The convenient myth of the sneering, Big Brother council
Posted: November 24, 2011 Filed under: Society, Technology | Tags: alex deane, big brother watch, bumholezania, CCTV, council, nick pickles, oxford council, oxford taxi CCTV Leave a comment »
As with so many things, it's all SEGA's fault.
“Britain” is quite a nice name for a country, when you think about it: it’s better than “Paraguay” (which is hard to spell), and “Liberia” (which sounds like a type of food poisoning), or “Bumholezania” (which isn’t real). The problem with “Britain”, though, is that it alliterates with certain words or phrases which appeal so much to salivating newspaper editors that they can sometimes get carried away with the simple joy to be had in sticking them together, without thinking too hard about whether it’s appropriate.
These are the sorts of words which really appeal to the part of us that, as life’s wheelbarrow trundles us inevitably closer towards being tipped onto death’s compost heap, begins to insist that everything was better in the good old days and the modern world as we know it is all going to hell in a grime-smeared, rickety pushchair. You know: words like “Broken” or “Bankrupt” – or “Big Brother”.
Ah, yes. Him. ‘Big Brother Britain’ has been splashing about in the tabloid paddling pool for a good few years now, and was out in force last week with the revelations of Oxford council’s plans to stuff cameras in the back of all its taxis, which would record everybody’s conversations as they pootle about the town.
The problem with these sorts of stories is that they always spin out the same way, as a tale of good honest everyday Britons having their privacy shattered by a legion of interfering, self-centred and downright evil council types following their crazed agenda to SPY on EVERYBODY and THEIR BINS. Now, there are plenty of things worth getting upset about with this Oxford scheme – but this isn’t one of them. The council had an increase in taxi-related crimes to deal with, and the way that councils are structured and assessed means that they need to handle things in a certain way. Let’s think about that a bit more: they have precise budgets for specific projects which must be closely monitored. They prefer a visible, immediate solution, because that makes them look more pro-active in the eyes of both the public and their central government superiors. They probably have specific, quantified targets to reach, which mean they need something that they can easily talk about in numerical terms. Preferably, it should also be something a lot of other councils have done before, so that it’s not your fault if it doesn’t work. If it comes from a massive company, all the better – they have sophisticated accounting systems that make life easier, and a track record long enough that nobody can accuse you of picking a dud supplier (in theory, anyway).
So, you’re Oxford council, and you need to sort out the rising number of wrong’uns being naughty all over your Hackney carriages. What do you do? Increase police presence at taxi ranks? Enormously expensive, and likely a waste of highly-trained officers. An awareness campaign? Fiddly to design and a little bit, well, wet. CCTV, though, now there’s an idea! It’s (relatively) cheap, it can cover every taxi, and we can stick in there just as quickly as we can buy the equipment. Back of the net!
Of course, this is all ignoring the fact that it’s questionable whether CCTV really does reduce crime, and that the cameras themselves often break down because nobody’s bothered to maintain them. But these don’t matter really, because the CCTV industry has long been able to adapt itself to the way councils work, smoothing the wrinkles out of the difficult commissioning process and promising a great result, at a low price, fast and in a way that everyone will see. An all-in-one-box solution that’s easy to put on a balance sheet, and immediately lets you wheel out impressive numbers in sentences such as “We have just commissioned six thousand CCTV cameras to combat the nefarious whistling epidemic sweeping the town’s libraries.”
Council workers aren’t evil, then – they might be a tad naive or lazy, but generally they’re not actively malicious. They’re just people after all: dull, ordinary people like you and me, and just as susceptible as we are to the slick sales and the glamour of technology.
Is this really the product of evil masterminds, or could it just be a rather more pedestrian bout of human fallibility?
Where, then, does all this acidic vitriol come from? Time and time again, an organisation called Big Brother Watch pops up prominently in these stories: like here, for example, or here. Nobody seems to have pointed out to them the irony of putting the word “Watch” in the name of a supposedly anti-surveillance organisation, but we’ll skip that for now. BBW – as I’m going to enjoy calling it from now on – is a spin-off from The Taxpayer’s Alliance, which supposedly campaigns against government waste and was a bit of a media darling itself, back in the day, until people started to suspect that it might not be all it seemed. Indeed, it turned out that behind this supposedly populist, grassroots crusade on behalf of everyday Joe Taxpayer, lurked a large bivouac’s worth of people linked to higher-ups in the Conservative party – specifically, the sort of Conservatives who were upset with all this centrist coalition nonsense and wanted to send things further right again. So, rather sneakily, they began lobbying furiously for lower taxes, ignoring all other options for reforming the treasury and disguising this very specific agenda, dreamed up by a small group of elite ideologues for their own particular benefit, as something else entirely – a well-meaning, friendly campaign group, the result of a spontaneous upswell of public concern and discontent.
