The Age Of Parrots, Part 2 (Or: Why I Hate The Internet)

Read Part 1 here. 

"It seems to me that more and more we've come to expect less and less from each other, and that's got to change."

Aaron Sorkin 

 In August 2010 I wrote an article on this blog called "The Mad Men Drinking Game". As an actual game it was as poorly thought out as it was terribly written, and was never a piece that I was particularly proud of. But just over a month ago I found out that someone had discovered my stupid drinking game while (presumably) searching the internet for Mad Men articles before the new season began, and had posted it to Reddit. Suddenly this silly little article that I wrote three years ago was being read and commented on by people on the internet. And they didn't all hate it!

The reason I'm telling you this is because at the time that was a huge thing for me. This was an article that I had completely forgotten existed that had been found by a stranger who enjoyed it enough to share it with other strangers, 83% (according to Reddits voting system) of whom considered reading it to be not a complete waste of time. 17 people commented on it and discussed it as if this was a real game that I had really invented with the intention of playing, and I wanted to meet and talk to and thank every one of them for treating this as something written by a real writer. This was really, genuinely exciting for me.

Now I'd like to show you this:



That's a Harlem Shake video. It's not the original. It's not even one of the first ten Harlem Shake videos made. It's probably not even one of the first hundred Harlem Shake videos made. It is just one of over 40,000 Harlem Shake videos that were uploaded in February 2013*. And it has 30 million views. Thirty Million. And it's not even the highest viewed. A Harlem Shake video made by the Norwegian army currently has EIGHTY-ONE-GODDAMN-HARLEM-SHAKING-MILLION VIEWS. For one video. And even that was not the original.

And I was excited about 17 comments.

How many individuals have had to watch this video how many times for it to reach 30 million views? How many times can one person watch this video without getting sick of it? And how many other Harlem Shake videos have the people who contributed to that figure already seen?

Making a Harlem Shake video is like going on stage at a comedy club open mic night to tell the same joke as the guy who was on before you, and expecting the audience to like you more because you did it while wearing a hat. And the guy before you was telling the same joke as the guy before him, but waving a golf club at the same time. And this has happened forty thousand times, with a joke that wasn't even that good to begin with.

A man dances while everyone else in the room ignores him, then the beat changes and we jump cut to the same shot, but now everyone's dancing in different ways with previously unseen props. OK the quick transition is kind of funny the first time, but it's essentially the same on every one of the Harlem Shake videos on Youtube. Yes, the location and the people involved are different, and there are variations on the props and wacky dances, but come on. It's the same joke. Forty thousand times.

All of those people. All of those forty thousand people with cameras and internet connections and Youtube accounts and the ability to round up enough friends and colleagues to participate in these things. What if all of those people had put just a little bit more thought in to what they were doing and decided to create something new? Something that wasn't just a direct copy of someone else's video? Something that wasn't a rip-off of someone else's joke? Why is it OK to put time and effort in to perfectly replicating something created by someone else, and why is it OK to watch and share all of those copies as if each is individually entertaining?

I've been focussing on the Harlem Shake, but this is true of all memes. Whether it's a sarcastic comment pasted over a picture of Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, a club full of people doing the Gangnam style dance, or a Rage Guy cartoon - we're putting more effort in to copying someone else's ideas than creating anything ourselves.

What's more is that many of these don't acknowledge the original in any way. I didn't know which Harlem Shake was the first until I looked it up on Wikipedia. There was certainly nothing on Youtube that helped me find it. In fact there are quite a few different videos online that claim in their title to be the "Original Harlem Shake". Do you know who made the first Rage Guy cartoon? Do you know where the condescending Wonka, or the squinting Fry started? Do you know where the Chuck Norris facts came from? Maybe if you've lived on 4chan since 2003, but for most people these are just ubiquitous internet jokes to be adopted by anyone.

