I want no part of such elec-trickery.
April 22, 2016 9:07 AM   Subscribe

How could kids today rebel? Stephen Fry suggests going off the grid.
posted by JanetLand (61 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Rebellion is supposed to be fun.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:11 AM on April 22, 2016 [13 favorites]


I grew up off the grid. It was much harder to find the people and ideas that resonate with me back then. The scarcity could make it seem more valuable, I guess, but I think that's an illusion.

My recommendation for rebels is decades old: use only open protocols & standards. Don't write or create in walled gardens.
posted by jjwiseman at 9:13 AM on April 22, 2016 [30 favorites]


Fry, although mostly-beloved of nerds, has proven himself to be on the wrong side of some arguments recently. This rejection of online space seems more like a retreat to a less testing environment, where his shortcomings won't be probed.

Which is not to say that real objects ain't great, it's just... we probably don't need to hear it from Mr. Fry.
posted by The River Ivel at 9:14 AM on April 22, 2016 [40 favorites]


You can accomplish this by striving to be mindful of your use of these technologies, as well. I regularly turn my phone off (couldn't do that in the old days without crawling behind the phone and unplugging it from the wall). I've become very good at re-retraining myself not to pick up my phone immediately when it dings, especially if I'm doing something (working, cooking dinner, reading, whatever.) Sometime I'll leave the apartment without my phone!

I think that for most people, this sort of low-grade ever-present connection and never-ending conversations are the really stressful part of texting and social media, and it's fairly easy to just say no to that.
posted by Automocar at 9:22 AM on April 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


Nobody who refers to a blog post as a blog has anything meaningful to say about the web, no matter how beloved they might be in other fields.
posted by maxsparber at 9:31 AM on April 22, 2016 [17 favorites]


My recommendation for rebels is decades old: use only open protocols & standards. Don't write or create in walled gardens.

Agreed. Owning your turf is hard, but does act as a brake against getting swept up by the latest internet fad.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:32 AM on April 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


Lin-Manuel Miranda tweets more than anyone I know, and accomplishes more than anyone I know. So, uh, I'm going to ignore this advice. You do you.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:34 AM on April 22, 2016 [11 favorites]


Well maybe they should consider this for a moment. Who most wants you to stay on the grid? The advertisers. Your boss. Human Resources. The advertisers. Your parents (irony of ironies – once they distrusted it, now they need to tag you electronically, share your Facebook photos and message you to death). The advertisers. The government. Your local authority. Your school. Advertisers.

Fry, as usual, makes some good points, like this one here. The problem is his solution and his willingness to wax nostalgic right out of the gate about his own disconnected upbringing, as though going backwards is the solution. It really kind of undermines any of the good points he makes (including the obvious parallels between AOL/Facebook.), and makes him seem pretty out of touch. Even moreso, you can't actually title something "Off the Grid" anymore, and have anyone take it seriously, because all the seriousness has been strangled out of the phrase, most notably by Jesse Ventura.

Perhaps the solution isn't disconnecting from the internet entirely, but realizing which parts of the internet are only there to skim your personal info and sell you products and finding your own spaces that don't involve that. Perhaps, as someone who is obsessed with language, he should be suggesting that people should be exploring the language of coding so they can build their own web-spaces (with blackjack and hookers). I mean, plainly, this already happens on the Darknet, and plenty of people spend their time coding to allow for privacy and doing and saying pretty much whatever you want online.

Perhaps Fry, so used to nothing but the glowing accolades of his legions of fans, is suddenly caught out and unsure what to do in a situation where his fans disagree with him. He's had a few flubs that have been ill received as of late, and it's easy to see why. It's also easy to see that Fry isn't necessarily nasty and wishes ill on anyone as much as he said something in kind of a shitty way that showed that even Stephen Fry can be a bit of a tit at times.

I think the real solution is a combination of being able to say no to the grid, enjoy real life experiences, but also be able to be directly involved in the internet in a way that works for you. We all have our levels of being able to cope with the online world. Some can revel in it all day long, while others can only cope with bits and pieces weekly. "One size fits all" solutions are never good. While there is a lot to be said for spending time in nature, or socializing in real life, or anywhere outside of digital devices, pretending that doing so is some kind of noble pursuit just makes you look like a whinging wanker, Fry.

