<VoxPVoxD> Having stuck around to tidy up, Stewart is the last to leave the study room. Every chair is pushed in, every scrap of paper is tidied, the remaining sleeve of Oreos wrapped up tightly in his backpack... there's a sense of completeness that comes from leaving a room immaculate that you can't really get any other way. He drew in the fear of eight twentysomethings who stand to inherit
<VoxPVoxD> a dying world like a second breath, but even that doesn't quite compare.
<banana> "And remember- there's no need to be discouraged! You don't have to integrate everything at once, Ms. Lucas, and the more you refine the scope of your critique the closer we get to a working topic. You've got plenty of time."
<banana> Time is not the problem.
<banana> Melanie thanks her advisor again - one of the first formulas she relearned - tries not to stumble on her way out of the little office. Too abstract. That's what she's been hearing for months now, that her ideas are disconnected even by the standards of the analytic school she's emulating. "Intelligent but not incisive"; "An almost daunting breadth".
<banana> One of the first tutorial sessions offered to her cohort was on constructive criticism, the importance of accepting that your ideas will be treated with impersonal rigour. To contribute anything to a crowded philosophical field in an age that's struggling for coherence, you can't mind anything - only take it to heart.
<banana> Melanie didn't need it. She's forgotten how to perceive criticism on a social register; what other people think of her words or actions is useful to know, but makes no empathic leap, no mirror neurons fire in whatever vegetable cell is serving the purpose of her synapses. This has been a problem, actually; it's hard to extend ethical reasoning to a convincing concrete example when
<banana> you don't intuit others' emotion.
<banana> Recently, that's been starting to change. She knows she still has emotions herself, because failing to come up with a viable thesis topic since the start of the semester feels... bad. The emotion of not good. Her advisor's reassurances are starting to feel like condescension - a breakthrough she could do without.
<banana> At this time of year the Sculpture Park is on its final shed. Gold-orange leaves drift around her as she moves slowly through the grounds; they don't register, either. Melanie's an evergreen.
<VoxPVoxD> There's still a couple hours to kill before work. He could get a head start on editing next week's Youtube videos, he could catch a movie... the autumn air and the drift of dying leaves to earth doesn't *spiritually* nourish him the way fear does, but the aesthetic is arresting. Every tree in sight is shedding itself for winter, except that one evergreen down there. The one walking
<VoxPVoxD> towards him. Wait--
<VoxPVoxD> His first instinct is to hide. Has she seen him? No, it's no use, look how tall she is.
<banana> It's true. In her human Mask, Melanie is a white girl over six feet - she stands out, not for her height but because her fashionable appearance is at odds with her drab and shapeless clothing. Her only trendy accessory is a large flat bag, but Stewart can see the truth:
<banana> The woman regarding him with a mix of pleasure and terror is bark-skinned, an intensely falked and crumbling white substance that stands out unpredictably and creates the lumps under her clothes. Her face is essentially human-shaped (beneath hair that's thin flat leaves and strings of hard nuts), but the bookbag is borne on something like a bough.
<banana> flaked.
<VoxPVoxD> Melanie sees what everyone sees, the slightly greasy young man in a turtleneck that's arguably sort of stylish in a eurotrashy way, but she also sees one layer deeper, to the porcelain-skinned and delicate-fingered Mien beneath, coal-black eyes widening beneath a shock of hair white either from fear or a relentless austerity of color.
<VoxPVoxD> He hopes, with both folly and luck, that she can't tell how freaked out Stewart is to get clocked out here on a (don't say human) low-pressure social outing.
<banana> "Hey- hello!" Melanie gives the impression of hurrying in her mien (lowercase m), but in reality she's moving quite slowly, creaking with the stresses of a walking pace. "I didn't know you were a student, I didn't think there was anyone else around. It's not really compatible, is it? The symbol of aspiration to mid-normality and the expensive entrance into- we've met? Haven't we?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart, to his arguable credit, doesn't *physically* recoil. "Hi! Yeah, it's good to see you again! I'm not a- I was here for a- compatible?"
<banana> Melanie: "Um, our condition. Striving means something else now - we want to sort of sculpt out selves from this block of someone else's promises, while actually trying really hard to stay alive and Out. But look around you? Everyone here, the kids all think they're invincible even if they keep tweeting, you know, kill me daddy.. it's an entry point into the wrong kind of life."
