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“All art is quite useless” Oscar Wilde. Wilde is of course right. In terms of plain old survival; art is useless. That is part of its joy. To have the time to try to make or enjoy something beautiful, or thought provoking, is the one of the most sublime aspects of leisure. That’s why the verb “To Netflick” exists. That is also why a lot of the internet, is people talking about the useless . We share our overlapping narratives whether they are fictional or not. So, the summer’s gone and so too has that weird moment in time when my YouTube recommendations were chockablock with Vlogs and video essays; ranting about Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Now, I know I locked myself into an algorithm bubble. You Tube’s A.I. just fed me that stuff because I click, click, click. Even so, that’s a lot of content generated and a very big bubble. When the new trilogy of Star wars came out and everybody was happy for a while and then the Fandom started to complain that the Force Awakens...

I love being pretentious. It’s my third favorite thing to do in the world (don’t ask). I’m really good at it. I’ve being doing it all my life. Knowing things granted me the attention I was desperate for at school, I soon became addicted to it, and like many addicts I soon found it surprisingly easier than I thought to “phone it in”, and sound smarter than I really am. I think all swots and teacher’s pets are pretentious people in training. I especially enjoyed the gambler’s adrenaline rush of multiply choice questions. Yet modern society frowns on pretense. At least, it does in our face to face everyday interactions. It’s important to distinguish between this form of pretense and the on-line form, because on the Internet we have entered a golden age of pretense. The ability to edit our lives, find videos of cute cats to share, intellectually pose on reedit, in other words; make ourselves and our ideas sound far more important than they really are. Goggle has also had a warping...

You Tuber Review: Beau of the fifth column The Pitch: It is the philosophical duty of everyone to put some skepticism in the path of our opinions and the opinions of others. That, I’m happy to acknowledge, was what “Beau” of the fifth column did to me, the first time I opened one of his videos. With a beard that would provoke envy in any hipster, a southern drawl, and pro-gun t-shirt, my prejudices were in top gear. I should just note, I’m European, so my mind was maybe even narrower going into it, than an American viewer. So, when I heard a balanced, well researched argument with a dose of our grandparent’s common sense; delivered in a tool shed, as a talking head program. I was happier than a hog in whatever that expression is. Sound and quality: The format is simple, so it doesn’t have to be too fancy. I personally prefer my editorials without the flashing green screen, especially those who use slickness to cover half-baked ideas. You tubers take note. The sound ...

We often lose ourselves in the media spin; the spectacle of it all. The idea that the news was a service providing information to the public, so they could make informed decisions(even if that was true if only for a few brief moments)has been replaced by a big top of spinning intro scenes and generic notes,strung into a tune. I find myself having to take breaks from it,to remind myself of the real and concrete around me. When the words literally and figuratively, were declared interchangeable by the Oxford English Dictionary, everyone blamed the flaws of our education system, but no one considered that it was just a symptom of living in an ever increasingly virtual world. The blurring of those worlds happens on line and in our minds, and so our language blurred too. HBO’s Newsroom   written by legendary screenwriter Aaron Sorkin,   shows Sorkin being the best at what he does, taking complex social and political ideas and wrapping them up in interesting characte...