About online wrongness

The Oxford Word of the Year is “rage bait”, defined as: 

online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.

But I’m trying to be less consumed with rage these days, even if recent events feel designed to provoke it: analogue rage bait, if you like. What I do notice instead, among all the AI capybaras is stuff that appears engineered to induce a bit of mild eye-rolling, a sigh, an outburst of pedantry; that time when an exasperated parent loses patience and says, “never mind, let me do it.” It’s a variant of Cunningham’s Law, which holds that “the best way to get the right answer is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer”. Except that nobody cares about getting the right answer as long as they get those eyeballs.

The whole issue is confused by the lurking presence of AI; are these cynical attempts to engage with wrongness, or just bots swallowing up online dumbness and spitting it out again? For example, this list of the best ever Test batters, which starts OK, then descends into increasingly hearty portions of word soup. It looks like AI slop, put out there to provoke – but then we recall the Japanese Nintendo game that was peopled with bizarrely-named baseball players, all without the assistance of AI. Might Gariel Btogby not be a distant cousin to Bobson Dugnutt?

And then we see posts like this, claiming to be a video of “Jingle Bells in Indian” which is nonsensical because there’s no such language as Indian, and in any case the song being massacred is ‘Sleigh Ride’. Pedant bait? Well, not really, because someone who points out the solecism is slagged off for being a killjoy Karen. This was a post born of slack-jawed ignorance, pure and simple, and it’s bad manners to mention it. To be honest, why do we need digitally-generated stupidity when we have the real thing?

Not about the Jubilee

No, I will not be indulging in bunting-related shenanigans over this inordinately extended weekend, and not just because even Radio 4 has taken to calling the whole thing “PLATTY JUBES”. Instead, here are two things that have amused me recently. First, Jacques Derrida playing cricket.

And then this, which may or may not be sincere: 

Niche film twitter question: is the French title of Emmanuelle 2, Emmanuelle: L'antivierge (1975), a pun on Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (1972)?

— Matthew Sweet (@DrMatthewSweet) June 1, 2022

About things

Back in the days when blogging was a thing and people used to read this, every now and then I’d use a post as a repository for various bits of stuff and nonsense that had caught my eye over the past few days or weeks, a sort of snapshot of my cultural life at that moment. 

In that spirit, Matt Doran, the man who forgot to listen to the Adele album, offers an apology that sounds like something from a Stalinist show trial, except that I’ve got a horrible feeling it’s genuine. And just when you think being under-prepared is a sin, BBC4 runs a documentary about Geordie singer-songwriter Alan Hull, which kicks off with the presenter admitting he doesn’t know anything about Alan Hull. I’ve got a horrible feeling that the success of You’re Dead To Me has given the Beeb the idea that ignorance is a qualification.

Also on a musical theme, I offer you Olivia Lane’s review for Pitchfork of the new Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album, for no reason other than that she uses the words “effulgent”, “magmatic” and “empyreal” and doesn't explain or apologise, so there. Then there’s Andy Bull’s quip about the Tim Paine scandal: 

Paine sent an unsolicited “dick pic” to a female employee of Cricket Tasmania with the caption “finish me off right now”. Four years later, she has...

A line from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ that made me giggle foolishly:

I arose and argued about trifles...

And this, via Richard Blandford on the Twitters, which also made me giggle, but not as much as the trifle thing did.

Klout: I get a pain in the back of my neck

Oh dear, Klout’s everywhere all of a sudden. It’s a service that aims to quantify your social media influence, deploying algorithms that translate to a score out of 100; the bigger cheese you are on the interwebnets, the higher your score. This might have some validity if Klout were to operate with the ethos of an old-fashioned gentleman’s club; those who push their claims for membership too loudly and brashly are doomed to failure. But increasingly, those with high Klout scores are not truly influential, but simply people who have the time and energy and inclination to rack up high Klout scores. Like people whose self-worth is determined by number of Twitter followers or blog eyeballs or Panini stickers, they modify their online behaviour to game their own statistics.  

And even when applied to someone who is properly (if not rightfully) famous, the statistics really don’t add up. Singer of popular ditties Justin Bieber has a Klout score of 100, apparently, but it’s not clear what portion of that score derives from people who use Twitter to express their heartfelt desire that Mr Bieber might be elbowed to death by Joey Barton (who scores 85).

 

Of course, purely in the interests of research and solipsism I just had to find out where I fit in the grand scheme of things; and Klout tells me not only that I have a Klout score of 45*, but that I am an influencer when it comes to the subject of “pak”. Unfortunately, it neglects to explain what “pak” might be and I spend several hours in a state of heightened agitation, worried that businesses and governments and criminal networks throughout the world will seize on the notion that Klout scores actually determine whether or not one is good at something, and ask me for my opinion on pak, my advice on pak, on whether we should privatise it or subsidise it or abolish it or put it in the water supply. I suddenly feel like Chance, the innocent gardener in Being There, whose ill-informed platitudes are interpreted as great wisdom. And then I remember that one of the main uses I have for Twitter is making facetious comments on cricket matches, and “#pak” is just a hashtag that indicates that Pakistan is playing.

