#who have perspective of what it means for that specific branch of the entertainment industry

[theliterarywolf]

It's so much fun that after all the 'hey, make sure to give SAG-AFTRA the same level of support you guys gave WGA during their strikes' that SAG-AFTRA ended up leaping on the first chance to suckle on that misshapen AI teat.

A Voice Actor's Union would be so fucking nice right now...

[crstapor]

Why I am so Cynical

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”  - Zarathustra

Part 3

Let me stop shouting - sometimes I get carried away. Because it needs be clearly stated that my perspective on the matter at hand is not based solely on 'personal' experience (of course one can never deny the importance such datum possess!) but also 'phenomenological' experience, which is, clearly, a different animal altogether. That this menagerie has informed my thought will surprise no-one who's ever tried it; thinking, I mean. How else, if one is being as honest as possible, can one arrive at any conclusions whatsoever? While the first part of this essay waxed rather subjectively poetic, allow me to offer this third as a sort of empirical respite. Facts, good reader, let me proffer facts to further found my cynicism most severe.

But let me first define the scope these facts will express. The working title for this missive to minds who want to think was 'A Polemic against American Modernity'. Allowing that my interests, here, lie not north to Canada or south of Texas, the parameters of this diatribe should be well understood by all with even meager cartographic skill.  

Superficial perhaps I've structured these facts into three distinct phenomena; the surface, the self, and the symbol. I do so not to make any sweeping ontologic distinctions or assertions, rather, to help me think through them. System-building is not my purpose here - system-analysis is. The facets of modern America culture were well in place before I came along, and, unless I'm completely mistaken, I've done little to add to or enhance any of them. Apart from the clear truth of my having lived with and through them the vast majority of my mortal years. This 'truth', my citizenship and biography, allow me credence to present what follows as 'fact'; though of course it's still just one man's opinion!

Knowledge!

The Surface

Politics. Democracy. American Exceptionalism. Yeah right. So, help me out here, we have a great democracy because we vote for other people to get to vote on who actually becomes leader? Unless of course nine robes get that special privilege - based off of their admitted political preferences naturally! - like back in 2000. How the legislature is just a club for the privileged, connected, and the rich (which is almost redundant). How once 'money' became speech only those with 'money' had speech. The Founders are grave-rolling and Mussolini's having a laugh - fascism much? Let's remember Benito's definition of the term; which is when State and corporate interests converge (more or less). And we find that just about everywhere we look up in DC these days. Apparently we have the 'political will' to help banks, big oil, agribusiness, gun manufacturers, and all the other consolidated purveyors of terror, hate or control (sure, tobacco had to be sacrificed - occasionally you must throw the peasants a bone to keep the lie alive) but can't find the time to help out 'we the people': see continuing cuts to social programs; see the limp-dick governmental response to the housing/mortgage crisis of 2008 - ?; see the student loan pyramid scheme; see a 'minimum' wage that consistently fails to keep up with inflation; see a 'healthcare' plan that mandates private citizens purchase a product from non-governmental, for-profit companies - and taxes them if they don't; see how prohibition (here considered against natural, earth-born narcotics) continues to fuel a for-profit prison system and further erodes race relations; see how the gravest existential threat to the species (climate change, for realz) is perpetually laughed off and ignored; see how we lecture others on human rights while keeping Gitmo open and denying homosexuals equal protection under the law; see how NASA's (quite possibly, from a historical perspective, the greatest achievement of our modern society) budget keeps getting gutted while their priorities are schizophrenically re-ordered with each administration; see how children keep slaughtering children with weapons of war and no one can even attempt to do anything about it; see how voter ID laws are passed like Jim Crow; see how the innate sovereignty of the nation has been torn asunder now that private corporations can be 'to big to fail'; see an ever increasingly militarized police force; see the constitutional absurdity of 'free speech zones'; see democratic campaigns where one guy runs but once elected that guy's nowhere to be found and in his place is a carbon copy of the last guy who held the office ... See how our 'political parties' are two sides of the same coin ... But let's stop here and consider that last point in greater depth, as it is so vital to any understanding of 'democracy' in America ... Republicans, Democrats; Jefferson has been famously remembered, quoted, as saying once our (more properly his) democracy devolved into a two party system it would be a democracy no more. And I've certainly been a witness to that in my life. Sure, America isn't a dictatorship, but it sure as hell isn't the country Jefferson helped forge. And the main reason for that, to my eyes, seems to be the consolidation of power in the hands of politicians with more in common with each other than their constituents. R or D you can bet they're there for Wall Street or the military-information-industrial complex. Anyone else? Good luck with that citizen ... And while they're both complicit in gutting the middle class, let's take a moment to reflect, ethically, on that matter ... You can't blame the snake for its venom, but you can sure as hell blame the snake-oil salesman for shilling his bullshit wares. In case that metaphor wasn't clear enough allow me to decode it for you:

R = snake. D = snake-oil salesman.

Switching gears - though not by much! - let's shift to the state of modern American entertainment. To the uninitiated possibly a trite transition, any who've watched politics lately will surely see the connection. And just as our politics smell rotten, the main complaint with what passes as entertainment these days is how bad it tastes. Yes, it's a question of taste, as it seems most Americans have none. From 'reality TV' (which is surely anything but - though let's not forget Barnum's maxim!), to a pop-music ecosystem that's cannibalized itself to the point of parody, a movie industry that can seemingly fill ten months of releases with one script, the apotheosis of sport, the devolution of literature into a hobby for diarists, the way the performing arts are continually hoarded into smaller and smaller urban green zones, well, it's just hard to swallow most of that without gagging. Or throwing up. Yet a more concerted analysis along these lines is not called for here - we have much too much ground yet to cover.

Speaking of ground and covering it why not mention war? That old playground of glory now some video game where you might win many things; though honor's not among them. The full transition here is yet to occur, but we're definitely in the middle of it. Drones, air strikes, GPS targeting and bombs dropped from orbit (sure, not yet - wait for it!). The complete impersonalization of the other; that total objectification of the enemy (you better believe the pornographers have drone-envy). Let's not equivocate; it's one thing to look someone in the eye and take their life - quite another to push a button sixteen time-zones away and watch an image of indiscriminate carnage. How long will it be before we don't even let a homo sapien sapien push that button? How long before the machines are killing us on their own .?. Nothing to be cynical about here!

And if killing our 'enemies' has/is becoming so much more impersonal healing our 'own' has a fortiori. I'm not even going to start bandying about statistics but it's well known that of the 'first-world', 'post-industrialized' countries we're the only one that still considers healthcare a cash-grab instead of a human-right. And to what wonderful affect! Go ahead and try to ignore all the horror stories of your fellow Americans who lost it all because they couldn't pay their medical bills, or because they did. Pay no attention to record profit margins at insurance companies while the poor forgo all but emergency treatment and the wealth of the middle class is bled out and transferred to HMO executives. Sure, Uncle Tom tried to change all that - by passing a Republican plan even though the Ds had two branches of the federal government! - but when I tried to sign up for 'Obamacare' I still couldn't afford it even though I had $200 in the bank, no assets, and had been unemployed for over two years. If I lived in any other country where English is the primary language I'd be covered without paying a dime. My solution? To use the actual Republican plan - don't get sick!

But that should be easy since we all know of the three pillars of good health (diet, exercise, genetics) eating right is the easiest of all ... Hell. No, sorry, I was about to go all sarcastic and make it seem America knows nothing about sugar overload, HFCS, preservatives, the increasingly and horrifying inability of urbanites to access fresh foods (specifically the poor ones!), pesticides, pink slime, corn or corn or more corn or when will there ever be enough corn already, price gouging on foods that were produced the way they've been produced for centuries (read: organic, grass-fed, free-range), trans-fats, GMO proliferation in our breadbasket without an honest debate on the merits or looking at the science past what some corporation's panel has assured us is true, sodas, the food-gap, throwing away enough food daily to feed the world's hungry cuz it wouldn't make a dime, slaughterhouses like Auschwitz or Dachau ... That Quite Barbarism ... But that would be foolish - America knows all about that ... Why shouldn't it? America invented most of it …

And we invented the largest consumer-driven transportation system the world has ever seen to move all that food around. Sure, China will catch up with us eventually (if not already), but for the better part of three generations the US led the world in road-building and car-buying. Quite apart from the environmental effects this produced there was a profound psychological positive feed-back loop involved as well: one justifying the pre-dominate narrative of our consumer culture. Choice is sacred; you are special and unique and can reflect that through choice; so choose this product or this other one and express your uniqueness through possessing any one of these infinitely similar products; the choice is yours. Perhaps nowhere else in the market was this ‘story’ sold as diligently and aggressively than in the automobile industry. While it is true the US is, spatially speaking, a very large country, it is not true that every adult American needed or needs their own set of wheels to connect it. There are other options, other technologies that could’ve been employed to bring the masses together with more energy efficiency and communal cohesion. I admit it’s no Copernican Revolution, but the thought that Americans are so stubbornly self-interested and quick to discriminate opposed many of their European or native counterparts can not be divorced from the fact we all love to be in the driver’s seat. That commodified ‘freedom’ we are told awaits us on an open road with our very own internal combustion engine humming along in front of our feet; a freedom trains, buses, or carpooling can never provide. Again, notwithstanding the ecological impact of all this, the psychological dimension is impossible to ignore: even if we all owned Tesla’s that were powered by clean fusion charging stations it would still be me, me, me … which is quite naturally a completely uncynical disposition from which to hold a society together …

American’s fascination with their own value and freedom has of course been a dominate theme in the grand narrative of the country for some time; and while cars and roads were the major technological expression of that for much of the twentieth century, we have turned the corner here, in this regard, finding ourselves lost amid tiny little shiny screens that put the whole world inches from our eyes. With the advent of mobile computing the freedom so many seek isn’t conceived any longer by MPG rather MPBS. The new speed of information, and the promise of perpetual access, have enchanted the newer generations in much the same way vehicles did their antecedents. The technology is different while the story remains the same. It is still a self-centered freedom underlying the need, desire, to own the newest, quickest, coolest gadget. A freedom of information surely, yet one closely connected with the freedom cars brought their older relatives; it is as much economic as it is self-satisfying. The internet changed the game, naturally - and hail and well met etc. etc.! - but a claustrophobic observation remains … for a technology that has brought so many people together - and it has - it sure as hell does an awful good job sundering them as well … for you can’t find a public space anymore where a near-majority of your fellow citizens aren’t more interested in their precious little screens than those flesh and blood humans nearby. Perhaps this is just the necessary evolution of the social fabric - perhaps resistance is futile - though a social contract that has more to do with Facebook’s TOS opposed a Bill of Rights just (and forgive me for being so cynical) doesn’t seem like much of a society worth bothering with to this writer. Certainly not one worth the name.

Speaking of the modern technology we all now can’t live without, it seems to me a funny thing happened on the way to Google’s homepage … we now have access to all the information we can consume, on any topic, just a keystroke away, and look what we’re doing with it … I’m not just talking about social media or pornography, I mean the fundamental epistemological conundrum of an allegedly intelligent species that now has post-scarcity style access to information yet we’ve made of the web one colossal echo-chamber where the tribes huddle together in aggrieved resentment or ignorant bliss of the ‘others’ … look at it like this: in a day and age when the work of science (you know, that thing that made all this ((by which I mean ‘Modernity’ and all its toys)) possible) is more evenly, widely, and objectively disseminated than at any other time in history the public’s grasp and understanding of science and its work is at an all-time low. Basic data are disputed; empirical findings are called into question by anyone with a laptop, forget about a degree in the subject: what used to be considered non-issues, resolved subjects, are now argued over as if the Earth might actually be flat … all of which might just be good for a laugh if there weren’t actual existential threats to the species that only science can solve; yet we can’t even begin that discussion because some car salesman googled Glenn Beck and now we have legislatures that don’t think climate change is real; or they say the data doesn’t support an anthropogenic cause even though they never took a serious science course in their life; or that can’t be right because it doesn’t fit into our time-warp economy and a dollar today is obviously more important than our children’s future; or anyway shut-up idiot scientists just because you actually studied something other than law or business doesn’t mean you know any more than me because I have a high speed internet connection and I bookmarked the Drudge Report … how is it, philosophically speaking, tenable that the more information you have the stupider you become? I don’t know, but if you want a good example of the principle in action take a look at America today. Or just Google it …

Of course there is one thread that ties all these elements of ‘the surface’ together and that thread is consumerism as expressed by our current form of capitalism. The ascendancy of the dollar over all else (sorry God!). The desire to possess, acquire, consume. We are material creatures, we humans, and thus must consume to survive; fine: but do we have to do so in the manner we seem set on here and now? No, not at all, even suggesting that our’s is the only system, the only way to satiate the human hunger is absurd on its face as well as betraying an amnesiac’s conception of history. No, there are other paths, yet we have chosen this one, this ‘capitalism’ that mimics the terrors and rigors of the jungle at every turn. In the act of deifying money (more on that later) we have dehumanized ourselves. For the most part we are simple cogs in a vast machine that cares little or nothing for us; and so we care only for ourselves. The inherent egoism of the modern American psyche is spectacular to behold, certainly, in its primal vanity; at the same time giving the lie to any ethical system we still tenuously cling to as reminder of simpler days (sorry Christianity!). So we are, as a culture, no better than spoiled children grasping for another slice of pie. And while that’s certainly comical, it is also tragic, since such a system is not sustainable whatsoever (there is never enough pie). Neither history or science can provide any examples of such a system expanding into perpetuity (literature has given us a few but they are either satire or utopias ((same thing really))), and yet a sincere, concerted discussion on this issue has yet to percolate through the public sphere, or if so, only in the usual places and thus not given the sort of urgency it requires. But to have this conversation we all have to be ready to listen; it is not enough for the cynics and naysayers to keep shouting into the wild or the web: there has to be an audience, a receptive ear. Which brings us to our next section.