What was that about self-pity being the ugliest human emotion? The Fry pity party has departed, and I bid him good riddance until he can grow up a bit. /s
posted by deadaluspark at 9:37 AM on April 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


Is this the sort of thing you'd have to watch TV be online to understand? Because...
posted by Guy Smiley at 9:40 AM on April 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


Kids today should rebel by listening to what old men tell them!
posted by srboisvert at 9:47 AM on April 22, 2016 [30 favorites]


Ah yes, 'old man out of touch'-post. Why is it that every generation without fail refuses to accept that the kids don't need to emulate their childhoods? I remember my father telling stories of how his father banned the playing of punk music in the house, regretting how that generation was so out of touch, then without a hint of irony dismissing my teenage fascination with post-hardcore as "horrible screaming". When the old yearn for the times before the internet they do so without fully appreciating what the internet is. How could we think that it was anything less than the greatest social revolution of our time? It's more than just the narcissism of facebook. At our fingertips we have the greatest library the world has ever seen; every piece of music, film, art and literature. We are able to access information and discourse about anything we desire. Talk of sticking it to advertisers is redundant when we all have ad/ublock installed anyway.
posted by Shikantaza at 9:49 AM on April 22, 2016 [10 favorites]


Fry interestingly harks back to the halcyon days of his adolescence, during which he stole from friends, family and strangers; was imprisoned for credit card fraud and attempted suicide. He did play pinball too, though.
posted by howfar at 9:54 AM on April 22, 2016 [11 favorites]


then without a hint of irony dismissing my teenage fascination with post-hardcore as "horrible screaming"

ok but here's the thing
posted by GuyZero at 9:54 AM on April 22, 2016 [24 favorites]


It's a pity, but Stephen Fry has gotten old.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:05 AM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


I enjoy my connection to this grid, allowing me to read MetaFilter while (e.g., as now) waiting for a train. There is very little advertising here too. Except for that "vote #1 quidnunc kid" guy, and his continual self-promoting bullshit.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 10:07 AM on April 22, 2016 [28 favorites]


His mention of Neuromancer dovetails with some thoughts I've had about the book (one of my favorites) lately: It's not really technologically outdated at all (Case's "eight megabytes of hot RAM" notwithstanding). We don't see any cell/smart phones, which was a glaring omission for awhile, but in today's post-Snowden world there's a plausible reason why: The low-life underworld that the book spends most of its time in doesn't want 'em! They're a liability. The ultra-rich (the other segment of society we get a good look at) don't have any need for them either.

(Another part of the book that was only temporarily implausible: The US-Russian cyberwar.)
posted by neckro23 at 10:34 AM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


They couldn’t force me to have an online presence after all.

No, what would happen is that you would just fail all your classes. The textbooks are online now. All the kids have Chromebooks. They're expected to do all their work entirely online. They make no exceptions for the poor in the community that have limited connectivity other than suggesting "do your work in 'Seminar' " (study hall period) or "Go to the Library." If they're that serious about disenfranchising the _poor_, they'll brook no comfort for your rebellious idiocy.

On the.. "up-side", they don't actually assign much out-of-class work anymore. Apparently, it's too hard to grade homework or something.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 10:46 AM on April 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


My own experience with a "disconnected" upbringing doesn't make me wax the least bit nostalgic for What Once Was. Where I think it did help me, however, was that since it wasn't a de rigueur part of my young life (I didn't get online until my mid-30's, and I was in my late 40's before I got a smartphone), I was able to make informed mature decisions about how selective I wanted to be about my online presence and activities.

I agree with Automocar above, that not letting yourself be (or training yourself out of being) a slave to...well, anything, really - and having the ability to make conscious choices about how you use any sort of technology seems to be a happy way to go.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:52 AM on April 22, 2016


How one gets that way, however, is a trickier subject.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:53 AM on April 22, 2016


Personal empowerment through self-marginalization seems to be all the rage these days. Several people have suggested I should go off the grid as a response to my personal/family situation. Feels like a trap to me. And I would never make a choice like that for my kids, given how much they would end up bearing the burden for my choice. No thanks.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:57 AM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sure, Steven, great idea. You first.

Seriously, i think Fry should just completely disassociate himself from the internet. At this point, it would be better for everyone concerned.

He can hire a manservant to act as an intermediary between him and computers, and then just spend his twilight years sitting on the back porch, drinking port. It's much more appealing than the alternative where he still has access to a computer.
posted by happyroach at 11:06 AM on April 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


As a parent, I'm able to allow my kids more freedom- later curfews, ability to drive far and wide, stay out late with friends- than I ever had. I'm able to do this because I have the ability to communicate with them as needed, I have the ability to reach out and find them if I need to, and I can feel confident that they can get help if they have to. We're careful to make sure they understand what our expectations are, and how these expectations will be enforced.

