Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
@tom and I came to the web as group 2 in the era of Web 1. So when I talk about the horrors of the modern web, I’m coming at it with the nostalgia of the early web promise, but am now firmly in group 3, Adam’s tech-grumps. But does that make us wrong?
Thinking back to Web 1: there had been a tech giant: AOL and we’d all run away from it into the open web while it was gobbling up Time Warner, and there wasn’t another threat to the web until Microsoft, whose principle crime with Internet Explorer was writing shitty HTML and installing it by default on Windows, which the EU was able to stop. The next threat was Rupert Murdoch buying MySpace which we dodged by running to an Ajaxy site run by some kid from Harvard, which was, um, less successful.
But still, compare AOL/Microsoft/Murdoch of the early web to Google’s monopoly with search today. You’re pushed into using the Chrome browser on billions of smart phones, it defaults to Google search, it has Google ad tracking built in, in a way that’s hard to prevent, 66.6% of the world use it (!). And this is the same Google that has 98% of the video player market, 90% of search.
Whats more, this search monopoly is now used to stop sending you to useful sites, as it once did, but instead to serve up AI answers, stolen from the content Google indexed from those sites under legitimate copyright exemptions, so you don’t even need to visit them any more and risk supporting them. Google’s future vision of the web is free data to train its algorithm that dominates its search page. Bing, Duck and the rest have been quick to copy this, and of course the original culprit is Chat GPT which is increasingly used in place of search, with answers similarly stolen from the web using search indexing exemptions.
Still, if your first phone was an Android, if you’re Adam’s group 1, maybe everything I just said sounds like questioning Catholicism in rural Italy a few centuries ago. The response may be somewhere between “shh Google might hear you and this blog could be blocked” and “burn the heretic”…
I try to hear myself as I might have done if I was 19 today…
“What, we have a TV channel we can post to and a dozen different ways to reach billions of people? Sounds like you don’t like democracy mate, can’t handle the chaos that brings. Sounds like you want to put the genie back in the bottle.”
Or – perhaps – “yeh social media makes me depressed, I try not use it too much. But also it passes the time, I feel less alone. Look at this cat making pizza. And this person who says what I think but even better.”
But it doesn’t make the criticism less wrong. The web was never meant to be like this, where a few companies get to define truth for the majority. The web was meant to prevent a world like this.
Like many who marched against the Iraq war (an estimated 36 million across 3,000 protests) only to see the popular turnout ignored by government followed by a devastating, illegal war, I’ve come to question the value of marches. 500,000 marching about Gaza in London each month doesn’t get a photo in the press, but an arrested 83-year old Priest holding a Palestine Action sign – or a Plasticine Action sign – does.
But Epping was something different.
If me – 6ft white guy – felt nervous amidst a crowd of 2,000 anti-fascist marchers, with police everywhere – I was struck by how on earth the asylum seekers in the Bell Hotel must feel, amidst theviolence erupting outside their accommodation. And how must Epping’s BAME and migrant residents feel walking about? Unlike other marches I’ve been on, this was about strength in numbers. It was a way of saying to the rest of Epping ‘you’re not alone’ – and judging by the many waves and cheers from windows and doorsteps (some half-hiding for fear), that was welcomed.
By some. But not by others – it’s sobering walking down a street 30 minutes from where you live – even in a crowd of 2000, majority women – to cries of ‘shame on you’ and ‘pedophiles’ from families stood in their drives with their kids.
But it’s not that the marchers didn’t have our share of inflammatory chants – from ‘Nazi scum’ and ‘kill yourself like Adolph Hitler’, this social media-friendly tendency to paint the other side in the extreme worst place struck me as lose-lose for everyone, other than the companies who depend on polarised content to feed to audiences around the world safe at home, screen-stroking. On this level it’s not a community crisis it’s a content strategy – it’s the social media equivalent of premium content – violence on British streets, with something for both sides. It’s not tribes, its not a community story, it’s two different dramas with two different audiences, who each can look at it and say how the other side are a sign of how Britain is doomed.
