I agree with Gladwell, based on my own personal experience with “activism”, or at least political dissent online. There are countless Facebook groups, blogs, and tweeters that I have followed who are in line with my personal politics, and yet none of them encourage me to really DO anything. At best I’ll sign a petition or write a Congressman.

Those passive forms of activism allow me to feel like I’m doing ~something~ without really committing, and not just because I’m lazy or disinterested, but because no physical initiatives ever seem to emerge from these groups. This is especially true of the Left – and by that I mean the real Left, not self-proclaimed “liberals”, who, incidentally, seem far more active.

It’s pretty clear that without any sort of formal leadership or organizational structure, that there will never be any sort of revolution, because that which keeps the status quo in place is a highly organized and well-oiled machine decades in the making.  A rowdy band of misfits, as well-intentioned or self-righteous and indignant as they can be from the comfort of their living rooms or offices, really aren’t doing much of anything to change anything.

Mind you, I count myself amongst those who are doing nothing, and I wish that wasn’t the case.

This is not to say that there are not people who are truly active, but that they go largely unnoticed by the general public, seen as a nuisance, or perhaps as asking for too much.  People said the same thing about the Civil Rights Movement, too.  And in the generations since, we’ve been increasingly conditioned to accept the status quo.

There has been a sense of powerlessness, mitigated to some extent by surges of political activity every two years, and even that is largely ineffective due to the tyranny of the two-party system.  Social media, though, is the new placebo, satisfying the desire to do at least something about all the things we know to be wrong in the world, without committing bodily or any real expectations of making a difference.

1. BP CEO saying that the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is relatively tiny compared to the size of the ocean. By that logic, someone could argue that the over a million people killed in a war built on a false pretext is tiny compared to the 6 billion people in the world.  Oh, wait…
2. SB 1070 – more popularly known as the “Arizona Immigration bill”
3. Arizona banning ethnic studies
4. Texas conservatives working to revise history along Biblical/American exceptionalist/racist lines in textbooks
5. Corporations authorized to buy U.S. elections after the Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission case
6. The surge of people “tweeting” and “microblogging” about nonsense while remaining dormant on things that matter
7. People wasting their time talking about Jay-Z is a devil-worshiping Freemason.  Even if he is, who cares? There are bigger things to worry about.
8. Republicans and Democrats both screwing the public through bankrupt policy, while continuing to trick people into thinking there’s any substantive difference between them.
9. The fact that legally, BP may only be obligated to pay no more than $75 million in damages, which doesn’t even begin to cover it, and that they’re fighting even that.  You want to know what’s “tiny”?  $75 million compared to the hundreds of billions^PDF that BP makes every year
10. Open racism coming back in style
11. The mainstream media continuing to report on sensationalist bullshit, rather than covering the stuff that really matters – the corporate version of #6
12. Omar al-Bashir “winning” the election in Sudan, in spite of being convicted of war crimes and genocide by the U.N.
13. People chasing conspiracy theories, while doing nothing about evil acts being committed every day out in the open
14. How perfectly the “divide and conquer” social strategy is continuing to work
15. All this talk of Iran having nuclear weapons, while no one says anything to Israel
16. The betrayed promise of “change” from President Obama
17. How the people around me don’t know and don’t seem to care about what’s going on in the world
18. Facebook’s new privacy policy violations
19. Obama authorizing the targeted killing of a U.S. Citizen, setting a dangerous precedent
20. How people are pawns of their respective political parties, rather than thinking critically as individuals

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play some Torchlight, as an alternative to shooting myself in the head…

And it affirms something to which I’ve long attested:

…the film critic’s pathetic lot – to forever claw and scratch for recognition by other film critics, since no one else – namely those other film students who went on to actually make films – gives a damn.

What is art?

This question is one that has been debated perhaps since the beginning of human history – indeed I would venture a guess that even the cave painters Ebert mentions in his post argued the validity of those works, unaware as to how they would inform historians of the social context in which they were created.  It is only at the modern heights of arrogance that could one claim to be able to answer this age-old question with any certainty.  And it is hardly possible to be any more arrogant than making a universal truth claim, let alone one expected to hold for eternity. The whole thing is laughable.

