...and I feel sorry for these poor guys, really I do.
The Mythos Project
Because instead of having an entire year to tear apart and analyze data, apparently they're doing it in a month.
Maybe I can help them. Maybe they can help me.... we shall see.
The blog is bookmarked and I will be going back to it to see how things pan out, and to watch their take on the mythos. In looking over the information, I realized I had been learning this stuff along with everything else... I could tell you He's a tall, slender guy lacking a face and yet dressed to the 9's... I could tell you how He operates, too, and where he cropped up first. It's funny what you learn on the side when you're chasing a subject.
I just found out the other blog posts that I thought I was posting never showed up. So something is definitely wrong with the internets at the house. I guess I'll be blogging from a cafe until Mr. Talbrie gets back.
If he ever does. Honestly I am expecting another extension request halfway through October at this point. With no job prospects on the horizon for right now, I guess I'll stick around for as long as he wants.
I miss my hoodie and my video camera. :(
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
The Auto-Immune Reaction
It was in revising my decision to only follow two new blogs because they did NOT follow the cookie cutter I'd seen so far that I came to an interesting observation about the entire Slenderverse.
That being - mainly that they really want to help each other out. Like, to an extreme end.
I had been focusing so much on the isolating nature of this entire tulpa that I completely missed the fact that we, as humans, found a way to overcome that. Being social creatures, we immediately decide to get social about this stuff.
If the tulpas ride our thoughts and information, then so can other constructs. Being that we were forged from the same tessellations in nature that spawned vectors for disease, for viruses and fungi and bacteria and even for population fluctuation, it makes sense that any phenomenon borne from us would be subject to those same laws. That is to say... once an idea gets around, people play with it. They help one another out with it. They form entire communities around a simple thought or concept. And this is why I love them dearly. Because we can forge entire relationships based solely on one small thing that is not anywhere else in the world except between us. This was something I came across when tracing the history of the otaku community a few years back.
So, okay, yeah, I'm babbling. But let me try to make a little more sense.
I started following BrokenHeartChronicle and ProjectNewWold because, like the others, they had JUST started. And because I was being sexist in my data gathering, slightly. I'm watching to see what patterns they follow in order to try and map the evolution of an idea.
And what was interesting was to see the jump in people that found the blogs and started offering up any information they had, even if it was conflicting information or stuff that wasn't necessarily helpful right that second. People were doing their best to throw as much info as was known about Him at these poor guys (and gals, it was the same with Willow Adder and Ashesfallbro). It was like they needed to help these poor people, and even though they didn't know exactly how to do it they were going to try.
Which I think reflects back on another property of mimetics... the data may be using us to reproduce, but in the end we control and change the data. We shift aspects, we change the delivery or the nuance of it. In the end we decide whether it has control over us or not, when we are able to step back and take note of how it occurs, this data transmission.
Or perhaps the data has figured out how to work best with our biology and knows how to ride our social nature far better than we could intimate.
But to start thinking down that line is to invite motive and awareness to the phenomenon, and I really don't think an idea can have an agenda except to stay fresh.
Have I referenced Pontypool yet in any of this? Pontypool is the perfect example of what I'm talking about.... the replication of something without motive, purely seeking to stay alive. It was an amazing horror movie. Behold, internet:
And despite what it says, it isn't a zombie movie. It's a virus movie. Think like The Crazies, or 28 Days Later.
The only difference, and the most striking and brilliant part of this, is where they advise people that what is deadly is not the people, but the communication. But it isn't deadly on purpose. (This will be possibly spoiler-y) It simply views the host as a vector to continue transmission, it can't equate it with someone who has hopes or dreams or a family.
Such is the way with all data transmission, though far less fatally and aggressively.
Such is the way with Him, supposedly.
I'm starting to think that Slenderman is the most brilliant personification of our own fears and understanding of the dangers of a transmitted idea. It is a reflection of how we feel about this time when all of our information is no longer our own, no longer private. He is the silent watcher, the great Unknown Thing in the background, the faceless group of people who see our blog posts and our tweets or skim over our credit card information on a daily basis. He is every person who could hurt us in the garage late at night that we don't see, or the security guard behind the camera there who might be asleep on the job.
Slenderman is effective because he is the gray space of what we know and don't know, and our fears of what is out there. Slenderman is every person who reads this entry that I don't personally know, or every person who watches a video on YouTube without liking or commentings. He's the untraceable in a world that is becoming far more traceable every second. He's what we want to return to, and what we fear falling total victim to.
