Monopoly

So a seven-year-old tongue-in-cheek blog post about the board game Monopoly recently went viral (again), passed around on social networks, the blogosphere, and even major mainstream news sites as purporting to have uncovered a forgotten rule that would speed up play of the game considerably. The gist of it is that, when you land on a property and wish not to buy it, instead of simply moving on as we've all been doing, the banker is supposed to auction it off to the highest bidder. I don't know how well implementing the rule shakes out in high-level play, where I assume it is commonly known. Actually, among the most hardcore board game enthusiasts I know, Monopoly is fairly poorly regarded anyway as a case of broken design. As a normal human being, who has only ever turned to the game as an absolute last resort when faced with nothing to do in mutually awkward company, I'd happily invite any rule change that would make for a faster-paced and more social game. Or, as occasionally that jackass who gets overly serious over board games played casually with polite company, I can only imagine that the rule would benefit me, having far too often watched as some barely half-awake opponent disinterestedly passed on a property that I would have hungrily snatched up toward completing a monopoly. Indeed, the last time I played Monopoly, I remember being cruelly foiled by our group's ignorance of the official rules (or maybe just by it being a poorly designed game).

* * *

It was 2001. Our family was on its annual summer vacation in the Bay Area. We were having dinner with friends of my parents. After dinner, while the grownups, ostensibly reflecting on old times and catching up on the present, continued their conversation over mahjong in the dining room, the young people, having no interest in such things, were dismissed to the living room. It was awkward. At least, I felt it was awkward, as I'm pretty sure not one of us—me, my brother and sister, and the daughter of our parents' friends—wanted to be there. Well, I suppose the daughter, Alice, wanted to be there, to the extent that it was her home, after all. But none of us cared to be stuck in that situation, I'm sure, waiting for the party to break up, before we could all get on with our own lives. And, on second thought, maybe she wanted out of that house too. I have no idea. Anyway, for entertainment, Alice dug out her dusty game of Monopoly from her room. Asked whether we wanted to play, the rest of us just shrugged our shoulders. And so Monopoly it was, even though none of us had played it in years and the instructions were missing.

Now, I don't play a lot of competitive games, and, to that extent, I don't consider myself a very competitive person. But, when I do compete, it tends to be either all or nothing. Either I put all of myself into trying to win, or else I shrug my shoulders and invest only just enough so that no one can accuse me of not participating. Perhaps neither approach is very conducive to a fun group experience, and admittedly I'm not always a very fun guy to have around. But, as far as “all or nothing,” usually it's nothing, and I only give it my all when instructed to, or when there is something on the line. In this case, I'm not sure what was on the line, but, even so, in hindsight, we probably should have laid out some ground rules before getting into this game of Monopoly. Specifically, were we taking this seriously or not?

Alice explained the basics as best she could from memory, and certain house rules (e.g. the Free Parking jackpot) were agreed upon as we went along. At first, nobody really seemed into talking, and people only spoke as necessary to keep the game moving along. Of course, we could barely hear ourselves anyway over the boisterous chatter in the other room. They were having a good time now, but it was a poorly kept secret from the kids that my parents annually made the Bay Area trip primarily so that my mother could argue with her brother (my uncle), who lived there, over who was to be responsible for their mother (my grandmother). Well, I suppose the primary reason was so that we could visit my grandmother, who was also living (in a retirement home) in the Bay Area, but inevitably every meeting between my mother and my uncle turned vicious. Maybe that was why it was awkward for us kids (well, I had just graduated high school, and my brother university, but "kids" all the same).

But the night was not yet over, and neither was the game of Monopoly. Indeed, I for one was just getting started. I don't know what came over me, but something did change. At some point, I just paused, looked around me, and wondered what I was doing there. We had driven up to the Bay Area to watch my parents become further enmeshed in some terrible drama that truly had nothing at all to do with me. I had, by that point, mostly accepted that it was my lot to be, at best, a supporting character in other people's lives, but, even so, I suppose I had hoped to be part of a nobler story. There was no good role for me there in whatever ill-conceived Hollywood melodrama—no, more a trashy sitcom, if that even—that they were scripting for themselves, and yet I stubbornly refused to just recede into the background. And so, asking myself again what I was doing there, I answered that I was there to play Monopoly. And I was there to win Monopoly.