The same is true of Big Brother Watch – the Dannii Minogue to the Alliance’s Kylie. The two organisations share the same Executive Director, and BBW’s other staff have previously worked for Conservative Home, the No to AV Campaign and David Cameron. When they come up with an incendiary soundbite like, say, this one: “Councils are waiting until the public aren’t watching to begin surveillance on our waste habits, intruding into people’s private lives and introducing punitive taxes on what we throw away” – they’re not trying to defend your privacy, so much as convince you that councils are bad because they want you to start resenting the tax that you pay to them. Because they hate tax. They loathe it. Tax killed their parents – no, tax ate their parents, and shat them out all over the beloved family spaniel. Let’s beat up the council with sticks and never pay them a penny again!
Whether these are good politics/economics or not isn’t the issue here. There’s nothing wrong with a campaign group being driven by an ideology –hey, they all are – it’s just the deception that doesn’t sit right, the romantic pretence that it’s all just a bunch of upstanding working folk banding together to defend against injustice. It’s not – it’s a lobby group, arguing in favour of a very narrow, specific set of interests.
Normally, when they’re quoting a lobby group, the media wraps it safely in disclaimers by making its leanings clear – as in “the left-wing IPPR” or “Policy Exchange, a think tank close to David Cameron.” They tread carefully. But BBW gets away with being labelled as a “privacy campaign” – continuing the myth that it’s a politically neutral assembly of the righteously upset – and, what’s more, like the TaxPayer’s Alliance before it, BBW knows how to get itself into print. It churns out good press releases that can be turned into copy with minimum effort. It supplies ready-made soundbites from its directors so journalists don’t have to bother going out to find them. In other words, it sells itself to the media in the same way that CCTV sells itself to councils: by offering the path of least resistance.
And it’s infuriating, because it means that every time something like this Oxford taxi kerfuffle comes around, we can’t use it as a starting point for bigger debates about privacy rights or the problems with government IT procurement because it’s all drowned out by the noise of BBW shrieking “COUNCIL SWINE SMASH THEM SMASH THEM” until they turn a funny shade of maroon and have to lie down in the park for a bit.
It’s not healthy, you know, all that sustained artificial rage. They’ll give themselves a hernia one of these days.
Toot the nerd trumpet, and toot it loud
Posted: November 4, 2011 Filed under: Games, Society | Tags: BlizzCon, blogs that have been written a bit too quickly and breathlessly, crappy world cup adverts, dyson, enthusiasm, football, GameCity, nerds 3 Comments »
"BALL BALL BALL, FOOTIE FOOTIE FOOTIE!"
Ah ha ha, this is brilliant. Look at all those sadcases, sat there gormlessly whooping because a bloke in a snood booted a chunk of leather around a graffiti-ridden lawn. What’s so special about that then, you crimson-faced dribblesacks? I’m amazed that they have the brain power to rearrange their pudgy faces into such expressions of mindless, drooling glee. Some of them were even sad enough to catch a train to be there, can you believe it? And, as for the ones with the adorably pitiable scarves, I…ah…ah ha ha! Ah ha ha, oh wow…I just need a minute here to…ooh hee hee! Ho ho! Sorry, it’s just that these guys are such, such…
…such nerds.
Except they’re not, because football is one of the few things you’re still actually allowed to give a toss about these days. Still, if you’re reading this and you happen to rather like football – which statistically speaking, you probably do – then you might be a bit upset by all that hoo-hah up there. Why wouldn’t you be? It’s plain wrong. Football’s great, what with its emotional highs and colourful history and father-son bonding. And, er, organised violence, but we’ll skip over that. Still, if you bear with me on this, those guys up there really aren’t any different from these guys down here…
"CLICK CLICK CLICK, MOUSIE MOUSIE MOUSIE!"
….apart from that they chose different games to attach themselves to. Yet it’s perfectly fine to treat the Warcraft fans with hoots of derision, snorting with such violence that your nostrils invert. Why is this the case? Well, football’s undeniably far more popular. It’s been around long enough for everyone to consider it a normal activity rather than some bizarre modern aberration. And there’s a commercial imperative to encourage people to be football fans – not only will they buy team kit and coloured bobble hats, they can also be sold all kinds of utterly unrelated tat ranging from shaving gel to corporate IT. Lazy advertisers know they can use football as a simple shortcut to emotion, to ideals of speed and victory and discipline and all sorts of other words which should never, ever be associated with shaving. So football is cool, and comparatively, even such an outrageously lucrative creation as Warcraft is still small fry and, therefore, nerdalicious. (This commercial effect may also explain why it’s cool to like Apple, with their sleek designs and eye-watering prices, but it’s unspeakably nerdy to like Linux, which costs nothing and has lofty political ideals, even though the two have a lot in common.)
