THE NEW DARK AGE/ A WALTZ WITH SOCIAL MEDIA by ROCCO SCIBETTA

In the years following 476 A.D., various Germanic peoples conquered the former Roman Empire in the West (including Europe and North Africa), shoving aside ancient Roman traditions in favor of their own. The negative view of the so-called “Dark Ages” became popular largely because most of the written records of the time (including St. Jerome and St. Patrick in the fifth century, Gregory of Tours in the sixth and Bede in the eighth) had a strong Rome-centric bias.

While it’s true that such innovations as Roman concrete were lost, and the literacy rate was not as high in the Early Middle Ages as in ancient Rome, the idea of the so-called “Dark Ages” came from Renaissance scholars like Petrarch, who viewed ancient Greece and Rome as the pinnacle of human achievement. Accordingly, they dismissed the era that followed as a dark and chaotic time in which no great leaders emerged, no scientific accomplishments were made and no great art was produced.

For clarity, let us start from a very basic beginning of the introduction.

 My government name is Rocco Scibetta, a group of letters unique in such a way that they identify me.

 Hi, how are you? This is a common introduction. Old-fashioned niceties like this are designed to pull people together who do not know each other very well, it establishes a familiar rapport. These days, however, the days of social media, no one is really looking for unique bonding phrases; Speed, brevity, and destination make for quick exchange of thoughts and ideas, with senseless chatter sometimes expelled as the flotsam by-product of a dull day. That being said, You would be best entertained and informed by my media name Rocco Bonfire, the pseudonym that graces the pages of my blogs and media pages, and my alter Ego as well.

As Rocco Bonfire, I can be the Artist I want to be, the writer I want to be or an anonymous monster raging from the slab with no substantial equality what so ever; so long as I get likes and followers I exist. All need be is to satisfy a group of readers whose cultural aspirations and spiritual needs correspond with my own, together with our community shares particular suitability.

As advanced as our new technology brings us. I would like to go back as far as I can to ancient myth to try and find a common thread that might link us at least psychologically to a common ground that could unite us in our thinking.

 Let us imagine for a moment that we are not on an information highway at all, but a man-made ship. One designed to bring us into unchartered places. I am referring of course to the odyssey. The best seller by Homer; With Gods and hero drooping in their seats looking on from Mount Olympus, let's make that our spiritual quest.

Let’s jump back and forth between Genres for a few centuries; Timelines not being a hindrance. allow me for a moment to blur the literary lines once more and allude to Gothic literature where The old and familiar tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. hyde could be demonstrated as our modern-day schizophrenic ailment. Not quite as brutal as it sounds we are closer to the myths and rituals than we think.

I like to compare my odyssey landing as a whimsical vacation on the shores of the social media landscape. if you will indulge me, I like to think of my Jekyll and Hyde undertaking as a personal ego trip.  These specific references of Gothic literature and anci
ent myth still continue to hold their own as both an archetypal example of Gothic literature as well as an ancient sea mariners tale. They set the stage for an excellent example of humankind’s yin and yang of psychological and spiritual balances.

I am In the Government issue form  (Rocco Scibetta; a contemporary artist and an author. My blessing is that through experience, much failure, human contact, and social media  I have met some very wise people. My Curse, however, is that I have forgotten many things over the years that some of my younger contemporaries have yet to learn; frustrating yes, however, the blessing that keeps on giving is that I have managed to linger on long enough to experience The worldwide web-WWW… cyberspace never forgets anything. You can always look it up.

Proving and disproving, arguing and discovering is much easier when fact gathering is at your fingertips. I doubt if Guttenberg could have imagined this magical leap for humankind.  How every word ever 4+ written could be stored and transmitted through a thread thinner than a hair.

So what is it we do as exactly? How is our human privilege serving us and humankind? How is it we can be one step closer to the Gods and half a step away from the dark ages? We live in great and fantastic times, no doubt about that. There is global wealth, and transparency to some degree; extended mortality and anesthesia to name a few of our comforting achievements- not to mention some great things we have become jaded to for so long that we take it all for granted.

 That being said, the bastard child known as social media is spinning its web across the air-ways and cyber-ways of our tiny planet, a world that is made smaller every day due to the exchange of ideas and commentary available on your blue screen. But more so,  what I  referred to a “Bastard child” Is in effect the emergence of telecommunication and the internet; the timely attachment to the very fiber of what makes us human, the extraordinary leap from a  service provided to becoming an evolutionary-part of our fiber … our egos demanded it.  Dr. Jeykill needed to explore it; Hyde needs to exploit it.