We know how to counter oblivion and anonymity with community and with information. We know how to stop the ingress of unwanted attention and snooping... with community and with information. It is a natural and almost auto-immune reaction I am seeing here in these comments for people to surge forward and try to help someone out in this fashion. People being people. God, I want to hug them all for their need to help out. It's amazing.
I can't imagine what it would be like if any of this were really going on, but to see that kind of response would probably be amazingly heartening.
(As an aside, I think we can safely say HE isn't real. I would be dead by now, with as much as I've been staring at pictures and reading about Him.)
I should not write these so late at night, but the noises and insomnia have me again. Maybe I'll try to find Pontypool online and watch it. Damned good Canadian horror film.
That being - mainly that they really want to help each other out. Like, to an extreme end.
I had been focusing so much on the isolating nature of this entire tulpa that I completely missed the fact that we, as humans, found a way to overcome that. Being social creatures, we immediately decide to get social about this stuff.
If the tulpas ride our thoughts and information, then so can other constructs. Being that we were forged from the same tessellations in nature that spawned vectors for disease, for viruses and fungi and bacteria and even for population fluctuation, it makes sense that any phenomenon borne from us would be subject to those same laws. That is to say... once an idea gets around, people play with it. They help one another out with it. They form entire communities around a simple thought or concept. And this is why I love them dearly. Because we can forge entire relationships based solely on one small thing that is not anywhere else in the world except between us. This was something I came across when tracing the history of the otaku community a few years back.
So, okay, yeah, I'm babbling. But let me try to make a little more sense.
I started following BrokenHeartChronicle and ProjectNewWold because, like the others, they had JUST started. And because I was being sexist in my data gathering, slightly. I'm watching to see what patterns they follow in order to try and map the evolution of an idea.
And what was interesting was to see the jump in people that found the blogs and started offering up any information they had, even if it was conflicting information or stuff that wasn't necessarily helpful right that second. People were doing their best to throw as much info as was known about Him at these poor guys (and gals, it was the same with Willow Adder and Ashesfallbro). It was like they needed to help these poor people, and even though they didn't know exactly how to do it they were going to try.
Which I think reflects back on another property of mimetics... the data may be using us to reproduce, but in the end we control and change the data. We shift aspects, we change the delivery or the nuance of it. In the end we decide whether it has control over us or not, when we are able to step back and take note of how it occurs, this data transmission.
Or perhaps the data has figured out how to work best with our biology and knows how to ride our social nature far better than we could intimate.
But to start thinking down that line is to invite motive and awareness to the phenomenon, and I really don't think an idea can have an agenda except to stay fresh.
Have I referenced Pontypool yet in any of this? Pontypool is the perfect example of what I'm talking about.... the replication of something without motive, purely seeking to stay alive. It was an amazing horror movie. Behold, internet:
And despite what it says, it isn't a zombie movie. It's a virus movie. Think like The Crazies, or 28 Days Later.
The only difference, and the most striking and brilliant part of this, is where they advise people that what is deadly is not the people, but the communication. But it isn't deadly on purpose. (This will be possibly spoiler-y) It simply views the host as a vector to continue transmission, it can't equate it with someone who has hopes or dreams or a family.
Such is the way with all data transmission, though far less fatally and aggressively.
Such is the way with Him, supposedly.
I'm starting to think that Slenderman is the most brilliant personification of our own fears and understanding of the dangers of a transmitted idea. It is a reflection of how we feel about this time when all of our information is no longer our own, no longer private. He is the silent watcher, the great Unknown Thing in the background, the faceless group of people who see our blog posts and our tweets or skim over our credit card information on a daily basis. He is every person who could hurt us in the garage late at night that we don't see, or the security guard behind the camera there who might be asleep on the job.
Slenderman is effective because he is the gray space of what we know and don't know, and our fears of what is out there. Slenderman is every person who reads this entry that I don't personally know, or every person who watches a video on YouTube without liking or commentings. He's the untraceable in a world that is becoming far more traceable every second. He's what we want to return to, and what we fear falling total victim to.
We know how to counter oblivion and anonymity with community and with information. We know how to stop the ingress of unwanted attention and snooping... with community and with information. It is a natural and almost auto-immune reaction I am seeing here in these comments for people to surge forward and try to help someone out in this fashion. People being people. God, I want to hug them all for their need to help out. It's amazing.
I can't imagine what it would be like if any of this were really going on, but to see that kind of response would probably be amazingly heartening.
(As an aside, I think we can safely say HE isn't real. I would be dead by now, with as much as I've been staring at pictures and reading about Him.)
I should not write these so late at night, but the noises and insomnia have me again. Maybe I'll try to find Pontypool online and watch it. Damned good Canadian horror film.
