Avatar photoSteven Savage

Fandom At A Different Level

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

After my post on the dangers of “Gray Goo” Media, serdar had his own detailed response. His response is worth reading – he also has some alternate ideas to my wishes worth considering – and he then notes it’s important to explore why and how we like things over specifics. He then proposes a most interesting exercise.

Sometimes I imagine we can cultivate this by way of exercises. Get together a slew of people who have divergent and vibrant interests, sit in a circle, start with one person, and have that person talk about some specific aspect of a specific thing that gets their attention. (“The reason I like Emma: A Victorian Romance is the attention to detail.”) Then the next person picks up from that thread. (“Something I like that has attention to detail… but here’s what else I like about it, the fact that it is a deeply humane story.”) And on to the next person. (“The thing I like that has a humane element…”)

This idea intrigues me enough that I’m thinking of using it under various circumstances, and suggesting it to other groups like a local book club, cons, etc. I also find it illustrates an important point about sharing media.

A lot of what we like about media can get very specific. I relate to this character, I like this specific story element. The become, intentional or not, exclusionary. If someone does not take to a given element or character, people have trouble connecting to you – indeed, a passionately stated enthusiasm can seem to be exclusionary. We don’t want to offend someone saying “not for me.”

Instead this method is about the commonality of how we relate, not what we relate to specifically. We discover our shared interests not in media specifically, but what we are interested in and how we share that. A group of people can each be passionate about good worldbuilding, and discuss how they love it, while completely not being interested in everyone else’s choices.

This may not save the world, but it gives us a lot to think about. Maybe it’s a method that can lead we passionate people to help others bridge gaps and find common grounds, which we could certainly use more of.

Steven Savage

Media Gray Goo

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Every now and then (OK, weekly), something Very Dumb happens involving a piece of mass culture media. People meltdown because of some casting. Someone gets fired because of saying something controversial like “hey, don’t be a douche.” Some new thing comes out that really just builds on something else, and we vaguely care.

How much of our minds get occupied by stuff like Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Star Trek, and the like? How much of our culture involves these works? How many people hang on every new book, idea, episode, etc. Geek that I am, I’m starting to wonder if this has gone very, very bad.

Let’s imagine how a healthy body works. Yes, it’s a unified whole, but also it’s got specific parts and is filled with checks, from antibodies to the ability to vomit bad food to neurons holding back other neurons from doing something terrible. A body is a single thing composed of parts that are both linked and independent in some ways (but not separate from the body).

A body that was one giant unified mass is basically an amoeba or The Blob.

Now let’s ask about a healthy culture. Shouldn’t it be the same way? There are dominant cultural elements, and many subcultures, specialized knowledge, and generalized knowledge. There will be conflict, but often in service of a larger whole – subcultures generating widespread ideas, widespread ideas passing their time and going to memory, etc.

A culture that is one giant unified mass is a gray goo of nothing, large but nothing to hold on to, nothing relevant to the individual.

I’m thinking our mass culture is becoming a mass of gray goo. Sure some of it may be great gray goo, but overall it seems to be samey even when good. I’m glad we can re-invent things (Like Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, who I loved), but why do we have to keep doing the same thing?

Worse, doing the same thing keeps giving power to the same group of people and companies (usually Disney these days). We’re letting people own vast chunks of our culture, and the inevitable battles between “do it good and interesting” and “give me the gray goo I expect” are exhausting. Besides, we know in the end that the big companies are going to play it safe – and safe isn’t always the best thing for the culture.

(Think of it as being like your brain overruling your body’s warning signals to keep drinking and eating cheeseburgers.)

This is probably why some big companies like Netflix and Amazon caught on and are working on churning out different stuff. It’s perhaps why we see authentically good media as well because some people got that there needs to be more. I can critique the hell out of them for many reasons, but I can acknowledge smart plays against gray culture goo.

So now I want to imagine a different media culture.

Imagine a media culture with few to no dominant media properties. Imagine things actually ending for a change, and excellent media being rerun or reread instead of being extended. Imagine not having cultural space taken up by gray goo, but more, smaller things.

Imagine if you do get into something that is a long-term media commitment, that it’s a more intimate experience. That TV series going on for a decade and its spinoffs don’t have to be forced into our consciousness. Imagine fandom as more interlinked preferences than A Big Thing.

Imagine more originality or at least new versions of the same old thing.

This is going to sit with me awhile. It makes me think about my own tastes, about what matters, and about what I’m writing.

Steven Savage

Civic Diary: The Lack Of Planning

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I’ve been thinking about why politics sucks.  When the world is burning up, and people blame Millennials for problems the previous generations created, and we put migrant kids in jail, you kind of wonder “what the hell happened.”

Now is where I get very weird and discuss the ability to plan and organize.  Also, yes, this is going to involve Agile and Project Management, and no it’s not bullshit.  I’m serious.

One of the things I noticed over the years is that people are often terrible at planning – when you’re a planning professional, it gets noticeable.  You’re hired to help people get their act together, which tells you that they can’t do it themselves or don’t have the time.

As you help people plan – and watch plans fall apart – you realize many people can’t plan for crap.  This is nothing against them – we’re not taught to plan or organize very well. However, they still fail, and why don’t we do anything about it?

A thing we get taught in any form of planning or management, from typical Waterfall to Scrum, is that you need a goal.  If you have a goal, you can direct your actions and make things work, and if you fail, you know why so you can adjust and try again.

So how many people are good at setting goals and measuring them?  I’m guessing a lot of us aren’t as good at it as we’d like to be – myself included (one thing you get taught in management practices is to keep learning).

Apply this to politics.  How many of us have a vision for the world, our lives, our countries, and the future?  How many of us have an idea of steps like A to B?  How many of us have at least a vision to work towards that makes sense, and we can evaluate?

Yeah, I know the answer.  I didn’t for a lot of my life, only the last decade or so did I think about these things.

Now apply this to politicians and big money donors and the like.  Sure they think they have a plan, but also have a lot of money and power, so they don’t have to think about results (beyond “hey I got more money and power.”).  The world burns and things fall apart, but they’re shielded by money and power so they can avoid consequences of bad choices for a long time – while we get to pay for them.

No vision, no plan, no goals, just flailing around.  If you have enough money or power, you can try to grab more, but it won’t solve the problems bearing down on us (hell, it makes them worse).

Right now if you look at the good things in the world, think how many people who helped make them happen did plan, did focus, did think.  Feel like we’ve got enough people like that?  Probably not.

We’ve left a lot of the world in the hands of surprisingly few people who have their shit together.  It’s not fair to them.

So yeah, if you want to change the world, start learning productivity techniques and such and use it to get your personal and political life in order.  Think about goals and plans and visions – because by and large, we’re kinda bad at them.

Also, it’s going to kill us if we’re not careful.

Steven Savage