The Case of Will Leitch & The Burning Q-Tip

The Case of Will Leitch and the Burning Q-Tip
PART 1.

Mr. and Mrs. Negro had one child. They called him TAN, and so did everybody else.

Mr. Negro was the head of all media, and the chief mind on matters of race and culture. The CEO or Chief Ethnocultural Officer. Whenever a TV station or radio show or magazine needed counsel, ideas, or understanding of some race/culture related issue, they’d ask Mr. Negro. And Mr. Negro always had a good answer for them. His track record in the realm of race was without blemish since 2005.

But Mr, Negro had a secret weapon. And that was his son, TAN. No one would believe it, but it was really TAN that provided Mr. Negro all his fodder. The streak since 2005 was no coincidence; it was also when young TAN started his blog.

Now TAN would help typically help his father solve cases for free. But after a while he realized he enjoyed ethnocultural matters so much he should open up a detective agency to help others solve the mysteries of race and culture. So he stole some money out of his father’s wallet, rented out a bodega, and set up shop. He hung up a sign to advertise himself:

As fate would have it, one evening around midnight Q-Tip came marauding into the office. He was clearly bothered by something. Q-Tip, of course, is a living legend, the lead rapper of iconic hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest. TAN immediately roused to attention upon recognizing the face.

Tip scanned the sign and fished around in his pockets. Eventually he took a quarter-water out from inside his jacket and looked TAN in the eye, "I don't have any change on me, but I can give you this drink. I have a problem, and I want to hire you." Apparently Tip had happened upon some tough fiscal times of late.

TAN looked at the quarter water. It was cherry flavor. His favorite. He smiled and reached for the Bible on the desk that he hollowed out and used as protection for his copy of The Low End Theory. He lifted the CD towards Q-Tip and said, “Yo, Tip. Do you know how much prep school and college cooch this CD got me? If Obama owes something to the Cosby Show, then they owe something to you as well. You’re the soundtrack of our assimilation. Certainly mine. I’ll take the quarter-water -- cause you know I love me some cherry drink -- but trust, i got you on expenses and all of that for this case.”

“So, now, tell me, what’s the scenario? forgive me, but ... you on point, Tip?” TAN asked.

“all the time, tan!” Tip chorused back.

Q-Tip was calmer after quoting an old classic. but he was still pacing as he spoke, “I don’t know why I’m bugging out. But there's this crazy article online. I think it's offensive, but I'm not quite sure. it just feels wrong.”

TAN was puzzled, "well, it’s an internet article. why don’t you just ignore it?"

"hmmm, well yeah, I was going to do that.... but then after i read it I decided to say something."

“You COMMENTED?!!?” TAN knew entering the world of anonymous commenters could only spell trouble for a veteran hip hop artist .

“What did you say, tip?”

uh,something like this:

Three Uses of the Blog: Viral Video as Metaphor for the Human Condition

The title of this blog is haughtier than the post is actually going to be. I mainly want to point to the series of posts in NY Mag's Reading Room on Bill Wasik's And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture.

The background summary is: Bill Wasik, basically, has some hands-on experience with viral culture; he engineered the "Flash Mobs" meme of a few years ago, where via email and text messaging throngs of people would convene at a notably random location and sing kumbaya enjoy the experience of being herded without a cattle prod. It's the seed that led to stuff like T-Mobile's karaoke session earlier this year.

There are other viruses on Mr. Wasik's resume. He's also a senior editor at Harper's Magazine, so he can write. And thus, a book is born.

NY Mag's panel of folk (Virginia Heffernan, Anil Dash, David Rees, Charlie Todd, Sam Anderson) don't issue a wholehearted recommendation for the book, but I'm probably going to cop it sometime soon anyways. It seems the biggest problem is Wasik comes off as a pretentious d-bag. Which seems to fall in line with his Flash Mobs narrative (he engineered the gatherings, and then later positioned/revealed himself as Mad Social Scientist manipulating people/rats to his bidding). But I don't have a problem with that as long as *good ideas* are present.

In any case, I haven't read any of these "I Will Explain the Internet and Internet Culture to You for $21.99" books since The Long Tail -- that's not intended as a slight; it's mostly because I've embedded myself deeply enough in the culture that I didn't feel the need for an instruction manual -- but given the evolution of the landscape even in just the last 2-3 years, it's a good time to catch up. If only to see how the new trends, memes etc are being packaged.

