Author: Lawrence King

Reflection Road

Lawrence King

Reading through all of my posts, I noticed that I tend to follow a certain pattern. I usually start with how an episode, chapter or article made me feel personally and then immediately connect it to one of the readings. I then give my own personal predictions and thoughts on the subject. I also usually have a witty title that uses alliteration or is a play on another title from something well-known like a movie. I do love alliteration and I’ve seen a lot of movies so I guess it makes sense that it influenced my title choices.

I also noticed that I’m really hard on humanity. A lot of my summaries highlight the shortcomings of human beings and my thouhgts on what will become of humanity is usually bleak or negative. Either the humans are the ones who caused their own misfortune, or they’re untrustworthy or they’re obssessed. I don’t think all humans are bad or anything, I just tend to focus on the negatives rather than the positives in this context I think because the core topic for all of these posts is death. Death doesn’t necessarily have to be negative but it is not usually a pleasant topic so I think that influenced my analysis.

I usually keep my posts relatively short and sweet unless it’s a topic I feel really strongly about. Like the characters on Dead Set, the exploitation of artists like XXXTentacion and the coldness of code. I had a personal connection to these topics. I really liked the Dead set series, I’m a rapper myself and don’t want to be exploited by a label and I took computer science and know firsthand how cold and cruel code can be. Overall, I think these were some good blog posts but I’m biased of course.

A.I. Justice

Lawrence King

STET was definitely a bit confusing for me. At first, I thought STET was an AI that engineers were developing to help edit a story. I figured they were having a conversation while editing. Turns out STET means “let it stand” during a proofreading session and is a disregard for someone’s edit. Once I got over that confusing hurdle, I realized that the story was in the foot notes and article headlines and that it was about AI and self-driving cars.

STET shows the birth and growth of AI, their implementation into cars and their effects on humanity and Anna personally. The footnotes have links to AI being created, then accepted into cars and then people who were killed because of the self-driving cars. Anna definitely wants to debate about the ethics of allowing self-driving cars to be on the street and if they have consciousness and can they be held responsible for the deaths for the people killed by these cars.

There is also the personal aspect of this story. Anna is telling this story to, at least partly, vent about the death of her daughter who was hit by a self-driving car. Anna slowly begins to lose her cool as the footnotes go on. She constantly rejects the edits by “Ed” the editor and you can feel her annoyance and anger at both the AI and the editor. There’s drama and history between them and it is seeping into the short story. I think Anna on some level blames the editor for her daughter’s death. Maybe the editor was in the car. She definitely is upset with the editor for not attending her daughter’s funeral.

At the core of this story are the ethics of allowing AI in cars and giving them choice. Can you blame the car? Can you blame the AI? Can you blame the humans? These are the questions the short story is asking. My opinion is that since all of this technology is man-made or man-controlled, humans are to blame for every fault technology has and every mistake technology makes.

Pseudo-Immortality and Para-Social Relationships between Artists and Fans

Lawrence King

Digital Studies                                                                                     Lawrence King

Sample                                                                                                 March 28, 2019

Haunted Media Artist Statement

For my project I decided to go the ghost centric route and focus on the eeriness of social media accounts of dead people, specifically famous artists. I also wanted to focus on para-social relationships and how their existence creates a reality where the subject of their affection can become a pseudo-immortal. Finally, I wanted to highlight how the living take advantage of the artist’s death to make money and gain online gratification. I referenced Mark Fisher’s book, “The Weird and the Eerie,” to highlight how confusing and unsettling it is to see new content and an active social media account from an artist you know is dead. I referenced Bethan Bell’s article on “death photography” during the Victorian era to show that the periodic release of content and the active social media accounts are like a more advanced form of death photography because they allow us to hold onto the person dear to us and immortalize them through their art and through multiple technologies. I also referenced John Beatty’s scholarly paper on para-social relationships between fans and celebrities to highlight the investments fans make by following and supporting their favorite celebrities and the motives behind that investment.

My project is a Facebook page dedicated to the late rapper XXXTentacion who had multiple projects released by his label and estate since his death. The page acts as a personal account for him and I, the admin, play the role of the estate and post content in his place. The point of this project is to discuss the notion that if an artist dies but their social media is still active and their fans are still receiving content through the mediums they’ve used to connect with that artist, then to them at least, the artist never died. The artist is only really dead to the people who knew him personally.

On my Facebook page, you’ll see the contradictory nature of life and death in the digital age we live in. You’ll see how the people running XXXTentacion’s estate have created a kind of ambivalence towards his death. Finally, you’ll see how the label he was signed under has turned his legacy into a profiting tool and transformed him from a man into a brand. You’ll see all these things through the posts I’ve made, the comments I pulled from real people on X’s latest YouTube videos and small Easter Eggs I scattered on the page thanks to Facebook’s group page tips.

