The *Apocalypse

[wolven7]

I need you to listen to me, VERY CAREFULLY: Stop. Putting. Conceptual Weight. Behind. The IDEA. Of ZOMBIES.

Not only am I fucking bored with most popular explorations of the zombie trope, it's A) Making it really difficult for those of us who need to make use of the concept of the apocalypse-- that is, when I say "Apocalypse," I don't want the general fucking public automatically slotting "Zombie" in front of it-- and B) Bringing shit like This and This into the world.

The fact of the matter is that our perceptions of things shape and more to the point Are the contexts via which we view events in the world. If our preconceptions are that naked crazy people eating flesh are "Zombies," then when we see that, our collective imagination is going to go there, and inform our response.

Now we can talk all day about whether something is or is not being "Brought Into Existence" by our conceptual weight, but an indisputable fact is that of the aforementioned reaction: It IS brought about by our conceptual weight. What we think we're seeing changes how we react to that, and when what we think we're seeing has been slowly, every so slowly, insinuated into everything we know about outbreak scenarios, and epidemics, and ravening hordes, then that pattern is the context in which we'll be reacting.

We bring the accoutrement of our situational expectations into being, even as and because we use those situational expectations to frame the reality we are attempting to observe.

If you're trying to operate in media-- consuming or creating-- then you MUST study the theory of and learn to think About Hypersigils.

I'm Serious.

Comments

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I myself am trying to throw my conceptual weight behind the perfected Culture body which the Machines of Loving Grace will build for me come the Singularity.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That's a good one to work on.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

The concept with which I'm having difficulty in that illustration is that of a self-stimulating brain with no side effects. Desensitization, if nothing else, seems one obvious conclusion.

[karma-aster.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I tend to think "feral human", given the nakedness, and then start imagining an entire colony of feral humans in the swamps of Florida, but that might just be me.

Though I think that might've been an X-Files episode...

[karishi.livejournal.com]

Doin' my bit.
Gotta say, when I looked at the pattern in this article, what I saw was either a poisonous/radioactive substance or a Deep One. Even a radio tower sending out Psycho-Beams makes more sense than zombies for that series of events (assuming they're even connected to one another). There hasn't been any sign of contagion, and after someone has been attacked in a way that includes biting, they've been exposed to practically every form of contagion possible: airborne, contact, saliva, blood. The problem doesn't appear to be spreading through people; It appears to be location-based.
I did my best to make this point on Facebook when a friend posted the article.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, my first response to the "EOTWAWKI" blog was to post something about poisonous meteors, even though everyone else was talking zombies.