James Howe First Prize (2012)

Essay on the New Media (Sort of)

Andy Post

I want a lyric—not just any kind
Of bullshit, but with warm misanthropy;
A lyric in a voice loose and reclined,
But free to study the technology
Of those who, when they, at day’s end, unwind
And set themselves in glowing effigy
They use to chat, play games, to congregate,
To shop, to argue, or to masturbate.

I think I’ll write about the internet
To see if I can’t pick the modern brain
By looking at the ways in which we’re set,
And asking if we must like this remain;
If this was the best future we could net,
Or whether I but vent my ticks in vain:
For instance, if you think my verse too bitter,
I challenge you, produce its like—on Twitter!

Yeah, let’s start with Twitter—where the brain starts
To unravel.  And however Stephen Fry
Defends the realm¹ where Sarah Palin’s brain farts  
And toaster status updates²  greet the curious eye— 
One hundred forty characters?  Here, my brain parts
Ways with writers when good language goes to die
A sickly death of infantile, short digress
Immortalised in the Library of Congress.³ 

Yes, Congress—that same bastard Parliament
With all its famous checks and balances;⁴  
That same exalted living monument
To rubber-stamping what our nation’s balance is
According to the President’s intent
Of re-election; that white marble palace is
Now the symbol of all knowledge men did seek,
And some they didn’t—thanks to your new tweak.

And Canada, don’t think I’ll let you off
Just 'cause you to “Americans” add “North.”⁵  
However much you and the Brits will scoff
At our fat asses, hiding your self-worth,
Look in the mirror—you’ve a feeding trough
As wide as ours.  Don’t act like you go forth
To play outside just like you used to.  Why?
Thank good ol’, Yankee ingenuity!

Look to the laptop screen’s entrancing glow!
Mac, P.C., or Linux—it doesn’t matter
Which brand you have.  All that you need to know
Is when the bells and whistles raise their clatter,
Your brain’s defenses all will start to go
At things you don’t need!  Food that makes you fatter!
“Think” now!——Shall you befriend this Internet…?
Yes!  Now say hi to the friends you’ve never met!

Oh yeah, that shit is ours, we’ll proudly say,
And so what if it’s not?  You dropped the ball,
My friends.  Marketing!  (That’s ours too, by the way …)
And now we’ve got a strangle-hold on all
You guys.  Oh, don’t argue—“dot-C-A”?
Good, now we know who we can safely call
In case we need to store and aim our bombs
’Gainst other lands that can’t afford dot-COMs.⁶ 

I jest, I jest, and I hope that you know it—
I love this northern weather, and then some.
I’m Yankee-born, it’s true, but if I show it,
Don’t think that I’m about this country dumb;
I’m practicing my “Zeds,” and so I’ll throw it
In for camouflage.  But how far have I come?
Well let’s just say, to make short a long story,
I know “Confederation,” “Keith’s,” and “sorry.”

To make the story longer—well it’s true,
I’d started out to write a poem pedantic,
But I’ll not try to save face or save glue
To cover up my bumbling fingers antic—
To make the story longer, long did I view
This country from afar with eyes romantic;
And thought that I might seek this land’s protection
Around the time of Bush’s re-election.

Illegal empire for a legal crown
Is a fair trade, I think, and thought so then.
But how did I know that when I got round
To crossing o’er the border; how thus I kenned,
Without Canadian books in libraries found
(At least in Jersey), that here I’d seek my end?
Well let’s just say I had the company
Of Wikipedia and the CBC.