I have argued in the past that video games are the ultimate form of expression, and what is art if not expression?  Indeed video games are a convergence of art from just about every medium – audio, visual, literary – and their social impact is ever-increasing.  Ebert makes his statement by observing video footage of a few games offered up as art, already prepared to deny the possibility.  Aside from the sheer fallacy of denying art as a form of expression, there is also the matter of his evaluation not being made from the proper standpoint.  As I argued in the above-linked essay, what sets video games apart from film, television, music, books, and other mediums is their interactivity.

That one thing [that sets video games apart from other media] is interactivity. You can rip a page out of a book in frustration as a story takes an unfavorable turn, or you can yell your lungs out at movie screen as the stupid teenage girl wanders down the dark hallway alone towards the lurking killer, but chances are that you’re not going to change anything. In a video game, however, a person is given a measure of control over the characters and environment presented.

To evaluate any video game without playing it is as dubious as evaluating a piece of music by only reading the lyrics or reading the sheet music, or evaluating the merits of a film based on – insert laughter here – a critic’s review.

If the art is expression argument alone doesn’t validate video games’ status as an art form, then allow me to speak from a more personal place, because is not the meaning of art in any context entirely subjective?  I can attribute to two single moments in the games Chrono Cross (Playstation) and Lunar: Eternal Blue (Sega CD), the abstracts that would expand to become the cornerstone of my personal philosophy.  The former, in that one moment, had me question how color could correspond to sound, and the latter had me considering the relationship between creation and destruction, which I would later come to understand more abstractly as two forms of change.  In that art has often sparked philosophical inquiry and introspection – for the creator and the audience – video games clearly fit the bill.

Furthermore, my ethics – manifest in my sense of justice – if not founded in, was certainly bolstered by the lofty ideals of good vs. evil I found in video games as a child.  The evolution of video game conflicts from black and white conceptualizations of good and evil in the “old school” to the shades of gray now explored through the tough moral choices players have to make in the “new school” not only showcases video games’ increasing complexity, but also their increasing relevance to the real world.  Art, as a medium, is nothing without its flexibility, and its ability to evolve as a reflection of the surrounding social atmosphere.

My inspiration to write came from video games as well, at first little more than an emulation or reworking of video game plots, but soon thereafter the expression of a burgeoning imagination, forged in outlandish worlds and impossible situations.  Video games spoke to me in ways that other mediums simply did not, and if we are measuring art in terms of social or personal impact, then Ebert’s claim is not only false for me, but a personal slight to me and others like me, for whom games have been either a subtle or direct influence.  His claim invalidates me, personally – dismissing the countless hours in which I was visually, aurally, physically, and emotionally invested and engaged – as frivolous, or a waste of time.

This is saying nothing of how it invalidates the creators of video games – themselves musicians, painters, 3D modelers, programmers, writers, choreographers, actors, and more – each of which, outside the context of the video game itself, Ebert could hardly argue were not artists.

So, on what sort of project, exactly, could established artists from many different fields come together, only to miraculously create something that is not art?

To propose that such a project could even exist is to stand at the very apex of stupidity.

For someone who is without a doubt – no matter how one chooses to define art – not an artist himself, and one who has never been touched by the myriad forms of expression contained within a video game, Ebert only proves himself incapable of making such a judgment.  He also proves, for his increasing detachment from an evolving media culture, his sheer cultural irrelevance.

The purpose was not to antagonize or slander Malkin herself – although she is deserving of every attack leveled at her – but to gain some insight into how run-of-the-mill conservatives think, and the kinds of conversations they have amongst themselves.

In a rather hilarious twist, “Michelle” posted a status message about how quickly people will jump on one bandwagon or another, if only someone uses the right buzz words. In no time at all, the facebook followers rallied behind “her”, blissfully unaware that “she” was talking about them.

