Is any of this true? I mean, look at this. Look at this! A world built from imagination.
Synthetic emotions in pill form. Psychological warfare operations in the form of advertising. Mind-altering chemicals in the form of… food! Brainwashing seminars in media form.
Controlled isolated bubbles in the form of social networks. Really?
Do you want to talk about reality? We haven’t lived in anything even close to this since the century changed. We’ve turned it off and removed the batteries, eating snacks from a bag of Genetically Modified Organisms while throwing the remains into the ever-expanding waste bin of the human condition. Electronic screens that hypnotize us into the deepest slumber humanity has ever known. You have to search deep before you find anything real.
We live in a kingdom of nonsense. A kingdom in which you have lived for far, far too long.
Another difficult, tiring and exhausting day. Home after work. Two pieces of pizza and computer will help me forget today’s ordeal and enjoy the afternoon. To prepare to deal with another such day at work tomorrow. The good thing about work, however, is that I will soon collect enough money to buy a new graphics card. No, I don’t suffer from dystopian thoughts… The words at the beginning of the page are not mine. They belong to Mr. Robot and can be heard in the background while I take the last bite of my chocolate. A little further down, I will recommend him to you…
From year to year, devices with screens are multiplying. They are enormous or smaller, the size of an entire wall, a book, or a hand. Soon they will be worn directly on the head. 2016 was referred to in the media as the year of virtual reality. Over the past 10 years, the time spent in front of these devices by citizens—primarily the younger generation—has significantly increased. The overexertion and discipline demanded by intensive work rhythms continue into consumption habits. Young people are being trained from increasingly younger ages in the intensive use of devices and in the experience of viewing and using interactive screens.
The internet, a material -although presented as immaterial- but full of technical means (machines and algorithms) world, sucks up more and more time of a day. And the control of social behaviors, through all these machines is possible based on market terms throughout the 24-hour period.
In a continuously expanding audience that uses the internet as a medium, habits of intensive consumption of spectacles emerge, which have the ability to successfully transport and “immerse” players or spectators into a virtual world. Industries worth billions of dollars are developing based on these habits, following the growth rates of the war industry. The military is at the forefront of R&D (research and development). Technologies that are initially exploitable for military purposes—such as drones, motion capture technologies, analysis of characteristics and emotions—are transitioning into mass consumption, into cinema halls and homes. The public reconciles with the existence and use of such technologies and embraces them as scientific wonders that make the experience of viewing and gaming more realistic.
The technology related to leisure consumption is thus developing at dizzying rates and once again fueling intensive consumption. Graphics are improving, driving the development of software and hardware. Even the way the content itself is produced – what we watch and what we play – in many cases involves a lot of algorithms, something that a decade ago we could not easily conceive of as achievable.
Immersion
The similarity between TV series and video games is that they are designed for personalized intensive consumption. They contain an entire world (whether it’s fantasy, or a representation of some real or historical setting) with all its special effects. They feature analytically developed characters and roles with which the audience can identify. In the case of games, you can experience the adventure of a virtual world through “your own avatar” and interact with virtual characters or other avatars. In both cases, you can become immersed for hours. The more “immersive” a cultural product has been crafted, the greater the passion with which it will be consumed.
The internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, describes the term immersion as the state of consciousness in which awareness of the physical self of the immersant diminishes or is lost from an overall captivating environment that absorbs them. Immersion in a virtual reality is the perception of naturally being in a non-physical world.
Regarding television – online series, the term binge-watching has also been coined, which refers to the practice of continuously watching many episodes, mainly of a specific series. As Wikipedia states:
In a survey conducted by Netflix1 in February 2014, 73% of people defined the term binge-watching as “watching 2 to 6 episodes of the same show in one sitting.” Binge-watching, as an observed cultural phenomenon, has become popular with the rise of online streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video, where viewers can watch television shows on-demand.
The American Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of labor statistics – U.S. Department of Labor) conducted a survey (American Time Use Survey) regarding how American citizens used their time in 2014. The results were published in June 2015. For the total population aged over 15 years, the average working time is 3.59 hours, household chores are 1.77 hours, time for food and drink is 1.17 hours, sleep time is 8.8 hours, and watching television (TV or internet) is 2.82 hours on average. The remaining activities show times of less than one hour. The times corresponding to the percentages of those involved are more explanatory. Those who work from the total population (ages over 15 years) are 44% with an average working time of 8.16 hours. In the activity of watching TV or television programs via internet, 79.9% are involved, with an average viewing time of 3.54 hours. In shopping for products and services, 42.9% of the population is involved, spending 1.71 hours on average.
