The Voodoo Viewpoint: Is new media stealing our souls and our memories?

Originally posted on lisascullard.wordpress.com

I haven’t blogged for a while, having had new things to deal with through the summer and autumn along with writing, and waiting for other things to be resolved – everyday life has got in the way, and all of it worthy of my time – so I can honestly say I don’t feel I’ve missed anything by not procrastinating online too much.

This post has been on my mind for a while over the past year, and I’ve turning it over further in my mind since a topic came up on Facebook regarding the well-roasted old chestnut of ebook vs. print books, and what might supplant them in the future. When I made my comment, I didn’t realise how much of an observation it really was. But the thought of it keeps returning to me, so I’ll attempt to dissect it further now. (I’ve used ‘Voodoo’ in the title as I was originally going to post it as Voodoo Spice first – but there is another relevance to the reference).

My comment on the post was:

I think real books will stick around for another reason – the same reason as real music disc collections, and real movie DVDs, and real photo albums. The death of these things will mean the end of being able to remember lost loved ones. Imagine going into an elderly relative’s last residence, and instead of shelves full of their favourite media that you can pick up and read and smell, and admire, all that’s there is a computer tablet full of password-protected cloud-storage erotica. Supposing they’re survived by 20+ family members all wanting a memento? Will they have to take turns hacking into his or her tablet to read their, erm, favourites???

It’s not only the issue of having physical objects with which to remember a loved one, though. When you first make a new friend, visit their home for the first time, you see immediately by their books, music, film collections, and photographs what you have in common. Without those, it takes far longer to define. How you learn about a person who wears nothing on their sleeve in real life? Are they hiding something about their personality, their cultural and entertainment tastes, behind password-protected anonymous digital storage products? How much of their social media persona is genuine – do they really like Top Gear, or do they just ‘Like’ it on Facebook? How long does it take to make early judgements of compatibility when all you see in their home is the faceless packaging and housing of technology? Is this creating the hacking, snooping, prying, suspicious culture that troubles present-day relationships?

Are we sacrificing our personalities, our ability to connect with one another in real life without the social media screens, in favour of electronic packaging?

Back to the subject of bereavement and memories, there is another agenda surfacing to consider.

Electronic media itself has no re-sale value. The tablets and electronic devices can be re-sold, but they lose value in the very short term. Unlike physical books, vinyls, cassettes, picture frames, CDs, and DVDs – when you buy anything in digital format, to watch, read or listen to, its solvency value is zero. So even if your descendants, friends and family don’t want to share the digital tablet and know your passwords to enjoy your *ahem* favourites, they can only sell the tablet itself. Even if you have bought 70,000 books, movies, and songs in your lifetime, they do not add up to £70,000 worth of house clearance on ebay to divide among the mourners. They add up to zero.

They money you spend on electronic books and media to fill your device has gone for good. You cannot donate the products to an Oxfam bookshop after you have enjoyed them in order for others to benefit. You cannot have a yard sale or a car boot fair stand of portable entertainment to fund a party, or to pay a few bills. You have not invested your money in anything physically reminiscent that can be enjoyed as part of the soul of a lost loved one, or liquidated as an asset in the future.

The money has gone for good, into the great black hole of the business that also sold you the device to enjoy it on, or to store in some online cloud.

So in the future, without personal possessions for family and friends to remember us by – not even the chance to flick through the same books and photo albums we held, and no idea how to access our family photographs and music – and more and more social lives being conducted online – how will anyone remember their grandparents and great-grandparents beyond faces on a screen?

Will the youngest family members have the sense of identity and individual heritage that children before the digital age grew up with?

Will old people just die and disappear, leaving nothing behind but an online account full of media they spent thousands on, which is worth precisely nothing to their descendants even if they have the ability to access it? Will their living memories and personalities evaporate the second you tap on ‘Confirm shut down/log off device’?

Will folk start leaving clauses on their departure, that no-one is to hack into the tablet at all to avoid finding out how much porn and erotica they downloaded to keep them warm in their old age?

Never mind what to do with Granny, the last Will and Testament says we have to burn her Kindle first… aptly named device, if ever there was one. I see a new business opportunity looming – the “Kindle Crematorium” where dirty old reading habits go after you die…

It’s a mystery that leaves me very curious. I already find houses without books, music, photograph or film collections very odd – rather like pictures of home interiors in advertising, with no identity of the occupants visible. Sterile, like a showroom to sell a product or furniture lifestyle – not a working, living home. And if that is what remains in the future, when individuals die, what is left to know of them? An indentation in the sofa, perhaps – where they sat while playing Candy Crush Saga online?