The Self

The problems elucidated in ‘The Surface’ are, to a great extent, symptoms of our sense of self, or, as is more often (if paradoxically) the case, our lack of one. While I am specifically referring to the modern American ‘self’, I’m going to be doing so with large brushstrokes; forming great swathes of colored splotches closer in kind to a rorscharch test than a pointilistic canvass. You may not see a reflection here so much as a sense of remembrance, or deja vu. That’s fine. I can’t be alone in thinking our lifespeeds have altered, and it’s just that alteration I want to discuss.

Lifespeed. Right. Let’s define that quickly so we can move on. By lifespeed I mean that facile quality of Being that tethers us to the ‘now’. Perceptually, our lives happen at a specific point in time, and I’ve conceived the word lifespeed to represent this point, as well as our conscious reaction to it. It’s just a word. Other than this meager definition it means nothing; has no other value. Right.

We were talking about choice earlier and there’s a clear connection between the act of choosing and the extant phenomena adjoining it. Just the relationship that lifespeed is meant to express. On its face, choice is neutral. Neither positive or negative, good or bad. The ‘designed’ choice of our consumer-driven society I find abhorrent, though not from some reactionary impulse, but a genuine longing for what it’s replaced. By making choices we define ourselves and I fear many of us are accepting a story that tells us we can only make this or that choice opposed to this that or the other. That we are told certain stories so many times we think we have no choice how they end; or wether to listen to them at all. In this way our lifespeeds have been damaged; like a bonsai pruned too severely.

Perhaps many are content defining themselves through ‘designed’ choice, or who ‘designed’ it anyway? Yes … there will always be sheep and lemmings in human form, and if that’s your angle you have my pity but nothing else. On the other hand, if you genuinely desire a leveling-up on the self-awareness front but have found this difficult to achieve thus far, you must realize two hard truths; the first that it is your business alone, none others - and the second, that it will be incredibly difficult to achieve because our society was not constructed to assist in this goal - quite the contrary! - it was designed to prevent it, at almost every turn. Here we return to the ‘designed’ component of American choice. Since the beginning the tiny tribes watching the throne have conspired to affect a marked class distinction in the land of the ‘free’. From the original agricultural workers of the new world, to the industrial workers who built a modern nation, to the current service sector workers slipping into poverty those with the firmest grip on the levers of power have continually strived to erect massive obstacles between those that labor for a living and those that live off that labor. Nor are these obstacles simply economic or aspirational in nature, no, due their pervasiveness through the generations they have percolated down into the most subterranean reaches of the mass conscious; into the very stories we use to define ourselves. Egads! a polite-hyper-modern-liberal-minded-triangulator might reply, don’t you know everyone has a TV! A refrigerator! Cheapest food ever! Why yes of course, there is an exception to every rule. While, for about thirty years in the middle of the last century, it seemed America was finally delivering on its promise, just look how long it took for us to devolve into another gilded age (the apparent default position of American society). It is foolish to define a thing based off aberrations, opposed its consistencies. In this way we clearly see the US for what it is … the second most successful marketing scheme in human history (naturally one must award Christianity top honors on that mark) … in the same way tobacco used to be good for you, that sodas were harmless, or how fast food is every bit nutritious as home-made, America cries ‘freedom’ when in so many ways the reverse is clearly the case. From ‘power’s’ perspective it’s nihilistically brilliant sure - give the people a semblance of freedom (in our case economic choice) and they’ll extrapolate that into a veritable cosmos of self-authorized-self-actualization - and you bet the monarchists, dictators, or petty politburos are jealous as hell at the level of control the political classes of America have been able to sustain generation after generation. A state of affairs that continues for no other reason than that an over-whelming majority of Americans keep believing the lies. We are forced to ask: why do they?

Let’s speculate wildly! Is it possible there exists some globe-spanning underground tributary of Lethe that constantly replenishes all the aquifers in the land? Or perhaps when we, on average a truly vain people, look into a mirror our historical consciousness is reset to zero? Or maybe we’ve all become so addicted to the stories we repeat about American Exceptionalism even the most destitute are content to sacrifice any chance they might have of another, better life, so as the stories can keep being told .?. the gyre is constricting at every turn, just like water flowing down the drain we’re becoming closer and closer to ourselves and ours; we’re losing a visceral sense of community and common cause through the ‘designed’ choices of a consumerist economy and specifically the newer technologies of self-absorption. So many of us don’t seem able to see past our own reflections, our problems, that even beginning to consider the larger problems facing our country seems as pointless as sending a manned mission to Mars.

The latent greed of the species is given free reign in America and this greed is destroying us. Making us sick. Stunted, withered, cloying little souls blighted with giga-myopia and eterno-amnesia. Greed. Most cultures have oft thought it a base emotion, one needing constant oversight - not the good ’ole US of A! We saw right through that ethical clap-trap - we saw that by harnessing the simmering greed of a people and putting them to work fulfilling that greed great things could happen … just absolutely amazing things … and we have accomplished quite a bit worth being proud over, and we sure have shown all those historical moralists just how wrong they were about the most solipsistic emotion … but this is a strange greed, our American one, one many may not even be aware of, so deep do its roots dive; a conniving greed that wraps in upon itself like a fresh burrito from Chipotle or those roller coasters you remember from Disneyland or Six-Flags … a greed that we have to learn to turn off, ignore, or quit seeing as so basic and benign in all our lives that there’s nothing you can do about it anyway - because it isn’t benign, it reacts to us and the environment as surely as we do it, and lately it’s been acting badly … yes, there are historical elements to this greed, there is also the question of personal responsibility, mutual complicity, systems of control and power as well - so many factors … I guess I’m nostalgic for another type of human being, one not fueled by avarice or beholden to the choices of others … qualities most seem to have lost somewhere on the way to Walmart … a human being that might never have existed except in a dream …

The Symbol

Human beings have long used symbols to represent value. Symbols are convenient, easy, and incredibly mutable. They can be transferred or translated almost infinitely. With a symbol ideas that might take an incredible amount of energy to explain or describe can be conveyed almost instantaneously. Logic and mathematics could likely not exist without them, nor, indeed, any language. And like any good thing, as is so often the case with any wonderfully useful thing, we humans have become dependent on them. Created for ourselves a world where we can not live without them. We are, in many ways, addicted to their utility. On its face there is nothing ethically challenging about this. Language and math are boons to humanity, practically describing our modern conception of ourselves. Symbols are naturally value neutral, like any high-level epistemological building block. And yet, we modern Americans have found ourselves in a tricky spot. We have crafted a society where one symbol is supreme. Where one symbol, and one symbol alone, holds all the power. A symbol that, if you find yourself without it, without access to it, without a stock-pile of it hiding somewhere, essentially makes you a non-entity. No longer part of the culture, the game. For it is certainly true that the only game in modern America is money. That collecting dollars has superseded all other activities; has supplanted any other endeavor as the only one with value. This state of affairs is the genesis of our cultural decline; of the death of the ideals that the Founders (who themselves were already playing the only game) attempted to instill in the New World: will in the end be understood by future historians as the single greatest crime of our time.

I say crime and I mean it. Don’t use the word for shock or awe. Nor do I want to dwell on this particular subject (not being the place for an extended analysis of this issue I will allow such a discussion its own essay, its own space, a place where it can be a bit more academic and dry, not so emotive or cynical) though we do have to mention a few more things before moving on. Crime. Yes. What was this crime? In short order here we go … it used to be the case that money was a symbol that referred to labor, actual work performed by one human that held value for another. So far as that is all money is, there is nothing ethically suspect about it. Then, at some point in the past, a few cunning paradigm-shifters saw an opportunity and changed the rules regarding what money was; they removed the labor as referent of value, replacing it with rare objects (typically gold) that few among any populace would ever see in their lives. Well, since the promise of alchemy was a lie, and the philosopher’s stone was never discovered, at least this money still referred to something real, something that couldn’t just be made up on the spot. Ah ha! the sons of the sneaky paradigm-shifters thought, that would just be the icing on the cake! Let’s remove the rare objects as value referent as well - let’s go all in on a communal mass delusion and see if anyone believes it … let’s just have money valued at whatever we say it’s valued at. Let’s create a massive shell game that only a very few will ever truly know the rules to, though the outcome, the results, will effect everyone … yes … let’s create the only game worth playing, and let’s give every live birth a turn … which leaves us with a system that, no matter how hard you work, no matter how industrious you are, if you don’t know the rules of the game (in modern America we can think of the Federal Reserve, Wall Street bankers, old money, select members of the Treasury Department etc. as the holders of the rule book) you will not win at it. You will play and play and play and keep losing and losing and losing all the while the rule keepers keep winning and winning and winning because for most players in this game the tokens of victory they collect (dollars) are bought at the hard price of actual labor, as if they never heard about how money grew up - no, they slave and slave for pennies without any chance of leveling up in this game and getting to that haughty echelon where money is no longer about work but having money make money off of someone else’s work … this little narrative I just outlined is a crime because there are clear stealers and victims (of course there are exceptions to every rule, but for every Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, there are a hundred and fifty million working at Walmart for a slave-wage). You see, the architects of the monetary symbol’s paradigm shift knew that by removing any referent to an actual act (labor) or object (gold) they were essentially hollowing out the natural relationship between the symbol and the symbolized, and in that empty space they would find their own El Dorado; their own little universe where they called the shots and none other. They essentially re-wrote the rules of symbolism, and clearly in their favor. And while symbols shift meaning all the time, especially in religious or political environments, these shifts are fundamentally harmless as neither religion or political discourse ever directly affects the physical well being of a human being as does their ability to acquire food, or energy, or health care, or shelter (I understand that by including ‘politics’ in this sense I might seem to be advocating a ‘post-history’ perspective; one where capitalistic-liberalism has won over all other political narratives, and while I hope that isn’t so, at the moment, and especially as an American author, one would be hard pressed to argue the point otherwise). To be clear, I’m not suggesting there was some shadowy cabal that gathered and planned out this great hollowing out of the monetary symbol; as is often the case it happened by fits and starts, here and there, as history would have it, propelled by the innate greed of the least amongst us. And yet they have scored a grand victory, these acolytes of avarice. Have pulled the proverbial wool over so many eyes - and in the process redefined a country that promised freedom into a vassal state completely enthralled to an ugly little strip of green denim that truly means nothing at all …

Of course this transformation did not just occur on American soil. But we sure as hell took the ball and ran it home. More than any other modern nation we are more readily defined by the empty symbology of the dollar than any others. This is not just an American problem; but we must be the first to address it …

America’s enslavement to the dollar is the singular cause of all the problems I put forth in ‘The Surface’, and, in many ways, ‘The Self’. We are a nation of suckers, rats, blind idealists, idiot sensualists, blatant thieves and the occasional dreamer … and knowing that, seeing my country in this way does nothing to alleviate my pathological cynicism … but allow me a query - do you still ask me why I am so cynical .?.  

[magicclownengineer-blog]

50 Possibilities

1.    Through my 4 week project I worked with a range of materials, one of these being cloth. I had only ever considered sewing material but this time I used it as more of a sculpting material which led me to the idea of sculpting a interactive scene by folding and laying material. That then gave me the idea of expanding this into maybe a miniature world. I could use different material colours and way of shaping it to create a world out of cloth. 