Recently, I had the pleasure of knocking around the GameCity festival in Nottingham, a unique event which celebrates videogame culture – rather than the actual games themselves – with madly inventive activities like molecular-gastronomic dinners, art classes, giant singalongs and treasure hunts. If you even slightly think that videogames are of any cultural importance, and you want to be in an environment full of people who strive to invite the entire public to share in that view by giving them a programme of inclusive, brilliant, free events, then there really is no better place to go. Whereas sweaty expos like E3 only want you to buy things, GameCity just wants you to have a good time – rather than the forced smiles of PR reps, GameCity offers a genuinely warm and friendly welcoming hand, extended by a hardworking volunteer, and often accompanied by a slice of tasty cake.
I am such a nerd for GameCity.
Anyway, before I veered off into all that doting nonsense like a doe-eyed tweenager having a bit of a funny turn following exposure to the Robert Pattinson calendar, I was trying to go somewhere with this. And here I am! On the last day of the festival, there was a big all day knees-up to celebrate the Legend of Zelda games – see here for why they deserve to be so lauded – and the atmosphere was, in the GameCity style, tremendously jolly: somewhere between a village fair and a really good children’s birthday party. IGN captured a rather nice video of the whole shebang…and it’s here that things start to get a bit nasty. The bile bubbled up from – where else? – the anonymous comments:
“Seriously all of you need a life…
u can get one easily but for you people you gonna need to die first!!”
“Wow people are this gay?”
“Looks like a Zelda orgy of nerds… lol but I would probs still go”
To be clear – these are people who are members of a website dedicated to videogames, making fun of people for, er, liking a videogame. Also, for the sake of veracity I should point out that for every one of those above, there are ten more in disagreement. Nevertheless, comments like that last one are just phenomenally despressing – acknowledging that you actually think it would be pretty good fun, but also trying to distance yourself from it all? For the sake of what, exactly? Who is this this guy trying to impress? Bereft of the confident self-belief in which sports fans can gently luxuriate, gamers often seem to face some sort of identity crisis whereby they suddenly flip out harder than a flubber tiddlywink, twisting their knickers around so far that they have to sit on a corkscrew for four minutes prior to every toilet visit. They turn on their fellows like snotty schoolchildren trying to score points with the older kids, hoping to claw themselves some respect and acceptance – but from where? And why?
The saddest thing I ever saw was a few years ago, in the midst of a big Warhammer event (I have, in the past, flirted with the world of plastic rulers, tiny soldiers and flabbergastingly-priced paint pots). A man of about 35 was stood there, glumly mumbling to nobody in particular, “I don’t know why I’m here, this place is just full of nerds.” I grabbed him by the lapels, my lips quivering as I bellowed – “What were you expecting? It’s a Warhammer event, in the middle of Warhammer HQ! Of course it’s full of flipping nerds – and you’re one of them, or else you wouldn’t have got this far! But you’re such an absurdly tragic figure that even here, in this place at this time, surrounded by people who love Warhammer, like you clearly do, and are looking for other people to share in that love, you still can’t let go of your childish anxieties and allow yourself to actually enjoy it? You’re a fool, man! Pull yourself together, unpack your little figurines and stop being such a bell-end!”
Well, at least that what’s I did in my head. Out loud I just very quietly mumbled “tsk, shame” and carried on enjoying myself. Still, the thing is, when people point at other people and call them names like nerd or gaylord or spoddy-spoddy-spodpants, all they’re really saying is “you’re enthusiastic about something, and for reasons best known to myself and the hardworking staff at the Institute for Dickhead Studies, I have a problem with that.” Pfff. Life’s too short for that nonsense. I don’t know why people have such an ingrained need to become passionate about something, develop a tribal identity around it, and then attack everyone who’s developed that passion around something else, but surely we as a species can rise above it. We’re all nerds of one colour or another: Aston Villa nerds, model shipbuilding nerds, X-Factor nerds, upholstery nerds, celebrity gossip nerds, word nerds, bird nerds and curd nerds.
From our first tentative forays into the social punji pits of the school classroom, we learn that effort isn’t cool, achievement is an unconscionable sin and enthusiasm is beyond the pale. However, the people least hung up on these petty reservations inevitably end up doing really well for themselves. I’ve recently been enjoying magnificent radio show called One Life Left, all about (of course) videogames, and it’s absolutely chuffing hilarious: I listened to the podcast with my breakfast once, and I’m still scraping bits of cornflake out from the corners of my mousepad. You can bet that its presenters didn’t get a radio gig by worrying to themselves about how nerdy they are. James Dyson was a massive nerd, for vacuum cleaners of all things, and look where it got him in the end.
So whether you’re into Arsenal or androids, sperlunking or stamp collecting, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Don’t be ashamed, and don’t try to sell your fellow fans down the river for the sake of illusory cool points. Cherish your nerdiness, nourish it and let your passion flourish. Go to the meetings and conventions and festivals and matches, and have a good time doing it, because nobody ever got anywhere by not giving a toot about something.
For more reasons to love GameCity, look here (thanks, Simon Parkin!) and here (thanks, Rich Keith!)
