I do believe a flying monkey could be considered an upgrade to a regular monkey.

Good? Bad? I’m the guy with Photoshop.

Hahaha, ok guys, who’s the one who photoshopped Palin onto this chick’s body? … Who was it? … Anyone? … Wait, What?

If you still need a reason: About Sarah Palin: A Letter From Anne Kilkenny

I’ve often wondered, as with no doubt many have, about what the future may bring, how this period will end, and what the world after might look like. We live in a time where an inevitability stares us in the face, and yet we do not meet its gaze. The inevitability is a question: How will the War on Terror end, and how might we guide its end to peace and relative victory?

It will end, but how? I’ve thought about this for the better part of a decade. When the attacks on 9/11 occurred, I wondered what action the US should take in response to the aggressors. When the enemy had a name, al Qaeada, I wondered what their terms of treaty might be. When we realized the Taliban may have been in bed with our enemies, I wondered how we might force them to control their bedfellows. In other words, whereas many of my compatriots thought only of how to correct the horrors that had been done to us, I thought only of how to end the conflict to come. Even before it had a name, the War on Terror, I began study on how to end it.

It appears, that in great part, I was alone. When we knew who our aggressors were, we didn’t think about how we should react, we simply killed them. When we had a name and face to the enemy, we didn’t attempt to communicate with them as people, we simply killed them. When we knew that the Taliban government was aiding them, we didn’t try to leverage the tremendous international support we had into forcing the Taliban to respect us and control their own borders, we simply killed them.

In those six years I kept quiet because I didn’t yet have the words to express what I believed. But think, enough time has now gone by that there are children attending school who have lived their entire lives under the shadow of the War on Terror. It is for them, who have little to no hope of understanding what life was like before 9/11, that I write these 5 ways to end the War on Terror:

• Ideological Conversion

Terrorist organizations are by definition retaliatory, they have no self-sustaining agenda of their own. Their only ideology is retaliating against offenses made against their arbitrary rules. Terrorist leaders alter the rules at a whim in order to allow the continuation of offenses so that their soldiers can be goaded into constant combat. We can clandestinely convert a terrorist leader to scale back the rules and claims to his followers that offenses have been made. This requires the consolidation of all terrorist resources under that one leader. The US would be involved in strengthening one terrorist organization (an illegal act if done knowingly) and weakening all other terrorist organizations.

Why this might not work: The US would have to give an inordinate amount of power to two independent entities. The first entity is the terrorist leader himself, who must be converted and controlled from afar. The second entity is those who will execute this mission, in all likelihood a private paramilitary group such as Blackwater (US government personnel would be barred from doing this type of mission). There is a great likelihood that these two entities, realizing the great power that the US is reluctantly allowing them, will act in concert to subvert the position of the US and not follow the mission to its peaceful conclusion. The easiest way to remedy this is to alter the government’s attitude towards the accountability of corporate forces engaged in security and paramilitary action in areas of US foreign affairs, and the evolution of the State Department as a powerful regulatory force with strict guidelines for US entities functioning outside of the US. Hopefully, the CIA and State Department could then together oversee the different facets of the infiltration of a terrorist organization, creating accountability through a three-pronged effort of civilian, intelligence, and private efforts. In no doubt, this type of action is already being attempted by covert US forces, and in doubt it is being done without legal regulation.

• Treaty

A terrorist organization has leaders that have self-interested motives that can be leveraged and fulfilled to satisfaction. Given the proper expression of goodwill, we would be able to sit down and negotiate terms of treaty at which all ludicrous ideas (such as the death of all infidels) will be quickly thrown aside and diplomacy can move onto the discussion of realistic lucrative gains for the terrorist leaders and their followers. In all likelihood this would involve the US and its allies creating a hegemony of power for the terrorist leaders where they might create nations according to their goals and vision. While it’s possible that a fundamentalist Ayatollah-ruled Iran-type government might evolve from this in Iraq/Afghanistan, it’s just as likely that we can guide them towards a type of stable bureaucratic-mired oligarchy or even a democracy. If you feel this a romantic vision of the world, I ask you simply to wonder what’s more likely to create a democracy: the creation of a puppet regime that does not have open communication with the warlords who rule the land and people, or an open dialogue and creation of treaty with all elements regardless of whether they’re seen as terrorists.

