Geek Urban Myths: Better than real

And so comedian and Doctor Who fan Toby Hadoke today tweeted some news that broke my heart:

“As there are some who still don’t believe it: I’ve just received written confirmation that Harold Pinter was not in The Abominable Snowmen!”

Okay, some context: for years a story has done the rounds of fandom, that Harold Pinter was hired by the producers of Doctor Who, not as a lauded playwright but in his other role as a jobbing actor. Yes, the man who would go on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature was employed to play a yeti-fighting monk. That is, frankly, an awesome story.

Only it’s not true. And I’m gutted.

It’s not that I want all geek myths to be true – I’m glad there’s not really a Munchkin suicide in The Wizard of Oz – but some make the world more interesting. I want Bob Holness to have played the sax solo on ‘Baker Street’; I’m kind of freaked out but intrigued by the idea that the CIA invented a nefarious arcade game. I wish Kate Bush had written a Doctor Who story under a pseudonym, and frankly it now doesn’t matter that Uncle Ben never said “With great power comes great responsibility” in the original comics, the phrase is now deep in Spider-Man’s bones.

Like any other culture, the geek community has evolved a mythology over time. Often that’s based on flat-out misinformation, but it catches on because a need is fulfilled – attaching names like Bush and Pinter to a show traditionally made on a shoe-string grants it a certain legitimacy and credibility; that’s why these stories find themselves embedded in fan culture. It’s probably worth noting that, when Neil Gaiman wrote for Who, his episode got its name from one of the show’s most notorious hoaxes. After all, reinventing mythologies is one of Gaiman’s great strengths.

All of which goes to show, sometimes it’s more fun to print the myth…

Riots, Martians and Spring-Heeled Jack: How a bit of panic makes us weird, and how Twitter sometimes doesn’t help

As you may be aware, there has been a spot of bother in England over the last few days. Rioters across London, Birmingham, Manchester and other towns and cities went on the rampage, with no clear explanation as yet. However, something else was going on behind the carnage. Something even more fluid and inexplicable than events in London.

These were the Phantom Riots.

Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry Messenger seem to have been the media of choice both for those gathering rioters and for more IT-aware police forces trying to calm situations. But they were also vehicles for misinformation – suddenly every township had rocks being thrown and Asdas on fire, every couple of teenagers in hoodies were a feral mob intent on bringing down civilisation. No evidence was offered for these events, but social media was sowing fear and confusion at a time when we could have done with less of this.

It’s not surprising though, because communities can have a tendency to jump at shadows. In this case the shadows were rampaging teenagers (which, it turns out, wasn’t quite the truth). Sometimes the shadows are, well, something else…

Take, for instance, The War of the Worlds. Everyone’s heard of how Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adaptation triggered panics and fears of Martians invading America. However, this wasn’t confined to the US; in 1949, a Spanish-language version of the play lead to riots in Ecuador, with the same thing happening in Chile, 1944. Sometimes the enemy isn’t from Mars; last year there was panic on the streets of Georgia when a fake news broadcast indicated that Russia was repeating its 2008 invasion of the country. Blackberry Messenger may be the current medium demon for those wanting to blame the medium instead of the message, but it’s clear that TV and radio can also lead to panics – maybe what’s needed are better digital curation skills rather than kneejerk reactions.

Sometimes panics don’t arise because of fears of invasion – sometimes there are insidious forces lurking within communities waiting to strike. For two years, between 1788 and 1790, the women of London were terrorised by the London Monster, an attacker who would stalk his victims before stabbing them in the nose or buttocks. A man was arrested, but still people reported being attacked by the Monster, who seemed to have slipped into the cracks of urban mythology. Fifty years later, Spring-Heeled Jack began his reign of terror, a bogeyman stalking the rooftops of London and beyond, making appearences in my neck of the woods, at Himley and Old Hill in the West Midlands.

(This seems like a good point to link to an old post of mine, about the time in fifties Glasgow when the children went hunting the Gorbals Vampire.)

Then there are the times when people en masse just start acting strangely – uncontrollable dancing in 16th century Strasbourg, inexplicable laughter in Tanzania, 1962, and, well, witch-hunts in general. Given the almost unexplainable way the London riots took hold, spread across the country then stopped over the course of just a few days, you’ve got to wonder if an element of mass hysteria has been involved.