In his book, Mark Fisher defines eeriness as “a failure of absence or by a failure of presence.” According to him, “the sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing or there is nothing present when there should be something.” After someone dies, you’d expect their digital avatars to die as well but they don’t in most cases. They just remain active but usually have no new posts, like a digital purgatory. This is eerie because something that shouldn’t be there is. With a normal person this eerie feeling is minimal and you chalk it up to just being weird but it doesn’t really affect your life if you weren’t close to this person or family.

However, when a famous artist dies the eeriness is amplified because you’re not only seeing active social media accounts but you’re hearing new music and seeing new visual content. This is particularly true in XXXTentacion’s case. When he died, I wasn’t sure how to feel. I was a fan of his music and suddenly hearing that he was murdered at twenty years old left me in a state of shock and confusion that took me, and would take any normal person I imagine, some time to process. During this processing stage however, I looked at my phone and saw a notification telling me that XXXTentacion had released a new video on his YouTube account. I clicked on it and saw X rapping, laughing and smiling and even though there were many “RIP” comments below, I didn’t feel like he was dead because he was right there in front of me, talking to me.

The video ended and after a little while I entered the processing stage again and again when I was about to accept reality, I hear that X has released a new album. The cycle continued again and again. In that time, I was notified about album release parties, more music videos, another album, etc. I wasn’t allowed to process my feelings over his death and didn’t have to because nothing about our relationship had changed. I knew him through his music, social media and visual content. All of those things were still active and producing new content at a steady pace so X was very much alive for me. I could see this sentiment was shared by multiple people across X’s fan base. Similar comments were made on his Instagram posts, YouTube videos and album reviews on streaming platforms. We all knew he was dead but it never felt like he was dead.

Today’s technology has provided XXXTentacion and other deceased artists with platforms that allow them to transcend their physical self and become an immortalized digital being. Our para-social relationships with them have also made this possible. Our “virtual communities,” as Beatty puts it, connect people from all across the world and creates a new reality where the artist can also exist through technology. X existed through his music, social media and music videos. We encouraged him and supported him to keep making music while he was alive for our own personal gratification but also to continue to create bonds with people on these platforms; a “meaningful communicative bond” as Beatty puts it. Now that he’s dead we still want new content to keep those communicative bonds strong.

X’s label is aware of our desire to receive new content from him so we can maintain the reality and bonds we created on these digital platforms, sustain his immortality and not have to truly deal with his death. They, like many labels before them, like Michael Jackson’s, Mac Miller’s, Tupac’s, Biggie’s, turned a dead man into a brand so they could capitalize off his death and gain profit and gratification for keeping his memory alive. I highlight this on the Facebook page I created by categorizing my page as a brand instead of a memorial page because the label doesn’t want to portray him as a dead man but as a legend because legends never die. They steadily release his new music and throw listening and album release parties and keep his social media account alive so they could continue to maintain their streaming revenue and sell his merch. I made his merch website my page’s website to further highlight that this page is really about making money not memorializing a dead artist.

My goal for the project was to make a page that showcased the ambivalence X’s estate has for his death. I believe I accomplished this goal by flooding the page with conflicting posts and images. Posts that made it seem like he was alive but had small clues that remind you that he’s dead. I named the page XXXTentacion Lives but the username right below it reads “in our hearts x minds.” The profile picture shows X happy, smiling and full of life but the cover photo is the infamous photo of him lying dead in his car after the armed robbery. I also posted a video of X going live, where he talks about death. These were some of the obvious contradictions but I had multiple subtle ones too.

Facebook gave me tips on how to make the page more popular. One of them was having a contact us section. I put in X’s real phone number but when you call it, you’ll get a message saying, “the number you have dialed is no longer available.” In the description you’ll see that the page was “born” on June 18, 2018 which is the same day X died. I created events telling people to head out to the listening and album release parties. I also posted old photos from his Instagram including his final photo with the same caption to, on one hand, keep my page active, but on the other, to subtly remind people that this was his final Instagram post. Die hard fans of X would be able to catch these subtle hints.

In addition to the subtle and obvious contradictions, I posted links to all of his new music and videos while completely ignoring his death in the captions. I complicated the post by adding ambiguous comments from real people that don’t explicitly say he’s dead but imply that he’s no longer with us. They said things like “legends never die” and that “it feels like he’s alive.” When I saw comments like this, I knew the label was succeeding in its mission to make people feel X’s presence despite having the knowledge of his death.