Why this may never happen: This would take a very long time to even start, not because the terrorist leaders aren’t ready to listen, but because Americans are not ready to listen. The policy of “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” is still very strong, but stems from an outdated model of foreign affairs where concentrations of power reside in the state and not in international organizations. Just as commerce has embraced globalism, so have paramilitary organizations. The days of being able to stamp out terrorist cells through military or legal action is done and gone. The terrorists have but to move into a nation that we cannot invade or leverage legal/economic power in (such as Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, China) and our old models of “Not negotiating with terrorists, but instead stamping them out.” becomes ineffective and dangerous (there is already talk of attacking Iran, which would most likely result in nuclear war or a decade-long stalemate in which the US is completely militarized with the draft reinstated and domestic martial law). In any case, we had better start talking and getting good at dealing diplomatically with the terrorists, because we’re going to be doing a lot of it in the future if we keep pissing people off.

• Deflection

Terrorists must have a target, and the external manipulation of that target is possible. Right now the target is the US, but the hostility could be easily deflected onto another nation, organization, or individual. The easiest would be the ACTUAL offenders which have made unethical incursions into middle east affairs. One of these is the 1988-1992 Bush administration, who established military bases, against Islamic law, in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia. The second is the current 2000-2008 Bush administration, who acted in concerted effort to destabilize the Muslim world. Why, as Americans, do we not simply throw these officials to the lions? Such a dramatic concession, exiling the offenders, might end Islamic terrorism almost instantly. Of course, no one can say for sure what might happen, so the argument will never win out. Or, we could simply ask the terrorist leaders “What if…” and see what they say.

Here you see why the CIA has such a tremendous amount of power. They’re the only group in the US capable of planning an exile of this sort. They’re the only ones that can ask the terrorist leaders, currently, what they would do if we did something like this. There’s no question in my mind that the CIA is involved in this type of effort, the CIA attracts those who understand the tremendous power that they would hold in the CIA, they’re king makers similar to the way the Praetorian Guard functioned in the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, having publicly declared that, I now have a slim chance of becoming an agent, or do I?

• Remove Benefit of Marginality

Terrorism is powerful because it functions at the margins of legality. The claims made by its leaders do not need to be bolstered legally, and because the rules and tenets of terrorist agendas are created dogmatically, they’re difficult for external powers to manipulate. Law is an attempt to control fear and the disorder caused by fear. Sometimes it fails, and sometimes it succeeds in holding back the tide. There are two ways to remove the advantage that terrorist leaders function under at the margins of legality. The first is to reinstate and manipulate the laws under which they functioned under at one time: Islamic law. Of course it’s difficult to do so, because part of a dogmatic leader’s power is to position themselves as the only relevant lawgiver. The second way would be to trap the terrorist organization in a rule of law structure. This would involve setting a trap, baiting the terrorist organizations and leaders into a situation where they’re reliant on a system that functions under a rule of law, and then to simply spring the trap and have all the leaders restricted by and accountable to the rule of law.

This would be difficult but possible. Simply put, it would require someone with such an in depth understanding of the way in which dogmatic rule functions, how legal systems function, and how governments are created, so that they might plan and execute the creation of a system into which a religious fundamentalist will willingly become a bureaucrat. Nobody in the modern world may be able to function at that high level of intellectual adaptation. Perhaps if the American education system ratchets up the intensity of these wide-flung systems of thought, an individual or group may be able to someday create this type of trap. Simply put, international politics is a game. Terrorists refuse to play that game. Therefore, we must trick them into playing the game, allow them the hope that they may win, get them invested in the gameplay, and then restrict their movement through the rules of the game which are created by majority player consent

• Conscious Ideological Compromise
  

By this I don’t mean slowly changing the terrorist’s ideology, I mean changing our ideology to fit more closely with theirs. Why is it that we don’t simply listen to the terrorists, find out what their grievances are, and change our policy to align with their wishes? The absolute only reason we don’t do this is because we’re afraid of what they might ask. A lot of people seem to be afraid of the terrorists, that they’re madmen and barbarians. Think objectively, if you can, on why you’re afraid of the terrorists. What’s the difference between a concerted terrorist attack against us and, for example, the concerted attack by Japan against US interests in the Pacific? The difference is that you actually have no idea what the terrorists want, do you? The “They hate us for our freedom” assessment is idiotic, but even if we were to believe it, what are we doing to change things? It is an ignorant assumption that the end of the war will come through the enemy alone changing to fit our views.

