When I'm on a long drive, I get annoyed by traffic, by the stupid decisions of fellow drivers that slow me down, that add more time to my trip. I hate slow drivers in the left lane, I hate people who pull in front of semis, forcing them to hit the brakes. I hate tailgaters, I hate high-beamers, I hate drivers who don't signal, and drivers who try to speed up and not let me in when I am signaling. I hate people who drive for miles with their turn signal on. And so on and so forth.
But what really makes me crazy is losing 30 minutes of my life to a rubbernecking traffic jam. I hate slamming the brakes to drop from 65 mph to a crawl for a mile or two, only to finally find that the cause of the jam is a car on the side of the road with a bit of smoke coming out of it, or 2 or 3 cars with some dents and people standing around. The jam is caused (or perpetuated) because every damn idiot in front of me has to get their 3-second gawk in as they drive by, before accelerating back to highway speeds on the empty road ahead of them. By the time I'm finally past the car crash, I'm ranting and snarling, full of hate for all the drooling idiots in front of me who just had to watch, just had to get their jollies from a bit of smoke coming off of a car, or a bashed bumper.
I don't care that all these people are apparently fascinated by car crashes, I just care that their indulgence impacts me and my plans. I care that these mindless droolers are blocking me from getting where I'm trying to go. I've fantasized about creating a car crash channel, with amateur videos of smoking cars on the side of the road, and people waiting for 30 minutes for the cops to show up, long boring shots of damaged cars on the side of the road for all these freaks to watch and masturbate over (or whatever itch it is that this scratches) for as long as they want, in the comfort of their homes, and not in my way on the highway. I've invented giant privacy screens, to be erected immediately after a car overheats, blocking the view of potential rubberneckers and protecting the flow of traffic. I've thought of pulling over and getting out of the car and yelling at the rubberneckers to "Just go! Stop gawking! It's just some fing smoke! Drive!" for awhile, just to get it out of my system.
I hate rubberneckers. And yet I understand the visceral pull of the car crash scenes. I do my best to stay eyes forward and drive through when it comes my turn, but it is tempting to snag those 3 seconds of staring for myself. It is human nature. I did once have the pleasure of watching an overheated car go from smoke to flames to exploding tires to fire engines, and it was excellent. I also have experienced the sick electric thrill of driving past serious accidents when I lived in Ecuador. Everyone in the bus would surge suddenly to the windows on one side, and stare at broken glass and smashed cars, bleeding people staggering around and lying on the ground. I saw a car hit a cow at about 30mph, it rolled over the hood and smashed the windshield with a sickening wet crump. I didn't stay for the aftermath.
The car crash thrill is atavistic. And it permeates our news. And our politics. Moreso now, for various reasons, including the internet. I watch the stories I follow, the news links I click on, and I've got a strong car-crash lust. Terrorist attacks, rape, violence, atrocities, brutality, vengeance, deceit, abuse, injustice, serial killers and so on - I'm more likely to click on that, then a story about how the local county council approved creating a new park, or balanced their budget, or launched a new beautification project.
And I know that I'm helping to create the news, to shape the media narrative, with each click - that's ad revenue. When I click on a story about the latest Palin outrage, I'm supporting stories about Palin - that's my 3 seconds. Same goes for Tea Party stories, partisan battles, hot lost white girls, and so on - each story I click on, reinforces the importance of that narrative, and increases the likelihood that others will see that story, and so on. It's a trivial act, but all those 3 seconds add up, when you get enough people in play, eg an internet's worth of people. And those choices create the narratives of the world we live in. We're fish swimming in a sea of our own drool. Amplified of course by a massive high-tech industry of marketing and the sophisticated targeting tools provided by internet-based databases and tracking.
The core human currency is attention. Money, success, power, resources all pivot on the axis of attention. The more people you have paying attention to you, the richer you are, in the attention economy. That's why we have so many twisted freaks wandering around in our media reality, the Glen Becks and so on. "Give me a lever and I can move the world", said Archimedes, and now that lever is audience, and the fulcrum is attention.
Naturally, the Tucson shooting has me thinking more seriously about this. In the wake of President Obama's speech, I have noticed a change in the narrative at the Washington Post and the NYT - they could have milked this conflict for another week, but instead they seem to be choosing more balanced and less provocative stories. I'm also paying more attention to the stories that I click on, the narratives I choose to reward. There are still plenty of teasers out there, and I know that my 3 seconds doesn't count for much, but it does count for something.
I find myself deliberately avoiding car crash narratives because I don't want to reward them. I can pick at Palin and Beck and O'Reilly stories like scabs for as long as I want, but I'm just going to make them bigger. I know it's in my nature to be fascinated by the gore and viciousness, to have my sense of outrage and indignity stroked and aroused, but it's the same sh*t I've seen a thousand times before, and my watching it isn't going to improve things, it's going to reward bad behavior by bad actors, who are using on controversy and outrage to make their millions.
It's hard, but I'm going to do my best to drive by, and stay focussed on where I'm going.