So never mind that a computer tablet doesn’t provide the same decorative impact as a bookshelf, or provide the same soundproofing from your neighbours. Never mind that it’s a good way of hiding your reading habits, and a bad way of storing your nekkid selfies. It’s also a good way of spending your children’s inheritance – permanently. Throwing your small change onto the Kindle Fire (literally), never, ever to return as second-hand small change, ever again. Quite possibly thrown away along with the material potential for any of your descendants to remember you for more than one surviving generation…

HHappy Halloween! :) xxx

IIf you want to learn to how to format a print-on-demand book, publish and distribute for free, click here for my tutorial. You can also learn how to format ebooks and multimedia books. If those still light your candle ;) x

The Voodoo Hoodoo - Who Do You View?

I didn't watch the Grammys - I haven't watched stuff like that for years.

I worked in nightclub security from 2004-2010, so I pretty much went off all mainstream music when hearing the same cheesy requests and chart dance or R'n'B night after night turned my brain to mush. I liked what the local DJs were doing in their own time much better, and the mashing-up of existing tunes to create new sounds, sometimes on the spur of the moment, never to be repeated. I go on Soundcloud nowadays and look for artists like Dominatrix Rmx and Reaps (Reaps/reaps007 on Youtube) mashing up my favourite old tunes by Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails. Daft Punk are one of the few current bands I like, and that's mainly because of their remixes and alternative versions (they also started out before the internet was a big wahoony too).

But when there was nothing on TV yesterday morning and I was trying to do my physio exercises, I switched over to the music channel and caught a few news clips of the Grammy awards ceremony. And I was really startled by how alienating it was.

This didn't appear to be the music industry as I recalled it. It was the money industry. Patting itself on the back and applauding its own adopted politics and talent. I've seen kids on Youtube with two sticks and a bucket who have more talent.

If you're passing him in an Australian mall and don't stop to listen, I would so swap places with you...

I found myself looking at all the 'industry' professionals in the Grammy awards audience, and wondering what place the fans have in all of it (you know, fans, those lowly lumpenproletariat currently waging war against gig ticket hidden charges). That show wasn't about the fans and what the youth masses are thinking about from day to day. It was about money and politics and the bling that Madonna wants to pimp out her kid's teeth with.

Maybe they brought the first-world politics into it because they're so far removed from the real world that they need some lifeline to claw a way back into the empathy of the viewers. But it didn't disguise the bizarre members-only club that the upper echelons of the music industry has so transparently become. Not helped along by all of these 'talent shows' where the money industry now openly stamps its brand on some hopeful in order to make a fast buck.

I have a teenager a bit younger than Madge's eldest, and she's never engaged with what's on the TV unless it's stand-up comedy or Top Gear. She gets all of her music from Youtube inspiration, watching manga fan videos made by children her age all around the world, and the music that they share which isn't shoved down their throats by today's chart-topping marketing moguls.

Over 34.5 million views and comments still being uploaded - that's a real-world fan-base...

Last week I retweeted a friend's Twitter post about his band getting mentioned in Kerrang! magazine, and suddenly my Twitter follows turned into a MySpace stampede. Instead of chirpy indie authors adding me with the tag line "Here's my author page on Amazon, please leave me a review" suddenly it was bands and artists deluging me with "Our new single is on Youtube!" and "Latest album out now on iTunes!" Don't get me wrong, I bloody love it (and their music!) but it makes me realise what a tiny little miniscule petty self-satisfied corner of the 'music business' the Grammys are, and they're only on TV because they've got most of our kids' pocket money.

The latest video for "Happy" by Pharrell Williams (LOVE it, in spite of my ranting!!) is a demonstration of money spent on something to fit in with what everyone in the real world is watching anyway. Fatboy Slim did the same as I recall, back in the day - who can remind me of that song? Moby is probably another one...

Pharrell's feelgood tune from 'Despicable Me' promo emulates Youtube home videos and fan videos

Meanwhile, the rest of the money industry seems to think achievement is all about strutting around dressing and behaving like an actual pimp, male or female. Which doesn't seem to fit very well with the first-world news and politics right now.

As an indie writer it made me think about the book publishing industry in the same way. Major publishers can't deliver books at the same rate and quality that the indies and self-publishers are uploading them (rapidly approaching 50,000 new titles per week at present onto Kindle, Smashwords and other platforms). What appears on the foremost shelves of Waterstones and other stores has been paid for, its prime positioning guaranteed by one of the Big Six publishing houses - the readers don't get a say in what they see first as they walk into the store, and neither do the store management.

But what writers have to face is that readers move on quickly from one book to the next. Yes, they may get 100 readers keen on their story and few knock-on recommendations, but once a book is put down, the reader wants another adventure. The writer can't (and shouldn't) expect that handful of readers to do their promotional work when the reader has his or her own life and interests to get on with once they've put the book away (although I know one or two individuals who can't move on from one book or another *snorts inappropriately*).

Good music is different. Those four minutes of heaven can trigger off an unlimited number of adventures in the listener's mind, so favourite songs are revisited and shared far more often than a book ever will be. And that's because the listener's imagination is in complete charge. They can plug in a set of headphones and get on with enjoying their life at the same time.

