Boisebration

December 10, 2017 11:27 AM

Jon Bois, author of MeFi-celebrated multimedia narrative 17776 and creator of Breaking Madden, Chart Party, and Pretty Good, has written dozens of pieces (fictional and nonfictional) about class, feminism, aging, sports, politics, wonder, education, and art. Following the jump, a collection of links. (previously)

On feminism and inclusivity:

• "If this game really were as controversial and edgy as it purports to be, perhaps it would go for the gold and challenge its gamers on feminist issues. You know, really make them upset."
• On girl-friendly LEGO sets.
• On misogyny in beer ads.
• "...it's a good thing the value of the dollar doesn't rise and fall by the spender's ability to comprehend what the hell's going on here..."
• "Meet 'Guy On The Internet,' Champion Of The Dullards." "He is thoughtless and gullible. He's firmly entrenched at the intersection of Mediocre and Cruel, which is just about the most weak, miserable place a person can find one's self." Or: "Internet misogyny as the trademark of the mediocre and boring."
• Defending his tweet "congratulations to the winner of this year’s masters, a guy who thinks gay people are wrong": "Please be nice. There are people out there who are dislocating their shoulders to scrape their fingertips against what you hold, peacefully, every day of your life."

On death:

• 30 feels old.
• "We aren't wired to understand death. Maybe if humans had to actually figure out how to be dead people, evolution would have wired us that way. But there isn't much to figure out. You just lie there and don't say anything."

On capitalism and class:

• "Introducing a new series called "Poorror Stories," in which we tell tragicomic stories from times when we were really poor."
• On bad customer service.
• "Why Microsoft Office Costs $200: A Budget Breakdown."
• How much did you pay for In Rainbows? And: Survey results.
• Bois's defense of participation trophies (and of the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, and of striving for its own sake).

17776 influences, references, precursors, and callbacks:

(Some mentioned in our 17776 read-along thread in July.)

• "What the heck is a catch in the NFL, anyway? An explainer" (previously).
• The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles (previously).
• A much older, unfinished piece of postapocalyptic science fiction by Bois features prisoners amusing themselves by inventing new ways to play chess.
• The end of Bois's 2010 NFL lockout fantasia includes a Flowers for Algernon-esque diary entry from someone who's temporarily deprived of NFL games. (An earlier chunk of it also includes a "Chinese Checkers, but with football" game design, in case you liked the Game 27 chapter of 17776.)
• Fictional TV listings mention the entertainment of someone stepping on a garden hoe.
• "In the year 2030 there's going to be a "man has Volkswagen with 1.5 million miles" story about some old dude who still has one that works. In 2006 it took a bullet for him, and in 2017 he was stranded in the wilderness and sharpened the antenna to hunt snakes, which he got really good at because he played a lot of Snake. Book it." Also note the "Cops and Robbers" game that Bois recollects, which has a strong 17776 vibe to me.
• Why we would have destroyed Pioneer 10.
• "On the Internet, as on the planet Earth, it is stranger and stranger to find one's self in a place where no one else has ever been. These moments are finite and rare, and they should be treasured, if not necessarily enjoyed."
• Bois compares the Pioneer spacecraft with the institution of baseball (found via a Twitter conversation where he mentions writing that while outlining 17776).
• "Card Show, Episode 2: Jon Bois Finds a Hologram" discusses holograms and what happened to the dream of space travel.
• The most recent Chart Party has Pioneers 9 and 10 on a shelf.

On government, and libertarians:

• Trolling libertarians: "I hope my birthday party is going to be fun. I think that making sure my birthday party is fun is the responsibility of the government."
• Arguments against voting.
• The story of the Griffey in '96 campaign (previously).

On education and homeschooling:

• Bois discusses getting to decide how to spend one's time instead of having it dictated.
• "I was a map kid. I wanted to stare at countries and borders and roads all day. I would shove atlases straight into my backpack at the school library, since they were reference books I wasn't allowed to check out. How did Russia get so much land? I'd wonder. Why is Lesotho completely surrounded by South Africa? Oh man, Detroit is right on the border. I wonder whether Cecil Fielder could hit a ball into Canada." (previously)
• "And that right there was the highlight of my entire experience in the public education system."

On boredom, creativity, awe/wonder, and the purpose of games and sports:

• Less appealing ways to spend time with your friends.
• What is a sport? "'Is this a sport?' is not a question that requires a binary answer."
• Radio Shack memories (previously):

  "For some damn reason, the company had ordered a ludicrous number of remote-controlled PT Cruisers. We literally had a hundred of them in our little store alone. Nobody bought them, of course, because PT Cruisers are boring and stupid. So a friend of mine would take a couple of them out to the middle of the mall and hold impromptu demolition derbies, just smashing them into each other until one of them stopped working. They would draw little crowds, and employees of nearby stores would stand in their doorways and watch."

