Interstellar freaks know those better than meek
The problem occured to me when one of my close friends was trying to remember a meme she saw. Normally in these situations, at least in yesteryear it'd fit the same format of question... But given the medium in question was Tiktok, a platform in which access to videos externally is tenuous at best... The environment engulfs you in a sensoric overload that dulls the senses as you're continuously swirling for more dopamine and intruige.
No, what piqued my curiosity was the fact that though it was remembered... It stirred a thought. 'Content' is to be treated as intellectual property and product, wheras Media is infinitely mashupable and steeped in the contexts that created it. A Book with all of its pages is a form of media in which each layer can be taken as its own or as a whole constructed to make something larger than it's whole... But a video that you saw cursorily passing through becomes that of a comedic ghost.. .Grasping towards it as you reach out into your social world hoping others are in your same circles of tags and algorithmically targetted feeds. In a sense we have lost a great deal of control with how we interact with things and that should be of little shock to most people who have felt this malaise.
When I work on a Zine, I can flux myself through a process of thought, feeling and impulse... Stickying all my favorite little pngs and text and making something that by the end of it I myself am shocked by.
When it comes to Media created by other humans, we're told that we're Content Creators in the same way that A cow is a methane-producer (hot).
There is a subtle demand that is only really felt by the speed of things on the internet
We live in frantic liminal rates where the boundaries of what we're doing and when and how long we're doing it blur and overlay like panels of color, but without true distinction we are lost, confused and dazed as we bliss away.
What this means et large is that human creation only equates to its watch-retention and its thumbnail. The same approach which leaves every published book resting at a barnes and noble to mime at each other. Similar covers similar topics.. And not all of it is dreck, there's much more to be said of curiosity and exploration than of full presumption.It is in this pre-assumption that we have built. Not wanting our time wasted nor our patience we scour over noise and noise and noise.
Whether it's Youtube's splayed feed, Twitch's Vertical Swiping of live and followed channels on mobile or the mind-numb of Tiktok and Reels and the like... Through its very slot-machine nature we are conditioned to pursue the things that interest us... and yet we do not go to a searchbar near as often, we trudge through for the next hit of inspiration or insight or interest. But this too changes our very dimensional constraints.
Where once was the time in-between a forum post to its response... When you could make a video and its success would be a slow-melting victory as it bubbles around through schoolyard word-of-mouth.
In a hyper-optimized cyberworld all the edges are sanded off so you cant feel anything.
Not unless you're trying to, any bit of consciousness is undermined however determined a will is to remain conscious and cognizant, the lull of a feed exists to warp and stretch. To keep you on there as much as feasibly possible.
And so we get back to the original thesis of this strange series of postulations and meanders...
On Blogspot in my yesteryear I approached blogging much in the same way I approach zines today... I look at myself, the world...
and I sang out my thoughts of the day, of the moment on page and that unadulterated conscience was unrestrained to deadlines and view-metric nor was I torturing myself trying to find the right words...Where comments only become passing ways to yes-and a joke and nothing more...
Where everyone is afraid to upset the invisible beast that is simply.. just everyone else.. Everyone's opinion becomes this strange attack vector to ward off through disclaimers and forewarning. This too muddies the message and the water.
There's a pursuant direction towards more and faster and larger but then with any pair of wax-wings you risk falling into an ocean of your own conceit, Enter Sora 2.
To immediately date this piece and yet hopefully remain somewhat coherent through the passing years. In my experience of witnessing people I know using such a platform all I am filled with is disgust and horror. Normally I'd reserve these emotions for your average bigot or fascist, the feeling of disgust coming from a world inverted inside of itself.A world built from layered simulacrums of willingly-surrendered faces and voices thrust through a sea of slush and slurry. No context beyond. Any insight akin to staring at a void and having it stare back at you. Even from an erotic-angle the appeal to the libido is a plastic one... Its artifice all too apparent and yet the hyperreality bodes of a world dislocated from itself.
And where there is 'Remixing' Here we see what mashups look like with “content” Much the same way that the user had little say in what was generated beyond the initial context sentance which gets gobbled up into tags and tokens there is an infintesimally greater loss of returns. There's no story to be constructed.
No narrative. At least not near enough to go off of.
Few seconds of something partially funny if you have the stomach for it. But it all blurs together like a wakeless dream.
This is what it's like to lose your hands, and your mouth and to only observe with your eyes... Even your mind is at stake for the longer you acclimate to these conditions the more your skillsets to think or wonder deteriorate through atrophying. You lose the possiblity of “what if” when you're always on the verge of being served. A white rabbit gambler always just a room away from catharsis.
Always late.
So for this piece I leave you to ask yourself. In 20 years, maybe even in 5-10 should you feel unconfident or pessimistic of such a large gap of time and space... What do you think will live longer in both memory and in space...
The articulations of poets and strange scribblings? Of your favorite artists sharing their pieces...
In archived websites and queer zines... Or will you remember the tiktok you saw 4 years ago, before brushing off to the next one? Do you collect tiktoks? How long does one of those last? Beyond its aspect-ratio only giving you a door of sight and a surrounding blackness... Will it stir in you the same romance that taking your time once did?
I will say, as a few last thoughts before i close this off. The biggest and most important distinction to make is.. Media for all its origin points is malleable and free. To reimagine and reconfigure and recontextualize. Content is bound by law and litigation, someones property that you just so happen to be interfacing with. Can you make a Zine out of Content? Surely there will be new ways to create, as there will be in the process of life death and the in-between but make sure whatever you play with... you're cognizant of the give and take... What can you use to write your name that you were here.. and what will grab your bones if given the chance... The answer is up to you... I love you
What else is there to say I wonder? Cleaning my room overtime and dealing with the troubles of curious kittycats who are deeply in love with the Windowsil, my cat Goblin ended up taking a shining to me and vice versa. Yesterday, and the day before I suppose... I got to share my servitor StickerBomb. She's a beautiful wand and musical instrument and it's beyond gratifying seeing so many people getting to play with her however briefly. One girl especially....The guitar is good...Very good. Overall this goal for creating and observing and expression comes from the presence and nothing else... the process is an intimate one and cannot be shared. This is the secret of how to make something real. The thread of paths that lead to circles of cement as autumn colors fill my gleaming optics, my castle high upon high in both imagination and mantle giddies my gyle as I delve further and further into mischevious witchery and all the delights that a skunk can witness. Beyond shortsighted dopamine bursts and systems of subjugated psuedo-RSS-precog-dolls. I am a creature of more than impulse and cravings. This is what it means to become a strange witchling on the world wide web.
This and many other stories, is a step.