It's not just that the creators of these things are missing out by not having their name attached to each copy. I doubt "Filthy Frank" (who uploaded the first Harlem Shake) is complaining about the 40,000 variations of his video. It's the attitude of the consumer. We don't care who Filthy Frank is, we only care that people see the version that we made. Because you can be damn sure that every single person who made a follow up video shared it on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and anywhere else they could so that everyone they knew could see how funny they were. No-one made these just for the fun of making them. They made them so that they could get the same attention as everyone else, and each one feels entitled to the millions of page views that the others got, even though they've contributed nothing new to the joke. They want to be credited with doing something funny on the internet, but that doesn't mean they'd ever credit the guy they're stealing from.

I began this piece by talking about another blog post that I wrote in 2010. The reason for this isn't because I wish that piece had the same success as that Harlem Shake video, because I don't (I can't stress enough how stupid I think the piece is). It's because at least this is something I created. At least I put some thought and effort in to it. At least it's original. And when one person decides to share it, or seventeen people comment on it, then I can be happy that someone liked something I made. Not just something I copied from someone else.

The people who created the Harlem Shake deserve to feel great about their stupid video, because an unimaginable number of people loved it enough to even love cheap copies of it. But the people who made the video posted above? They don't deserve anything. They got 30 million views, and they didn't do a damn thing to earn it.

In the age of parrots an unoriginal work can be watched 30 million times. A video can be mimicked over 40,000 times in 10 days, with each copy being uploaded and shared online. And we fully expect to experience the same level of success as someone else by directly copying their work.



In the interest of sharing some original work, and because I now have a Harlem Shake video on my blog and feel terrible about that, here's a great video from BriTANicK that is far, far better and far, far funnier than the Harlem Shake and most other things.






In Part 3 I look at the ramifications of The Age of Parrots, and why we act this way.




*Over 40,000 Harlem Shake videos were uploaded between the 5th and the 15th February 2013 [source: http://youtube-trends.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-harlem-shake-has-exploded.html]. At the time of writing, searches for "Harlem Shake" on Youtube show 8,240,000 results. Many of these, however, appear to be repostings and compilations of already-existing Harlem Shakes (which, if anything, strengthens my overall point). No information appears to be available at this time to determine how many individual Harlem Shake videos currently exist online.

The Age of Parrots, Part 1 (Or: How To Insult All Your Friends In One Blog Post).

Carl: Homer, if it weren't for you, we'd be at the mercy of weekend philatelists.
Lenny: You know, why didn't you just say stamp collectors?
Carl: 'Cause I'm tired of dumbing myself down for you.

The Simpsons - The Little Girl Who Slept Too Little 

While planning an event in a recent Facebook message thread a friend of mine excused himself by writing "Sorry guys n gals Im in leed's"[sic]. Those of you who aren't illiterate should be groaning right now. Naturally I could not let the incredible stupidity of this apostrophe misuse slide (though I did let him off the "n", because sometimes three letter words are too much effort even for the best of us), and I pointed it out to him. For this I was called a Grammar Nazi.

Don't worry, this isn't going to be a long complaint about someone calling me names. And it's not going to be a thousand word exploration of the phrase "sticks and stones". The intent - though misplaced, and we'll come to that in a later post - doesn't bother me in that way, mostly because it's exactly the sort of response I was aiming for. I'm not going to pretend that I spent the rest of the message thread pointing out his grammatical mistakes and telling him that he should stop being wrong because I was trying to teach him a lesson or because I deeply cared about his mastery of the English Language. I was doing it because I knew it was annoying him and I knew he'd keep rising to it and, well, it was too funny to not do it.

But I'd like to look at the phrase "Grammar Nazi". A term that - to the best of my knowledge - originated on the internet* and has been picked up by web users to become a commonplace term for anyone who takes it upon themselves to point out spelling and grammar errors made by other people. The earliest definition on Urban Dictionary - as reliable a place as any for web-based phrases - comes from November 2002 and describes the Grammar Nazi as "someone who is addicted to the correct usage of the English language...". Since that time there have been thirty-one more definitions added to the term, because Urban Dictionary is ridiculous. Not one of those definitions explain what the word "Nazi" is doing there. There is no etymological information to let us know when "Nazi" became synonymous with "addicted to the correct usage of...". It is objectively a meaningless phrase and this is where my issue lies.