2.      A project earlier in the year led me to create a space painting in which I hung paper clips over the front as this piece was to represent all the junk floating in the atmosphere. At the end of this piece my tutor challenged me on scale which gave me an idea for a similar interactive piece where I could craft a globe coming out of the background and use other pieces to create a 3D background but to then use recycling/junk to hang so the scale is increased. This then creates a space where you can stand in all the junk and really get a perspective.

3.      Expanding off of this I could even just consider creating a final major piece that represents a current issue in the world or society that really puts it across in the exhibit. 

4.      On the contrary I could possibly come up with an idea that represents something positive in the world to give people something uplifting to exhibit.

5.      Over the year I worked with a range of new materials and machines as well as artists and I could maybe create a piece including each stage of my journey just by taking one part from each stage to let them create a piece on their own.

6.      Like the artist I have researched and small pieces I have made along the way I could consider a more complicated piece working with shadows and look into how I can take this a step further.

7.      Another idea I could try is to create a line of coherent pieces, possibly I could paint a repetitive picture but each in a different media or this in 3D by creating a repetitive sculpture each out of a different material. Or I could just make multiple pieces that come to create one exhibit. 

8.      As I researched in my 4 week project I could take the idea of using only recycling only to inspire and idea as I wanted to try this on a larger more professional scale while I have the facilities and space. 

9.      Before starting this course I had a plan to learn a bit more in electronics and animatronics as I have always been down the props route so I wanted to do a simple animatronic to gain a base of skills within that part of the prop industry so I can keep the idea in mind of how I can adapt something to include this idea.

10.   I looked at the artist Alexis Noriega who makes mechanical wings that are like costume props that take a lot of detail so maybe I could go off the props route a little and make a crafted look like I would make props but formed in a way that it can be worn. This would give me a knew outlook on prop making to be making them in such a different form.

11.   I could consider choosing one object such as a book and make something out of as many or as little books as I want. I could use the covers to add to the piece or fold the books. I could do this with anything like chairs. Only limiting my self to an object but not quantity or process as I feel the idea of this process would add a lot of interest to the piece its self.

12.   An idea I could take from my 50s project could be to create coherent pieces that are also a sort of puzzle. I could look into engineering interlocking systems and maybe find new materials to work with as well as deciding between more 2D or 3D. 

13.   Another idea I have had is that I could possibly create a prop of something that doesn’t seem very interesting that can open or transform into a completely different piece that is a lot more vibrant and unexpected. I am thinking of taking ideas from a boring every day object.

14.   I have recently been interested in practicing with Styrofoam as I feel it would be great to have skills in as I continue in to the prop making route. Maybe I could try a large sculpting piece carving Styrofoam and experiment with decorating and finishing it to get more knowledge on working professionally with this material.

15.   Similarly, I can maybe attempt to create a sculpture through casting as I haven’t had much of a chance to work with resin or take a professional cast of my sculpt however I don’t know how I would make this into an exhibit.

16.   Like the recycling idea I could just go around buying or collecting on wanted items to possibly create a piece or a sculpture. It would be cool to try and bring a load of objects in to one piece. Working with the objects to connect them up in some way.

17.   I could consider creating a large canvas collage using all the materials I have worked with this year. I was originally thinking not creating an image, but I could consider this too.

18.   To stick to my props career path, I can look into props and attempt a replica but put my own twist on it. As a replica wouldn’t show my design skills. I could maybe even take inspiration from multiple props.

19.   Another idea could be to get the public involved and display my final major of them reacting to a piece I have made. 

20.   Maybe I could work with the out doors or something already set up in an environment and design a piece/ create a space within it to completely change its look.

21.   Another source I could consider getting all my materials from nature and working with what I can find. I could plan to build a structure out of branches and use smaller things for decorations well as letting the materials I find inspire me.

22.   Rather then applying materials I could create a piece by carving or taking away from my material using a scalpel by using a large piece of paper or something like cut out a design that creates an intricate image.

23.   Further in to new knowledge I could possibly create a piece using computer programming to try out machines such as a laser cutter, 3D printer and maybe other machinery I don’t yet know. This would help me prepare for my university choice as well as they now work a lot with 3D printing for modelmaking.

24.   In my 4 week project I found a lot of materials could be used to create pieces through folding to shape them so I could maybe try to take this to a new level by creating a large piece of something just by folding either one material or various.

25.   I could consider the idea of creating a piece that works in layer. I not sure how as this is a more open idea but to create a piece either built in layers or comes apart in layers could be interesting.

26.   Like the idea I had about limiting my self to possibly on specific material or area I could limit my self to just one process e.g cutting, painting or others as this could direct my piece but it might make it difficult.

27.   Another idea that could be interesting would be to let other people pick out my materials, so I don’t have any way of planning until I know what they have chosen.

28.   Something I could consider is playing with state e.g solid, liquid and gas as maybe a theme or my materials.

29.   I could use junk or recycled materials but use working electronics to create a piece that moves or something, this will also limit what materials I may find.

30.   I could maybe create a piece that is interactive by being able to change its shape through touch.

31.   I could not only create a material often seen as tough to be soft I could also challenge the dimension materials are often used to work in like my realization within the 4-week project with cloth.

32.   I could create a piece to represent all the diversity of art styles by using a range of different styles to create a piece as again this could really bring up some different ways of working in the future as well as making an interesting and engaging piece.

33.   I created a painting early in the course by putting everything into block colour and shapes to still capture the image but take away almost all the detail so this is a concept I feel would be good to consider as possibly apart of another idea.

34.   Similarly, I could research into a specific art style I haven’t really looked at or worked with before as this would teach me a completely new skill within art and I could consider applying this to whatever I make.

35.   From my 4 week project I could possibly attempt to upcycle a large item that would otherwise be thrown away. This could either be the piece or be built of to create a piece, but I feel this idea would really direct my piece.

36.   I could research into ways prop making skills are used to make things out side of props e.g costume to gain more skills within the industry but to also expand my making skills in general.

37.   Maybe I could research into a target audience to inspire a piece as well as learn some techniques to direct my piece to entertain and engage people as from a career point of view this is a very key feature.

38.   I could possibly play with junk that still works but play around with sound so that it creates or represents a message.

39.   One idea could possibly be to use materials that in no way match or look good together to try to create a piece that works.

40.   I could take inspiration from one specific artists work to either remake their pieces in a completely different way or create a piece completely based off of what inspires them.

41.   Maybe I can make a piece that is interactive by moving around people to involve them without them having to involve themselves as this might gain more interest as well as creating a fun feature for my piece.

42.   I could make a replica of something however of something natural so I have creative licence for the expression or pose of what I make as this could really contribute to my skills in detail.

43.   From pathway I learnt about stop motion and this is possibly something I could try again as making the models for stop motion is possibly something I want to do.

44.   I could maybe choose a story to inspire my piece to give me the meaning to work of while designing my piece.

45.   Another thing I could do is buy in all new things for what I want to build so that I have completely free range of ideas however the only worry with this is budget.

46.   Like the idea of basing a piece off texture I could try coming up with a piece based round one texture or finish such as shiny.

47.   What I could do is take 4 or 5 ideas from this list to make a range of piece and then in some way bring those together either in the way I display them or merge them together.

48.   As I haven’t worked much with sewing and clothing material, I could maybe build of a stuffed toy to create a character with a lot of personality by sewing onto it.

49.   I could possibly create a working prop where its interactive by doing what you’d expect e.g I could make a tree that maybe drops leaves and can change with the seasons or make a flower that loses petals.

50.   I could maybe attempt a futuristic, hyper reality theme by taking anyone of these ideas and adding this into the planning.

[bluewatsons]

Joe Stroud, The Paranoid Style and Popular Music: The Case of the Vigilant Citizen, 28 J Popular Music Studies 75 (2016)

Conspiracy theories regarding popular music are not uncommon. The frequent characterization of musicians as standing up to the mainstream, as rebels against the established order, can cultivate a sense of injustice among fans when musicians die prematurely and can create a space for conspiracy theorizing, with such theories surrounding the deaths of, for example, Brian Jones, Tupac Shakur and Kurt Cobain. There is a similar casual mistrust of the corporate power behind the music industry, demonstrated by the frequent speculative stories about the manipulation of TV talent shows, specifically the retention of acts with limited musical ability that are thought to make “good television,” and a more general manipulation of voting figures to ensure that preferred acts win.

There is an even more extreme branch of conspiracist thinking which regards popular music as part of a grand conspiracy to oppress the general public. There are various views of the role of music, which is regarded as dominated by members of secretive groups or transmitting specific messages in lyrics, music videos, or the music itself. This article examines the writings of one particular conspiracy theorist, Vigilant Citizen, who focuses on mass media and, in particular, the popular music industry. Through this analysis, it becomes clear that conspiracy theorizing is not solely the preserve of the mentally imbalanced or the socially oppressed. It is also evident that popular music presents easy opportunities for generating conspiracy theories.

Approaching Conspiracy Theories

The term “conspiracy theory” is somewhat contested; originally a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy, its popular meaning has evolved into something substantially more complex. Peter Knight states, “At the most basic level, a conspiracy theory blames the current, undesirable state of affairs on a concerted conspiracy by a secret group.…However, the label “conspiracy theory” usually suggests that the interpretation offered is wrong” (Conspiracy Theories 16). Knight's mention of secrecy is a crucial component of conspiracy theories, although the group in itself need not be secret so long as some of their activities or motives are assumed to be concealed from public view (a plethora of supposedly public bodies such as the United Nations, European Union and the World Bank frequently feature in conspiracy theories). The notion of concertedness is also crucial, with conspiracy theories suggesting a view of the world as governable and controllable, a perspective often contrasted with the view of history as “the fairly random and unpredictable interaction of countless individuals, or the predictable interplay of vast, impersonal structural forces” (Knight Conspiracy Theories 16).

Another important aspect of conspiracy theorizing is the attitude toward evidence. Evidence which supports a theory is embraced, while a lack of evidence is not considered damaging, but is simply assumed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the conspirators in concealing their activity. This belief in the reach and power of conspirators means that “the very same thing that critics argue makes conspiracy theories unbelievable is, for conspiracy theorists, the strongest evidence in favor of their claims” (Byford 34). This attitude allows the theorist to interpret any evidence that would seem to invalidate a theory as proof of the meticulous care taken by the conspirator(s) to cover their tracks.

The apparent irrationality of ignoring evidence that disproves the conspiracy theory is in part the reason that “conspiracy theory” is generally considered a pejorative term, demonstrated particularly by the popular culture stereotype of a “conspiracy nut” wearing a tin foil hat to avoid having their thoughts read or their mind controlled. The notion of conspiracism as the domain of the mentally unbalanced has even been the starting-point of some academic analyses; in his book on the subject Daniel Pipes observed that while “political paranoids need not suffer from personal paranoia … often the two go together” (Goldberg xi). While such attitudes build on Richard Hofstadter's introduction of the paranoid into the discourse of conspiracism in his highly influential essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics—and he is also blamed for equating a conspiracist mindset with deficient mental health—Hofstadter was clear that this was not a parallel he wished to make, saying: “the idea of a paranoid style would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to people with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant” (3).

The difficulties in equating conspiracism with paranoia are demonstrated by an analysis of conspiracy belief in the United States.1 A 1994 survey found that 69% of respondents believed John F. Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy, while finding considerable agreement levels between 41% and 55% for conspiracies regarding the concealment of evidence of flying saucers; FBI involvement in the assassination of Martin Luther King; a (modern) Japanese conspiracy to destroy the American economy; and the collusion of Ronald Reagan and George Bush with Iranian hostage-takers not to release the American hostages until after the 1980 US Presidential election (Goertzel 732–734). More recent studies have found that nearly half of African Americans believe AIDS is a man-made virus (Fears); a third of Americans believe the US government actively took part in or allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks to justify war in the Middle East (Hargrove); and a quarter of Americans doubt President Barack Obama was born in the United States (Travis) while a fifth believe he is a Muslim (Green). Clearly, when such significant proportions of the population identify with conspiracy theories, it becomes difficult to attribute conspiracism to paranoid tendencies in the individual or to marginal groups.

Conspiracism as paranoia also does not allow for the fact that conspiracy theories can at times be grounded in justifiable doubts. While Knight suggests that proven conspiracies are often called something else, such as “investigative journalism, or just well-researched historical analysis” (Conspiracy Theories 16), it is difficult to theorize a distinction between conspiracy theories which have no rational basis and those which merely remain unproven. One methodology which can help to distinguish the belief in conspiracies from the sociological phenomenon of conspiracy theories has been forwarded by Jovan Byford, who considers “conspiracy theories as a tradition of explanation, characterised by a particular rhetorical style” (4). Byford suggests that the publication in 1797 of two accounts, by Augustin Barruel and John Robison, of conspiratorial causes of the French Revolution—particularly the involvement of Freemasons and the Illuminati—was particularly important to the current phenomenon of conspiracy theories. Citing Geoffrey Cubitt, Byford notes certain features which particularly distinguished these writings: prior to the Revolution, theories restricted themselves to fairly specific events with tangible rewards for the conspirators; by contrast Revolutionary theories centered the plot on secretive societies whose goal was “the implementation of an evil and subversive plan,” namely the destruction of Christianity and the established social order (43–44).

