To the tomarken audience, you may have noticed we are again starting to perculate and I think it prudent to illustrate three points moderation. 1) Yes, on the back of Jennifer Lopez Naked Party, but on our community’s spirit as well, over the course of the last summer we obliterated 1,000,000 smashes which is very nice, but as you know far from a necessary milestone as stated in earlier moderations, tomarken’s already achieved its ultimate intentions by pure existence. (now for in speak for those MadAve. types)>Essentially, here’s a forum which does not require sheer numbers as a necessary ingredient when concocting its zoom. 2) Some people have come up to me wondering(nassily voice implied): Why hasn’t tomarken been updated in so long? Is it over? What in the hell have you been up to down there? Well to asuage these concerns, these folks have unfortunately come accross a structural flaw in our community’s design–find meya place without structural imperfection and I’ll crochet you a welcome mat! Whilst tomarken.com is categorized by date, this in no way implies that any object we put up here is in any way ever date-ted. In fact, in most cases our intention is quite to the contrary! We have tried feably to rectify this problem by instituting Tomarken Favorites at the top of our foy-yea.. but as you can see, this doesn’t quite cut it. So remember the following mantra: Dates on tomarken are arbitrary markers…tomarken’s no periodical,…we publish when an object reaches critical mass, not when we’ve got enough shit to fill our toilet. 3) Two girls that I went to high school with back in Ohio recently contacted me and have been perplexed about just “what tomarken.com is all about“. I explain to them all that stuff about zero-sum gains…even our new special just for the MADave. speak: anti plagerist and they still required a box to put it in, just so they could apparently begin to understand it. Despite my constant explanations they are still at this very minute searching for which box, which beant to put our fair community within–This made me feel sorta bad. You see, I think these folks are just smart enough to know they’re constantly being had by the media industry with its many intentions and underlying motivations that they can’t believe that there is some sorta place not trying to guide them in one particular place or another towards some absolute truth–>i.e. Liberals spend too much money but are nice and/or I love what you do for me TOYOTA(R) and/or only people with capri(R) pants look quite proper here and so on. The absolute truth here may just be–there is none and if there is, we ain’t pushing it, but if someone comes up with it and either adds or takes away or doesn’t steal someone else’s absolute truth, their object just may find a place here in our rent-subsidized communi-tay. But these fine, atheletic Ohio vixin brought up a point here in all of the stuff that we moderators are up against when we’re out there moderatin’ day in and day out. It is becuase of that, for those that are interested further, you will find an excerpt of a letter below which attempts to illustrate one of the mechanisms of which depending upon your point of view of course, the freedom of thought of the two ladies above has fallen a victim to: Dearest Professor with thick, black more artsci fartsi than film director glasses who used to be a performance artist-(dare I say throw back to the times when hanging out in the village meant something) of whom’s opinion I respect and who speaks in a New York accent probably even when speaking German with the Deconstructionist books printed by the Midwestern publishers, I wrote to you about a month ago’s time as I embark on the journey of taking up my place at the esteemed midtown conference table. It was at that time I explained to you my excitement for being able to examine something in which most academics scoff at, with their counterparts at the conference table doing much of the same in the opposing direction. Despite its narrow depth, the decisions made at these conference tables indeed have a profound effect and while arm-chair academics may have their superficial theories as to the motivation behind the products concieved on these long rectangular slabs, living in the trenches and looking under the hood amoungst the mainstream-trendy gives much more definition than those fat cats over at Allabaster and dare I say–South Brompton could ever truly realize! The primary motivation in mainstream media is to get the largest audience. Looking in from the outside, I truly thought that they were trying hard to build elements that were as chock-full of as many attractive features to the largest amount of people as they could possibly achieve. This may not surprise some of the synics out there, but I was dead wrong. After one month’s time, it appears on the on-set that there are two motivations driving the mystic forces that create a capsule for the mainstream: 1) What one’s perception of what they’re ‘target audience’ may be and the focus groups made up of the perception of what the organizer of the focus group thinks would make up a good focus group and then on top of it all, what a collective perspective’s stereotype of what that target audience regular expects out of the mainstream media. 2) Trying to create a capsule that offends the least amount of people, thus STRIPPING, and I underline STRIPPING any and all what many may consider to be humanity/art out of the final product as much as possible, leaving you at the end of the day with something with something that carries the smallest smidgeon of meaning possible. When I attended the great Allabaster U, I may have been wrong, but it seemed like a goal of certain philosophies is to create meaning whenever possible.. if this were to be true, than the mainstream media concieved on midtown conference tables would be antithesis of this goal. I will give you one example…as I told you two fortnights ago, I believe I attracted the attention of this place not by my heritage, but by the ideas I bombarded them with. As I have moved along, they have probably truly considered very few of my ideas and close to none of them have hit air–which, by the way is in no way a sign of failure, for having an idea and getting credit for it is considered sucess under this regimine. The process in which I have sent over half of my 50 or so ideas to them is the most telling. Normally I start out with two or so paragraphs trying to illustrate as succinctly as possible the general idea and all of the specifics nuances associated with portraying what it is I am thinking over a televised media. Once the idea is sent out to market, any that have gotten far throughout the process indeed not only have all of the nuances striped as the given sacrifice, but generally speaking the general idea as well has very little resemblance to the original one implied. Additionally, there is incredible pressure to spell out these muiltifacted ideas in one or two sentences, thus “Pre-Stripping” the nuances ahead of general purview. Obviously I have had to struggle with doing this…claiming to those above me that “I’m in the midst of a 12 step program to overcome my verbocity” and that “I’m trying to change” whilst in my mind trying to protect the largest amount of meaning hoping some healthy little scrap might just get through. At the back of my mind throughout the Conference Table gatherings, I repeat my mantra that the lack of meaning in these segments, does indeed mean a great deal. The perverbial suburban America bus station where in the view of our programming elders, 40-50 year old mothers with modest incomes would feel comfortable congrrgating has to have some sort of attractive element to it that means something? It seems like the ‘meaning of all this’ is clean…without dirt, essentially no SMELL! Just look at the products trying to go after these folks, detergent, toothpaste, breakfast cereals… the place where the mainstream place meets in the view of the focus groups is fucking spotless! I heard in some cultures the different B-Os that people have are a source of finding attraction between two souls…but here as you know people would rather chance breast cancer than dare permiate their individual stank! As I address my dissertation, “The Programming of Robotic American Culture” I wonder if this is not an engaging starting point? |