No, I would not be just some background extra, nor even a supporting character. Again, I'm not sure why, but I was suddenly determined that the story of the trip would be mine. I wanted, when everyone else went to their bedrooms and recorded that night in their diaries, that they would write, not about how such-and-such person had made such-and-such other person feel such-and-such feelings, but about how this guy had just delivered a dominating performance with the most brilliantly played game of Monopoly any of them had ever been so privileged to witness.

And so it was on. Or at least I was. The others seemed not to care at all about the outcome and were only going through the motions. But I didn't care that they didn't care. I was ready to compete, to win, to be ruthless. Even my tone of voice sharpened, and I made my frustration known any time people didn't snap to attention when their turn came up. In that moment, I knew with perfect clarity what I wanted, I was determined to have it, and nobody was going to stand in my way.

Unfortunately, I didn't really take into account that 1) I barely knew the rules of the game, let alone any solid strategies, and 2) in any case, Monopoly was not ultimately a game of skill but a game of dice.

Once I managed to secure both Park Place and the Boardwalk to complete my monopoly of the luxury blue properties, spending nearly everything I'd had to make it so, I felt victory within my grasp. But things only unraveled very quickly for me from there. On the next turn, my brother landed on Park Place, and I was ready for a huge payout. As it turned out, even factoring in his meager assets, he didn't have anywhere near enough to pay me. Landing on Park Place bankrupted him and forced him out of the game, but I got almost nothing else out of it. I was perplexed. It occurred to me that I had never before actually finished a game of Monopoly, and I didn't even know how one was supposed to win. The official rules were lost, so I couldn't look up the endgame conditions. I had thought the goal was to make the most money, but, in this case, I was beating my brother while making hardly any money at all. Even so, I was confident. It appeared to me that, with Park Place and Boardwalk under my control, I had in my possession essentially an “instant kill” monopoly that would bankrupt and decisively eliminate any opponent that landed on either space. I had just seen it happen, and I had only to wait for the same fate to befall the others.

Instead, on my next turn, I landed on Alice's orange monopoly, and since, once again, I had almost no money, I was suddenly the one who could not pay up. Maybe if I had converted my assets to cash, I would have had enough to pay, but I refused. It seemed to me that there was something terribly wrong with how things had played out. I should have had more than enough to pay in cash. I should have had plenty of money coming to me, still owed to me by my brother, whom I had bankrupted. Instead, buying Park Place and Boardwalk had not come close to paying off, in terms of actually earning me any money. And, because I had never received what I was owed, now I was the one unable to pay and about to lose everything. It didn't seem fair. It didn't make sense to me. I felt certain that there must have been something in the rules to protect me against such a ridiculous scenario, but conveniently we did not have the rules to consult.

I was furious. I told them it was outrageous. I declared Monopoly a broken and degenerate game. I didn't quite flip the board over, but I threw my money down and walked out of the room. I went to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. Yes, somehow I had gotten lost in something and ended up making myself, instead of the leading man of the story, rather more likely the antagonist. But I had a point, didn't I? In any case, Alice “won” the game, and maybe she deserved it, as much as anyone can be said to deserve a pile of fake money that literally already belonged to her. Our parents wrapped up their own game (or whatever the hell was going on over there), and finally we could call it a night.

So things hadn't quite gone according to my plan, but I suppose, in a way, I had gotten in the final word and put my own stamp on the night, having managed to expose the scam that is Monopoly. More than a decade later, I have not played the game since, I intend never to play it again, and I'd like to think we've all lived more comfortably ever since.

On Blackface, "Gay Face" (Or "Gay Blackface"), Etc.

