Shame about the Internet

I'd been thinking of tackling the utopian topic of what kind of society I'd like to see after the whole pandemic business finishes - a more social democratic society, and one where things are less ridiculously complicated (because for some reason Americans love stupid stuff to be stupidly complex), but I decided against it.

Instead I was thinking about a topic at once less utopian, the internet, and also more utopian, i.e. how nice it'd be if it were less shitty.

I guess it's easy to complain about the ways the internet has distorted the culture worldwide - exhibit A is the Trump "presidency", which owes its existence heavily to the worst aspects of the internet, and which has given us the situation we currently face.

And it's not just here that the internet has fucked things up - misinformation on the internet generally and Facebook specifically contributed heavily to the Brexit vote in 2016 and other far-right politicians' victories in the years since. To say nothing of its success in radicalizing disaffected Muslim-background youth in Europe and leading to atrocities like the Paris attacks of 2015.

But every morning, when I fire up my laptop to do my Duolingo lessons, or when I follow along with a workout routine on YouTube, I have to remind myself of how much benefit it's brought me.

Or to put it another way, I keep trying to think how I'd be coping with boredom and so forth during this sheltering in place, if I didn't have the internet to keep me in touch with my friends and family, to keep me informed about what's happening, and to keep me entertained.

While I've gone on something of a buying spree on Kindle since the first shelter-in-place order came down, it's probably fair to say that I wouldn't be short on physical books to read. I've got my own collection here, and also my dad's, so if I don't mind re-reading certain things, I'd be fine there. Same with music, because even though I'm currently listening to John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Unfinished Music Vol. 2 on YouTube (review: don't listen to it), I have my own CD collection and iTunes library to fall back on.

TV is a slightly trickier prospect, because as a cord-cutter I really only have access to Netflix and other streamers. And there I'd find my first set of problems, because there wouldn't even be YouTube to pass the time (for instance by watching this one British nerd solve ridiculously complex sudoku puzzles).

I wouldn't be able to learn my languages on Duolingo or any of the other apps I use, including YouTube. And it'd be so much harder to keep on top of my health or finances or generally any of the other things that keep my life humming along - I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's fair to say that a whole ton of things are so much easier now because of it, pandemic or not.

The other important thing that I wouldn't have if not for the internet is my girlfriend, because we met online, and now that we're sequestered apart we use iMessage and FaceTime to keep in touch every day.

This whole screed isn't so much a Pollyanna-ish attempt to ignore all the disruption and chaos that the internet causes, as a reminder of all the good things that we use it for. Sure, Twitter and Facebook in particular are not just causes of our current polarization, but also actively making things more chaotic by providing a platform for all the worst kooks and grifters to either peddle falsehood or use misinformation to sow division.

But even there it's pleasing to see how my friends and family are coping on my Facebook timeline, or seeing what interesting or silly things the writers and reporters and comedians I follow on Twitter. There are bad things to all of these apps and platforms, but we can outweigh them if we make a more concerted attempt to focus on the good aspects.

This is why I get so annoyed when I see writers I like (as one example) quote-tweeting whatever idiocy the president or his enablers has vomited out into the world. If we stopped signal-boosting all these idiots, I really think they'd go away. There's no upside to retweeting those things, beyond the endorphin rush of feeling superior because you got to say something snappy to a tweet by someone who doesn't even know you exist. But they're happy because you're sharing their message with other people.

Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to be Rich (another thing I know about because of the internet) talks about improving your life by focusing on increasing the good, rather than decreasing the bad. It's not always the easiest thing to implement, but it's pretty powerful - instead of cutting out junk food, for instance, you focus on increasing the amount of healthy food you eat.