The work of Barruel and Robison has been recycled and recontextualized on numerous occasions, thus contributing to what Byford perceives as “a distinct narrative structure, thematic configuration and explanatory logic” (32). In this view of conspiracy theories as a tradition, conspiracies are seen as the stimulating force in history: diverse global events and time periods are integrated into a grand arching conspiracy theory driven by a particular nefarious group. The characteristics of the conspirators can easily adapt to the context and politics of the time, as can the stated goals, with the result that conspiracy theorizing is an adaptable and multifunctional process.

“Conspiracy-mindedness” has been classified by Benjamin McArthur into four categories: the “casual embrace”; “intrigue as a form of entertainment,” for example, in Hollywood films such as Oliver Stone's JFK; “the conviction of socially oppressed or disadvantaged groups that they are the victims of an organized effort”; and “use of conspiracy as a political weapon” (38–42). Furthermore, it is possible to divide conspiracy theories between Barkun's “event” and “systemic” categories: the former only usually incorporate individual events, while the latter are concerned with the long-term plots of secretive organizations (6). As McArthur suggests, casual event conspiracy theorizing is something which most people indulge in occasionally and is generally confined to Barkun's event category, but Byford's conception of conspiracy theorizing as a tradition of explanation and rhetorical style is more suited to systemic theories belonging to McArthur's third and fourth categories. A good example of the latter can be found in the writings of the Vigilant Citizen, but first it is worth taking a moment to consider some examples of the link between popular music and conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy Theories and Popular Music

Following the categorization of Barkun, it is possible to divide music-related conspiracies between “event” and “systemic” conspiracy theories. A prime example of event theories is provided by the rumors surrounding the deaths of various musicians, which can be further divided into the categories of suspicions over the circumstances leading to these deaths, and the belief that the deaths were staged and that the musicians are, in fact, still alive. Ambiguities surrounding the deaths of musicians are unsurprising; many involve an element of substance abuse, while some musicians—especially those caught up in the East/West Coast rap feud in the mid-1990s—had links with organized crime. The itinerant life of touring musicians means that when tragedies do occur, they can be interpreted as acts of sabotage by an establishment acting against a perceived threat. The frequent characterization of musicians as standing up to the mainstream, as rebels against the established order, can also cultivate a sense of injustice and suspicion among fans regarding premature deaths.

Something of an industry has arisen to cater for this appetite for conspiracy theorizing. In the case of Kurt Cobain's suicide, for example, a number of books and documentaries have been produced which claim to have uncovered inconsistencies in the official account that cast the whole conclusion into doubt. This encapsulates a common trend of conspiracism, namely a focus on incongruous or ambiguous details which supposedly exposes an elaborate deception. For example, the book Who Killed Kurt Cobain? by Ian Halperin and Max Wallace points to the quantity of heroin in Cobain's bloodstream, and proposes that he would be unable to operate a shotgun under those circumstances. They further claim that his suicide note reads like a retirement letter from the music industry until the last line, which they assert was added later and is of a different handwriting style. These inconsistencies, among others, prompt the authors to call for the investigation to be reopened. Despite repeatedly implicating Courtney Love, Cobain's wife, in his death, the authors draw short of actually accusing her, perhaps fearful of litigation (Halperin and Wallace).

The belief that musicians did not die—most famously represented by theories surrounding Elvis but also extant in the myths of others such as the rapper Tupac Shakur—is likely an expression of an unwillingness to let go of a cultural icon. While event conspiracies such as these are common in music, and integral to many myths surrounding it, they are more to do with the culture of celebrity than the music itself. For instance, the theories surrounding musicians such as Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain have equivalents outside popular music, demonstrated by the theories concerning the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and even JFK. Such theories can often appear irrational. For example, the death of Elvis was the result of overdosing on a cocktail of prescription drugs; the most popular myth of Elvis being alive claims that his death was faked in order to allow him to continue his work with the Drug Enforcement Administration (this theory draws on his meeting with President Nixon during which Nixon granted him honorary agent status). Ian Inglis has argued that such theories perform an important function for subscribers: “To admit the circumstances of his [Elvis’] death is to undermine the legitimacy of a national ideology that promotes ambition, possession and wealth—for what good are such attributes if they lead to a miserable and lonely death? To deny his death and to continue ‘the liberatory celebration of his life’—as so many have sought to do—is to re-affirm that ideology” (41). As such, conspiracy theories can provide the means to reconcile deeply held beliefs with contradictory evidence.

Systemic theories, on the other hand, are generally based on the content of music rather than on specific individuals. The portrayal of various forms of popular music as anti-establishment (e.g., Martin and Segrave 79) has seen it characterized as a threat to the structure and norms of society in a number of moral panics (defined by Cohen as occurring when a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (1)). Moral panics have surrounded popular music genres for decades, from jazz in the era of Prohibition, rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, to punk in the 1970s, rave in the late 1980s, and hip hop throughout its history. Such panics can be easily adapted into a conspiracist framework, with music supposedly promoting a range of plots including the advancement of communism and racial integration.

The controversy surrounding the Parents’ Music Resource Center's assessment of heavy metal in the 1980s was driven particularly by metal's use of violence, sex, and occultism in its lyrics, as well as its frequent use of Satanic imagery. This led to linked accusations of musicians presenting death as a positive alternative, supposedly leading to “epidemic” levels of adolescent suicide. In 1987, Tipper Gore, leader of the PMRC, asked “what happens when a confused, depressed adolescent picks up an album…?” (quoted in Chastanger 182). The belief that metal musicians were placing subliminal messages in their music through backmasking has led to a number of high-profile cases over the years (all dismissed) involving Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest and Slayer for their alleged culpability in suicides and murders involving young adolescents.

In cases such as this the line between moral panic and conspiracy theory is indistinct, with varying opinion regarding the intention and culpability of musicians. What is clear, however, is a firm belief in the power of music to convey hidden or multiple messages, and to influence and control the actions of individuals. It is this belief which drives the conspiracy theorizing of the Vigilant Citizen, who provides a notable example of a systemic theory drawing primarily on music and associated visual culture, particularly music videos, which does not derive from a moral panic.

The Vigilant Citizen

Vigilant Citizen (VC) is the pseudonym of an anonymous blogger, who claims to be a Canadian male with a degree in Communication and Politics, and also a music producer who has worked with many “urban” artists (“About VC”). VC sums up his stated aims on his Web site:

My efforts to further understand the forces governing the world lead me to study secret societies, mystery religions, esoteric sciences and ancient civilizations. I've spent the last seven years researching Theosophy, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, the Bavarian Illuminati and Western Occultism. These schools of thoughts [sic] have many things in common: they are based on Hermetic teachings (Hermes, Thoth, Enoch, Mercury), they attach EXTREME importance to symbolism and they recruit within their ranks the most prominent people of all fields of society: politics, law and public service. The natural result of this phenomenon is the display of occult symbolism in all aspects of society, especially music, movies and buildings. My goal is to bring out the meaning of these symbols in a clear, concise and entertaining way. (“About VC”)

As suggested by his description, the Vigilant Citizen does not concentrate solely on music—with a particular interest in films and television—but music is probably his most common topic. The blog consists of an extensive library of essays analyzing various popular culture and architectural texts, interpreting their symbolism in ways that apparently reveal the machinations (or, at the very least, controlling presence) of the Illuminati.

The Illuminati were a group of freethinkers founded in Bavaria in 1776. In its permitted eight-year lifespan, the group attracted many intellectuals and progressive politicians, counting up to 2,000 members in lodges all across Europe (Mackey 1099). The order, which preached “resistance to state authority and vowed to destroy ecclesiastical power” (Goldberg 4), was unsurprisingly viewed unfavorably by authorities. It collapsed in 1784 when the ruler of Bavaria banned all secret societies, but its spectre remained. It was widely believed that the Illuminati were behind the French Revolution, spurring the United States to pass legislation limiting the freedoms of speech and the press and establishing the power to expel foreign nationals engaged in secret machinations against the government (Ibid.). This marked the origins of the Illuminati conspiracy theory, which has reappeared in various forms over the years, particularly in the United States (Goldberg 22–65). It should be noted that the masters of the conspiracy can vary substantially depending on prejudice, intention and context, with the alleged machinations of Freemasons and Zionists particularly historically significant, but the Illuminati retain a preeminent position in the conspiracist hierarchy.

After the fall of Communism, the apparent conspiracy to create a “New World Order” rose to prominence. This plot, apparently to establish a one-world collectivist government (Berlet and Lyons 287), was firmly established when televangelist Pat Robertson published The New World Order. The book asserted that the course of history was manipulated by international financiers toward their secretive objective. Robertson's book sold over 500,000 copies, and was top of the New York Times best-seller list for eleven weeks (Goldberg 91–92). The power of these beliefs was demonstrated when it became known that many thousands of Americans thought they and other patriots were under observation by mysterious black helicopters, in preparation for a United Nations invasion to establish the new order (Potok 48). This belief in subversive forces often results in a severe mistrust of government, while the narrative of secret cabals striving to set up a New World Order has been integrated into established theories. It is from this stance that VC grounds his critiques of popular culture.

VC's essays, far from being the paranoid ramblings often associated with conspiracy theorists, are methodical, and at times even reveal a certain humor. His approach is also intriguing because it is not predicated on a belief in the degenerate nature of popular music as a form, setting VC apart from many other conspiracy theorists who attack the form of popular music in general. Compare, for example, the argument of the executive secretary of the segregationist North Alabama White Citizens Council in the 1950s that rock ’n’ roll was a plot by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to bring the white man “down to the level of the Negro,” and to serve the “cause of integration” (Martin and Segrave 41), or the writer in the extreme-right British National Party magazine, who declares that popular music “amounts to a mugging of the mind. The purpose of the muggers is to break down barriers in the brain, and brainwash away distinctions of race and sex in youth to whom the future belongs, thus capturing that future … [for] the revolutionary advance of multiracialism, Democracy's zenith” (Jordan 14). For these writers, popular music itself is the danger particularly because of the music's association with black culture, leading to the racist rhetoric of primitivism. VC, on the other hand, confesses that:

I like most of the songs analyzed on my site. They're all well produced, contain good melodies and showcase cool, innovative elements. If people have to go through the trouble of incorporating hidden messages in songs, they will certainly pick sure hits, performed by charismatic artists. If those messages were in crappy songs, they would have no effect at all, rendering them useless. (“Ask VC”)

VC's problem, then, is not with the form, but with the symbolism tied to it. This difference is emphasized by the fact that VC does not often analyze specific features of songs, such as melody, rhythm, or lyrics, instead focusing on the symbolism and imagery of accompanying music videos. Indeed, although most of his articles claim to expose sinister messages, there are some that yield a more positive interpretation, notably the Black Eyed Peas’ video for “Meet Me Halfway.” The potential for occultist symbolists to create positive material leads VC to acknowledge that:

Occult means “hidden,” not “bad.” Occult schools believe esoteric knowledge is too powerful for the profane to dabble with it. So it is kept hidden, the same way mothers hide knives from young kids.… According to occult schools this knowledge can lead you to two extremes and everything in between: it can liberate you from the shackles of materiality, put you in direct contact with divinity and make you nothing less than immortal… Or it can also make you deal with demons, black magic and lead you into eternal torment. “Meet Me Halfway” seemed to portray this positive side of esoteric knowledge. It is indeed quite uplifting. (“10 Questions”)

This is an exception; the majority of the subjects of VC's writings are selected due to the belief that those behind the products are engaged in the process of brainwashing the audience.

As of October 2015, VC has around 74,000 “likes” on Facebook and over 17,000 followers on Twitter. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the size of his audience from these figures, but they suggest that VC is not among the most renowned theorists. The American radio host Alex Jones, for instance, has 925,875 likes on Facebook and 317,000 followers on Twitter, while the British author David Icke has 656,839 likes on Facebook and 138,000 followers on Twitter (figures as of October 2015). Each of these figures also has a Web site which is used as a platform for their writings, although as with VC it is difficult to ascertain reliable figures for these Web sites. According to Google Trends (as of October 2015), “David Icke” is a far more popular search term than “Vigilant Citizen,” roughly in the ratio of two to one (Google Trends). However, other site analytics suggest the gap is not quite as large; over the period August 2014 to August 2015, the number of unique visitors each month to vigilantcitizen.com averaged 139,850 compared to 140,350 to Icke's Web site. For five of these months, VC's Web site was more popular among unique visitors than Icke's (Compete.com).

