The Unforgettable Fire (Burning Down the House)

Before continuing – I want to welcome a long lost mod back to the fold. He had to leave us for some time but now finds himself caught up in the warm, fuzzy embrace of a nascent TV network. Considering he hasn’t been here pretty much since the beginning, I can only imagine just how radically different everything is (don’t worry – he’ll catch up by reading this blog post!)

So, on with the show...

Unfortunately, high pressure text shows such as our own, where the desire to be eloquent meets the realities of quick typing, often leads to people seeming to come close to bursting a gasket. Such was the state of affairs a few days ago as we became inundated with all forms of inflammatory rhetoric. The users were first timers and gave us the impression they were working as a team.

And I’m all like – what? Convo-baiters and text trolls are now working in cahoots?

Has the world gone loco? The answer to the aforementioned – No, it’s the children who are wrong…

Ok, fine – call me on it why don’t you – that was Principal Skinner – a lot of our loyal viewers use Simpson’s quotes and images as their avatars, who am I to stop the runaway freight-train of pop culture? Anyways – it looks like we’ll be dealing with trolls for some time, and I guess we’ll just have to get used to it.

A big element of the job is to assist people in getting the full appreciation and utility of the network, which is partially a text/chat/open forum conversation generator, but also serves to create and develop highly personalized fantasies.  

Consider: the avatars, the nicknames, the personalities – even what’s being said may come in a form you’d never associate with the actual person doing the texting. And why not? People need to escape and not all of us will live the life of that Dos Equis Guy (stay thirsty my friend…) So TXT-TV can and does allow its users to develop virtual extensions of themselves for entertainment purposes. Hell, some people have been able to use TXT-TV to meet new people and develop friendships.

I suppose I’ll leave you with a reminder, that TXT-TV is entertainment, but rest assured, it’s always in our interest to ensure you have a thoroughly enjoyable experience. 

We learn quickly from our beloved texters – you keep us on our toes!

Trolls: They’re doing it for the Lulz (Part 3)

So, a few days back we mods discover what can only be described as Trolls-in-Concert. Multiple texts coming in from various different texters sporting different nicknames, spelling out lurid sex acts and proposing extremely offensive discussion topics. 

It was, in its own right, a breath of fresh air – usually the trolling happens sporadically, this was the first instance of collaborative trolling we had experienced.

It was further complicated by the fact that one of the users had a pre-approved nickname that ought to have raised alarms before it was approved. This can happen, especially when you’re sorting through hundreds of nicknames and profile pics that all require diligent consideration. What can I say – TXT-TV is getting more and more popular every day.

Now keep in mind, rules about vulgarity change around 11pm, and as any devotee of our late-night programming can attest, raunch certainly abounds on TXT-TV ‘after the lights go out’. Most of this is harmless and playful, fun without being creepy or offensive. It’s a necessary concession, similar in principle to the un-written rule about public-drinking (keep it in a brown paper bag and don’t act like a fool) – there needs to be a time when the strictures of the established rules are relaxed – it’s a give and take thing.

Moreover, its not like we’re a bunch of prudes either. 

We all dig on the raunch, the offensive, the limits of comedy and trying to figure out where the line lies. A tendency in broadcast media I’ve noticed is that the people behind the scenes and the people at the mic over-compensate for what they’re not allowed to say on air when they’re off the air. A cousin of mine is the morning DJ for a local radio station – he curses a blue streak, real sailor styles, whenever the mic is turned off. On air, he’s a real sweetheart – the kind of guy you’d think nothing of introducing to your conservative grandparents.

Regardless, we find ourselves delighted by the attempts of the numerous trolls if for no other reason than it has become functionally taboo for us – we love it even more when it has a hint of subtlety or cleverness to it. But alas, the work of the obvious troll is easy to spot and habitually will never make it to air. 

I want the trolls to know their work is widely appreciated by the mods, despite the fact it will never see the light of day. Try harder if you must, but be aware we’re paid to be hyper vigilant. It may seem paradoxical, but it isn’t inherently hypocritical, and at the end of the day that’s all that really matters.

Trolls: They’re doing it for the Lulz (Part 2)

So, with all that jazz about social taboos and offensive subject matter, I can tell you it's left the mods in a bit of peculiar and paradoxical situation. Consider it – we’re all twenty-somethings living in the big city. We’re from a wide-range of different cultural backgrounds and have, for the most part, grown up in open, inclusive, multi-cultural societies. In essence, we’re very aware of social sensitivities; they’ve been bred into our subconscious by years of public education and public service announcements aimed squarely at us. 

