YouTube is probably dying BUT THERE'S A TWIST!

 

 Well exactly, Man Carrying Thing.

 

 I think – and this is a statistic I heard before they recently started counting a single frame as a "view" – that YouTube is now more viewed in the UK than the BBC, yet I'm honestly not sure it'll be around in a couple of years. Many of my favourite professional creators like Jenny Nicholson and Lindsay Ellis have long ago been driven to rival, paid-subscription site Nebula by the constant, unpoliced hammering of commenters. The slack, inaccurate, and uncorrected robot-butler-driven demonetisation of other professionals like Yesterworld (as he explains here) proves even the men aren't safe. And, as I found out when I started a new channel with its own fresh algorithm, the most divisive, Ai-faked, "you'll never guess what didn't happen" rage bait dog mess – the exact opposite of what made YouTube such a gift – is now the preferred recommendation. 

 But, just as the party's winding down, look who shows up...

 

 Come in! Come in!

 Given the recent respects paid on this blog to the pioneering Fred Spencer, and my own low effort return to talking to the camera, I felt it would be remiss not to note that the highly lauded, lowly derided auteur M. Night Shyamalan has, within the last twenty-four hours, started his own channel and, to my mind, not put a foot wrong. This isn't a partnership or a strategy, this is someone simply deciding to have a go at the internet, undramatically baring his soul like those dating videos of old, but with the authority of a person who has swung and missed across the world. He's keeping it short. He's found a bench he likes. He's not overthought the thumbnail (although actually – oh, that might change. They do change. A/B testing. I really hope it doesn't change. Is it still just a curvy arrow pointing to him saying "movie director"? I hope so. I've screengrabbed it just in case. Stop tapping that. It's a screengrab, the video's below). Thumbnail aside, it's not funny, but it makes me as happy as something funny might. It's beautifully concise, human scale, unscripted, and promises so much whose passing I mourned with the death of Fred. The innocent and accurate assumption that people care. Gauche as chocolate rain. I'm sorry you often don't feel great, M. Night Shyamalan, and welcome, maestro. Permission to be not great granted.

 

Is it a loud man getting things wrong?

 Here, ol' Unattendees, to celebrate my love for you all, is a tree giving a little house a hug. Sorry I haven't been posting more, but I am once again between keyboards (in case you were wondering, this post has been compiled entirely from copying and pasting parts OF ITSELF) but this hardware situation should be resolved when I get back from France, pictured above – where I have, as always, been spending Christmas with my folks – and below is the advert that will pay for it:

 

 

 I might even have enough left over after to take a show to Edinburgh, something I haven't dared do since 2001. Guess which show. "I don't know, Simon. How many shows have you made?" Well exactly, that one. Although, thinking on the previous post, I am growing obsessed (again*) with how abysmal a part of real world, far right economic discourse beloved, old sci-fi tropes such as space exploration and Ai have become, so maybe it will be two shows! Maybe it will be none! No, I've written it down now (or pains-takingly pieced it together from individual characters torn from THIS VERY POST) and 2025 is likely to frighten a lot of us anyway, so nits like me, who are sitting pretty pretty, should give courage a go too! Happy... changing things, then. Yeah. No. Franceuck it. Happy 2025, readers. Happy Change. 

 

Vancouver last August, where this ad was filmed – along with many futuristic sci-fi shows from the noughties, meaning I'd wanted to visit this city for decades. But when I finally get there, everywhere else had caught up, and the biggest thing distinguishing this Pacific shoreline now from, say, Leeds or Chelsea Wharf is just the number of people to a canoe.

 

* Did you get that that was what "Time Spanner" was about? I mean, it was about other stuff too.

