Take Monday night, for example. I was at a show in San Francisco my sister was headlining and after the first act finished their set, I started feeling rather hungry. Not hungry enough to pay through the roof for bar food, but, y’know, hungry. I needed a snack or something like that. More specifically, I needed a Twix bar. I didn’t know why I needed a Twix bar as opposed to other potential snack foods, but since I’d had a few drinks and was slightly tipsy, I didn’t bother questioning my logic. I walked across the street to Walgreens, bought two Twix bars (…well, technically four, but whatever) and happily consumed the first one on the way back to the club. The second bar also served its purpose; when I woke up at 7 AM on the couch in the house my sister was staying at (we ended up hanging out until an hour ungodly enough to merit everyone, including myself, doubting my ability to safely drive home to my mom’s house in the South Bay), I made an impromptu “breakfast” out of it and then went back to sleep. All’s well that ends well, right?

Well, no. Not really. You see, over the past few weeks, the phrase “blog about your ideals” has been kind of stuck in my head. I knew that it came from some dumb commercial I’d seen involving a guy using it as a successful pickup line, but wasn’t really sure what product it was for. After some intense Googling, I came across this little gem… and suddenly, I knew both why I wanted a Twix bar so badly Monday night and why I couldn’t for the life of me remember what product the “blog about your ideals ad” was pushing. Behold!

So what exactly is the structure of this commercial? Well, in a way, you could see it as a 30-second adaptation of Joseph Campbell’s heroic cycle… simplified, of course. We find the “hero” at home just like we find all traditional heroes in contemporary mythology (Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, etc.): a normal, run-of-the-mill guy with normal, run-of-the-mill guy problems. He is talking to a “hot chick” at a party (a very opinionated, politically-minded “hot chick” at that…), but seems rather clueless as to what to say, resulting in a terribly awkward pickup line (“Do you want to go back to my apartment?”) which is followed by a rather caustic response (“WHAT?! What kind of a girl do you think I am?”). All of a sudden, he is transported into the “other world,” which in this case is represented by an image of a delectable Twix bar with caramel pouring out , accompanied by a calm, deep voice asking him: “Need a moment?” As is almost always the case in the heroic cycle, the “hero” manages to return from his caramel-infused hi-jinks armed with new skills and knowledge relevant to his community, which in this case comes in the form of a “pickup line” which reverses the situation and lets him bring the girl back to his apartment after all: “I thought you were a believer, someone who’d like to blog about our ideals, but…” “Oh, blogging! I love blogging!” The pair depart for a wild night of blogging and, most likely, bumping uglies (…despite the girl’s deeply-held convictions on this, I might add). The end.

Now, most guys who are high and/or drunk and watching Adult Swim late at night probably aren’t going to think of Joseph Campbell when they see an ad like this. In fact, they probably won’t even think about it; after all, it’s just a dumb commercial which they have to sit through if they want to watch Morel Orel after Robot Chicken. That’s okay, because the heroic cycle primarily resonates with the unconscious; it’s a series of events human beings tend to like including in their stories and like seeing in other people’s stories. In fact, I’d argue that this ad is most effective when one is not paying much attention to it because in this state, it’s a lot easier for it to do a number on one’s unconscious.

