[00:10.430 --> 00:13.330]  Pat yourself on the back for some awesome endurance.
[00:14.750 --> 00:24.850]  Partially caffeine-fueled, partially alcohol-fueled, and 100% intelligence, inspiration, and curiosity-fueled.
[00:25.130 --> 00:29.230]  We are getting towards the end of our speaker sessions for this evening.
[00:29.230 --> 00:30.730]  We do have a lot of activity on the overnight.
[00:30.910 --> 00:35.370]  There's a concert beginning at 11.30 down on the Mez.
[00:35.530 --> 00:38.610]  Don't leave this talk, but afterwards you might want to consider.
[00:39.210 --> 00:40.150]  Yeah, I wasn't...
[00:40.990 --> 00:41.970]  You're making people...
[00:41.970 --> 00:44.490]  We've all taken a vote and you should stay here.
[00:44.490 --> 00:45.470]  There's a lot of good videos.
[00:47.030 --> 00:51.410]  But there is a lot of stuff going down on the Mezzanine starting at around 11.30 tonight.
[00:51.690 --> 00:55.570]  We will have Robert Steele in here starting at around midnight tonight.
[00:55.570 --> 01:00.810]  And the Hacker Cinema will be at 1 a.m. next door.
[01:04.950 --> 01:07.410]  Up next is Gabriella and Finn.
[01:08.030 --> 01:10.570]  They're going to talk about net wars over free speech.
[01:11.130 --> 01:12.150]  We've changed the title.
[01:12.330 --> 01:13.030]  All about...
[01:13.030 --> 01:13.970]  Oh, I can't see that.
[01:14.050 --> 01:15.430]  It's all about Scientology.
[01:15.850 --> 01:16.230]  Pardon.
[01:16.570 --> 01:21.510]  And there's going to be personality tests down on the Mezzanine a little bit later.
[01:21.510 --> 01:21.930]  Yeah.
[01:22.410 --> 01:22.910]  Thank you.
[01:23.570 --> 01:25.970]  Figure out what your Satan problem is, people.
[01:26.470 --> 01:29.050]  There will still be Scientology, despite the new title.
[01:29.310 --> 01:29.510]  Yes.
[01:30.230 --> 01:31.370]  Scientology does play a role.
[01:31.750 --> 01:33.470]  So, as you said, I'm Gabriella.
[01:33.710 --> 01:38.010]  I'm a professor at NYU in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication.
[01:38.290 --> 01:40.910]  And I work on the anthropology of digital media.
[01:41.590 --> 01:42.330]  I'm Finn.
[01:42.510 --> 01:43.670]  I'm a postdoc at NYU.
[01:44.030 --> 01:46.090]  I'm writing a book about the history of spam.
[01:46.090 --> 01:49.650]  And I work on ways that people misuse various technologies.
[01:50.930 --> 01:51.430]  Yeah.
[01:51.870 --> 01:52.910]  And we are...
[01:52.910 --> 01:54.870]  We've changed things around a little bit.
[01:54.990 --> 02:05.810]  We wanted to do this as kind of a workshop format, where we would present what we see as like threads in how lulzy media works, that people can adopt for non-lulzy purposes and messages.
[02:06.150 --> 02:10.770]  But the problem is we're presenting in like this wind tunnel here with about a million people.
[02:11.050 --> 02:13.710]  So like a workshop format isn't really going to take.
[02:14.950 --> 02:22.110]  So we have a little bit more of a formal presentation, but we're going to try to move through it to the Q&A and get the discussion going around this.
[02:22.570 --> 02:22.830]  All right.
[02:23.030 --> 02:23.430]  So great.
[02:24.470 --> 02:30.850]  Let me just move to the first slide, which is the three threads that will be explored in the various examples.
[02:31.270 --> 02:32.590]  Do you want to start with the first one?
[02:32.730 --> 02:32.870]  Yes.
[02:33.390 --> 02:50.090]  We're going to be looking at how lulzy media use exploitable forms and rapid variation, by which we mean like various systems that make it easy for you to start creating your own versions of things, like stuff that makes it so that you can rapidly create variations on a theme,
[02:50.230 --> 02:52.110]  which is where a lot of the power of lulz lies.
[02:52.350 --> 02:59.750]  And then the two other threads I think are a little bit more obvious, one of which is the importance of pleasure in politics and then the importance of spectacle as well.
[03:00.670 --> 03:06.870]  And so what we're going to do is I'm going to kind of jump in depth in the example of Anonymous versus the Church of Scientology.
[03:06.950 --> 03:07.130]  Mm-hmm.
[03:07.290 --> 03:10.690]  And then afterwards, Finn is going to give five examples.
[03:10.810 --> 03:11.290]  Three examples.
[03:11.370 --> 03:12.550]  Three examples from the past.
[03:12.550 --> 03:13.410]  Told you we were condensing.
[03:13.730 --> 03:13.810]  Yeah.
[03:13.810 --> 03:14.570]  Past and the present.
[03:14.870 --> 03:20.490]  And then we'll kind of discuss these in a little bit more detail and then open it up for Q&A.
[03:20.810 --> 03:21.070]  All right.
[03:21.170 --> 03:25.370]  So I bet most people here know who Anonymous is.
[03:25.490 --> 03:26.810]  Can I actually have a show of hands?
[03:27.250 --> 03:27.870]  Anonymous for...
[03:27.870 --> 03:28.490]  Okay, good.
[03:28.630 --> 03:28.870]  All right.
[03:30.030 --> 03:30.590]  Um...
[03:30.590 --> 03:32.030]  This is such a great crowd.
[03:32.410 --> 03:32.990]  I know.
[03:33.330 --> 03:35.110]  I'm actually going to answer a little bit.
[03:35.290 --> 03:51.890]  But before I jump into the particulars, this project is part of a larger one which has to do with the following question, which is why have Internet enthusiasts been drawn to denounce Scientology so vehemently and for over two decades?
[03:54.690 --> 03:55.990]  The holes, exactly.
[03:55.990 --> 03:56.430]  The holes.
[03:57.750 --> 03:58.310]  Exactly.
[03:58.310 --> 04:11.250]  And while there's sort of very particular circumstances that brought Scientology and geeks together in the USENET era versus the era of the image board, we'll say, I'm interested in some of the kind of cultural continuities.
[04:11.250 --> 04:14.790]  I'm an anthropologist, which is why I focus in on that question.
[04:14.790 --> 04:22.590]  And to sort of simplify the argument, Scientology is obviously a perfect nemesis.
[04:22.790 --> 04:27.710]  And so, Scientology has obviously gone after folks on the Internet in person.
[04:27.710 --> 04:36.370]  But when they did, geeks kind of encountered an organization and in a world that was almost an inverted image of their own.
[04:37.070 --> 04:39.430]  And so that's what I mean by perfect nemesis.
[04:39.590 --> 04:46.650]  And in my longer work, I sort of go into great detail about the sort of inversions between geekdom and Scientology.
[04:46.790 --> 04:59.510]  And I'm not going to do that today, but just for this crowd, I thought the following slide would be a huge... would be kind of lulzy, I guess, which is the way in which Scientology views technology.
[05:01.070 --> 05:03.010]  And so this is from KSW.
[05:03.270 --> 05:04.130]  We're going to see this again.
[05:04.330 --> 05:07.790]  And this, again, has to do with the kind of cultural inversions.
[05:07.930 --> 05:08.890]  Geeks love technology.
[05:09.610 --> 05:11.670]  Scientology loves technology as well.
[05:11.790 --> 05:16.230]  But the ways in which they view technology is extremely particular and narrow.
[05:16.490 --> 05:31.910]  So getting the correct technology applied consists of having the correct technology, knowing the technology, knowing it is correct, teaching correctly the correct technology, Applying the technology, seeing that the technology is correctly applied, hammering out the existence of incorrect technology,
[05:32.350 --> 05:33.990]  knocking out incorrect applications.
[05:33.990 --> 05:35.490]  I think you get the point, right?
[05:35.830 --> 05:45.430]  And so what's interesting is that Scientology is this religion of science and technology, which many geeks find offensive on top of their kind of human rights abuses.
[05:45.890 --> 05:47.070]  Who's signature is that?
[05:48.650 --> 05:50.270]  I believe it is.
[05:50.350 --> 05:51.230]  I believe it is.
[05:51.290 --> 05:57.430]  I spent a year at University of Alberta, which has the largest Scientology archives in the world, which is why I have this sort of stuff.
[05:58.110 --> 06:02.790]  Alright, but now I'm going to go to Anonymous proper.
[06:03.690 --> 06:09.150]  And to kind of understand the birth of Anonymous, we have to start with Tom Cruise, naturally.
[06:09.710 --> 06:15.890]  And a particular video, which I think most of you have probably seen, where he's praising the church quite exuberantly.
[06:16.050 --> 06:19.350]  And I'm not going to show the full clip, but we'll get a little bit of it.
[06:19.490 --> 06:22.270]  And it's also KSW, Keep Scientology Working.
[06:23.530 --> 06:30.230]  But if that's what Mr. Cruise has brought to this world, there still remains one more word on the man.
[06:31.310 --> 06:36.450]  Call it Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise Scientologist.
[06:39.900 --> 06:43.620]  I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and it's something that you have to earn.
[06:44.600 --> 06:55.580]  And because a Scientologist does, he or she has the ability to create new and better realities and improve conditions.
[06:57.360 --> 07:01.040]  Being Scientologist, you look at someone and you know absolutely that you can help them.
[07:01.040 --> 07:06.620]  So for me, it really is KSW, and it's just like, it's something that...
[07:08.840 --> 07:13.460]  I don't mince words with that, you know, with anything that LRH does.
[07:13.520 --> 07:16.160]  But that policy to me has really gone, boy.
[07:16.740 --> 07:19.540]  And every time I went through, I said, you know...
[07:19.540 --> 07:19.960]  Okay.
[07:20.320 --> 07:21.500]  So I think you get the point.
[07:21.620 --> 07:23.300]  A lot of sort of remixes were made.
[07:23.300 --> 07:29.680]  But the important factoid was that the Church of Scientology tried to censor this video, right?
[07:30.440 --> 07:37.040]  So after it was leaked on the Internet, it was mocked by thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people.
[07:37.320 --> 07:40.360]  They tried to censor the video.
[07:40.360 --> 07:47.980]  And then it was at this point where Anonymous kicked into kind of trolling and pranking high gear.