Why this may never happen: Osama Bin Laden stated in one of his recent videos that he believes America should convert to Islam in order to end the conflict. Bin Laden, I believe, is proposing a situation that is correct in its essence but faulty in its execution. We shouldn’t convert to Islam, but we should consciously learn from the Muslim world, understand what their ideals are, discover whatever beauty there is in their culture, and think about how we can compromise our beliefs with theirs to find common ground. This doesn’t take a genius to figure out, any diplomat can tell you the same thing. The problem with this method is that Americans are stubborn and close-minded. It’s hard to step outside of yourself and reflect on the similarities between you and your enemy. That’s why most Americans still can’t identify Iraq on a globe, or face the fact that we’re torturing Iraqi civilians in prisons that Saddam Hussein built. In order to face those facts, we’d have to also accept that in fact Muslims aren’t so different from Americans, and that the predominance of corrupt autocratic rule by fear in the middle east is being exported successfully to the US because we’ll accept it as much as people in the middle east have.

War is the medium by which we are becoming more and more like the worst of our enemies. That’s because war is historically known to make a country more like the worst, most corrupt, most ruthless of its enemies. Don’t believe me? Read a history book. Want an example from current affairs? Israel, a country based on a foundation of fascist persecution and pogrom has allowed those same tenets to rule its state. It doesn’t matter that the Jews of Israel were victims of Nazi fascism, it matters only that their enemies used such methods. You become like the worst of your enemy.

The United States, in the early 1940s commits to thwarting open imperialism and foreign meddling by the Axis. By the end of the war, the CIA is created. This powerful organization bent on fighting international meddling and infiltration instead evaluates the potency of such questionable methods and begins to use them successfully itself in second world nations throughout the globe. Dozens and dozens of fascist regimes are propped up by CIA-driven foreign policy, because they are easy to control. When it comes to imperialist agendas, fascist states function not similarly, but in exactly the same way that the US has since 1945.

What I mean to say is: We’re already becoming like the terrorists because we’re giving way to fear and hatred of them. Terrorists are fearful people, and they’ve projected their fear onto us and helped create a war machine that acts without wisdom, and a domestic policy that resembles more and more the fundamentalist regimes of Islamic police-states and terrorist hierarchies. Terrorist hierarchies function at the margin of legality through the use of dogmatic dictatorial rule. So in order to combat this, the US now functions at the margin of law, using dogmatic dictatorial rule. At any moment, holy Homeland Security warriors can sweep an innocent American away to a secret prison for 3 years. It is an element of American domestic policy that this will happen to innocent American civilians. The ultimate dictatorial dogmatic power of the President is in fact still questionable, but only after the innocent civilian has suffered 3 years of solitary confined imprisonment.

• How NOT to win the War on Terror

The marriage of terrorism and fear is the same reason why we will never be able to kill the terrorists into submission. The more we kill, the more fear we create, and the more radical elements will be able to leverage fear into violence. The more we remove the rule of law in the middle east, the more terrorist elements have breathing room in the margins where they can function unimpeded. Terrorists don’t need a nation in order exist. They don’t need weapons in order to exist. What they need is an enemy that inspires fear, and the longer we as the US fit that role, the longer terrorism will exist.

Obviously, my opinions are not up for debate. But if you have a rational disagreement with anything I’ve stated here as a fact or inevitability, please leave a comment and I’ll address it to the best of my abilities. This goes for arguments from both sides of the fence, those who believe the administration is infallible, and those who believe the government is 100% ineffective. The reality lies in an unromantic middle, where we must hammer away at problems with new perspectives, and suffer uncomfortable compromises for the better good.

I kept seeing the image of Che Guevara on posters and stickers, people seem to be using it more as a stylized counter-culture bullshit rather than as a political statement supporting the passion of guerrilla rebellion. Then I saw a picture of Che’s face replaced with an ape from Planet of the Apes, and struggled to understand what the hell it was trying to say. (FYI: “gorilla” fighter, omfglulz).