The entire objective in acting is to perform as someone other than your actual self. One's roles should be limited only by one's talent—their ability to convince the audience that they are the character they are playing as. So, if they can pull it off, I have no problem with, say, a straight actor playing a gay character, a female playing a male, or even a little person playing a character of normal stature.

It is only when one acts as a mocking caricature that the performance becomes offensive. A white person playing a black character is not intrinsically racist, but blackface carries with it too much historical baggage to be acceptable. But when it is done with proper respect to both the art of acting and to the races and cultures represented, then I have no objection to actors playing as characters of other races, including whites playing blacks.

"Yeah, like how they're always getting Japanese guys to play Chinese characters."

On second thought, I take it all back. People should just be what they are. (Japanese playing Chinese? Burns me up so bad!)

Does the slave choose?

Some of the older ladies at work were discussing "Meatless Mondays," which a San Diego school district had recently voted to institute for public school lunches. It was a surprise to hear my coworkers discussing such a relatively low-profile local political news item because... well, because, they being working class immigrants, I did not expect them to be so well-informed. That was my first lesson.

The second lesson was that you don't need to be a Ron Paul-esque rich white male to espouse libertarian views. To a woman, they were all opposed to the city enforcing Meatless Mondays in public schools. I was skeptical of their grasp of the dietary implications (and I myself would not claim any expertise on nutrition), but even those who conceded that going vegetarian at least one day out of the week might be beneficial to kids' health were opposed, on principle, to the government stepping in and making the decision for them.

"The choice should be ours," one lady defiantly asserted.

Yes, the problem was choice. (And, yes, perhaps quoting The Matrix Reloaded is not going to strengthen whatever point I'm about to make, especially as the quote probably isn't even relevant. I just like it as my go-to line on choice.)

The conversation shortly thereafter derailed into whispered discussion over whether specific coworkers not present qualified as obese. Before it sank to that point, I asked, just to make sure, whether any of them would ever choose to go Meatless Mondays, and if not, why not. I was genuinely curious to know what they thought. So many among those who pushed for Meatless Mondays for San Diego public schools were actually younger white folks with no kids. Meanwhile, here seemed to me a chance for an informative look into the views and opinions of those most directly affected by the recent vote: working class parents of minority public school students, who depend on free and reduced-price meals for much of their daily nourishment.

As it turned out, once again to a woman, they all stated that they would not go Meatless Mondays. I must say, however, that, this time around, their responses sounded more like sheepish rationalizing than the haymakers they were going for with such confidence before. Some were still insisting that meat was necessary for protein. For the rest, the prevailing argument was that people should eat what they like. Of course, by this point, we had lost sight of the fact that we were talking about their growing kids, not themselves. I suppose it would only have been consistent with their previously expressed opinions if they didn't believe in parents making their kids' decisions for them either, but, to be honest, I myself had lost sight of the kid angle, and so I didn't press on that issue.

In any case, the "do what you like" argument was something that had come up before. Specifically, I had challenged them before on their fondness for casinos, only to be met with "It's just fun. You should enjoy life. As long as you're not hurting anybody, it's okay."

This was a temp job at a manufacturing company, situated in the Filipino part of the city. The labor force for this and almost every other similar company, of which there are dozens in the area, is predominantly Filipino. And, to return to stereotypes and preconceptions, they loved gambling. They played the lottery every week, of course, but they especially loved visiting the casino every weekend. One lady even insisted that, if she ever won the lottery, she would retire and spend every day in the casino.

Previously, I had asked them to consider that, perhaps, if they spent less money on lotto tickets, then maybe they would have enough money saved up to live comfortably without ever needing to do anything so desperate as play the lottery. Likewise, if they simply saved their money, instead of blowing it at the casino, then maybe they would have enough savings that they would never have to do anything so desperate as gamble at the casino.

They assured me that they didn't go to the casino expecting to win anything. They were quite certain that winning was impossible. Instead, it came back to doing what was fun for them, which was casinos. And that was the thing I didn't get. The only point in gambling, as far as I knew, was to try to win money. So if you kept failing at that, then how could the activity possibly be fun?