Campaign groups need to get better at communicate to both two audiences
A danger of these ‘filter bubbles’ is not knowing how to communicate to the other bubble; the strongest messages can be heard by both groups and the majority will agree with it. That’s why ‘save our kids’ works and ‘migrants out’ doesn’t. Organisers Stand up Against Racism have to be better at communications. Take this reasonably balanced report from the BBC of the march –
Carmen Edwards, from the anti-migrant protest, said: “It was all happy, people were dancing, we were singing. There weren’t no far-right.” Sharon Smith, who had travelled from nearby Harlow, said she wanted to attend the protest to “protect my grandkids”. She said: “A lot of people showed up; it was good humoured and [there was] music. Everyone wants the same, [which is to] save our children.” However, Lewis Nielsen, officer at Stand up to Racism, said: “We think it is a quite dangerous situation in Epping. “They are potentially heading towards the same kind of violence we saw in August last year, so we think it is important that anti-racists and anti-fascists come out and mobilise against them. “People are right to be angry about the cost-of-living crisis, the NHS, the housing crisis. None of that was caused by the refugees in that hotel.”
Stand up to Racism sound like a politician who’s dodged a question from a journalist. The anti-migrant crowd in Epping aren’t talking about the NHS or housing, they’re talking about ‘protect our kids’. That has to be the first sentence in any response:
“We absolutely agree every community should feel safe, and nothing is more important than keeping all of our children safe. Unfortunately some of the refugees staying at the hostel have been attacked and beaten up while just going to the shops – and we’re here to say they must feel safe too.”
That’s the headline statement. And then they can pivot to the hard truths:
Nigel Farage has tried to split this community over a sexual assault of a teenager, but champions pro-rape figures like Andrew Tate. Some of the loudest voices weaponising the concerns of this community pay no interest when those accused are white. Tommy Robinson planned to come here today – he co-founded the EDL with Richard Price who was convicted for creating and possessing child pornography; Tommy defended him for long after that. The EDL – which he founded – had 20 members charged with child exploitation offences. This has continued for years – dozens of people close to him charged with child sexual abuse material, his spokesman in 2019 convicted for domestic abuse, and what’s key is he NEVER condemned these white supporters when the crimes came to light.”
Of course this isn’t a new story – a horrible attack on a teenager, weaponised by Britain’s newest Nazi group Homeland through a Facebook Group ‘Epping Says No’ (who openly boast of their orchestration), instrumentalised by a click hungry right wing press, conflict-hungry social media platforms and shameless politicians – to divide a community into ‘racists’ vs ‘threats to children’; or at the extremes ‘Nazi scum’ and ‘Pedophiles’.
Is this something new?
Is there anything meaningful to take from all this? From Tulsa to Ballymena – sexual assault is the ignition on an initial furious community backlash against the minority group where the accused comes from; and other forces then mobilise to defend them. In Ballymena 107 police officers were injured; in Tulsa in 1921 35 blocks were burned down and 39 of the local black community were killed. In Epping’s march on Sunday night thankfully no-one was hurt, a week before tho a dozen were – and Nigel Farage spent the week in between complaining that the police had let more get injured.
Reading the press in the aftermath, listening to the chants on the day, looking at the range of people who opposed our march through Epping I think there is. I think what’s new in all this, that’s different to Tulsa or previous such fights was how many of the men lining the streets was how many of them were filming.
Unlike the race battles of the 80s and 90s that we thought we’d left behind, this is also about content production and distribution. It’s both social-capital generating content for the creator, and money-making, attention-grabbing content for the platforms.
This is a relatively new thing. And so a relatively routine far-right weaponised concern for the safety of women and kids and a similarly common concern for the safety of refugees and minorities – is prevented from finding that natural common ground of ‘safety and care for all’ on social media, because this is social media’s version of a football match – choose your side and attack the other. A resolution would be bad for business.
Where once community leaders – from the local church to pub, cabbies and newspaper – would do the work of trying to repair fractured communities, the business model here is the opposite. The attention model is built on conflict, not the calming down and compromises which community peace and restoration is built on. At its worst unregulated extreme, we can picture a full cycle where social media companies –who don’t invest in content production– benefit so much from these conflicts that their algorithms continually reinforce the conditions for conflict, encouraging each ‘side’ to behave in ways that are most triggering to the other, all as a path to generate high-value content.
I began to write a screenplay a few years back about a developer who discovers the algorithm he’d written to grow a newspaper’s engagement and clicks was triggering geopolitical conflicts to meet its objectives of ‘more news’. It was a fun/scary Black Mirror-esque idea, but increasingly it feels like a logical conclusion of the business model of the attention economy, when coupled with the lack of transparency or regulation over the algorithms that decide who sees what.