I’m tired of seeing impotent political art.  Oh boy, President Bush as one of the Three Stooges?  Good call, too bad it’s the artistic equivalent of calling someone a dumdum.  Nowadays, political art and satire involves way too much intellectual analysis for what boils down to ill-conceived risk-averse ideas.  The administration is “bad,” the war in Iraq is “bad,” this or that person is “dumb.” Are you god damn kidding me?  Art is about engaging and challenging popular opinion, not spouting the second-most-popular opinion.

Essentially, American modern political art is dead, at the time when it should be the most vocal, crushed by a few years of overwhelming nationalist fervor in the states, and general apathy and idiocy among artists. Well, times are changing, and for those of you looking for ways to bring it back, here you go. More to come.

Whether you call them a terrorist organization or not, Al-Qaeda sees itself and will continue to see itself as a freedom fighting organization, fighting for the creation of a Nation of Islam against the democratic political machine of the United States, in which all citizens have power and are indirect political leaders, and therefore are open targets as key political figures in a battlefield.  They believe the US has continually invaded the borders of the Nation of Islam and encroached upon its peace and sovereignty, tainting and disrespecting its sacredness, killing its leaders and innocents.

This is a new world.

(Photo NOT altered). Here, Putin enjoys in quiet contemplation how his tremendous power will allow him new and unexplored methods of obtaining more power. Showers will become power-showers, salads will become power-salads with power-dressing and power-croutons, and unrelenting blizzards of silenced popular discontent will become Tuesdays.

Ever since I cared enough to pay attention, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been a figure of cool cunning. His rise to power is amazing, from the KGB through the KSB (the KGB’s “replacement” organization after the fall of the Soviet Union), and ultimately to ruling positions as Prime Minister, then Acting President (when Boris Yeltsin steps down), then Head of the Commonwealth of Independent States (a loose organization that oversees the other former Soviet nations), all the way up to 2000 when he finally wins a Presidential election and rules up to today.

Here’s some other lesser known facts and rumors about Putin:

-Rumor: Putin is a hard line believer in Russian Nationalism, and still believes in the reality of a bilateral world power structure (ie. the Cold War scenario of Russia vs. USA). Arguably, because this would mean a stronger Russia. Putin’s major opponents in his rise to power were mainstays of the Communist regime. Like Hitler in the 1930s, Putin in the 1990s and up to today has had to thwart the efforts of the Communist Party by reestablishing a strong nationalist party.

-Fact: Putin has stated numerous times that the fall of the Soviet Union was a historic tragedy.

-Fact: As President, Putin has progressed the Russian nuclear program in three major steps. The first is passing security doctrines that changed Russia’s nuclear strike policies from “reactionary” to “preemptive,” meaning that Russia can now, and not since the Cold War, launch a nuclear attack at its enemies without being attacked first. The second step is developing and emplacing new Topol-M strategic nuclear missiles. The third is launching a new nuclear-armed Borei-class submarine that carries new ballistic missiles.

- Fact: In 2004, Putin radically changes the Russian political system which essentially removes all provincial/state rights. Instead of governors of Russia’s 89 regions being elected by popular vote, they are now appointed by the Russian President.

Go ahead, read that last one again.

-Fact: In 2005, Putin organizes a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a loose association of ex-Communist nations in Asia that includes Russia, China, 4 central Asian nations, as well as observation privileges for Indian, Pakistan, and Iran. For the first time, the SCO discusses intertwining military concerns for its members in a hope to actively counter US and western involvement in Asia. (Note that the members of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War did NOT include China, Iran, India, or Pakistan).

-Fact: In 2005, Putin’s economic adviser resigns from his post, citing Putin’s continued progress in nationalizing important industrial sectors. After his rise to office, Putin notably nationalized and strengthened control of all of Russia’s major media outlets, including radio and television.

-Rumor: Putin has key political opponents killed or “disappeared.” The most bizarre of all these allegations was when a presidential candidate, opponent, and extremely vocal critic of Putin disappeared, then reemerged stating he had traveled to gain political support in Ukraine, been drugged and kidnapped and forced to appear in an embarrassing reputation-killing video. While his chances of winning the election were considered “slim” at the fore, it must be stressed that all media outlets in Russia are controlled by Putin, and it is they who control whose chances are considered slim or otherwise. In reality, as substantive polls were never conducted before the scandal, it cannot be stated how likely the candidates chances were in winning. The man, Ivan Rybkin was an experienced statesman, orator, and investigator into government affairs.