• On a game that is bad because it's just stamp collecting.
• "The water gun is the simple joy of running through a sprinkler, repurposed and weaponized into a portable hurter of feelings."
• "Let's square ourselves with a fact: the NFL is going to end. I mean, it's not like they're going to be playing games in 10 trillion years."
• "Depending on what you're looking for, baseball might be a sophisticated, beautiful, and irresistible sport, or it might be a stupid crapfest where a bunch of jerks do boring stuff all day."
• Before releasing "Pretty Good #3" on baseball player Lonnie Smith, Bois wrote a chapter on Smith for the ebook The Hall of Nearly Great (Amazon, Twitter).
• "For some time, the futurist set has wondered whether sports might one day replace war, the reasoning being that our desires to conquer (as athletes), belong (as fans), and experience violence could be sated by a good game of football. The idea is entertaining if nothing else, and I can't help but wonder whether those are the only teeth we're cutting it with. I can't read these words from these political figures or remember the hundreds of Important Judgments upon No. 5 that I've read on message boards without thinking of it as sparring -- grandstanding without logic and for no apparent real purpose but practice. Practice for what? More practice, maybe." Also has a soup recipe.
• "God, I wish this plane and the stealth bomber and the Apache helicopter would never be used for what they were for. I don't care how much they cost. I don't care that they require my tax money. I don't give a shit. I want them to fly over the river, their empty munitions bays empty to allow them greater maneuverability, creeping under the bridges, roaring over the delighted hundreds of thousands of people, rocketing into the stratosphere, being fundamentally unlike anything that has ever existed in the history of the universe."
• Advice to a child rooting for the Kansas City Royals: do not build your house upon the sand.
• "Meet the 'other' next-gen console": "PRODUCT REVIEW: THE GAMING CONSOLE YOUR PARENTS BUILT YOU OUT OF WOOD" (previously)

On his own writing/creative career:

• Bois reminisces about his old keyboard; he's wanted to write for a living since he was 11.
• "A few times I’ve written something only for disaster to strike – a hard drive crash, an accidental deletion, forgetting to save, whatever. And it was all gone. The thing is, my re-written versions were unquestionably way better. I would do that on purpose more often if I had the guts, but I don’t."
• On Progressive Boink: "We wanted P-Boi to be 'the Calvinball of websites' -- that is, an entertainment site that did things that nobody else was doing." And: "We were constantly pushing each other to create the wildest shit we possibly could." (As of 2012: "Jon's company, SB Nation, has been gracious enough to allow us to become the first non-sports site on the network," and perhaps the only one whose name is a Calvin and Hobbes reference.)
• "Over the years I took a couple more cracks at the 'sports video games as dumb machinima' idea, and learned a little at each time. With Breaking Madden, I finally found the formula I wanted."
• On making mixed media:

  "Mixed-media pieces have blown up on the internet over the last few years, and yet still, my opinion is that there still isn't enough of it. Traditionally, most internet writers have not been terribly ambitious when it comes to supplement their writing with, say, GIFs or fancy charts or videos they put together. And that makes sense, because a writer's job has always been to write. But now we have access to the stuff we need to make any number of visual accompaniments, and readers have the bandwidth on their end to take it in. Personally, I see this toolbox full of cool shit, and all I want to do is play around and see what I can do with it. There is certainly a learning curve. And, of course, there are plenty of things out there that are best suited for words and words only. But if you never even take a stab at it—especially if you're talking about something as visually spectacular as sports and sports data—I think it's almost like you're working with a hand tied behind your back."

  Also from that interview: "I find myself at a loss. There are not enough white guys in this question."

More silliness:

• On boring/unconstructive Internet commenters: fiction about a person who manufactures internet commentary.
• "If your plane is scheduled to be hijacked or crash, do not board that plane."
• Barack Obama's Hotel Breakdown
• "Everyone Poops but Only Julian Assange Doesn't Flush"
• "The Dada iPhone App Store: LloydAvoid, Your Anti-Moseby Solution."
• "Grown Adults Crying About Food: The 15 Bestworst Moments Of MasterChef."
• The couch census. A Fermi problem. Over 300, couches that never move, 495, why more sisters than brothers with couches?, 614, 664, 698.
• A genre pastiche concerning Drive.

posted by brainwane (25 comments total)

I've only just started digging into these links, but I'm already having fun. Excellent roundup, brainwane. :)
posted by mordax at 11:44 AM on December 10, 2017

17776 is so good. If you somehow avoided it recommend catching up immediatly. And I say that as someone who is usually sports adverse.
posted by Artw at 11:48 AM on December 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

We ought to call him "Metafilter's Own" even though there's no indication to my knowledge that he even knows this website exists. He's just so good, he should be ours.

ours alone
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:52 AM on December 10, 2017 [18 favorites]

When the machine eats you up, as it is built to do, your spirit is all that will save you. Love yourself.

