Quarantine Control #4: Cognition Disseminated

Several territories around the world are still on lockdown thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, because the wait until the spread of this virus is largely halted was always going to be a long one. It hasn’t helped that impatient types have taken to the streets in groups, where people are free to spread the virus themselves to other oblivious marchers. That’s probably not the “freedom” they had in mind. Even worse is how some countries have leaders that like to posit quack medical solutions and still pretend this isn’t as dangerous as it actually is. That’s why it’s best to stay at home when you can, despite how easy it is to get stir crazy.

Fortunately, there’s still plenty to watch and play, and the writers here continue to have stuff to share.

Joseph Daniels

Some weeks it’s a lot harder to decide what to recommend to our readers among all of the things we genuinely enjoy.  This week, two things happened that made the first of my two picks an obvious choice.

One, I was talking with a customer at work on Sunday.  This customer was someone I knew from my summer job, whom had been hired as extra help so that we wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed.  He started out as a good worker but he always had things to say about how much the media and government lie to us.  Well, I hadn’t thought about him in months until he did some shopping on Sunday and had a lot to say about the media and its handling of the reporting of the Covid-19 epidemic.  Sadly, he’s a “covidiot”, basically the anti-vaxxers of the current epidemic, parroting the junk science and conspiracy theories that they heard on vague websites that they then refuse to show you because “they did a bunch of research and figured this stuff out so now it’s your turn, it’s all on the Internet if you just look”.  (Or they’ll overwhelm you with evidence and refuse to continue the conversation until you’ve watched all the videos and read all the articles and rebutted every single point with “credible” sources, meaning sources that they approve of… and of course, the only sources they approve of are the ones they’ve already provided.)

Two, I found a quote that someone retweeted this week that says it better than I ever could: “I think something a lot of folks need to get their heads around is that the fact that the government is obviously lying to you doesn’t mean any random assertion that contradicts the government line is automatically credible.  Two opposing positions can both be bullshit.”  Substitute the word “government” for “media” and it’s spot on.  Just because you can point to ways in which the media is corrupt doesn’t mean that 1) all media is corrupt and 2) anyone calling out the media don’t themselves have a deceitful message they want to spread.  So in these uncertain times, with lies and misinformation being spread around, I wanted to recommend one of my recent favourite podcasts, one which was founded to criticise Canada’s media, and which does so but only when Canadian media deserves it.  This podcast also helped me pass the time when grinding for levels near the end of Dragon Quest II.

Canadaland

Source: Spotify and its official website, among others

Episodes: Ongoing; currently 323 (Canadaland) + 259 (Canadaland Short Cuts) + bonus episodes; also posting several Isolation Interviews a week on top of its regular weekly shows

I am still playing catch-up while listening to this podcast (I’ve almost made it to 2016!), but so far it’s lived up to its mission statement.  It’s taken Canadian media to task about how it handles things like the ties Alberta oil has with the media, Jian Ghomeshi and the scandal surrounding him (this was two years before the #MeToo movement, but Ghomeshi isn’t as internationally known as Harvey Weinstein), and the ways in which the Koch Brothers are buying influence in Canadian journalism to silence criticism about themselves.  There are even a few episodes dealing with video games, if readers of our blog want to just skip to them.

I hesitated when I thought to recommend this podcast but then decided to look at what’s been posted to the website as of late and check out the recent episodes of the show to see if they’re succombing to all the same conspiracy theories that my covidiot former co-worker subscribes to.  An article calling out Candice Malcolm for publishing a piece in the Toronto Sun full of covidiot propaganda was all the proof I need that the contributors to Canadaland have their heads on straight, and reading the descriptions of the most recent episodes is enough to convince me that Canadaland creator Jesse Brown also has his head on straight.  (That and the 100+ episodes I’ve already listened to.)

Also, his interview with the guy who created Ed the Sock is my favourite from the first hundred episodes.

Something which makes me respect Brown is that he’s willing to bring his critics on the show and debate with them, and he’ll often times acknowledge they’re right about some of the things they say.  He has had his “harshest critic” Joe Clark on the show more than once.  A different Joe Clark than the former Prime Minister of Canada, although Jesse Brown’s Joe Clark is also apparently retired, considering his anti-Canadaland blog is closed.  This disappoints me, I’m morbidly curious to find out whether or not Clark’s a covidiot.

The Checkout

Source: YouTube

Episodes: 74…75?  78?  More?  It’s… complicated.

And speaking of media that is more relevant in foreign markets than it is in the United States, The Checkout was an Australian consumer rights television show that aired on ABC (the Australian ABC) until it got too expensive to make.  I’ve always liked consumer rights shows, having grown up with Street Cents (although these days, I’d find that particular show grating and irritating) and Marketplace, both airing on CBC.  The Checkout was created by the same team behind the political satire newspaper and later television show The Chaser.

If this name sounds familiar to you, then that’s because they were the ones behind a satirical prank they played on APEC Australia 2007 for an episode of The Chaser’s War on Everything, where they drove a fake motorcade in and were fully expecting to get stopped at the first checkpoint, especially since their security passes were pretty obviously doctored up to look fake, going as far as saying “Insecurity” and “It’s pretty obvious this isn’t a real pass” on them.  But the further in they got, the more nervous they got and upon realizing the police weren’t going to stop them, they decided to turn around and leave.  That was when they got arrested.  One of their members were even dressed as Osama bin Laden, which was apparently okay with police.