Time will tell how many of the followers will recognize that they’ve been deceived.  For now, the experiment continues…

I ordered Qwest internet service on Monday, 1/11.  I was told at that time that it would take 3 business days for the order to be completed.  3 days in itself is too long to wait for new service.  I have had the internet regularly for the past 10 years and never have I had to wait so long for new service.  Cox Communications, Verizon, Comcast, AllTel, and Cavalier Telecom all were able to set up service the next day.  As anyone who uses the internet on the verge of excess will tell you, 3 days is a LONG time to wait.

But fine.  The tech was scheduled to arrive between 8am and 12pm. He called around 8:30 to let us know that he would arrive between 10 and 12.  Come 12:15 we haven’t heard anything, so we call him back and he tells us that the work was already done and that he forgot to call us back to inform us.  Minor mistake, it seemed.

Except that we had no modem.  And the internet does not work without a modem.  We call Qwest again and are told that the order for the modem was supposed to have gone through but due to some computer error, it was not.  They said they would mail us out a modem and it would arrive the next day.  So, that means waiting again, beyond the 3 business days.  We didn’t want to wait, so we went to a Qwest kiosk in a nearby mall and picked up the modem ourselves.

We bring the modem home, follow the installation guide, and the internet is still not working.  So, we call Qwest again. At this point we have already spent at least two hours on the phone with one representative or another, using up our cell phone minutes for something that should’ve been straightforward.  During this call, a tech support rep runs diagnostics, troubleshoots, the works, and is still unable to get our internet working.  He says that there must be something wrong inside the apartment – perhaps some faulty wires or some other problem.  So he tells us that he’ll schedule a tech for an internal installation, between 8am and 11am on Friday 1/15.

So, 11am rolls around on Friday morning and guess what?  No tech.  We call Qwest again and they tell us that they can see no record of a tech being schedule for Friday morning.  Well that’s just wonderful.  They also tell us that another tech will take 3 more business days, but also because of the MLK holiday that it would take until at least Tuesday 1/19.  The representative tells us that the tech would not have to come into the apartment, that he’d only have to “flick a switch” somewhere on the outside, something that should only take 10-15 minutes.

My question then was, what did the tech who came (if he came) on 1/14 do?  Didn’t he already “flip the switch”?  What we needed – as discussed with tech support already – was a look on the inside to diagnose the problem.  Had I not caught her mistake, conceivably a tech wold have come out to see that the switch was already flipped, wasting our time and his, and requiring us to call Quest again once the internet – inevitably – continued to not work.  After another hour and 10 minutes of talking  and mostly waiting on hold, we are put in contact with someone else in tech support.

This  tech told us that he could schedule a tech within a broader window for Saturday 1/16, between 8am and 5pm.  I even got a confirmation email to that effect.  But of course I remained skeptical.  So, enter the little bird…

Within minutes of tweeting about the problem, I received a response from Qwest, telling me to e-mail them about the problem.  I explained how I felt that at this point it seemed like antagonism as much as a mere string of blunders from everyone involved.  I mean, what does it say about a company if on every level of the organization – from the field techs to the customer service reps, to the tech support reps, keep making mistakes and providing terrible customer service?

About two hours later I received an email from the management team, apologizing for all of the mishaps and confirming my appointment for Saturday.  He also narrowed the 8am to 5pm window to 10am to 2pm, offered me a credit for the modem (which, strangely, you have to purchase for Qwest), and a free month of service.

Sure enough, the tech did show up on Saturday within the scheduled time window and got the internet up and running.  Best of all, after so much of a hassle, it turns out that Qwest’s internet (I have the 20 MB download/5 MB upload plan) is the fastest I’ve ever experienced at home.  According to the tech, our connection is dedicated, meaning that we don’t share it with everyone else in the general area.  When you actually download a song in seconds and movies in minutes, as advertised, well…it’s kind of a big deal.  So while I certainly am not fully on board the Qwest bandwagon due to the installation nightmare, I am at least willing to give them a second – or is it third or fourth now? – chance at providing me with good service.

And once again I have the little bird to thank for getting the right people’s attention…