Monday, September 10, 2012
For Your Monday
“We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it’s worth.”— Terence McKenna
I think things are getting back to normal.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Enough already, Universe.
The week didn't really start out well, and now it's just ended weird.
Remember when I used to talk about boring observations on the general socio-economic diversity represented by the Slendervlogs? Do you? Cuz I do. I guess I've succumbed to the internet's siren call and this is my new "bitchin' spot".
So I never did find my hoodie, which pisses me off to no end. I loved that thing, it was a gift from a friend. And it's officially not there. I gutted that closet and all I found was waaaay too much stuff crammed up against the back of it, and a weird pile of damp leaves at the bottom.
The strange noises returned, and I swear to god they are now louder than before if that is possible. I'm thinking maybe there's a family of raccoons or something up in the attic, because there is so much that goes on there, even during the day.
And to top it all off, somebody dropped off a package with no name on it and no address yesterday. I couldn't ask them who it was for because nobody was there when I got to the door. Considering how hard they were knocking on the door you would think they would've stayed to make sure somebody got it since it was obvious they wanted someone's attention.
It is currently sitting on the kitchen table and I'm not touching it until somebody owns up to dropping it off. For all I know Mr. Talbrie has many enemies and it's a letter bomb or something.
This is it, if you want to be sure I'm talking about your little prank, guys:
Now if you'll excuse me, I am attempting to regroup and pick up where I left off. Schoolwork and job hunting need to take precedence.
Remember when I used to talk about boring observations on the general socio-economic diversity represented by the Slendervlogs? Do you? Cuz I do. I guess I've succumbed to the internet's siren call and this is my new "bitchin' spot".
So I never did find my hoodie, which pisses me off to no end. I loved that thing, it was a gift from a friend. And it's officially not there. I gutted that closet and all I found was waaaay too much stuff crammed up against the back of it, and a weird pile of damp leaves at the bottom.
The strange noises returned, and I swear to god they are now louder than before if that is possible. I'm thinking maybe there's a family of raccoons or something up in the attic, because there is so much that goes on there, even during the day.
And to top it all off, somebody dropped off a package with no name on it and no address yesterday. I couldn't ask them who it was for because nobody was there when I got to the door. Considering how hard they were knocking on the door you would think they would've stayed to make sure somebody got it since it was obvious they wanted someone's attention.
It is currently sitting on the kitchen table and I'm not touching it until somebody owns up to dropping it off. For all I know Mr. Talbrie has many enemies and it's a letter bomb or something.
This is it, if you want to be sure I'm talking about your little prank, guys:
Now if you'll excuse me, I am attempting to regroup and pick up where I left off. Schoolwork and job hunting need to take precedence.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Fuck this noise.
Alright, so... yeah.
My awesome friends and I were planning on kicking off the start of the final year of academic hell with an end-of-summer bash over Labor Day weekend at the Jersey Shore (location withheld to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent). I have actually been looking forward to it for 2 months now because I could hide my laptop, glue a red solo cup to my hand and spend 3 days in complete oblivion with a few ten thousand of our closest friends. There was going to be dancing, and drunken singing, and probably at least one illegal beach bonfire where we got some underage kid drunk. It's what we do.
But then my alarm clock didn't go off. And when I said didn't go off, I mean it was stuck at 12:34 and it hasn't actually progressed past that time since I noticed it was that way. I was already late getting up, and later getting packed.
I had talked with a teenage gal in the neighborhood about coming to feed the animals and walk the dog twice a day for some pocket $$$, so I spent part of that time trying to phone her and see where the hell she was. She actually never showed up. She never answered her phone, either, it just kept redirecting to some weird busy signal/humming sound. Yay for T-Mobile phones!
And since I am retardedly responsible about things and I do what I say I will do, I couldn't leave until I had someone to come check on the animals. I tried to call my friends, and per usual the ultra-shitty phone reception was in full effect.
I got in my car, which had issues starting for some reason (too many days not driving, I'm guessing) and drove to our meeting spot... and they were gone. Granted I was, by my estimation, 45 minutes late, but I was still a little pissed off that they didn't wait for me. I call, FINALLY get through to somebody, and they tell me they actually left 5 hours ago???
I don't know how that's even possible since every clock I looked at told me I was only 45 minutes late. But when I checked a clock on the nearby bank, it said pretty boldly it was 2pm.
Clearly I'm going insane.
But wait, there's more.
I then tried to girl's phone again, and THAT finally went through. And then I got some weird story about how she tried to find the house but there was no house with that house number. I even had her read off what she'd written down, and it was the right place. She'd been up and down Holloway drive for half an hour trying to find the place, apparently. Then I asked if I could pick her up and take her there to show her, and she got really weird. She hung up a few moments later with some stupid excuse.