[07:47.980 --> 07:58.940]  Engaging in online acts of raiding, hacking, and pranking galore to kind of register their distaste of the Church of Scientology and protest the kind of censoring of this video.
[07:59.280 --> 08:08.980]  To give you a taste of the pranking that happened in this kind of period, I'm just going to defer to Anonymous in a quote from a person who contributed to the trolling.
[08:09.140 --> 08:11.720]  And he came to visit my class at NYU.
[08:11.900 --> 08:13.500]  And this is how he described this period.
[08:14.260 --> 08:23.360]  He said, the unified bulk of Anonymous collaborated through massive chat rooms to engage in various forms of ultra-coordinated motherf*ckery.
[08:23.840 --> 08:31.940]  Between January 15th and 23rd, Scientology websites were hacked, DDOS, to remove them from the Internet.
[08:32.340 --> 08:40.680]  The Dianetics telephone hotline was completely bombarded with prank calls and the, quote, secrets of their religion were blasted all over the Internet.
[08:40.680 --> 08:44.580]  I also personally scanned my bare ass and faxed it to them.
[08:45.060 --> 08:46.220]  Because, f*ck them.
[08:47.240 --> 08:50.780]  So, I think that gives a good sense of the trolling that happened in this era.
[08:51.280 --> 08:56.860]  So, initially, Anonymous protested the Church simply because it was f*cking fun to do so.
[08:57.160 --> 09:00.060]  In other words, they were doing it for the lulls.
[09:00.280 --> 09:04.340]  And again, most here, I suspect, are familiar with the lulls.
[09:04.340 --> 09:14.720]  But for the sort of two or three people who may not know what the lulls is, it is worth mentioning that it basically denotes the pleasures of pranking or something silly.
[09:14.720 --> 09:15.980]  And it's on a spectrum.
[09:16.140 --> 09:19.480]  It can be something that follows from something that's quite lighthearted.
[09:19.880 --> 09:31.840]  Or it can also follow from something that's really obnoxious, a really particularly potent form of trolling that produces an offensive shitstorm.
[09:32.700 --> 09:35.400]  So, there's a lot of cursing, of course, in this talk.
[09:35.600 --> 09:43.260]  So, what happened next would help transform project technology from trolling motherf*ckery into something with at least some moral legs.
[09:43.560 --> 09:51.520]  So, soon after the Tom Cruise video was leaked, there was this video that was also circulated on the Internet.
[09:51.520 --> 09:53.420]  And again, I think most people have seen it.
[09:53.520 --> 09:56.380]  I'm not going to show the full video, but it's always nice to revisit.
[09:57.300 --> 09:59.480]  Hello, leaders of Scientology.
[09:59.760 --> 10:00.580]  We are anonymous.
[10:01.020 --> 10:08.920]  Over the years, we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature.
[10:09.280 --> 10:10.920]  All of these things have caught right.
[10:11.100 --> 10:21.200]  With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us.
[10:21.420 --> 10:25.160]  Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed.
[10:25.500 --> 10:36.800]  For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment, we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form.
[10:37.160 --> 10:43.060]  We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to be completed in a short timeframe.
[10:43.980 --> 10:49.460]  Okay, so at least from what I've heard, and if I'm wrong, please let me know.
[10:49.560 --> 10:55.700]  Supposedly the video was produced just by one person, and was done so, again, for the laws, right?
[10:56.180 --> 11:04.240]  But what happened was with the circulation of this video, it kind of upped the ante, and the amount of pranking and trolling increased dramatically.
[11:05.000 --> 11:10.820]  But what also happened was that it led to some serious street protests.
[11:10.820 --> 11:25.480]  So after a period of heated debate on IRC, and people were really torn about this, should we really protest them in a kind of more serious way, they decided, anonymous, to emerge out of the kind of Internet bunkers and hit the streets.
[11:25.960 --> 11:47.100]  And while there were some earlier protests in early February, on February 10th, there was a coordinated day of protests across the United States, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, I believe one person showed up in Japan, which were really actually impressive,
[11:47.100 --> 11:53.520]  both for their high levels of attendance, I believe there were 7,000 in total, as well as their performative bravado.
[11:53.680 --> 11:54.920]  And again, a clip.
[11:55.120 --> 11:59.000]  They were really, really good at producing videos sort of as everything was happening.
[11:59.160 --> 12:02.700]  So this is a clip post this day of protests.
[12:24.800 --> 12:28.020]  We've got the right to choose it.
[12:28.180 --> 12:31.040]  There ain't no way we'll lose it.
[12:31.460 --> 12:33.140]  This is our life.
[12:33.340 --> 12:35.140]  This is our song.
[12:38.000 --> 12:40.460]  We'll fight the thousand features.
[12:41.020 --> 12:43.980]  Don't pick your destiny cause.
[12:44.480 --> 12:46.040]  You don't know us.
[12:46.180 --> 12:47.440]  You don't belong.
[12:49.860 --> 12:54.360]  We're not gonna take it anymore.
[13:03.030 --> 13:06.310]  Oh, you're so condescending.
[13:06.850 --> 13:09.430]  Your goal is never ending.
[13:10.030 --> 13:13.570]  We don't want nothing to pay from you.
[13:16.650 --> 13:22.350]  Your life is tried and jaded, boring and confiscated.
[13:23.070 --> 13:26.970]  If that's your best, your best will do.
[13:36.590 --> 13:38.730]  And free and free.
[13:39.270 --> 13:39.710]  All right.
[13:39.870 --> 13:46.530]  And it was, you know, I went to these protests in New York City, and the first one was really, really interesting because a lot of people were just like, why are you here?
[13:46.730 --> 13:47.470]  I don't know.
[13:47.710 --> 13:49.550]  I was following Mudkips on 4chan.
[13:49.950 --> 13:51.990]  Do you know anything about the Church of Scientology?
[13:51.990 --> 13:53.830]  Well, they're kind of weird, you know?
[13:54.050 --> 13:58.130]  So it was really one of the Kali world's first truly accidental protests.
[13:58.590 --> 13:59.150]  All right.
[13:59.490 --> 14:05.790]  So now that we know a little bit about Anonymous, I want to examine its conditions of birth to address two things.
[14:05.910 --> 14:14.330]  How memes act as a kind of memory, and to address how this example kind of teaches us something about spectacle and trickery.
[14:14.810 --> 14:19.470]  So we have to go to Anonymous' place of birth, which is 4chan.
[14:19.890 --> 14:23.870]  And again, I have a feeling that no one here needs a kind of introduction to 4chan.
[14:24.010 --> 14:31.830]  But I do like to quote my co-presenter who described 4chan as possibly the single most offensive artifact in human history.
[14:32.930 --> 14:34.210]  We did it, you know?
[14:34.330 --> 14:35.270]  It's like all there.
[14:35.530 --> 14:36.110]  Very apt.
[14:36.470 --> 14:44.250]  But it is worth putting on the table that anonymity is not only cherished, it's actually brought into being through a range of micro-practices.
[14:46.030 --> 14:48.850]  And this is so because you don't have to register.
[14:49.350 --> 14:51.410]  Also because nothing is archived.
[14:51.610 --> 15:02.150]  But I also think that as important is that the kind of volume and pace of posts occurs at such a rapid rate that sort of everything is quite ephemeral, right?
[15:02.650 --> 15:13.310]  Well, that's definitely the case, but there is one thing that is not ephemeral, and that has to do with the fact that 4chan is a meme-generating machine and factory, right?
[15:13.310 --> 15:16.210]  And so the most famous ones are lolcats.
[15:16.430 --> 15:20.210]  My personal favorite is ceiling cat and basement cat.
[15:22.110 --> 15:28.440]  And obviously, they're quite pleasurable.
[15:28.800 --> 15:29.600]  Everyone's laughing.
[15:29.600 --> 15:34.740]  But I think they're also important because the meme acts as the locus of memory.
[15:34.960 --> 15:43.440]  So in a context where so much is ephemeral, the meme is that which perdures because it circulates largely through constant modification.
[15:43.440 --> 15:51.000]  It's that which sticks in people's minds, which can also unite a group of people who are otherwise dispersed and unconnected.
[15:51.140 --> 15:57.160]  And I think, in fact, the initial constitution of Project Genology is kind of...
[15:57.160 --> 16:00.460]  can be seen as a kind of meme that went wild, right?
[16:00.560 --> 16:01.740]  At various different levels.
[16:01.860 --> 16:04.220]  There was the Tom Cruise video that was altered.
[16:04.580 --> 16:14.400]  There was the message to the leaders of Scientology where there was also some remixes and then just the very initial protest as well.
[16:14.580 --> 16:15.500]  F*ck boxes!
[16:16.980 --> 16:34.740]  So if Project Genology was initially a well kind of conceived act of distributed trolling, and if it was fueled in part by memes, what happened when Anonymous started to protest for serious reasons?
[16:34.960 --> 16:41.660]  What happened, in other words, to the lulls once they were kind of protesting with more traditional tactics?
[16:42.300 --> 16:58.340]  So, in fact, the traditional hallmarks of Project Genology, trolling, and pranking actually proved hard to sustain as they kind of hit the streets, as it went from kind of Internet motherf*ckery to real protest movement.
[16:58.340 --> 17:07.700]  And there was kind of old-time critics of the church who were involved in the USENET era who were just like, whoa, whoa, we're not going to get on board with you anonymous people.
[17:07.880 --> 17:09.580]  You're just too out of control.
[17:10.320 --> 17:26.940]  And basically, they asked them to reconsider their tactics, which Project Genology partially did, dropping some of the more kind of offensive, trollish and prankish behaviors and bringing on board or at least making alliances with the old-time critics of the church.
[17:26.940 --> 17:30.200]  But the important word I want to emphasize is partially.
[17:30.620 --> 17:47.060]  So, on the one hand, the protest movement, as it grew out of the Internet and grew up, used tactics of nonviolent street protest and telescoped onto the kind of abuses of the church on free speech and human rights grounds.
[17:47.060 --> 17:49.920]  And they really ran kind of a remarkable protest movement.
[17:50.220 --> 17:57.700]  On the other hand, some participants continued to engage in lulzy behavior as part of their protest arsenal.
[17:58.340 --> 18:06.240]  And the most famous one of these, there's a number of them, but the most famous one is Operation Slick Pubes, which happened here in New York City.
[18:06.640 --> 18:10.480]  And actually, I'm not going to describe in any detail what happened.
