DEMATERIALISED

YouTube Trends

2010-12-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

I like the new YouTube Trends dashboard, which lets you compare trending videos by country and by age. According to YouTube, 35 hours of video are now uploaded to the site every minute. So this is a great way to see what's floating to the top - the good, the bad, the ugly, so long as it's popular.

Risk and Immortality

2008-05-18T23:59:00.000-07:00

Sticker Nation by Srini Kumar

Risk taking is a giddy tension between being vulnerable and scared, but at the same time, feeling superhuman. Mind and body are perfectly unified, at the top of their game, as the awareness of danger sends senses into overdrive. Stepping off a precipice, in the blink of an eye, the world accelerates wildly, yet you see more, pupils dilated, reaching deep into the shadows and sensing all harm. You feel more, terrified and sick and elated. Blood pounds into muscles primed for fight or flight. You're full of piss and vinegar, angry and bold, elated and terrified and terrifying and beautiful.

Risky behaviour is associated with a sense of power and immortality. Those who feel they're immortal are more likely to engage in risky activities, and, those who participate are more likely to feel unbreakable as a result of overcoming fate.

I feel it's important to understand risk better - the attraction of it and the danger of it - in order to get people to take more calculated risks. I've worked on advertising campaigns for road safety and considered strategies for the safer use of alcohol. Risk, perceived immortality and perceived lack of consequences are central to these issues.

The 'immortals' in our society are largely teens, who, much to the chagrin of their elders, live as if no harm could come to them. One of the problems in convincing teens otherwise is that, in a sense, they're right. Those on the brink of adolescence have the strongest claim to immortality. As Bryan Appleyard points out in How to Live Forever or Die Trying, 11-year-olds are the people least likely to die because they have survived the perils of childhood illnesses and are not yet subject to the debilities of age.

They are like medical immortals, defined as those who can't be killed by disease or age. Based on death rates for 11-year-olds, gerontologist Steven Austad calculated the life expectancy of a medical immortal to be 1200 years!

So, it turns out that young people do have some justification for feeling indestructible. Unfortunately, bolstered by confidence, they take poorly calculated risks and subject themselves to the one thing that can kill a medical immortal: a fatal accident.

Give Evil A Fair Go!

2008-05-14T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko

I have a problem with Evil. Not in the philosophical or theological sense (if there is a God, how can there be Evil in the world?) but in just how bad evil is. Rubbish, in fact. In popular culture, Evil leers menacingly, it heralds the coming of the apocalypse, the demise of man and hobbitkind. But for all its bluster, it never delivers. No matter how insurmountable the odds, Good always prevails.

Now, I know that the struggle between Good and Evil is often the subject of morality tales, which, by their very nature, are dedicated to the promotion of Good. In this case, Evil is scuppered from the start. But, let's be fair. In popular culture, can't we even the odds a bit - can't we give Evil a fair go?

In Sergei Lukyanenko's The Night Watch Trilogy , I believe I've finally found a text, which does just that. For starters, Evil isn't labelled with that pejorative term. Instead it's 'Dark', while Good is 'Light'. The author toys with preconceptions, mixing terms usually associated with one camp or the other. So, the Dark side is The Day Watch, keeping a check on the Light, while the Light is The Night Watch.

Lukyanenko invites the reader to identify with both sides because within every human there is both Dark and Light. The 'Others' (powerful, immortal beings who start off as humans) choose to align themselves to the Dark or Light when they come of age. It makes no bones either way, provided the balance between the two sides is maintained.

I found myself identifying strongly with the Dark Ones. Unrestricted, they value freedom and individuality above all else. They chose the night as their time because the night is all about freedom, in contrast to the day, when duty and responsibility prevail. Their favourite city is Prague, with all its terrible, gothic beauty. They grab life by the balls, squeezing every last drop of enjoyment and pleasure. Their only wish is to be left alone to do so. Their only rule is that no one should restrict another's freedom. They keep it simple.

The Light Ones, in contrast, are all about imposing moral frameworks on all mankind. They profess to care more. They're not profligate. They feel they are better than the Dark Ones and always seek to keep them down.

They imagine that the Dark Ones are always trying to get one over on them for the 'Dark Cause', when, in fact, the Dark Ones are only really interested in pursuing their own individual pleasures. So much so that the Dark Ones tend to tiptoe round the Light Ones, if ever they find themselves in conversation, lest the Light Ones take umbrage at some imagined egregious affront!

The Light Ones seem to complicate things. Their ideals are hard to live up to. The path of the Dark Ones seems much more fun.

A parallel could be drawn with everyday life, in which we're constantly making trade-off decisions between what we ought to do and what we want to do: the eternal struggle between duty and pleasure.

I vote for pleasure, for irresponsibility and freedom! If my fun doesn't curb your search for pleasure, is that so evil? Er, I'll get my (long, leather, vampish) coat...