If my kids didn't agree to these expectations, I'd be less comfortable extending to them the freedoms that they enjoy. I think that Mr. Fry's perspective works for him as a wealthy functioning adult without parental responsibilities.
posted by jenkinsEar at 11:09 AM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Old man yells at the Cloud.
posted by bonehead at 11:13 AM on April 22, 2016 [35 favorites]


and then just spend his twilight years sitting on the back porch, drinking port.

If some smart young writer has a part he wants to cast Fry in and put some clever and witty words in his mouth, that's also allowed.
posted by straight at 11:16 AM on April 22, 2016


I love it when old people think it's a good idea to tell young people how to rebel.
posted by lunasol at 11:17 AM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Personal empowerment through self-marginalization seems to be all the rage these days

Oh come on. Thoreau wrote Walden in 1906 and if you think it's a load of shit then you're welcome to that opinion, but there are positive elements in disconnecting from time to time. "These days" has been since the mid-1800s.

The framing device of kids rebelling against their parents is kind of odd, but the basic thesis is fine. And if you don't like it, that's also fine. But it's not crazy, it's actually a perfectly good idea.

Is there a privilege angle here where white middle-class people have an easier time to do this than some other groups? Sure. That doesn't make it a blanket terrible idea that's unfit for anyone.
posted by GuyZero at 11:52 AM on April 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


It's a pity, but Stephen Fry has gotten old.

I don't think any non-old people remember Catweazle.
posted by delfin at 12:06 PM on April 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


Schools don't require kids to submit their work electronically as a pointless exercise. Basic computer skills are sort of like penmanship or typing skills. They're a base level quasi-vocational requirement, and it's a good thing for schools to ensure that their students know how to do that.

Also, papers usually get submitted to those plagiarism databases, so teachers need an electronic copy.

But yeah, some young people are doing some of the things he suggests already. Not totally going offline or anything, because you can't get away with that, but backing off, keeping their personal information personal as much as possible. Lots of kids, like lots of adults, read physical books and buy vinyl and all that, for a variety of reasons.

But in the past 1500 years or so I've been alive, anyway, the pattern has remained largely the same. Adolescents, particularly sort of sheltered ones, get some hormones and their first real introductions to the adult world and they start trying to make sense of the system. Power balances, corporate manipulations, things like that, and a subset of them are rightfully outraged, so they rebel against that. Marketers have gotten much faster and craftier in recent years, but the pattern, at least stylistically, is pretty much the same, with trendy kids trying to stay a step ahead of the marketers trying to capitalize on their style.

It is a subset, though. Like how baby boomers who talk in 'we's about Woodstock and civil rights marches. Only a minority of them actively participated in those things. It was only later, after those things gained some hindsight respectability, that a lot of those people started to embrace and coopt the experiences by taking some kind of generational credit for social movements.

Most of them weren't doing those things, though. Most young people, eerily like most old people, are just sort of going along, have other things to worry about, are fine with the status quo, or sometimes just don't care enough to do anything about it.

The ones who do, though, are already forging their own paths in terms of technology. I'm not aware of any who have rejected it entirely, but my fifteen year old nephew has a pretty robust system for controlling his information, supporting the things he wants to support, and opting out of or subverting those he doesn't. He's not doing those things to freak out the normals and pop old people's monocles. Hell, he learned a lot of those things from his dear old auntie ernie in the first place.

He isn't rejecting those things simply because he's a teenager, or to be trendy. He does those things because he is engaged and interested and he is pissed off at being treated like a commodity, just like so many generations of fifteen year olds before him.

Fry isn't entirely wrong, and the things he's wrong about aren't because he's old. The main thing he's wrong about, in fact, is that he's talking about young people as though they're a single, predictable monolith. Sort of like, you know.
posted by ernielundquist at 12:09 PM on April 22, 2016 [7 favorites]


Not buying anything (or reducing drastically the amount you buy) and not using plastic would be much bigger rebellions.

Stop using plastic. Entirely. Try it. It's pretty hard. (Unless of course you need plastic for a life-saving medical device. Then definitely don't stop using it.)

Fry does have a point, of course. There will definitely be a shift off the Internet and back into meatspace once the initial rush wears off. Say, oh, 2040?
posted by mrgrimm at 12:16 PM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Whoops, I got some random publishing date wrong there - Walden was written in 1854. Some edition came out in 1906. My bad.
posted by GuyZero at 12:18 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't think any non-old people remember Catweazle.