[18:10.660 --> 18:12.740]  I think you can use your imagination.
[18:12.840 --> 18:18.060]  And for those who really must know, Google, a quick Google search will yield the video.
[18:18.060 --> 18:25.620]  The important point here is that trolling and the lulz are still part of the protest repertoire.
[18:26.060 --> 18:32.020]  And some protestors claim that the lulz is not only important because that's kind of their roots.
[18:32.380 --> 18:43.080]  It's not only important because it's more fun, but it's also important because to get any media attention these days, you kind of have to go out on a limb and create spectacle.
[18:43.080 --> 18:53.360]  So in the remaining time, I cannot give justice to the range of positions and tactics that emerge over time as project technology kind of grew up.
[18:53.560 --> 19:01.800]  Because it's not really as simple as the binary between the lulz and the, quote, moral fags who protest for human rights reasons.
[19:02.100 --> 19:03.820]  The movement has diversified.
[19:04.100 --> 19:06.580]  There's a range of tactics.
[19:06.580 --> 19:09.620]  And also, there's a lot of differences cities to cities.
[19:09.620 --> 19:13.520]  Toronto versus New York versus San Francisco and so on and so forth.
[19:13.880 --> 19:24.700]  But to finish, and I'm reaching my conclusion so that we can go over to Finn, I want to raise the issue of spectacle and trickery that I think is so pertinent to this story.
[19:25.160 --> 19:45.280]  So whether or not you think that anonymous are scum of the earth douchebags, which is one definition for trolls on Encyclopedia Dramatica, or freedom fighters, they are nonetheless wizardly when it comes to enacting spectacle, which can be a very handy political weapon.
[19:45.940 --> 19:53.960]  This is something that political activists and academic Stephen Duncombe has written a lot about in a book, and I'm going to quote him.
[19:53.960 --> 20:02.380]  He's argued that spectacle must be staged in order to dramatize the unseen and expose associations elusive to the eye.
[20:02.580 --> 20:07.260]  And after Finn, I'll complicate this a little bit, but this is a good definition to start off with.
[20:08.300 --> 20:14.340]  And this, I think, is related to a question I usually get during the Q&A, and I'm actually going to raise right now.
[20:14.440 --> 20:17.880]  What impact has anonymous had on the politics of Scientology?
[20:18.320 --> 20:24.800]  This is kind of a hard question to answer, but I do think there's a few things that can be said.
[20:24.980 --> 20:27.800]  Due to the spectacle, it definitely pierced the media.
[20:28.240 --> 20:32.600]  It was on Fox News, ABC, Time Magazine, so on and so forth, right?
[20:32.820 --> 20:36.080]  And I don't think without the spectacle, it would have had that impact.
[20:36.220 --> 20:39.560]  So that's something you could say with a little bit of confidence.
[20:40.060 --> 20:44.240]  Recently, there were some high-level defections from the Church of Scientology.
[20:44.240 --> 20:50.600]  So some members who were well-respected and had been involved with the Church for a long time left.
[20:50.940 --> 20:54.420]  To connect this with anonymous is very difficult to do.
[20:54.580 --> 21:05.540]  But one thing that I can say, which is somewhat related, is that I think people were more willing to be critical of the Church post-anonymous.
[21:06.280 --> 21:08.140]  Journalists, critics, and researchers.
[21:08.580 --> 21:11.340]  For example, this is a kind of personal story.
[21:11.340 --> 21:18.560]  I had been working on this project prior to anonymous, in part because I landed in University of Alberta, where they have these archives.
[21:18.940 --> 21:26.220]  And I was actually too scared to ever really talk about this in a very public setting, much less published.
[21:26.540 --> 21:32.080]  Thanks to anonymous, ironically, I'm no longer anonymous at all about this work.
[21:32.200 --> 21:33.440]  They've got their hands tied.
[21:33.440 --> 21:33.520]  All right.
[21:33.680 --> 21:34.180]  So that...
[21:34.180 --> 21:35.880]  They definitely had that impact.
[21:37.560 --> 21:38.160]  Okay.
[21:38.340 --> 21:41.340]  So my final point, which has to do with trolling.
[21:41.760 --> 21:49.040]  So anonymous is worth looking at to ask whether Internet trolling, which anonymous is obviously only one example.
[21:49.200 --> 21:50.540]  It's kind of exploding today.
[21:51.240 --> 21:59.620]  Has any politically redeemable qualities, given that trolling can, you know, edge very close to harassment or be harassment at times.
[21:59.620 --> 22:01.670]  So I'm not going to talk about the harassment.
[22:02.440 --> 22:10.820]  But if we consider trolling as an example of the trickster, then perhaps there may be some ethical substance to their actions and to their spectacle.
[22:11.200 --> 22:19.340]  So for those that may not know, the trickster kind of encompasses a whole range of figures across the world, mostly in myth.
[22:20.180 --> 22:29.480]  They're really wildly entertaining and quite audacious mythical characters and legends, from the Norse god Loki to the North American Coyote.
[22:30.480 --> 22:36.960]  Tricksters are not always the sanitized kind of version that Disney makes them out to be.
[22:37.180 --> 22:39.380]  This is one of my favorite images of a trickster.
[22:39.640 --> 22:43.600]  Though clever, they're often quite grotesque with big penises.
[22:43.600 --> 22:51.700]  They engage in acts of cunning, deceitfulness, lying, cheating, killing, destruction, hell raising, and as their name suggests, trickery.
[22:52.240 --> 22:55.220]  Sometimes the trickery is to just kind of quell their hunger.
[22:55.440 --> 22:56.760]  They have insatiable hunger.
[22:57.120 --> 22:58.800]  Sometimes it's to prove a point.
[22:59.060 --> 23:01.260]  And sometimes it's just because they're stupid.
[23:01.580 --> 23:04.000]  In other instances, it's to do good in the world.
[23:04.520 --> 23:07.980]  Trickster, to be blunt, they're much like trollers.
[23:08.120 --> 23:09.940]  They're provocateurs and saboteurs.
[23:09.940 --> 23:14.420]  And according to Lewis Hyde, the trickster helps to renew the world.
[23:14.680 --> 23:16.200]  In fact, renew culture.
[23:16.460 --> 23:24.680]  In so far as, and this is a quote from Lewis Hyde, the trickster's function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on.
[23:25.220 --> 23:32.260]  So the mythical notion of the trickster does seem to embody many attributes of the modern Internet troll.
[23:32.960 --> 23:35.400]  And now I'm going to leave you with a bunch of questions.
[23:35.400 --> 23:47.440]  But is it reasonable to equate the mythical trickster figure Loki and the trickster in Shakespeare with figures that don't reside in myth, don't reside in fiction, but reside in our Internet?
[23:47.740 --> 23:50.360]  Although they do create a kind of mythos.
[23:51.240 --> 24:05.000]  Given that the troller can often cause actual mayhem in people's lives, does the moniker, the trickster act as an alibi, as a defense, an apology for juvenile and worse, racist, misogynist, take your pick behavior?
[24:05.380 --> 24:11.440]  Or is there a positive role for the troller to play on the Internet as a site of constant play?
[24:14.260 --> 24:19.000]  If all the world is a stage and we are merely players on it, what does that make the Internet?
[24:19.000 --> 24:20.400]  A play within a play?
[24:20.600 --> 24:21.480]  A place to play?
[24:21.840 --> 24:24.420]  Is the role of the trickster played by the troller?
[24:24.620 --> 24:27.920]  Or is the troller just playing, you know, just for the laws?
[24:28.600 --> 24:29.980]  So I'm going to leave it at that.
[24:30.360 --> 24:33.880]  And now we're going to turn it over to Finn, who's going to give a bunch of other examples.
[24:42.170 --> 24:47.150]  If anyone wants to start a band called Ultra Coordinated Motherf*ckery, I have a tambourine.
[24:47.990 --> 24:49.130]  A place to practice.
[24:49.550 --> 24:50.330]  So just let me know.
[24:51.290 --> 24:52.130]  That was good.
[24:53.450 --> 24:59.930]  So, yeah, whenever I follow one of Biela's presentations, I always feel like, you know, I've got a kite following a helicopter or something.
[25:00.170 --> 25:11.130]  But I would like to present some examples from very different media and very different eras to create context for these ideas of lulzy media and lulzy practice.
[25:11.510 --> 25:14.930]  Things from other times, other kinds of media, they have, like, very weird...
[25:14.930 --> 25:17.350]  They, like, have temperature differentials and speed differentials.
[25:17.430 --> 25:19.490]  You can get good stuff off of them, good energy.
[25:20.170 --> 25:25.130]  So these are three major ones and the sort of threads of lulzy media that I'd like to argue that they connect with.
[25:25.290 --> 25:26.350]  So the first is a book.
[25:26.890 --> 25:39.610]  It's a collection of photographs from medical journals, official archives, and the albums of soldiers and veterans, with captions and text in four languages, produced by the German pacifist anarchist Ernst Friedrich in 1924.
[25:40.570 --> 25:42.770]  Krieg dem Kriege, war against war.
[25:43.370 --> 25:50.970]  Friedrich was the kind of guy and living in the kind of environment where he would be put in a mental institution rather than go and fight on the front lines of the First World War.
[25:51.290 --> 25:53.490]  And he had a deep belief in the power of images.
[25:53.770 --> 25:58.470]  If people could see just exactly how bad it was, something like this would never happen again.
[25:59.070 --> 26:14.930]  So in a period of heavy censorship, he created this album of summary executions, mass graves, destroyed cities and forests, starving civilians, and most infamously, a run of images from the first generation of soldiers that reconstructive surgery was able to save from mechanized warfare,
[26:15.050 --> 26:17.170]  but not in a really recognizable form.
[26:17.330 --> 26:20.990]  I'm not going to show any of those, because I don't want to go see this entire audience.
[26:21.230 --> 26:23.450]  They really are hard to look at.
[26:23.870 --> 26:25.330]  I know you can take it.
[26:25.910 --> 26:31.470]  But if you just Google the title of the book, you can have your, you know, two girls, one cup moment.
[26:32.830 --> 26:43.670]  So the, um, so this mode was completely straightforward mockery and shock tactics and a kind of fail blog style that we could essentially call Lowell warmongers.
[26:44.690 --> 26:58.190]  It's juxtaposing official images of proud soldiers with marching off to fight for the fatherland with pictures of their heaped up bodies with captions written in this kind of sarcastic snark of which the highest form is like this kind of outrage, sardonic humor.