Stupid teenagers. I'm not supposed to want to falcon-punch somebody in the face because I study people and their interactions and be all understanding and shit. But right now, I want to falcon-punch all stupid teenagers in the face. Because they are stupid, and they ruined my weekend.
So I stayed home by myself and listened to the rain on the roof and tried not to cry because all of my friends were having fun without me while I was stuck cleaning hairballs off of rugs.
On the plus side of things, though, the rain has made it REALLY easy for me to sleep the past few days. No nightmares, no insomnia, and no weird noises. It was almost normal.
I was ready to forgive the world and be happy again, but then the Universe decided it would be amusing if my favorite hoodie just up and disappeared mysteriously. Now I am irritated again, AND I am freezing because the house is cold and I have no awesome hoodie to curl up in. I'm going to tear the closet apart again tomorrow, because it has to have fallen into or behind something. Stuff doesn't just do that.
It's started to rain again. So soothing. I need that right now.
My awesome friends and I were planning on kicking off the start of the final year of academic hell with an end-of-summer bash over Labor Day weekend at the Jersey Shore (location withheld to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent). I have actually been looking forward to it for 2 months now because I could hide my laptop, glue a red solo cup to my hand and spend 3 days in complete oblivion with a few ten thousand of our closest friends. There was going to be dancing, and drunken singing, and probably at least one illegal beach bonfire where we got some underage kid drunk. It's what we do.
But then my alarm clock didn't go off. And when I said didn't go off, I mean it was stuck at 12:34 and it hasn't actually progressed past that time since I noticed it was that way. I was already late getting up, and later getting packed.
I had talked with a teenage gal in the neighborhood about coming to feed the animals and walk the dog twice a day for some pocket $$$, so I spent part of that time trying to phone her and see where the hell she was. She actually never showed up. She never answered her phone, either, it just kept redirecting to some weird busy signal/humming sound. Yay for T-Mobile phones!
And since I am retardedly responsible about things and I do what I say I will do, I couldn't leave until I had someone to come check on the animals. I tried to call my friends, and per usual the ultra-shitty phone reception was in full effect.
I got in my car, which had issues starting for some reason (too many days not driving, I'm guessing) and drove to our meeting spot... and they were gone. Granted I was, by my estimation, 45 minutes late, but I was still a little pissed off that they didn't wait for me. I call, FINALLY get through to somebody, and they tell me they actually left 5 hours ago???
I don't know how that's even possible since every clock I looked at told me I was only 45 minutes late. But when I checked a clock on the nearby bank, it said pretty boldly it was 2pm.
Clearly I'm going insane.
But wait, there's more.
I then tried to girl's phone again, and THAT finally went through. And then I got some weird story about how she tried to find the house but there was no house with that house number. I even had her read off what she'd written down, and it was the right place. She'd been up and down Holloway drive for half an hour trying to find the place, apparently. Then I asked if I could pick her up and take her there to show her, and she got really weird. She hung up a few moments later with some stupid excuse.
Stupid teenagers. I'm not supposed to want to falcon-punch somebody in the face because I study people and their interactions and be all understanding and shit. But right now, I want to falcon-punch all stupid teenagers in the face. Because they are stupid, and they ruined my weekend.
So I stayed home by myself and listened to the rain on the roof and tried not to cry because all of my friends were having fun without me while I was stuck cleaning hairballs off of rugs.
On the plus side of things, though, the rain has made it REALLY easy for me to sleep the past few days. No nightmares, no insomnia, and no weird noises. It was almost normal.
I was ready to forgive the world and be happy again, but then the Universe decided it would be amusing if my favorite hoodie just up and disappeared mysteriously. Now I am irritated again, AND I am freezing because the house is cold and I have no awesome hoodie to curl up in. I'm going to tear the closet apart again tomorrow, because it has to have fallen into or behind something. Stuff doesn't just do that.
It's started to rain again. So soothing. I need that right now.
Apparently I have a Twitter now.
After being badgered in to it by friends who say it'll help me understand the flow of memes better to be IN it instead of just OBSERVING it.
Whatever.
It's @Jessiebellespks. I can virtually guarantee you it'll be abandoned in 6 months.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just had the worst fucking weekend in recent memory and I need to go fucking stew about it some more before I can write intelligently.
Whatever.
It's @Jessiebellespks. I can virtually guarantee you it'll be abandoned in 6 months.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just had the worst fucking weekend in recent memory and I need to go fucking stew about it some more before I can write intelligently.
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