VC's audience reach is striking, particularly given that Jones and Icke appear across a far wider range of media than VC, disseminating their message through the Internet, radio, television and books. Jones and Icke are also “personalities,” and their audience engages with them as people as well as with their theories. The theories of Jones and Icke also cover a wide range of topics. By contrast, VC only spreads his theories through his Web site,2 does not generally conflate his personality with his theories, and tends to focus on interpreting popular culture in line with theories of Illuminati dominance. As such, VC has established himself as a significant conspiracy theorist regarding popular culture, and his Web site is one of the centers of this theorizing.

In September 2013, it became possible for readers of the site to contribute their own articles, with 104 articles posted by 37 distinct usernames by August 2014. These articles allowed dialogue between site users through comments, often consisting of appraisals of the article and debates initiated by its content. Around May 2015, this was replaced by a dedicated forum section of the Web site which, by October of that year, had 824 users and over a thousand threads. Comments are also enabled on VC's original articles, usually amounting to hundreds of comments. Exploiting the communal potential of digital technologies is not unique to VC, but it is an important part of the user experience his Web site offers. VC's Web site thus offers something of a convergence point, where like-minded individuals can come together to form a conspiracy theory community.

The virtual nature of this community is significant. Given the negative image of conspiracy theorists, individuals may be reticent about exposing themselves to any potential stigma associated with their beliefs. Such stigma can be significant for those with beliefs that are seen as extreme in relation to the mainstream, as explored in relation to white power activists by Futrell and Simi. These authors’ suggestion of “transmovement-prefigurative spaces” which draw together otherwise unconnected networks and individuals seems particularly relevant here, even if the levels of politicization and activism differ. Moreover, while casual belief in some conspiracy theories may be relatively common (see above), the numbers of those who identify with the grander systemic theories of the type espoused by VC are substantially smaller. VC's Web site therefore offers the potential for a feeling of community which might not be available via nonvirtual networks.

The Theories of VC

VC gained a small amount of mainstream media coverage through a series of articles concerning the work of Lady Gaga (Lynskey). In many ways, Lady Gaga is an artist ideal for the interpretations of VC; since the release of her debut album in 2008, she has become one of the most prominent figures in contemporary popular music. As music videos are the prime focus of much of VC's efforts, the striking symbolism of Lady Gaga's work, as well as her eccentric sense of style and often controversial pronouncements, mean she is one of the most frequent subjects of VC's analyses. In VC's interpretation, Gaga's “whole persona (whether it is an act or not) is a tribute to mind control, where being vacuous, incoherent and absent-minded becomes a fashionable thing” (“Lady Gaga Illuminati Puppet”). Even her name is indicative of mind control: because of the linguistic simplicity of “Gaga,” her name “basically says: I'm a lady and I'm empty-headed. This empty head can be filled with any crap you want. Imitate me young people. This state of mind is achieved after successful mind control” (“Lady Gaga Illuminati Puppet”).

The commonly circulated explanation for the name—that it was inspired by the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga”—is interpreted as an indication of guilt. The video for “Radio Ga Ga” features scenes from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which VC sees as an allegory for the way pop stars are used by elites to corrode the morals of the masses (“The Occult Symbolism of Metropolis”). VC sees Metropolis as “by the elite, for the elite,” filled with Masonic symbolism that could be decoded by the initiated viewer. Gaga's slight association with scene quotation in a Queen video is not the only evidence put up against her; one of the costumes used in her “Paparazzi” video is cited for its direct resemblance to the robotic Maria of Metropolis, sent to incite the working class in order to justify the use of violence against them.3 Lady Gaga is not alone in the use of Metropolis imagery; VC cites further examples in Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé Knowles and Janelle Monáe. Metropolis is such an important reference point because:

the movie touches upon all the themes of today's “Illuminati agenda”: transhumanism, mind control, dark occultism, degradation of morals, police state, all-seeing government. Metropolis is basically a blueprint for population control. Like Maria, today's pop stars are recruited from the working class and literally programmed and reinvented to become the hidden rulers spokespersons.… Part of the stars’ role is to promote the elite's agenda through music and videos, making it sexy and attractive. (“The Occult Symbolism of Metropolis”)

As such, the symbolism of Metropolis becomes part of a symbolic catalogue on which VC draws in his analyses; VC picks out symbolism which conforms to this catalogue while disregarding that which does not fit with his theories.

Probably the most prominent component of this symbolic catalogue is the covering of one eye. This is pointed out regularly by the Vigilant Citizen, both in individual essays and in the recurring feature on his Web site “Symbolic Pics of the Month,” and is said to be an important symbol in Illuminati circles. The significance of the one-eye symbolism is traced back to Egyptian mythology and the Eye of Horus (“Lady Gaga Illuminati Puppet”). VC believes the eye to be one of the most important Masonic symbols, with its appearance on the US one-dollar bill indicating how high Masonic influence reaches. What VC does not make clear, however, is just what this gesture means, other than providing evidence of the conspiracy. It is also unclear whether musicians draw attention to one eye to indicate initiation into the conspiracy, or if they have been manipulated into doing so by their “handlers.” The latter seems more likely to be VC's view, given that he generally sees musicians in the role of manipulated rather than manipulators.

While VC is clearly concerned with the exploitative nature of modern popular music, his particular grievance with the music industry is the constant, unrelenting attention that pop stars receive, the materialistic lifestyle they promote, and the way this is portrayed as worthy of emulation:

Watching a few hours of MTV programming is enough to understand that its contents promotes [sic] a specific set of values to the youth, notably the importance of materialism, the cult of celebrity and fame, the glorification of appearances and of the superficial, the sexualization and fetishization of everything and so forth. A young person that has not developed the ability to think critically will absorb this information, integrate it and, ultimately, live by it. However, an educated mind will realize that all of these values are artificial constructs and deceiving illusions.… Today, mass media are so omnipresent and persuasive that billions willingly fall into that trap. It takes a lot of “deprogramming” to make the average person realize: “I am not super famous, I do not have paparazzi after me, I am not on the cover of magazines, I do not have a Gucci handbag nor a BMW with Louis Vuitton seats … and so what? That is all garbage anyway!” Coming to this realization is one of the most liberating things one can experience, as a lot of unnecessary pressure magically disappears. (“About VC”)

Clearly, VC is antagonistic towards the materialistic culture he perceives in popular music, going on to say that the most important things in life cost nothing. The idea that the culture industries encourage consumerism is hardly controversial, nor is the idea that there is value in things that cannot be measured in market or monetary terms. However, VC is not necessarily welcoming of material that would seem to correspond with these sentiments, seeing it as deception with ulterior motives.

This is well demonstrated by VC's interpretation of the single “Price Tag” by British singer Jessie J, which reached number one in the UK singles chart in February 2011. The song's lyrics seem to be a fairly straightforward criticism of the materialist nature of modern popular music, advocating a return to music for music's sake. VC's interpretation of the symbolism of the music video led him to conclude that there are other reasons for Jessie J's claim that “It's not about the money”:

In the past decade, the music industry went through a great metamorphosis. The combined impact of the Internet, the availability of single tracks instead of albums, more access to music listening online and unlicensed copying have reduced its revenues by a whopping 50%. Although the music industry is not the money-maker it once was, it still has an important function: a powerful tool of mass indoctrination. Today, despite the lack of revenues, the industry keeps spending millions developing and promoting new stars. Why? Because there is more at stake than money. Pop music is a developmental tool as important as the school system or the daily news. It shapes and molds the youth to adopt attitudes and values. (“Jessie J's ‘Price Tag’”)

VC thus articulates his belief that pop music is not primarily an industry, but rather a conditioning tool, and his interpretation carries overtones of disgust with the values promoted by pop.

In VC's interpretation, Jessie J is oblivious to this hidden meaning, having her mind controlled by the elite; VC sees confirmation of this in the video's depiction of Jessie J as a puppet suspended by strings. The placement of the rapper B.o.B. (featured in the song) among a group of toy soldiers is apparently indicative of “the powerlessness of the artist versus the will of the handler” (Ibid.). An important part of VC's belief is that the musicians themselves are ignorant of the part they play in this process: responding to Nicki Minaj's lyric “You know, I graduated Summa Cum Laude; That's why they thinking I'm Illuminati,” VC claims “nobody with even a little knowledge believes that Nicki is ‘part of the Illuminati.’ Rather, she is one of the several pawns used by the industry to promote an Agenda” (“B.O.B. and Nicki Minaj”). According to VC, musicians are either having their minds controlled by mysterious techniques associated with the CIA—namely “Project MKULTRA” or “Monarch Programming”4—or are simply oblivious to their manipulation by the Illuminati.

Other artists who similarly challenge the power structure of the music industry or the culture it promotes are dismissed as still belonging to the conspiracy. For example, in an entry outlining the occult symbolism surrounding Kanye West's 2013 album Yeezus, VC focuses at one point on the song “New Slaves.” The song is in part an attack on celebrity culture and materialism, and a critique of economic exploitation and for-profit prisons. VC focuses on a particular passage containing the line “See they'll confuse us with some bullshit like the New World Order.” West is dismissing conspiracist rhetoric as a distraction from real issues; VC, meanwhile, sees West as part of this grand conspiracy, and attempting to distract attention away from it. Thus, while West appears to be “rebellious” and “speaking out,” he is in fact “the definition of ‘controlled opposition’” (“Kanye West's Yeezus”). Both West and VC are offering critiques of consumerist and materialistic culture, but VC's dismissal of West as a diversion asserts his own “truth” as authentic, establishing himself as a lone champion in opposition to an entirely subverted music industry.

Even so, VC does wonder if West “maybe does … sometimes have moments of clarity where he realizes that he sold out to the system” (Ibid.). The slight element of doubt, or at least ambiguity, regarding West's motivation is something of an anomaly. Overwhelmingly, VC's use of language is absolute; his conclusions are rarely suggested or partial. Take, for example, this analysis of a scene from Britney Spears’ video for “Work Bitch,” released in September 2013: “Towards the end of the video, we see blindfolded mannequins being brought into the desert. They then explode. Blindfolded mannequins represent the state of mind controlled slaves. Blowing them up into body parts represent the fragmenting of a slave's psyche into several personas.” (“Britney Spears’ ‘Work Bitch’”)

The interpretation here is presented in the same unequivocal language as the literal description of the images in the video; the symbolic significance of blindfolded mannequins is not diverse, but absolute. While conspiracy theorizing does not have a positive status, this rhetoric attempts to place conspiracy theorists in a position of authority by presenting these interpretations as indisputable; a negative judgment is placed upon those who dismiss them as conspiratorial. If accepted, this authority implies power, or at least resistance by rejecting the messages presented to them, VC and his followers can avoid their own manipulation by “the System,” while the absolute nature of the language rejects any notion that this is a theory, countering the pejorative association of conspiracy theorizing with the assertion of truth. Thus, the theorist is presented as superior, in having both the ability to perceive the conspiracy and to resist it.

The theories of VC make two major assumptions about the music industry: first, musicians themselves are not in positions of power, either having their minds controlled or oblivious to the truth around them; second, the music industry is viewed as monolithic and working in complete coordination towards a common goal. In VC's ideology, nothing is accidental: every aspect of a star's persona, every release, every statement, is demonstrably linked to the Illuminati agenda. This is consistent with the conspiracy theorist perception of the world as ordered and governable rather than chaotic and random, and means that even events that come across as spectacular failures must have some hidden intent behind them.

This latter point is evident in VC's interpretation of Miley Cyrus’ performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2013 alongside the singer Robin Thicke. Cyrus, a former Disney star, gave a provocative performance which incorporated, among other things, “twerking” into Thicke's groin and simulating masturbation with an oversized foam finger. Partly controversial for its overtly sexual content, the performance was criticized just as much for being cringeworthy, one writer describing audience reaction as “a mix of confusion, dismay and horror in a cocktail of embarrassment” (Steiner). The major talking point of the show, reaction to the performance was overwhelmingly negative, but VC argues that this negative reaction was deliberately sought. For VC, Cyrus was “the industry slave chosen to take the fall”:

she was selected and programmed to be this year's main example of a “good girl gone bad”, a process the occult elite wants the public to constantly witness. They want the masses to see innocence and wholesomeness turn into sleaze and trash. They want pop culture and the youth in general [to] follow the same process. While alchemy is about turning stone into gold, the masses are made to witness the opposite process. (“MTV VMAs”)

VC does not entertain the thought that Cyrus had any control over this performance, frequently referring to the control her “handlers” have over her, and cites the fact that she has “an enormous marketing machine behind [her]” as evidence that this could only have been deliberate. Just as musicians are not deemed to have any agency over their work, VC does not appear to allow for the fact that marketing could fail or be misjudged.