I read an astonishing statistic the other day (care of Stephen Follows obvs) that two thirds of all feature films ever made have been made since the turn of the millennium. One of the artefacts of being (hopefully) halfway through my life is that films made in the middle to end of the last century take on a false perspective. The distortion bends both ways. Filmmakers wear their influences with pride, often obsessively so. Producers’ eyes too are always on the rear view, trying to mirror past successes. At the same time runs the collective sigh that everything is worse now and thanks to streaming and computer games and social media and AI, the audience have moved on and no one cares. So it’s stimulating to think, a quarter of the way through this century, most films are recent.
Don’t take this as bromide. I don’t discount that this might also mean that more than two thirds of all films ever made aren’t that great. I think I’d probably lean towards that view whenever they were made. Equally I’m not saying things aren’t hard. I am though perhaps saying that hard/easy is the wrong scale. Who out there ever finds it easy to make a film? Sure Luca Guadagnino seems to knock ‘em out bimonthly but a quick dip into his interviews finds him longing to retire and saying “I used to see making films as a kind of paradise and I now realise it’s kind of a hell, to be honest.” Disingenuous? Perhaps a little, but however else you imagine the process of filmmaking to be I doubt it’s ever not hard.
The sheer volume of production says nothing of creative quality or cultural impact but it does speak to the fact that someone somewhere thinks someone wants this. Yes it’s a vocation and passion blinds us. Yes there’s no fool bigger than those fooling themselves. But I was recently at a talk at a film market and everyone was sagely agreeing that no one wanted to watch films anymore and I looked around the room which was rammed to the rafters and thought again that the numbers and the sentiment didn’t add up. If we all really agreed that this was over, why were we all there? A mass delusion?
Film is the art of illusion, the focusing of a million falsehoods into a single point that looks like truth. Appropriately the economics that underpin the art are also famously a trick of the light. We all know the basic sleight of hand of hollywood accounting where the pay-out of profitability is constantly kicked down the road by a hundred tiny considerations. Ticket prices are too high, cinemas are failing, distribution companies struggling, production companies rudderless and Oscar hopefuls are living pay cheque to pay cheque. Maybe.
I’m in too deep but I think if I had to pick a problem facing cinema in the next 25 years I’d still plump for complete social collapse caused by environmental trauma. But then, I’m an optimist.
Nic remembers this time well. I don’t remember. It’s not that I can’t remember, I just haven’t.
Nic didn’t let it go, and so it has remained nurtured. When I left, I severed it at the root. That’s what I tended to do then. Not him. Netribution grew out of him, it was his creation, and so new growth continued off the main trunk; it grows still. And now he’s asked me to, to what?
To Commemorate. To Mark the Time, fill the gap in time? To show my respect for you, Nic. Yes, certainly that. But also to see who I was before I ended my involvement in the business, and for some years, our friendship.
Really though, I want to talk to the young man I was from across time. I want to remember. Let’s start at where I met Nic. We were studying film production at Westminster Uni.
Tom. I love you. I remember your urgency, your impatience to Have, and your frustration with how slow it all was. You didn’t want to work unless there were others, to play with, to be with and be accepted by. And yet you didn’t choose to live on campus. You placed yourself off to the side and above (?) them. You didn’t emotionally commit. I want to make my own choices. There’s a drag to this. I can’t stay motivated. I want to be seen and I want success but it seems like such a long way off. I want to be free. Actually, I’m just lonely. I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know what Nic wants, but he seems to know. He’s smarter than I am. He’s committed. Let’s just fucking do this and see what happens.
Bless you. What are you doing now, much later, at a documentary festival? Well we’ve been invited as indie press but I don’t have my own words. I can’t describe Netribution. I don’t know this industry. I’m trying to follow the narrative but I’m also only trying to be interested in it. I like film. I love the excitement and the style of all this, this scene. Awards one night and basement talks with drinks the next. I love the lifestyle. The travel. I’m bouncing. I’m flexing Me. I get to be good looking, get to be witty. But I’m seen in a way I don’t recognise. I want to be seen as someone. I want to meet women.