When I inquired further, they interpreted that as criticism, and that was when they would always try to settle the argument by reasserting that it was their choice. Having fun was how they were choosing to live, and going to the casino was how they were choosing to have fun.

I asked them specifically what made it fun for them, and they seemed rather at a loss how to articulate concrete reasons. One lady offered "The blinking lights are exciting," but I'm not sure she was serious. Finally, they sighed, as though the loss were mine for not being able to appreciate the inexpressible, irreducible joy of gambling. Fair enough. After all, how does one quantify fun?

But I considered my own hobby of choice, video games. Video games also offer blinking lights, but they involve other elements as well: practiced skill, challenging oneself, the pride and satisfaction of seeing oneself progressing and improving at the game. Many games contain stories as well, which can be enjoyed as one enjoys a book or movie. Sure, anything achieved in the game is ultimately erased by the final "failure" that is the eventual end of our mortal existence, so, in that respect, my fun was just as pointless as my casino-loving coworkers'. But I was not interested in getting into an existential debate with a bunch of old ladies who were not native speakers of English (and I had only picked up a handful of Tagalog words, all of them referring to intercourse). The fun of the casino seemed, to me, so temporary. For the money, the fun of video games seemed so much more "real."

Back to choice, though, it really seemed to me that, although they were claiming that they were exercising choice in wasting their time and money at the casino, the fact that they themselves did not seem to know why they enjoyed it suggested to me that this was not truly a meaningful choice they were making. As I saw it, they were being taken advantage of.

Finally, I tried to draw an analogy to drugs. Hard drugs also offer, like the casino, pleasure that is extremely temporary and produce no benefit afterward but are, rather, actually quite damaging to one's health, much as gambling is damaging to one's finances. And drugs, being addictive, actually impair the user's ability to make any choice other than to keep up the habit. So, did they not consider, perhaps, that the casino could also be an addiction, and anybody who is going there literally every weekend may not, at that point, actually have the sound judgment anymore to meaningfully exercise choice? Instead, would they not only be acting as slaves to the addiction?

As I should have anticipated, my questioning, instead of provoking serious thought, only led to them thinking that I was a drug user, and quickly they were trying to lecture me on why using was a harmful habit with no good side (unlike gambling, somehow). Oh well.

It's something I've thought about many times, however, in my more philosophical moments, and the Meatless Mondays thing perhaps even better illustrates the argument. It is all well and good to insist that one should be allowed to make one's own choices on what to eat. But when you choose to go for the fatty delicious food, is that really a choice? Are you not merely acting as slave to your own cravings for food that you know is bad for you? It occurs to me that, given the "choice" between healthy food and junk food, perhaps it is only when opting for the former that one is expressing choice; the latter is impulse. It sounds odd, because, for the old ladies at work, and as perhaps most people understand the concept, "choice" meant being at liberty to decide for oneself how one was going to live. How can it be that, presented with a choice, there might only be one path that properly expresses choice? It seems a contradiction, does it not? That there should be only one way to choose? But perhaps "choice" is not truly about the freedom to pursue many different and comparably valid possibilities but, rather, about having the chance to do the right thing of our own free will, without some overbearing daddy figure stepping in to make all the decisions for us.

And I suppose, in that case, the old ladies' point would stay the same. They're just a bit late, I think, as choice has clearly already passed our obese nation by. Now hooked, we haven't any longer the strength of will to free ourselves from the bondage of deliciousness. Thus, it is left to the healthy-living voting contingent to shepherd us away from our own weaker tendencies. And, anyway, were my libertarian working class coworkers truly so opposed to Meatless Mondays, they could have made their protests known before it passed. That is the people's choice, after all.

Arrow (Season 1) (2012-2013)

CW's new show loosely based on the DC Comics superhero Green Arrow got off to a rough start. Frankly, I hated the first few episodes.