<banana> If he wants to talk about this, we should probably go somewhere more private. Ah heck, does Melanie even know this guy's name?
<VoxPVoxD> Her name's not tree lady. Stewart knows that much.
<VoxPVoxD> He'll start. "You were at the icebreaker and the recruitment fair. I'm Stewart."
<banana> "Ah. I'm Melanie, and thank you for the reminder. Yes, they- we- I was there." Smiling. There's a faint crackle and roll to her, a hint of a smokeless forest fire - which was not the case at those events.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart really wants to go 'Well, seeya' and wheel around her, but ever since that night with Gerald he's been pushing himself to act against his instincts more. That was how he got out to the Sidereal and met Maggie, and that was great. So let's roll the dice again. "Do you maybe want to get a cup of coffee or something and talk?"
<banana> Melanie does, he can tell. She's weirdly easy to read for someone so inhuman - fidgety with opportunity, worried by how to react... "Alright, I'd like that. There's a Dunkin up the road.. I mean, in case you don't know the campus, because you said you aren't a student. Or you were about to."
<VoxPVoxD> "Alright, cool." On the short walk there: "What are you studying?"
<banana> Melanie: "Philosophy. I've taken a certificate in ethics and value - well I haven't. But someone with my face and name did, I guess, and now I'm postgrad. Do you.." this is a longshot. "Do you know anything about dasein?"
<banana> Melanie: "Philosophy. I've taken a certificate in ethics and value - well I haven't. But someone with my face and name did, I guess, and now I'm postgrad. Do you.." this is a longshot. "Do you know anything about dasein?"
<banana> "Because if you don't we could absolutely talk about something completely different. There's so much stuff I'd like to learn actually."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart, unhelpfully: "It sounds German...?"
<banana> "Heidegger. He was a.. a real shitbag actually, with important insights into the form of being that is, um, humanhood. And the relationship of unique human being to other human beings. So I'm trying to put together some ideas that follow up on some of his stuff with.. extended and alternate experiences, such as one might have were one to have our point of view."
<banana> "Except my thesis advisor isn't.. into it, so maybe not. What do you do Stewart?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart feels a lot more comfortable saying this to Melanie for some reason. Maybe it's because she sounds younger than Maggie despite being a tree. "I'm a streamer."
<banana> Doughnuts and coffee: this place is packed during undergrad class hours, but it's much better at the moment. Melanie can still eat human food, although she suspects it used to taste quite different. "Like on youtube?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods. "I do a lot of Youtube content, yeah. Though my main audience is livestreaming, on Twitch."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart gets one of those iced coffee drinks so sugary that it's basically a breakfast milkshake.
<banana> "Oh, I'm a bit.. out of touch. I used to have some friends who were really into Instagram... I think. Maybe I was too, but I forgot all the passwords."
<banana> Melanie frowns, which is to say two knots of wood knit themselves tighter around empty sockets. The sense of a frown is conveyed quite artfully. "Do you think tech is going to be important to us as to.. everyone else? The court who, they sort of reluctantly made it clear they had the honor to accept my allegiance. Medieval. People don't even seem to have smartphones, and those
<banana> are easy.."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's cogs are turning... Melanie likes to ask a lot of complicated questions and jump around a lot. "I think our relationship with technology is like our relationship to society. You see that a lot. And our... cohort, has different levels of comfort and fluency with society. It's the same with technology. One of the more important people in the Autumn Court is plugged in like
<VoxPVoxD> all the time, and then at the other end there's... have you met Maggie? She was at the same meetings we were."
<banana> "So..." Melanie draws it out theatrically, but her voice (the real one) also just does that. "I didn't learn anyone's name. Or really communicate with anyone at the events. I'll try to do better on that, hopefully people are used to a degree of initial discombobulation? Maggie's a woman's name, I don't want to assume, but she was either the sad one with the fingers or the one where
<banana> someone cut a silhouette in space and filled it with embers."
<banana> "Neither of them had a phone, and they didn't recognise SMS tones or namedrop any silicon valley stuff." Melanie didn't talk to anyone, but she watches.
<banana> "Have you noticed that's rare in conversation? Anyone who wants to sound plugged in, if you talk about politics or culture it's all.. tech business creeps in. They're in all discussions, unless you actually have something to talk about. Which we always do!"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Maggie's the second one. She's really sweet, I met her at the Sidereal - that's the bar the Court uses, I think Spring sponsors it? - but as you deduced, she has very little working knowledge of computers. She had a lot of questions and was very keen to learn."
