Subluminal

note : please do not take this post as an offense against facebook, the social network. I have great respect for their work, and I have many good friends working there. But sometimes, things get a little out of control due to emotion, and I want to make sure my non-French friends can visualize these things we’re being bombarded of, since facebook has territory bubbles.

Friday the 13th couldn’t be more nightmarish.

Synchronized attacks on locations of high cultural significance of Paris (one near France’s biggest stadium, while two national teams were playing- think of the playoffs, for soccer, at the scale of Europe- and another at very popular indie music venue) hit France really hard, for a third time this year, though now hitting citizens at random.

Promptly, my big brother Mark activated the “security check” feature of facebook :

It’s the same kind of feature that was deployed during the last Nepal earthquake. But let me explain why things are *subtly* different in the context.

It is great to know that your friends are fine, but this is clearly contributing to fear, what is the whole point of terror.  How can I know that my friend actually was there ? What about my friends who don’t have facebook- they don’t exist ?

The problem with this kind of app, is that you don’t know who is missing, what is actually the point. That of course recalls the notion of negative space (which became trendy again in the press, rebooting the use of subtlety in discourse… if only subtlety remained subtle when it hits you in the face). It is so much more efficient to give a list of the know casualty, instead of adding confusion to terror.

Not only it is useless, it is also pointless. Considering the amount of casualty (~140) to the population of Paris (2.2M), there is 0.0064 % chance that you actually know someone who was hit by the attack, probably way lower than the actual prevalence of facebook.

Lastly, there is a differential treatment for other countries, such as Lebanon, that we hit by the same barbarian violence. Why is that ?

But there’s more superfluousness in the whole venture. In an attempt to reiterate the success of the quick portrait picture fix that happened to celebrate Obergefell vs. Hodges (coincidentally with the gay pride in San Francisco) or support digital india,

the feed proposed me to change my profile picture to something to those of the French flag!
But hey people, France is not a cause, the its flag not a symbol… It carries a complex history and nationalistic interpretations that are more often than not, ambiguous.

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.
– George Jean Nathan

I believe that it looked like a good idea to some, to remind the core values of France, hailed by president Obama, of Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité. But these values are not related to the colors of the flag at all… And what can I say about the hashtag #PrayForParis, in a country who cares deeply about its secularism, especially in the context where attacks where perpetrated by religious fanatics ?

Ok, I am being pretty unfair on the flag and the tag. I can see how many French people find comfort activating this temporary feature, as a way of expressing compassion and a way to mourn.

But the problem underlying “features” is that they open the door to the gamification of everything in life, and gamification of terror seems like a very bad idea. Some people are completely derailing, turning into the worst case of slacktivists (‘hey, don’t tell the terrorists where the cops are’, as if they were playing counterstrike), wasting people’s mind and time. And it, again, adds up to terror and the feeling of powerlessness.

And oh, NRA folks, I hope people would not carry weapon when going to a concert.

* * *

Now, The COP21 summit on Climate Change is supposed to happen at the end of the month in Paris; it is seen as a crucial gathering for all countries around to world to take action. Will it be impacted by these events ? That is my biggest fear.

 

edit Nov 23, 2015 : Things are getting worse- a showdown between slacktivism and hacktivism (or is it a mashup?).

Twitter Cats to the Rescue in Brussels Lockdown – NYTimes

The Anonymous ‘war on ISIS’ is already falling apart – The Verge