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| Has every conversation in history been just a series of meaningless beeps? | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| It's a fact of modern life that any human aspiration – from dropping a dress size to preventing your own suicide – will spawn a series of how-to books devoted to it. Most of the time, the guidance within could be summed up in one paragraph, but since no one would pay £12.99 for advice you could blurt in its entirety during the instrumental intro to Waterloo by Abba, it instead has to be sprinkled cautiously across several hundred pages of escalating bibble disguised as an easy-to-follow magic formula. | It's a fact of modern life that any human aspiration – from dropping a dress size to preventing your own suicide – will spawn a series of how-to books devoted to it. Most of the time, the guidance within could be summed up in one paragraph, but since no one would pay £12.99 for advice you could blurt in its entirety during the instrumental intro to Waterloo by Abba, it instead has to be sprinkled cautiously across several hundred pages of escalating bibble disguised as an easy-to-follow magic formula. |
| Screenwriting bibles are a prime example. All this stuff about myths and heroes and inciting incidents can be fascinating from a detached, diagnostic perspective, but ultimately it's a bit like a thesis explaining why Yellow Submarine is a catchy tune: analyse the components all you like, but you'll never actually become a musician unless you close the book and start mucking about on the guitar. | Screenwriting bibles are a prime example. All this stuff about myths and heroes and inciting incidents can be fascinating from a detached, diagnostic perspective, but ultimately it's a bit like a thesis explaining why Yellow Submarine is a catchy tune: analyse the components all you like, but you'll never actually become a musician unless you close the book and start mucking about on the guitar. |
| The best practical advice often comes in the form of throwaway observations. For instance, one of the handiest screenwriting tips I've ever encountered is a quote from Russell T Davies in a book about the making of Doctor Who. | The best practical advice often comes in the form of throwaway observations. For instance, one of the handiest screenwriting tips I've ever encountered is a quote from Russell T Davies in a book about the making of Doctor Who. |
| "Dialogue is just two monologues clashing," he said. "That's my Big Theory. It's true in life – never mind drama. Everyone is always, always thinking about themselves. It's kind of impossible to do otherwise." | "Dialogue is just two monologues clashing," he said. "That's my Big Theory. It's true in life – never mind drama. Everyone is always, always thinking about themselves. It's kind of impossible to do otherwise." |
| It's good advice because it feels right: the reason a lot of soap opera dialogue is unrealistic is that, unlike real people, the characters actually listen to each other. You'd think this would make Albert Square more harmonious, but of course it has the opposite effect, thanks to their other glaringly implausible habit of expressing their innermost emotions out loud, instead of anxiously suppressing them like any self-respecting human wreck. | It's good advice because it feels right: the reason a lot of soap opera dialogue is unrealistic is that, unlike real people, the characters actually listen to each other. You'd think this would make Albert Square more harmonious, but of course it has the opposite effect, thanks to their other glaringly implausible habit of expressing their innermost emotions out loud, instead of anxiously suppressing them like any self-respecting human wreck. |
| The internet is a bit like a soap opera, in that the dialogue often seems phoney. As a human, you know this. You know a lot of that squabbling and babbling just doesn't ring true. No species that angry could have survived the invention of fists. Online, even a whimsical chit-chat about the cutest part of a kitten can rapidly descend into a bitterly entrenched civil war that tears families apart, with brother turning on brother while their mother looks on, weeping. Resolving Palestine looks like a piece of piss by comparison. | The internet is a bit like a soap opera, in that the dialogue often seems phoney. As a human, you know this. You know a lot of that squabbling and babbling just doesn't ring true. No species that angry could have survived the invention of fists. Online, even a whimsical chit-chat about the cutest part of a kitten can rapidly descend into a bitterly entrenched civil war that tears families apart, with brother turning on brother while their mother looks on, weeping. Resolving Palestine looks like a piece of piss by comparison. |
| I used to worry that computers were to blame: that modern connectivity was steadily turning all of us into a bunch of fake, shrieking character actors. Pick an avatar, cultivate a "personality" that doesn't quite represent your actual personality, and shit out an endless string of entertaining brain turds for the crowd. | I used to worry that computers were to blame: that modern connectivity was steadily turning all of us into a bunch of fake, shrieking character actors. Pick an avatar, cultivate a "personality" that doesn't quite represent your actual personality, and shit out an endless string of entertaining brain turds for the crowd. |