And sometimes I get exposed. Because I genuinely don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m faking it, quite well it seems. I’m on a fucking panel about UK indie film. I have no idea what I’m supposed to say. I’ll borrow. I’ll blag it. I’ll look the part, play the role.
How did you end up here Tom? I don’t know. It just happened.
How, Tom. How did it happen? Nic asked me to join him. He seemed to just know and it sounded exciting, so I followed Nic. Uni was slow and I didn’t feel part of the group. I was off to one side; accepted but my peers seemed committed. They knew their stuff. I felt like an amateur, and a bit of a fraud.
Nic’s smart and fair and he’s humble enough for me to respect his way with this. We have rich conversation. I think it’s this that I enjoy most. He speaks beneath the surface of me and I’m curious.
Are you OK sweetheart? Well, I’m going to see how it goes. It’s fun but I can’t afford to live like this. Maybe I should go work with my brother? He’s earning so well in an A-list restaurant. It’s an ongoing pull. Anyway, there’s a rhythm now.
Tell me about the rhythm, Tom I interview folk on the indie film scene. I love it. I photograph them and I get to talk to interesting people. I love asking questions. I love being seen in this way. When I’m interviewing, I don’t need to perform. Sometimes it’s a bit intimidating. Sometimes they see I’m not, somehow, worthy of this but most of the time, by the end, they’ve enjoyed it too.
Then I transcribe the interview, develop the photos and design the piece for its Friday publication. This is what I do mainly. Transcribing from a mini cassette player is very long.
That sounds fun. We have AI to do this for us now. AI like Hal in 2001?
Not quite that advanced but getting there it seems. Amazing! How long does it take?
Seconds. Haha! It takes you hours! Look. Would you like to ask me a question? I’m so far from you now, but of course, we are the same.
Errm. Do I, do I become responsible, like an adult with a house and a car and all that? Hah! Sort of. You try but in many ways it’s not for you. At least, not how you are thinking about it. After Netribution you will go on to work in some amazing restaurants. It’s hard but fun and exciting. It gives you control and stability, because they are disciplined. You need that. You will start on the fringes, as a restaurant doorman but the lure of what’s inside becomes too much to resist. I won’t give the story away but you become quite successful in this world.
So, to answer your question more kindly, you try to become an adult but you just end up copying what that seems to be. Will I become a father?
Yes, Tom. We are father to a beautiful son. This changes everything, but your ‘adult’ question requires answers that you cannot yet understand. You see, I’m still learning how. Can I ask another question?
Shoot. If this doesn’t last, what’s the point in carrying on?
Good question. What you don’t yet know is that everything you do is an experiment. And more, that everything you do is exactly the way it is meant to be. In fact, I want to tell you some truths, about who you are. Are you OK with that? Of course, I want to know what to do to get what I want. OK. Well even knowing what you want requires work, because there is a meaning beneath every want. Sometimes, that makes the thing you want irrelevant. In those cases it’s really just a feeling that you want more of. The thing, or the job, or the woman or the whole package gives you that feeling. I won’t explain more on this now because I know you aren’t ready. Why? Don’t you think I’m smart enough?
No offence meant. This isn’t easy for me. What I can tell you is this; you want, so you go out and get. You aren’t conscious of this yet. It’s the way you are now and the way it has to be. You aren’t like this later in life. Fine. Say what you want to say to me.
Thank you, Tom. One. The way you ask questions, your decency and curiosity about people, just the way you are with people, beneath wanting something from them, is how you are seen. You don’t need to try to be anything more.
Two. You are naturally wild and free. This journey with Nic is an expression of that. The pull towards a better paid job and the security it offers is both natural and understandable, but the fruits of it are an illusion.
Three Only do what is in your heart’s desire. If you do something purely for money or the status it brings, the good feelings eventually wear off. You return to sad and confused and frustrated. I know this because I did it again and again.
Four Write and talk to people. It fulfills you. But there’s a condition: If you keep Wanting, they sense it and it pushes them away. Even with women?
Especially with women. How will they know if I’m attracted to them?
They will know even before you do. Relax. You are a decent, smart, good looking young man. Stop trying. That’s so easy for you to say!
I know. It’s not fair. I just wish I’d learned this sooner. Here’s a question that’s been bugging me. Would you describe yourself as a romantic? Hmm, I suppose, but I don’t like the word. It sounds feeble. Where is this going?