The riots seem to have calmed down, and Twitter is no longer jumping at its own shadow. There have been calls to ban Blackberry Messenger, as if this will stop rioters from communicating, as if BBM is some sort of totem that needs to be destroyed to prevent the corruption of the nation’s youth. This isn’t the case, but there are lessons to be learned from the way in which we have engaged with technology during the last few days, for while the instincts behind rumours and panics are nothing new, the speed at which they can be spread is now unprecedented. And yet, while we can talk darkly of exorcising phantoms, maybe the easiest way to deal with this is simple and threefold:

Stop.

Think.

Check.

Or, by it’s more traditional name:

Common Sense.

Writer’s Block: Stories of old

Who is your favorite mythical creature/character, and why?

Submitted By herasrevenge

Either Superman (who’s becoming something of a modern myth), John Henry (“Gonna run that hammer down!”), or the Pig on the Wall.

But while we’re talking about mythology, I’m going to shamelessly link to some old posts I did on the subject here, here, here, here, here, and here…

Escaped Cobra Terrorises New York!!!

The news that an escaped cobra may be on the prowl in the Bronx reminded me of this story about the 1874 Central Park Zoo Escape. Two major differences – unlike the cobra, none of the Central Park animals were on Twitter, and, also unlike the cobra, the 18– escape didn’t actually happen – it was actually a hoax published by the New York Herald. All of which is just a cheap way of me linking to an old post I wrote about famous hoaxes…

Writer’s Block: Children of the sun

Actually, according to local folklore, in 1979 aliens landed about six miles from me, in Rowley Regis, and a witness gave them all mince pies, so baked goods may be an appropriate gift to present to any extraterrestrial visitors. I think any aliens that like cake are potential friends and allies, and far better than aliens that, say, want to eat our livers.

As for how aliens would regard our society, it’s a big question – which society, for a start? They might have an affinity for modern western culture, or the long view of Chinese history, or native American tribal societies, or… Given that the arrival of aliens would be one of the most influential and earth-shattering events in human history, the way in which they relate to any of our particular human societies could lead to a total shift in global politics, with existing superpowers possibly being pushed aside if the aliens had a greater affinity for, say, Australian Aboriginies.

That’s a bit of an anthropomorphic way of looking at the question, of course, because if they were truly alien then we’d struggle to even comprehend each other, let alone communicate or develop alliances. How would either side go about making contact when we’re not talking about different human societies that at least have a shared physiology to help things along (we couldn’t exactly smile at aliens and expect them to know what that means, because they might not even have mouths. Although that would stop them eating our livers).

And then, then, who would we send out to make first contact? The military? Probably gives the wrong impression. Politicians? Okay, which ones? Scientists, theologians, entertainers? Male or female? Young or old? President Obama, David Cameron, the Pope, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Bono, William Shatner?

Should we send anyone? Remember War of the Worlds – one virus in the wrong place and we’ve given an alien ambassador Swine Flu. That’s not going to go down well in the mothership. This isn’t sci-fi paranoia – this is pretty much what happens when civilisations run into each other for the first time, mixing up germs that had previously been isolated.

But then if they landed in my backyard, I’d be on the frontline of the first contact between humanity and a sentient alien race. Me, Matt, from Dudley. I don’t think I’m ready for that responsibility. I’d be tempted to ask them to mow my lawn with a laser or something. My sole experience in this sort of thing is watching sci-fi TV shows, and that never ends well for the aliens. For my generation, Han Shot First. Who would I call? The police? The local Council? The RAF, the Government? How do I get in touch with the Government anyway, my MP? Which department is in charge of this sort of thing, the Foreign Office? Ministry of Defence? The UK Border Agency?

It also doesn’t help that my stupid mobile phone probably wouldn’t get a signal.

So, all in all, I’d like to think I’d be friendly and welcoming, but there’s too much at stake, and if I sneezed I could kill them all. There’s only one solution to this, and that is to draft my house’s very own First Contact Protocols (to go alongside the Zombie Apocalypse Contingency Plan). This may seem over-the-top, but no-one else seems to have a plan in place. They’re leaving the ball in my court. Well, fine. I can handle it.

I for one welcome our new alien overlords!

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