[26:58.730 --> 27:02.770]  Um, the pictures, especially the facial surgery material are presented really straight.
[27:03.190 --> 27:08.690]  Like Friedrich believes that these will blow your mind and you will refuse to participate in another war.
[27:09.410 --> 27:12.550]  Um, this is one of the most evocative of the images.
[27:12.690 --> 27:16.710]  This is from one of the retreats where they just started killing all the livestock and torching the fields.
[27:16.890 --> 27:18.550]  It's like a still from a Jodorowsky movie.
[27:18.870 --> 27:20.410]  Um, this is actually something else.
[27:20.530 --> 27:21.310]  I should have cut this slide.
[27:21.490 --> 27:24.150]  Um, so it brings us to the strategy of shock.
[27:24.150 --> 27:28.290]  Um, this is thread one of lulzy media, shockiness.
[27:28.670 --> 27:31.050]  So on one level, shock totally works.
[27:31.270 --> 27:32.070]  It's simple.
[27:32.330 --> 27:33.570]  It's really effective.
[27:33.930 --> 27:35.290]  You can see the results.
[27:35.550 --> 27:39.390]  People will actually come back of their own accord to be titillated and horrified.
[27:39.690 --> 27:42.990]  Um, and on another level, it doesn't work at all.
[27:43.170 --> 27:50.990]  It's really hard to make it stick if you're trying to create any kind of continuous social change, especially in a sort of image-saturated environment like ours.
[27:51.330 --> 27:54.930]  It's exploitative often of its subjects, and that's something we have to think about.
[27:55.070 --> 27:56.970]  And in the long run, the effectiveness is questionable.
[27:57.170 --> 28:07.250]  Like, war against war not only did not stop further wars, it's actually been virtually forgotten by everyone except people who make album art for death metal bands, which is actually how I first encountered it.
[28:07.890 --> 28:10.450]  Um, yeah, that's where the process began.
[28:10.450 --> 28:20.130]  Um, so number two, very briefly, is one of the most interesting cultural events to come of someone dropping acid on a rooftop in San Francisco in 1966.
[28:20.830 --> 28:29.510]  The tripper is Stuart Brand, who I'm sure most people here are familiar with, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog and longtime kind of Internet gadfly guy who started the well.
[28:29.810 --> 28:41.250]  Um, and he, on his acid trip, became convinced that if you could show people the whole earth from space, it would jumpstart ecological consciousness because they would see that it wasn't, like, flat and infinite.
[28:41.250 --> 28:44.210]  It was actually bounded and finite and, in fact, quite small.
[28:44.870 --> 28:49.130]  And he knew that NASA, at this point, had the capability of taking these images.
[28:49.430 --> 28:53.950]  And so his first idea was to create a demand, take a picture of the entire earth.
[28:54.510 --> 29:01.950]  But then he realized he could take advantage of what he brilliantly calls the great resource of American paranoia, and decided to rephrase it as a question.
[29:03.170 --> 29:06.050]  Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?
[29:06.790 --> 29:07.150]  Yeah.
[29:07.450 --> 29:09.150]  What are they hiding from us?
[29:09.290 --> 29:09.550]  You know?
[29:10.030 --> 29:14.970]  Um, and, uh, this is a picture of one of them in action.
[29:15.130 --> 29:18.970]  You can see it down on his shirt there, um, grooving out at the human being.
[29:19.430 --> 29:23.390]  Um, and, uh, he sold them for 25 cents.
[29:23.470 --> 29:28.210]  Sold them for 25 cents a piece, starting on the campus of UC Berkeley with a Dayglo sandwich board and a white jumpsuit.
[29:28.730 --> 29:32.090]  A project which got him kicked off of campus and got the story into the papers.
[29:32.210 --> 29:34.410]  And then he moved on to Stanford, Harvard, MIT.
[29:34.410 --> 29:36.510]  He sent these buttons to everybody.
[29:36.690 --> 29:46.470]  Soviet scientists, UN representatives, politicians, activists, Buckminster Fuller, who helpfully wrote a letter back, explaining that you can really only photograph half of the whole earth at any one time.
[29:46.470 --> 29:49.990]  Uh, this idea of helpfulness.
[29:50.610 --> 29:56.270]  Um, and, uh, and it created a classic instance of what, of what Biele called a meme that produce.
[29:56.550 --> 29:57.730]  Like this thing had legs.
[29:57.830 --> 29:58.750]  It went for years.
[29:58.910 --> 29:59.870]  People raised this question.
[30:00.010 --> 30:02.870]  It appeared in newspapers, various dignitaries wore the button.
[30:03.010 --> 30:07.110]  And then you had the 1968 first whole earth image from Apollo 8.
[30:07.110 --> 30:08.090]  You had Earth Day.
[30:08.290 --> 30:09.750]  You had NASA's blue marble image.
[30:09.850 --> 30:13.150]  A lot of them directly referenced or connected with this initial campaign.
[30:13.730 --> 30:14.490]  So, two points.
[30:15.470 --> 30:17.670]  One, it's a question and not a demand.
[30:18.070 --> 30:21.230]  Which means that it has something open-ended, kind of provocative.
[30:21.490 --> 30:22.870]  It's not an announcement of a position.
[30:23.050 --> 30:25.250]  It has kind of mystery, drama, simplicity.
[30:25.870 --> 30:27.750]  The other thing is that it's 25 cents.
[30:27.930 --> 30:28.330]  It's a button.
[30:28.510 --> 30:31.590]  Buttons are a ludicrously cheap physical mass market format.
[30:31.590 --> 30:32.910]  They're on the level of bumper stickers.
[30:33.130 --> 30:34.950]  They're one level below novelty t-shirts.
[30:35.370 --> 30:37.690]  That means you can crank out millions of them and spread them around.
[30:37.910 --> 30:41.570]  They were that period's equivalent of the YouTube video or the random JPEG.
[30:43.870 --> 30:45.110]  So, number three.
[30:45.310 --> 30:46.610]  I just love this phrase.
[30:47.090 --> 30:49.070]  Golem made of the clay of three rivers.
[30:51.310 --> 31:03.270]  So, if you were in the business of getting together with some friends and destroying the textile mills that were robbing you of your livelihood around 1811, you traveled under the banner, used the name, and pinned the blame on Ludd.
[31:03.670 --> 31:04.410]  King Ludd.
[31:04.610 --> 31:05.410]  General Ludd.
[31:05.550 --> 31:06.270]  Captain Ludd.
[31:06.410 --> 31:07.030]  Ned Ludd.
[31:07.450 --> 31:08.350]  The Luddites.
[31:09.210 --> 31:14.110]  Who was a mostly mythic figure whose legend anyone could take up as a model and an incitement.
[31:14.190 --> 31:17.590]  Anyone could adopt this persona, destroy something, lead people.
[31:17.810 --> 31:19.250]  And everyone would say, well, Ludd did that.
[31:20.070 --> 31:22.770]  So, Ludd opened up this kind of space of possibilities.
[31:23.070 --> 31:30.850]  So, if you were wrecking threshing machines and petitioning for higher wages in the 1830s, you operated under the nom de guerre, Captain Swing.
[31:31.010 --> 31:35.330]  And these are two letters from different sources with really kind of a chilling ring to them.
[31:35.430 --> 31:41.970]  And given the language you heard in that video from Anonymous addressing Scientology, I love this phrase in the letter on that side.
[31:42.910 --> 31:50.190]  If your threshing machines are not destroyed by you directly, we shall commence our labors, signed on behalf of the whole Swing.
[31:51.390 --> 31:53.390]  Which is really kind of like terrifying.
[31:53.710 --> 31:55.110]  Can you imagine opening something like that?
[31:56.590 --> 31:56.990]  Yeah.
[31:57.170 --> 31:58.590]  And I mean, some of these are a little less subtle.
[31:58.670 --> 32:02.890]  You have been the blackguard enemies of the people on all occasions you have not done as ye ought.
[32:03.250 --> 32:03.650]  So, yeah.
[32:03.830 --> 32:04.250]  Pack up.
[32:04.410 --> 32:04.590]  Move.
[32:06.430 --> 32:10.090]  So, similarly, the news was often...
[32:10.090 --> 32:11.990]  These techniques were so effective.
[32:12.350 --> 32:14.990]  This technique of creating a persona that anyone could take up.
[32:14.990 --> 32:19.350]  That many people adopted the technique after learning about it through the folks who were trying to stop it.
[32:19.630 --> 32:20.710]  Copycat crime style.
[32:21.630 --> 32:25.610]  So, when you have like, you know, these people have been receiving scandalous and disgusting letters.
[32:25.890 --> 32:26.990]  And these letters get results.
[32:27.170 --> 32:27.770]  They are threatening.
[32:27.970 --> 32:31.990]  And then you start thinking, wow, I can write scandalous, disgusting, and threatening letters to people.
[32:32.870 --> 32:36.270]  It's clearly having some kind of effect that they wouldn't be offering this huge bounty.
[32:37.830 --> 32:50.330]  Or, okay, let's say just as a thought experiment that you aren't trying to destroy agricultural machinery in 19th century England, but rather you're an artist and you're interested in playing with identity and truth in the media and pulling pranks on people,
[32:50.490 --> 32:56.870]  then perhaps you pick up the name of Luther Blissett and you both create and investigate satanic cults.
[32:56.950 --> 32:59.330]  And you kick off a giant media frenzy in Italy.
[33:00.250 --> 33:06.030]  This is one of many images of Luther Blissett who is actually... doesn't actually exist.
[33:06.150 --> 33:06.990]  He's a soccer player.
[33:07.050 --> 33:08.110]  He's a real soccer player.
[33:08.230 --> 33:14.730]  But his name became the name which hundreds of different artists all over the world have adopted for the kind of the most extreme work that they wanted to do.
[33:15.330 --> 33:16.810]  So yeah, he goes everywhere.
[33:16.970 --> 33:17.750]  He does everything.
[33:19.130 --> 33:28.410]  Or you could add to the enormous body of weird artwork produced by Monty Canson, who has had a similarly... you can Google any of these names and get their kind of extensively weird histories.
[33:29.050 --> 33:33.310]  Who's another like sort of art star that anyone can adopt, anyone can become.
[33:33.950 --> 33:39.090]  And if this model sounds familiar, that's because it brings us back to Anonymous.
[33:39.870 --> 33:44.530]  This is framed from V for Vendetta, if anyone hasn't read those.