When this particular ad comes on, the typical dude with girl problems watching Adult Swim sees a situation on TV which seems all-too-familiar. All of a sudden, there’s a break in the narrative; a giant Twix bar is shown, compete with a change in music, narrator, and so forth. Then we return to the primary narrative, which ends in a favorable way… well, favorable at least to the dude with girl problems watching Adult Swim. Once the commercial is over, the narrative sticks with him, because that’s what he was paying attention to… but the break in it doesn’t, since he of course dismissed it as an “annoying sales pitch.” However, the “sales pitch” is actually linked to the good feelings associated with the “love story” in his subconscious, since it occured in a similar context.  Thus, when the dude who watched the commercial is feeling hungry, there’s probably more of a chance of him wanting a Twix bar. Think about it: whenever you crave a particular food, you usually crave either the nutritional content in that food (…this is why pregnant women often have weird food cravings) or the experience associated with that food. For example, there is a crappy Mexican place in Santa Fe called Burrito Spot which I absolutely love – not so much because the food is great (…it’s not), but because it’s open late at night and thus, I have many fond memories of going there with friends while out on various adventures. Another example: there are probably certain dishes that you enjoy eating because a family member used to make them for you and you associate the food with the family member. What Mars Inc. seems to be after here is creating an experience which would cause its “target demographic” (guys my age with girl problems) to associate a Twix bar with good feelings. In short, commercials like these are using the viewer’s own emotional weaknesses and shortcomings to “brainwash” them into buying the featured product – without even knowing that they’re buying the product because of the commercial!

For some reason, I’m not terribly comfortable with Mars Inc. preying on my emotional insecurities to sell me a candy bar which I would not ordinarily buy. Why not just make a quality product and depend on word-of-mouth and genuine human connection to do the “advertising” for you? Burrito Spot is a good example of this; they’re probably the best place to get cheap food in Santa Fe after 10 PM. Not the best Mexican restaurant in town by a long shot, but hey, they’re always open and are dramatically better than McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Sonic, or any of the big chains out there. As a result, a late night of movie-watching, hanging out, and general debauchery in Santa Fe will almost invariably involve a stop at Burrito Spot at some point – they have a quality product which none of their competitors can offer.There’s no need for psychological warfare in this case. Business is good, a new location just opened up in a different part of town and actually, come to think of it, I have not seen a single Burrito Spot ad in the three years I’ve lived in Santa Fe other than maybe a small black-and-white one in a local newspaper. It’s really too bad that big companies like Mars Inc. feel they have to use propaganda to get me to buy their product. As Marx would put it, this contributes to the alienation we feel from each other and makes it harder for us to truly act as “species beings.”

One more thing before I end this post: I am very interested in the philosophical issues raised by the “pickup culture” which produced the ad in question. Expect to see more posts about that sort of thing in the future.

So 48 hours into owning an iPhone, my favorite application is Stick Wars. It’s the only one I’ve actually paid money for so far and it acts as a great stress reliever. Hey, there’s something downright cathartic about launching anthropomorphic stick figures who deign to attack your castle into the air and watching them turn into puddles of blood on impact. It’s as though you’re protecting your mind from all the things you could worry about, one flick of a finger at a time. The soundtrack is also really cool (y’know, for a crappy iPhone video game soundtrack)… but then again, maybe that’s just the residue of that Viking metal phase I went through a couple of years ago.

That said, I can’t help wondering just what exactly the consciousness of one of those stick figures I mercilessly slaughter consists of. Well, granted, that’s kind of a stupid question. As we all know, stick figures on a video game aren’t real. They’re just a string of numbers in a computer code which, when translated to a graphical user interface, takes on the appearance of an anthropomorphic entity. So basically, whenever one of those stick figures runs towards my “castle,” the Stick Wars application runs a line of code which says: “x area of screen is moving at y velocity towards z location, but if x is touched by the user in a certain way, it will move at a velocity towards b location and when it gets there, this funtion will cease.” Since a line of code in an iPhone application isn’t really “alive” or “sentient,” no one cares if it “dies” or not. In fact, every single “character” in Stick Wars has no purpose other than being “killed” or being “captured”… which is why I don’t feel terribly guilty when I’m informed that 3,000 brave souls have perished at my hand while trying to attack my castle. In fact, the only reason I would ask this sort of question in the first place is because the code that governs the motions of the stick figures is presented to me in an anthropomorphic manner: “little men” who are attacking me. I’m sure there are plenty of functions of code that “die” in a simmilar way – many of them drastically more complex – which I don’t think about like this because they’re presented as a window in Firefox or a Soulseek file transfer or something like that.

