This post contains content up to episode 3.
I’m not going to get into the whole “SJW” thing but I think there’s a visual aesthetic at work in Gatchaman Crowds. I think it’s not a coincidence that MESS looks like a bunch of tiny, moving single-color cubes of various colors. Nor is that the offkai is a collage party. [I wonder how much of it was inspired by gaijin train hijacking customs.] I guess this is as close as themes can intermix with visuals? It’s about the sort of visuals, the clipart-style of sharing, the unit of information. The way we exchange them today and how they do it in the anime.
Personally, Tumblr and Pinterest remind me of what feels like Gatchaman Crowd’s latest social networking efforts–labor organizational platform can be summed up as a colorful pipe collage-dream. I mean, at least GALAX has shortcomings that are well-recognized. And it’s kind of odd that episode 3 is labeled “Futurism” because the only visible people that call those who don’t believe in altruism as “enemies” are Futurists. I don’t remember if communism is compatible with such principles, but it sure didn’t require a logistical supercomputer powered by Tange Sakura. Well, maybe that’s why communism doesn’t work so well in practice.
I’m exaggerating, of course. Topologically, twitter and live chat-style (think DOLLARS) forums are always the closest realization of these common Web 2.0 fantasies. (And it’s good to pause and credit Eden of the East for something a little more original there.) GALAX, for better or worse, starts out ballsy. If students fighting their teachers (the establishment) to save their friends not symbolic of what GALAX is up to in the big picture, then I quit Kenji Nakamura. DRRR seems comparatively spineless in comparison, in terms of the statements of what it is trying to say. Maybe it’s more tribal-status-quo, rather than something like GALAX that unites people across class and age boundaries. In a more altruistic way.
And it’s this sympathetic backbone–that Hajime and company demonstrated–that the sjw types lack. This is what all the old people complain about. This is why the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
But it’s all too unreal. When that one sketchy lawyer leaned over to talk to that mom, I was like, LOL LOLOLOLOL. I don’t know what that is but pass the pipe please.
July 29th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
Keep in mind, The whole thing is powered by a giant super-intelligent AI that can do background checks and massive simulations off of vague information to get accurate results. That’s the crux of the whole system. If that AI doesn’t exist or doesn’t have those human-level reasoning skills, it would all falter to pieces. This is essentially science fiction in a nutshell. You’re just saying every marginally science fiction thing is a pipe dream.
July 29th, 2013 at 9:29 pm
I understand your first statement, and I wrote as such in the post.
I understand your second statement, and I agree.
Your third statement is too general to be applicable.
your last statement is lols.
If you want to discuss where the fantasy comes in, I can show you how (in fact I did so once (if only once…maybe twice or three times) already in the post).
Let’s just say that the term sjw is appropriate here–it IS fiction. And all fiction, in some ways, are dreams. Some don’t involve pipes however.
July 29th, 2013 at 10:02 pm
Sorry, I think I took some of your last few points out of context from the rest of it. So much for reading comprehension skills lol. The main thing I thought was off was that discussing any of its rather fantastical elements and the results thereof in terms of pipe dreams is rather pointless. It usually just comes down to if somebody will pull if off or not, really. I wouldn’t even say the lawyer bit was unreal given the context (although the way he approached her was rather weirdly done, although I attribute that to writing more than the situation).
July 29th, 2013 at 10:12 pm
It is a matter of disbelief, so writing definitely matters–good writing is helpful because it does not easily expose the flaws of the underlying “dream” as you put it.
What I have done in this post is basically both describe the mechanism on display on Gatchaman Crowds ep3 and describe the current discourse regarding the kind of info tech and the problem we have with it today. It is not so much a logistics problem, but an engagement problem (thus sjw). And so far a supercomputer that does all that Professor X does do not make people somehow care more in the way it translates to selfless actions.
DRRR overcomes this via its tribal descriptions.
July 29th, 2013 at 10:31 pm
It might be a little better than that. What GALAX does, in a sense, is assign people to others in a suggestion. If you got contacted for a mission, it means that you know that the other guy knows that you are around and can see you (even if it’s just avatar to avatar). If you don’t take action, people will know that you were there and did not take action and will be held socially responsible by the community. The level of attribution of the person’s identity to the avatar will probably affect that as well. From my understanding, some GALAX users are hand picked by the AI so that alleviates some of that potential unsincerity. SJW will exist but those probably won’t be the people who use such a platform for long. Switching avatars after you got called out will get old after the first time probably.
July 30th, 2013 at 7:00 am
Hurr, public shaming. So Japanese.
Well, we’ll see if this is really the case. It does make sense though.
July 30th, 2013 at 8:32 am
I don’t think public shaming is the main factor at work here. If you look carefully you can see Galax rewards good deeds with points. Since Galax is a game-like network, chances are you can use those points to purchase other services and so on.
What’s interesting here is that even though Rui wants people to be altruistic, he created a system that exploits people’s inherent selfishness to move them into action. Despite his ideals, he doesn’t seem to belive people can really be altruistic, and his system reflects this rather cynical outlook on society.
July 30th, 2013 at 9:57 am
Ah, gamification of altruism. Yes thanks for reminding us that this is a thing.
We’ll see what Rui is up to. I agree that he does see people in the way you put it to some extent. I wonder what those GALAX points are good for…