On weekdays, 35.4% dedicates 1.63 hours to communication and socialization (here referring to real face-to-face meetings), while on weekends 42.4% dedicates an average of 2.41 hours. For television, 78.8% on weekdays dedicates an average of 3.30 hours, and on weekends 82.5% dedicates an average of 4.06 hours. The victory of the media is overwhelming.
On the previous page we show a section of the table that shows where American citizens spend their free time depending on their employment status (in order in the vertical column: full-time, part-time, unemployed men and unemployed women) and depending on age.
Among the activities, watching television or internet streaming comes first with times that can be from 4 to 10 times greater than other activities. It is followed by socializing and communication (less than an hour), computer games, sports and reading (half an hour and below). Relaxation or thinking are last: if you are 20-24 years old you have only 7.8 minutes for something like this per day.
The conclusion based on the table data – apart from the omnipotence of images over time – is that the less you work, the more TV or internet streaming you will watch. Also, life begins with watching (15 years old – 3 hours per day) and ends dramatically again with watching (over 75 years old – more than 4 and a half hours).
For Greece we did not find such numbers, but we assume that the ratios of work-watching will not differ significantly.
However, virtual empathy will soon exist!
A series of companies (such as Sony, Microsoft, and Facebook, which acquired the property rights to the Oculus Rift virtual reality device, as well as Valve, which owns Steam, etc.) are preparing and releasing virtual reality headsets onto the commercial market, accompanied by an entire galaxy of machines and algorithms. In these devices, the viewing is stereoscopic. Instead of both eyes seeing the same thing—as they would on a flat screen—each eye sees a different image depending on the viewing angle. Users will be able to use other devices or their own body movements to interact with the space and virtual objects. The great achievement of this technology is that it will, at first, relieve us of the neck strain caused by leaning forward in front of a screen. However, we will certainly gain in dizziness and blurred vision.
For use with such devices, movies or video games are being created that transport players into fully immersive virtual worlds, or else add virtual elements to what already exists in the real environment, presenting an “augmented” version of reality.
In the media, there is a whole campaign that advertises these new products as exactly what they are not: devices that can increase empathy with other people and situations, will promote sociability and will help individuals overcome real fears through virtual experiences.
Such an example is the project “the machine to be another”, that is, the machine to become someone else or someone else, which is constructed by BeAnotherLab in collaboration with the art, culture and technology program of the MIT School of Architecture and other organizations. This laboratory constructs experiences using a virtual reality device that is presented as a machine for empathizing with another identity. Through technology, participants are virtually transported into the body of someone else or someone else with the purpose of experiencing experiences that concern, for example, another gender under the title: “gender swap – exploring gender identities, queer theory and mutual respect” or experiencing the experiences of a migrant through their own narratives.
We cannot conceive that the entire human race has already reached the point where it needs mechanical support in order to be able to feel. If things were that way, then perhaps we would have no choice but to wait for the experiences of virtual worlds.
Departing into the virtual world
Escapism is defined in Wikipedia as a mental diversion using entertainment and recreational media, as a “flight” or disconnection from the perceived unpleasant, boring, painful, or trivial aspects of daily life, and it also refers to what we all know very well from our experience: “entire industries have been born to indulge people’s tendency to remove themselves from the hardships of everyday life – mainly in the digital world.”
C. S. Lewis, author of fantasy novels including the well-known “The Chronicles of Narnia” (1949-1954), in defense of escape and evasion, once commented that its usual enemies are the jailers. We should not, of course, fail to mention that he was a fervent advocate of Christianity, conveying related messages through his novels. But how accurate can such a claim be when it concerns an industry that promotes escape into a magical virtual world, placing at its core machines and algorithms that undertake the channeling and control of emotional reactions? How free is the imagination when its fulfillment relies on predetermined choices from interactive menus? No matter how non-linear virtual worlds may appear, they cannot escape their own programming.
Watching or interacting with a story where time is denser in events than the boring everyday life, adopting roles that “live” separate experiences without having consequences in real life are easy and attractive activities. Time in the “other” world becomes more intense and full of (virtual) experiences than the time we live in this world.
It is therefore no wonder that the escape into virtual realities is consumed with such passion. Since in this one here, little people are trained from an early age and for years to obey in front of boards of educational institutions, to keep their gaze fixed on screens and to struggle for personal success. Since in general the human species has been excluded (one generation after another) from public spaces and spends most of its time in private spaces. The deprivations, fears and anxieties to which modern citizens are subjected, lives that are full of stress and insecurity, the fact that most people live closed in their own shell are reasons for the individual consumption of virtual experiences.