-Fact: Putin has formed a co-op society named Ozero (wikipedia link) near St. Petersburg that is controlled by, and includes land and property owned by some of Russia’s most powerful figures.

-Rumor: Putin, through his co-op society Ozero that can function outside of Russian law, brokers nearly all financial and political power in Russia. If the controlling interests of all the members of Ozero were pooled together, it would mean Ozero has overwhelming control of the Russian federal government in Moscow, overwhelming control of key security organizations in Russia including the KSB, sole control of the top oil/gas/power firms in Russia and other countries, and sole control of Russia Bank. Combined with Russia Bank in turn, it has overwhelming control over all major newspapers, television stations, securities and investment firms, chemical companies, and even a leading civil development and real estate firm. If the members of Ozero decided to move Russia in a specific direction, there is very little to nothing that anybody in Russia could do about it. Between 1993 and 1998, members of the Organizatsiya (the Russian mafia) killed 93 bankers, and innumerable other industry leaders. Whether the leaders of the mob are working against or in concert with Ozero remains uncertain.

-Rumor: Vladimir Putin strongly resembles the man in the Jan Van Eyck painting “The Arnolfini Marriage” painted in 1434.

(click to enlarge)

Much speculation has gone into the importance of the resemblance between Putin and this man, the most banal of which is that Putin carries very interesting ethnic features, and the most extravagant conclusion being…

-Rumor(?): Vladimir Putin is the Anti-Christ. Yes, you read that right. Now on top of being a proven badass, it comes out that Putin may in fact be the Anti-Christ who will call upon the Beast and the Serpent to bring about the end of days. Christian or not, you have to join me in saying: “Son of a fucking bitch, fuck.” I’m not going to state whether I believe this is true or not, either Armageddon is in 2010 or it isn’t. But you have to admit, that if Putin showed up to the Anti-Christ auditions, Satan would probably at least ask him in for a callback.

Read a detailed, if not completely insane, analysis of how and why Vladimir Putin is the anti-christ here. Some interesting points are brought up, notably that whether he’s the anti-christ or not, Putin is one of the most cunning, brutal, and god damn amazingly formidable political figures in history. However, read the article, and somewhere before the end you’ll find you’re suddenly panicking at just how futile any sort of opposition to this guy is in Russia. Plus, he is a superman in public polls.

And on the US side, we’ve got these people:

Not exactly a fair fight.

VERSUS

Please, my dear, call me Vlad.

Anti-christ allegations aside, Putin is easily the most formidable figure in the world today. In democratic nations, power belongs to those who can move in, out, and across the system. Starting in the secret innards of Soviet KGB where he creates a core of trusted executors to secretly do his will for the next fifty years, moving up to legislature and security councils, propelling allied but weak people up with him so that he can take their place at a key moment, then concreting a power structure from the top-down, brokering massive industrial and political shifts through marginally-legal entities in concert with political avenues, then moving out of the executive branch into the legislative, now with the entire power structure under his control, and as prime minister being able to do ANYTHING he wants. His party, United Russia, will have over a two-thirds majority in the next election, allowing it to alter the Russian Constitution UNENCUMBERED. Let me repeat that, Putin and his party will have the power to change the Russian Federation’s constitution without any political, industrial, or media entity powerful enough to even question or report it.

This marks a paradigm shift in the Russian government, as it is essentially the culmination of thirty years of power brokering within Putin’s Ozero/KGB power-core created for one single moment in 2008 when they will rule all of Russia without obstacle, able to radically alter economic, military, civil, and foreign doctrines that inform the governance of the nation. But Russia will just be the beginning. It will allow, for example, the economic reappropriation of all the Soviet bloc (through the aforementioned SCO), as well as severe economic power in key nations in Asia and Europe and the world entire (Russia clearly has the power and will to monopolize portions of the oil industry and bleed the world in the next few centuries). The US will not argue against this because we ourselves use this same method of takeover, we’ll be goaded along with supposed friendly alliance and the idea of “inevitable globalization” but ultimately we’ll be giving up power around the globe in places we are currently unable to encroach effectively (India, China, Central Asia, Iran, etc.).