It's a good model for how we approach the internet, I'd say. Instead of rage-tweeting because some right-wing dingbat thinks Mexicans cause the coronavirus or some such nonsense, seek out the things on Facebook and Twitter that make you happy, or make you think, or even just make you laugh. Such as this:

See also male opera singers and ship's horns 🚢 pic.twitter.com/HpQu17tYtc

— Olaf Falafel (@OFalafel) September 4, 2017

Birthday Thoughts

Another birthday has come and gone. Because of the coronavirus shelter-in-place business, I had to celebrate it all online - doing Zoom calls with family and friends, and receiving texts and the obligatory Facebook messages and so forth.

For all that, it wasn't so bad. My girlfriend may not be here physically to keep me company, but she sent me some very thoughtful presents, and a lovely card (Star Wars-themed, naturally) and we've been FaceTiming as we always do on weekends. The most important thing has been knowing that she's out there, safe and sound, and that I can text her whenever I need to - I don't know that I'd be handling this isolation quite so well if it weren't for her.

As far as going out and doing stuff, it kinda felt like there wasn't much point anyway - it's not like 41 is such an exciting age to be, so you don't expect to embark on global tomfoolery like I did last year. Though it would have been nice to get out to Italy and see the relatives and all.

It is funny how far it feels like I've come since turning 40. Meeting my honey is the biggest part of it, but also the way work has shaken out, and my approach to writing and all the other goals. Maybe everyone does this when they get to a certain age, but I keep wondering how much ass I could have kicked if I'd seen things as I currently do, back in my 20s or 30s. But then, those feelings of spinning my wheels or wasting time have made me the person I am now, and who knows how obnoxious I'd have turned out if I'd been too much of a go-getter back then?

(No need to answer that, it's a rhetorical question)

There's also looking forward, though. Personally things look bright, which is light years away from what I would have said last year. And the job is... well, the job, but at least I have it in this uncertain time, which is more than a lot of people can say.

The question is, what'll happen to the rest of the world? I keep seeing a lot of inspirational quotes being thrown around social media about how the coronavirus pandemic is calling into question the assumptions underpinning American society and the economy, and how we're going to move forward into a social democratic future where everyone has health care and stuff.

But I'm not so optimistic.

I'm reminded of the (apocryphal?) quote from Winston Churchill, that the Americans can be relied on to do the right thing, once they've tried everything else. Frankly, though, I don't see us doing the right thing - I see us using this opportunity to make the economy even more cut-throat and less useful to Americans than it even was before. I see us ceding more power and money to the corporations that bully us into lower living and environmental standards, and I see an entrenchment of libertarian/objectivist ideas that'll lead to us falling even further behind the rest of the developed world.

I also see us taking exactly the wrong lessons, from exactly the wrong countries. We'll continue concentrating power in the hands of a few white men, because otherwise they stand to lose a portion of the money they'll have no hope of ever spending or passing on - money that could unlock so much more creativity and innovation if it were flowing around the economy.

It seems pretty clear to me that the country is headed toward becoming a one-party state, like Russia or Hungary - nominally a democracy, but one in which federal and congressional elections can't actually change anything for the party in power. If we're really lucky, we can look forward to a day when dissidents and journalists who dare to criticize the Republican Party, or talk about preserving the environment, get murdered in embassies and consulates abroad.

None of this is planned, and none of it is inevitable. But it's hard to see a way to a sane, fair economy or government without some sudden, sweeping change in the mentality of the people. The coronavirus itself is the black swan that's put the procession of Donald Trump to his second term in doubt, but the other thing under threat is the integrity of our elections, especially since they weren't that structurally sound to begin with.

Of course, I don't want to bring everybody down. We'll just have to see what happens in the next few
months, and hope that enough states institute mail-in voting that enough Democrats can sway the important states. But while we're being realistic let's not also pretend we're going to learn anything in particular from this crisis.

At any rate, this is one of the comforts of growing older: I get to rail against all the things that bother me in society and people will be less and less inclined to listen to me!

Revisiting All of the Marvel Movies

Or nearly all. Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far From Home aren't on Disney Plus, and neither is the Hulk movie with Edward Norton - possibly because they're worried about confusing people with discontinuity?

