{"id":29975,"date":"2016-09-13T09:06:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T13:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=29975"},"modified":"2016-09-13T09:06:43","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T13:06:43","slug":"jason-arnopp-certainty-in-the-social-media-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2016\/09\/13\/jason-arnopp-certainty-in-the-social-media-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Arnopp: Certainty In The Social Media Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah, dear Jason Arnopp. Satanist. Sexual healer. 30 squirrels in a human suit. And now, an author. He’s gone ahead and written a crackingly funny — and scary — book, The Last Days of Jack Sparks<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. It’s kind of like if you took a found footage horror movie and turned it into a book except made it as hilarious as you did horrific? It’s really quite brilliant. Anyway, Jason wanted to come by to talk about some stuff, and since he has those pictures of me, I decided to let him.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing I\u2019m certain about these days, it\u2019s the glut of certainty in this world.<\/p>\n

My novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks<\/em> started life with the idea of a guy who becomes obsessed with tracking down the makers of a creepy YouTube video. Sometimes isolated notions like this resemble ice floes, spending years adrift in search of a connection. For two years, I didn\u2019t know who the obsessed guy would be, until finally, the arrogant celebrity journalist Jack Sparks was born from something I noticed about social media.<\/p>\n

As one character notes in the novel, you never see anyone on Twitter say, \u2018I\u2019m undecided on this issue \u2013 let me come back to you once I\u2019ve had a chance to properly think it over!\u2019 Nope, we all dive straight in, don\u2019t we, to nail our colours to any given mast. And I\u2019m curious as to why that might be.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s clarify what we\u2019re talking about here \u2013 or rather, what we\u2019re not. Clearly, having right-minded morals and values (aka not being an asshat) is important. Most of us naturally wouldn\u2019t have much time for someone who questioned whether various prejudices were good or bad. Neither am I talking about actual facts, which you either know or you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re talking more about issues for which there is no single answer, and often no way of gaining any definitive closure. From God to gun control to Ghostbusters to the truth about what happened to Malaysian Airlines\u2019 Flight MH370, the fact that everyone has an opinion isn\u2019t so much the fascinating thing here. What fascinates me is our apparent reluctance to express uncertainty. To occupy that bewildered middle ground. Why? Why has it become almost taboo to appear uncertain or undecided about any given topic?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one answer: we\u2019re all broadcasters now. We all have our own cyber-platform, with a number of viewers theoretically open to what we\u2019re putting out. So when we think of ourselves as broadcasters vying for attention bandwidth (and the resulting dopamine hits, which we underestimate here at our peril), it\u2019s easy to assume that our audience will find shiny granite-hewn opinions far more interesting than namby-pamby uncertainty. Received wisdom suggests that people are more likely to show up for news and views than someone scratching their head or sitting in cross-legged contemplation.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, a kind of race memory assures us that strong leaders make strong decisions. If we buy that logic and crave respect, it follows that we need to be seen to be assertive. Even if it means making a situation seem more binary or simplistic than it really is, as long as we deliver our vital hot take<\/em>, that\u2019s surely the priority, right? Hmm.<\/p>\n

Perhaps another reason we rush to serve up a steaming slice of opinion pie, is that uncertainty creates unease. It leaves items in our brains labelled Action Required. Unticked items on our mental to-do list. Deciding what we feel and believe ASAP helps to clear our psychological decks, which are already cluttered enough on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

On a very obvious level, uncertainty can be downright scary. In 2016, it\u2019s easy to see the world as more chaotic than ever before. There are strong arguments against this. Plenty of folk maintain it\u2019s less chaotic than before and internationally we\u2019re actually more united than ever, in almost every sense, but an understandably widespread sense of unease prevails nonetheless. Faced with such perceived levels of chaos, perhaps we feel the all-abiding need to cling to rock-solid views, even if those views might only unhelpfully spawn more fear (\u201cHey everybody, we\u2019re all fucked! KTHXBYE\u201d)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no coincidence that we find the most certainty clustered around the human condition\u2019s biggest question mark of them all. We have no idea of what happens to our spirit when we die, or even whether our spirit is a thing<\/em>. And yet endless millions get in line to place their bets. They stack their chips on the roulette table, even though the wheel won\u2019t be spun till they stop breathing. I understand and respect anyone\u2019s right to place such bets, but it\u2019s an interesting phenomenon \u2013 or at least, it is until seemingly irreconcilable certainties clash and people die, at which point it becomes deranged.<\/p>\n