[33:45.110 --> 33:51.450]  And yeah, this exact same figure where you have an iconic hero who then becomes someone that anyone can take up the mask.
[33:51.610 --> 33:53.070]  And anyone can learn the methods.
[33:53.110 --> 33:54.970]  Anyone can apply them in their own lives.
[33:57.230 --> 33:57.710]  So...
[33:58.610 --> 34:13.430]  I think these can be seen as a kind of like grand form of exploitable media, which is the other crucial part of Lulzzy memes, where the essence of the thing is not just that you can do it, too, but it's that here's a pre-existing form to get you going.
[34:13.610 --> 34:14.910]  You don't have to kind of start cold.
[34:15.050 --> 34:15.930]  There's a starter kit.
[34:16.110 --> 34:18.310]  There are themes and variations that you can play inside.
[34:18.490 --> 34:21.570]  And this is a potent incentive to creativity and involvement.
[34:21.730 --> 34:24.650]  I kind of like these just as they are, you know, without anything else.
[34:24.790 --> 34:25.850]  They sort of work really well.
[34:27.370 --> 34:31.010]  So the takeaway from number three is that it's incredibly powerful.
[34:31.270 --> 34:33.770]  I chose these examples of very few among many.
[34:34.030 --> 34:35.310]  Lots of people have tried this.
[34:35.430 --> 34:37.070]  It's been very effective in many different situations.
[34:37.290 --> 34:45.750]  And as summons the Luther-Blissette crusade, it's a golem made of the clay of three rivers, agitprop tactics, folk mythology, and pop culture.
[34:46.070 --> 34:49.350]  And if you can mix those well, your golem can move mountains.
[34:50.210 --> 34:56.230]  But, and this is where we get into the problems, if you have an actual message, there can be a bad signal to noise issue.
[34:56.530 --> 34:58.030]  Because anyone can use your platform.
[34:58.290 --> 35:00.950]  As in the concern over the Scientology protests.
[35:01.130 --> 35:02.750]  Like, is this a joke or not?
[35:03.530 --> 35:04.970]  When do we become serious?
[35:05.870 --> 35:09.130]  And, of course, it's easy for agent provocateur to crash your message.
[35:09.870 --> 35:14.390]  And closing the loop here, you run into the problem of lulls for the sake of lulls.
[35:14.510 --> 35:17.370]  You know, the message kind of disappears into something like this.
[35:17.490 --> 35:18.390]  Which I just cherish.
[35:19.530 --> 35:21.030]  This is from 4chan, obviously.
[35:21.210 --> 35:23.450]  But I mean, this is virtually like a piece of conceptual art.
[35:23.450 --> 35:26.430]  This has become like very abstracted from...
[35:27.450 --> 35:30.090]  Which brings us to issues and lessons.
[35:30.310 --> 35:30.870]  Yeah, let's...
[35:30.870 --> 35:31.910]  Sorry, I thought it was one more note.
[35:31.970 --> 35:33.730]  Which brings us to issues and lessons we'd like to consider.
[35:33.930 --> 35:35.630]  Starting with the question of pleasure and spectacle.
[35:35.890 --> 35:41.650]  Okay, so now that we've seen all this media, this part is not going to be as humorous or shocking.
[35:41.950 --> 35:46.270]  But hopefully still, there's going to be some interesting things to say.
[35:46.770 --> 35:52.250]  And again, we're going to address why some of these things are important and valuable and some of the downfalls as well.
[35:52.250 --> 35:54.130]  So why is pleasure important?
[35:54.390 --> 35:57.690]  You know, asking that question is almost obvious, I think, to most.
[35:57.890 --> 36:01.410]  So what I'm going to add is hopefully just a little bit of granularity.
[36:02.530 --> 36:08.070]  I think, especially as the example of anonymous shows, humor is just pleasurable.
[36:08.450 --> 36:09.530]  It keeps people going.
[36:10.170 --> 36:11.250]  So that's helpful.
[36:11.890 --> 36:16.670]  It is the case that there's certain types of politics that don't lend themselves towards humor.
[36:16.930 --> 36:18.030]  War is one of them.
[36:18.130 --> 36:18.290]  Yeah.
[36:18.450 --> 36:20.730]  Which we saw a little bit of that.
[36:21.350 --> 36:26.630]  So in a related guise, pleasure is quite practical because it helps to bind groups together.
[36:27.370 --> 36:34.730]  Groups that are even quite dispersed, such as anonymous, the Luddites, Luther Blissett.
[36:35.050 --> 36:37.970]  I don't think you can really call Luther Blissett a group.
[36:38.210 --> 36:43.970]  But nonetheless, there is a kind of identification among people who are otherwise dispersed.
[36:43.970 --> 36:51.110]  I think also related to this is that a kind of mythic figure or entity is created.
[36:51.430 --> 37:00.690]  And this could be helpful because you have a leader without having the problem of a living person who is a kind of cult of personality where too much is expected of them.
[37:00.870 --> 37:06.470]  And obviously with these groups, especially ones that are engaging in political action, there are leaders.
[37:06.470 --> 37:10.410]  There are people doing the heavy lifting and so on and so forth.
[37:10.410 --> 37:13.970]  But there's not necessarily someone who is identifiable.
[37:14.530 --> 37:21.130]  Wu Ming, which is an Italian collective in Italy, is a really good example of that.
[37:21.250 --> 37:22.030]  They write novels.
[37:23.190 --> 37:25.110]  They engage in political action.
[37:25.830 --> 37:27.390]  There's at least five of them.
[37:27.510 --> 37:32.430]  But they never, never, never allow the press to take pictures of them, for example.
[37:32.610 --> 37:34.110]  So you really don't know who they are.
[37:34.430 --> 37:39.350]  So it has created a kind of mythic aura around them.
[37:39.350 --> 37:40.310]  Okay.
[37:41.750 --> 37:55.030]  I think another really important element has to do with the fact that with the examples we raised, a lot of these groups are engaging in political action, but they're also just making stuff.
[37:55.330 --> 37:56.550]  They're making arts.
[37:56.950 --> 37:58.970]  That is useful for two reasons.
[37:59.870 --> 38:02.430]  It can be used to kind of garner attention.
[38:02.430 --> 38:04.230]  Hey, look at us.
[38:04.250 --> 38:05.770]  We're doing something interesting.
[38:06.070 --> 38:13.590]  But it also can be used to kind of sustain pride among the kind of activists themselves.
[38:14.110 --> 38:20.370]  Because as people know, sometimes with politics, there could be dry periods.
[38:20.370 --> 38:22.770]  It could be very difficult.
[38:22.770 --> 38:25.590]  The labor of politics can be very depressing.
[38:27.090 --> 38:29.550]  It's often fighting against something.
[38:29.770 --> 38:35.930]  So if you can also have something that you're creating alongside the kind of deconstruction, it could kind of keep you going.
[38:36.450 --> 38:38.510]  Obviously, hackers make software.
[38:38.730 --> 38:40.190]  And in sort of...
[38:40.190 --> 38:41.770]  I study free software as well.
[38:41.970 --> 38:45.210]  And that software keeps these groups going as well.
[38:45.210 --> 38:50.050]  But if you're not building something tangible, the art can function in a similar way.
[38:50.410 --> 39:01.870]  Now, we just want to give a few brief examples where media was and was not created in terms of kind of more mass political campaigns.
[39:02.230 --> 39:20.710]  And so to start off, I'm just going to give the Obama example whereby in his political campaign, a lot of Obama fans created artwork of all kinds, music videos and posters and so on and so forth, that were then kind of integrated into the campaign.
[39:21.070 --> 39:23.330]  And it had this very kind of vibrant life.
[39:23.570 --> 39:27.450]  The health campaign, on the other hand, had none of that.
[39:27.590 --> 39:34.930]  It didn't even have a slogan like he had with his political campaign, much less the kind of art produced by fans of healthcare.
[39:34.930 --> 39:41.530]  And again, you can't blame the sort of problems of the healthcare campaign just on that by any means.
[39:41.750 --> 39:45.330]  But nonetheless, I think it's indicative of a kind of weaker politics.
[39:45.610 --> 39:47.170]  And so you're going to give one more example.
[39:47.270 --> 39:51.390]  Well, one where you can blame it a little bit on the weakness of the campaign is Prop 8 in California.
[39:51.650 --> 39:52.890]  Is everyone familiar with Proposition 8?
[39:52.990 --> 39:55.050]  Yeah, let's... yeah, it's horrible.
[39:56.290 --> 39:56.670]  Loathsome.
[39:56.770 --> 40:01.890]  And the f*cking thing is, two months before it came to vote, it was down 17 points in the polls.
[40:01.890 --> 40:03.730]  This thing was dead in the water.
[40:03.910 --> 40:04.810]  It had no legs.
[40:05.310 --> 40:16.870]  And these asinine advertisements were created featuring a lot of slow motion clouds and people explaining very nebulous problems that they might conceivably have at some point in the future if Prop 8 did not pass.
[40:17.470 --> 40:22.350]  And our side, dare I say it, the good guys, had nothing.
[40:22.550 --> 40:23.430]  We had nothing.
[40:23.630 --> 40:26.130]  We had very, very weak presentation.
[40:26.750 --> 40:28.930]  It was like, you know, don't do this.
[40:29.050 --> 40:29.570]  It is bad.
[40:29.810 --> 40:30.730]  It is clearly bad.
[40:30.890 --> 40:31.510]  This is stupid.
[40:31.730 --> 40:32.930]  And that achieved nothing.
[40:33.190 --> 40:43.070]  So you can really see those as like, I think, cogent examples of something where there was a real opportunity to get people engaged and develop powerful messages and nothing of that sort was created.
[40:43.530 --> 40:52.930]  Okay, so now I'm just going to make one final... two final points about Spectacle and then we'll turn it over to you just for a few more minutes and then we'll be done.
[40:54.630 --> 40:58.850]  So, first of all, it is important to note that not all spectacle is pleasurable.
[40:59.530 --> 41:04.050]  I think we saw that with some of the war on war examples and I'm going to show a few others.
[41:04.370 --> 41:08.190]  Nor does spectacle have to be manufactured in all instances.
[41:08.190 --> 41:25.250]  So, for example, the Yes Men are really, really good at creating spectacle for certain political causes or campaigns or issues, let's say issues that just are very invisible and they're very hard to locate the source of the power, right?
