What creative writing can tell us--not much

As it turns out, VT student turned mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui was an English major, and penned some creative work. The kind of work that gets flagged and the author sent in for counseling:

"There was some concern about him," Rude said. "Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be. But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."

But where do you draw the line between artistic license and maniacal ranting? Plenty of folks -- Stephen King comes to mind -- can pen amazingly violent, creative stories and don't act out fantasies of mayhem and destruction.

Some will tell you that violent writing, videogames, or other such outlets are just that -- a place to safely act out behavior prohibited by society. And for many, they're just that. Then there are the crazies like Kleibold and Harris from Columbine, Cho and even a recent case here in Massachusetts where the perpetrators were all fans of dark, violent media properties -- Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Dark Tower. Be prepared for another outpouring of "media is the problem."

Though in Cho's case, there's no indication he engaged in such behaviors. And there is plenty of hard behavioral evidence that things weren't quite right with him:

Citing unidentified sources, the Tribune said he had recently shown troubling signs, including setting a fire in a dorm room and stalking some women.

So before we start to demonize the media, or to suspect that every short story that doesn't end well is a cry for help, it's critical to put the work in perspective, with the rest of that individual's life.

Cumulative Advanage Theory

In case you missed it, here's a very intriguing article from the New York Times Magazine April 15 about the results of research on market popularity and hit predictors. Why is it, they wondered, that it is so difficult for companies to predict the Next Big Thing?

Conventional marketing wisdom holds that predicting success in cultural markets is mostly a matter of anticipating the preferences of the millions of individual people who participate in them...That they fail so frequently implies either that they aren’t studying their own successes carefully enough or that they are not paying sufficiently close attention to the changing preferences of their audience.

The common-sense view, however, makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best” of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.

In other words, we are social creatures and we rely on a host of indicators -- friends, family, reviews, etc -- to help us make up our own minds. The sociology researchers at Columbia University devised an online experiment where participants were divided into eight different groups and given a collection of songs to listen to and download, a mix of popular and unknown artists. Participants were divided into two groups -- those who could see what other people downloaded, and those who couldn't. The first group, the ones who could see what other participants downloaded, was further divided into eight separate subgroups, and their downloading habits analyzed.

While it's always good to be skeptical of studies which prove what the researchers set out to verify, this particular study seems too important to dismiss:

First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

Excerpting bits of this study doesn't do it justice; I strongly recommend you read the article yourself to grasp the nuances.

The takeaway, though, is immense. With the rise of markets online, will there be a corresponding rise in the "cumulative advantage effect", where the first arrivers start the ball rolling and help determine its ultimate outcome? Does it make sense for a company to reveal the number of overall downloads, knowing that it will influence audience behavior? Could you seed a new site with corporate shills gaming the system? And what does this study say for those who correlate popularity with quality? The wisdom of the crowd seems to be a moving target.

Media, Memory and Memes

I feel the need to say something about the Don Imus flap. For those of you who are comfortably ensconsed in your cave, the radio shock-jock called the members of the Rutgers girls' basketball team "nappy-headed 'hos". So, what makes this day different from any other?

* As tapes of Imus' show demonstrate, Imus and his producer didn't just leave it at that, they proceeded to joke about other celebrity African-Americans, their hair and weight;

* There's a world of difference between an insult and similar language used by rap artists, where the context allows for a certain amount of dramatization;

* Rap artists, also, rarely insult successful women's basketball teams en masse;

* The team, competing in the NCAA women's finals, has responded to this thoughtless verbal assault with grace.

David Carr, in this article in the New York Times adds some more reasons why Imus today is toast:

* By inviting activists such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson -- figures with explicit agendas of their own to further -- onto his show, Imus effectively lost control of the apology process;

* Don Imus may be finished right now, but don't expect him to be down for the count. His second act is right around the corner;

* Carr mentions the role of YouTube and distributed video in perpetuating the outrage. Back in PYT (Pre You Tube), someone would kick their foot in it and perhaps a clip would circulate via email, perhaps it wouldn't and the whole imbroglio would die down just as quickly as it had started. Now, not only do clips circulate, but they're posted on video sharing sites, commented on, and rated.

What Carr doesn't clarify is that in a world where you might be able to eek out 7 minutes of YouTube fame, you don't want it to be kind of fame Don Imus or Michael Richards have received. Popular YouTube videos are the multimedia equivalent of a meme, an idea that worms its way into public consciousness as 'knowledge'. For instance, presidential candidate John Kerry never said "Who amongst us doesn't love NASCAR?", a tortured grammatical construction at best, a condescending East Coast faux-fan posture at the words. But that falsehood did its work, and I bet most of you still thought that Kerry actually said that drek.

Signs of the Times

I know, tacky headline. How about "Highway Signs and You"? "Variable Electronic Signs a Hit or Miss"? Or, even, "o8iusfm Yns"? Because that last phrase, or a close approximation, is what I often read on those mobile highway signs.

