Eternal TV, Web 2.5, Washington Square Tourist Media Vibes and MORE

This is going to end up being a weekend round-up blog. DEAL!

(courtesy of the New York Times)

Washington Square: The Capitol of TikTok

You know what? It seems like I was not the only schnook who moved to NYC in 2020 because of the cheaper once-in-a-lifetime rent bonanza. A bunch of young TikTokers also descended. They seem to love Manhattan and this year, the spot for these Zoomers is not Dimes Square (don’t worry, more on that later) but Washington Square Park. Some of them do funny pranks, some play guitar to rapturous applause (more ironic pop covers than sincere folk songs like in the ‘60s). One of them, Davis Burleson, is a New School dropout who hosts a hit TikTok talk show called “What’s Poppin’ with Davis.” It doesn’t only have a high quantity of followers, but a high quality (Camilla Cabello and Iggy Azalea). Not precisely my thing, but I do appreciate that it is a person-on-the-street interview that is the diametrical opposite of most of these types of affairs, which are meant to insult/goof on passersby. Burleson prefers to interview them as if they were celebrities. I wonder if some enterprising “surprise guests” have used this to their advantage?

But the reason I’m drilling down on this is that it confirms my theory that TikTok is a reservoir for normie entertainment. This reminds me of MTV, specifically the negative space that grew around it. Music in the 1980s was every bit defined by what wasn’t on MTV as well as what was. Thrash metal, house music, indie rock, countless other subcultures grew like mildew in the darkness around MTV’s flickering light.

TikTok has similarly attracted the attention seekers so artists and creatives can not only grow, but even define themselves against it. On Dimes Square luminary/film director Eugene Kotlayarenko’s podcast Director’s Commentary, Peter Vack and the host were discussing how normies and tourists were ruining the hip, cool vibes of Fanelli’s in SoHo. Peter Vack particularly singled out the day-in-the-life TikTokers flocking to the pub. If his voice had any more venom, the Apple podcast logo would have turned rotten.

Speaking of Status…

I purchased W. David Marx’s Status and Culture, a book I already mentioned on this Substack before. A passage that I found interesting was about how Jack Nicholson’s status plummeted in the ‘80s.

Jack Nicholson, one of the most beloved actors in American cinema during the seventies, lost status during the Brat Pack teen-movie era of the eighties. After seeing the 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he vented: “Well, that movie made me feel totally irrelevant to anything that any audience could want and 119 years old. . . . I literally walked out of there thinking my days are numbered. These people are trying to kill me.”

Now that’s what I call a vibe shift, baby! But, beyond the accelerated generational change in style, I also am reading an older book by artnet critic Ben Davis where he discusses how, increasingly, an artist’s personal style became more valued in the Gilded Age, if only to distinguish them from the increasingly mechanized art of the Industrial Age. What about now? Tik Tokkers are mostly leaning into the conformity mill and are going with the flow of the gears. Many are also unhinged and are making shitposts that are meant less to flatter mainstream comedic sensibilities and are instead meant to baffle, confuse, even alienate. Frankly, either approach is above reproach. Tempting though it might be to continue ragging on attention whores workers, we are living as slaves to robot overlords, so the Uncle Tomorrow approach might be less romantic, but it is understandable.

Got My Mind In My Money

Great look at the fringe ideologies that are fueling the Web 3 movement. No one is betting on any one ideology, but this is the first work I have read that (indirectly) explains the popularity of fringe ideologies among the NFT loving downtown art scene in NYC.

Web 2.5 (a mini-manifesto)

I am not entirely sure what I think about Web3, but I do know that part of the problem with online culture is not that it isn’t looking more forward, but that it is looking away from its past. This piece from Ness Labs does a good job explaining why “new” isn’t always “better.” But I would like to look here at how sometimes, older is still good. Doorknobs still do a great job opening doors. Better to cover your hand and avoid germs than try to make them obsolete. Yet if this were the Metaverse, who knows? We might move from doorknobs to automatic doors to whatever infernal standard Zuck and Co. will think of next.

One word that comes to mind when I think of what made the 2000s web so magical was curation. Bloggers recommended musicians they liked. Photographers took pictures of parties they went to. Personal bloggers would write about their lives as they were lived. If you heard of their websites, cool. If not, OK. They had their audience. Not their AI-dience, (lame, but don’t be surprised if this becomes a word soon) but their 1,000 true fans.

Substack, Patreon, all the other portals, are increasingly relying on people to recommend things again. Inspiring example I recently mentioned : a Substack that looks at the NYC music scene. Side note: all the music links go absolutely everywhere except TikTok. This seems like a petty point to bring up, except that every single musician on the planet is being told they must have a presence on the app to make any dent. Kinda sounds like MTV in 1982.

