Recently on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media, there was a trend going around where people would show images of themselves in January of this year. The idea is to show how oblivious we were, back then, to the serious threat faced by this immense, unprecedented year. Yet, as many Australians pointed out (especially us that live in the eastern cities), this test doesn’t really work for us. In January 2020, our country was burning. We were protesting our government’s inaction, including a poorly-timed vacation by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Popstar Lizzo was taking time away from her national tour to pack boxes at food banks. Most notably, the smoke and haze were so bad that we were already wearing masks.
That’s not to say that there weren’t massive vagaries between the 2020 of then and the 2020 of now. You can just barely see it between the lines of the description above, such as the fact that Lizzo, an American national presumably here on a temporary working visa as any foreign entertainer must have, was not only in the country but seemingly performing to large groups of people, both aspects of life that are almost unimaginable now. It’s been just over eight months since January, and it seems that any mention of “things not being able to get any worse” act as a challenge to the world to simply make things worse.
That said, there are these subtle pushes, mostly by those heavily invested in the current status quo, to make the world “normal” again, to return us to a world where things were fine, there was no virus, there were no protests, complacency was the norm and straight-up vitriol was the default for governing bodies. Things were fine, actually.
For me, there was no greater example of this than a viral ad from a few months back, advertising the reopening of the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. The idea that The Happiest Place On Earth is ‘home’ isn’t new, at least in the hyper-capitalist realm occupied by Disney. But the idea that this home must exist despite all pressures otherwise, including a worldwide pandemic, is truly terrifying.
Getting back to business, whether you like it or not
But you also see this in other places. Most notably, the reopening of schools and universities across the globe, especially in the USA. Journalist Anne Helen Peterson has been doing an excellent series of reports on the ongoing issues of universities reopening on her amazing newsletter Culture Study, which has both free and paid tiers but is very much worth the paid tier.
One standout quote, from her most recent email, on the power of unions:
“That’s what a union can do: it grants power to those who are otherwise powerless when it comes to their employer. It’s a defence against exploitation. It’s a way of turning a chorus of individual concerns into a shout that can’t be ignored. It’s a means of creating changes that will last long beyond yourself and your tenure. It’s how we collectively assert our humanity as workers — and our refusal to be treated as replaceable robots.”
On that note, the power of unions of all different stripes has come into focus lately. There was a recent discussion on Twitter about what defines a union and how the strict definitions offered by state regulations may actually hinder the movement in the long run, restricting what a union can and can’t do. This video by BadEmpanada goes into greater detail on that argument, even if I don’t agree with it entirely.
That said, it’s worth noting that unions, at least in the “collective that fights for the rights of the many against those that hope to control them” can take forms beyond the usual employee-employer relationship. Tenants unions, for example, advocate for the rights of those that pay landlords for housing. Unemployed unions exist to advocate against disenfranchisement and dehumanisation by the state, whether that be through the erosion of the welfare state or through creating a convoluted web of systems that no one person could ever manage to tackle on their own.
This is not to say that all unions are good. Unionism has a complex history throughout the world, and wherever there is power, there is generally someone there ready to exploit it. A recent example, albeit on a smaller scale, is the attempt by Novak Djokovic (among other tennis players) to create a new tennis players union.
On the surface, it could be deemed good, maybe even necessary, for such a thing to happen; tennis players are notoriously individual private contractors to the sport’s main governing bodies, creating a wealth gap between the top 100 players (or, more likely, the top 10 players) and everyone else in the world of professional tennis. Not to mention that the rights of sportspeople in a world where they are increasingly commodified (to the point that the world’s biggest soccer star is basically being held hostage by his Spanish club) is a very real issue. All this is before you get into the huge issue of the wage gap between men’s and women’s sports.
But Djokovic’s planned coup failed on several fronts. First, he seemingly didn’t talk to any other players about this, most notably his high-profile colleagues Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray. Second, he had just held an unpopular, unsanctioned tennis tour through the Balkans, that led to several cases of COVID-19, including Djokovic contracting the virus himself. Lastly, the union made a point to exclude women. They said it was because their gripes were not with the Women’s Tennis Association. But, frankly, the move speaks for itself really.
Where we go one, et cetera.
The topic of any group of people leading the charge against those that aim to suppress them occasionally leads to the unfortunate gathering of many online into believing that they’re being oppressed, mostly by simple, real-world stuff we have to do to form the social contract of living in a society. Paying taxes, taking vaccinations for herd immunity and taking necessary precautions during a pandemic are all examples of things we do as a society to collectively ensure our growth and prosperity, but that a loud few believe are examples of their mass oppression by a regime.
Case in point: the conspiracy theory collective-slash-cultists-slash-Trump devotees known as QAnon.
I won’t get into every way QAnon is awful here, because they’re awful in so many ways, but I will link to this video by Folding Ideas about how they are, indeed, very very awful.
A few quick updates
Last week we talked about The Boys Season 2. It turns out that fans of the show have been turning on the series. Not because it’s overly cynical or features a Neo-Nazi as a key character this season, but because the show features a staggered, weekly release schedule, unlike the first season.
The differences in release schedules and how that affects engagement is interesting: While we’ve been told that the general public personally prefers the “bingeable” one-season-at-a-time model, the reality is that it causes a drop off in audience engagement. A good example is to compare the reactions to Disney+’s The Mandalorian and the last season of Netflix’s Stranger Things. Both received favourable reviews from both critics and the public. But The Mandalorian stayed in the public psyche for around two months longer than the last season of Stranger Things, and not just thanks to the novelty of the new Star Wars-adjacent series compared to the three-season-old Stranger Things. The final season of Game of Thrones is another example; it was able to stay in the public consciousness for longer by simply airing week-to-week, despite the drop in quality.
So it makes sense, on a commercial level, to “keep the conversation going” by delaying episodes to a weekly schedule. I guess the main difference is that fans of The Boys may have seen straight through that move as a purely cynical, commercial one by one of the biggest consumer brands on the planet, on a show designed to directly question such moves.
Or they just want their fave tv show now like petulant children. Either-or, really.
Lastly, sorry for this email being sent out on a Monday evening as opposed to a Friday evening. It was a big week last week, for me, which started with a full load of work, and ended with a COVID test. Fun!
One happy thing to end on…
Please enjoy this flow chart, explaining the overarching story of every Tony Hawk game ever. You’re welcome.
For now, I’m going to get into that game pronto.
Till next week (or rather, later this week).