Who cares, right? Well, one might argue that public safety is at stake ; these signs presumably exist to communicate something that needs to be known, like "Road Closed" or "Flash Flood Warning". For those of us who care about the aesthetics of the built environment, these signs are pretty ugly. They're often unreadable against the glare of the sun, and you're stuck with that dreadful font comprised of dots. And when they're broken, they're not even functional. They're used instead of regular old wooden signs because they are versatile. You can put any important or fanciful message on it you like, such as "Construction Ahead"/"Proceed with Caution"/"Go Red Sox".

Broken electric signs may not communicate what they're intended to, but they shout "Lack of Care!" and "Public Infrastructure Crumbling Ahead!". Broken signs say decay, decline, and neglect: they are a feature of any decent film noir. Imagine Philip Marlowe's detective office without a broken electric sign buzzing and blinking outside his window. It speaks of broader themes of deregulation and postmodernist garble, of display simmply for the sake of display. But if the signs can't tell us where to go, what can?

With this in mind, I was amused to read target = "new">this story in the Boston Globe about one such broken sign:

[The writer] included a link to a picture, which showed an askew Jersey barrier, an orange barrel, a sign that said "Road Closed," and a variable message sign displaying the universal symbol for deer crossing.

"I took this picture April 3 (but the sign was still there this morning April 5)," he wrote. "This is on the south side of the old bridge, looking north. Possibly an extended April 's Fools joke? At least we're pretty certain that's a deer and not a terrorist device."

Erik Abell, spokesman for the Massachusetts Highway Department, blamed technology for the deer crossing sign popping up.

"Apparently, the message reverted to one of the board's default settings, due to a malfunction," he wrote. "The message board was originally set up to warn drivers of the looming bridge closure. Since the bridge is now under construction and other signs are on site, we are removing the message board from the location."

As for the detour signs, Abell said a dispute in the neighborhoods surrounding the bridge over where the route would run has led to simple, if uninformative, signs on either side of the bridge reading "Seek Alternate Route."

Do you find it a comfort that the default setting for the variable message sign is "Deer Crossing". That's appropriate for just so many occasions! Perhaps the sign originated in Maine.

What is Graffiti Anymore?

This perfectly nice article in the New Statesman magazine discusses the legitimization of graffiti as an acknowledged art form. While many property owners would still beg to disagree, graffiti is emerging as a way for artists to produce thought-provoking work outside the gallery system.

Fine. That tide had been turning for years now -- think of Keith Haring, TATs Cru, etc. What's confusing here is what graffiti is anymore. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Graffiti (strictly, as singular, "graffito," from the Italian — "graffiti" being the plural) are images or letters applied without permission to publicly viewable surfaces such as walls or bridges....When graffiti painting is done without the property owner's consent, it can be considered vandalism, which is punishable by law in most countries. Graffiti can be used to communicate social and political messages, and as a form of advertising. It is also considered a modern art form, and can be seen in galleries around the world.

One producer profiled in the article, "Slink", left thumb-sized dolls throughout London:

Last year, the artist "Slink" left a Hansel-and-Gretel trail of art around London. Walking around the capital, the 26-year-old left more than 50 miniature dolls on street corners, at traffic lights and in other places where they would be noticed only by those who glanced in their direction...The dolls - about the size of a thumb but intricately detailed - have long since been swept away or eaten, but the artist is still at work distributing new diminutive items.

I had to reread the article a few times to figure out that he left actual dolls, and didn't draw dolls, on the street. Is leaving miniature figures out in public space graffiti? I'm not sure. Another work involved ornamenting the rather unstylish crossing walk figures with purses, hats, clothing and other satorial trappings. Sounds cool, but again, is this graffiti, or a series of site-specific installations.

But was really got my attention was the "comments" section, where -- in a very lengthy entry -- the poster claimed that his group's YouTube videos were also graffiti.

You can't get around the fact that what we do is art. You can't get around the fact that it's very public. You can't escape the reality it's a form of graffiti.

The poster goes on to explain that graffiti is not only public, it circumvents the gallery system, etc etc etc.

Does that mean that everything artistic online is graffiti? What about all those people who don't have robust access to computers? Is it graffiti if you have to go looking for it online? Is something graffiti if it doesn't trespass on someone else's property? If it isn't at least semi-permanent? Or is it a style, created with certain tools? Or dolls?

Granny's got Game

There's a charming article in the New York Times about how video games are really making inroads at retirement communities. That's right, Junior, Grandpa's got a new joystick:

Anxious about the mental cost of aging, older people are turning to games that rely on quick thinking to stimulate brain activity. A step slower than in their youth, they are using digital recreations of bowling, tennis and golf.

The Nintendo Wii is proving particularly popular with the Silent Generation:

The photo to the left shows an older gentleman competing in a local Wii bowling league. Over time, it's cheaper than bowling, and the Wii controller is sure lighter than a duck pin bowling ball. And to confirm the Wii's appeal to the silver set, the Norwegian Cruise lines recently announced that it is installing Wiis on all of its ships.

What do teenage boys and retirees have in common? Perhaps that very human impulse we all have to be engaged and entertained. They also have more free time than those adults in between, with jobs and children consuming valuable play time.