Those of us who do still cry and shake in terror.
posted by maxsparber at 12:22 PM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Maybe I'm only thinking of my own personal situation, GuyZero. The only way, practically, that I could go "off-grid" would be to welch on all my debts and personal responsibilities and just wander off into the woods or something. It seems privileged from my POV to consider doing something with so many knock-on consequences for other people I care about as a speech act.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:43 PM on April 22, 2016


HipsterFry: an old person who has found his fuddy-duddies in random convergence with a strand of youth culture. I suspect this might be a prank by Charlie Brooker in connection for the upcoming series - Nathan Barley: The Twilight Years.
posted by aeshnid at 12:57 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh no, he does sound like a grumpy old dude, and I agree with him :/ I don't think anything I did as a teen was particularly worthy. But I think my generation (email was just picking up when I was at university) did benefit from having less space taken up by others' thoughts, or at least feeling less pressured to respond in synchronous time. Maybe we had more time to reflect on and develop inner experience - some kind of line between out and in. More patience - I now have to force myself to read longform pieces, never mind books, way too much energy is going to chasing info pellets.

I agree with Automocar above, that not letting yourself be (or training yourself out of being) a slave to...well, anything, really - and having the ability to make conscious choices about how you use any sort of technology seems to be a happy way to go.

I think it's necessarily going to be less of a conscious choice when you're embedded in a Borgish exobrain from mommy's first ultrasound on.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:58 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


(Does this mean I have to return the pink neon running shoes I just got, because I don't want to :/)
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:58 PM on April 22, 2016


I think it's necessarily going to be less of a conscious choice when you're embedded in a Borgish exobrain from mommy's first ultrasound on.

That's what I was trying to say, yes.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:21 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


It seems privileged from my POV to consider doing something with so many knock-on consequences for other people I care about as a speech act.

It is. I agree. I just think that's a better criticism than saying Fry is old and out-of-touch.
posted by GuyZero at 1:37 PM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


mrgrimm, if you know of a way to completely stop using plastic, I'd love to hear about it. As far as I've been able to figure out it's pretty much impossible to do without disappearing butt-naked into a National Wilderness Area and starting over completely from scratch.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:41 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Damn kids. Get off my cloud.

(Shakes fist)
posted by Michele in California at 2:33 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Rebel? Alarm the 'rents? Isn't that what the alt-right is all about?
posted by IndigoJones at 3:59 PM on April 22, 2016


How to build a Faraday cage wallet

Obviously you also want a Faraday cage phone case.
posted by bukvich at 4:12 PM on April 22, 2016


As Fry once again tells an entire generation to check their privilege, I sincerely hope he finds the "safe space" he's looking for.
posted by duffell at 5:31 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick: "No, what would happen is that you would just fail all your classes. The textbooks are online now. All the kids have Chromebooks. They're expected to do all their work entirely online. They make no exceptions for the poor in the community that have limited connectivity other than suggesting "do your work in 'Seminar' " (study hall period) or "Go to the Library." If they're that serious about disenfranchising the _poor_, they'll brook no comfort for your rebellious idiocy.

On the.. "up-side", they don't actually assign much out-of-class work anymore. Apparently, it's too hard to grade homework or something.
"

This is not true at all in the school district my kids attend. YMMV, I guess.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:13 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ah yes, 'old man out of touch'-post.

yes you can tell when old people's opinions are dumb and worthless by when you are younger than they are and disagree with them. that's the proof. cause they're old, get it. definitely if two opinions are opposed the more recent one is right. what do you mean, 'why'

no but opposing metafilter to stephen fry and defying me to choose between them is some kind of delicate torture the devil should be proud of himself for thinking of
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:29 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick: "No, what would happen is that you would just fail all your classes. The textbooks are online now. All the kids have Chromebooks. They're expected to do all their work entirely online. They make no exceptions for the poor in the community that have limited connectivity other than suggesting "do your work in 'Seminar' " (study hall period) or "Go to the Library." If they're that serious about disenfranchising the _poor_, they'll brook no comfort for your rebellious idiocy.

On the.. "up-side", they don't actually assign much out-of-class work anymore. Apparently, it's too hard to grade homework or something."


Wow, that's super uncharitable about teachers and education.

And none of that is true in my experience as a teacher for over a decade in public schools, including ones that were 80-90% socioeconomically disadvantaged. In fact, I flipped my class in that kind of environment, and there were only 2-3 kids out of 80 who didn't have reliable access to technology. That was 4-5 years ago, and that access has gotten better since then. Eventually, I decided that using video during class was more productive than assigning it as homework.