So TLDR; looking forward is very important, but you can’t drive without a rear-view mirror. And there are some tight spots we need to back out of.

Guess Who Manufactured Consent?

Some things you love, some you hate. Some you’re not completely sold on until something hits you. Matt Taibbi is one of those things. I kept trying to get into him and couldn’t but Angelicism’s recent Souncloud rap post had an interesting excerpt that sold me:

Not listening and not paying attention became justified tactics, even what Taibbi calls ‘rhetorical addictions’ to be paired with hate as a sort of machine. Civility was out, and doing everything to stymie the president was in. In Hate Inc. Taibbi wrote:

Before long it was a media trope that civility was actually a regressive thing, a balm to fascism. Incivility was a requirement, a show of solidarity.

And in his essay on the NYT’s changing editorial policy under Trump, the same problem is posed in terms of whether, given Trumpian conditions, ‘objectivity’ from the side of the reporter can justifiably be adhered to. Taibbi writes:

In the Trump era, even the Times has surrendered the hill, meaning the last connection to the objectivity era is gone. Goodbye to the white line in the middle of the road. We’re all driving blind now.

I am now reading Hate Inc. on Scribd. He mentions Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent. I’ve had a passing familiarity with the concept, but it was only after reading this that I learned that much of the reason the press limited the range of ideologies online had to do with special interest groups. In other words, not just the military-industrial complex, but also the audience.

Young reporters learn early on what is and is not permitted behavior. They learn to recognize, almost more by smell than reason, what is and is not a “good story.”

Chomsky and Herman described this policing mechanism using the term “flak.” Flak was defined as “negative responses to a media statement or program.”

They gave examples in which corporatefunded think tanks like The Media Institute or the anti-communist Freedom House would deluge media organizations that ran the wrong kinds of stories with “letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits” and other kinds of pressure.

So being “ratioed” was always a thing; but back then it was behind the scenes and you needed organizations to do it for you. But, yes, letters to the editor, etc. also helped limit the advertising-based discourse of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

A Chronological List of “Forever Shows,” Apropos of Nothing

Just like we have forever wars, we also have forever shows. A random late-night thought about Saturday Night Live’s impact on television made me think of all the forever shows that are still going, especially the huge amount from the ‘00s.

1960s:

General Hospital

Days of Our Lives

1970s:

The Young and the Restless

SNL

1980s:

The Bold and the Beautiful

1990s:

The Simpsons

South Park

Law and Order SVU

2000s:

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Robot Chicken

Family Guy

NCIS

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Grey’s Anatomy

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia 

American Dad

Squidbillies

Metalocalypse

Tyler Perry’s House of Payne

TV Cannot Be Destroyed, It Can Only Be Transformed

I recently completed a great audiobook by Michael Wolff entitled Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age. A particular passage that struck me is one in which Wolff describes the Web as the “Land of the Banal.” Since I only have the audiobook and there is no ebook version, I do not have the luxury of giving you the exact quote. But here is the logic:

On TV, the artwork is the star (ie, Breaking Bad). Online the system is the star. If TikTok favors you, then everything revolves on your good algorithmic fortune. As soon as the numbers fall so do you. Great TV shows in the prestige era stand out from the pack. Trying to distinguish yourself from the memetic logic of the web, however, is ineffective and inefficient.

But what Wolff seems to gloss over is that TV was once the land of the banal. As the always great Justin Hanagan points out on Stay Grounded:

Instead of TV getting better and well, that being that, TVs evolution left behind an unfilled niche for passive low-stakes consumption that (as far as I can tell) went mostly unnoticed for nearly a decade. It’s not that surprising it took awhile to be capitalized upon because it’s not like people were out clamoring in the streets for a “new idiot box”, right? TV was better now, right? Nobody born after the eighties watched cable anymore. After all, nobody wants to be a brainless "boob tube" zombie. But, as you dear reader are likely aware, it turns out that for humans- the opportunity to be lightly entertained while doing basically nothing, is very hard to resist.

……

On the consumer side, what TikTok users get is a screen that serves up nonstop, comfortable, low-stakes video, riddled with product placements, and interspersed with occasional ads.

…Sound familiar?

To Wolff’s credit, he is wise enough to make a distinction between TV as an actual device (that will be obsolete) and TV as visual media being transmitted (can you even imagine a future without that)? So it seems like capitalism is once again not above cyclical time. Things progress and regress. Right now online video is in the remote-control ‘80s (not at all an accident that many clips of ‘80s TV are popular on TikTok).

Fear not, though. The gabagool is on its way.