Cyrus's “fall” through the process of a good girl going bad is a recurring theme throughout VC's essays. In his assessment of the 2014 VMAs, VC refers to leaked photos of Nickolodeon star Jennette McCurdy as another example of the transformation of a figure idolized by children into “a product of the Beta Kitten industry.” Indeed, VC considers the whole 2014 event to have been entirely about promoting oversexualization through “Illuminati puppets,” with VC including images and lyrics from performances by Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, and Iggy Azalea as evidence. VC argues that “making love is a wonderful part of life, but when this act is debased, corrupted, exploited, and sold to young, immature minds, it can produce lifelong negative psychological and interpersonal effects. However, to the occult elite, those effects are desirable because it produces a population with ‘loose morals’, which is just the kind of population they are looking to create” (“The 2014 VMAs”). This is a common theme of VC's essays: popular culture, particularly popular music, is being used to promote sexual depravity and materialistic culture in order to serve Illuminati purposes. How the promotion of these will actually further Illuminati goals is not made clear, but these concerns suggest a particular code of morality motivating the work of VC.

As these examples indicate, the arguments of VC are heavily predicated on the use of images; at times the text of an article will consist only of a single sentence. These images allow for juxtaposition in service of VC's arguments, in the way John Berger wrote of when he argued that reproduction and representation of images can alter the relatively fixed meaning of an original. The meaning of the reproduction, devoid of the original's context, “becomes transmittable: that is to say it becomes information of a sort” (Berger 24); moreover, VC is able to manipulate this information to his own ends, particularly in the selection of certain images from music videos, and indeed the freezing of moving images. The malleability of images is shown especially in some of the more stretched comparisons that VC makes, and by the general lack of other indications of Illuminati control in VC's arguments. Musical styles and sounds are rarely mentioned, while, on one of the few occasions that lyrics are cited, VC suggests that they “are open to interpretation, but the visuals of the video give a particular meaning to the words” (“Lady Gaga's Bad Romance”).

The question of why the elites would load cultural products with material interpreted as damning by “a guy who knows his symbolism” (“Lady Gaga Illuminati Puppet 2”) is justified by VC as a consequence of the belief in the power of symbolism:

They [the elite] firmly believe (as did all ancient civilizations) that symbols can deeply affect the human psyche. Many occult exercises focus on meditation through symbols, which they believe leads to a higher state of consciousness. The same knowledge is applied to the masses through movies and videos, but to attain another result: to dumb down and dehumanize. (“Ask VC”)

VC has no problem in blending different groups in line with his interpretation of the symbolism; thus, in an article describing Lady Gaga as an “Illuminati Puppet,” symbolism with apparent Masonic associations is asserted as proof. The secretive controlling elite is thus depicted as homogeneous, despite going by a variety of names—particularly the Illuminati, Masons, and occultists—and perceivable via a variety of different symbols.

VC is, in essence, a conspiratorial cultural critic, with a particular focus on mass media. VC believes the consolidation of the cultural industries into monolithic major corporations allows “the elite” to easily standardize the media they generate (“Mind Control Theories”). In the same essay, VC quotes many prominent figures, including Marshall McLuhan, Carl Jung and Aldous Huxley, thus presenting himself as the inheritor of 20th century cultural theory, and in some ways he could be right; his assertion that mass media, as well as bombarding receivers with subliminal messages, appeal to base human instincts as part of the process to standardize human thought does not seem that different to the conspiratorial accusations levelled at the culture industries by critics such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Where VC differs from the thinking of such figures is through the cited tools of manipulation, and the purpose of manipulation. Adorno and Horkheimer saw the culture industries as being in the service of organized capital; VC sees them as engaged in a programme of indoctrination.

In an academic context, the work of VC is somewhat outdated in following the theories of Adorno and Horkheimer. As Raymond Williams argued, “There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses” (300): contemporary cultural studies emphasize ways in which cultural products provide opportunities for individuals and groups to decode and recontextualize them in new and unintended ways. VC's arguments, in contrast, are entirely dependent on seeing people as a mass, passively and uncritically accepting the products of the culture industries.

It seems probable that VC's view of the mass of the general population is colored by his belief in the manipulative capabilities of the conspirators, with the majority likely to succumb to the bombardment. The purpose of this manipulation is partially a means of ensuring economic slavery:

The System needs us to crave and want, and to live for the crap that is sold to us. It needs us to spend our paychecks, to load our credit cards and to take on ridiculous mortgages in order for us to replicate what we see on TV. Our debts are the chains that link us to them and we willingly chain ourselves. (“About VC”)

In passages such as this, VC employs conspiracy theories as a means of attacking the exploitation of the masses by elites, in essence a critique of contemporary capitalism.

On the other hand, VC does not see the culture industries as merely designed to part consumers from their money. Often, conspiracy theories are combined with political rhetoric, with the theories acting as justification for a particular ideology and its plan of action; perhaps the most notorious example of this being the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories used to justify Nazism, culminating in the Holocaust (Cohn). The conspiracy perceived by VC has a political motivation in its attempt to debase humanity, making it easier for people to accept their exploitation by their rulers:

Mass media is propaganda—but it is not trying to sell you on an ideology or a political view. It goes much deeper than that. It is about affecting the mind, the body, and the soul. It is about turning humanity into a debased, confused, and malleable mass of lost souls. It is about exposing and desensitizing minds to foul aberrations. It is about selling demoralization disguised as empowerment. It is about turning disgusting things such as pedophilia into something normal. It is about making you scared, insecure and unsatisfied. In short, mass media is poison. And that poison is everywhere. (“Despite the Doom and Gloom”)

VC neither associates this conspiracy with a particular political movement nor endorses a particular ideology in order to combat this propaganda. For the latter purpose, mere recognition of the conspiracy is the first step, with resistance to manipulation—and rejection of the materialist culture promoted—sufficient to combat the conspiracy.

Because VC offers no clear political programme as an alternative to the manipulation he identifies, it is difficult to establish the central purpose of his critiques. Indeed, the way his articles have been treated as humorous by mainstream media articles, cited above, suggests that VC may be a satirical exercise. However, the volume of material and the consistency of VC's message undermines this interpretation, and even if it were satirical in intent this would arguably be irrelevant given the substantial community which is receptive and sympathetic to his ideas. Thus far VC has not attempted to direct this community towards any specific politics, preferring instead to educate others to the supposed manipulation around them. Even without a specific political programme, VC articulates and promotes a severe mistrust of those with power and influence, particularly those who are perceived as being in control of popular culture.

Conclusion

Popular music will continue to provide abundant material for conspiracy theorizing. The importance of stardom and celebrity, and the elevation of a few individuals to prominence, allow for the interpretation of selling-out to the industry in order to advance a career, or being used as a puppet to promote a certain message (this is particularly true since individual taste may mean that success is seen as undeserved, and thus that there must be some other explanation). Furthermore, the mass-media nature of popular music is viewed with suspicion. This music reaches a significant proportion of the population and is a prominent part of mass culture, while the processes of globalization mean that there is some standardization across national boundaries, even if local variations are still significant. The sheer reach of the form is linked together with the assumed global reach and unity of purpose of the elite. Related to this reach is the conception of the form itself: the idea that music can perform subliminal brainwashing is fundamental to many conspiracy theories. VC's theorizing apportions this function to music videos rather than the music.

Conspiracy theories are generally associated with the paranoid and the powerless, but the case of VC challenges both of these assumptions. His arguments may seem to be based on presupposition and circular reasoning at times, but by and large they display a rational thought process, albeit employed in a peculiar manner. Moreover, the assumption that conspiracy theories are merely an explanatory tool for those low in the social hierarchy is simplistic. McArthur's third category of conspiracy-mindedness (“the conviction of socially oppressed or disadvantaged groups that they are the victims of an organized effort”) assumes that those who perceive a conspiracy are disadvantaged members of society. VC, although details are few, seems relatively privileged: a family man in a prosperous Western country (Canada) who claims to have a higher degree and who can afford the time and money required to run an extensive Web site. VC may see himself as relatively powerless in the face of mass media, but his Web site actually demonstrates the importance of the individual receiver in cultural production: far from the uniform reaction he assumes, VC demonstrates the importance of the individual “reader” in the way he or she receives the cultural object.

VC does not operate in isolation; indeed, he frequently refers to other material from the conspiracy theory industry, in the form of books, Web sites and films. VC quotes material which corresponds with his findings as if it is indisputable scholarship, and links to videos which purport to provide visual proof. In this way, this particular conspiracist world becomes self-perpetuating, with a mounting evidence base to draw on, and VC himself is becoming an important part of this canon.

The belief in Illuminati manipulation of the music industry has gained some mainstream currency, to the extent that some artists have started to deliberately incorporate provocative symbolism into their work (Raymer). Musicians—with no ironic intent—have accused some of their peers of belonging to elite groups, leading to Jay-Z (commonly associated with the Illuminati) to counter that “I can't even get into a golf club in Palm Springs” (Mueller). The circulation of such rumors demonstrates the existence of an audience for conspiracy theorizing, and digital technologies have allowed this audience to coalesce into a community, with the very existence of this community acting as a legitimization of conspiracy theories for its members. The potential of the Internet, and the niche success of VC and his peers, suggest that conspiracy theorizing about popular music will persist for the foreseeable future.

Underlying conspiracy theorizing is a deep mistrust of power; the idea of an individual or a group with enough power to carry out a conspiracy is fundamental to theorizing. The fact that conspiracies are concealed is proof of their nefarious nature. Furthermore, the marginalization of believers of conspiracy theories can be taken as evidence of targeted repression. Through the dissemination of his theories and the creation of a community for like-minded individuals, VC engenders a sense of resistance to the manipulative intentions of the powerful. Indeed, VC offers paranoia as a means of avoiding this manipulation; through a suspicious mindset, an individual is more likely to identify the apparent motivation behind conspiracies and the vehicles they use, and therefore be in a better position to resist manipulation.

Finally, VC is a notable example of the flexibility of conspiracy theories. Political ideology—beyond some criticism of sexualization, materialism and consumerist culture—is not a driving factor of VC's essays. As such, his conspiracy theories have the ability to serve a variety of purposes and ideologies and are not confined to specific areas of the political spectrum. Rather, they reveal a fundamental mistrust of the powerful that is malleable enough to be applied across a range of political ideologies. This is not a particularly new phenomenon, but the possibilities afforded by the Internet have greatly increased the potential for the proliferation and circulation of these theories, and the possibility of creating digital communities predicated on conspiracy theories. Furthermore, VC represents something of a new stage in common narratives surrounding popular music in the context of conspiracy theorizing, in that his theories do not attack the form, but the content. VC himself is sympathetic to popular music, but uses the tools of cultural and media studies to critique what he sees as underlying messages in mainstream popular culture.

There can be no doubt that conspiracy theories are significant. Studies have shown a correlation between exposure to conspiracy theories and decreased willingness to engage with politics and reduce carbon footprints (Jolley and Douglas). Conspiracy theories often constitute significant components in extremist ideologies, such as anti-Semitic theories in radical Islamist and extreme-right doctrines. Conspiracy theories can also be integral in the ideologies of individuals who carry out extreme acts; consider, for example, the prominence of conspiracy theories regarding multiculturalism, and particularly the spread of Islam, in the manifesto of the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik (on Breivik's attitude towards music, see Stroud). It is difficult to say how crucial conspiracy theories are in the spread of extremism and in motivating extremist acts, but a broader understanding of conspiracy theorizing in general should contribute to a better understanding of extremism in particular. Through analysis of theorists such as VC, it is possible to discern how conspiracy theories emerge through engagement with certain aspects of the world, in this case the popular music industry; how communities coalesce around conspiracy theories; and how digital technologies are influencing the creation and understanding, as well as the circulation, of conspiracy theories more broadly. Understanding of these factors will be crucial in further research into the social psychology of conspiracy theorizing.

Notes

The United States is a hub of conspiracy theories and belief, to the extent that Goldberg refers to it as an American tradition, and demonstrates this through an account of the prominence of conspiracism throughout US history (1–21), while there is an edited collection dedicated to exploring conspiracist thinking in the United States (Knight Conspiracy Nation).

