The Parasite in My Phone
I’ve been thinking about monstrous (social media) parasites, a Disney film called Darby O’Gill and the Little People, and Día de los Muertos.
#167
THEN & NOW
It’s nearly Halloween. The ghouls and skeletons are poised in the front yards of my neighborhood. I’ve been thinking about monstrous parasites, a Disney film called Darby O’Gill and the Little People, and Día de los Muertos.
When I was in graduate school, I studied linguistics for one semester with Professors Eve Sweetser and George Lakoff. They taught me the power of metaphor, and how the most apt metaphors make it easier to understand and explain experiences. You know you’ve got a good metaphor when you understand it viscerally and emotionally, and when it applies to multiple and complex situations.
It occurred to me that “parasite” may be the best metaphor for what people distrust and fear about social media platforms.
Merriam-Webster describes parasite as “an organism living in, on, or with another organism in order to obtain nutrients, grow, or multiply often in a state that directly or indirectly harms the host.”
In “Are We Now Living in a Parasite Culture?” author Ted Gioia weighs in on parasite businesses and corporations, and the strategies they employ to keep us glued to their platforms.
Matt Simon uses parasites as metaphor in the title of his article “Learn from these Bugs: Don’t Let Social Media Zombify You” in Wired 2018.1 He has also written a book on real-life biological zombies in Plight of the Living Dead.
My partner reminded me that so many people participate in social media because of potential benefits, such as becoming an “influencer” or meeting interesting people who share your interests or might even purchase your product.
Some social media interactions with family and friends have been mostly worthwhile since the early days of Facebook and social media. But things changed after the once-humble but now-huge media corporations became monopolies and began manipulating users with their bags of tricks.
Patrick Sharbaugh’s Hard Refresh focuses on those changes including “society's reckoning with peak online and digital saturation — and what comes after.”
I argue that there are many other ways to meet customers or people with shared interests. Unless we are media influencers to begin with, we don’t need hundreds or thousands of contacts. Sometimes those contacts can distract us from focusing on more important things. Physical meetings can often spark more meaningful, long-term collaborations or customers.
And using algorithms, dopamine hits, and visual/emotional bait like TikTok and AI-generated content to keep us glued to the screen seems demeaning and sneaky, if not downright evil. Do we want social media to keep colonizing our minds and our time? Take some of that time to weigh your benefits and losses.2
Recently, I remembered a Disney film that scared the bejeezus out of me when I was a kid: Walt Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People.3 I was of the age when the idea of death was starting to mess with my mind. Having to say the “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”4 prayer at bedtime didn’t help:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take . . .
At that early age, my babysitter’s bible stories suggested to me that I may have been just naughty enough to be a future candidate for ending up in the Bad Place. Also, my father—although he was mostly away at sea—seemed closer to the atheist end of the spectrum; he never spoke about God, heaven, or hell.5 My mother was not the sort to offer comforting reassurances about angels and heaven, either, though her presence helped a lot when I had nightmares and she came running. When I was older, Mom left all the explaining to the nuns during catechism class, and in my opinion they were not very helpful. In any case, I was left to sort things out on my own.
I looked up Darby O’Gill and the Little People on YouTube and the specific part of it that I found scary. It was where the banshee summons the death coach—drawn down from the skies by black horses—for Katie, and Darby offers himself in her stead.
Now that I see it again, the special effects seem awkward and roughly devised, compared to the almost magical special effects we see nowadays. Children today have so much worse to deal with in terms of “frightening” video! Still, it’s amazing how, as a kid, just the suggestion of a ghost could arouse and color my nightmares. And hey — is that Sean Connery in that scene? He wasn’t even Irish!
Día de los Muertos and All Saints Day are coming up soon, too. Recently, my art became part of the Día de los Muertos altar at the Paraluman Fil-Am Festival Art Exhibit, held at Urban Arts Collaborative in Salinas Chinatown. I felt it was a great position for my art, since three of the pieces referenced the Buklog gratitude ritual of the Subanen people.