[41:25.430 --> 41:30.110]  So they create a spectacle and make visible that source of power.
[41:30.110 --> 41:39.090]  When it comes to something like war, on the other hand, the spectacle and the shock are very... they're inherent to war itself, right?
[41:39.370 --> 41:45.530]  And in the case of the United States with the Iraq War, we actually don't see the spectacle or the shock.
[41:45.750 --> 41:49.710]  We only see it on rare occasions thanks to WikiLeaks, for example.
[41:49.970 --> 41:52.510]  But this is not always been the case.
[41:54.450 --> 42:00.090]  During the kind of latter part of the Vietnam War, journalists started to...
[42:01.050 --> 42:11.790]  showcase and feature much, much, much more graphic images and news clips in magazines, newspapers, as well as the nightly news.
[42:11.910 --> 42:22.230]  And I'm just going to finish with three images to kind of make the point not all spectacle is pleasurable and you don't have to kind of manufacture it in certain regards.
[42:22.270 --> 42:27.210]  You just have to kind of learn how to broadcast it, how to make it visible.
[42:27.210 --> 42:35.590]  So I just want to show three very kind of iconic images from that period that were again shown in the kind of mainstream news.
[42:35.850 --> 42:38.150]  This sort of stuff that we'd never see today.
[42:39.290 --> 42:39.830]  Yeah.
[42:43.760 --> 42:45.580]  So very important thing to remember.
[42:45.720 --> 42:56.080]  And the unbelievable fact that now we have to rely on the incredibly hard-working and daring people of WikiLeaks to bring us actual images of things that are happening.
[42:57.820 --> 43:04.960]  So to very quickly wrap up, I wanted to mention a few other issues that we have that we wanted to basically get into arguments about.
[43:04.960 --> 43:10.260]  Because, okay, obviously the lulz is awesome by definition.
[43:10.480 --> 43:11.840]  It is fantastic and spectacular.
[43:12.360 --> 43:20.640]  And we're talking about whether or not it's possible to use the lulz to spread messages about important things that are not necessarily awesome in quite the same way.
[43:21.160 --> 43:25.640]  And this raises the immediate problem, which I've come to think of as the stay in school problem.
[43:25.920 --> 43:31.260]  You know, which is the way it's like, you know, Spider-Man defeats Dr. Octopus and like, you know, all kinds of amazing shit is happening.
[43:31.260 --> 43:32.640]  And at the end of the day, it's like, stay in school.
[43:32.880 --> 43:34.780]  It's really important to, you know, learn algebra.
[43:34.920 --> 43:35.780]  There's always like a moral.
[43:35.980 --> 43:38.460]  And the moral kills the humor and kills the whole project.
[43:38.580 --> 43:43.960]  And I'm sure everyone is familiar with just the painful, painful media artifacts, but that's clearly the case.
[43:44.120 --> 43:45.700]  You know, it's like, learn a good lesson here.
[43:46.900 --> 43:53.020]  So what we're trying to figure out is whether it's possible to use lulz for things without kind of like destroying that spirit.
[43:53.080 --> 43:54.600]  And that involves a couple of different aspects.
[43:54.600 --> 44:02.620]  So one is that given lulz group is not your personal army, as they used to say of anonymous, as they still say of anonymous.
[44:02.780 --> 44:08.560]  Which means that you can't simply sort of approach some group of people and be like, here is X worthy cause.
[44:08.800 --> 44:12.040]  You know, spread the word, make funny stuff so that people learn about this.
[44:13.060 --> 44:22.060]  So this suggests that, first of all, the question, if you're going to build a campaign like this, how do you bubble up the good stuff or the stuff that you want?
[44:22.160 --> 44:27.780]  The message that you would like to bring forward and somehow kind of keep things balanced?
[44:28.340 --> 44:33.960]  So I don't know how many people followed this, but this is the My David Cameron project.
[44:34.260 --> 44:37.820]  They took his aggressively airbrushed publicity photo in the UK.
[44:38.640 --> 44:39.720]  It's just magnificent.
[44:39.940 --> 44:41.220]  I mean, the man looked like a Ken doll.
[44:41.220 --> 44:48.100]  And then, and then they set up a simple, this is a classic instance of trying to use, trying to create like a kind of lulz environment.
[44:48.300 --> 44:49.900]  So they created an exploitable form.
[44:50.000 --> 44:52.580]  They made a simple web app where they had a blank version of this poster.
[44:52.680 --> 44:56.400]  You could insert your own slogan and then you could like have kind of a voting system.
[44:56.560 --> 44:57.640]  You could bubble some stuff up.
[44:57.880 --> 45:09.200]  And as you can see, the hard part was they were kind of angling for the top poster and kind of wanting to head away from the lower one or the ones where he's just like, you know, dressed up in crazy clothes or sort of speaking gibberish.
[45:10.760 --> 45:14.360]  And this raises the question, like, so how are you going to...
[45:14.360 --> 45:14.960]  Is it...
[45:14.960 --> 45:22.360]  Can you cultivate a community that can actually come up with genuinely funny, crazy, lulzy stuff without kind of killing them by being like, no, you need to do...
[45:22.360 --> 45:25.320]  We need to have only the responsible things that make us look good.
[45:25.460 --> 45:26.880]  Only those need to come to the fore.
[45:28.480 --> 45:32.840]  Similar question is how do you use shock tactically so that it doesn't lose its kind of luster?
[45:33.500 --> 45:40.580]  Because if you don't, if you just keep deploying it, people end up either turning the page or you end up running rotten, you know, and no one really wants to end up doing that.
[45:42.080 --> 45:44.780]  Yeah, the images are often kind of not enough on their own.
[45:46.860 --> 45:48.480]  And finally, the...
[45:48.480 --> 45:50.060]  I thought there was a slide there too.
[45:50.360 --> 45:51.300]  Totally screwed this up.
[45:52.520 --> 45:59.740]  Yeah, finally, the kind of metaphor that I've been trying to work with is that, like, really lulzy groups, I've noticed, have a tendency to, like, eat themselves.
[46:00.180 --> 46:04.900]  And they sort of, like, eat any attempt to make them, to, like, control them or contain them in any way.
[46:04.900 --> 46:12.000]  They sort of, like, there was this old alchemical idea of the universal solvent that you could create, like a liquid that would burn through anything.
[46:12.280 --> 46:13.520]  And then how would you store it?
[46:13.600 --> 46:14.660]  How would you contain it?
[46:14.720 --> 46:15.860]  What do you do with that?
[46:16.100 --> 46:22.180]  So what we're wondering is, and what we'd like to kind of talk to everybody about is, can this be used in this way?
[46:22.240 --> 46:27.160]  Is it even possible to take the power of lulz and harness it towards non-lulzy purposes?
[46:27.160 --> 46:37.020]  And with that, on the right time, I've actually started a little website that's going to be, like, basically a kit, theoretically, for people who want to do lulzy stuff.
[46:37.160 --> 46:41.300]  There's almost nothing there yet except a GIF of, like, evil monsters playing accordions.
[46:42.620 --> 46:46.880]  But after this discussion and after this material is up, there will be more there.
[46:47.040 --> 46:49.720]  Please feel free to email me if you want to talk more about this.
[46:49.720 --> 46:57.180]  If you're interested in starting some kind of campaign for some kind of good cause and you would like to try to bring these techniques in, please just let me know.
[46:57.440 --> 46:58.300]  And, yeah.
[46:58.480 --> 46:59.320]  And I think we're done.
[46:59.520 --> 47:00.600]  It's open for questions.
[47:00.780 --> 47:01.100]  Thank you.
[47:01.240 --> 47:02.200]  Yes, please harass us.
[47:02.300 --> 47:02.860]  Thank you so much.
[47:12.180 --> 47:12.540]  Hello.
[47:12.720 --> 47:14.140]  That was a very great talk.
[47:14.980 --> 47:15.700]  Two things.
[47:16.600 --> 47:23.400]  During the healthcare debate, I think the tea partiers were actually great about...
[47:23.600 --> 47:25.000]  Tea baggers, whatever the f*ck they're called.
[47:25.460 --> 47:28.460]  But they had all sorts of incredible imagery with, like...
[47:28.460 --> 47:29.020]  They had the death panels.
[47:29.020 --> 47:33.100]  Yeah, like Obama with Hitler mustaches and all sorts of bizarre shit.
[47:33.100 --> 47:34.760]  Yeah, they rocked the boat on that one.
[47:34.840 --> 47:35.020]  Yeah.
[47:36.040 --> 47:41.220]  But I also wanted to get back to the Yes Men, which you only touched on very briefly.
[47:41.380 --> 47:43.860]  But to me, they're the absolute kings of this.
[47:43.980 --> 47:44.140]  Yeah.
[47:44.280 --> 47:48.960]  Because everything I've ever seen them do is just utterly brilliant.
[47:49.220 --> 47:51.820]  And they pull it off incredibly and it's hilarious.
[47:51.820 --> 47:57.980]  And they even did something with a giant inflatable cock, which was making me think about the pictures.
[47:58.280 --> 47:58.400]  Yeah.
[47:58.740 --> 47:59.580]  It's a great movie.
[48:00.060 --> 48:06.700]  But they're clearly all done with, like, real moral purpose.
[48:07.020 --> 48:07.060]  Yeah.
[48:07.060 --> 48:07.800]  That's unambiguous.
[48:08.200 --> 48:08.480]  Right?
[48:08.480 --> 48:15.820]  And so when I see what they've done, there's an immediate shock and awe and laughter.
[48:16.160 --> 48:19.700]  And then I just am like, wow, that was brilliant.
[48:19.860 --> 48:21.640]  They got their point across perfectly.
[48:21.640 --> 48:22.060]  Mm-hmm.
[48:22.060 --> 48:33.880]  So I'm not exactly sure what it is that they're able to do that manages to combine everything and make it their moral point so clearly as well.
[48:34.080 --> 48:34.980]  But I don't know.
[48:35.060 --> 48:37.580]  Whatever that is is the key to it all, I think.
[48:37.780 --> 48:37.900]  Yeah.
[48:38.140 --> 48:39.120]  No, that's a great point.
[48:39.120 --> 48:44.440]  And I think something to really look out for is the fact that they've created the Yes Men labs.
[48:44.720 --> 48:49.000]  Because one thing about the Yes Men is that they're frickin' fantastic, but there's only two of them.
[48:49.000 --> 48:52.920]  And perhaps the answer is like they're just really frickin' good at it.