In June 2014, VC did publish a book in paperback and digital format, but this is a compilation of previously published articles from his Web site.

VC does not explain the actions of the robot Maria with regard to the privileged classes, whom she excited into a state of such hedonistic and sexual abandon that duels of passion became a common occurrence.

MKULTRA was a covert CIA operation set up in response to the apparent use of mind-control techniques by Communist countries. It is famous for testing LSD on unwitting subjects, but was an extensive programme that also tested many other drugs—as well as hypnosis, sexual abuse and sensory deprivation—with the goal of influencing and controlling the mind. The full extent of MKULTRA was impossible for a Senate Hearing of 1977 to ascertain, as CIA Director Richard Helms had ordered a purge of the relevant files in 1973. Monarch Programming is commonly cited in conspiracist circles, believed to be an extension of MKULTRA.

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[rickhorrow]

15+5+5 To Watch : 41519

15 TO WATCH/5 SPORTS TECH/POWER OF SPORTS 5: RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 15 with Jacob Aere

Step aside, George Foreman. Tiger Woods’ 2019 Masters victory now tops the list of greatest comebacks in sports, and elsewhere. Turning back the clock and delivering another vintage Sunday performance at Augusta, Tiger Woods held off the best players in the world to capture his fifth green jacket and 15th career major championship. In doing so, he joined the likes of boxer Foreman, California Governor Jerry Brown, entertainers Robert Downey, Jr., Glenn Close, and Justin Timberlake and mogul Martha Stewart in making a significant cultural impact years after their assumed peak and following a major gap in their career timeline. As testament to Woods’ wide-reaching impact, Twitter noted that over a span of two hours on Sunday, there were over 1.4 million tweets about Woods and more than 1.8 million about the Masters. Sports celebrities including Jack Nicklaus, Serena Williams, Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Michael Phelps added their voices to the throng, as did two U.S. Presidents, Obama and Trump. For the next weeks, and perhaps months, we will continue to put into perspective what Tiger’s victory on Masters Sunday means to sports, and what it means to society.  

Tigers’ Masters victory: other winners and losers. Let’s start with the biggest winner: CBS. According to a release from CBS Sports, Saturday’s Masters coverage was the highest-rated Saturday golf telecast on any network since 2015. It also featured a 5% increase in ratings over last year. Given the Tiger Effect, Sunday’s final ratings will blow the doors off those increases. Other major stakeholders benefitting from Tiger’s victory are Nike, which stuck by him during the troubled years, the PGA and the state of New York, looking ahead to the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black May 16-19, the golf industry as a whole, and fans. But even on this happy sports day, there are losers. The NBA and NHL had to air playoff games across from a Masters final round held early due to weather. Ditto the U.S. women’s hockey team, which defeated Finland to win their fifth consecutive women’s hockey world championship gold medal but likely had few casual fans watching back home. At Bethpage and elsewhere Tiger tees it up, the rest of the field will see its screen time vanish as TigerTV – every hole, every shot – blasts back. The biggest losers? The pocketbooks of 2020 Masters patrons. Secondary market badges averaged $2,500 per day this year. Next year, look for that marker to move north of $3,000.

Augusta National, Westeros collide. When you envision Masters patrons, you don’t necessarily think of “Game of Thrones” fans. Which may be, according to GolfWeek, the precise reason the Masters has pulled off one of the boldest buzz-building moves in its recent history. Over the weekend, the club tweeted out a promotional clip showing the 12th hole under snow before shifting to its normal glorious springtime view. To even further pull at the heartstrings of Masters and Thrones fans, the 30-second promo also morphed Ramin Djawadi’s Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” theme with the Masters’ famous Dave Loggins instrumental score. HBO’s blockbuster series may be entering the most anticipated final season in television history – if the 61 million plus views of the season trailer are any indication.  The bridge between the Masters and Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” return was an unprecedented nod to pop culture for Augusta National, which has traditionally not acknowledged much that goes on outside its hallowed gates. 

Heads up! This year, Minor League Baseball fans might notice new digital screens and displays at their favorite stadiums. Together with ISM Connect, over 25 MiLB teams will be adding new smart displays to their ballparks. But beyond delivering unique stories and creative ads to fans during each game, these displays are also equipped with smart cameras to measure audience engagement. These smart cameras will help keep ads and content fresh. The cameras record anonymous interactions -- how long someone watches the screen or their age range -- not individual images of specific people. By measuring foot traffic and engagement, MiLB teams and ad sponsors can better understand who their fans are, what resonates with them, and how they’re experiencing each game. The result is a better, more engaging experience for fans, and a better way for teams and partners to learn how to best serve their loyal audience.

Stanley Cup Playoff storylines intrigue as the NHL enters its second week of the post season. Here are a few big picture scenarios for 2019. First, the Tampa Bay Lightning are in the conversation for best regular season team ever. The Lightning won 62 games, something only one other team has done -- the Detroit Red Wings in 1995-1996. However, of the 13 teams that have finished with the NHL's best record since the 2004-2005 lockout, only two -- the 2007-2008 Red Wings and the 2012-2013 Chicago Blackhawks — have gone on to lift the Stanley Cup. Second, the Stanley Cup hasn't been won by a Canadian team since Montreal took it home 26 years ago. However, three Canadian squads are in this year's mix — the Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames, and Winnipeg Jets — and Calgary has the second-best odds of capturing the title, per The Action Network. Finally, in his first full season as NHL owner, Tom Dundon helped the Carolina Hurricanes make the playoffs for the first time since 2009. In Raleigh, Dundon is a hero. Elsewhere, he's more of a villain, as he pulled the plug on the Alliance of American Football's inaugural season less than seven weeks after investing $250 million to rescue the league.

As the Stanley Cup Playoffs intensify, the New Jersey Devils won the 2019 NHL draft lottery after entering with the third-best odds. It's the second lottery win in three years for the Devils, who selected center Nico Hischier with the top pick in 2017. The prize of this year's draft is 17-year-old Jack Hughes, who the Devils will almost certainly make the eighth American-born player to be taken with the No. 1 pick. Hughes is set to make history as the first U.S. National Team Development Program player to jump straight to the NHL. There, he rewrote record books, blowing past the likes of NHL standouts Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Patrick Kane, and Phil Kessel. "You can spend the rest of your hockey career trying to find another player like Jack," claimed an anonymous NHL exec quoted by The Athletic. Elsewhere, the Rangers jumped up from No. 6 to snag the second overall pick, and the Blackhawks made an even more dramatic move, going from No. 12 all the way to No. 3.

The average Major League Baseball team is worth $1.78 billion according to Forbes latest valuations, an 8% increase from last year. Additionally, all 30 MLB franchises are worth at least $1 billion; whereas a decade ago, only two were: the Mets and the Yankees. The rest of the league has caught up to the Mets and Yankees, who rank dead last and third-to-last, respectively, in growth since 2009. The Giants saw the biggest increase in value over the last decade. MLB's ownership stakes in MLB Advanced Media (100%), BamTech (15%), and MLB Network (67%), as well as the league's investment portfolio, were included in the valuations and equally divided among the 30 teams, constituting over $400 million in value per franchise. Over the 22 years that Forbes has conducted its valuations, the average MLB team value has increased 11% year-over-year, while NBA and NFL team values have increased 13% and 12%, respectively. The MLB increases are going to get even bigger in 2022, when baseball's seven-year, $5.1 billion deal with FOX kicks in.

Congressmen threaten MLB antitrust exemption over RSN bid. U.S. Representatives Elijah Cummings and Raja Krishnamoorthi threatened MLB’s antitrust exemption over the league’s attempt to buy the 21 Fox-branded RSNs. In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, the two House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform members wrote that they are concerned about the potential for “anticompetitive conduct that harms American consumers” if MLB buys the RSNs. “MLB’s potential purchase of these RSNs raises significant questions about the antitrust exemption that professional baseball has enjoyed for nearly a century,” they wrote. “Although the Supreme Court has upheld baseball’s unique, judicially-created antitrust exemption for nearly a century on the basis of stare decisis, the Court has also described the exemption as an ‘aberration’ and recognized Congress’ ability to limit or even eliminate it.” The congressmen gave MLB only two weeks to produce documents relating to MLB’s potential acquisition and operation of the RSNs.

The Trump administration has nixed Major League Baseball's historic agreement with the Cuban Baseball Federation (CBF) that would have made it easier for Cuban players to enter the U.S. legally without needing to defect. According to Axios Sports, the goal of this deal was to help end the dangerous trafficking of Cuban players that has gone on for decades, resulting in players being threatened, extorted or even kidnapped. Take Yasiel Puig, now an outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds. After helping Puig escape Cuba, traffickers affiliated with a notorious Mexican drug cartel held him for ransom on a small island for weeks. The Cuban agreement is similar to the deals MLB has with China, Korean, and Japan, and dates back to the Obama administration’s détente with Cuba, which intended to soften relations between the two nations. However, the Trump White House last Monday argued that the CBF is a branch of the Cuban government and that the agreement, therefore, violates U.S. trade law since MLB would be paying a fee in exchange for each player. A geopolitical war is being waged — and young baseball players with dreams of a better life are the collateral damage.

NCAA March Madness Live set all-time tournament records in live streams – over 100 million – and live hours consumed (over 24 million), up 31% and 29% vs. last year. According to JohnWallStreet, NCAA March Madness Live generated a record for last night’s NCAA Championship Game based on live uniques, with live streams and live hours consumed showing increases of 19% and 7% vs. last year. Competitive intelligence platforms BrandTotal reports that AT&T, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Infiniti ran some of the top social media campaigns during the NCAA men's basketball tournament, with BWW posting fairly evenly across social using Facebook (31%), Instagram (39%), and Twitter (30%) with the most viewed ad, in terms of engagement, being an Instagram Dark post about March Madness. AT&T leveraged YouTube as its main medium, with Instagram as its second and Facebook third, and scored a positive sentiment report of 45% and a negative sentiment 18%. Infinity used Instagram in 85% of its posts with the other 14% coming from Facebook, scoring a 2% negative sentiment report for its campaign and 29% positive. As more and more people consume media online, look for these numbers to continue to increase by double figures for the foreseeable future.

The L.A. Clippers honored retiring Hall of Fame broadcaster Ralph Lawler during their regular-season finale against the Jazz with a special halftime ceremony to celebrate his 40 years with the team. The Clippers unveiled a special logo on the court at Staples Center, and players wore a special shooting shirt. The first 10,000 fans on hand for Ralph Lawler Night also received Lawler bobbleheads. NBA Legend Bill Walton joined Lawler on the call during the game, and CarMax presented “a check to the charity of Lawler's choice," according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The Clippers actions honoring a longtime figure in the Clippers “family” stood in stark contrast to the turmoil surrounding their Staples Center locker mates the Los Angeles Lakers, who fired Walton’s son Luke as their coach after yet another season in which the franchise failed to make the NBA Playoffs and team president and NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson abruptly resigned. An All-Star in his own right, Lawler will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in September. 

The Boston Marathon passes $200 million in economic impact, and welcomes seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson to its field. This year's Boston Marathon, held Monday April 15 and carried on NBCSports Network, will be the 123rd running of the race that winds its way 26.2 miles from the town of Hopkinton to the finish line at Copley Square. It is the world's oldest annual marathon, starting in 1897 after the successful debut of the marathon at the first modern Olympics in 1896. The Boston Marathon is traditionally held on Patriots Day, the third Monday in April. The Boston Red Sox also have a traditional home game on Patriots Day with an 11:05 a.m. first pitch against the Orioles this year. Boston is among the six largest marathons, along with Tokyo, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York City. A special prize purse is given to runners who accumulate the most points in the majors. Here's a bit of trivia: Just five national sporting events were held during the two World Wars, and the Boston Marathon was one. The others? The Kentucky Derby, Penn Relays, Rose Parade, and Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. 

NASCAR has reportedly rejected an offer from Monster Energy to extend its title sponsorship of the US stock car racing series in order to push ahead with a new tiered partnership model. According to SportsBusiness Journal, the energy drink brand offered to extend its deal for an additional year to give NASCAR more time to finalize its sponsorship restructure. However, NASCAR has apparently turned down that option to keep moving forward with the new model, with Monster now in talks about becoming a lower-level partner. NASCAR’s switch to a tiered sponsorship model has been rumored for some time, and the series is reportedly asking for close to $20 million per year for top-tier deals. SportsBusiness Journal added that Monster would likely land a second-tier sponsorship deal, although it is not yet clear how much NASCAR wants for those slots. Monster was first named NASCAR title sponsor in 2017 as part of a two-year deal estimated to be worth an annual $20 million. The company then extended the partnership for a further season last April. The new arrangement would see NASCAR’s premier series be known as the NASCAR Cup Series, rather than the title-sponsored Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

A new ESPN deal with the Big 12 guarantees three football title games. The Big 12 has agreed to a deal that gives ESPN the rights to all Big 12 football championship games through 2024 and makes the league the first Power Five conference to provide exclusive content to ESPN+, the cable giant's online subscription streaming service. According to USA Today, the new agreement also calls for Big 12 content on ESPN+ to be branded specifically for the conference, creating a de facto digital conference network. Fox and ESPN share television rights to Big 12 games and are in the middle of a 13-year deal worth $2.6 billion signed in 2012. This is good news not only for ESPN and the Big 12, but for college football fans everywhere.