At any rate I've gotten through Phase 1, and am now 1.5 movies into Phase 2. I've seen most of the movies but never got around to the Thor ones (other than Ragnarok), and I can't say I was missing much. But it's interesting to see them again, given that I've never sat down to rewatch any of the movies in their entirety.

It's especially appropriate given that a couple of weeks ago I was talking about my memories of movies, music and video games I loved as a kid. Watching the first Iron Man movie again reminded me of the weekend that I walked to the cinema from my mom's place in London, where I was living at the time because I was between flats. Not having anything else on that afternoon I went to see it on my own, at the Vue Cinema where I would later see Black Panther (which is another fun story).

Since it was 12 years ago, I can't quite keep straight whether I'd already seen The Dark Knight (always at the same theatre), and whether I'd seen Dark Knight with anyone. But I do know I saw Iron Man on my own, and enjoyed it immensely, both because of the things I recalled from the comics and the fun, silly and loud goings-on onscreen.

I'm also far enough away from those days that it surprises me a little to hear that Iron Man was considered a third-tier character at the time, and that giving him an entire movie of his own was seen as quite risky. I was never that big a fan, but I knew a fair amount of back story, so it was exciting to see it all playing out in live action (if updated for modern sensibilities, i.e. not dripping with racism).

The other thing I remember is the rush of SQUEEEEE that hit when I saw the (now-famous) post-credits scene where Samuel L Jackson, as Nick Fury, tells Tony Stark about the "Avenger Initiative". Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's reboot series, Ultimates, was still pretty fresh in my mind, and seeing them aim for that in the movies was exciting as hell.

Thinking about it all now, I still appreciate the sense of excitement and possibility from watching Tony Stark go from entitled playboy to hero. It's also interesting to see how much was referenced in Infinity War and Endgame, and how many ideas that were introduced here culminated in those movies.

On the negative side, you also see the formula early on. The origin story, which takes up the entire first act, the confusing fight scenes and the fairly limited color palette (at least at first). Add to that the fact that, excitement of seeing Iron Man on the big screen aside, the movies were full of cliche - literally the first scene in Iron Man 2 is Mickey Rourke's character watching his father die, and then screaming to the heavens - a sort of Russian-language "NOOOOOOOOO" that filled me with little hope for the rest of the movie.

What's odd is that I liked Iron Man 2 a bit better on the second viewing, that scene aside. Robert Downey Jr is as engaging as ever, and again, you see a lot of things introduced here that play out later.

Another one that's hard to separate from what came later is Captain America: The First Avenger. The last scene especially, where he's talking to Agent Carter as he aims the Red Skull's doomsday plane toward the Arctic ice, hits hard when you think of his years in the present and then his return to the 40s at the end of Endgame.

The question that keeps echoing through my mind as I write this, though, is whether any of that is more than fan service. I don't want to be a spoilsport, but I guess as a writer I can't help it? In any case, like so many comic book movies before and since, it's hard to separate my actual feelings about the quality of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from my excitement at seeing throw-away references to an obscure character I read back in the 90s, or even the pleasures of seeing Jack Kirby's art form the design aesthetic of a bunch of these films.

Both of those aspects are nice, but they don't necessarily make the movies great in themselves, and I have to say that the middle of Phase 2 dragged for me a bit. Avengers: Age of Ultron, as I've noted before, was a frustrating watch because the filmmakers were too concerned with playing up the "universe" aspects than with telling the story as it needed to be told (when I say filmmakers here, I mean the producers who forced Joss Whedon and the screenwriters to put in that crazy scene with Thor in that cave, which made no sense at the time).

What I'm hoping, though, is that in rewatching all of these movies I can see the ones I didn't like (Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy) with fresher eyes and with better understanding of the picture the filmmakers were trying to draw with all those callbacks, call forwards and digressions.

This might even extend to Thor: The Dark World, which was up until today the only MCU movie I'd never seen even a minute of. Wish me luck, though, because it's the one that everyone seems to hate above all others...