Halloween. There are many ways to view this time of year. We contemplate the many monsters of our past and present; we ponder death, our universal experience, and we think of those who have gone before us. I’m remembering poet, author, and editor of Pinoy Poetics Nick Carbo, and artist Cruz Ortiz Zamarron.6 My gratitude goes out to the Earth and its myriad offspring who enrich our lives, and sometimes make it scary. Gratitude to all my ancestors and especially to my parents, whose letters now comprise my Letter Project.
I made a “perfect bound” watercolor sketchbook using Fabriano mixed-media paper. The covers are recycled from an old painting. Best of all, the pages lay flat, with only a fold—no seam. I made a second sketchbook today, and I think I’ll just continue making more . .
RABBIT HOLE
For as long as I’ve known about it, I’ve thought of Sasquatch as a dorky, shaggy monster of the Pacific Northwest, dreamed up by someone in a tourism bureau. Sure, it could be scary thinking about it if you’re alone in the woods. But Charlene Moody’s Sasquatch art brings a new and indigenous perspective to the local legend:
Cathryn Miller’s Byopia Press is soon coming to Substack. As Halloween approaches, she is thinking of a scary moment in another Disney film: Fantasia— but the scene is set on St. John’s Eve rather than Halloween. Remember “Night on Bald Mountain”?
Lawrence W. (@BunkOFlakes) draws little monstrous creatures and things in tiny sketchbooks. I like tiny sketchbooks, and I make tiny sketchbooks, so there you go.
The story of the Paisley Abbey Xenomorph from Grimmlifecollective:
“The Net Out of Control: Mail Art in Latin America” by Fabiano Pianowski.
Pilostyles: a parasitic plant within a plant—or possibly a plant with eyeballs and a hangover.
The Covid-19 lockdown was very disturbing to conceptual and mail artist Stewart Home, so—as a comforting and comic ritual—he recreated the “normalcy” of the claustrophobic London underground commute in his kitchen:
SOUNDINGS
Lots of music, today!
Guitarist/composer Gary Lucas’ stunning and surreal soundtrack to the silent film classic horror story The Golem (Dir. Paul Wegener and Carl Boese). More information about this work on Lucas’ website.
Would you trust this guy? I’m having fun with an imagined dialogue. First, here is Philippine songwriter/vocalist Rico Blanco dressed up like a futuristic nobleman in a gothic setting from Spain’s colonial past. He shuts the heavy doors and pulls the drapes closed, assuring his supposed lover “You’ll be safe here” (written by Blanco, produced by Rivermaya, 2005):
Next, Janine Tenoso sings the Itchyworms’ “Di Na Muli”7 or “Never Again” at Wish 107.5. One stanza, translated into English below suggests that “never again” could be a lament for someone who has died, “never again” to return. But, in the context of Halloween and relationships—well, it could mean a lot of things—like, “sorry dude, never again will I enter that castle now that I’ve disposed of your body . . .”
I'm sorry, again
Never again
Your life was taken without notice
I whisper to myself
I love you until the end
This is a “Song for One of the Worst Films Ever Made” by Josh Turner. Great song!
Sincere appreciation to all of you who read Eulipion Outpost regularly, and to those who have subscribed here or donated on my Ko-fi page to support my efforts.
My ongoing appreciation goes to the Mysterious M. for his editing.
Website and blog: Jeanvengua1.wordpress.com
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. . . although he later refers to his usage as an analogy.
If you need help getting off social media, call Seth “Why the f*ck are you still on social media?” Werkheiser’s Hotline (limited time offer).
Adapted from stories by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh. And yes (regarding the film), I’m that old.
Second version, originally from the New England Primer, 1750.
Apparently he had an issue with the church having absconded with family property, or something like that. Yet another story for me to track down . . .
"La Luna del Mariachi,” computer generated digital print by Cruz Ortiz Zamarron, 2013 (Museo Eduardo Carillo).
Writer: Wally Acolola, Jazz Nicolas; Copyright: Lyrics © Sentric Music. source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/itchyworms/di_na_muli
I saw Disney's Fantasia in the theater as a little boy with my dad. Fantasia was produced and released thirteen years before I was born, so it must have been a special showing. The Night On Bald Mountain sequence scared the bejeezus out of me, too. I drew my little legs up onto the seat and hid behind my knees.