The premise is that billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), believed dead along with his father from a shipwreck in the Pacific, actually survived Castaway-style on a remote island, finally to return five years later to Starling City, now with a hard attitude and the badass vigilante skills to cleanse the city of the crime lords who sank him. His mother and sister are outwardly glad to have him back, but everyone else is still dismissive and resentful of the irresponsible young party-goer they continue to perceive him as. Nearly every old acquaintance he runs into rudely acts as if they were the ones who were suffering those last five years and that he is to blame. True, he was the one who invited along the sister of his then-girlfriend Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) (very loosely based on the comics' Dinah Lance (AKA Black Canary), as the show reimagines most of the comics characters as ordinary civilians... except when it doesn't, and that's when things get really weird and dissonant....), consequently not only cheating on Laurel with her sister but also unwittingly leading the sister to her death. Still, nobody seems properly sensitive to what Oliver himself has been through. Seriously, one character actually says to him, "You spend five years on an island, and I'm supposed to believe you've found religion?" Um, I've seen people convert after far less harrowing experiences, so why not? The entire show is drenched in this suffocating hyper-seriousness, as almost every character is unbearably mean, cynical, and never in the mood for joking.

Of course, Oliver himself is just about the worst of them. He's overbearingly self-righteous, especially in enforcing the old superhero rule of "must lie to your friends in order to protect them," but he won't hesitate to break that other rule of "superheroes don't kill." In fact, in the very first episode, he kills a guy specifically in order to protect his identity, which gives you a sense of his priorities. In his civilian persona, he plays to people's expectations as the billionaire playboy in order to throw off any suspicions that he is the vigilante in the news (who conveniently emerged on the scene at the same time Oliver returned to Starling City), but he's so aloof and self-loathing in his performance that I don't know how anybody could fail to see that he's a madman and/or hiding some deep, dark secret. I guess nobody catches it because they already also loathe him and think him phony. And because they're also nuts themselves.

The way that the world of Arrow's Starling City is crazy is similar to the crazy of the Batman movies, or maybe even more descriptively one could liken it to the Dick Tracy movie. It's ostensibly supposed to be a realistic setting, to the extent that, for example, the laws of physics are the same as in the real world. As are the laws of... well, law. It's the real-world laws of social reasonableness and sensibility that seem not in effect, as weird things can happen very suddenly and without context—like outlandishly attired figures going on crossbow rampages in a city that, as far as we know, hasn't ever seen such things—and even the ordinary people seem to suffer from personality disorders—characters routinely skip to making logical and emotional leaps with a rapidity that no rational human being ever would—but nobody within the show seems appropriately perturbed by how unreasonable everything is.

In the midst of that, what saved the show for me initially were the flashback segments covering the time Oliver spent on the island. We're not actually told at the outset what specifically Oliver went through that so changed him, and, as the flashbacks are doled out over the course of the season, we see that there's a lot more to it than "crime lords sabotaged his boat, and now he's back and out for justice." The island story is a trip unto itself, full of costumed characters, mercenaries, and double- and triple-crosses, and, even by the end of the season, it's not clear what any of it has to do with Oliver's mission in Starling City. What makes it compelling and not merely unbelievable like the Starling City stuff is that, in these flashbacks, Oliver himself actually comes across as a normal guy, who responds to the madness around him as a normal person would, completely nonplussed in disbelief and denial. When you introduce one normal person into a crazy situation, as opposed to just having everyone be crazy (but thinking they're normal), it completely alters the dynamic, not only within the show but with the audience as well, because now we have a surrogate to place us in the acknowledged madness, instead of us feeling taken out of a story that just seems too incredible. And the island story is frankly more interesting than the main story, replacing the usual CW relationship melodrama with fearsome characters who know exactly who they are and what they're after (even while leaving viewers guessing at their true allegiances).

As I started to get hooked on the flashback story, the main Starling City narrative also surprisingly improved. It never becomes any more credible, and the cases of the week are largely snoozers, but after rival archer Merlyn arrives at the end of the first half, Arrow suddenly becomes the most thrilling action show on television, with stunt choreography far surpassing anything in the Nolan Batman films, let alone anything else on TV. And Merlyn was, for me, the most awesome villain on any show all season. Reminding me a bit of Ozymandias from Watchmen, he'll go from wearing thousand-dollar suits to startlingly ripping guys apart without missing a beat.