The US’s own impotence is horribly apparent by our inability to create basic change in Iraq and Afghanistan, areas in which Russia will be better equipped to step in and rule. The US is crippled by private corporate interest, a pathetic military command, and a stagnant democratic process that cannot pass laws to make things better despite having a majority in legislature. As American power in the world slowly slips, there is a point at which the American people will happily dismantle the government and try to give power to one benevolent individual. This is not a guess, this is inevitable, and when it occurs, guess who we will choose:

The future is inevitable and draped in black.

]]> http://efficientawesomeness.com/blog/2007/10/01/russian-president-vladimir-putin-will-rule-us-all-11-reasons-were-all-pawns-in-his-game-of-pure-badassness/feed/ 26 http://efficientawesomeness.com/blog/2007/08/24/oops-i-stepped-on-your-balls-fandom-vs-familiarity-masturbation/ http://efficientawesomeness.com/blog/2007/08/24/oops-i-stepped-on-your-balls-fandom-vs-familiarity-masturbation/#comments Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:38:49 +0000 admin http://efficientawesomeness.com/blog/2007/08/24/oops-i-stepped-on-your-balls-fandom-vs-familiarity-masturbation/ Have you ever had the experience where someone goes “Hey, what did you think of [movie]?” and you, being honest, go “Oh yeah, that movie sucked.” Then the person’s smile slowly fades into a sober “Oh yeah, well, I thought it was ok. What didn’t you like about it?” Ouch.

What the hell do you do at this point? Some part of me wants to rip into the movie and analyze it down to a nub of its former self, ultimately the purpose of which is to make the other person cry. Some part of me wants to surrender in favor of camaraderie, backpedaling “sucked” into “I have loose opinions against specific elements.” Of course, me being the chick magnet with asshole-to-nice-guy ratio of 60% nice, 40% asshole, often go with some sort of in between route. The movie still sucked, but there were scenes that were “entertaining.” I use the old standby: “That one character/scene was funny/awesome.” Even the shittiest of movies have something entertaining (ok, maybe not the shittiest, watch some direct-to-dvd independent films, mmbleh).

Often, I feel pretty good about my ability to sidestep social awkwardness, allowing for a generous dosing of compassion for people I’ve just met. In the situation described above, there’s of course the point at which the other person describes what they liked about the movie, maybe even acting out some part. But then a funny thing happens, often the person stops talking about the movie, but still thinks they are. I mean this as in they’re talking about themselves and other related things, but they think they’re talking about the movie.

Let me explain. Fandom (as bastardized from fanaticism) can loosely be described as an intense yearning to experience and re-experience a specific performance/art because of its quality.

However, this isn’t the type of enjoyment many people talk about when describing what they liked about a movie. Often, people enjoy movies/books/whatever because of familiarity masturbation. It’s starkly different from being a fan of the work. Familiarity masturbation arises when you say you like something simply because it’s familiar, or it espouses an idea/style similar to something you’re more familiar with.

For example, many people talk exclusively about comic book movies using terms of familiarity masturbation. They’re more interested in the work being something similar to what they already know and like than in actually being good. This is fine when what they’re familiar with and what’s “good” are the same thing, but it’s an abomination when they differ.

The problem stems from the fact that people enjoy things (like comic books) for a whole load of reasons, most of which are based in unreasonable subconscious balancing, projections of their own inadequacies. This is fine. But when that book/play/comic they like is adapted into a new piece of work, they judge that new work based on context-removed elements that are of little or no value, but which the fan identifies with as “quality.”

Here’s an example. Batman Begins is judged against “Dark Knight Returns”. Because it resembles it in many surface way, such as the car, the “dark look,” the brooding character, it is therefore judged as good. A lot of retorts in defense of Batman Begins involve a belief that only a true understanding of “Dark Knight Returns” and other arbitrarily chosen uber-canon allow for a legitimate opinion of the film. Notice how many “fans” of Batman Begins cling onto its connection to previous canon as if they were absolute indicators of its quality.

The problem is, these people aren’t enjoying the film. They walk out and go “That film was great.” But they’re not really even paying attention to the film itself. Instead, they’re enjoying the thrill of being able to say “That’s familiar, that’s what I like,” or “I knew that before it even showed up on screen,” or “Now everyone will get it right, this is the true depiction,” This isn’t enjoying the film, this is masturbating over how familiar something is.

