truefiction.org

I know that I haven’t updated in two weeks. There are a number of reasons for this. First and primarily, it’s nearing the end of the semester and I haven’t exactly had a lot of free time. Second, I’ve been preparing to move everything over to truefiction.org, to which I own the domain rights. The main problem there is trying to find a suitable web provider–this can’t cost too much money and it has to have a certain number of features–Perl 5 and PHP 4 are very important, MySQL less so–but there are other reasons for this as well.

Especially since I started going to afterDinner over the weekend (it’s a site for short fiction and personal narrative, as well as an online writers workshop), I started thinking about other things that could be done with a weblog format. I mean, the majority of weblogs that are out there all follow the same basic structure–short little snippets of ________, with an occasional longer essay or three every so often to mix things up. It’s great, but goddamn there’s a lot of it out there.

So I ask you: what if a weblog were almost entirely fictional?

I’m sure it’s not nearly as revolutionary an idea as I currently think it is (sleep deprivation = bad). There’s a better than likely chance that many websites are already doing something along these lines. And given my predilection towards long essays and linkless blurbs as it is, this site isn’t much different than a novel written up in a journal format.

But a journal formatted novel, set up in a world that’s ostensibly the same as ours but with some really weird stuff going on–I’m currently thinking of having a tron/matrix/neuromancer type of thing going on in the background, but different. Earlier. The first human computer interface in development. Now it gets a little more interesting. (I think. Maybe not. I’ll need to think this through while not tired.) The only major feature of this would be that it would be serialized, with real time updates as i think of them. Short plot twist? I can write it in between classes. I’ll be stuck with what I’ve posted, which could make for an interesting experience when I’m nine months in and I can’t remember which character picked up the flowers for the office party.

Then to get really crazy you could throw in a few other sites to the mix–one of the older characters could have a site on geocities or AOL, for example. There’d probably only be the one journal, but this way I can also get to have other characters in the story be slightly more fleshed out. I don’t know. I have to think about this a lot more before I make any decisions.

But it’s a hell of an idea, right?

Appeared in The Declaration in copy-edited form on 18 April 2002.

In these days of meta-humor, meta-fiction, meta-websites and meta-everything, it can be difficult to figure out what’s original, what’s derivative, and what’s originally derivative. It’s tough to figure out the different levels of meta necessary for full understanding of a piece of data. For example, there’s something like Ben Greenman’s “Blurb,” which is a story consisting entirely of blurbs about the story “Blurb.” This is the first degree of meta and, since it’s self-referential, fairly easy to decipher.

As obscure references begin to pile up, however, it can be more difficult to determine what it is the author (or musician, or artist, or reporter, or web designer, an alia) is trying to impart. Take a look at Dynamite Hack’s “Boys in the Hood.” Originally a song by NWA, it was covered from a bunch of white kids from . . . somewhere. The lyrics are exactly the same, but they’re imparting a different message because of who is singing them. This is the second degree of meta: you can grasp it on the non-meta level (dudes singing a song about drinking and whoring), on a the first degree of meta (white dudes singing a song about drinking and whoring while living in the ghetto) or, finally, on the second degree (white dudes ironically covering a song by NWA to indicate the love of suburban white boys for gangsta rap). This is where it starts to get confusing.

Degrees of meta-ness can continue infinitely though, once you get past the third degree, it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what the hell is going on. It can hurt your brain as well, which is why we will not follow this definition of meta any further. We will, however, progress on to the main subject at hand.

You see, as meta has progressed on, it has infilitrated mass culture and, with culture, our notions of cool. Remember last year, when you saw all those kids looking like they stepped out of a Sears Catalog, circa 1977? The whole reason for that was simple: these clothes were inherently uncool, even when they first came out. However, because they were so uncool, they became cool in a meta sense. You also saw people wearing bellbottoms again; even though they were cool in the seventies, a love of so-called retro fashion brought them back. This, too, was meta: it was brought about by a conscious decision to look like someone from the seventies (though with a decidedly nineties twist to it). However, this fashion wasn’t considered as cool as the sears catalog look. Why? Because bell-bottoms were only first degree meta, while “the Sears catalog” look was second degree. There’s also the added problem of intent: doing something to be cool makes said something uncool; doing something uncool becomes cool.

See why cool has become so complicated?

If you’re having trouble with this, don’t feel bad: rocket scientists have been unable to figure this stuff out for decades. We’ve prepared a few case studies for you to study. Once you’ve looked them over and feel you understand them, there’s a short quiz on which you can test your newfound powers of perception.