 The essence of social media is revealed, by its form and content, mediated by human communication, language and time. It might be easier to compare it to what it is not. It is not a television. It is not scheduled programing. It is not a phone, but it is a telecommunication device. It is not a letter per se but it is a type of mail service. It was born from a need to communicate more quickly building on the overload of new information dispersed amongst an impatient and changing generation.

 A new ritual springs forth; a new form within an already existing family. There are no head journalists or anchor people, no newsrooms and on the spot reporters. We the people are the judge and jury. Our new group of readers is a large one- the largest in history. Our members not always very well educated, the problem with this being inequality. The larger the numbers grow the more progressively less educated everyone becomes. Due in part to the process that there is always something hidden.No one fully understands how all this works,  the issues cloud, creating an electronic tower of babble, to say the least… but you can still find some great sales at expensive stores if you are diligent enough to read between the lines and follow coupon ads. Pop up ads, by the way, are a great distraction from the missing links.

The age-old axioms of warnings that were prevalent in Homers time were information passed down; wisdom bestowed on the fledglings so they might avoid the pitfalls. At one point in their evolution, they became synonymous with bumper-stickers on psychedelic Volkswagons warning people not to trust anyone over thirty. Or “make love, not war.” The form and content changing to the needs of the cultural timeline. Proverbs of simple wisdom have become media memes taking their cues from those old Volkswagon bumpers- stickers and protest signs thus replacing  Poor Richards Almanac.

However traditional truisms come from a humble place in history brought on by experience usually by an elder who was deemed respected by the tribe.   The young ones could always benefit from their “elders and betters” was the discipline. Wisdom was sought after and revered, so it was since Solomon.   What changed?   The prodigy of the future does not have to have to be wiser, smarter or quicker at the shoot than their elders, they just have to believe they are. With the help of social media always on the cusp to supply cutting subjective symbolism quicker and faster. The Volkswagen philosophers are replaced by social media memes.

“ Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see”-is  a warning against over-reliance on one's own experience, recorded from the mid-19th century; a related Middle English saying warns that you should not believe everything that is said or that you hear, and a letter of the late 18th century has; ‘You must not take everything to be true that is told to you.’ However, like so many other prophetic sayings, this too has landed into the annals of obscurity. In a card game with lepers, the one with the most fingers wins. Not quite an anecdote worthy of   Erasmus but pretty damn close. Erasmus did say by the way, and I quote; “Your library is your paradise.”  He would have done quite well these days on social media, and the worldwide web with that thinking.

As we slowly become Igor, to social media’s technological mad genius legions of IT  people are changing our lives every day by upgrading and replacing. In some cases almost in an organic way, technology mimics our own evolution pattern. Old outdated programs are weeded out and quickly replaced by the newer faster or better-performing ones - ( survival of the fittest and (fastest)in the digital market place). We seldom shed a tear for these extinct programs because we still regard them only as extensions of our selves, improving our social lives; serving us, making our lives simpler less complicated. In some cases an accessory, like a watch or a pen.

however,  Weare evolving also, becoming a passive participant to social medias body or should I say brain. Clutching to the only vestiges that separate us, a nervous system and a human mind; hardwired for emotion.

 And of course, a soul to mourn with. So long as we don’t become extinct as a species.

What makes it tick?

What is the hidden thing?

To begin with:

The emptying of symbolic value from the Written word creates a whole new language in which everyone has a voice and opinion, however, a friend to everyone is a friend to none and soon enemies will be made.

 As the media must stay forever young; it’s equivalent of aging is the dreaded code embedded into its hard drive. The kiss of death is  Obsolescence. The Grimm Reaper for outmoded software looks probably more like the silver surfer than our traditional hooded sackcloth and cycle.

 Symbols create mythology and rituals. Art is the human spirit acting as the great Ad Man. Through social media everything is for sale or trade; your hopes, dreams ideologies, vacation plans religion, culture, online degrees you name it. “Step right up “ cries the barker.  We have all the information with no clear theory. We will take your sovereignty of reason, your prime ideas, somehow bypassing fact and move into the direction of realism. Everyone can create their own propaganda information board. Create art. What is Missing?  Singer-songwriter Tom Waits recorded it this way;

               Step right up, step right up, step right up,

Everyone's a winner, bargains galore

That's right, you too can be the proud owner

Of the quality goes in before the name goes on

One-tenth of a dollar, one-tenth of a dollar, we got service after-sales

Do you need perfume? we got perfume, how 'bout an engagement ring?

Something for the little lady, something for the little lady,

Something for the little lady, hmm

Three for a dollar

We got a year-end clearance, we got a white sale

And a smoke-damaged furniture, you can drive it away today

Act now, act now, and receive as our gift, our gift to you

They come in all colors, one size fits all

Excerpt from  “STEP RIGHT UP”

Tom Waits

What is missing is the thing.