<VoxPVoxD> "But then, you know, there are some who'll swear off phones with a touchscreen entirely. There's a spectrum of engagement. I don't know what's optimal."
<banana> Melanie: "I like learning."
<banana> "And people who learn, I assume? I'd like to like them."
<VoxPVoxD> "It's so bizarre! I wasn't even gone that long and it's like moving to one of those countries that technically speaks English but has different words for everything."
<VoxPVoxD> "Like 'Uber' means 'Taxi' and 'Seamless' means 'takeout'."
<VoxPVoxD> "It's some Sliders shit."
<banana> "Haha! That must be a pain.. um, there were Ubers when I left, but I forgot them too. The reason I said smartphones are easy is, you just poke at it - they're designed to be easy. A lot of really smart people wasted their lives on it. The hard stuff is what we know, not what we learn."
<banana> "What I mean is!"
<banana> "Things we 'just know' because we've grown up with them, or because 'everyone' does it that way." Melanie's making airquotes with a whole cluster of twigs, here. "That's what doesn't translate across culture or time.. we have an immense potential for normalisation, adapting, making a priori knowledge out of what are in reality skill-elements!"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Immersion?"
<banana> Melanie: "Immersion learning isn't voluntary. It just happens to you. After a while under it's just part of who you are! We're really incredible. At adapting."
<banana> "You said 'the Court' owns the Sidereal? Is that the term for the whole.. collection of seasons?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That's the one I hear used. I don't know whose name is on the deed, exactly, I was just told that it's a safe place for us."
<banana> "Good enough, right?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I hope so. That mantle... you went Summer?"
<banana> "Like, people even claiming to be on our side.. that's better than the alternative. And there seem to be enough of us that the proposition is axiomatic."
<banana> Melanie: "Yeah!" It's exciting to be able to talk about this stuff, to process it. Stuart or Stewart is a good listener.. hopefully he's not being imposed on, since she forgot how to tell. "The, more medieval terms, king of summer is a real hothead. He's like the Fonzie of gangs. I think the summer bargain has a lot of good bits about, like... remembering you can fight back."
<banana> Melanie: "Yeah!" It's exciting to be able to talk about this stuff, to process it. Stuart or Stewart is a good listener.. hopefully he's not being imposed on, since she forgot how to tell. "The, more medieval terms, the king of summer is a real hothead. He's like the Fonzie of gangs. I think the summer bargain has a lot of good bits about, like... remembering you can fight
<banana> back."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart needs a moment to recover, as the phrase 'Fonzie of gangs' physically paralyzes him.
<banana> "You uh, basically coalesced out of a haze of falling leaves. That's an omen in either the divine sense or Nickel's."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, Autumn seemed like where I can be the most helpful."
<banana> Has Stewart read Nickel? Melanie's thinking: no. But he'd be a good starting point. The ethics of technology and reliance would be perfect for someone who.. "Hey, what kind of stuff do you livestream?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Uh, videogames. Path of Exile mainly."
<banana> "You're playing them, other people watch?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Sometimes I'll play with people in the audience, but mostly yeah."
<banana> "Wow, and that's what you do in the sense of- that probably sounded really dumb, please bear with me? I'm missing a lot of basic facts about the world, I'm not saying there's anything weird about it, I just didn't know."
<banana> Hurriedly, almost interrupting herself or Stewart: "Who do you work for?"
<VoxPVoxD> "That's the thing!"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's weird, like... there's so many people who have jobs that just depend on people wanting to give them money, basically. They aren't needed. There's not a war on or a railroad to build or anything. A lot of people are just, sitting around, with nothing to do, but food and rent still costs money. So there's this weird ecosystem of... paying people for doing stuff,
<VoxPVoxD> basically."
<VoxPVoxD> "Like me, I just... play. I show up and I play games and people watch or they don't. Of the people who watch, they stick around or they don't. Of the people who stick around, they subscribe or they don't. For every person who subscribes I get a couple bucks a month. Then there's Youtube which has a similar but different model for turning videos into money."
<VoxPVoxD> "But it all depends on people wanting to see them. If I worked just as hard, for just as long, but nobody cared... I'd have nothing."
