Culture

Geek As Citizen: Hashtag, Crashtag

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I assume that you heard about the #CancelColbert hashtag on Twitter. I’m going to assume you did but the rough summary is:

  1. Colbert did a skit mocking racism in the name of the Washington Redskins.
  2. Part of the joke was retweeted, including his mockery of racism towards Asians.
  3. The joke on its own looked hideously racist (it was removed).
  4. Hashtag activist Suey Park tweeted the #CancelColbert hashtag.
  5. The internet had an intelligent discussion of racism, parody, and society.

I’m joking about #5 of course. I’d say the conversation degenerated, but the conversation never really generated. I watched a lot of the back and forth, which took on the air of a tennis game with grenades instead of balls. Eventually it got bizarre, snipy, weird, and in fine internet debate tradition, people directed racist and sexist comments at Suey Park and others.

As you may have guessed nothing good came out of this that I can find.

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Geek As Citizen: What We Don’t Know

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Wrong Way Sign

A few weeks ago there was a story bouncing around the internet about a Google employee who had started a petition to replace the US government, basically, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.  This was apparently not done with any form of approval from Mr. Schmidt, and you can read more about the person behind this at Quartz.  If you heard about this, it’ll give you some idea of the person behind the petition, Justine Turney.

To put it politely, I find Ms. Turney’s idea to be ill-thought out and lacking a sense of the larger picture, as well as impolite about Mr. Schmidt’s lack of free time.  It felt like a Deep Geek idea, to reference my previous theories, disconnected from reality.

As I discussed it among the gang, something came to the surface  how many times we run into political theorizing that doesn’t seem to involve an understanding of how the world actually works?  It’s a problem whose distribution may vary among people, political groups, and such, but it’s a problem you find everywhere.

We don’t know what we don’t know.  Which may qualify you if your career is to be “random pundit who yells a lot,” but really doesn’t help solve problems.  It is, in fact quite good for creating them, as anyone who has ever worked on a project that was poorly defined without repercussions knows.  I’m guessing that’s all of us.

Now as much as I’d like to see a lot more people address this lack of knowledge about lack of knowledge, it’s something we geek citizens should also address in ourselves.

In fact, I’d say we need to be extra responsible.

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No Mystery On The Science Of Political Theater

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One of the groups protesting (counterprotesting?) the genetrification and changes in Silicon Valley* protested at the home of Kevin Rose of Digg and Google Ventures fame.  They also apparently asked for $3 billion to establish anarchist communes, which will doubtlessly lead to many sarcastic analyses of investments.

Kevin Roose (not Rose, but boy he’s apparently had problems with parties over the names) referred to this as political theater.  Indeed, political theater is something the Bay Area** is used to, usually from the left and in this case anarchists, unless that’s also part of the joke.  Except, the more I think about it, it seems that who uses political theater has changed, and I think this is where the protestors are going to experience backfire.

Political theater in America is now the domain of the Right.

The right is the realm of elaborate Tea Party costumes***.  It’s the realm of Glen Beck’s blackboard.  It’s where Clint Eastwood does performance art talking to an empty chair.

I don’t know about you, but I associate political theater with the Right in America, not the Left or Anarchists.  As Roose (not Rose) notes, the more “mainstream” protestors are involved in anti-eviction, city planning comissions, and the likes.  Those prone to political theater are in the realm of the Right at this point, and that may hurt their cause, whatever it is (one guy even suggests it’s a false flag), since the traditional Left won’t be sympathetic, the Right isn’t sympathetic, and others may just be confused.

* I should note that the exact geography of Silicon Valley is up for debate.

** Not necessarily the same as Silicon Valley, but let the debate begin.

*** Cosplay for people into politics.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.