Lots of interesting tidbits (especially about being Asian-American) in this article about the loose-cannon, on-the-cusp food celebrity, Eddie Huang. But this tidbit in particular got my gears going:
He talked about weighing two alternative routes to video stardom: his planned basic cable show versus a project to be produced and distributed independently online.
Are there any well-known, online-distributed food shows at the moment?
Rational people hate Instagram. Its popularity seems driven by any of a series of insolvent whims—misplaced nostalgia, vanity, herd mentality—there’s no sense that it does anything real. This is why Instagram users are derisively branded as “hipsters.”
I mostly accepted Instagram’s popularity, while dismissing it personally. The photos generated by the app did feel more artsy, more cool; and knowing that, I couldn’t really fault people who used or liked the service. But I did feel that it would be inauthentic in my hands, so I decided to remain mostly ambivalent about it. But then I got to try it, and I like it a lot. Being a rational person, I have an overwhelming need to rationalize my position in this post.
Here’s my lunch:
That is exactly what I ate. Crispy egg noodles, in a salty, oily brown sauce, with tofu, bean sprouts, broccoli, carrots, and mushrooms.
Here’s the Instagram photo of my lunch:
The Instagram photo is what I remember eating. I had rich, succulent noodles, brought to a perfect tension by the gingery oyster sauce; the give of the noodles was given contrast by the crisp broccoli and the crunchy bean sprouts. The tofu had a fried skin but was soft and full of flavor inside.
As it turns out, Instagram photos can depict something much closer to what our mind will remember. My mind, at least, stores memories as a hazy lattice of emotions and thoughts around facts that may or may not be accurate. The Instagram filters give users a chance to imbue captured moments with emotional tones; a loose vocabulary of distortions that may be the best mimicry we have available for a mind’s imperfect storage and retrieval of experiences.
And then, after selecting a filter, the subsequent act of sharing is more personal. Someone sharing an Instagram photo is communicating about their emotions (man, this meal felt indulgent and really hit the spot) in addition to the factual bits conveyed by the subject of the photo (I ate vegetarian chow mein for lunch today).
As a self-described rational person—who also believes that the most rational way to view the world accepts the domineering role that emotion plays in it—that’s my take on what Instagram does, how it adds value, and why I’m totally (mostly) okay with using it.
I’ve always been into comics and graphic art, but I’ve typically followed titles that deviate from the hero-in-tights model. Also, I’m kind of a sucker for following a story “from the beginning,” so it’s always been a bit of a hurdle to jump into a long-running title that’s well into the hundreds of issues.
However, DC Comics recently rebooted a ton of their titles, with new #1s across the board, so I’m taking it as an opportunity to see what’s on offer. My lovely wife bought me a package that includes all 52 new titles; I plan on reading through them one by one and tweeting some brief thoughts on each title under the hashtag #new52.
After more than 4 years of fighting alongside the leading Internet freedom advocates on the planet, I’m leaving to work with a team that’s creating unprecedented, everybody-wins scenarios in the world of gaming.
It’s very much a case of leaving one dream job to start another dream job, and as such my emotional state in the last few weeks has been quite…jumbled. I’ve got my feet arched-to-aching in the starting blocks, ready to start collaborating on some mind-blowing game bundles. And yet, I’m decidedly heartbroken, ’cause the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a pillar of justice and frankly, a home away from home. So, I’ve decided to try and work out my feelings by sharing some thoughts on how bogglingly awesome these organizations are — EFF from my direct experience, and Humble Bundle from a more peripheral (but soon to be integral, I hope) perspective.
Principles are the bottom line. EFFers apply every ounce of brilliance and passion towards giving users the most freedom — full stop. For EFF, being on the cutting edge of technology is not a matter of ego, hobnobing, techno-dazzlement, or paranoia. It’s about advocating for the values best known to keep a society free and democratic, and making sure that those values are given their due and then some on the frontier of technology.
EFF makes sure that our liberties endure, even as the global shift to ones-and-zeros makes everything more awesome, more weird, more scary, and often, for those accustomed to power, more uncomfortable.
A pioneering, holistic approach. EFF has spent years building a dream team: top-notch attorneys, internationally recognized policy experts, impassioned activists, imaginative technologists, and future-focused fund raisers. EFF is a fantastic example of a 21st century public interest organization, where each individuals’ ideas and expertise are flexibly accessible to others in the organization, and where the work seen by the outside world represents the highest standard of technical precision, legal accuracy, and emotional impact.
The holistic approach means that when EFF explains an issue, advocates for a course of action, or condemns a notion, it’s been done with world-class attention and expertise from across domains.
An engaged membership. The supporters of EFF — from the casual social media sharer to our sustaining and major donors — are really concerned about the future and care deeply about outcomes. They contribute with their hearts and minds as much as they support EFF with their pocketbooks. As an activist, you couldn’t ask for much more than to work alongside a focused community willing and able to ask questions and challenge various authorities in the fight to make the digital world more free.
Experimenting well. We’ve said for awhile that experimentation is going to be one x-factor for creatives seeking financial success on the Internet. And we’ve known in somewhat abstract terms what the Internet offers — absurdly low overhead for communication, and the distributed freedom to exchange ideas and create culture. But experimentation is largely what we’ve needed to be able to take the next step. We’ve needed to put boats in the stream and exchange notes on which ones float and why.
Humble Bundle is experimenting intelligently and making excellent use of their findings to update the experience of selling and buying games.
Working for the win-win-win. Humble Bundle refuses to accept that someone in the “game developer-to-gamer” relationship should habitually receive the short end of the stick. Developers should be rewarded for the sacrifices and toil that go into making a great game, and customers should be able to engage, participate, and play the games honestly, without being treated like an abstract liability or a balance sheet line-item. The story doesn’t even end there; Humble Bundle recognizes that charities involved in world-changing work — particularly work that expands the reach and impact of gaming — are part of the community and deserve a measure of recognition as well.
Working diligently towards a “win-win-win” situation is stubborn, simple, and ground-breaking, and goddamn do I want a lot more of it in the world.
Games, gamers, gaming. I have always loved games, and I’m starting to feel that as a society, we’re warming up to their potential. Games are a favored, multidimensional way to be social, solve problems, and compete. I’m invested in seeing a future in which independent game developers are able to have authentic, innovative voices; I want to see more kinds of games being made; I want to see everyone playing more games. Humble Bundle seems like the right place to make all that happen.
I’m leaving a dream job with EFF to start a dream job with Humble Bundle, and I’m excited for what the future holds. EFF is awesome! Support their peerless effort to advocate for our digital civil liberties! Humble Bundles are stupendous! Support game developers and non-profits by buying computer games! (And for more regular musings and updates, follow me on Twitter, because writing long personal posts turns out to be a very occasional activity!)