<banana> Melanie: "That's really cool though. We've developed past needing to pull potatoes out of the ground with like, one broken arm and another one that has scrofula."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "But we haven't, simultaneously, evolved past needing to eat potatoes, or wanting to sell potatoes for money."
<banana> "Can I drill down on the stake-mechanism- do people pay you in microtransactions? I know about Patreon." Some of the forums she's got onto have people advertising their work.
<VoxPVoxD> "So there's this whole system of, basically, make-work."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The Twitch subscription model is similar to Patreon's, yeah. People can chip in for a recurring payment at different tiers of support, which unlock scaling benefits. A tier 1 subscriber gets to use my special chat emotes. A tier 3 subscriber - that's the highest tier - will get to play games with me once a month."
<banana> "Well, as long as they're having fun. But that makes it work-work, right? You're demonstrating your eligibility for participation in the system specifically in its entertainment complex but also as an allocation unit, I mean think about it as an economic demonstration? Everyone who watches you is specifically choosing to give up some of their money, not a super plentiful commodity in
<banana> 2019. The 'value' you have has got to be largely as a... persuader."
<banana> Melanie's really interested in this. It's an occupational model that didn't occur to her, like the entertainment industry but predicated on just.. being there, showing off someone else's media. How much do people pay for it? Either Stewart's rich, or each of them is chipping in fractions of a cent.. or the high tier guys (she always imagines guys being into these things) are subsidising
<banana> the rest. The 'tier of virtue', as Gettier would put it, is quite different to service-industry *or* manufacturing labour.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I guess... it's not really what I expected to be doing, but then, you know. It's cool that you can make a living this way, but it's all zero-sum. Every dollar that's flowing into a persuader's hands, or to a middleman's hands by way of a persuader, is a dollar that people who don't or can't build an audience can't access, and they still need dollars too."
<banana> Melanie: "Yeah, since they're just allocating. How do the middlemen make money? I guess Twitch takes a cut of what people pay you, but couldn't you just set up subscriptions externally, so then they'd get nothing?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They do the work of payment processing and running the website I stream on. They also get to sell ad time. They're also integrated with their parent company, Amazon, which I guess is just where everyone buys everything now and also is a TV channel."
<banana> Melanie: "Add time?"
<banana> She's finished her coffee. Melanie likes Stewart, she thinks - she's still sorting out utility from preference internally but people who're capable of this kind of freeranging discussion are a kind of person she.. likes, probably.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Advertisements. Twitch runs commercials during the stream."
<banana> Melanie: "Commercial whats, though? I don't know the term off the top of my, um, head." Mostly what comes off there is leaves, but you know what she means.
<VoxPVoxD> This is very similar to and very different from his conversation with Maggie. It comes easily to him, though, the reaching for the meaning behind a thing and spreading it out for inspection. Words are like monsters, if you know what they mean to do they can't hurt you as much. "An advertisement, or 'ad', is some exhortation by a business to would-be consumers to buy something.
<VoxPVoxD> Toothpaste, coffee, socks, a graphics card. Whatever. A video advertisement is colloquially a 'commercial'."
<VoxPVoxD> "Twitch - the middlemen - have permission to interrupt my stream with short video clips prepared by sponsors to get them to buy stuff. The sponsors pay Twitch for permission to do this."
<banana> "Wait"
<banana> Melanie: "Wait wait wait, I've seen those."
<banana> "You mean the little clips about products and sales? And- what about the stuff on billboards."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, that."
<banana> "Are companies paying for that? Do they buy space from people to.. sell things, just visible to everyone? It's not because the people who run the highways wanted to endorse something?"
<VoxPVoxD> "Yeah."
<banana> "Shit!"
<VoxPVoxD> "?"
<banana> "I forgot about- shit. Advertisements. Fucking shit."
<banana> "I am so sorry. Of course. Christ on a crutch."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart, carefully: "I doubt you're the only one."
<VoxPVoxD> "It takes a lot from people."
<banana> "But I've been.." Melanie drops her head, holding it in her.. limbs. She's a little too loud. "I'm trying to analyze the world, advance the study of knowledge itself. What other really freaking basic things. Have I forgotten."
<banana> "Also, and this is not your fault? But ads.. suck?"
<banana> "I never realised how much they suck. I thought they were normal."