The show also finally picks up a sense of humor, once Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) goes from being nearly a one-off, one-scene character to being a breakout de facto regular (and now an official regular for Season 2). Seemingly the only person in the world of Arrow who isn't obsessed with themselves and their own drama, this one supporting character alone carries an entire dimension to the show with her pointed observations that manage to ground both Oliver and the show itself whenever they start to take themselves too seriously.

It's not a perfect show by any means; it's uneven, full of blah characters, and too often unintentionally absurd. But when it delivers, the first season is as thrilling a show as you'll find on network TV, with better fight scenes than you'll find anywhere else, and twists that eventually surprisingly pay off the excessively heightened self-seriousness with legitimately major consequences.

Standing Apology

I'll be out of the country for three weeks, starting this evening. I've scheduled a few blog posts to go up automatically, so as to maintain an appearance of regular activity. In case anything I post in the next three weeks appears to be commenting, tastelessly or otherwise, on a news story that breaks at any time after this evening, understand that it was entirely unintentional, and, depending on Internet access over there, I may not be able to pull or edit anything truly inflammatory. So I'll just offer a blanket preemptive apology for anything offensive I might say here over the next three weeks. Actually, while I'm at it, I should probably extend that apology in the other direction as well, taking this opportunity to say sorry for anything I've said in the past. In fact, let this post be my standing apology for all occasions.

The Office (U.S.) (Season 9) (2012-2013)

The ninth and final season of the U.S. version of The Office was a marginal improvement over the previous couple seasons. I felt the show had lost its charm some years back, even before Steve Carell had left. I think the last time I felt truly invested in the show was around Season 5, when Michael, Pam, and Ryan set up their own paper company to challenge Dunder Mifflin. I can't believe that was four seasons ago. From there, it was a long, labored decline, including such unfortunate developments as Jim's turn as ineffectual and unlikable co-manager, the entire James Spader run, and, most regrettably, the preposterous push for Andy Bernard to become some sort of Michael Scott stand-in. Season 9 made some ballsy moves, then, chief among them the near annihilation of the Andy character. This may have been less a gutsy move than the show having to operate around Ed Helms's movie career, but it was nevertheless dealt with in a way that was far more real than I had come to expect from the mockumentary sitcom.

As originally introduced, conniving yet oblivious, the Andy character was, I thought, a hilarious addition to the cast. Once he actually was promoted to being a series regular, however, and they decided that they needed to make him more of a pitiful nice guy, he became far less entertaining. It probably would not have worked to have him continue on as that quasi-antagonistic presence in the office—that's not a recipe for longevity for a sitcom character—but to have him flip around to playing the underdog also didn't ring true. And if I wasn't quite protesting the Andy-Erin romance angle, I certainly wasn't buying it either. So, to see the story completely turn on Andy in Season 9, and in a way that unambiguously painted him as the bad guy, just one season after he had seemingly beaten the odds to get his happy ending, was delightfully refreshing (even if, more than ever, I actually hated watching the character himself). Shame, though, that Erin and Pete both largely dropped out of the story almost as soon as Pete emerged as clearly the better man for her, as if that subplot had existed primarily to put Andy in his place, rather than to develop Erin and Pete.

Andy wasn't the only problem with previous seasons, however, and there were many more that Season 9 didn't fix. Toby, had he simply never come back after running off near the end of "Night Out" (Season 4, Episode 15), would have had one of the classic exits in TV history. He had a few more good moments after that, but, for the better part of the last several seasons, he was simply dead weight. By Season 9, especially with Michael no longer there to abuse him, this character had nothing left to offer.

Speaking of which, Nellie was, like Andy, another character that I found hilarious in her initial appearance, and still enjoyed when she continued on as a recurring guest, but who never should have become a regular. There was nothing more to say with that character that the show hadn't already said during her guest appearances, and every bit involving her in Season 9 was, for me, a miss.