I really love this statement, from the participation trophies piece. I come back to it frequently.
posted by protocoach at 12:11 PM on December 10, 2017 [6 favorites]

I adore Jon Bois, have done at least FPPs from him that spring to mind immediately, probably more, and yet I never knew he wrote for Polygon. Him, Griffin and Justin at the same publication is almost too much for me to take.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:02 PM on December 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Thanks for this, I like him on Twitter but had no clue about his body of work. Good post dot com!
posted by rhizome at 1:18 PM on December 10, 2017

> Him, Griffin and Justin at the same publication is almost too much for me to take.

For the completionist, Jon and Griffin did a video review of Goofball Goals.
posted by ardgedee at 1:24 PM on December 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

I am so glad y'all like this. And ardgedee, thanks for the link to the video - am about to watch. I am sure I missed awesome stuff he has written/said/made and would welcome further links!
posted by brainwane at 2:44 PM on December 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

I watched the Chart Party about Colin Kaepernick and was soon sucked into 17776, which is probably one of the most astonishing pieces of fiction I've read in recent memory.

I also reluctantly dipped a toe into Breaking Madden, since I don't really know anything about football, and was very pleasantly surprised. That series of articles has given me some of the most genuine and sustained laughter in a while. I can't even tell other people about it without cracking up.

Thanks for the round-up - I know what I'll be reading over the holidays.
posted by invokeuse at 4:33 PM on December 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

The Radio Shack one was brilliant but depressing. Corporate management sucks.
posted by scruss at 4:59 PM on December 10, 2017

Earlier this weekend I fell down a step ladder and bruised my leg and pulled a muscle in my left side somehow while falling on my face because I am awesome. Reading and/or rereading these makes painfully apparent that if given unlimited access to cake I would eat myself to death. Each laugh hurts. Can't stop, shan't stop. Ow.
posted by Perfectibilist at 5:26 PM on December 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Even more articles can be found on the original Progressive Boink site via the Wayback Machine.
posted by BiggerJ at 5:54 PM on December 10, 2017

Whoops, wrong link - this version's links work.
posted by BiggerJ at 6:25 PM on December 10, 2017

List needs more NBA Y2K:

All Is Lost

Ten Years To Midnight
posted by HillbillyInBC at 6:43 PM on December 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

The only thing better than this post is Mister Jon Bois himself.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:27 PM on December 10, 2017

This piece, also discussed here previously, always makes me cry.
posted by kmz at 10:05 PM on December 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh, man. I thought I was up on my Bois (at least the non-sports, non-video stuff), but I just got to the Radio Shack '02 story about Ham Radio Guy: "A couple weeks later, he walked in and asked to purchase another ham radio, this time with more timidity in his voice. I was required to tell him, 'no.' He gave me this look, as though I was betraying him, which I was. I never saw him again."
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:42 AM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

And that CB radio "Cops and Robbers" game sounds like hella fun; that's the sort of thing that I'd do instead of street racing.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:43 AM on December 11, 2017

I thought I was the only one who didn't like Destiny.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:49 AM on December 11, 2017

He's (originally) from my hometown (Louisville), and I just want to find out where he hangs, so I can buy him beers.
posted by DigDoug at 8:22 AM on December 11, 2017

Breaking Madden was where I realized Bois was a really funny writer, but NBA Y2k was where I found out he was a brilliant writer.

If he was French he would be lauded as one of the great living exponents of experimental fiction.
posted by ardgedee at 8:45 AM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

This article, from 2004, has the single greatest joke I have ever read online. My wife and I still reference it to this day. Just find the Chone Figgins visual joke. I'll wait...

...

You're welcome.
posted by Groundhog Week at 10:46 AM on December 11, 2017

Hey, while you're all here, does anyone know what happened to Pretty Good episode 4? I love the story of Stanislav Petrov, but Jon's take on it seems have vanished off the face of the planet, or at least off YouTube.

Did... did it turn out to not be Pretty Good after all?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:24 PM on December 11, 2017

I think there were copyright issues with that episode, and Jon was supposed to be making a new version sometime, but who knows.
posted by kmz at 2:00 PM on December 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Taking a moment to appreciate those of you who flagged this post as fantastic and thus led to my recognition in the December Best Post contest as a runner-up for December 1-10. Thanks -- a bright spot in a kinda tough time.

ardgedee, I watched that Goofball Goals video and laughed incredibly hard -- thank you so much for the link!

One thing that Bois and Julia Evans share is a willingness to engage with the stupendous and the numinous -- she often narrates or illustrates a journey through confusion into wonder, as does he. Their work is like the opposite of Malcolm Gladwell's because of their passionate personal engagement and a sense of visceral curiosity and astonishment. Even Bois's astonishment throughout, and then that silent bit at the end of, "The Dumbest Boy Alive" ties into this for me.
posted by brainwane at 6:06 AM on December 12, 2017 [2 favorites]