And the reason a lot of teachers have stopped assigning homework is not about it being "hard to grade." It's about there being a critical mass of research that says homework is detrimental to kids.

In my classroom, each of my students has written around 30k words this year. All of that is online. I read pretty much every word and give them personalised feedback on all of it. I couldn't do that before the internet. Now, I can go through a class set of work in under 20 minutes. On paper? That took nearly double the time, including more time in class to collect the paper and pass it back out. And then to retrieve it from the recycling bin once the kids threw it away without reading what I took all that time to write.

When I RTFA, the teacher/student part struck me as completely misguided. I typically return papers after a day, sometimes two. I make time in my schedule to grade when I collect an assignment, ensuring I can get the work back as fast as possible. It also takes SO much longer to read handwriting than typing. Some students don't leave any room on the paper, which makes targetted feedback difficult. In a typed essay, i can check Revision History and see if they're copy/pasting. I also can really easily show progress over time, because unlike paper, I have a copy of everything they've done all year. I can share it with parents, other teachers, admin, other students...etc.

I can see where a lot of my kids need to unplug more. The way they use Instagram is really troubling for me, and we've had 4-5 incidents this year alone where cyberbullying on instagram affected huge portions of our student population.

But unplugging isn't rebelling. I love Stephen Fry, but he is ultimately missing the point here.
posted by guster4lovers at 9:37 PM on April 22, 2016 [10 favorites]


Young people should rebel by manufacturing fake identities that persist online. Basically make it impossible for the authorities to tell who is real or not.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:03 PM on April 22, 2016


So many of thou protest too much! For one thing, if you're here on Metafilter, you are like me, an old fart. So what we have here are old farts calling another an old fart. Stephen Fry does have some points here but he, being an old fart like us, is calling for something that is already happening among quite a few young people (under 25) that I know. They were raised submerged in 'the matrix' and they have opted out -- more or less. They have their smart phones for getting in touch with their friends and getting whatever info they need, but they don't do social media, shop online, or mindlessly go on the web, as I do. Most of them don't even have computers and often only have a tv to play video games - no cable, Netflix, etc. Now, unlike Stephen's pipe dream, they're not putting together magazines by hand but they're also not mindlessly liking an endless stream of friends' Facebook posts and falling down rabbit holes on Reddit. Can't argue with you all that the internet is an incredible, life-enhancing resource, but like every other form of media, it's also a vast reservoir of mind-numbing, life-draining dross. And young people, as is always the case, are the first to recognize the fatigue of the conventional.
posted by SA456 at 10:50 PM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's a pity, but quidnunc kid has gotten old.
posted by y2karl at 2:37 AM on April 23, 2016


But if I just suck the life-essence from a gelfling, I'll be back to my youthful, useful self - and then we'll see who will be Skeksis' emperor! So put THAT up your Dark Crystal, Chamberlain!
posted by the quidnunc kid at 5:01 AM on April 23, 2016 [8 favorites]


quidnuncparabiotickid
posted by y2karl at 8:11 AM on April 23, 2016


countquidnuncula
posted by y2karl at 8:11 AM on April 23, 2016


quidnosferatuncula kid
posted by y2karl at 8:13 AM on April 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Young people should rebel by manufacturing fake identities that persist online. Basically make it impossible for the authorities to tell who is real or not.

This is already a thing - essentially "shelf companies" but for teens. When future employees search internet history of their new intake they'll find elaborately organised pro-business bullshit instead of a series of pissed up selfies and topless Tuesday Tumblr posts. And thank fuck for that. If there were any evidence from my teen years I'd literally never have landed even the shitty job I have now.
posted by longbaugh at 9:17 AM on April 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


I should point about that this primarily appears to be a thing that rich kids get done for them. So long as nobody looks up MTV shows like "Posh Twats On The Lash*" they're all good.

*may or may not be a thing. I'm off the grid and wooden no. I dictated this to a highly trained parakeet whose speling is sometimes a bit of.
posted by longbaugh at 9:22 AM on April 23, 2016


How to build a Faraday cage wallet

Obviously you also want a Faraday cage phone case.


Also haberdashery.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:44 PM on April 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


I could likely exist pretty happily without social media, but apparently I can't write code anymore without Stack Overflow and about twelve dozen Github dependencies. So my off-grid bunker will have to have a pretty fat pipe.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:31 PM on April 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Obviously you also want a Faraday cage phone case.