This is not an unusual case. As a society we adopt the language and terms of our peers, picking up colloquialisms and accents along the way. Now that the internet has increased the range of people we interact with every day by an incredible degree, terms and phrases such as this are picked up by more people at a quicker rate than ever before. Soon they become part of the daily lexicon of people who have never considered what they're actually saying. And phrases like "Grammar Nazi" become commonplace.

It shouldn't be unusual to consider the meanings behind these things. It shouldn't have to be pointed out to someone that a term they use on a daily basis doesn't actually make sense. And it especially shouldn't be common practice for someone to ignore the literal meaning of what they say and continue to use it in the same nonsensical way, regardless. The internet gives us new words and phrases every day. It's time to start thinking about them before using them.

Why is someone who corrects grammar a "Nazi"? Why is a night out "cheeky"? Why the person responsible for something you approve of a "lad"? Why is "fail" now a noun? And why, why, why does a picture or description of your dinner have to be followed with "omnomnom"**?

This is the age of parrots. And it will continue until we learn to think about what we're saying. 

In Part 2 I look at the way the age of parrots has affected our creative endeavours online, from original works to viral videos to memes.

*Feel free to let me know if I'm wrong about this. It would be interesting to see if the term was in use before the internet.

**This is something that especially needs to die. Mostly because of the image it conjures of the person who wrote it opening their mouth as wide as possible between chews as they spray their greasy, mushy food all over the table while inviting you to stare down their throat at whatever stayed in being digested in their swollen, flabby stomachs. Just...stop it.

The 7 Worst Things About Being Unemployed

Because I enjoy whining over writing things with any substance this article isn't about making any political or socio-economical points. It's purely about things that are annoying me right now. Because I'm a fan of Cracked, and kind of a hack, it's also in list form.

The 7 things that are currently most annoying me about not having a job are:

2011 - A Summary

As December closes it's common to see articles and programmes rounding up the experiences of the past 12 months, looking for ways to sum up the events of the year to give future historians an easier job. As we reach the end of 2011, many of these are talking about this as "The Year That Lots Happened".

Informative though that title may be, what may be a better way to sum up the past year would be "2011 - The Year Society Reached New Lows".

When we look back at 2011, what will we really remember? The Royal Wedding and the death of Steve Jobs will certainly stand out as two events that - for very different reasons - brought people together and demonstrated that there is still a spark of decency, community and affection amongst the populous. Other notable deaths - those, for example, of various enemies of the West: Bin Laden, Ghaddafi, Kim Jong Il - prompted less inspiring reactions. Some celebrated, not always in appropriate ways. Some took to their high horses to lecture everyone on why we should still honour and respect the passing of brutal dictators and terrorist plotters who sent thousands to early graves for their own pointless, selfish reasons. And most just made snarky jokes on twitter and facebook and forwarded them on to their friends.

And then we come to those other big stories of the year. Those stories that make you look at society and have to swallow the shame vomit crawling past your tonsils.

Phone hacking and super-injunctions. Two sides of the same filth encrusted penny. On the one hand we condemn the News Of The World and all of Murdochs minions for hacking in to phones, stealing voicemail messages and spreading the shit they find there all over their papers. How dare they go so low as to intrude on peoples private lives just to get a story. On the other we condemn those that take out super-injunctions to prevent anyone reporting on their secret affairs. How dare they try and hide their sordid lives from us.

When a celebrity tries to hide from what they've done and prevent their story being told in the press, we take to twitter in armies and rat them out so everyone knows who they are. When a journalist tries to find these stories using certain methods we force a 138 year old paper to stop printing.

This double standard isn't even the worst part. Look at the source of each of these issues. The stories that are being told or hidden from them. These aren't important. Super-injunctions aren't being used to hide political scandals. Phone hacking isn't being used to unveil paedophile rings. The biggest thing revealed by a failed super-injunction was that Ryan Giggs had sex with some girl from Big Brother. And we're all sitting at our laptops patting ourselves on the backs for being able to beat the system and spread this story around.