The object.

While social media is objectifying the information, no one is noticing there is no object.

Let's compare art for a moment before it had its symbolic bowls slashed open spilling its content onto a large canvas in Jackson Pollock’s Long Island studio.

We have an increasingly complex social order. with art slowly evaporating, what is this invisible thing that is going to save us? It is us. The thing that can save us; is-us and the thing that can lead us down the path of mediocrity is us.

 Once again the fight for individuality will lead us into alienation. You can comment on twitter, but you cannot tweet a manifesto You can create a blog then stand inline.

The same algorithms’ that dispense order leave you waiting online with a cell phone in your hand.

Here is a crude example from an artists point of view.

I send you a fax or xerox copy of a car with all the information about it. You do not have a car in front of you, -you have only the information about the car. Based on the information I give you -you can conjure up anything you want about that car. With the gestalt of abstract thinking, you can let your imagination create a whole parking lot of cars.

Imagination is fun but made possible in most cases by information.

I choose for my example Van Gogh’s (empty chair) paintings. in which two quite ordinary chairs fill a space in a still life with no significant meaning of what’s-so-ever. Empty chairs had a very personal significance for van Gogh, who appears to have associated objects strongly with people. Van Gogh personifies the chairs into representations of the men themselves. Vincent's Chair is a daytime painting, with a golden wood chair reflecting golden yellow sunlight. The angles are sharp and precise; the colors are limited. The tone of this painting is somber with yellow, tan, and orange highlights. The only change in color is a green door to the right of the chair. Vincent chose a simple chair with simple colors to depict himself. The emptiness of the painting is evident. A chair's purpose is relaxation for a person. The painting, with an empty chair, leaves its audience with an incomplete feeling.

Gauguin's Chair is darker in comparison to Vincent's Chair. There are two light sources in this painting, a gas-light, and a candle, indicating nighttime. The color scheme in this painting is bold and dark. The colors are richer and more saturated. The chair is a piece of art, carved with expensive wood. There are two books lying upon the chair "symbolizing what van Gogh believed to be the intellectual nature of Gauguin's pursuits. The floor is distorted and unrealistic. In Vincent's Chair the floor resembled simple tile or linoleum, but this, in contrast, is confusing and scary. Again, the emptiness of the chair reveals the emptiness in Vincent's heart. Van Gogh's temper was the primary reason for the separation of these two artists. His temper is apparent the construction of the two paintings. Vincent's Chair is soft and the paint is thin in most areas, whereas Gauguin's Chair is painted thick and dark. Van Gogh depicts their separation with a personification of two chairs

The analysis of these paintings can run on through every inch of the composition, the piece is saturated with emotional and earthly symbolism and an impassioned perception from the artist.

 The aura of the artist continues to infuse the stilllife with bolts of gestalt and some Romantic history. If we study the case, as some do, Van Gogh and Gaugin were said to have shared these chairs smoking their pipes and discussing lofty art principles, local girls and absinthe. It is all Boheimien ecstasy until one bores with it and leaves, that being Gaugin leaving a lonely and disillusioned  Van Gogh to wax artistic over the loss of his friend and soulmate. This gestalt would add new meaning to the viewer if they are privy to this information.

 Let's transfer the aura to another head. A different viewer from another era shares the same sense of loss because they also lost someone they had a heartfelt camaraderie with. This transference of emotion can be made possible by the universality of loss. The chairs themselves remain empty objects. Someone interested in chairs might be stimulated by the type of furniture two poor artists were using in Arles in the late 1800’S.  The symbols are ripe and ready to be plucked.  Michaelangelo was promoting heaven for the Vatican his whole career.

Which brings us back to social media and the slow death of art.

"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley in 1978. This song actually does play a small, poetically odd part in the drama between radio and television. "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the very first music video to air on MTV, and as we know, the music television industry would soon become an indispensable staple in the music entertainment industry. Unlike the opera singer in the short story, radio never did become obsolete. It found a niche in broadcasting that didn't require its listeners to imagine characters. It found its purpose in broadcasting music and news, just as it had always done, only now it did so exclusively. Yet, with the dawning of the age of music videos, it would appear that now even music sounds and looks better after one's seen the video that goes with the song.

So, the question now evolves forward, What is social media killing?

 Its wide range engrossment of everyday things makes it difficult to isolate, exactly what is it that makes it so attractive to us as human beings?

Whatever you are in real life, becomes secondary in your social media life. You can do this by objecting the hidden thing. You can rant and rave, or just share information. You can live in the past with nostalgic ghosts and online phantoms joining in. You can make demons disappear with just one click, or praise any diety with a choir of newfound supporters from all over the globe and all at once.

