Where’s the mouse?
I remember being a kid and spewing out masses of rudimentary fan-creative kid brain stuff. When I encountered a story, I made other stories based on it, usually transitory ones played out with whatever toys I could get my hands on.
Part of the transition between a blithely unpopular and unaware childhood and a somewhat more socially connected adulthood was the unfortunate realization that not everybody does this. Mind you, to realize that was to go in search of the people who do, so I’ve been surrounded by them all the while, but it always struck me as depressing that creativity was not considered part of the “base set”.
And now that may be changing. See this fascinating bit by Clay Shirky via Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who nicked it from Warren Ellis. Click the link; there’s apparently a video, for those of you who aren’t in China. I read the transcript, and here is one awesome Eureka moment:
(…) In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: “Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves.”
At least they’re doing something.
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
And I’m willing to raise that to a general principle. It’s better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, “If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too.” And that’s [sic] message–I can do that, too–is a big change.
Daisy said,
May 1, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Well, true enough… I am right here with the rest of you, obviously!… but I do miss the breakdown of a large, common culture. Obviously, this first happened with the COUNTERculture, so -I- had something to do with that, but still, it’s weird to have a room full of people and no two people watch the same TV shows… that never used to happen as we were growing up. Guaranteed icebreaker with religiously/racially/culturally mixed group of people was to talk about Ginger and Mary Ann! Take that away, and people just sort of gape across the room at each other.
Or find the person most similar to themselves, and only talk to THEM, as we often see on the net.
I think one reason certain shows like American Idol become mega-hits, is because people are hungry for that common culture, and just want to see what everyone else is talking about, so they can join in.
Speaking of counterculture, just wrote this obituary of Albert Hofmann, and expected to find lots of internet references to what I was talking about. On the contrary, couldn’t find *shit* –and my piece just got LONGER AND LONGER (and I had to FOOTNOTE IT! Holy God.) since I felt it was necessary to fill in the history. Back in the day, the counterculture STAYED underground, and that’s why there are such slim pickings… NOWADAYS however, the counterculture, and every culture, is on the web. Those momentous events could not happen in a vacuum now, with only a few druggie-freaks knowing the details.
What this means, though, is when someone my age gets on the web, it’s like “history” starts around 1996 or so. It can make you feel lonely, in a way I can’t quite describe.. which is why I started writing about drive-ins, LSD, old movies, etc. I feel like somebody has to do it!
Sorry for the length of this, you always make me THINK!