Also - the singer and songwriter isn't looking over their shoulder saying 'This is what I want you to be thinking about when you listen to my tune. Here are some discussion topics and questions to raise when you hear my song out in a nightclub with your friends, or with your 'listening group'. And I would appreciate it if you would leave me a review on Amazon...'

The best music doesn't have the musician's agenda attached. It just has a little bit of their soul. The rest is for the listener to interpret, and to go away and play with in their own imagination and inspire their own creativity.

But when I see first-world money-industry artists acting like entitled tits (Adele's early rant over her £4m tax bill comes to mind, thanks for all the NHS treatment by the way) they seem to have lost the joy of just sharing something now it's become their new branded lifestyle, and they're finally in that tiny little industry country club at the top of the TV mountain. I forget about their nice music because all I see and hear is their spoilt whining.

I wonder when any of them are going to experience being noticed for any skill, kind word, good deed, receive a spontaneous compliment, without a sense of political obligation or the media pointing at them first? And is that what any of them wanted when they started out? To be a puppet for the industry's marketing agendas?

And what's with the culture of wanting to be "known for something" whether it's a skill, an art or a job - what's wrong with just being known as yourself, as a person who does a few things? And why are we putting the ones who send out the most extreme mixed messages on pedestals, combining 'Dress Like Pimps & Hoes Day' with sexual equality politics? I'm sure this year's Grammys was the first time Madonna has put the bottom half of her suit on in about thirty years. No wonder she needed a stick, the unfamiliar chafing must have been insurmountable... *wanders off topic*

I remember Ye Olden Days when you could draw a picture or play a little guitar for yourself and feel like you'd achieved something. Now you can go online and see any number of youngsters with more talent than you can conceive of.

62.2m views...

And the fact it's even there tells us that having talent of any kind is not that unusual. Not every talented child's parent is putting videos of them on Youtube. One of my brothers could find and change a spare wheel on a car aged six. That's a skill.

What is unusual is that a bunch of marketing experts and fashion sponsors exists with ways of convincing us it's so rare to have any talent whatsoever, the money and attention they suck up for it is justified. And they do this by only showing us the extremes next to one another on these talent shows.

Encourage your creative peers and your kids in their own right. Don't teach them that being the next double-standard, branded piece of merchandising is the future. Let them share what they want to share and find enthusiasm for it in ways they can appreciate as real people. Being creative is rewarding, but then so is doing a regular job that people respect you for. And that's without being asked to represent an entire sexual and political movement while being trolled by fake fan user accounts on social media.

Even big celebrities now want to get closer to these guys who are able to share their talents online with the world, or other passers-by discover them for us - the ones who just do something for fun, without a big management team taking 80-90% of their income. People doing what they love creatively, and others love them just for doing that...

The Darth Vader Unipiper is corralled onto TV, so they can check if he's really real...

I guess in summing up I just want to say, enjoy what you do creatively and artistically. Don't compare it to what the money industry, members-only club is doing. If you want to share, share. If you want to go out and perform in public, go for it. But do it for yourself first. Don't let the fun drain out of it in pursuit of what you imagine that other thing might turn out to be.

L xxxxx

The Voodoo Reviews: Christmas List Recommendations

Click here for a great review of RAYMAN ORIGINS by Dragon Spirit 10.

I watched it played by the expert...

There's some classics on my 'recommended' list as well as new, and not-so-new.

Musical DVDs first. I heartily recommend Pink Floyd: Live At Pompeii and Iron Maiden: Flight 666. They never get old, for some reason.

Movies. Obviously, although it makes Christmas a bit like groundhog day for the last eight years, there has to be the last Harry Potter. And of course the Star Wars Blu-Ray collection. It wouldn't be Christmas otherwise.

DVD series box sets include Absolutely Fabulous, the IT Crowd, Comic Strip Presents... (anyone remember those? Who launched Jennifer Saunders, Adrian Edmondson and Keith Allen, among others?)

Other blast-from-the-past box sets you can still get include Black Books, Gimme Gimme Gimme, The Young Ones, Bottom, Filthy Rich & Catflap, Red Dwarf, The New Statesman, Blackadder, and Girls On Top. And if your budget reaches, check out The Golden Girls. Classic Betty White!

If you haven't seen it, definitely get Bridesmaids - it's a hoot!

From the newly-released, there's The Inbetweeners Movie and Horrible Bosses...

And it has to be Super-8. Steven Spielberg back on his best form in this one. Saw it in the cinema, and felt just like being a little kid again, watching ET for the first time :)

If it was out sooner, I'd also add Cowboys & Aliens. Just thinking of Daniel Craig's method of concluding an awkward confrontation with a good... well, it makes me smile :)

Happy holidays all!

L xxxxxxx