I don’t know. I just remember you as, you know, a dreamer beneath but blustery and a bit crass in public. Perhaps that’s inaccurate. But what stands out is you often trying to show off. Just to be taken seriously. Funny that. You try so hard to be diligent and hard working, to be a good boy, but you are anything but. What do you mean? Haha! You have a big ginger beard and shave your head daily. You wear Italian summer suits. You look like a suave pirate. You spontaneously eat at restaurants you cannot afford. I remember you meeting Keeley Naylor for the first time. You persuaded the maitre d’ at Quo Vadis to give you that beautiful, intimate private dining room. You ordered a Negroni and eggs Arnold Bennett before she arrived. Who DOES that in their early twenties? That sweet boy beneath, that I have become reacquainted with, never got a look in. But this too is unfair. How would you know? Hahaha! In truth, I have no fucking idea what I’m doing! Where am I supposed to learn how to behave? I guess I’m liked and accepted and I’m having fun. I don’t want to be like anyone else. I don’t follow trends. I always want to try something different. Why the fuck wouldn’t I do those things? Anyway, you make out it wasn’t you.
It wasn’t meant as a judgement. That’s how it landed. I get this from my brother, that adventurous dreamer thing. If there was a bit more money coming in it would prove I’m fine. I don’t like being worried about and I don’t like being told what to do.
This I know well! What would you do with more money? Go to more bars and restaurants. Buy nicer clothes, and buy nicer Christmas presents. Date fab women with abandon.
Tell me about your successful older brother. I love him but he’s always taking care of me. He seems to be miles down the road and considering things I haven’t even thought of. I’m so grateful to him but I’d love to have the freedoms he can afford. I feel like he needs to look after me. It’s a bit of a trap for both of us. That’s ok. He gets over it. Tell me about Nic. He challenges me, intellectually, morally. We go on long philosophical discussions, when we should be working. He seems so connected to the industry. He knows what’s happening locally and internationally.
Nic has strong political and ethical beliefs, beliefs that I lack. I just don’t see the world as he does. I suppose that means I’m disinterested, as though it’s all just going on around me. And we talk about food!
The night before he’ll have devised some new concoction of onions, melted cheese and potatoes and revels in the detail of the telling. He likes frying things!
And we talk about women as though we are visitors from Mars. We are both in relationships actually.
I have fond memories of both his and ours. How’s it going with ours? Oh no! You know what happens! Oh! Is she the.. No. I don’t want to know.
Good for you. I wouldn’t tell you anyway. How do you see her? Hard working. Smart. Diligent. I envy her that. Ambitious too. And she’s absolutely gorgeous. She wears dresses with nothing else on, or she’ll put something on that she knows will excite me. She walks around barefoot. She excites me, but she’s well grounded. The sex is, every time, like a great battle. It’s just ridiculous.
I remember. The best, as I recall. Is she ‘the One’, Tom? I don’t know. It’s very passionate and I think we love each other. What is love like at your.., you know, later?
Thank you, Tom. Very tactful. Love is as sweet and exciting as at your age. But it gets broader; not just for women and family I mean. My love for our son is the deepest feeling I have ever known. It rocked me. Yes, the need for the love of a woman has lessened, but I still imagine.. No. There’s a lot I can’t say, you know. Let’s get back on topic. How do you see British Indie film?Tough one. It’s seems both a bit hippy and earnest. America has made it an industry. We seem to be approaching it like an offshoot of the NHS. Lottery money has changed things but it still seems like all the cream rises to the top of the system. We are grassroots. I prefer documentary film to be honest. You guys have made some docs right? Yes. Really great fun. Not much money in it but they have a definite flavour and I’m proud of what we’ve done.
Another one off topic. What sort of dad will you make? I have absolutely no idea. I don’t know if you remember this, but I talk in the mirror to my, our, future son. In the bathroom. It’s as though I’m working through something; a shred of truth and I want to tell him. I want to help him not make my mistakes.
I do remember. It’s sweet. I tell this story even today. You know you’ll be a great friend to him right?
It’s as though, too, that I already know him…
That’s right. We loved him before he was born. Isn’t that just magical? What does that say to you about love? Maybe that’s it’s just, always there?
Something like that. OK. Be seeing you around, Tom. Time’s up. No. Wait! I need to know one thing! Sorry sweetheart. Enjoy the next 25. I believe in you x
