thestig, Barthes

posted this earlier, but now it isn't showing up... here it is again:

I’m going to take a crack at this quote and see if the connection I make here is relevant – please do offer your feedback.

“Our very avidity for knowledge impels us to skim or to skip certain passages in order to get more quickly to the warmer parts of the anecdote: we boldly skip descriptions, explanations, analyses, conversations” (Barthes 108).

Barthes wrote this quote in 1973, seven years before his death. What would Barthes say about today’s society. To me, Barthes laid down the tracks to what life is like today. Here we are now in the 21st century – the world is in our pocket; at our fingertips. It’s as simple as TI puts it: “You want it, I got it, go get it, I buy it.” The web offers a 24-hour global environment in which you can research or buy pretty much anything. You can even live on the Internet through a cyber character in Second Life – you can even visit Rollins, if you so desire.

The problem is not the Internet, nor the life that you live through vicariously, but the content and execution of the information made available on the Internet or in print by media companies. It isn’t necessarily what the media publishes, either – it can be initiated by the media, and followed through by the consumer (i.e. text messaging). The point of text messaging is to get to the point quickly. Isn’t the beauty of language and rhetoric lost with this technology? That girl who sends/receives 14,000 text messages a month --- what the _ _ _ _(four letter interjection of your choice) is she doing with her life?

I think this can also be applied to video games. Rockstar games, EA games, etc all make some pretty incredible games. The graphics, the game play, and story are remarkable. I used to play racing games in which you could only drive certain cars if you unlocked them. There are two ways of unlocking them – the honest way, or cheating. Well, I tried the honest way, but got pretty bored, so I cheated. Cheat codes are made available by the video game company and on the Internet. So what would Barthes say? Here I am, skipping the “descriptions, explanations, analyses, and conversations” of a video game… the intricacies of someone’s hard work, and potentially my enjoyment/education, but yet I decide to sacrifice it to get to what I think is going to be “the good stuff.”