Obligatory End of the World Blog Post (The New Age)
What a mad, mad world we live in. Doom and gloom that has nothing to do with the coming to the end of the Mayan Calendar. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a plethora of daily rant ideas, but I’ve held off due to the volatility of several of the topics.
Heh!
I’m holding off on ranting about a volatile topic. That should be a sign that things are changing!
I think rather I want to talk about something changing in the world. I’ve noticed this for a while, but it’s really been gaining momentum recently.
Oppa Gangnam Style has the distinction of being the first YouTube video to hit 1,000,000,000 views. I am a late comer to this one, having first seen the video in it’s entirety only a week or two ago. I have to admit, I’m a fan. The video is spectacular in an annoying kind of way, and it’s infectious. While I am fairly new to the strange awesome, that is this video, I have a feeling that it will be one of those things I retreat to when I need a quick mood boost.
This year, I discovered WOOL by Hugh Howey. It’s a series of post-apocalyptic dystopian stories that is incredibly well written, entertaining, and has some interesting things to say about society and how we control information. This is some of the best stuff I’ve read in a long time. It’s not a happy, warm-fuzzy kind of story. It’s not going to be fluff reading for me, or anyone that I can think of. It is not the comforting, quick pick-me-up boost in the way Gagnam Style is, but I come to books for and entirely different reason than I do for watching videos. As of right now, the WOOL Omnibus is #150 in the paid Kindle Store. At several points, it has been #1.
What do these two seemingly disparate works have in common that would make me put them together in a blog post about the end of the world? Well, first, the Mayans didn’t say it was the end of the world, just a change. With that in mind, Gangnam Style and WOOL represent a shift in the way we view our entertainment. These are not the only examples, just two that are currently the king of the hill of their perspective mediums. Now that we have that settled let’s look at how WOOL and Gangnam Style represent a new age in entertainment.
Both are sleeper hits that erupted onto the world scene by going viral on the internet. People experienced both, loved them, and shared them with their friends. Who then shared with their friends!
I discovered Gangnam Style originally while playing airsoft with a friend. He showed me a short clip on his phone of Psy doing his silly crossed-arms, prancing dance and said that anytime someone got shot, they had to do that dance to let people know. I rolled my eyes and we kept playing, without that lame rule I might add. A few weeks later, I saw this thing taking off. And now it is the most viral thing in the history of the internet.
WOOL came at me from a different angle. I first heard about it in a review of First Chosen from the only 1 star review I’ve gotten from the novel.
Oh well I guess for every “Wool” or “Dark Angel” you will get 10-15 “First Chosen”.
The original review is no longer on Amazon, because several of my readers reported it. He posted another review shortly after, which did not insult the other reviewers, so that one stayed up. Though the second review made no mention of WOOL. Read the original review in this blog post. I brushed it off until August when I talking about the reviewer comparing my book to WOOL (and it’s really comparing apples and oranges, they’re both fruit, kinda roundish, and that’s about where the similarities end) with some friends. One of them had read WOOL and thought that I actually might like it. On that recommendation, I tried it. I loved it.
Now, I understand that Gangnam Style and WOOLare not for everyone, just like I admit that First Chosen is not for everyone. This isn’t about that. This is about the change in how entertainment gets out to the masses. We have more control over what does get popular. Rather than have a few TV networks, publishing companies, record lables, etc. ad infintum, ad nausium, controlling what is available, modern technology had made it possible for the artist to put his or her work into the world and let the world do with it what it will.
It doesn’t mean that isn’t going to come with some hard work. in watching Gangnam Style and reading WOOL, one can tell that both the artist put more hard work and passion into their perspective projects than most people put into anything in their entire lives. These are the works of people who have the mindset of being professionals, but also show a level of emotional investment that drags potential fans willingly into the original meaning of the word: Fanatic!
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of this phenomenon popping up all over the world. Independently produced works across all mediums that have seen some success outside of the traditions of their particular markets. Even though I have not, and probably never will, hit this level of virility, I have enjoyed some small bit of success by playing in this new world of self-produced art. (Even for brief periods of time, rubbing elbows with fantasy legends such as George RR Martin and Robert Jordan – very, very brief.) It’s an exciting time to be and artist of any medium. For the first time we artists and the people who enjoy our art are largely in control of where we go from here.
Welcome to the new age.
As a special treat, here’s a short clip of Hugh Howey celebrating WOOL hitting #1 on Amazon. Yeah, he’s doing Gangnam Style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIHFta1w9iQ&list=UUeekNA-saYL78IFP1nvF_jg&index=8