The Chaser took this sort of humour into the field of consumer affairs in 2013 when The Checkout began airing on ABC.  The show was popular enough that it ran for several years and included segments like “F U Tube”, a weekly segment where viewers aired their grievances about products and services that were subpar and which was inspired by the success Dave Carroll had when he uploaded a song to YouTube called “United Breaks Guitars”.

My favourite episode was one that tackled the science behind the push to make milk in Australia “permeate free”, the final conclusion being that it was all nonsense and that there wasn’t any reason to remove permeate from milk.  It turns out that the so called “permeate” is just a by-product of the process of making other dairy food and is essentially just milk anyway, so putting it back into milk would have no adverse effect.  However, someone heard the word once and decided it had to be bad for you just because it sounded bad and reports of permeate in milk spread like wildfire in Australia.  The hysteria is easily comparable to the anti-vaxx movement in the rest of the world and how it’s spread through misinformation and fear.

The Checkout also devoted much of an episode to educating viewers about their rights under the Australian Consumer Law, a law which has been referenced on this blog in the past in regards to certain shoddy PC and console games being released in Australia from Bethesda.  You can probably guess which game I’m talking about; if you can’t, let’s just say the fallout was glorious.

As of right now, The Checkout isn’t fully available on YouTube.  The uploads to The Chaser Archive stop partway through season 4 and someone else tried uploading a few more episodes to another YouTube channel.  The official YouTube channel for The Chaser chopped up various episodes into their individual segments and uploaded them individually.  As for the episode count, The Chaser Archive includes clip show episodes that were meant as filler, whereas official episode lists don’t count those episodes.  Plus, the Wikipedia article lists the episode count as 75 while breaking this down per season as “10, 16, 12, 12, 12 and 12”.  Which somehow add up to 75, I guess.

 

Geoffrey Barnes

“The writers” described above, I’m afraid, does not include me this week. My entertainment focus in more than the last week has been on Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I provided impressions of in last week’s post. I’ve now finished it, but I’m saving the final thoughts for a review. That means, well, I have nothing new to provide this week, so I’m turning this into a personal blog with an editorial.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph: We’re in the middle of a pandemic, a virus that’s still dangerous despite positive news about a treatment and other positive news about some countries dealing with it extremely well. But most of the media we’re watching doesn’t take place during a pandemic, meaning it can sometimes be a little tough not to reminisce about the temporarily bygone era we had just at the beginning of the year. This can make it tough to suspend disbelief.

It’s hard not to name the TV shows and movies outside those in very specific genres that don’t have at least a few establishing shots where groups of people are gathered indoors or outside. Characters in them wander around other humans outside without wearing face masks, or visit reasonably crowded airports or stores thanks to circumstances being usual. When they aren’t, they’re also not discussing how to avoid people, or adequately “social distance” if you prefer, while they’re indoors with others. This isn’t one of the first thoughts I’ve had when binge watching TV shows and movies or while playing a video game; it pops into my head when I don’t expect it.

In fact, it’s bizarre that I’m having this feeling at all. For one, I’m not the kind of guy that hangs in many groups during many times in a given year outside occasional gatherings with friends, so I’m weirded out by how I’m feeling so nostalgic about this. I was already spending too much time at home consuming nerd stuff, though I’m doing considerably more of that now. My best guess is that this is due to empathy for others. But I’m also well aware that things won’t be like this forever, and it hasn’t been that long since social distancing first became necessary even though mere weeks feel like an eternity in these times.

The only way for this to be realistic would be to watch horror films, movies that tend to focus on a small group of characters within close locations, with frightening moments physically worse than those in real life. The entertainment can be made even more realistic in movies, TV shows, and games about pandemics, but that can make anyone depressed in a different way. Entertainment doesn’t tend to contain much subtlety when it comes to depicting contagious viruses that run amok and rupture society, which can lead to fantasies about what an unrestrained COVID-19 could do. Worse, it can make you think about the viruses that could emerge in the future that will be easier to travel around thanks to climate change. See? I’m getting depressed just thinking about this.

The solace in this time has been talk shows, of both the daytime and late-night varieties. I haven’t watched a heavy amount of them, but it’s fun to tune in and see how the hosts and crew are coping with having to record episodes from home — the “crew” in which can be family members. It could not be clearer that the hosts are out of their element by not having studio audiences, but as the cliché goes, the show must go on. There will be further options here when shows like Parks & Recreation and All Rise air their social distancing episodes. It’s also easier to suspend disbelief with animated works or sprite-based and cel-shaded video games.

This feeling doesn’t pop up often enough for me to be too concerned about this. I’m not at the extreme point where I flat-out can’t watch anything that looks unrealistic in this current moment, and social distancing shouldn’t go on long enough for that to be a concern. Note how the keyword in that last sentence is “shouldn’t.”

I should return with more proper recommendations next week, assuming nothing goes wrong over here.

 

COVID-19 won’t be going away any time soon, despite efforts from insipid lawmakers to just wish it away and reopen their economies. Several of us will still be staying at home if we can, so we’ll be back with more recommendations next week. Until then, please stay safe and listen to the experts, and not the people who think they know more than them.