Also haberdashery.


Incidentally, "Faraday Haberdashery" is the name of my new band.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:10 PM on April 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


Faraday Haberdashery is brilliant!

While we're on the topic of silly old-man rants: except in the case of solder preforms or other special applications, nobody under the age of 80 has used foil made of tin. I've never touched the stuff, and neither have you. Can't we please stop using that phrase? Get off my fire escape, you kids with your lack of precision in referring to kitchen supplies.
posted by eotvos at 11:03 AM on April 24, 2016


nobody under the age of 80 has used foil made of tin.

That's just what they WANT you to think!!
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:29 PM on April 24, 2016


"Why should anyone want to dissociate themselves from all that ... reach and power? Well, because it would be ... awesome."

So he wants kids who have found their reach and power via social media, their ability to influence others and gather in groups to amass that power, to throw it away on a lark? You know who benefits when people with great ideas don't seize their power? Entrenched interests.

"when I was young, being difficult and disruptive was more or less what I lived for."

What the hell does he think "those kids today" are doing with this technology? Did he Rip Van Winkle his way through the past decade of global political unrest? Did he miss that one of the primary benefits to Snapchat users is its encryption, allowing people to collaborate and share ideas without interference from the very "overlords" he rails against?

"We really are starting to live in that kind of movie, mutatis mutandis, so surely it’s time to join the Rebels, the Outliers, the Others who live beyond the Wall and read forbidden books, sing forbidden songs and think forbidden thoughts in defiance of The One."

Oh, okay, so he's just sad that reality isn't living up to fiction, and wants us to become more like this fiction... why exactly? Because he can't properly wrap his head around the shape of things that are happening currently, and wishes it were a tidier package, or what? What would we gain here? Has he ever actually met anybody he would consider a rebel?

How are we supposed to think forbidden thoughts without being able to talk to others who share them? The internet is the greatest subversive tool of all time, you can read the collective works and banned books from our entire civilization's history of political and social rebellion. It is a vibrant jungle of dangerous ideas. It's full of information and perspectives on a million things the mass media, and folks you meet on the street, aren't likely to have even considered. How do you formulate the questions to ask about your conditions, your society, without having access to information that things are better elsewhere, and thus could be better for you? The social justice movement has been critical to expanding an entire generation's perception of how they should be considerate of other people's identity, how they should question entrenched bigotry and xenophobia, by making these alien viewpoints familiar.

Oh, but he's not talking about actual rebellion here, not the kind that matters. He's talking about a childish "thumbing your nose at teacher" form of rebellion, harmless and petulant and easily waved away.

We live in a world of The Hobos of Instagram, and even the outliers, rebels and travelers I meet without a smartphone usually have a Facebook account. Social capital is one of the few forms of wealth available to those without money, and they know it. My friends are a global network, and tapping into that network has been an invaluable resource. How are we supposed to accomplish this without phones? Pen pal letters? Scrolls delivered by pigeon?

Fuck your nostalgiawank. The future is here, and it's not the kids' fault that you can't comprehend the tidal wave they're surfing.
posted by Feyala at 9:50 AM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Fuck your nostalgiawank.

As much as I like Stephen Fry for some of the things he's done and said, I gotta go with this sentiment. I mean, the fact he's had the career he's had in the last several years he owes precisely to the fact that he's been on the grid.

Fry:

Vinyl reminds us that, before the days of the internet, digitisation and streaming, musicians were perfectly able to create extraordinary new sounds and write immortal songs. It’s not helpful for me to suggest that the music that came from people meeting up in garages and sheds and bedrooms was better than the music being made now, because such a claim would rightly be put down to the obvious preference we all have for the music of our youth – but no one surely can deny that it was possible to create marvellous sounds and write marvellous songs without the help of MIDI synthesisers and Protools loops.

The number of entirely acoustic musicians who are getting their stuff out there widely online means people can hear the people who make "marvellous sounds and write marvellous songs without the help of MIDI synthesisers and Protools loops" without the interference of the once-entrenched interests who they would otherwise have had to court (and scrape and bow before) to press that vinyl for them.

And man, if I had the internet available to me as a young gay kid...goddamn would shit have been easier. Probably the only thing that saved my life was that I was a library junkie...HQ helped me out immensely, but not everyone could do that, know what I'm saying, Stephen, old pal?

Sorry, Stephen, buddy, you're losing me here as a fan.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:05 PM on April 25, 2016


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