Well, not the CBC—YouTube for sure.
The news is all you’ll legally export
To liberal Yanks you otherwise would lure
Into this friendliest, healthcare-covered fort.
And so it was that I had to endure
Each episode of Little Mosque in short,
Ten-minute clips.⁷   A nuisance, I assure ya—    
But guess how we get our revenge?  Pandora; 

Pandora, Hulu, Spotify, and shipping
Fees not charged with Amazon Prime.  And neither
Do we let you off with T.V.—there, a whipping
You can get from us each time.  For either
The “actual” U.S. sites are Canada skipping
Over on their bouncers’ lists, or, see, they’re
Screwing over Canadians’ innocent pleasure
To watch poor Kenny meet death at their leisure.⁸

You think I’m but a larger theme o’er-glossing?
Damn right!—Double our tax on each transaction paid?
We’ll raise you passports at the border-crossing!—
We flaunt our strength and numbers, I’m afraid;
The internet’s just one more way of bossing
Those around those who aren’t us—well then, enough said.
So, fuck this—I think I’ll to my theme return
And you can joints, while I shall idols, burn.

O yet once more, my Muse!  Sing——oh, goddammit,
My Google Notifier’s rung its bell again.
Let’s see… bills, hate mail, bigger dick (… I’ll spam it
This time), and uh-oh, e-Bay wants to sell again.——————
Well, what do you expect when moderns ham it
Up, or try to, when that pesky shell again
Of our attention span defeats our aim
Of epic grandeur, in this age of AIM?

Oh, AIM, iChat, Skype, Facebook, Twitter—all
These social media have their use, you’ll say.
And I agree!  If it’s friends you want to call
Or say hello, then throw your phone away!
In fact, why bother to go out at all?
Cut off your legs, too!  For on your throne you’ll stay
And talk to all your friends!  And talk with pride—
And marvel that you never go outside!

And, when you actually do log on to chat
(Before your breakfast), you’ll never’ve been so
Free from all the rules of sentence structure—That
Shit, once online, will go right out the window.
For anything the ruling proletariat
Thinks is elitist, typing mobs have deemed so.
Such is the trade-off, friends, when we live at the Dawn
Of Information’s age, and the emoticon.

For now the happy- and the frowny-face
League with “ROFL”s and “TMI”
In order to full sentences erase,
And stunt complete thought.  Still, a throwback, I
Just give the middle finger to the pace
My peers have set for language’s decline;
In which all comment on just how well you speak
The latest version of George Orwell’s Newspeak.

So much for that idea.  Except, of course,
That old-school media’s still got to have a show, man!
Now, CNN and YouTube both will force
Our candidates for President to have a snowman
Ask them questions.⁹   And these tours-de-force   
Of advertising clusterfucks now will leave no man
With peace of mind to cry out “Hold!” or “Mercy!”
Because at least they’ll teach the controversy!

What, you want fresh supplies of cold, hard fact
In Information’s Age?  To Wikipedia!
And see there all the knowledge that you’ve lacked—
Absorb it quick!  And forget it even speedier…
Unless you quickly edit!—Then an impact
You’ll have made on this new, open media!
For there shall rest your crown of laurels.  Pluck it,
Thou worthy scribe, and thou drop in the bucket!

It’s true that social revolution now
Is more enabled than it was before
By Twitter and whichever gold cash cow
Will move us faster from the sloth of yore—
But when the Spring is over, then what?  How
Can tweets stop when today it is a chore
To write a letter?  Isn’t typing cleaner
Than inking out “I Love Y…”—Look, Anthony’s wiener!

Well, tempting as it is, let’s leave aside
The Congressman’s Grade-A, American man-meat¹⁰ 
And let’s just see if we can’t all decide
If other websites serving all-that-you-can-eat
Skating cats, bad singers, people who confide
Unto a webcam—oh and somebody’s pants-seat
Ripped at their wedding;—let’s all see if “You”-Tube
Is worth—wait, “Coke & Mentos Bombs with Lube”?

Oh dear, I spoke too soon.  I guess I would’ve
Done this sooner or else later—Although
It’s true that cameras have their use.  I could’ve
Written all about my webcam interview
For university.  But then, maybe “should’ve”
Is unheard of when Time’s Man-of-the-Year is “You.”¹¹   
Well, let’s just hope no one’s enough a sucker
To make TV based on YouTu…¹² ——MOTHERFUCKER!!!   