La Liga, Spanish soccer’s top-flight league, has been named the eighth biggest brand domestically, according to a report by valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance. The report places La Liga above major Spanish brands such as the insurance provider Mapfre and telecommunications company Movistar. Using its brand strength score metric, a figure based on calculations regarding emotional connection, financial performance and sustainability, Brand Finance gave La Liga a score of 80.7 out of 100. Fashion retailer Zara topped the Brand Finance list overall, with the likes of Santander and Iberdrola also featuring inside its top ten. The new 2019 report marks the first time a sports league has appeared in Brand Finance’s top ten, highlighting the continued growth of La Liga. Brand Finance values the league body at $548 million. Based on monetary value along it occupies 50th place on the list, a considerable drop. However, taking into account the value of participating league clubs – which includes the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid – La Liga’s overall value jumps to $4.5 billion, which would place it sixth on that list.

Top Five Tech

Opendorse has helped to rank the most “engaging” online PGA golfers. Ahead of Masters Week, the athlete marketing platform released its Top 5 in Gold with the then betting favorite to win the Masters, Rory McIlroy, leading the way by a steady margin with 1.21 million engagements since the start of 2019.  According to Sports Media Report, McIlroy’s Facebook engagements alone were nearly eight times that of the second player on the list, Rickie Fowler, whose total numbers amassed 1.05 million engagements. In third, fourth, and fifth were Justin Rose, Justin Thomas, and Ian Poulter respectively. Opendorse was able to calculate these numbers based off every like, share, retweet, comment, and other social factors each players’ posts received during the indicated time period. Using opendorse to track the top PGA golfers can help with advertising as it provides hard numbers for the number of people viewing a single athlete’s social feeds.

At The Masters, IBM tracked over 20,000 golf shots to create its automated highlights. IBM tracked every shot taken by every player during The Masters Tournament and used its artificial intelligence platform Watson to produce three-minute highlights of every round. According to SportTechie, IBM launched automated highlights for a select few players last year and expanded those capabilities to include all of the roughly 90 players at the 2019 Masters. The AI helped power the Masters’ “Round in Three Minutes” feature, which is a highlights package that served fans across the tournament’s digital platforms a bite-sized summary of a single player’s round. One of the most complex artificial intelligence systems around, IBM’s work at the Masters is helping to further teach its already complex Watson to create opportunities for the tech company to repackage and expand its capabilities to clients in other industries outside of sports.

Your Call Football looks to change the future of the game through tech. According to ESPN, YCF is part football, part gaming, part fantasy and allows fans to decide how an actual in-progress game is played, as if Madden came to life. Every Monday night for four weeks in the spring, fans get a notification at 8 p.m. to open the YCF app. They are given a coach-selected "bundle" of three plays to choose from and each fan has 10 seconds to decide what the team's offense should do next on their app. The game is free to play, there are cash prizes, and fans are awarded points when they select what the coach wanted and when their play selection is successful. On the other hand, fans who don't pick with the majority are awarded points when the majority-chosen play results in a negative play, like a sack or an incompletion. At the end of the 10 seconds, the play is radioed into the huddle with the whole sequence taking just 19 seconds, no longer than a normal football game. For a generation of hyper-connectivity, YCF wants to bring the digital world into live sports and give millennials who have stopped paying attention a reason to actually care.

The World Rallycross Championship (WRX) will launch an electric series that will run alongside its traditional format. Launched by WRX promoter IMG Motorsports, "Projekt E" will see electric-powered cars compete on the same weekend as regular Supercars races, with the series reportedly starting in 2020, according to industry outlet Autosport. The move comes after WRX's proposals to shift the main racing series to electric cars for 2021 fell through after failing to garner enough support in a manufacturer vote in March. According to SportsPro, Rallycross is considered by series bosses as the perfect stage for showcasing electrified motorsport. With its short races -- the longest is just over five minutes -- and use of road cars, it is seen as an ideal shop window for manufacturers to display their electric innovations to the mass market.

AKQA uses AI to invent a new sport called Speedgate. According to TechCrunch, the digital agency wanted to do something “really ambitious” for Design Week Portland, and given the team’s work with Nike, it made sense to ask: “What if we invented the next basketball, the next football?” AKQA used an existing recurrent neural network architecture, feeding it data of 400 sports, which it used to generate sports concepts and rules. The AI was good at coming up with descriptions for sports like “underwater parkour” but reviews were mixed. It also suggested creating rules for a sport where players pass a ball back-and-forth while in hot air balloons or on a tightrope. AKQA Creative Director Whitney Jenkins insisted that Speedgate could never have been created by humans alone: “Using AI as a member of a creative team takes us to a new place that we never could have gotten to without it.” But it still took a back-and-forth process with humans to narrow the list down for playtesting.

Power of Sports Five

The USTA Foundation unveils celebrity and player council in New York. According to SportsBusiness Journal, at a lunch with media at the Penn Club in Manhattan, the USTA’s charitable arm last week introduced its celebrity and player council, including Alec Baldwin, Katie Couric, and "Shark Tank" regular Daymond John – all avid tennis fans. “Anything I can do to bring tennis into the lives of young people,” said Baldwin, who serves as Chair of the 15-member council. Also attending the lunch were celebrity and player council members Billie Jean King and ESPN’s Chris McKendry, as well as USTA Foundation Chair Chris Evert. The USTA appointed Evert to the role two months ago, and it was her idea to more aggressively use the celebrity council to raise awareness and funds. The USTA Foundation has awarded $40 million in its history to bring tennis and education to underserved communities.

Chevrolet recently wrapped a fifth season of its GoalKeepers campaign, a program built with the Women’s Sports Foundation surrounding the brand’s Manchester United sponsorship in the U.K. The goal of GoalKeepers is to inspire girls to #BeAGoalKeeper, in soccer and in the pursuit of their dreams. The eight-month-long campaign involved 11 girls ages 11-15 from across the U.S. selected by an application process to immerse themselves in mentorship, regional activities, and a grand finale trip to England for a weeklong workshop. The insight by Ernst & Young guiding the program: that more than 94% of female business leaders played sports as children. Compare that figure to the sad statistic that by age 14, girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys, and Chevy has recognized an opportunity to support female empowerment with a recipe involving its soccer sponsorship and role as official automotive partner of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Sponsorships connect brands to consumer passion points, but they can also open doors to help brands make a real difference in the lives of fans.

AT&T becomes the first non-apparel company with logo on WNBA jerseys. AT&T will become the first non-apparel partner to have its logo featured on all WNBA jerseys as part of a new deal, with the tech company and the league also planning to collaborate on programs that support women in sports. According to Hashtag Sports, the jerseys debuted during last week’s WNBA Draft held at Nike’s new NYHQ. “Whether it’s women in sports, supporting small businesses like those owned by WNBA players, being a leading voice in LGBTQ rights, or giving back to communities in which we operate, we have much in common and many opportunities to empower these incredible athletes and their fans,” said Fiona Carter, AT&T’s chief brand officer. Sports sponsorship deals can be important gateways to philanthropy. With this latest move, AT&T is demonstrating that giving back is as important to the telecom company as selling mobile phones and service plans.

The NHL is recruiting teenage advisors to be a part of its NHL Power Players program. The NHL is recruiting a group of youth advisers to help the league better connect with Gen Z and get them invested in the sport. The council will assist and provide insight and suggestions to the league on matters including marketing, community engagement, events, social content, and understanding rules of play. Applicants must be between the age of 13 to 17, be open, honest and willing to share their ideas with the NHL and their peers as well as have a passion for hockey. Power Players is born from the actions of Sabrina Solomon, a teenaged avid hockey fan. In 2017, just after the NHL’s CMO Heidi Browning had started in that role, Browning did an interview with the Wall Street Journal about her plans for the league. Solomon, who was then just 11 years old, saw the article and wrote to Browning, telling her she had some ideas of her own. Impressed, Browning invited her into the NHL’s offices for the day. The hope is that with these varied insights from the team of Power Players, the NHL can get a better picture of what Gen Z is looking for from a pro sports organization.

April is National Autism Awareness Month, and the MLF Bass Pro Tour roster is participating in the way they know best: by catching fish. Most of the field of 80 anglers competing in the next two Bass Pro Tour events are pledging “dollars per pound” donations to their favorite autism awareness organization, and they’re asking their fans to consider doing the same. “Autism affects so many families, we’re just doing our best to encourage people to do whatever they can for their local autism awareness organization,” said Kevin VanDam, who is pledging a robust $5 for every pound of fish he records on SCORETRACKER. MLF anglers participating in April’s awareness and fundraising effort will combine their weights and contributions from the Stage Four event on Lake Chickamauga in Tennessee, and the Stage Five event on Smith Lake in Alabama. With big weights of Florida-strain largemouth expected on Chickamauga and even heavier overall weights of spotted bass on Smith Lake, those dollars-per-pound pledge could add up quickly. The angler with the most weight at these two tournaments will be recognized as the Autism Awareness Champion.

[morgangainespr-blog]

YouTube Circa 2017

Circa 2014 I was obsessed with YouTube (in fact, I was...and still am... subscribed to over 200 channels and watched those videos on the site daily) but when my favorite bloggers started becoming more and more popular...their content changed. And with it, went my love for the site. I have always relied on YouTube to watch videos of things I liked (makeup tutorials, fashion hauls, etc.) but never really branched outside of my comfort zone. I am typically more of a Twitter-user, receiving news, entertainment, politics, etc. updates from that social media site, so roaming the depths of YouTube for similar stories was a different take for me. One thing I really liked about the YouTube community was the idea that it is content created by someone like me. Sure, large news outlets and industry leaders use the site for promotional and advertising purposes, but I appreciated that integrated mix of user-generated content and widely-known larger sources. YouTube also really highlights that diversity aspect of society that I value in my everyday media consumption. I look for varying perspectives, differing opinions, similar ideas, interesting points of view, and more when I read the news, so that was something YouTube has that several others platforms do not.

YouTube is an online community “created by you, for you” so heavily based in user-generated content. That leaves thoughts and opinions raw, real, and unfiltered, much like the demographic makeup of the community’s users (https://digiday.com/media/demographics-youtube-5-charts/). YouTube has uncountable amounts of content from how-to videos, to dating advice, to politics, to foreign language classes and back again. I think this makes it extremely diverse, in users and consumers, varying in age, race, gender, sexual orientation, and more. From my observations, there is not one type of person more inclined to watch a YouTube video more than another. However, I imagine specific content areas have more or less of one demographic tuning in, like makeup tutorials or NFL Fantasy Football advice videos.

I have always been a visual learner. I enjoy looking at things, be it pictures, videos, etc., so YouTube felt like my comfort zone. I enjoyed gaining my media through a visual means, other than reading words on a screen or listening without a picture to hold my gaze. YouTube kind of serves as that happy medium between the three, allowing users to pick one of the three senses or all of the above. So I definitely found that interesting and enticing on the site’s behalf, it can appeal to several (if not all) types of consumers.

Like I said before, I did see several larger organizations creating a presence on YouTube, like ABCNews, CNN, Buzzfeed, etc. The videos posted on those channels were definitely more produced, staged, and shortened to a perfect length for quick, media consumption. They were also constructed more for promotional, marketing and advertising purposes, unlike the unfiltered, web-cam in one’s room, type background and setup of the everyday YouTube creator. This shift is YouTube video culture initially turned me off the site, but now I understand the societal need for it. Quick, visual, and constantly changing information for all types of consumers.

Circa 2017, I found YouTube to be a very creative and diverse media platform, one that I genuinely enjoy and would encourage others to engage with. The long list of categories and various types of content is both inspiring and enticing; you never know what you are going to get, but there’s millions of different opportunities to get something incredible. I like that it is relatable. It is made by people like me and you, for people like me and you have the option to captain your own ship, be in control of who you follow, what you watch, and can connect interpersonally with those individuals on a different level. YouTube encourages uniqueness and creativity and that provides for such varying arrays of diversity to really be highlighted on this media platform.