And that, my friends, is why Klout is silly. Far better, if you must jump on any sort of virtual bandwagon, is social media for existentialists: “All passwords on the Being and Nothingness Network are vaguely menacing anagrams formed using the maiden name of Martin Heidegger’s paternal grandmother.” You know, if anyone at Klout reads this, I’ll immediately become one of the world’s leading experts on Heidegger. It’s between me and Joey Barton.

* 45’s not brilliant, but it could get me free noodles at San Francisco airport.

Silly point

Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland (2008) tells the story of a New York-based Dutchman whose marriage unravels in the aftermath of 9/11, and who attempts to pull himself together by joining a cricket club in Staten Island. Barack Obama  apparently thought it was very good, and so do I. It would be more than a little trite to describe Netherland as a novel about cricket; but at the same time, without cricket there wouldn’t really be much of a novel. So I was a bit surprised when I saw a US paperback edition of Netherland in a Bangkok bookshop the other day, and noticed that there was no reference to cricket anywhere on the cover. Not even an opportunistic World Cup tie-in...

OK, so most Americans don’t get cricket, despite the fact that the first ever international match was played on US soil, so it was probably a hard-headed decision on the part of the publishers, who reckoned that nobody would buy a book that involved a sport they barely know exists. But would a British publisher bring out an edition of The Natural by Bernard Malamud with no indication that it might contain stuff about baseball? Or Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries with the title erased...

(The image is of the mighty Bart King, the greatest American cricketer of all time, who in his last tour of England, in 1911, took 87 wickets at an average of 11.01. Which, for the benefit of my lovely American readers, is rather good.)

None more blog

The New York Times solicits a number of viewpoints on the apparent decline of blogging among the young:

“If you’re looking for substantive conversation, you turn to blogs,” Ms. Camahort Page said. “You aren’t going to find it on Facebook, and you aren’t going to find it in 140 characters on Twitter.”

or conversely:

Kim Hou, a high school senior in San Francisco, said she quit blogging months ago, but acknowledged that she continued to post fashion photos on Tumblr. “It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,” she said. “With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.”

Ah, that pesky “having to write” thing. There may be a useful analogy with cricket here. When the one-day form of the game began in the 1960s, traditionalists grumbled that it was a tawdry concession to the shrinking attention spans of the young, and that it would cause the end of the traditional first-class game (for which, read conventional news media).  Except that it didn’t really, although  Test cricket did feel the pressure for a while. Then, as if from nowhere, 20/20 cricket (Twitter, Tumblr, etc) arrived with its cheerleaders and fireworks, catering to even shorter attention spans, and suddenly it was one-day cricket that looked staid and tired, and pundits wonder whether the current World Cup might be the last. Ach, tell me I’m worrying about nothing. Blogging isn’t actually dying as such – it’s just that, in the words of cricket lover Ian Faith, its appeal is becoming more selective.

(Cartoon by gapingvoid)

Gentlemen and prayers

I was going to liven up your Sunday with a fairly long and convoluted post about how recent events have proved Marshall McLuhan right – how the process of transmitting information becomes the story – people focus on Wikileaks itself more than on the US spying on Ban Ki-Moon or Prince Andrew sanctioning corruption – tabloids blaming the BBC’s coverage of FIFA skulduggery for the failed World Cup bid, ignoring the skulduggery itself – and even as I type, I see someone complaining about a supposedly offensive Twitter hashtag, demanding that the complaint is RT’d, thereby managing to turn said unremarkable tag into a global trending topic. (Thinks: what’s the Thai for “D’OH!”?)

But I won’t, because all I want to do today is to share this picture with you:

Hey, hey LBW

Just finished Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, which is about many things – marriage, masculinity, mid-life crises, migration – but above all about the barely visible subculture of cricket in New York. O’Neill describes it as a post-American novel: as the dust of 9/11 refuses to settle, a hodgepodge of immigrants indulge in a pastime that’s almost as alien to the American psyche as Marxism or not liking apple pie. (Although, as one character points out, cricket was played in New York in the 1770s, and the first international sporting events were cricket matches between the USA and Canada, in the 1840s.)

I think I’m reading it at exactly the right time. America may not yet have ceded the 21st century to China and India at the G20 summit, but Obama’s presence at the G20 summit struck a new tone of humility. Meanwhile, Afghanistan responds to its prolonged occupation not by opening McDonalds and Starbucks in Kabul, but by moving inexorably towards a place in the next Cricket World Cup.

Cricket becomes the signifier of not-Americanness; the next step will be America meekly submitting to its charms. And the conclusive sign that the American hegemony is over will be President Paris Hilton bowling the first googly of the 20/20 World Series.