While the label uses his legacy for profit, I’d found that regular people, usually trolls, use his legacy for likes. They would use his name in comments like this: “Hit the like button if you miss X.” They were guilting people into liking them essentially. I saw many comments like these in the comments on YouTube and Instagram and it proves that it’s not just the music industry that’s taking advantage of death and grief but normal people are doing it too for online gratification and to rile people up and start online comment battles.

The digital age we live in today has allowed us to preserve people who’ve passed away in new ways. Like the Victorian’s did with photographs, we use social media, video-sharing services like YouTube and streaming services to hold onto the people we care about. With an artist, that you’ve only ever interacted with through these mediums, this practice allows you to delude yourself into believing that that person is still alive. Death and this preservation practice create a conflict that leaves you with an eerie feeling that you can choose to acknowledge or ignore.

These para-social relationships however leave room for exploitation by third-parties who live outside of the reality created by these individuals and online communities. People and entities like labels, family members, non-fans and trolls to name a few. These entities and people exploit the legacy of the artist for monetary gain and online gratification by steadily releasing their music along with merch on the artist’s platforms and by commenting things that guilt you into liking them. I wouldn’t consider it exploitation if they just leaked all of his music and videos at one time and gave the proceeds to charities or something.

My page’s goal was to act as a microcosm for other deceased artists’ pages that sheds light on the eeriness of this preservation practice, the exploitation of the artist, the transformation of man into brand after death and the pseudo immortality that is gained by the artist in question. While exploring my page to the utmost you will be able to see the obvious and subtle contradictions between life and death on these platforms, the ambivalence it creates and how real people react to it. The funny/sad thing about all of this is that even if you know the artist is being exploited after his/her death, you still contribute to the exploitation by buying and listening to their music and streaming their videos. We’re funding the machine but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter to us because like other people who struggle with grief, we don’t want to let go of someone who was important to us and we’ll do anything to keep up the illusion that that person is still with us to avoid dealing with the truth; even if we’re only connected through headphones or a computer/TV screen.

Bibliography

Fisher, Mark. The Weird and the Eerie. Repeater, 2017.

Bell, Bethan. Taken from life: The unsettling art of death photography. BBC News, 2016.

Beatty, John. Motives and para-social interactions of fan celebrity web site creators. Paper presented at the meeting of the International Communication Association, 2006.

Link to the page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/inourheartsxminds/posts/?ref=page_internal

Cold Cruel Code

Lawrence King

After reading the two articles on algorithmic cruelty I came to the realization that code is cold. The code doesn’t feel, the code doesn’t think, the code just does. A code will follow its directives, accomplish its task and then repeat. But codes didn’t just appear randomly. Codes and algorithms aren’t a natural part of this world; they’re man-made. So the truth is that it isn’t the code that’s cold but it’s us, humanity.

More specifically, the cold ones are the creators of the codes and algorithms and the corporations that allowed this code to exist. They created programs that were efficient but focused on the masses instead of the individual. They created programs that were centered around the living because the harsh truth is the dead don’t matter to these tech companies. The dead can’t use social media or buy products. The dead serve no purpose for the company and that’s why they weren’t considered in the algorithm. The company also doesn’t care how death can personally affect the living.

I wonder if this generation is really as distanced from death as we think. Sure we live longer on average but death is all around us. Just recently we heard about the tragic shooting in New Zealand, and while it was terrible it isn’t anything new unfortunately; gun violence is something that happens on a daily basis in America. I wonder if we’ve reverted to Victorian times where death is so apart of our daily lives that we are desensitized to it. Maybe that’s why these codes were written the way they were. Maybe the programmer and the people in charge didn’t even acknowledge the dead because it doesn’t happen as often and because it’s apart of our daily lives.

Our generation is more complicated than others because while we can live longer we can die just as easily. Unlike the Victorians we read about where death at a young age was a virtual certainty, we have a longer life expectancy. But because of our technological advancements, we’ve built tools that make it easier to live and save lives but also easier to die and take them. Death is close and far at the same time which puts us in this weird middle-void space where we’ve become cold towards death as a result. I believe this thinking has influenced our subconscious and now it’s showing. The cold cruel code is just one example.

An Immortal Obsession

Lawrence King

While reading the article on Thomas Edison’s spirit phone, I came to a realization; humans are obsessed with death. Death is the one certainty we all can agree on but it is also the thing we know virtually nothing about. We seek out the dead to gain clues about the afterlife and to get reassurance that it’s not so bad on the other side. In today’s world we use mediums, ouija boards, digital versions of ourselves, seances, etc… to reach the dead.

