Strategic thinkers really need to be quite good at strategy. They also need to shut the fuck up about the importance of strategy around people whose technical skills they need. This goes double for me. On my better days I am a fair strategic thinker. And nothing gets the backs of people with technical expertise up faster than dismissing their skills because the strategy is awesome. Also, if you're going to talk with technical experts, be a technical journeyman. Otherwise, you are going to be like the executives at Pratt & Whitney talking to the engineers, and you are going to hear nothing and sound like a douche.
It is sometimes incumbent on someone who is looking at strategy to get someone who is looking at technical to see beyond the series of technical problems that need to be solved. I've got no prescription on how to do this; it probably has a lot to do with the person in question, but I am thinking that leading questions that show some level of technical savvy would work pretty well on me when I am thinking of the technical.
5) Something that I am learning to do in game design, visual art and in wiritng, and probably will still be learning on my dying day: looking at the success and failures of others and really trying to analyze why something successful works (in this case I was trying to dream up effectively scary monsters and figuring why the Creeper is more frightening to me than Pyramid Head), and trying to figure out what people who failed were trying to envision as success.
None of these are world chattering insights. To a certain extent, I am probably just catching up with some of you and just catching up with places you were a long time ago, but I wanted to get all this down before it sieved out of my head for good.
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