What's on the internet?

I like the internet, because it's where all the things are. Here are some things.

Igor Presnyakov
Igor arranges music of various styles for solo guitar, and plays it on YouTube. He's doing familiar things in an unfamiliar way, and he's very good at it. He's clearly having a lot of fun in all of his videos, which makes them a joy to watch. [He also writes his own music, but that interests me less.]

Igor is planning a tour of the US in 2012, and taking suggestions as to which cities to visit. I would like it very much if he were to come to Seattle, because then I could go and see him play live. As such, I'd be grateful to anyone who votes for Seattle. Not eternally grateful. Just for a few months. Shouldn't that be enough?

While you're on his website, please consider buying his albums. If we want a culture of art and entertainment, we need to pay for it when we can.

Louis C.K.
Louis is a stand-up comedian and writer. He's had a couple of sitcoms of his own, currently Louie on the FX channel. He combines pithy observations on the human condition with grotesque confessions of his own debasedness. He's one of a few people who I've heard able to articulate the gap between what we know is the right thing to do, and what we actually can be bothered to do; and to point out that the opportunity to be so lazy is only granted to a few humans on Earth, who have done nothing to deserve it.

Last week Louis recorded a show at the Beacon Theater, which is available on his website for $5 (via PayPal). The video is DRM-free, so once you have it you can play it anywhere on pretty much any device. The show was an experiment to see whether it would be possible to reach a broad audience without going through traditional channels such as television or DVDs. Within 12 hours of going on sale, the video had made back its costs and started turning a profit.

Louis's humour is often incredibly tasteless, so if you are easily offended, or moderately easily offended, you may want to steer clear. Otherwise, check him out at the above link. You can also see some of his work on Netflix and Hulu, but I'll let you find it yourself there.

Captain Awkward
I followed a link to this advice column, which tackles personal and work problems for the socially inept. As you may recall, I have dabbled in being unable to interact with human beings in my time, so I found the site interesting. There's a perspective that would have been great to see when I was about 15. Who's got the DeLorean keys?

New things about old posts

Scott Adams is now declaring that his ideas that he posts on the open internet for everyone to see aren't for general consumption, they're for people who are interested in letting their preconceived ideas go to consider the controversial. Thing is, Scott, "men are testosterone-fueled beasts" isn't a new or controversial idea. Sorry. To quote The Dude, "Hey man, why don't you fucking listen occasionally? You might learn something."


And Tree Lobsters understand the trouble with Scrabble.

Reading Comprehension

Over the past few months, Scott Adams has been doing his best to pick fights with feminists (and various other groups of people). His modus operandi is making an outrageous and offensive statement, and then accusing anyone who gets upset of having "poor reading comprehension" and taking things out of context. There are some flourishes, like sending sockpuppets in to comment on the websites of people who are calling him out.

The latest noise has been around a post called Pegs and Holes. Here's the bit that people have been most bothered about:

Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable.

Adams doesn't ever define "natural instincts of men" (or of women), although later on we get this gem:

If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose.

So I'd interpret "natural instincts of men" to be unrestrained horny animaltude, and the "all hell" to be a pandemic of "tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world." I can't see another reasonable interpretation of this post. (I'm still waiting to hear what women's natural instincts are.)

Sample size of one, but I have no instinct to tweet, rape, or cheat. And while I'm happy to be offensive to my friends and family, I don't think it would be fair to inflict that on the rest of the world. (Although maybe if I were a syndicated cartoonist with a 4-figure IQ, I'd feel differently about that.)

Now, I don't know what's going on in Adams's head. His claim is that his "only goal is to be interesting", but the whole schtick about men wanting to fuck anyone and anything isn't interesting, clever, or original. He's somewhere on the axis between completely clueless and intentionally trolling, and my suspicion is that as he gets more reactions he moves in the trolling direction. He clearly gets his jollies from feeling smarter than people around him. I can't really blame him for that - I like feeling clever too, but I prefer it to be collaborative rather than competitive. Plus, if I have smart people around me they're more likely to say interesting and funny things. Bonus.

Anyway, the "poor reading comprehension" accusation kind of touched a nerve. If you write something down, and the English-speaking world (with the exception of a handful of sycophants) infers something from it that you didn't intend, then the problem is not in their reading, it's in your writing. As usual, Mr Munroe captures this human failing perfectly.

In his latest post, Adams compares himself to Kruggers. Scott, I subscribed to Paul Krugman, I read Paul Krugman, Paul Krugman is an idol of mine. Scott, you're no Paul Krugman.

(I've been following this saga for the last couple of weeks, but the event that inspired this blog post was watching the new Futurama episode, "Neutopia", which manages to cram just about every gender stereotype into a 22 minute episode, and STILL have time for everyone to learn a lesson and everything to get back to normal in time for next week. The lesson I learned is that women like crazy things like "shopping" and "Diet Coke" and "being listened to" and men like crazy things like "fart jokes" and "not asking directions" and "lying". I expect this crap from sitcoms in 1992 with laugh tracks, not from you, Futurama.)

Other helpful links:

Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon

Irin Carmon at Jezebel