With this in mind, the obvious answer seems to be that a Stick Wars “man” isn’t very conscious of anything; it’s just a blip of code in a larger application. We might be tempted, then, to ask what the consciousness of Stick Wars itself is – after all, it responds to its environment, just like a life form, and its existence (in this case, it’s ranking in the App Store) is determined by how well it reacts to environmental pressures, again, just like a life form. However, it once again goes without saying that Stick Wars isn’t self-aware. On the whole, it’s just a big bundle of code which for some reason causes human beings to think that they’re killing little men who are trying to invade their castle.

Here’s the reversal, then: who’s to say that I’m not just a “line of code” to some larger, more-powerful being which I’m unaware of? Not necessarily “God” in the sense of an Abrahamic tradition, but maybe an application developer in an alternate dimension. Of course, the ammount of code necessary to generate a fully-functional universe is gargantuan; no creature that we know of could create such a thing. That said, if we consider the unverse as a set of mechanical laws and functions, life really is just an incredibly complex function with, to varying degrees, the capacity to reprsent a model of the universe to itself. There are limits on our functionality, just as there are limits to what a video game character can do and, just like the functions governing a stick figure in “Stick Wars,” there will inevitably come a time when the function governing our very existence will cease. The problem is, we’re all aware in some capacity that the end is coming and, honestly, not many of us seem to like that very much.

…Yeah, that was kind of morbid. On the other hand, all this “that’s a function,” no “we’re a function” crap reminds me of a certain debate often held between Towlie and other characters on South Park. I can’t find any actual clips of it, but here’s a video which is just as funny:

Or, returning to the original sense of this post:

According to Hegel, things are defined by what they’re not. The act of setting limits, or negation, is important in defining something as a specific entity. For example, the name Sam Richards is fairly common; a simple Google search will reveal a sociology professor, a photographer, a composer, and many other results. Were one to define me as “a male homo sapiens who is currently alive and named Sam Richards,” that simply wouldn’t fly; all the other Sam Richardses out there would fall under the same category. A proper definition would have to include some aspect which no other “Sam Richards” possesses: “the Sam Richards who just graduated from St. John’s College,” “the Sam Richards who has a box of Grateful Dead tapes in the trunk of his car,” or that sort of thing.

Now, seeing as this is my first post, I don’t think my blog has any qualities quite yet that would distinguish it from other blogs. Maybe over time, it will develop into a unique flower of a blog, or maybe it will become yet another failed attempt at blogging in the internet age, just like all the other blogs that you’re linked to but never read because they’re really boring. I really have no idea. However, what does exist is the intent behind this blog. What do I want to do with this blog? How is it going to identify itself as a blog that is uniquely mine, as opposed to other blogs?

For some reason, I seem to look at everything I’m exposed to as a philosophical statement of sorts. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember – hell, I remember listening to “Daddy” by Korn back in middle school and thinking about the implications of Johnathan Davis writing a song about his childhood sexual abuse. I’ve come a long way since then. Instead of listening to Korn, I now listen to Black Moth Super Rainbow, and instead of studying for the big algebra test on Monday so I can get an A on my report card, I’m studying for the GRE in case I apply to graduate school in the future. However, this is still my natural way of thinking. In short, it is my “intellectual capital:” the thing I can offer the newly-emerging “noosphere” of online communication which is uniquely mine.

As such, this blog will be devoted to philosophy and popular culture at the same time. I will take various forms of media – commercials, film trailers, television shows, et cetera – and turn them into abstract philosophical terms, as I am always wont to do. Or maybe I will take something I read by a philosopher and apply it to a current trend or idea. Whatever the case, there will always be a philosophical element and a pop culture element combined to form who-knows-what. Read it for fun, read it for profundity, read it because you’re waiting for that dude who has your Miles Davis LP to IM you and let you know when you can get it back! The important point for me is to just get my thoughts out of my head and into yours – provided you’re interested in that kind of thing.