<VoxPVoxD> Should he put a hand on hers? It was nice when Maggie did that for him, but the social dynamics were completely different and they weren't surrounded by near-teens in an environment painfully evocative of Stewart's own near-teendom, which he has abandoned in time but not in frame of reference. The moment passes before Stewart can fully work out its implications.
<VoxPVoxD> "Yeah. They both suck and are normal."
<VoxPVoxD> "That's kind of a theme, I've noticed."
<banana> Melanie: "I'd better go, I need to rework a lot of things."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What do you mean?"
<VoxPVoxD> Oh no, this is going south. He wasn't graceful enough. He was too didactic. He made her feel stupid. Fuck!
<banana> "Um, ideas.. whatever stuff I'd made contingent on a basic fucking analysis of economic behaviour.. I don't know. I'm sorry." Melanie's gathering up her bookbag, which doesn't actually have any books in it - there are papers spilling out, and a large e-reader like the kind used for textbooks.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Hey, listen. If you gotta go you gotta go. But... you know you don't have to handle all this stuff on your own, right? That's why you're in school. That's why you're in the Court."
<banana> Melanie pauses what she's doing for a moment and half-sits back down, spreading her 'hands' on the table. Each has five similar long branches, 'jointed' with flexible green shoots showing through the white bark. There's no thumb, but the length helps to compensate for that.
<banana> "That is true, and it reminds me of something. It reminds me that I'm being rude, even though you've been probably the most.. helpful.. of anyone I've met so far in the world of, remnants or whatever we are, sorry if that's rude too."
<banana> "But that's something else I need to think about a lot so.. I have to go. Could I get your number?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart lets out the breath he didn't realize he was holding. "Uh, sure. Texting's probably easier than calling, and if you've got email that works too. I'm also on Twitter but don't get Twitter." He'll write down his number - he has a vague memory of getting people's numbers by letting them type the numbers directly into his phone, but she's clearly feeling pressed so he hands
<VoxPVoxD> her a napkin with ten digits and an email address.
<banana> Melanie: "I do have email." She stands up, but takes on.. a kind of musing tone? "I can't tell whether this is something which would interest or upset you, so I'll just.. explain it. I deal with things by thinking about them for a long time. It's an intellectualised form of emotion, like a caul formed over an ulcer. I don't actually.. you haven't made me feel bad; I just need
<banana> to go and spend a while. Thinking about my mistakes. And then I'll be ok with them."
<VoxPVoxD> Now that Stewart understands. "I hope you can process them efficiently."
<banana> "Goodbye! We'll meet again!" Technically that's contingent on whether both of them want to meet again, but fortunately for Melanie she's forgotten that's a factor.
<banana> On the way out there are kids in branded shirts - Melanie looks undergrad-age, but all of these people are kids. Did some company sponsor those shirts? Are they cheaper because they say Coca-Cola? Freaking heck.
<VoxPVoxD> After she's out of eyeshot Stewart slumps back in his seat. So flatfooting and dense was that conversation that he realizes only belatedly that half the muscles in his body were clenched, to the point he's now physically achy. In his mind's eye he sees his phone helpfully pointing out the discount liquor stores between here and his apartment. New Stewart has no time for that. Straight
<VoxPVoxD> home for a shower, a shave, and an Adderall. He's on in two hours.
<banana> From: paperbark@summer.ctl
<banana> To: criticalmass
<banana> Subject: Technomedical/reliance ethics
<banana>
<banana> Good morning Stewart,
<banana>
<banana> This[https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxbTIYQXU0PnNzJpUjdObWUwaHc/edit] is the manuscript I was alluding to before I messed up. It's a preliminary examination of our ability to depend on *artifacts*; Nickel uses the term *technologies* interchangeably but I believe the same considerations apply to Wyrd contracts and the constructs of the Others. If it's a bit dense, may I recommend the section on the principle of respect, p.20. Nickel argues cogently that a secondary root of trust can be found in the *attitude* of artifacts toward their consumers (parties).
<banana> I'd extend this reasoning to Heidegger's ontology of unconcealment, the presentation of the self-that-dwells (dasein->wohnen). We depend on each other as beings (humans) and on the specific artifacts (magic spells) we use to shield each other from the harms They try to do and the harms we do to ourselves. In this algebra, being (verb) is contingent on being (noun), and the implications are obvious.
<banana> I fell asleep watching your stream but I liked Piety a lot, hopefully she comes back in a later act (direct terminology there!)
<banana>
<banana> Melanie Lucas