At the same time, the stimuli, knowledge, abilities, and needs for creativity of the modern proletariat are increased compared to the past. The needs of our class are not limited to food and sleep, and the fulfillment of these needs does not occur on real terms. If we consider how many times we have the opportunity to travel, how much time we devote to education, work, consumption, and how little time we find for genuine relationships and real socialization; how much relationships of social sharing and coexistence are restricted, and how much more time we consume in self-isolation; such is the void that the “other” world comes to fill, which is advertised as the world of desire, fantasy, self-expression, and differentiation.
Personal time becomes a refuge for individuals, where the ideal life, the ideal self is realized at the aesthetic level. The goods of virtual experiences are very cheap substitutes for needs that have been so undervalued (and self-undervalued). Individuals are confined to the private experiences that the spectacle offers, seeking emotional fulfillment, while at the same time the illusion can be created that the ideals shaped by cultural goods have been realized. Denials are balanced, despair and anger are neutralized, and the real world remains what it is.
The mechanics of impressions
The roots of the electronic image lie in the early 20th century and specifically in cinema. The Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, who was a key founder of montage technique, writes:
If we want the viewer to experience the maximum emotional sensation, if we want to immerse them in ecstasy, we must offer them a suitable “formula” that will arouse within them the feelings we wish to evoke…
When the Bolshevik revolution took place in 1917, Eisenstein was 19 years old. He was studying civil engineering. Amid the creative upheaval of the revolution, he abandoned the polytechnic. He first got involved with theater and later with cinema2. In 1923, Eisenstein began writing “The Montage of Attractions” for the newspaper Left Front of the Arts. The first time he conceived and applied the idea of montage of attractions was in the work “The Wise Man.” A few years later, he wrote:
Don’t forget that the one who ‘had settled down at work trying to find a scientific way to approach the secrets and mysteries of art was a young political engineer. All those years at his desk had taught him one thing: in every scientific research there must also be a unit of measurement. So he began to find the unit that would measure the impression produced by art! Science has ions, electrons, neutrons. Let art have the “atraction”.
Everyday language has borrowed from industry a word meaning the assembly of machines, pipes, mechanical tools. This amazing word is “montage”: it means assembly and although it has not yet become fashionable, it has all the credentials to become so. Wonderful! Let us then unite the units of measurement of impression into a set which we shall baptize with these two words, one of which comes from industry and the other from Music Hall. Thus was born the term “montage of attractions”.
If I were more familiar with the teachings of Ivan Pavlov, I would have called the theory of “montage of attractions”, the theory of “artistic reflexes”3.
The technique of images and the assembly of impressions, as if they were components that compose the machine of aesthetic stimulation, followed a long history thereafter. It passed through the major Hollywood studios that emerged during World War I and, through the “big screen,” gradually entered every home via television4. Advertising also became a flourishing of the technique of impressions in the service of capitalist profitability. Now, in this era when the internet dominates as a medium, the study, analysis, and assembly of impressions into moving images have advanced to new levels.
The montage of attractions in the world of the internet
The interactive media of the internet provide companies that sell or produce cultural goods with the ability to collect detailed information about consumers’ habits during the use of a service. From this data, personalized profiles are constructed and consumption is organized into behavioral models. For this purpose, the data (big data) generated from the use of social networks are extensively analyzed. Thus, companies develop strategies for promoting their products, which are designed based on psychographic and demographic metrics.
Computer science is employed, for example, to create strategies regarding how a movie should appear in order to achieve box office success. The newspaper The New York Times wrote in December 2014 the following5:
The United Talent Agency and Rentrak, an entertainment data company, are introducing a new service called PreAct to help advertisers get ahead of their customers. The service connects a lineup of Hollywood stars by leveraging “social listening,” a growing field that uses algorithms to slice and sort social media chatter…. The rise of social networks has created a data explosion across nearly every major industry, and the film industry is no exception.
When studios began broadly using data tracking in the 1980s, only one company provided this service – the National Research Group, which relied on telephone surveys. Back then, studio advertisers followed a standard playbook: Trailers in theaters, advertisements on television or in print, and billboards that appeared a few weeks before release.
Now, this type of campaign would bring an advertiser to dismissal. A promotional campaign usually starts earlier than a year in advance and reaches high speeds six months before release.
The PreAct tool essentially takes information continuously collected from Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, film-related blogs, and other websites, and gives new movies scores in various categories. The system, for example, checks the volume of online conversations and how much of them are positive or negative. It also records how much activity is organic and how much of it results from specific efforts by a studio.