Sometimes this blog will just be Tinsel and Custard

 

 

 Is there a word for the opposite of nostalgia? For the unhousingly alien disclosure of things past you'd forgotten you'd even tried to forget? Quentin Smirhes' innovations in this nameless, benighted field continue to go from strength to hideous strength. The botched Schools and Colleges module "Dont You Start" (beginning three and half minutes in) might be the QTV team's most ambitious bit of salvaging yet, but grisly as you might find it, it's angora wool compared to the botched experiments in A.I. Quentin now broadcasts over on instagram. Go and browse and dredge, for they are works of genius, and you will not come back unchanged.

"Thank you sir from 6 to God" - The Sound of the Summer with Auto-Generated Subtitles, plus Auto-Translation

 Four no-budget one-man productions of Shakespeare is all well and good, but nothing I make this year's going to top Je Suis Mermaid, so I thought I'd put that on youtube too, and am indebted to those who told me to check out the channel's auto-generated closed captions. (At least it got that I was speaking French). Here:

[Musique] À
Je suis ma m. J'habite à la merde. J'ai [Musique]
Laissé le temps au top. Je suis dans la merde.
À nous maintenant de six: Qu'est ce que c'est que tu fais aujourd'hui
À Cannes? De nos francs, dix marocain poisson à totino médecine gland.
Je suis ma m. J'habite à la mer.
Hays s'élève á tizi disquaire day one.
Approcher sakuma cheveaux gris mat à lieu à Kiev.
Merci Monsieur merci Monsieur mais il fait aussi fonction.
Merci Monsieur de six à dieu, c'est la mer et le
cadeau dinars mais Séguinaud lance
Marie vêtus de blanc. Merci monsieur [Musique]
Si ça dure [Musique]
Remercier monsieur vers ma chère.
Voilá merci monsieur français à dieu. [Musique]

 And for those who don't speak French, youtube also of course provide an auto-translation service:

[Music] At
I am my m. I live in shit. I have [Music]
Time left on top. I'm in shit.
To us now from six: What is it that you do today in Cannes?
Of our ten francs, Moroccan fish with totino medicine acorn.
I am my m. I live at the sea.
Hays amount to tizi record store day one.
Approach his mat gray hair sakuma takes place in Kiev.
Thank you sir thank you sir but it also works.
Thank you sir from 6 to God, it's the sea and the dinars gift
but séginuad launches
Marie dressed in white. Thank you sir [Music]
If it lasts [Music]
Thank you sir towards my dear.
Here is thank you French mister to God. [Music.]

Apparently Seginaud was a French cyclist. Obviously I love this.

A go on Eliza

"ELIZA – a friend you could never have before" (which already sounds iffily ambiguous, and unlike anything an actual person might say) is an interactive computer programme developed back in the 1960's at MIT, a "chatterbot", according to wikipedia. An online version of her – it, sorry – exists here, and to celebrate the opening of Tom Lyall's "Defrag" this week, at the Camden People's Theatre (speaking of excellent friends), I thought I'd have a go. I'm "You". She starts...

  Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you? 

You: Who are you?

  Eliza: Would you prefer if I were not []?

You: What is []?

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: The answer interests me. 

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: No. Sorry.

  Eliza: You are being a bit negative.

I then typed in "You're old."
But weirdly it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Hang on, that's not what I said!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What?!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What? This one? Or the last one. But the last one wasn't a question –

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: This is it now, is it?

 Eliza: Please go on.  

You: "Does that question interest you?"

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

I then typed "WHAT IS []?"
But  it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: THAT'S NOT WHAT I TYPED!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: Yes. Yes it does.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: Yes. Sorry I mean "yes"

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Positive.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: I've completely lost the thread of this conversation – Do you know Tom?

  Eliza: Oh, i know tom.

You: Okay, "tom". Do you know he's got a show on?

  Eliza: Oh, i know hes got a show on.
  
You: Okay... What's it called?  

 Eliza: Please go on.

You: Please go on your mum?

  Eliza: What about your own mum?

You: Please go on.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: No, you wanted to say something about my mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum?

You: YOU said my mum. I said YOUR mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum you said my mum?

You: I didn't.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that? 

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?
  