The irrational essence of social media is revealed by its form, it is a form without theory. it was born by accident from a mating of telecommunications and mega computer skills.. the spawn of a highschool idea that hit a nerve with every person’s deep embedded need to communicate freely and if need be anonymous.   You can create sensational drama, locate long lost people, and gather great information. Gossip without the water cooler. What's more, things can be reduced to their simplest forms. That being said, in all its victories, all of this is inconceivable without information.

 It is a medium that suits everyone's taste. You can find a forum and a friend. You can pick and choose your battles. And you can post your grandmother's favorite brownie recipe without anyone ever tasting the original. It can be stimulating to share highlights of peoples lives.

We had more individualism I believe when the course of communication was- one on one with books and the mysteries they contained.  The long-form book, with its sometimes illustrated artwork, presented in a primitive form what social media attempts to do in digital. It gathers information and illustrates- it leaves the viewer to interpret as they wish. Or tell them, in one persuasive manner or another, just what they want them to wish.

 The book as well as art,  ceasing in its role to be a devoted shelter where one can run to in need of collected inspiration. the community of social media has set up camp, similar to that of (Flower children of the nineteen sixties)  who established communes for the world-weary and unconventional.

The Rebel, of course, will always exist in the heart not the mind of Sapiens. The question remains partly because the whole of social media is still a work in progress. there is one mantra, however, that should be ringing in true poet's ear, “First it will serve you, then it will own you.”

Social media though it is many other things, and has been adapted by the hearts and minds of a large majority including some of the art community and much of the literary bunch, to which the many benefits of outreach serves their own purposes.

Many of the classic art and great literary giants are still kept in the ceremony, springing up in theme taverns and restaurants. The great giants and revered “ immortals” are reduced to comic book status and image libraries, Yet what is sought after by the multitude with craven lust are images of their own lives. Projections of once unique dreams and nightmares; all that was once held sacred and secure in the chambers of the soul can be shared with thousands of strangers on a worldwide stage with only the membership to a social media page.

It produces the illusion of friendship and camaraderie without the full-body experience; it expands geography and exposure. Human interfacing becomes less and less; most conversations and relationships become digested and consumed in snippets and sound bites of information, producing a minimal effect of watered-down versions of whole genres and schools of thought. On the social fr  social Petrie dish- ripe for giving birth to more acceptable mediocrity and mind dulling bells and whistles. In all of this is the hidden thing. There is no real object.; only information about the objectified.
ont where the mass majority intermingle, groups of pseudo friendships and mediocrity form. A

One of the standing obstacles with the arts, all forms of the arts, is the conceptual form of it. The basis is in concept. Theory in art and design, for example, plastique representation, synthetic cubism as opposed to analytic cubism, abstract expressionism…Etc.. lofty concepts as in math and science appropriate too much time for the everyday person scrambling to get the last newspaper before it is sold out; scanning the pages to check the sordid current events of the day before going off to their livelihood. Who had time for art or literature for that matter except for a privileged leisure class who could indulge in it? 

Warhol is often quoted about everyone in the future will have their fifteen minutes of fame. On social media, you can be a star with minions into astronomical numbers and still only be an opinion in the real world; Sailing away on the good ship lollypop as opposed to the calypso. That being said, it might be worthwhile to mention that with the new media, 15 minutes might be too long to hold anyone's attention.

Fifteen minutes of pure knowledge is quite a bit; and if it brings to the table a measure of wisdom- all the better,  that might even increase its shelf life a little longer. However,  as time has proven, Old information may one day have to step aside for new information causing stress upon the whole bulwark of prior history.  The older generations might have to yield or prove their case to a whole new generation of fledglings with even shorter attention spans and more easy access media- lite knowledge leaving the elders and wizards of the tribe holding obsolete cannons of wisdom gone by akin to Poor Richards almanac.

“ You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” was a familiar euphemism for a long spell. Now the old dog might have a chance if he can overcome some fatiguing bouts of cognitive dissonance.

 The human attention span could be reduced to seconds if you removed concepts, theory, and substance, and just replaced it with empty symbols and pseudo-love. Religious platitudes and sound bites make it easy to follow God without all the time-consuming worship and guilt, not to mention theology. This is strange and unusual alchemy presented to this new dark age. one that can literally and figuratively change forms. It indeed changes elements, but elements of conceptual form.  Empty symbols make the most noise in the form of senseless chatter and throwaway news.  The Epic hero at some point must descend into the depths. The problem is there might not be anyone paying attention long enough to notice. Welcome to the new dark age.