Case One - The Bomber Jacket

Jack owns a leather bomber jacket that he picked up at a vintage clothing shop. Though he normally wears it with the collar down, he occasionally decides to place the collar in an upright fashion. Is this (a) Stylin’; (b) Cool; (c) Uncool; or (d) Meta-cool?

ANSWER: The answer is entirely dependent on his intent. If Jack has not put any conscious thought into his decision to wear the collar up–it may have just happened as he put the jacket on–then the answer is (b) Cool. However, if a decision was made along the lines of, “Wearing my collar up will make me cool,” this makes Jack uncool. The answer is then (c). However, some of you may be asking, “What if Jack knows that actively upturning his collar is an uncool action, and proceeds regardless?” This is when it begins to get complicated. If Jack knows that what he is undertaking is inherently uncool, then the decision is reversed and it becomes cool again. The answer in this case would be (d) meta-cool. Finally, if Jack decides that he is going to wear his collar up regardless of what anyone else thinks, his fashion choice has become stylin’, so the answer would be (a).

Case Two - Smoking

Sarah, like many of her friends, prefers to smoke Camel Lights. She began smoking her junior year of high school, and now smokes three-quarters to a pack a day. Can you classify her smoking as cool or uncool? Does her standing change if she smokes something other than Camel Lights? Explain.

ANSWER: The simple fact of the matter is that everyone started smoking for one reason: to look cool. This would seem to indicate that smoking is, no matter what, an uncool action. Many doctors and parents of impressionable teenagers would agree that this is so. The problem with this attitude is simple: smoking really does make you look cool. Why the hell do you think she started? Besides, by the point of smoking roughly a pack a day, you’re addicted. Since smoking is no longer a conscious choice, it becomes cool without reservation. However, should she begin smoking cigarettes other than Camel Lights, smoking would become uncool. There’s no explanation for this; perhaps superstring theory will one day have a solution.

Case Three - Vintage T-Shirts

Tony buys shirts by the ream from his local salvation army. He prefers to wear shirts with outrageous and/or odd messages on them, such as “Liars Go To Hell” or an old Arena Football shirt. Is this action cool or uncool?

ANSWER: Uncool. No matter how cool the damn shirts look, going to a vintage store means you’re trying to concoct a look. This makes you uncool. Get the hell over yourself, and get some fresh air and sunlight while you’re at it.

Hopefully, you now have some ideas of what cool really is. With everything that you’ve learned, you should be able to answer the following questions with assurance.

The Quiz

1. Juanita is buying albums at a used record store on St. Mark’s Place. She is wearing a tight, plaid miniskirt and a loose blouse. Her boots are beat-up old Doc Martens that she’s had since seventh grade. She has a messenger bag (not from Manhattan Portage) and thick-framed black glasses. What is her cool status?

   (a) Hip
   (b) Hep
   (c) Emo’d out
   (d) Depends on what records she’s buying
   

2. Mona’s mother bought her an ugly new shirt for her birthday, which she begins wearing everywhere. What is her most likely motivation?

   (a) To placate her mother
   (b) Because it’s not cool at all
   (c) To achieve meta-cool
   (d) She actually likes the shirt

3. Brian is listening to Shampoo’s “Uh oh! We’re In Trouble!” What are your feelings about this?

   (a) I love that cheesy song
   (b) Meh.
   (c) Wasn’t that song on the Power Rangers Movie soundtrack?
   (d) Who the fuck is Shampoo?

4. Donald has purchased a Vespa scooter. He begins riding it everywhere–to work, to classes, etc. Discuss all his possible motivations for these actions, and their relative merits of cool.
5. MTV: What happened? Explain your answer.

Answers (Don’t look until you’ve finished)

1: d.
2: a (also acceptible: d).
3: a.
4: Vespa scooters are cool. People named Donald are not.
5: I don’t know, either. The Osbournes is pretty funny, though.

Coolness has always been a relative thing–even more so in today’s confusing post-modern world. It’s complicated down to the words used to describe it. Hip, hep, keen, tragic, ill, and even meta have been used as substitutes for the word. Even with what you’ve picked up from this article, you may still be unable to become cool yourself. We suggest that you just do what everyone else is doing. Emulating your peers may not appear to be cool, but it can never hurt. It’s worked for people for years. So get yourself a pair of tight jeans and some thick-framed glasses, and go out there and rock.