Monkey nuts

In which I herald the dawning of the equal-opportunity racial epithet.

A whiter shade of... er...

In which I welcome the new, inclusive, ethnically diverse face of boneheaded bigotry.

Also, this reader response from the BBC's online coverage of the England collapse in Galle: "Do other nations think it unfair that England get to bowl more overs and have more turns at batting than anyone else?"

Entirely academic

In which I go back to blathering about education policy.

And serious respect is due to that man Muralitharan, of course. As he said himself: "I like to be a bowler because I can't bat properly."

From our sports correspondent

It's not often that Portsmouth and Bangladesh get mentioned in the same sentence, except maybe when it comes to comparisons of heroin addiction and poor diet, both of which indicators tend to suggest Dhaka is a more salubrious environment (and you can go here and here for variations on that theme). But high fives to both teams of unfancied, underprivileged urchins for yesterday's sporting upsets, which have injected an unexpected double dose of uncertainty into the latter stages of the Premiership and the Cricket World Cup respectively.

Odd to think, though, that 20 years ago, if we were celebrating an obnoxious, fascist pariah getting a bloody nose, it would have been the humbling of South Africa that provoked the widest smile...

The appliance of science

My ongoing statistical investigation (to identify the correlation between mentions of my new book, Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album, and online indicators such as Amazon ranking and my own Google rating) has gone completely tits-up. Since the last mention in this blog, on Friday, Amazon has plummeted; while Google is as chirpy as an Irish cricketer.

Never mind, I'm going to hell anyway.

Update: Maybe that simile about the Irish cricketer wasn't so apt, if the subsequent tragedy and ongoing allegations of skulduggery are anything to go by? Chirpy as a Pakistani bookie? As a Jamaican conspiracy theorist?

Colly flowers

England just beat Australia to win the CB Series.

While you're attempting to get your befuddled, still-a-bit-hungover heads round that quite preposterous turn of events, may I remind you that Chasms of the Earth is still trundling along, and would welcome your impassioned defence of the literary majesty of Dan Brown; and that the competition to win a signed copy of my new book is also live.

And here's a joke that my very splendid nephew George (age 5 and a bit) just told me.

Q: How do you get a baby astronaut to sleep?

A: Rocket!

Under normal circumstances that would be joke of the day, but I think the cricket result pips it.

Don't forget the joker

I still haven't written that review of Pinball 1973; but I'm relieved to note that Ian Hocking has been similarly slack with his Murakami-related duties. I have however, gone a bit OTT on Roxy Music 1974 at Tangents. And of course, the FA Cup Final and the Test Match (England fielders: What ball? Oh, that ball. Sorry.) have intervened. On the subject of the latter, serious question time; can anyone tell me why Sri Lankans have so many first names? In this match alone we had Denagamage Proboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene, Kulasekara Mudiyanselage Dinesh Nuwan Kulasekara and the magnificent Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas (but his mum just calls him Chaminda). Was Herath Mudiyanselage Rangana Keerthi Bandara Herath on drinks duty, perhaps? A little Googling also unearthed this guy. Pity his poor mum when the time came to sew in his nametags for school.

Damn, I really need to do some work. Got a major business writing slog to complete in the next month, before I go back to England, and after that it's full steam ahead with the top secret indie rock book project. But there may be a bit less action at this site than you're used to. I'm sure you'll cope.

However, couldn't resist this one: Metallica frontman James Hetfield spoke about his battle with booze and drugs at a fundraiser for addiction charity MusiCares MAP in Hollywood last week. A tearful Hetfield described the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll ideal as "a horrible myth". Also in attendance and sipping alcohol-free beverages were a number of celebrities who have joined Hetfield in repudiating a lifestyle of excess and hedonism. These included members of Alice In Chains and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who have lost bandmates to drugs, substance-damaged wildman Ozzy Osbourne and, uh... Lemmy. The man who only resorts to "Just Say No" when someone asks if he's sober.

And also, while I'm here: Marina Hyde (is she still intercoursing Piers Morgan, by the way?) analyses NuLab NuSpeak, with the help of TS Eliot; the ever droll David Freedman identifies the a priori of humour; the French PM turns into Louis XIV (although XVI might be more amusing); a Danish band plays the music from Commodore 64 games; Andrew Marr imagines a pub for ponces; from 3am, a pretty definitive soundtrack to depression from the guy who made Rose Royce samples cool; in Tokyo's restaurants, the Duran Duran years are back; and the president of Universities UK, we learn from an otherwise pretty uninteresting press release tarted up by a bored hack at Reuters to look like a real news story, is called Drummond Bone.

Now, obviously, nobody's really called Drummond Bone. That would just be too silly. So is this in fact a new piece of Cockney rhyming slang? (Drummond Bone = congestion zone, maybe?) Or is it a new dance music genre that people in Hoxton are pretending to like until July? Or what? Suggestions, please.