alt Hacker NewsThis is the story of how one user spent too much time writing why he became disenchanted with Adam Curtis, how he had been a longtime fan. But eventually he saw through the same smoke and mirrors. He learned to see it all as uncharitable nonsense to convince others that technocracy is unassailable. He thought the parody was funny.
But this was a fantasy.
(Curtis's entire ouevre can be summarized in 18 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YSwCJIpSXQ )
Replies
I have seen these parodies before, and while they are accurate in style, they seem to misunderstand or misrepresent Curtis' message. A message which is not that hard to understand, except that it falls comfortably outside of the Overton window:
"Driven by the seductive post-war fantasy that human beings and nature are self-regulating machines -- a cybernetic delusion shared equally by California tech-utopians, holistic ecologists, and free-market economists -- we willingly surrendered political power and moral responsibility to automated, network-driven systems, only to find ourselves trapped in a static, dehumanizing loop that cannot envision an alternative future and leaves the existing, unaccountable hierarchies of power completely intact."
That's a good parody.
I like the Curtis stuff because it hits like old internet-core. It is entertainment that makes you think, but entertainment. Otherwise it would have been written work. But damn the guy can weave a story with some old videos and a soundtrack. As a genre, it's extremely approachable to make your own.
Sometimes it seems like shorts and tiktoks are like a bad Adam Curtis film. 30s highlights stitched together with no relation, garing transitions, ads.
Maybe I can put together a greasemonkey script to make YT shorts Adam Curtis themed. Maybe I won't feel as guilty, maybe it will all make sense.