There were a couple really interesting takeaways from the discussion though. The first is Virginia Heffernan's suggestion that "viral" is a misnomer when we talk about the culture of people passing along videos. Mainly because as the internet has developed, it's not so much about person-to-person sharing, and more sending e-mailed traffic signals directing everyone to Youtube or whatever huge content hub is hosting the *virus*. As she says, "the word 'viral' is used to pretend that culture is so idiosyncratic and personal now, where it may actually be more fascinatingly uniform than ever."

No one came up with a better term, but everyone seemed to agree with the semantics of "viral" being no longer appropriate. Specifically, I think everyone is turned off by the corporate exploitation element, i.e. every company issues a "viral video" that hasn't even been seen with their new product line.

This all made me flashback to The Matrix, when Agent Smith uses "virus" as a metaphor for humans:

"The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure."

It also made me think of David Mamet's three-essay collection, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama, where in the context of a discussion on dramatic structure he explains how drama is a metaphor for the human condition. Drama is life. Or at least, what we live for.

I left a comment on NY Mag's post. Here's a snippet with another takeaway:

the other... was about "purity". How everyone, it seems, hates being manipulated. This is a theme through a few of the posts: Don't overthink it. Don't oversell it. Don't overschtick it (a personal TAN *cough* gripe that resonates). I guess we want internet hippiedom or something? Just be chill and watch pure-viral videos and people doing what they want to do but not too hard..."

This speaks to everyone being turned off by Wasik's pretensiousness. It also speaks to the nebulous don't-try-to-make-this-into-a-formula-because-you-can't nature of viral videos. Everyone thinks they have a viral video in them, and that's because they do. If you ignore the pernicious angle of Agent Smith's quote (don't worry Obama and Al Gore will fix all of that), then in the context of these quotes and book discussion, the striking conclusion is that the "viral video" is you. *cue Tony Robbins* Or, at least, it's your pure essence repurposed into a funny clip.

You can also think of the sharing element as someone identifying some crystallized portion of themselves in a clip, and sharing it. Like you would a list of favorite movies or whathaveyou.

Now this is where I don't want the post to ramble out of control; just go check the book discussion. But i think in this era of information age paralysis, what is in us, the intangible transient *thing*, is what creates the kinetic energy (kinergy?) of viral phenomena. This is true with athletes, and art, and blogs, and twitter, and just about anything that people gravitate towards. Now, sure, corporations and market research groups, and smarty-pretentious editors will thinkthinkthink it through until they come up with some Cool Ranch facsimile, and that facsimile might even create some ripples (I'm an absolute sucker for the same ol cereal being put in a newly redesigned box).

But I think Mr. Dash nailed it when he talked about pop music being what it is because people just like a good beat to dance to, as opposed to indie-rock (or indie-music) being about overwrought thinking over an instrumental. Good memes, good people, good viruses, are self-evident. It resonates not only with our rational side, but also our emotional intelligence.

Another brilliant pull is from David Rees who identified "moms" as the ideal spreaders of real viral ideas. Most "moms" don't know the current tech-pop-culture-hipster fad-trend, but they will absolutely share anything that is need-to-know or cool in an obvious self-evidently good way.

Which I guess means all the tech/culture commentary circles back and boils down to life's one simple truism: Moms rule the universe. Hallelujah!


Vulture Reading Room, Diagnosis: The Spread of Viral Culture [NY Mag]

image via Mike Arauz, moms

The Perfect Political Woman: Coming Soon, Like Maybe 2012, or 2016

Amanda Fortini at NY Mag raises some valid points. While there has been much trumpeting about the progress for females in the wake of the campaigns by Hillary Clinton and VP nominee Sarah Palin, the end rewards have been muted at best.

Granted, in the realm of American politics, there's a measure of progress simply by seeing a couple women so prominently in the spotlight; it's not an unmitigated blessing. Amanda writes:

"In the grand Passion play that was this election, both Clinton and Palin came to represent—and, at times, reinforce—two of the most pernicious stereotypes that are applied to women: the bitch and the ditz.

What I don't think she satisfactorily conveys, however, is how those archetypal female stereotype boxes may simply add up as part of the cost of losing. Which is to say, if Obama lost he'd be a lot more like an Inaccessible Elitist Bougie Negro stereotype than he is now.

But because he won, because he was an individual who brazenly defied those characterizations, such an assessment sounds as silly as it should.