[48:53.000 --> 48:54.120]  They really practice it.
[48:54.240 --> 48:58.560]  But is it something that can be exploitable media in the sense that others can adopt?
[48:58.860 --> 49:01.720]  And time will tell because that's precisely what they're doing.
[49:02.000 --> 49:07.620]  They're creating a kind of class and kit to train others to do what they do.
[49:07.800 --> 49:12.140]  And that will be really interesting to see if other people will be able to pull it off.
[49:12.320 --> 49:12.500]  Yeah.
[49:12.560 --> 49:13.340]  That's a great point.
[49:13.500 --> 49:13.680]  Yeah.
[49:13.680 --> 49:14.420]  Yeah.
[49:14.620 --> 49:20.980]  I know this example isn't quite as important and it didn't have that much loss and it was a lot more light-hearted.
[49:21.220 --> 49:25.180]  But I was surprised you guys didn't mention Team Coco or anything like that.
[49:25.600 --> 49:30.800]  You guys considered them along the same vein of, you know, they did get together, they gave some support.
[49:30.800 --> 49:43.580]  I know it was just a really unimportant cost in the end, but it was really effective and, you know, Conan started a tour and he got his own show and all that basically because of Team Coco's support.
[49:43.680 --> 49:49.540]  You know, obviously he had his play on it, but without Team Coco's support, things would have been a lot different.
[49:50.180 --> 49:51.340]  That's a really good...
[49:51.340 --> 49:51.420]  Yeah.
[49:51.700 --> 49:55.100]  Actually, to be totally honest, I didn't even think of that, but that's actually a really good example.
[49:55.360 --> 50:00.300]  Yeah, because it was a lot more light-hearted and all that and, you know, no violence and all that, but still it was very effective.
[50:00.580 --> 50:00.680]  Yeah.
[50:00.940 --> 50:01.000]  Yeah.
[50:01.420 --> 50:02.200]  No, that's...
[50:02.200 --> 50:02.300]  Yeah.
[50:02.460 --> 50:04.180]  I mean, they had a huge suite of different...
[50:04.180 --> 50:04.260]  Yeah.
[50:04.260 --> 50:05.820]  It was very savvy the way that they went about it.
[50:05.920 --> 50:06.560]  That's a really...
[50:06.560 --> 50:06.660]  Yeah.
[50:06.800 --> 50:07.480]  Something to look at.
[50:09.540 --> 50:13.740]  So I promise all of our answers aren't going to be like, that's a great point and we're going to think about that.
[50:13.740 --> 50:14.060]  Sure.
[50:14.580 --> 50:18.820]  I have to apologise because this isn't even a question and it's pretty much like the last two.
[50:19.080 --> 50:21.360]  But I just wanted to make a comment.
[50:22.620 --> 50:27.540]  What you're talking about at the end reminded me of a documentary that I saw about in Serbia.
[50:27.820 --> 50:27.980]  Hmm.
[50:29.240 --> 50:32.820]  The so-called Fall of Milosevic was...
[50:33.800 --> 50:49.240]  The documentary was by the BBC and it was about a bunch of really young kind of pro-democracy people and their whole thing was about farce, you know, jokes, they were not earnest and they were not trying to be, you know, political in the kind of classic sense.
[50:49.500 --> 50:49.680]  Yeah.
[50:49.880 --> 50:58.800]  But it was also interesting because that group got a lot of funding from outside and yet it didn't manage to kill, you know, it didn't kill the lulls, so to speak, you know.
[50:59.140 --> 51:00.320]  And they still managed to achieve their aims.
[51:00.460 --> 51:00.920]  I just thought it was interesting.
[51:01.040 --> 51:01.940]  I don't know if you've thought about that.
[51:01.940 --> 51:02.960]  Do you have the name of the documentary?
[51:03.620 --> 51:03.940]  Nope.
[51:04.300 --> 51:04.540]  Sorry.
[51:04.820 --> 51:05.040]  BBC.
[51:05.040 --> 51:06.360]  But we can Google for the rough cloud.
[51:06.360 --> 51:06.700]  Yeah.
[51:06.940 --> 51:14.720]  I mean, it definitely seems that if the lulls is generated from within a group who is channeling it towards something, then the lulls doesn't get in the way.
[51:14.860 --> 51:20.380]  It's more like when there is an independent lullsy thing, can that be channeled towards something else?
[51:20.720 --> 51:34.540]  And I think also what's great about all the examples that people are giving, and this is something that really came into fruition as we planned for this, lullsy media that's exploitable that has these qualities is actually a lot more common than even I thought.
[51:34.740 --> 51:35.640]  You know what I mean?
[51:35.640 --> 51:36.000]  Yeah.
[51:36.240 --> 51:37.600]  It's a lot more common.
[51:37.800 --> 51:44.540]  I mean, it exists in sort of ponds and patches, but we're trying to kind of collect it in sort of one arena to make it more visible.
[51:44.980 --> 51:45.080]  Yeah.
[51:46.000 --> 51:49.140]  Yeah, so I think the healthcare debate is an interesting example.
[51:49.140 --> 52:01.700]  So to come back to that, I think that the fact that the right wing had a very, you know, was very effective at this sort of like viral meme messaging and all that sort of thing.
[52:01.940 --> 52:11.220]  I don't think that that's disconnected from the fact that they actually had a clear message and a clear platform and that they actually had people mobilized at least to some extent.
[52:11.220 --> 52:11.600]  Yeah.
[52:11.840 --> 52:16.520]  And I mean, it's hard to say like which really came first or whatever.
[52:16.660 --> 52:18.060]  There's definitely like a relationship there.
[52:18.160 --> 52:30.080]  But I mean, you can't really have any kind of like meme supporting the healthcare reform that did get passed because, you know, it's been months and nobody still knows what it really consisted of.
[52:30.080 --> 52:32.320]  So how do you have a meme that supports that?
[52:32.500 --> 52:32.920]  You know what I mean?
[52:33.040 --> 52:37.900]  So I think that you have to look at it kind of in connection with like everything else that's going on too.
[52:38.080 --> 52:42.680]  But I think what that connection is, is kind of something that varies a lot.
[52:42.820 --> 52:43.140]  You know what I mean?
[52:43.540 --> 52:49.540]  And that's, I mean, no, that's, that's part of the thing is like to have that, you know, what is, what is V from V for Vendetta about freedom forever?
[52:49.880 --> 52:53.840]  You know, what is, what was chenology about, you know, the downfall of the church?
[52:53.980 --> 52:55.720]  Like these are these very powerful things.
[52:56.060 --> 52:56.180]  Yeah.
[52:56.600 --> 52:57.180]  Very specific.
[52:57.180 --> 53:02.880]  Hey, I was wondering what you guys... where you guys think improv everywhere fits into the ecosystem.
[53:03.360 --> 53:09.200]  Because it's... one of the things that's kind of interesting to me is it seems like Lulz entirely absent of Troll.
[53:09.560 --> 53:10.080]  Yeah, yeah.
[53:11.780 --> 53:13.200]  There may be a touch.
[53:13.540 --> 53:17.080]  It seems like when they have Troll, it's a failure mode.
[53:17.360 --> 53:21.500]  Like, as portrayed in kind of This American Life about the fam night.
[53:21.800 --> 53:22.400]  Yeah, yeah.
[53:22.480 --> 53:27.060]  And I'm kind of... I find that really interesting and really disconnected from a lot of the stuff.
[53:27.180 --> 53:29.940]  But also one of those things that couldn't happen without the net.
[53:30.400 --> 53:30.660]  Mm-hmm.
[53:31.980 --> 53:39.180]  And kind of... they put me in mind of the 60s French...
[53:40.600 --> 53:41.080]  Situations?
[53:41.200 --> 53:41.680]  Situations.
[53:41.940 --> 53:42.260]  Thank you.
[53:42.820 --> 53:48.060]  They kind of put... and I'm wondering where, like, those things fit into kind of the Lulz media kind of thing.
[53:48.500 --> 53:49.400]  No, that's a great point.
[53:49.660 --> 53:58.180]  For people that don't know, improv everywhere do, like, these wacky things where they'll collect hundreds of people at Grand Central Station.
[53:58.460 --> 54:00.300]  And at one moment, they all freeze.
[54:01.820 --> 54:05.320]  And then everyone around them is like, what the f*ck is going on?
[54:05.440 --> 54:05.740]  You know?
[54:06.000 --> 54:07.960]  It's really incredible to watch.
[54:08.100 --> 54:13.440]  And actually when I saw that for the first time, I was like, oh, this could be mobilized for political protest.
[54:13.440 --> 54:16.680]  The question is, can you get those large numbers as they do?
[54:16.920 --> 54:17.000]  Yeah.
[54:17.000 --> 54:18.460]  Because I think...
[54:18.460 --> 54:19.080]  What?
[54:19.260 --> 54:20.540]  They did when they paired with the Yes Men.
[54:20.620 --> 54:21.700]  When they paired with the Yes Men.
[54:21.880 --> 54:22.040]  Yeah.
[54:22.040 --> 54:23.120]  I didn't know they paired with them.
[54:23.340 --> 54:24.380]  They did the newspaper.
[54:24.680 --> 54:25.240]  Oh, okay.
[54:25.720 --> 54:26.040]  Yeah.
[54:26.940 --> 54:27.260]  Yeah.
[54:27.360 --> 54:29.020]  No, I mean, it's... and it's very much, like...
[54:29.020 --> 54:30.480]  It's very much along those lines of, like...
[54:30.480 --> 54:35.100]  Yeah, I mean, I think, again, like, we're just starting to kind of, like, look at this and start to take some of these different things apart.
[54:35.100 --> 54:42.340]  But that quality of, like, just wanting to bring joy first and foremost is definitely a part of their ethos and something kind of neat to think about.
[54:42.840 --> 54:43.380]  Yes, sir.
[54:43.980 --> 54:49.660]  Yeah, I wanted to get your thoughts a little bit on maybe the extent to which we...
[54:49.660 --> 54:56.980]  When we look at these actions, that we really focus on the ones that have been successful.
[54:57.160 --> 54:58.720]  And that's maybe stopping us a little bit.
[54:58.800 --> 55:04.460]  When we talk about the Yes Men, we invoke them as these godlike interveners.
[55:04.460 --> 55:05.900]  And we know that that's not true.
[55:06.100 --> 55:15.000]  I think if we look at some of the additional footage on the last DVD, there's a couple of actions that didn't actually make it into the documentary.