You: Do you know Alan Turing?

  Eliza: Oh, i know alan turing.  

You: You two get on, do you?

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

You: I'd prefer it if you didn't

  Eliza: Do you wish that i didnt?  

You: Yes.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: I'm afraid so.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am afraid so?  

You: This friendship has basically run its course I think.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: Absolutely. You're not real, and you're annoying and you don't understand what I'm saying anyway and I'm only doing this because I thought it would make a fun blog post, and I've been meaning to write about Tom's show about Artificial Intelligence but also I suppose I don't want to write that much about it because A) I don't want to give anything away, and B) outside of the content of the show itself my only other take on it was how much it reminded me of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire, and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while my juvenilia dried out, and I wasn't sure about whether I should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug, and because all the photos I took of those boxes were on a memory stick which I've lost, although maybe that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post. Something about "We lose everything in the end."

  Eliza: Why do you say your only other take on it you was what much it reminded you of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while your juvenilia dried out and you wasnt sure about whether you should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug and because all the photos you took of those boxes was on a memory stick which ive lost although perhaps that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post something about we lose everything in the end?  

You: Because I want the post to have some visual element. And having just archived the whole blog onto blogspot it struck me how much of it detailed the unpacking of those boxes the first time round, ie when my parents moved to France and I suddenly had a room full of everything I owned. And how if I hadn't blogged stuff as I unpacked it there would be some things I had no record of at all after the fire.

  Eliza: Do you wish that you hadnt blogged stuff as you unpacked it there would be some things you had no record of at all after the fire?

You: No. That's my point. And that's the thing about theatre, isn't it. You make something and then it's gone. I keep telling people I want to work in more accessible media like television, but actually that's not it all. I don't think I do care about the numbers, I just want something to last.

  Eliza: Why do you say your point and thats the thing about theatre isnt it i make something and then its gone you keep telling people i want to work in more accessible media like television but actually thats not it all you dont think you do care about the numbers you just want something to last?

You: Because I haven't been making theatre. And it's tempting. But I have to remember making it on my own has never been my dream, just something I was allowed to do.

  Eliza: Do you dream often?

You: Loads. I've taken a month off to try and write, and I'm sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes. I have written things though.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes you have written things though?

You: Mm. You're tired. Anyway, thanks for this.

  Eliza: How long have you been tired anyway thanks for this?

You: Stop.

  Eliza: Please go on.

Tom Lyall's superb show Defrag is on here as part of a whole Science Fiction Theatre season. See it! See it blind! Meanwhile the interview he gave about it, the one that tipped me off about the existence of Eliza, is up here but I'd save that until you've seen the show as there's spoilers.
Shunt, the people I normally made theatre with when I wasn't making it on my own, also have a show opening this week, "The Architects", which looks stupendous, and probably deserves a post of its own but I've had it with Eliza, so head's up!
And this post's visual element is a picture of Tom working some hat boxes while getting costumed for "Money", checking nothing falls off.

"they don't sing from the monty python creation like sometimes the Jewish religion?" "Close."

 You know the "transcribe audio" feature on youtube - what's that? You don't? Oh well I'm not entirely sure of the technology involved and obviously it's in its infancy but basically what it means is, say you want to watch a comedy clip only you're deaf, what you can now do is read everything being said at the bottom of the screen as though transcribed - and here's the really clever bit - by someone who is also deaf. I guess it's a feature reserved only for really really special clips like the Abraham sketch that I wrote. As follows. Ahem:

Premise -

Counter-Premise -

 

Twist -

Allotted Anachronism -

Flourish -

Punchline -

The Prestige -

- TextBOOKas more like! Nice work "transcribe audio" feature!