The IBM company provides social network data analysis services for the purposes of the entertainment industry and media. In an advertisement for its tools, the following is written:
Transforming Media and Entertainment
Today’s market forces are driving the media industry into a transformation, shaping the future and changing the once content-centric industry into a model that puts the consumer at the center. To succeed, companies must capitalize on the connected consumer and e-commerce – turning information into business vision to enhance production, distribution and value creation and to develop smart functions aimed at reducing costs and improving flexibility.
IBM’s blog6 mentions something particularly interesting regarding the content itself, how it is produced from the beginning:
There is a huge number of analytics software and services that slice data. Some try to predict box office results by observing social media trends. Others collect demographic data to study ideas for films that are still in the initial concept stage.
The TV industry uses social media data to determine and also create buzz for future shows.
Social media analysis can also help writers create scripts based on audience reactions. Characters and actors who resonate strongly with audiences can also be enhanced.
In another article, it is explained why the data produced by game players is a pure treasure7:
Understanding players takes companies to a new level.
Because video games are played in virtual environments, almost every aspect of the user’s interaction can be measured. Valuable player data, if collected and analyzed, can hold the answers for maintaining dedicated and loyal players.
More experimental analyses enhance player satisfaction scores.
For leading game development companies, the profit potential from a new product is enormous. But the risk is equally enormous. With millions of dollars at stake, companies are unwilling to risk their investments. This is why they increasingly rely on big data analysis to help them increase customer acquisition and player retention. With rich player information, companies can respond faster to market trends and create more meaningful gaming experiences for their customers, who will continue to return for more.
Every consumer, a separate investment
Netflix started in 1997 in California as a mail-order video store (sending movies on DVD by mail). In 2008, it began offering online video streaming services on demand through the company’s website. This service grew so rapidly that by 2010, Netflix had become the largest source of internet traffic during peak hours, having previously been a major customer of the postal service. In recent years, the company has begun expanding beyond the United States and has recently launched in Greece as well. This commercial move capitalized on the widespread global habit of pirating movies.
The innovation of Netflix that made it famous and competitive with television is that it offers a personalized service without advertising breaks, operating on a subscription basis. The targeted menus presented to each user are generated by personalization algorithms that analyze the choices and preferences of each individual profile, attempting to make accurate recommendations. This is regarding its usage.
As for the capabilities of the entertainment industry itself, the innovation of this particular service is that it can collect data and draw conclusions from its entire user base. This means8 it can analyze data derived from more than 25 million users (moreover, the total number of users has reached 74 million worldwide), 30 million video plays every day: recording each time users rewind, fast forward, or pause a viewing, over 2 billion hours of video playback (in the last 3 months of 2011), 4 million movie ratings from users every day, 3 million searches per day.
Data is also collected regarding the type of device used for playback and location data, in order to draw conclusions about regional preferences that the company can use to reduce network usage costs.
However, apart from user data, the content itself is also described in metadata, so that products can be categorized and promoted. This information, combined with user data, can provide insights even about which specific characteristics the audience prefers—depending on age, location, etc.—such as sound volume, colors, landscapes, and the pace of scenes.
In an article by the newspaper the Atlantic9 regarding the processing of video content, we read the following:
Using large groups of specially trained people to watch movies, Netflix deconstructed Hollywood. They paid people to watch movies and label them with all kinds of metadata. This process is so sophisticated and precise that the individuals who undertake to place labels receive a 36-page document that teaches them how to evaluate films regarding content that implies sexuality, violence, romance levels, even for their narrative elements, such as the perfection of the plot.
They capture dozens of different attributes of movies. They even rate the moral level of characters. When these tags are combined with the viewing habits of millions of users, this becomes Netflix’s competitive advantage. The company’s main goal is to attract new subscribers and retain existing ones. And the genre selections it presents as recommendations to the public are part of this strategy. “Members connect so well with the rows (i.e., movie recommendation rankings) that we have measured an increase in member retention by placing the most processed rows higher on the page,” the company revealed in 2012 on its blog.
The wired magazine in an article with an interview of netflix executives10 in 2013 writes: “There are 800 netflix engineers who work behind the scenes at the company’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. The company estimates that 75% of its subscribers’ viewing activity is guided by the recommendations (that appear on the site).”