| But pretending to be something you're not isn't new. Nor is conforming to expectations, or showing off for attention. So after literally minutes of fuggy medium-wattage thought I've decided the problem isn't technology, but us. Bloody us again. Davies was on to something: ninety-nine per cent of all human discourse since the beginning of time has been little more than a series of clashing monologues. The internet simply allows more of those monologues to clash at once. | But pretending to be something you're not isn't new. Nor is conforming to expectations, or showing off for attention. So after literally minutes of fuggy medium-wattage thought I've decided the problem isn't technology, but us. Bloody us again. Davies was on to something: ninety-nine per cent of all human discourse since the beginning of time has been little more than a series of clashing monologues. The internet simply allows more of those monologues to clash at once. |
| If you think that's depressing, consider this: almost every monologue consists of nothing but the words PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE, repeated over and over again, in disguise. There has never been a single tweet that couldn't be replaced with PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE. But then, it's hard to think of a single human utterance outside of Twitter that couldn't be replaced with PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE either. That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind, you say? Yeah, right. PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE. | If you think that's depressing, consider this: almost every monologue consists of nothing but the words PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE, repeated over and over again, in disguise. There has never been a single tweet that couldn't be replaced with PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE. But then, it's hard to think of a single human utterance outside of Twitter that couldn't be replaced with PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE either. That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind, you say? Yeah, right. PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE. |
| If you could zoom out beyond the moon, beyond time itself, and picture the entirety of humankind since its creation to its eventual end, and somethow witness it repeatedly pinging the phrase PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE back and forth between itself, we'd probably resemble a squirming galaxy of bees endlessly performing needy little waggle dances in front of each other, minus the useful pollen co-ordinates. | If you could zoom out beyond the moon, beyond time itself, and picture the entirety of humankind since its creation to its eventual end, and somethow witness it repeatedly pinging the phrase PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE back and forth between itself, we'd probably resemble a squirming galaxy of bees endlessly performing needy little waggle dances in front of each other, minus the useful pollen co-ordinates. |
| Perhaps that's a clue to the next stage of our evolution. We've already boiled communication down to acronyms, emoticons and shrtnd sntnces, all of which are simply more efficient ways of transmitting the PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE signal from the fragile core of our souls out into the wider world. Maybe the next stage is to reduce it all down to a single noise. I'd favour a short, electronic beep, not unlike the noise emitted each time Pac-Man eats a dot. Instead of having to think of an amusing Facebook update to impress your friends, each of whom is so consumed with agonising over their own update they're only pretending to pay attention anyway, you simply push a button and transmit a little beep. Said beep is then automatically intercepted by your friends' software, which broadcasts a brief "acknowledgement" sound effect in response. So all "conversations" would effectively run like this (I'll translate as we go along): | Perhaps that's a clue to the next stage of our evolution. We've already boiled communication down to acronyms, emoticons and shrtnd sntnces, all of which are simply more efficient ways of transmitting the PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE signal from the fragile core of our souls out into the wider world. Maybe the next stage is to reduce it all down to a single noise. I'd favour a short, electronic beep, not unlike the noise emitted each time Pac-Man eats a dot. Instead of having to think of an amusing Facebook update to impress your friends, each of whom is so consumed with agonising over their own update they're only pretending to pay attention anyway, you simply push a button and transmit a little beep. Said beep is then automatically intercepted by your friends' software, which broadcasts a brief "acknowledgement" sound effect in response. So all "conversations" would effectively run like this (I'll translate as we go along): |
| You: Beep ("PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE.") | You: Beep ("PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE.") |
| Them: Bip-bip ("EXISTENCE AUTHENTICATED. PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE.") | Them: Bip-bip ("EXISTENCE AUTHENTICATED. PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE.") |
| You: Beeeeep ("EXISTENCE AUTHENTICATED. DISCOURSE ENDS.") | You: Beeeeep ("EXISTENCE AUTHENTICATED. DISCOURSE ENDS.") |
| Now that might seem robotic. Inhuman, even. But it's polite, and it frees up your brain for more important tasks, such as curing disease or baking brownies. So don't fear this inevitablefuture, but embrace it. | Now that might seem robotic. Inhuman, even. But it's polite, and it frees up your brain for more important tasks, such as curing disease or baking brownies. So don't fear this inevitablefuture, but embrace it. |
| Beeep. Existence authenticated. Discourse ends. | Beeep. Existence authenticated. Discourse ends. |