Binary Elysium

Excerpt from The Escapist issue #4 article 8 by Dave Thomas.

“Further, it turns out you don’t need a computer to play Second Life. We do it all the time.

Although 10 years have passed, I still vividly remember the face and the curly red hair of the girl I almost ran over with my bike. For that moment, her face looked up, the sun shone down in painterly streaks, she smiled, time stopped and I fell in love. I didn’t plow her into the gutter and instead peddled on home to my family. But right there, in that second of cliché so perfect that they could use it to sell soap on TV, I slipped into my second life.

We think of time as something that pushes us through life, relentlessly conveying us from station to station, piling on experiences at each stop before dumping us into a coffin for final shipment. This is time as the eternal taskmaster. Really, though, we press time forward with the weight of our expectations, the gravity of our demand for things to happen the way we expect. We go home after work because, well, that’s what defines being at work, going home. And then we get up in the morning to head to work to afford having a home. We press and press and press.

Fantasy stops time and we fall through the floorboards of those mental shanties of expectation.

At least, that’s how I felt when time literally stood still not just long enough for me to avoid mangling the red-headed girl, but long enough for me to spend a lifetime in that smile, to imagine another life where I see that smile every day and the sun always shines like a Bob Ross painting.
You see, we all have a second life, and we bottle it up in our fantasies and stop time.

When a cute waitress brushes your hand as she hands you the check, when a glowing mom and dad walk by hand-in-hand with their children as precious as lambs or a Jaguar glides down the street, a glimmering metal beast, you slip into fantasy, into your second life.

These images of fantasy are powerful. And frozen. We collect them and collect them until our fantasy life is a junk drawer of unrelated things. “

No wonder I bury myself in the pleasurable, supplementary reality of television. Now available at minimal cost, no advertisements and 100% guilt free. What a wonderful soma it is to forget yourself in others pathetic, predictable, yet enviable lives. Inject the video, smoke the audio: partake of the sweet denial.

Ah-gads, what an addiction.

By far the most insidious feature of MSN Instant Messenger is the “Display Name” option. Perhaps the brainchild of a programmer with the goal of disrupting the social lives of teenagers worldwide, the “Display Name” option allows MSN Instant messenger (MSN from here on out) users to set a “friendly name” or nickname that others can use to identify them by besides the generally cryptic email address.

Useful right? Sure to an extent, as “Danny” is alot easier to remember and identify than some email address. The problem is with the character limit. 129 characters. Who on earth needs a simple, identifying name that long? Do give you an idea of how long that is? Here is a typical name you would find on a teenagers contact list:
“ow how my body aches 4 ur touch. ur intoxicating 2 my senses. if only u wuld evar sumtim look @ me 2 kno i exist cuz i luv u :”(”
The majority of those reading this just read something familiar and unsurprising. The rest of you most likely spouted some exclamation along the lines of “WTF?!” The MSN IM display name has become a community sidewalk or billboard for angst filled teens to chalk or spraypaint their pent up emotions and express their suicidal tendencies in 129 characters or less. The result of a lifetime of media conditioning by Hollywood, marketers who get paid to manipulate teens, and bands with minimal musical talent who “integrate unenthusiastic melodramatic 17 year olds who don’t smile, high pitched overwrought lyrics and inaudible guitar rifts with tight wool sweaters, tighter jeans, itchy scarves (even in the summer).” A full analysis of this plague sweeping adolescents is beyond the scope of this document.

Even the absurdity of the variety of names one might encounter on MSN is not the specific intent of this document. Rather, to concentrate on the adverse effects that the MSN Display name has on the user and those who see the name. To state it matter-of-factly these “friendly names” precipitate an atmosphere of doubt, confusion, and misinterpretation among friends. Names like the one demonstrated above do not fall into this category. They are childish and very transparent in nature. A desperate cry for attention in the most obnoxious way possible. The latter type of nickname, however conceals it’s message beneath or between levels of metaphor, undefined pronouns, and incomplete thoughts. They subtly hint to emotions or thoughts that the ‘namer’ would not say outright.

Those who have such a person on their contact list (who doesn’t?) will see this cryptic name and wonder what it means. Now enters the factor of the ‘viewer’s relationship with the namer. The closer the viewer is to the namer OR the greater their relationship OR the type of relationship the namer and viewer share – all affect how the viewer interprets the “message.” In some cases the “message” really is not a message at all, yet they interpret it as such. “Why else would someone set such a thought provoking name, if not to convey some message?” This type of (unconscious) thought is the precursor to misgivings.

Impromptu Closure: Why must we communicate secretly, and ambiguously? If you want to say something don’t equivocate! Unless, heaven forbid, your intention is precisely to befuddle and frustrate.

yes i am guilty of all i just ranted about. such hypocrisy.

A half-empty glass rests amiably, gently refracting the awful gaze of a dying sun plunging headlong into the depths of a darkened sea splintering its volatile rays into shards of caustic munitions to bombard the sunken skin of a sturdy skeleton grip and exaggerate the amber emptiness staining the smooth hourglass fragility.

A wily grasp is suddenly loosened and hoisted to decant the rigid flow of spirits through pursed lips reeking of cheap cigars and condemnation as an angular clock face depicts the waning of an anonymous evenings indefinability. Stilted pockets of mediocrity shine in full-moon brilliance neath gaping eyes with hollow reflections of the corrosive sieving of accounting sands slighted at an extreme angle to view the smeared black ink splattered across an unfettered horizon with an awkward stare. One single grain of smooth sand slides down the pinched tunnel neck of a shapely timer drifting calmly as a feather fiercely to land atop a towered heap to shake loose its delicate foundations summoning a determined glance from anticipating eyes shuddering in sarcastic relief as the last amber drop breaks and scatters upon a vast, vacant jaw to quench a dying thirst and satisfy a denied desire.

Time is like poison. Once you drink it all, you die.

You’re going up on an escalator that’s also a ladder that’s not moving but is. You’re going up only it’s really Everything moving down to fascilitate Illusion. Who’s fighting with Delusion over who’s got a better head game going. Nobody’s talking but all you can hear is Somebody. Illusion and Delusion both are claiming that one for themselves. Belief laughs, long and deep, from the belly. With a hint of (from?) Malevolence but it might really be Indifference. Everything/you keep(s) moving down/up. You think you might be dizzy, see a light, know where you are, etc…

But Nobody has teamed up with Delusion now to get Belief to convince you that Somebody/Illusion has fed you a bunch of bad acid, but Somebody is adamant that Illusion is Nobody and Delusion is a fucking liar, and you’re not sure if what that means is: all of this is True or: none of this is True or: some of it is true and some of it is false or: what it would mean to accept even meekly any of these options as even remotely possible. You don’t even know if they are options.

Hallucination laughs, short and manically. She’s fucking Belief with a black serrated dildo. Belief is doing something too horrible to see, but you look anyway. Just don’t write it down.

Truth remains awful silent, or Nobody’s talking too loudly for you to hear Her.