[55:15.380 --> 55:15.560]  Yeah.
[55:15.660 --> 55:17.380]  Where they're not doing a good job.
[55:17.700 --> 55:24.520]  You know, there's this one site that they try to go visit when they're down in Bhopal and they get kicked out and they don't really make it past the front door.
[55:24.800 --> 55:24.920]  Yeah.
[55:24.920 --> 55:38.560]  I think that these are amazing actions, but somehow it feels really intimidating to want to get into it when all we see or really know about is the stuff that's mediatized and that's really successful.
[55:38.840 --> 55:38.940]  Yeah.
[55:38.940 --> 55:38.960]  Yeah.
[55:39.200 --> 55:48.380]  And so I'm just wondering that it feels as if there's room to also acknowledge and recognize that there's a beginning to get into stuff like that.
[55:48.840 --> 55:49.020]  Yeah.
[55:49.020 --> 55:53.000]  I remember being, you know, like 12 years old and doing crank phone calls.
[55:53.160 --> 55:55.420]  And so it felt as if there was a beginning there.
[55:56.240 --> 55:56.340]  Mm-hm.
[55:56.860 --> 55:57.300]  So I don't know.
[55:57.360 --> 56:03.740]  So I'm just kind of wondering, like, what are your thoughts on just kind of acknowledging the historical body that has led people to...
[56:03.740 --> 56:05.660]  No, we really...that's actually really important.
[56:05.860 --> 56:15.720]  Like, I mean, one of the only things that makes standup any good is the fact that all standup comedians go to clubs where they watch people die on their ass on stage night after night after night.
[56:15.820 --> 56:22.840]  Like, when you see enough people just collapse into flop sweat and completely fail, like, you get more comfortable with yourself.
[56:22.840 --> 56:24.400]  You get more comfortable with experimenting.
[56:26.160 --> 56:33.260]  And I think something where it'd be great to create, like, one of the things maybe we can do with the site is start to make it into a repository of, like, things that didn't work.
[56:33.260 --> 56:33.520]  Bloopers.
[56:33.520 --> 56:34.640]  And how they didn't work and why.
[56:34.840 --> 56:35.820]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[56:35.960 --> 56:38.480]  Like, the bloopers reel, the sort of problems.
[56:38.800 --> 56:41.040]  Because, yeah, there's an enormous amount to learn from that.
[56:41.140 --> 56:45.020]  And, yeah, if anybody has good examples of failed forms, that's one to start.
[56:45.180 --> 56:45.220]  Send to us.
[56:45.220 --> 56:45.700]  Yeah, email.
[56:45.860 --> 56:46.420]  Email me.
[56:46.700 --> 56:47.240]  Or Gabriella.
[56:47.480 --> 56:47.600]  Yeah.
[56:48.080 --> 56:48.780]  Great, thank you.
[56:49.060 --> 56:50.680]  We only have, like, five minutes left.
[56:50.720 --> 56:52.140]  So I'm sorry, we'll be fast.
[56:52.920 --> 56:54.540]  Hey, so you mentioned Luddites.
[56:54.760 --> 56:54.880]  Mm-hm.
[56:54.880 --> 56:59.120]  And I've been feeling a bit like a Luddite at this conference because I'm really interested in print culture.
[56:59.120 --> 56:59.440]  Mm-hm.
[56:59.460 --> 57:03.100]  And ephemera that was passed from hand to hand.
[57:03.340 --> 57:03.680]  Yeah.
[57:04.460 --> 57:05.700]  In different ways.
[57:06.020 --> 57:09.660]  And were definitely based on trickery, like zines and underground culture.
[57:09.940 --> 57:10.080]  Yeah.
[57:10.300 --> 57:25.320]  So I'm wondering, when you guys are talking about having this go from, like, the screen to the streets, do you think that there's a possibility that the future might depend more on material goods than everything else?
[57:25.540 --> 57:27.780]  Like, that it might morph into something...
[57:29.060 --> 57:29.440]  Interesting.
[57:29.820 --> 57:30.100]  Different.
[57:30.540 --> 57:31.720]  That's a really neat idea.
[57:31.860 --> 57:36.040]  Because, yeah, I mean, a major part of any protest movement is who you can actually mobilize.
[57:36.560 --> 57:43.040]  Like, you know, because it's easy to sit on your butt and, like, you know, do something through PayPal, but to actually get people knocking on doors and walking around is...
[57:43.040 --> 57:49.120]  So, yeah, maybe something where there is, like, an emphasis on, yeah, like, physical stuff, because then you have this awesome thing and it engages you.
[57:49.220 --> 57:57.260]  Well, yeah, that's an important question because I think that you're raising the question of how we get attached to objects and the material form really matters.
[57:57.820 --> 58:07.920]  And why I think means work in terms of attachment is because of the fact that there's consistency and change always at the same time, which gets people coming back.
[58:07.920 --> 58:13.120]  So, I know what it is, but it's going to be slightly different, but I don't know how it's going to be different, so I want to see, so I'm going to go, right?
[58:13.340 --> 58:18.140]  But that's very different from an attachment to zines, for example, or the button, you know?
[58:18.380 --> 58:23.060]  So, understanding the kind of material properties, I do think, is a really important part of the equation.
[58:23.300 --> 58:23.860]  Yeah, absolutely.
[58:25.300 --> 58:25.620]  Okay.
[58:26.000 --> 58:26.420]  Three minutes.
[58:26.580 --> 58:27.100]  Great talk.
[58:27.400 --> 58:27.720]  Thank you.
[58:27.820 --> 58:28.360]  I have to say that.
[58:28.360 --> 58:28.800]  I'm your friends.
[58:30.620 --> 58:41.900]  Can you talk a little bit about lulzy media for preliterate people in areas where they aren't really into print, and maybe they're getting, like, TV, which is, you know, like, five corporate-controlled channels.
[58:42.080 --> 58:42.240]  Yeah.
[58:42.240 --> 58:44.120]  Are people doing lulz over, like, radio?
[58:44.600 --> 58:45.160]  That's a great question.
[58:45.240 --> 58:45.940]  What's going on?
[58:46.820 --> 58:48.440]  Shit, that is an awesome question.
[58:48.680 --> 58:49.360]  Yeah, that's a great question.
[58:49.600 --> 58:51.880]  Yeah, I think you just won because you stumped us.
[58:52.080 --> 58:52.200]  Yeah.
[58:52.380 --> 58:52.620]  Totally.
[58:52.900 --> 58:54.460]  Like, I have no idea how to answer that.
[58:54.600 --> 58:54.660]  Yeah.
[58:54.660 --> 58:56.160]  I mean, again, in sort of, like...
[58:56.160 --> 58:57.300]  I'm guessing radio.
[58:57.300 --> 58:59.400]  Yeah, no, there's absolutely...
[58:59.400 --> 59:05.300]  And I'm just starting to think, like, there's got to be, because there's some great, like, comedy that plays with radio itself, but yeah, this is something...
[59:05.880 --> 59:08.940]  Okay, we're going to just start this investigation right here, but yes.
[59:09.100 --> 59:20.580]  I mean, slave revolts in Haiti depended on dance and music that traveled over long distances, and there's kind of some meme-like qualities to it, but that's the only kind of historical example.
[59:20.580 --> 59:23.500]  I think some contemporary ones would be fascinating to kind of look at.
[59:23.720 --> 59:24.080]  Absolutely.
[59:24.500 --> 59:24.700]  Yeah.
[59:24.700 --> 59:32.720]  Well, I think mine might actually tie into that, but move into a different area, is, for instance, Orson Wallace in War of the Worlds.
[59:32.800 --> 59:33.120]  Yes.
[59:33.340 --> 59:33.400]  Yeah.
[59:33.460 --> 59:33.640]  Okay?
[59:34.060 --> 59:38.160]  So there's a completely fictitious event that stunned a lot of people.
[59:38.400 --> 59:38.540]  Yeah.
[59:38.740 --> 59:43.200]  So part of the thing that's interesting for me is, what about the responsibility of it?
[59:43.200 --> 59:43.620]  Yeah.
[59:43.620 --> 59:51.340]  In other words, being a great orator, being a great command of an audience, doesn't necessarily mean that you're going in an ethical direction.
[59:51.720 --> 59:53.860]  And to some extent, it obfuscates the point.
[59:54.320 --> 59:54.440]  Yeah.
[59:54.900 --> 59:55.720]  If you...
[59:55.720 --> 59:58.720]  It obfuscates the intelligent debate that you want to have.
[59:58.920 --> 59:59.020]  Yeah.
[59:59.240 --> 01:00:01.900]  So what about the responsibility tied to...
[01:00:01.900 --> 01:00:04.440]  I mean, I think I'll defer a little bit again.
[01:00:04.620 --> 01:00:11.240]  Stephen Duncombe has written a whole book about this, and how spectacle is really important, but, you know, just think of Hitler.
[01:00:11.560 --> 01:00:11.860]  Yeah.
[01:00:11.980 --> 01:00:17.120]  Who is really, really good at spectacle, and, you know, created a huge mess as a result.
[01:00:17.120 --> 01:00:19.300]  And so it's a double-edged sword.
[01:00:19.480 --> 01:00:22.840]  That's what makes it powerful, but it has to be done responsibly, right?
[01:00:23.620 --> 01:00:37.560]  But I think the instance you raised is the most interesting one, because I think, for the most part, you can say, you know, responsible, irresponsible, but there are gray area ones, and War of the Worlds is a good example of a gray area one.
[01:00:37.660 --> 01:00:44.520]  And that's the one where you really have to put it out in the open and debate it, as opposed to the kind of more black and white ones.
[01:00:44.520 --> 01:00:45.080]  Yeah.
[01:00:45.420 --> 01:00:45.860]  Brilliant.
[01:00:46.080 --> 01:00:46.180]  Yeah.
[01:00:46.220 --> 01:00:48.760]  Thank you all so much, and stay here for Robert Steele.
[01:00:49.360 --> 01:00:49.420]  Thank you very much.
[01:00:49.420 --> 01:00:49.660]  Good night.
[01:00:50.340 --> 01:00:50.760]  You're welcome.
[01:00:56.560 --> 01:00:57.020]  You're welcome.
[01:00:57.640 --> 01:00:58.000]  Thank you.
[01:00:59.460 --> 01:00:59.900]  Yeah.
[01:01:00.120 --> 01:01:00.360]  Totally.