According to the New York Times, lately magazines are increasingly using less and less written content, focusing almost entirely on graphic elements (i.e. photography). This isn’t really surprising to me, having stared at other magazines like Nest and Nerve for hours at a time during the Dec redesig (I also have been known to peruse Stuff on occasion). The most interesting part of the article was this, right at the end:

The assumption is that readers raised on a media diet in which they are presented with a new image every few tenths of a second are not about to wait 3,400 words for the upshot. The glossy publishing industry will continue to serve as the back fence for mass culture. But in these days of postliterate publishing, few in the neighborhood seem to have time to stop and tell stories.

One of the things you have to wonder about is, how much of this can be blamed on the web? If there’s one thing that all the usability guidelines for the web agree on, it’s that you shouldn’t have too much content on any given page. Usually, the amount of text on a page, according to these guidelines, should be between two and four screens on a page (the Times article is roughly five and a half on my computer). This isn’t too exact, especially with all the differences in monitors today, but it’s really not a whole lot of text.

It’s true that you can link together multiple pages for longer articles, but what sites really do that? The Times and other newspapers do so; the New Yorker and other magzines; salon.com and one or two other sites. Most of these sites have real life counterparts; only salon is a web publication. Feed and Suck, which specialized in the longer-form articles, no longer exist. And salon’s articles typically aren’t normally that long on a day-to-day basis (although it’s possible that the premium articles normally are, but I don’t pay for Salon Premium so I wouldn’t know).

Whether it’s a matter of bandwidth or a matter of time for writing and production, most sites can’t afford to put up these longer articles. Those that do, eventually burn out (we all know how many times I’ve stopped updating websites). People who work for one of these sites, or try to run their own, could have developed a dislike for the longer form article. It’s tough to write 4,000 words on a daily–or even a weekly–basis, especially if you need to get other things done. Websites that focus on longer, more literary articles often don’t even want to try for articles as long as the old magazines would carry. McSweeneys specifically asks for articles not more than 1,000 words (though only if you want to be published on the website; the print magazine takes longer works). So writers get used to writing shorter articles; designers get more used to preparing shorter articles for web publication. To believe that there’s no overlap between web and print workers is foolish, so it’s not hard to imagine that web tendencies carried over into physical media over the past six years. Even if any designer that works on the web never returns to print, there’s a more than even chance that print editors would be influenced by stuff happening in an Internet Explorer window.

There’s also the fact that the web is, inherently, a visual medium. Just about every site has some graphic elements, reducing the text to a small column that can be quickly scanned. This isn’t unusual in the print world either; it’s just that, on paper, you can have multiple columns stacked next to each other. You can’t do that very easily on paper. So even a magazine that has a very simple, non-graphical layout in the real world is going to have sidebars, title graphics and banner ads on the website. Again, assuming that designers occasionally work on the both websites and magazines, you’re going to see this type of design flourish in print as well. (Personally, I wanted a sidebar in the Dec’s scene section, but I didn’t get my wish.)

Finally, there’s the influence of weblogs and discussion sites. Slashdot (which is, essentially, a weblog about technical issues) usually has content no longer than a paragraph or two; much more written words are available from the comments, but they are often repetitive and read less often. Metafilter’s entries are typically just a sentence or two. Weblogs vary greatly, from short little blurby things to, well, long essays like this one, but definitely lean towards the former. Now: it’s true that most people probably don’t read Slashdot or make the rounds of weblogs every day. It’s also true that these sites primarily point people to other sites where there is, presumably, more content. However, these “glorified captions” have gotten an entire population to the point where they like to read little blurbs versus long, detailed articles. Is this population directly responsible for the slow evolution from text-heavy to picture-heavy magazines? Personally, I don’t think so: I highly doubt that most of the people who read these sites don’t occasionally pick up and read a magazine or a long article in a newspaper. But for pleasure reading, who knows? Certainly, web readers are picking up a new attitude of “better entertain me in a few screens or else I’m going back to that other site,” and there are a whole lot of people that read the web.

In the end, I’m not entirely sure how much the web is responsible for shorter articles, but I’m convinced we’re somewhat responsible. The Times article doesn’t specify it, but this is a trend that has been carrying on for years. Televison, then Cable, then MTV, then Entertainment Tonight and People (I think I’ve got that order mixed up…whatever, it’s four in the morning)–the shortened pieces have been developing for years, and the web has only hastened it. Web content is almost always shorter than 4,000 words; this article is probably only around 800 or so. Can we say the web hasn’t made our attention spans run out quicker? Can we say it hasn’t adapted us to wanting more graphics around our text? Can we say that we aren’t going to want these qualities in print publications as well?

I don’t think we can. We all knew the World Wide Web was going to change printed media in an unprescidented way; I just wasn’t expecting it to happen by dumbing-down our magazines into glorified picture books.