This article proves that we’ve had this obsession during Edison’s time as well. Even Edison was curious about the afterlife and believed that he could contact the dead with his “spirit phone.” With the rapid growth of technology Edison, like everyone else, got confident and felt that they were closer to reaching immortality; that they could finally cheat death.

I think at the core of all of these methods to contact the dead is a desire to achieve immortality. We contact the dead to gain clues about the afterlife and even though we’re curious about what comes next we also fear what comes next. Fear is stronger than our curiosity. What we really seek is immortality. We fear death and what comes next and constantly seek ways to subvert it; even if we only achieve that immortaltiy through the digital world. In the modern world we are further removed from death than in Edison’s time so  as we continue to advance technologically we will continue to seek immortality until the day we die.

Reality TV Must Die!

Lawrence King

While watching the first couple episodes of “Dead Set” I was thinking about Jeffrey Cohen’s article, “Monster Culture” and the role that the zombies play on this show. First, I thought about what makes zombies inherently scary and, based on Cohen’s theses, I believe they fit into at least three categories. Zombies are a cultural body, they’re the harbinger of category crisis and they dwell at the gates of difference. They’re a cultural body because they represent people’s fear of invasion and disease. Maybe it’s a fear of foreign invasion or a fear of non-white people since the fighters and survivors in most of these films are usually all American or predominantly white. Examples of movies like this include “Zombieland” and “Shaun of the Dead.”

Zombies are harbingers of category crisis because they’re walking contradictions. Being the “living dead” defies the categories we know of and creates fear. This is what also causes them to dwell at the gates of difference because they’re dead cannibals, with deformed faces and little intelligence. They’re the opposite of a normal human being and just looking at them is terrifying enough and the fact that they’re sole purpose is to eat and kill humans doesn’t help.

What’s interesting about the zombies on “Dead Set” is that while their sole purpose is to eat and kill people, they’re focused on killing the people on the reality tv show “Big Brother.” The creators of this show purposely placed zombies on this set to disrupt this popular reality show in the most extreme way. This could mean a couple of things. One, the creators are trying to make a point about what reality tv is doing to humanity. Maybe they believe that reality tv or tv in general is turning us into zombies; single-minded and slow. Two, the creators are critiquing reality tv and believe that it needs to be destroyed and they’re using zombies as the tool to do that.

The Big Brother characters aren’t placed in the best light. They’re vain, insecure and obsessed with performing for the camera. The behind the scenes look at the show reveals how fake reality tv is. There’s heavy editing which manufactures drama for the audience and the contestants are being over the top so they can stand out and be popular. I believe the creators turn Cohen’s first thesis on its head. Usually humanity is the “hero” that kills the monster but I believe that on “Dead Set” reality tv is the real monster, the cultural body that needs to be destroyed, and the zombies are actually the “heroes” of the show who will kill the monster. To be honest I’m not mad at that idea. If reality tv died tomorrow, I wouldn’t really care, I think I’d actually be happy.

A Head Full of Unreliable Memories

Lawrence King

After reading the first sixty pages of “A Head Full of Ghosts,” I immediately thought of our conversation about postmodern horror. Specifically, I thought about the fourth element that defines postmodern horror, namely, that there is no narrative closure and ambiguity. From the opening chapter, it is clear that the protagonist Merry will be recalling a story from her past, a story from fifteen years ago. This gap between her current memories and her eight-year-old memories make me suspect that she will be an unreliable narrator.

My suspicions began to grow when in the second chapter there is a blog post about the reality TV show, “The Possession,” which is based on the exorcism that took place in her home. The blog makes it clear that the show was popular and interesting enough that someone would want to write about it. Where there is one blog there are usually a hundred more. This means that there are multiple perspectives on what happened during that time that probably influenced Merry’s memories and thoughts on that time making her account even more unreliable. She even confesses that she consumes a lot of media and they, plus her nightmares, mix with her memories of that time jumbling them (13).

Finally, when Merry starts to recall her childhood and we are introduced to Marjorie, the cause of all their trouble, it is clear to me that Merry looks up to her sister a lot. She puts up with her stories, teasing and mood swings. My worry is that Merry’s affection for her sister will cause her to leave certain details out of her story because she wants to remember Marjorie how she wants and not how she actually was. Merry’s unreliability as a narrator leads me to believe that we may never know the full truth of what happened during that time and we will be left with an ambiguous ending to a complex story. Nevertheless, Merry is the best person to ask since she was physically there when it all went down; so unreliable or not, we have to trust her.