Of course, by the end, most of the supporting characters were dead weight. Not only did they become less and less funny, but the more time I spent with them, the more I began to actively dislike them as people. Far from being a close-knit office family, these people were purely negative, both toward one another and in general, the exceptions being Erin, who was always cute, and Kevin, who could still consistently elicit a cheap laugh from me.

The series finale was appropriately big and emotional. I'm glad that The Simpsons is still running (not saying it's still the best show on television or anything), but otherwise I can't think of any show that has ever lasted as many as nine seasons that shouldn't probably have ended a lot earlier. The benefit of going on so long, however, is that, even if the show hasn't been great all along, the story collects a unique weight over the years simply by being in viewers' lives that long. It sounds silly as I write this, but, in a case like this, the viewer and the show kind of grow old together. If you watched The Office as it aired, that was nine years of your life, after all—a significant stretch of time for anyone. And perhaps, as you look back on past seasons and episodes, you'll be reminded of what major things were going on in your own life at the time. There's a particular sweetness to this finale, as the characters are able to look back and equally reflect on the weight of nine years.

Still, I couldn't help feeling that the Michael Scott farewell episode was better and would have made for the better end to the story. Certainly, it would have made for a good stopping point for the documentary, to end it with the guy you started it with. And, as much as perhaps they didn't want Michael, no longer a regular part of the show, to come back and overshadow what the remaining regulars had come to over these last few seasons without him, my feeling, as I watched each character's story wrap up in the finale, was that none of them had actually moved very far from where they had been at the time of Michael's departure, so I didn't really get the sense that there was more left to say for the other characters than there was for Michael. It also didn't make any sense to me that Michael would have been absent from the reunion panel, but oh well.

Freedom From Privacy

So the government is spying on us, you say? Listening to all our calls and reading everything we post to the Internet (even the things we set to "friends only," which does NOT include you, Mr. NSA!)? Surely this isn't so surprising. And, in any case, for most of us, it is delusionally egotistical to suppose that our private lives are interesting enough to hold the government's attention. Never mind that, logistically, there is just no way our government has the manpower to actually comb through every ordinary citizen's stuff, considering it's fairly well established that they wouldn't have the resources even to effectively monitor all sex offenders' activities. No, I imagine they're just scanning for certain key phrases ("Blackbriar" and all that) that would raise security alerts. Or, who knows, maybe there is some pervert getting paid (by you!) to read with relish your private Facebook status updates on your pathetic love life.

In any case, the news is discouraging on principle, not because it means the feds know all the embarrassing details of our lives, but because, however Obama may try to spin it as a necessary evil (and the official "deal with it" response has been about as blatantly and maddeningly anti-little guy as Microsoft's attempt to explain to consumers why the Xbox One must daily check in online (answer: because Microsoft has to look out for Microsoft)), the point is that our government has been lying to us all. Big time. Maybe many of us conspiracy theorists had seen enough spy movies to have known already not to trust the government. But even members of the liberal mainstream press are hammering the administration now. This is a broken relationship. As when your spouse cheats on you or a family member steals from you (or whatever—I can't think of a better example), though we may not have to stay angry at them forever, we can never again fully trust them, no matter how many apologies they make (and, in fact, Obama hasn't offered an apology).

As I see it, the only thing they can do now to halfway "make it right" is to give all of us access to that same information, so that everything is transparent and we're all on a level playing field.

....

Okay, everything I said before that I was serious about. This news is outrageous, and we shouldn't just get over it and accept Obama's call to calm down (at least until a Republican takes office, at which point let's blame that guy for everything we haven't liked over these last two terms, right?). Maybe this revelation won't have much practical effect on how we live our daily lives, as we pump gas, buy deodorant, etc. But if we stand for this, it's only a slippery slope to more really bad anti-little guy stuff.