We completely missed the point. The story there shouldn't have been "Ryan Giggs had an affair and then tried to hide it from the public". It should have been "Ryan Giggs had an affair and then FELT THAT HE HAD TO TRY AND HIDE IT FROM THE PUBLIC because apparently we've decided as a society that who a footballer's fucking is something that we should all care about". And with the year being taken up by stories of these super-injunctions and phone hacking enquiries, it never seems to occur to us that maybe if we just grew the hell up and stopped thinking that this is the sort of inane, unimportant bullshit that we should focus on, neither of these things will be an issue. We forget that the people writing these stories aren't the evil ones, forcing us to pay attention to this crap - they work for us. We tell them we want stories of celebrities behaving badly and they oblige. This, right now, is the point where we should realise that we've gone too far and we seriously need to reassess the kind of stories we want.

But that's not happening. We're just going to keep finding new ways to get around injunctions, and force journalists to find new ways of spying on people just so we can find out who one of the droopy mouthed morons from Geordie Shore is banging behind the scenes.

And then we come to the final big story of the year which is, of course, the riots across the country. A time when, for seemingly no reason at all, great tribes of twats adopted a "Monkey See, Monkey Do" attitude across the country and looted, burned and trashed various city centres - proving themselves to be the stupidest, most awful piles of scum on the planet. The end of the summer was then spent trying to decifer just how this had happened, and what the point of it was. Were the riots politically motivated? Was it to make a socio-economic point? Was it out of necessity?

As it turned out, people were rioting because they were morons. The very worst of humanity rose up and rioted purely because someone had failed to realise that they should have been drowned at birth.

So that's 2011. We finally went too far with our addiction to idiotic celebrity gossip - and then continued. We recognised the behaviours of the worst of our journalists - and learned nothing from it. And we were terrorised by our own people - and were unable to catch them all, lock them up in the Jeremy Kyle studios and set the place on fire. We then sat back and allowed our television channels to fill up with nonsensical, intellectually offensive "scripted reality" shows, let the charts fill up with previously pleasant songs remixed in to garbled, robotic messes of sound and tweeted racist jokes about dead leaders.

2011 is the year that brought out the very worst in society, and all signs show that we're not planning on making ourselves any better in 2012.

The Importance of Commentary in a Fair Trial

According to news reports, the jury responsible for the outcome of the trial of two men accused of murdering teenager Stephen Lawrence have been told by the judge to stay away from social media sites Twitter and Facebook, in case they include "commentary" of the trial. This is supposedly done in the interest of a fair trial.

This, to me, doesn't quite make sense. I'm not saying I'm against the prospect of a fair trial - far from it - but I'm not sure that isolating the jury from the opinions of the masses is the way to go about it.

The jury is selected randomly in order to represent the rest of the population in coming up with a fair verdict. A small number is chosen simply because it's unfeasible to try and give all that information to everyone in the country and have us all vote on it. But they're still a small group. If they're to represent us, then why are they not allowed to hear what we have to say?

The benefit of social networking - especially twitter - is that everyone can put forward their thoughts on the topics of the day in real time. When it comes to a trial, I don't see why those responsible for coming to a decision can't see what other people are saying about it. Surely by allowing the views of hundreds of more people to be heard, we are making the overall verdict more fair, not less.

I'm not saying they should make looking at twitter the most important aspect of their decision making. After all, they're the ones in the courtroom. They're the ones who see all the evidence, and they're the ones hearing arguments from both sides. Obviously that's the most important thing they should be focussing on. But surely they should still be allowed to see what everyone else thinks about the proceedings - even if they're warned to take it with a little pinch of salt. Because, by our court system, the people tweeting had an equal chance of ending up in that jury. So why ignore their views?

I want a fair trial in every case. And I believe that when it comes down to it, discussion is vital in ensuring the right decision is made. And removing the possibility of discussion with the rest of your peers is not the way to ensure a fair trial.