“But shouldn’t people be allowed to judge a film based on their connection to it?” That’s not what I’m talking about. In fact, familiarity masturbation is the exact opposite of personal connection to a film, it’s connection by proxy, filtered through an idolized external medium, then reappropriated as personal preference. It has nothing to do with personal connection, in fact it’s a rejection of the value of personal preference.

Why do people do this?

I think people do this because they feel compelled to create objective rulers of quality and judgement. When watching a Superman movie, they compare it against prior versions of Superman they’ve encountered and are familiar with. When it differs, that’s “bad,” when it’s similar, that’s “good.” This is a lot easier than coming up with more ethereal personal subjective reasons as to why something is good or not. It’s more difficult to say “The story was strong, tight, and compelling for these reasons…” than it is to say “It was exactly like the book, let’s go jack each other off!!!!”

In short, people do it because they’re scared. Scared of creating an opinion they’d have to explain. Oftentimes, I’ll explain the subtle intricacies of how a story worked or didn’t, and somebody will answer with “Yeah, but why?” After some prodding, I realize what they’re really asking is for me to reference some previous comparable piece of work. They’re trying to enforce familiarity masturbation as the only legitimate ruler of quality.

Well it’s not. Putting your opinion out there based on what you understand to be compelling or not in your gut is scary, but it’s very powerful. It defines you as a unique person, who takes chances, is brave and noble. When you enjoy something and give your opinion, your heart soars, you feel lifted, as if the world has become a better place to live in. When you don’t enjoy something and want to give your opinion, you think hard about what could have been changed, you do mental gymnastics to figure it out, learning all the way, becoming invested in making the story/movie/book/song/whatever better.

But when all you do is express familiarity masturbation, the world is an enclosed place, whether you enjoyed the thing you’re talking about or not. Possibilities are built on top of precedence, unknowns are scary, and since most of the world is unknown, you’re scared most of the time.

In defense against the world, many of these people hoard their structures of “objective authority,” becoming familiar with every facet of a character or franchise, in an attempt to create order out of the chaos so that when asked, they have rulers by which to speak authoritatively. We all know them, uber-nerds who can speak Klingon, know the name of every Pokemon, or can recite the yellow scrolling text of all the Star Wars movies word by word. There’s communities of these people in which there’s epic struggles to determine which things are authoritative over others. If Star Wars Episode 2 novelization refers to a Z-95 as having ion cannons, but Star Wars Incredible Cross-sections says Z-95s have laser canons only, WHO DO WE TRUST AND IF WE TRUST ONLY ONE WHAT ELSE FALLS INTO QUESTION AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!!?!?

I know, I used to judge about 98% of the world using familiarity masturbation. However, that was when I was 16, I’ve since moved on. But many my age and even older haven’t. With objective authorities to judge the world against: “Kevin Smith liked it so I have to too, but if I don’t what’s wrong with me, AHHHHH!!?!?!??!” many people are inclined to live their lives through proxy, never really having opinions of their own, but being compelled constantly by a celebrity interview, comic book release, movie release, video game release, book release, or heated internet debate as the only igniter to change their view of the world.

Of course, this is no new theory of the world. It’s a type of sheep mentality, but it’s extremely unique in one way: People who use familiarity masturbation to talk about work they enjoyed or not will always enjoy most things. Have you noticed that no matter how shitty a piece of shit movie is, there’s always somebody somewhere who speaks favorably of it, how it’s a true or better depiction of this or that thing. Have you noticed that often the newest edition of a movie is referred to by people as being “the best yet!”

This is a property of familiarity masturbation, the toleration of shittiness. After all, if the movie referred to specific familiar things, how could it be shitty? That’d mean those things were shitty too, doesn’t it, and how can Batman Begins be shitty if the car in it is cool??!?!?! That’d mean “Dark Knight Returns” is shitty and that’s IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!

We encounter arguments like this all the time when we’re trudging through the wilds of the internet, but perhaps it’s a good lesson. Don’t identify yourself so much with specific works, or else you end up sounding and being crazy. Don’t idolize a specific movie/book/character/whatever as being pure unmitigated goodness, or else you end up sounding and being crazy. Instead, just chill out, pay attention to the world around you, take small steps of bravery and let your opinion loose. Take chances, you enjoy work that takes chances, so go out and do the same and people will be inspired to follow.