Meghan Daum and Rob Walker
Morning, Meghan,
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StumbleUponThe gym? Are you kidding? Is that a euphemism for slopping the hogs?
Anyway, I don't know--there's probably still room out there for your anthology idea. (All I've read so far in Leaving New York is actually Norris's essay, which was quite good.) You certainly wouldn't want for contributors, and I guess I'll go ahead and volunteer the incredible banality that the way technology has evolved in the last few years really is changing (gradually) certain notions and experiences of connectedness.
And the public imagination, too. I have not read that Trow book, though of course what I have read of his I've found as impressive as everyone else who reads his stuff does. So impressive, really, that I'm quickly going to cultural-free-associate my way away from him, so I can avoid sullying his ideas. Did you happen to see the story in today's Times about a squabble involving a reader-favorite photo contest at the MSNBC site? I guess I'm about to make a run at the general cultural mood here, so get ready for some utter disappointment.
Here's the deal. Buried on the MSNBC site (it took me several minutes to find it) is a pretty simple reader-participation photo contest: You look at the pictures, and you vote. Pictures are ranked according to number of votes. "Contest" is actually sort of a misnomer because there's no prize, and the thing never ends--it's just pure interactivity, and the rankings can presumably keep shifting around forever as long as someone's out there voting or until MSNBC just takes the thing down. Well, the Times says that the early front-runner in the contest showed a Palestinian man and his son, shortly before the boy was shot to death in the course of a battle in the Gaza Strip. "After a widespread e-mail campaign by supporters of Israel," the Times continues, various other pictures have surged past that one. As I write this, the leading picture shows fireworks behind the Iwo Jima Memorial in D.C.
Is there something meaningful lurking in here, related perhaps to the disparate context idea? Sort of, maybe, I guess. It may be that I only read the story because of my own context for the morning, which had nothing to do with the Middle East (let alone the budget). What I'd been thinking about was what's become one of my favorite Internet time-wasters, Yahoo's "Most E-mailed Content" tracker. As you know, you can get all sorts of news "content" through Yahoo's main page, and I guess if you read an interesting story or see an interesting picture, you can e-mail it to someone. What this tracker does is tally the stories and photos that have been e-mailed the most times by Yahoo news readers in the past six hours. So it's another context in which to look at the news, quite different from a newspaper: It's weird to think about the "most popular" news of the past six hours.
It has its own strange logic. Technology-related stories ("Cisco fixes flaw in IOS software") are usually in the top five or so. News-of-the-weird stuff is popular ("Student Dies in Trash Bin Prank"), and of course there are, as I write this, several stories in the top 10 related to ... Survivor or Temptation Island. On the other hand, the top story at the moment is "Afghan Taliban Shells Buddhas, U.N. Warns." Then there are the photos, often (though not currently) dominated by cheesecake stuff, especially if there's a fashion show going on anywhere in the world featuring negligees.
I'm not sure what I'm looking for when I look at this thing. Is it really a barometer of the culture, or some particular segment of the culture? Or am I just looking for something more fun than opinions about deficit reduction? I don't know, and of course I don't expect you to have the answer. But there must be something interesting to be learned from processes like this or the MSNBC photo contest that attempt, in a way, to quantify and crystallize the public imagination. I just wish I knew what it was. Maybe I should just stick with reality television. See? Utter disappointment.
rw
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Reader Comment From The Fray:
I have a suggestion for some 'reality based' TV programs. How about Refugee Boat? We could take contestants and put them in a third world, war torn country and give them thirty days to figure out how to make a raft, find food and get set afloat before despotic soldiers order them to dig their own graves.
Or, how about Street Survival? In this one, the contestants must survive three months on the street with only the clothes on their backs and no identification. They would be required to jump trains, sleep outdoors in alleyways and in shelters, and generally try to survive their new found compatriots, welfare rolls and dumpster diving.
And, how about this beauty? Prison Guards would be a reality based show where one would become a prison guard in one of the most feared prisons in the United States. In this show contestants get thirty days training and then must work as a prison guard in the most violence-prone sectors of the prison for at least two months. Talk about ratings! I know that I would personally be glued to the screen.
Let's give vanity and greed a real price. Instead of paying people to play the mind games most of us have to wade through in our regular work week, let's up the ante a little. I can't wait until the spotlights burn and we get to see one of these numbnuts have to face a freight train's worth of trouble rushing headlong into them.
--Rogue
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