NEWSPEAK Blog

Today in Ataritard

Tee hee:

2 Girls 1 Cup

So I'm sure most of you know about this webnonemon by now, but my friend David sent me this.

That's him, David Melito, watching this video  2 Girls One Cup. It's allegedly the most disgusting movie ever made. Keep in mind that David has a pretty thick skin for such things. He was watching Pink Flamingos when he was in kindergarten. Almost.

I have yet to see the  video, but You Tube is loaded with reaction videos and, oddly enough, they're highly addicting. While I don't need to watch the  movie David predicts that the more reaction videos you watch the more you ultimately start wondering how gross the actual movie is...

So here's David:

Here's some frat boys wathcing it:

And your mom in Long Island:

And your mom in the midwest:

Goddam this is fun!!!

Further Pedestrianoia Fodder

More bad news, foot traffickers and cycloids:

Yesterday we learn that a majority of Colorado teens text'n'drive at the same time.

Now this, in an email from Pastor "I'm SO not Ted Haggard" Brady Boyd over at New Life Church - motherfucker WORSHIPS behind the wheel!

"On another note, I have the Desperation Band's new worship CD, Everyone Overcome, in my CD player, and I absolutely love listening to it and worshiping as I drive. If you haven't gotten a copy yet, you can order it from our Bookstore at http://www.newlifechurch.org for a special discounted price."

What's next? Japanese tea ceremony'n'driving? Yoga poses between stoplights? Let's keep our wits about us, non-motorized travelers....

When Republicans try to wield the power of the internet

Mitt Romney's campaign got totally punk'd by Slate's Bruce Reed.

Bin Laden gets Bush!

Here

God hates the Bee Gees!

It's too bad about the house, but thank god the Bee Gees guy doesn't get to live there...

Johnny Cash House Burns Down

Today in immaturity

Wikipedia "Pony Express."

Fine, I'll do it for you lazy bastard. Here.

Flash Blob

The March Harper's has a piece by the creator of Flash Mobs, Bill Wasik, one of the senior editors at Harper's. What's interesting is that he created them as a kind of latter-day authority experiment in the tradition of Stanley Milgram to, uh, uh ... prove that hipsters are subject to "deindividuation", i.e. mob mentality???? Say it isn't so! You mean (gasp) that uber-individualist hipsters are just as prone to mob-think as your average SUV mom?

Have so many self-alleged aesthetes ever been more (in the formulation of Festinger et al.) “submerged in the group”? The hipsters make no pretense to divisions on principle, to forming intellectual or artistic camps; at any given moment, it is the same books, records, films that are judged au courant by all, leading to the curious spectacle of an “alternative” culture more unanimous than the mainstream it ostensibly opposes.

The fact that Wasik would even stage these cheeky events as situtationist hipster booby traps makes him both clever AND the consumate meta-hipster snob -- one who so despises the culture he is complicit in creating that he must cannibalize it to prove his hipster cred. Smug as Fug on a drug.

Wasik seems to be equally willing to leave out the problem of context -- at least until the very end of the piece when he acknowledges that it's more of an "anti-authority" experiment (or a theatrical revolution) than an expose on hipster fascism (you'll have to go buy a copy to read the whole thing). Proving that a bunch of bored urbanites are willing to show up to a mildly transgressive public get-together in the spirit of fun hardly seems to justify the level of condescension it took for Wasik to equate them with the subjects in Milgram's electro-shock experiments, which he never really gets around to anyway.

If, on the other hand, he's merely exposing the hyprocrisy of a culture of supposed individuality that happens to have its own insidious norms, well ... I'll be a witches britches.

Anyhow, all this caught my attention because of the Wal-Mart Dance Party we did this past November. I had never heard of flash mobs, and I certainly don't remember believing we were going to do anything more than have a lark in a Wal-Mart on the busiest shopping weekend of the year. What was most surprising, aside from the bounce the video got on the web (we got some 50,000 visits in a week), were the many absurdly impassioned debates people were having in our comments section about the ethical ramifications of our tard party -- everything from "you're just fucking with the poor slobs who work there" to "this is a new, truly radical form of protest." Several people mentioned that what we had done was a flash mob. Given that we're in Colorado Springs, I was hardly surprised that my hipster gaydar had missed the zeitgeist by a country mile. And so what? Despite Wasik's most condescending intentions, there's still something about these Kabuki revolutions that hits a nerve.

But next time I'll be sure to stay home and read Festinger.