a painful 3 billion $ answer, or: Utoya, Aurora, Batman

it's weird days. for the comic site i freelance for, i put a feature for the batman film together earlier this week, and we had also had a special giveaway upcoming in a sunday newspaper with priginal sketches of Catwoman and Batman. and it was just when i wanted to announce that again on friday that the horrible news of the Batman film amok run came through as breaking news. it shocked me, and made me think of how i went to see that superhero film in April, Avengers. to imagine to go to the cinema and then fiction turns reality. scary.

i just couldn’t post any comic promo twitter / facebook message then, it would have felt wrong. instead, i put up a note with a wish that Batman was real and would have been there to protect people. and all the others, too - there are hundreds and thousands people dying violently or in tragedies every day, and most of them just go unnoticed to the larger world. in the evening, it was the main news in all TV-stations and online news channels.

and yesterday, it went on, with more details: what the attacker said / wrote / had done, down to messages in the web. and it left me wondering if this isn't exatly what he wanted. that the world spins around him for days and weeks, that his life is in focus, all his sick actions and thoughts of sudden major importance. a celebrity of the dark kind, leaving everyone questioning his motives, and the media acting as it was a passive bystander, not a possible key to such dramas, for the uncomfortable truth is: tv stations and magazines and newspapers - despite all the worry and disgust they express - of course are profiting from dramas like this.

in a painful way, it's the logic of our modern times and the information system, that bad news are good news for news companies. and so even here in Germany, it was not only the main news, but the 24-hour breaking news, and in all online news sites and with ongoing tv coverage.

which is media overhype, when you think of the geographical distance, and think of all the other vast dramas happening. then, in today's Sunday newspaper, in an irony of time, there is a double page about the amok run in Utoya, Sweden from a year ago. again, with the image of the killer, who by now everyone knows by name, and whose pamphlet of a better world, just as his motives and actions and whole life has been discussed in thousands of articles, in a worldwide ongoing media coverage that always seems to focus more on the killer than on the victims, and that - if you tried for it in advertising or PR, would be worth billions and billions.

which probably is the answer to the question that is brought up from reporters from the moment the first breaking news spreads: "What's the motive?" - it's a sick chance to turn into a worldwide dark breaking news, and if you survive, you even get an additional stage in the jury and thousands of news articles, and can attach your name to a film, a place, an island, and be part of life of all the families who suffered there, and all the news articles about it, forevermore.

subversive indie games

while preparing the next daily s-press feature (which is now up: "first issue: #3" - a new e-journal), i came across this rather different game page link. and couldn't resist to try it. here it is: Molleindustria

the "about" of this game page: "Molleindustria aims to reappropriate video games as a popular form of mass communication. Our objective is to investigate the persuasive potentials of the medium by subverting mainstream video gaming clichè (and possibly have fun in the process)."

weekend reads: asemics & politics & media & sexism & more

some weekend reads and links of this week. i can happily blame the moon for the range of themes. this morning, my horoscope announced: "Valid during many months: This influence will bring idealistic, spiritual and philosophical issues to the fore in your life. You will become concerned with the meaning of the world, and you will find new ways of investigating it."

so here goes. new ways, meaning, and all. the photo above is from the frankfurt book fair, china pavillon. such beautiful books, from a country that restricts freedom of speech.

new words... foffof - the journal of asemic writing: diagrams, no question, time piece and other wordless multilingual writing

layouts.. after working on layouts for a new website this week, i found this article interesting: On getting your name out there , which includes a link to "How to Change the World"...

media... Gratuitous: How Sexism Threatens to Undermine the Internet - which includes some interesting questions and notes: "Is a personal blog a public or a private communication? Is it meant for mass consumption by thousands or millions of people? Not typically, and yet it can be read, theoretically, by billions. This blurring of the two types of media is so difficult to grasp that it’s produced its own near-ubiquitous straw man argument, which blogger Jason Kottke calls “the breakfast question.” It comes up whenever anyone writes about social media: “Why would I care what you ate for breakfast that morning?” Shirky’s rebuttal to this is succinct: “It’s simple. They’re not talking to you. We misread these seemingly inane posts because we’re so unused to seeing written material in public that isn’t intended for us."

on the note of gender: ...Literature’s Gender Divide: Numbers About Old-Fashioned, Boring, Outrageous Sexism. following the theme, interesting to visit this year's nobel prize gender divide.

politics... a statistic of a different kind: geography of a recession. connected to that, i came across a general country forecast from a Harvard prof in one of the major german news magazines: "USA: Eine Gesellschaft zerfällt / USA: A Society Crumbles". strangely, or maybe not so strangely, no english version available. here's a rough translation of a key paragraph: "Today, America represents the paradox of a rich country, which crumbles, because its inner values disintegrate. The American productivity ranks among the highest in the world. The national average income per head is with approximately 46,000 dollar - enough to live on it. The country is troubled nevertheless by an ugly moral crisis. .. And what happens in America will probably be repeated in other places."

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on burning holy books, or: how to create a media buzz.

referring to the post below -- i just saw on the CNN webpage that there now is a Press Review up "Who will stop 'crazy' Quran-burning priest?" (link)

as noted below, the church has a sign up with the mission statement: "Dove World Outreach Center". reading this now again, it's hard to escape the fact that they for sure found a way to provoke huge media coverage for his statements, and ways to "reach out" into the world. as CNN states in the Press Review: "Newspapers from the town at the center of the Florida Quran-burning controversy and across the Muslim world have expressed outrage over a church's plan to set fire to copies of the Muslim holy book on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks."

we are talking about 1 person here, and about an event that hasn't even happened. the focus of the discussion is: "Many papers question why U.S. authorities are powerless to prevent burning". my question would be: why give such huge coverage to statements / an event that probably would have gone unnoticed without the coverage, and that sparks angry protests now across the world, which again gives more attention? this church managed to set a whole media machine in motion and the coverage they receive is "priceless" in a very disturbing way.

i guess i will write a letter to CNN. see if they answer.

okay. letter is sent. the CNN online contact page is: link.

on burning holy books. "C'Mon People Now."

big thanks to onemoreoption for typing these thoughts out.

"I didn’t want to write about this topic today.

Like anyone else, I have so many better things to do than to make a public declaration opposing the actions of a few American fools. But there are times when people should express their opposition publicly and in writing.

As you’ve probably heard, there’s a pastor in Florida who thinks he’s sending an important message by planning to burn a Qur’an on September 11th.

If the best response you can think of to oppose another group’s ideology is to burn their sacred books, their philosophical writings, their flags or symbols, or images of their leaders, let’s be clear: You’re an intellectual infant.

Terry Jones leads a church of a few dozen members. Here is the cross on the front of his church: .."

here's the link to the full post: C'Mon People Now.

i just hope someone manages to convince Jones to give up his plans. and i still am amazed by the sign on Jones's church: "Dove World Outreach Center", of all mission statements. i first read it as: "World Outrage Center", though.
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