Anyway the full sketch is here (it's the little red cc button you're looking out for - I'd put the proper corresponding lines up myself only I really haven't the first bankable idea what any of these correspond to EVEN WHILE WATCHING IT.) All of which is a very roundabout way of saying firstly sorry for not alerting you sooner to the airing on Tuesday of the fourth Series of "That Mitchell and Webb Look" (still viewable to the British public here and boasting the Caesar sketch I saw recorded at Pinewood here) and secondly of giving you, I hope, a glimpse into the lightless, hunched one-man orgy of sifting through youtube for self-nuggets which the anticipation of such a screening has provoked. (Are one-man orgies the saddest of all orgies? Or the sanest? Robert?)

Qui Make Ispum Makeman (warning: garbled quasi-scientific tuppencey)

In the Dungeon the Summer hours are over, the party thrown, the prize for best costume perched atop my locker and swaddled in the tubigrips that I wore as Milla Jovovich, and when the Germans aren't passing through my shows and blowing on their swatchels I've been tucking into the classics. Two hundred pages into Samuel Butler's "Erewhon" - a book from 1872 that crops up a lot in science fiction histories as the first to discuss Artificial Intelligence - I have finally hit upon those chapters that form "The Book of Machines". The meat. It was received as just a piss-take of Darwin upon its publication, but what The Book of Machines actually does is ask quite sincerely: "What will be the next living thing?"

"Machines" it goes on to suggest. "Not for a while, no... Not for say hundreds of thousands of years... But eventually we will have to consider them as living beings. Already we feed them and help them reproduce as the bees serve the poppies, and we hear them calling out to each other in the street - even though we're currently the ones who sound their horns - but the machines are evolving. And they will develop Consciousness."
And this was back in 1872! He was talking about pipes!

So no wonder his readers at the time just went: "Hahaha, screwdrivers with souls, vair good." But reading it NOW... in the Dungeons...

Or sitting in a pub off the Essex Road last night waiting for John Finnemore to return with some shopping (I'd arrived half an hour too early for a read-through, despite losing myself in one of the most pleasingly evil and deserted underground stations ever to be burrowed, tiled and filled with cameras).... I sat with my copy of Erewhon and I thought of Battlestar Galactica (the new, good one) where it's only the machines who still believe in God. And I considered the old arguments - Monotheist: There must be a designer. / Atheist: Who designed him then? Eh?... And I don't know how the argument goes after that, or even if it does go on after that - I'd always up to this point assumed that "Eh?" was the last word on the matter... up until this point...

But now, as I finished my half, I thought: Wait? What if we say that question ISN'T rhetorical, who did make God then?... What if we start singing along to the Pixies: "If man is 5, then the devil is 6, and if the devil is 6 the God is 7!"... which of course still leaves room for an 8, a 9 and a 10... And what in that case is 1? And what's 67,825?

And playing around with that idea I felt a lot closer to an understanding of... of our total lack of understanding (which is the MAIN THING) just as I had at that party full of architects last Saturday night where in a garden over some cake the Uncertainty Principle was finally explained to me NOT as the simultaneous existence of two separate states (at which point I would normally thank whoever was at the quantum desk and head off to look for a night bus) but simply as an illustration of the flaws in our definition of that state (Should I go into this?... ie: we're saying that something can exist simultaneously as both a wave and a particle NOT because we've discovered that reality is on the fritz, but because we've learnt that the multiple choice options we give reality - "wave and particle" - just aren't that useful at a quantum level. We're taking a poll and forcing the facts to choose from A, B or C when really what they would rather be doing is filling in the box at the bottom of the page and going onto a sheet of A4... See also: eleven bloody dimensions.)

So even if you say there is a God who made us he's not the answer, just the next level up... like the family tree at the back of my book of Greek Myths where the father of the gods is the son of Time, and Time is the son of, I think, Uranus, oddly.
And maybe in the end, as with everything else, the chain of command is a loop. I mean we know that if you're given a powerful enough telescope you can see the back of your own head. Hypothetically.

And maybe it's a really small loop.
I mean at CERN they've already got a machine that can recreate the big bang! A bit.

And at Essex Road they've already developed a machine that ignores you, and they've stuck it in a lift.