I’m sensing that my song now nears its end,
So I’ll leave you with these words inspiration:
On Facebook, just how much do you pretend
To intimately know folks in every nation?
Among your thousands, is there not one one friend
With whom you actually have real conversation?
But, before I leave, from Avenue Q
I’ll take my last theme, porn¹³,  then bid adieu.  

And not just any porn—no low themes I—
Not with this golden opportunity
To shit on what so many brains does fry,
Thanks to Japan’s state of futurity;
Of anime I sing not, but hentai—
And not just any of that variety,
But epic sci-fi shit, with demon pentacles!
With laboratories! Lotharios! and tentacles!

For there, blonde, wide-eyed, buxom-bosomed mistresses
Of martial arts will somehow always find
Themselves in situations where distresses is
A thing long-planned by men of monstrous minds,
With monstrous frames to boot, and monstrous penises;
Who, of torture known to man, have every kind
For use on women¹⁴ —And you ask why today 
We sell both women’s lib, and pepper spray?

So go forth, “friends”; eat, drink, and be ye merry,
Though you might suffer cardiac arrest.
Not right away of course—after that very
Important entry for that essay contest
You heard about online; once all the hairy
Bits are gone, then keel before your screen, and rest—
But know, you’ll live! (when from this life you’re freed)
Through friends, through family, and your Twitter feed.

Now, if my words offend your taste so fine
With my profanity (my “fucks” and “shits”),
I challenge you to look this up online;
See for yourself how fucking easy it’s
Become to earn fame from far worse art than mine.
Reality’s been my theme—that I insist.
And now, you—“You”—decide if what I’ve writ
A piece of art is, or a piece of shit.

Notes to “Essay on the New Media (Sort of)”:

1. The actor Stephen Fry is a well-known enthusiast and advocate for almost any new sort of popular technology, and has been informally dubbed “the King of Twitter.” 
2. There is actually a man whose Twitter feed is entirely dedicated to the activity of his toaster.  Examples of such riveting updates include “Toast is in” and “Toast is done.”
3. As of March 2006, every single tweet ever made has been entered into the Library of Congress.
4. The framers of the American Constitution took the idea of the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) from the Baron de Montesquieu’s political treatise, The Spirit of Laws.  However, Montesquieu’s celebration of this so-called “separation of powers” was based on his misunderstanding of what he observed in the proceedings of the British Parliament.
5. I assure you that very few Americans who either don’t know Spanish, or who are not university professors, ever make any reference to “North Americans” when discussing what is essentially a shared culture between the U.S. and Canada.
6. Aside from the fact that the Canadian Shield was a thing very handy in terms of Cold War geopolitics, I would remind any perturbed Canadian readers that very few American websites use the domain name of “.us”. 
7. “Ten minute clips” – i.e., on YouTube; I refer to programming which every Canadian takes for granted, but which for some stupid reason is blocked to internet users in the United States.
8. In case there’s any confusion, I here refer to those websites which every American takes for granted, but which for some stupid reason are blocked to internet users in Canada.
9. This actually happened during the CNN/YouTube debate held during the Republican Party primaries of 2008.  Mitt Romney then proceeded to make an ass of himself, declaring it was beneath the dignity of a candidate for president to have to answer a question asked by a snowman, even if the question was one about global warming.
10. Google “Congressman Anthony Wiener Twitter.”  Go ahead, I’ll wait.
11. In case we have all forgotten (why we would have forgotten is beyond me), “You” were Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2007.  Readers may also remember that this was a last-ditch replacement to cover up the fact that the magazine was originally planning to give the award to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, based on his influence on world affairs.
12. I direct your attention to “Tosh.0,” a show with no redeeming cultural value whatsoever.
13. I refer my readers’ to the hit song from Avenue Q, “The Internet Is For Porn,” a number with which I think my entire generation is intimately familiar.
14. If you have any friends whom you have to ask whether or not they’ve seen this shit, I guarantee you the answer is “yes.”