So while Fortini's closing sentiment, "Many will say we’ve come a long way this year. The truth is we have a long way to go." -- is true, it's also shortsighted. It doesn't accomodate a perspective that appreciates how much ground one perfect political candidate can cover.

This is part of the largesse of Obama's legacy. We may have wondered how much a Black president mattered, and then we saw it mattered so much more than we could imagine, and not just in our nation's borders, but around the globe.

We couldn't exactly predict the overwhelming magnitude of The Big O's appeal. His perfectness. Sure you can speculate and rationally deconstruct a perfect multi-racial presidential candidate, and it would be Obama. But he's special because he played the game perfect. Every misstep was anticipated, every major mistake avoided. He threw a perfect game, against a substandard opponent and it resulted in a landslide.

So yeah, Hillary and Palin proved to be flawed, and maybe the media will transform those flaws into caricature. But all women need to find is their Super Woman to show how long distances can be leaped in a single bound.


How The Year of the Woman Actually Set Women Back [NY Mag]

images:
post-it
perfect woman van
perfect man

New York Is The Mind State

OMG. It's soooo cute how Buffalo got featured in NY Mag earlier this last week; I loved how it was all if you can make it there, in Buffalo, you can make it anywhere, there ... in buffalo. So true!

And omg, it's been so totally cute reading the comments. When I first spotted the piece there were, like, 40 comments, and, like, 35 of them were all "yeah, Buffalo rocks. The Chinese food is much-better-than-you-expect and the other day we went somewhere and saw ... *turns to significant other* ... what did we see the other day, dear? Oh yeah that's it, CULTURE. We saw Culture the other night and it was absolutely wonderful and really just as good as any Culture i've read about it in big cites. And, might I add, not as much a drubbing on the wallet. "

Now (as of last week) there's 150+ comments (Buffalo, stand up!), and I can only assume its still about 90% of them hollering for Irrelevant City Buffalo, New York.

Which is really really sweet.

It almost makes me want to get on the first Greyhound to Buffaloville and gather in the Town Square with everyone and celebrate the better-than-you-think culture scene with singing songs.

Maybe ones everyone knows and can sing along with, like this one:



ahhh, those little town blues... nice to indulge those every once in a while.

it's funny cause i shared this article with a friend and she knew i'd been in the dumps about some work stuff recently and she was like, does this mean you want to leave NYC? And I was like, god, heavens no! Shoot, if i need to find lower prices and a thriving, underrated culture scene i can just move to Astoria.

Ha! I'm just joshin' with ya, Buff. Just a lil' good-ol' apostrophe-needin' small-town humor, knowwhaimsayin'?

I mean, I get it. You're not a lesser person just because you live in buffalo.

*cough*

Cause in some very irrelevant sense we all just go to work, talk to our neighbors, take the kids to school, etc. etc. And you can do that anywhere.

Well, anywhere except New York.

New York is tough, you gotta earn it.

Of course i'm a native NYer who has lived here his whole life. i'm obviously biased.



The thing is, it seems to me it's even more than a state of mind. New York is The Empire Mind State ..

Sure the center of the universe is separating into the haves and have-nots, but that doesn't mean rich and poor. NYC is by any means necessary: you don't have to be rich, you do have to be smart.

If you can make it here, it's because of your brain. When Hov says, "put me anywhere on god's green earth, i'll triple my worth." He means Buffalo too.

And I stress it because it's easy to get caught up in the handwringing over the accompanying superficial glitz and glam. And no question, the place is kind of dirty. In some places it's downright nasty even.

But that's just excess, in the Nietzschean sense: "The only proof of strength is excess of strength."

That's why our magazine is doling out props to Buffalo, instead of Buffalafrica Digest, or whatever they read out there, putting people on to Manhattan.

Now I'm pretty sure I'm not bursting anyone's Buffalopian Paradise or anything, and I totes-totally want to visit... I guess reading some of the comments got my greasy, oily NY feathers ruffled up.

I mean really people, if you go to Buffalo you might as well say you're going to Timbuktu, or going to Alaska, or even just going crazy cause all of them are more interesting.

[*rimshot* I'll be here all week ... in Buffalo!]

It's not that I think Buffalo -- or any small-town satellite -- is particularly unpleasant. They're definitely tolerable, like the citified embodiment of small talk... but—

I don't know, I guess I'm just an obnoxious pompous-assed New Yorker.

But I'll take it over Buffalo...



Could Mediocrity Make Someone Want To Leave New York And Move To Buffalo? Why Yes, Yes It Could. [NY Mag]

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