And now, back to what I was saying about letting us spy on one another (well, it really wouldn't be spying anymore, since there wouldn't be any more secrets, only transparency), I actually had once, before any of this came out, what I thought would have been a brilliant idea for a service that I now realize would have amounted to violation of privacy on a massive scale. It would have vaguely combined Google Goggles and Facebook's Graph Search, although I had this idea before I'd ever heard of those things either. (And I should clarify, by "I had this idea," I mean I thought to myself, "Somebody ought to make this," not "I plan to and know how to make this.")

The basic idea was of an app that would tap into and interpret all the user-generated data on every social network in order to pull up info on anything we might observe in the real world. Initially, this would have been to assist with shopping. Increasingly, there are movements calling for more ethical production practices (e.g. no slave labor involved, eco-friendly), but nearly all of the most profitable companies, especially in electronics manufacturing and the garment industry, are still less than forthcoming about where stuff comes from and how it gets made. This is not information you're going to get off the tag or from the store. But what if, when shopping, you could scan the item with your smartphone (this was also before Google Glass) and get instant access to useful stats researched by people not standing to profit off the sale?

Of course, you can already do research prior to making a purchase by consulting customer reviews on merchant websites, but that's much easier for certain types of products than others. And how handy would it be if you could, right in the store, simply snap a visual of the item itself (yes, this would require a much more sophisticated version of what Google Goggles offers right now) and get the info then and there? And the info wouldn't just be from other regular consumers but from any informed blogger, or even just anyone who has shared a tip on Facebook. The service would intelligently sort the data to provide, beyond just quality reviews, details on production practices (to steer you toward ethical shopping, including providing user-suggested alternatives), pricing (including where and for what price specifically other people have seen the same item or an equivalent alternative), materials (whether it's all safe to use or wear), etc. And this info would all be drawn from what the people collectively have to say—perhaps the most effective oversight of all.

Even in the beginning, when people's contributions to the service would be indirect, all that stuff we post to social networks would constitute a wealth of data (as the NSA well knows) that, for the most part, isn't being put to best use as is (because you can't Google what's been shared on Facebook). But, as the service caught on and people recognized its usefulness, users would get into it the same way they get into all of these ego-stroking social networking services, and they would snap photos and microblog their quick opinions or tips on any item they came across throughout their day. At least, that would be the hope.

And this wouldn't just be for shopping. It would bring up data on food, flora, whatever—basically, anything that the app could identify and that anybody had ever written about online. And, in case you couldn't see where this was going, what if it could even visually ID and bring up info on people? It could, for example, alert you if the person in front of you were a sex offender. Or maybe the guy's not a criminal but just not a nice guy. Yeah, say you have a bad feeling about a date or an interview, you just look them up on the app and see not only their vitals and background but also if anyone has left a reference or tip about this person. And maybe the app wouldn't just be passively bringing up data, but maybe users would start actively leaving notes about other people as they interacted with them—like, say, "Note: this guy's a tool, and his wiener is small (ironically)."

Okay, so you can see where this idea could go wrong. It's also probably going to happen. Google Glass is already pointing us in that direction. It probably won't be the government's doing, but we also probably won't be able to expect them to have our backs and protect us against it. Rather, they'd be the first ones to try to control it for themselves, to no good end. Maybe the only real solution is just to give it to everyone equally after all. We all have secrets we'd rather keep to ourselves. Advantage, both in national security and in social circles, is gained from knowing other people's secrets when they don't know yours, while embarrassment is the result when other people know yours and you don't know theirs. Maybe we'd actually live more compassionate and freer lives if together we were all made to stand on the same side of shame, to recognize that each among us is flawed and makes mistakes, but, as we'd likely find out once everything is out in the open, no one's individual mistakes are bigger, worse, or more notable than most anyone else's. And if they are significantly worse, then those are probably the people who should be locked up, eh? And, once the playing field is leveled, we'd probably discover that it's the people in power I'm talking about, who keep the most outrageous secrets from the rest of us. (Well, maybe not worse than the psychos with the secret mass murder graveyards....)