Even people who don\u2019t believe in a creator or an afterlife, they feel the need to place their own bet and share that with the world, sparking whole new certainty wars. Me? I\u2019d love a planet on which everyone just lounges around, shrugs and says, \u2018Ah, who knows? Let\u2019s play Doom<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

In The Last Days Of Jack Sparks<\/em>, avowed non-believer Jack regularly clashes with people of faith via social media. The man doesn\u2019t seem to have an undecided bone in his body, and yet his friends and family alike are mystified when he sets out to write a whole non-fiction book debunking the supernatural. Could it have any connection with Jack\u2019s older brother Alistair having locked him in a dark room at the age of five? Only Jack\u2019s labyrinthine mind holds the answer, and it\u2019s no spoiler to say that the story takes him from a place of certainty to an altogether different place\u2026 and ultimately death.<\/p>\n

My friend John Higgs (whose own books like Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense Of The 20th Century<\/em> are must-reads) introduced me to the counter-culture icon Robert Anton Wilson. Not in person, sadly, since Wilson died in 2007. The man would warrant a whole post in himself, but when it came to (un)certainty he popularised two concepts that appeal to me greatly and seem relevant here.<\/p>\n

The first concept was the reality tunnel. A term originally coined by Timothy Leary, this means that we all see reality in our own unique way, filtered through our beliefs and experiences. We\u2019d do well to bear this in mind, next time we try to pass our opinions off as facts. The second concept could also be considered a tonic for the internet age: multiple model agnosticism. This doesn\u2019t just apply to God but to everything. It involves acknowledging that we see the world through our own reality tunnels, while remaining open minded about switching to any number of new tunnels. Whole new grids of belief, further down the line. Whatever feels right.<\/p>\n

If the internet so often seems to say I know I\u2019m right<\/em>, Robert Anton Wilson was saying I know I\u2019m wrong<\/em>. His whole self-deprecating attitude made him so diametrically opposed to Jack Sparks that it felt spectacularly right to start the novel with a Wilson epigraph: \u2018If you think you know what the hell is going on, you\u2019re probably full of shit\u2019.<\/p>\n

So many readers seem to find Jack Sparks as compelling as he is infuriating. Like some kind of existential duck, Jack appears perfectly calm on the water\u2019s surface, while his legs swim furiously away underneath. Perhaps it\u2019s appealing for us to explore the less desirable traits that social media might nurture in us, but to do so through Jack, without having to interrogate ourselves too closely.<\/p>\n

All high-falutin\u2019 philosophical considerations aside, of course, the idea that we have no clue what\u2019s really going on in the universe works nicely in a novel that aspires to scare the ever-loving Christ out of readers. But the next time we don\u2019t know what the hell is going on, we might consider plucking up the courage to say so. For every one person who thinks less of us as a result, I\u2019m totally certain there\u2019ll be ten who think, \u2018Thank God it\u2019s not just me\u2019.<\/p>\n

Jason Arnopp: Website<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/a><\/span> | Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Last Days Of Jack Sparks: Amazon<\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/span><\/a> | Indiebound<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, dear Jason Arnopp. Satanist. Sexual healer. 30 squirrels in a human suit. And now, an author. He’s gone ahead and written a crackingly funny — and scary — book, The Last Days of Jack Sparks. It’s kind of like if you took a found footage horror movie and turned it into a book except […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-29975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-7Nt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29976,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975\/revisions\/29976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}