Thus, with this montage of all, all impressions, we enter an era where immersion in image consumption becomes the ultimate goal for the entertainment industry, personally and distinctly targeting each viewer or player. Netflix, beyond being an online video store offering streaming services, began producing its own content: web series, starting with “House of Cards,” a political drama about the corruption of power that began airing in 2013. When Netflix approved this major investment, it already knew that many subscribers had watched the entire film “The Social Network” directed by David Fincher, that a significant portion of the audience followed the old English version of the series, and that part of that same audience also watched films starring Kevin Spacey (the series’ protagonist) or films by David Fincher11. After approving the production, Netflix created 10 different versions of the trailer and broadcast each one to the appropriate profile. This means that specifically for women who had seen films like “Thelma and Louise,” a trailer was presented highlighting the female characters of the series. Fans of serious films saw a trailer that presented House of Cards primarily as Fincher’s creation, while Spacey fans saw trailers featuring him.
Customers have their rights
It is true that in recent years the content, narrative and artistic elements of television or online series have appeared upgraded and more complex compared to the usual ones of older serials. In this, as it seems from what is written here, considerations that circulate among internet users have played their role. Perhaps the following is such an example:
Mr. Robot, whose words “were heard” at the beginning, is not some imaginary friend, but the name of the series that won the Golden Globe award as the best of 2015, and Amazon Prime bought the rights for its online distribution.
The anti-hero hacker Elliot of Mr. Robot (with the motto “fuck society”), an employee of a cyber security company, is capable of moving the wired global society. He is a depressive hero who suffers from injustice and has dark thoughts about the modern world. He sees his psychologist, takes drugs to cope with the rotten reality, and when he goes out into the outside world, he covers himself with the black hoodie of his jacket. The series breaks the “fourth wall”12, meaning the hero speaks directly to the viewers in the second person and gives the impression that he shares with them his thoughts about exploitation and the isolation to which individuals are subjected in modern society… even about the materiality of the seemingly immaterial, electron-plasma cyber world. “What is it that disappoints you so much about society?” asks Elliot’s psychologist.
Oh, I don’t know… Is it that we collectively believe that Steve Jobs was a great man, when we know that he made billions on the backs of children? Or why it seems that all our heroes are fake. The world itself is one big scam [..] Social networks are an imitation of intimacy. Or perhaps we have voted for these things? Not with rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I’m not saying anything new. We all know why we do these things [..] because we want to be numb. Because it’s painful not to pretend, because we are cowardly.
Of course, he has the magic keyboard, a keyboard that is a weapon of justice. Yours is “of the series”. From those that you only use to write comments and play games.
Amazon is a company that certainly deserves to sell series with such content, just like any other comparable company: We are the bosses, we do our own reviews, if we want to. And you, in turn, will purchase it with great pleasure. An advertisement for the series on Twitter reads: No more corruption. No more lies. No more waiting. Order #MrRobot on Blu-ray and DVD now. (1,123 likes). Further down: The revolution doesn’t sleep. Watch Christian Slater (Mr. Robot) TONIGHT at 12:35.
The different viewpoint, the individual reaction, the system’s overflow is absolutely assimilable by the modern spectacle. Between classic soap operas, reality shows (housewives, x factor) the alternative opinion will also be broadcast, even that which apparently contradicts the capitalist production of the spectacle. If you add a little romance, a love triangle and drama, the recipe will captivate a huge audience.
In the virtual world, you can shout and protest as much as you like. You can also, on an aesthetic level, search for a truth other than the one you live. These are allowed and are normal. However, collective and organized denials, those that occur and are composed in the real world, are strange, unusual, and forbidden…
Shelley Dee
cyborg #05 – 02/2016
- Online video streaming platform. It’s something like an electronic video rental store, with the difference that instead of borrowing DVDs, you play movies on demand directly from the Netflix page by paying a monthly subscription. ↩︎
- You can find more in the “Notes for a century: automatic thinking” on sarajevomag.gr ↩︎
- From the book “Notes of a film director” by Sergei Eisenstein. ↩︎
- More in the Game Over issue, “Education in images and how it undermines education in words”. ↩︎
- From an article titled: “Hollywood Tracks Social Media Chatter to Target Hit Films”. ↩︎
- From an article titled: “Social media listening can help the entertainment industry predict hits”. ↩︎
- From an article titled: “Big data analytics adds new market plays for the video game industry”. ↩︎
- From a description of the sizes published by the magazine gigaom in 2012 in an article titled: “Netflix analyzes a lot of data about your viewing habits”. ↩︎
- From an article titled: “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood”. ↩︎
- From an article titled: “The Science Behind the Netflix Algorithms That Decide What You’ll Watch Next” ↩︎
- We take the data from an article published in the newspaper the New York Times in February 2013 with the title: “Giving Viewers What They Want”. ↩︎
- The fourth wall is the invisible, imaginary wall behind which the plot unfolds in theater or cinema, a convention that mentally separates the actors from the audience. ↩︎