All About Lists

Everything now is a list. It's one of the strategies for social media marketers and you see it everywhere. The top 5 this, the top 10 that, and every so often a top 8. It doesn't matter how many you have in your list just as long as you have one. 

There is even a TV show called The List, a show about all the other lists out there. Not quite, but that would save a lot of people a lot of time. One of the best Twitter accounts you can follow is @SavedYouAClick. They read the stories with click bait titles, the ones that usually headline with a leading question, and tell you the answer without having to risk downloading a virus to your computer. Thank you @SavedYouAClick.

The television show The List makes their own lists and produce short segments about the things on their lists. Usually about tech, health fitness or upcoming events. Stuff that is popular on the web and things that are trending. It wasn't such a bad show. The information was useful, but (and there's always a but) the fast paced story cuts and motion graphics with the continuous high energy enthusiasm of the hosts got a little tiresome. It's a show for people with ADD. Despite that, I would watch it again if it was on. 

The real trouble with lists facing us today is not that there are lists, but how the lists are presented. A typical list used to be a simple one page countdown or count up of the top something within its focus area. Movie lists come to mind, the top 100 AFI movies list has been a standard in lists for a long time. A one page list of what they deem to be the best movies of all time. It's simple, easy to read, no fuss, no muss, no gimmicks, no pop ups, nothing. The best lists are that simple. Although, I'm not sure why Amazon hasn't paid them to add links to their site to buy the movies. 

All webpages aren't so simple. A list embedded in a web page and for whatever reason each time you click on the next button the whole page reloads all the static graphics and ads, sometimes the same sometimes new, again. Now with high speed internet maybe it's not much of a problem, but it's annoying. At one time it might of been the only way, but more and more sites now are getting away from this with the help of HTML5.

Most  good sites build a container where they put the photograph and text into it, they then embed that container in a webpage. Each time you click the next button the container changes, but the rest of the site doesn't. Genius. One site that does this really well is the purpleclover.com. Their site is a pop culture site for Gen X'ers. Kind of a niche I guess. What they do is make a story gallery, one in particular is a Marylin Monroe through the years (something Gen X'ers are into) and each time you click the next button the image and text changes, but the site remans the same. Little things in this world can make a person so happy.

I like lists. I have been known to make lists myself. I try to use lists more as a sequence; three things Dan Harmon said about telling better stories, number 1, number 2, etc., things like that.

Most lists are subjective and shouldn't be taken so seriously. Top 10 love songs or top 8 muscle building exercises. My favorite love songs aren't necessarily anyone else's and all exercises utilizing body weight or barbells are going to help lose weight and build muscles. I did watch a youtube video about the top 5 foods to help build muscle, that's why I eat more avocado.

Lists that are educational or fun are my favorite kinds of lists. Lists that promote low culture or propaganda are my least favorite lists. Lists that exploit celebrity gossip, lies and just plain dangerous ideas. And most times lists are dangerous and may be just click bait so spyware and spammers can get your information. These are the types of lists that prey on the low culture. Top 10 ways to enhance the size of your wiener. If there was a way, we would know.

So be careful out there when looking at lists. Go out and create your own lists of things you're interested in and if you make a list of articles about lists then put this one on your list. That would be nice.

Stranger Things (2016) and the Future of Stories

Anyone who grew up in the 1980's can probably name every movie, TV or book that fuels that itch in your brain that says, 'Wait, I've seen this, no maybe not.', in the Duffer brothers series for Netflix Stranger Things. Teens or young adults too may recognize some of the influences due to the remakes of many of the influential media in this reboot culture, or because it feels like it was produced by J.J. Abrahams. The thing to remember when we watch Stranger Things is that it is neither a reboot, a remake or even a wannabe, it's influenced.

Everything in the show feels like something we've seen before, the telekinetic girl, the Dungeons and Dragons playing boys, the parallel universe, the sadistic scientist and his government funded fringe science laboratory. It squishes all these familiar elements into a fresh new package, even though the comparison pitch for this show would be: it's like Super 8 meets Twin Peaks, a Stephen King novel meets Goonies, Freaks and Geeks meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Breakfast Club meets Lovecraft. Even the opening credits was like an NWR film, that's Nicolas Winding Refn for anyone who hasn't seen The Neon Demon, with the bright neon colors and low thumping electronic theme song. Is smashing all these influences together a bad thing? No, I don't think so.

They don't hide this fact. They come out and say it upfront that it is an homage to 80's pop thrillers and is inspired by the plethora of media formally mentioned. Is our willingness to call foul on everything that comes out make it necessary for them to say this or is it necessary to inform viewers who weren't born in the 80's that they aren't plagiarizing the works of others because they didn't put that remake branding stamp on it? Will everything that we create from now on that feels familiar in any way need a footnote to the media or ideas that influenced it? Anyone reading a philosophy book written in the last twenty years might say 'yes' because Plato's thoughts on death have to be referenced along side every other philosopher's idea on death before the modern day philosopher can give his philosophy on the subject that includes centuries of scientific data supporting a new more up to date version of the idea. So how does anyone ever have a truly original idea anymore?

At the GenCon convention's 2016 Writers Symposium, they held a panel asking that same question on Creating Truly New Ideas. What did we discover from our inquiry, are there truly new ideas? No, not really. Why?  The fact is there are only six basic emotional arcs of storytelling. You can read about those here. In short a group of computer scientists fed a computer 1,700 stories then data mined the most common emotional arcs and found six. One day, in the hopefully not so far future, we will be able to link our brains to computers to stimulate our emotional senses using one of the six basic arcs instead of having to read or watch the story itself to experience it. 

Of course there are more emotional story arcs than that, but there is a consensus that a lot of ideas have been done before and a lot of plots are being reused over and over. John August and Craig Mazin, two hollywood screenwriters who talk about the business of writing scripts on their podcast Scriptnotes, discussed this very question on their show. In response to the low number of six emotional arcs Mr. Mazin remarked, "the story may be known, but how the characters react in their surroundings can be new."

The character's are never the same. They live in different communities. They grow up or have grown up in different circumstances. They make different decisions just like I do and you do. That's why you yell at the girl in the horror movie to 'run' and scream curse words when she doesn't or does run, but in the wrong direction. That's why when a movie like You're Next comes along it's so refreshing, a girl in a typical horror movie situation doesn't lay down and take it or cries about it, she fights back. Hell yeah!

The communities themselves can be different enough to put a new coat of paint on something we've seen before. Hawkins, Indiana is not so different from Chippewa, Michigan, but contain details that are specific to the community of the characters that determines their culture and influence their choices. Most religions or cultures have a flood story, but not all stories are the same. They are different between cultures and communities because of the power of myth, hero worship and ancient aliens. We look for those differences to explore how something already told can be told again and influence a new generation of people.

That's why I like Stranger Things. Instead of just making something we've seen before or making something we haven't seen but slap a brand name on it, Ghostbusters, they take everything we love and breath new life into it. You could call it derivative, but I think Stranger Things does something we should start doing more of and that is to make more things created on influences. Then it will be awesome to watch the next generation of shows and movies that have been influenced by this generations shows and movies. Everything continuing to build on top of each other, until it all comes crashing down and we have to start building all over again, those lucky bastards.