As young children, the endless messages were beamed right into our heads: play nice, accept others, differences are what make us individually unique, celebrate diversity etc.

I don’t mean to be flippant – clearly this is vital, nay crucial for a society such as our own. However, when I say it was beamed into our heads, please take this as literally as possible. Hell, go a step further: it was drilled into the very essence of our beings.

That being said, we were also raised, as I previously mentioned, by the titans of off-colour comedy. Being from the Internet Age as we are, the adolescent tendency towards rebellion often manifests itself in the youth taking an avid interest in the realm of taboo, and the performers who test the limits of what’s considered appropriate and what issues can be satirized for comedic, perhaps even oddly educational, effect. Comedians like Dennis Leary, Chris Rock, Mitch Hedberg, Bill Hicks, David Cross and Dave Chapelle are largely responsible for really pushing the limits of offensive comedy, but underlying the curses, scatology and perversions lay a wealth of social truths. Satire is mainstream nowadays, as any devotee of Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart or Conan O’Brien would tell you. Consider the content of programs such as Arrested Development or 30 Rock – both mainstream, prime-time programming, and ask yourself if you think you could say the same thing on a mainstream Canadian network at the same time. Ask yourself if any of these comedians or programs could have survived the social censors of the last generation – a mere thirty years ago.

At the end of the day, what you need to realize is that while a bankable comedian can test the limits of vulgarity for effect, the average TXT-TV viewer probably shouldn’t. 

After all, that’s why those comedians are called ‘bankable’. What they say has monetary consequences for their sponsors, the networks, the advertisers etc. As professional performers they have a very good idea of where the very thin line lies, and when they tap-dance all over it, they risk everything. There’s a school of thought, perpetuated by the devotees of the Andy Kauffman school of comedy, that suggest that Michael Richard’s racist nightclub rantings of a few years back may in fact have been an act, maybe even a staged act. 

All I know is that Kramer crossed a line – nay, leaped over a line – and his career will never recover.

How this relates to Trolls is as follows. Regular people feel that they too can push the boundaries of vulgarity and taboo, and the anonymity of the Internet Age only makes the would-be troll more comfortable in pursuing their mischievous aims. Trolling can take on almost any form, happen anywhere people gather to exchange views and opinions, and can range from mere name-calling and shit-disturbing to in-your-face ambush interviews (and, suffice it to say, everything in between).

Trolling was an issue all Mods had to deal with starting on day one of our training as we carefully dissected what would be considered appropriate submissions for nicknames, profile pics, content submissions for the individual programs etc. 

On the first day we aired we were confronted almost immediately with people who were trying to flood our system with pornographic images, vulgar nicknames and a steady flow of provocative, explicit and otherwise offensive messages.

After more than three months, it still happens, and as we’ve been gaining more viewers and more attention, it is unlikely to cease any time soon.

Trolls: They’re doing it for the Lulz (Part 1)

So we’ve encountered a problem with trolling. It is both infuriating and, at times, fiendishly amusing. 

What a catch-22 for a moderator!

Here’s the deal for the uninitiated: a Troll in common webspeak parlance is an individual who stirs shit with a single goal in mind. They’re their own personal amusement at your enraged, befuddled, jaw-dropped expense. These are the people in high school who would fart as loud as they could in the middle of a lecture just to wake the people up around them. The types who years earlier ate worms to gross out female classmates in the elementary schoolyard; a healthy breed of oddball sociopaths who gets “lulz” at your expense. "Lulz" incidentally is a bastardization of the term “lol”; it is as if lol was written by the cats from lolcats and conjugated in the style developed by the Cheeseburger Network 

(If you don’t know, Google it on your iPhone – welcome to the future…)

A troll can take on many forms. Initially it applied to people who would write asinine and provocative comments on Internet message boards, such as newspaper and broadcaster websites, though at present no one is safe from trolling, and indeed everyone who runs a website with a message board is all too aware of these sick, hilarious people. Often quite contrarian -almost to an absurd degree, the common troll is looking to get you enraged, though he may or may not believe in what he’s writing, saying, hell – maybe even singing. He’s out to get your goat, as it were.

Who is a troll? 

Glenn Beck is most likely a troll, and he has a syndicated radio show, not to mention a very popular infotainment program on Fox News Channel. In fact, he’s probably the most recognizable example of pure troll. Because he does it for the lulz.

Here at TXT-TV, the Mods have been encountering a problem with trolling. 

Individuals send in all kinds of obscene messages, which due to various provincial and federal regulations we are prohibited from airing before 11pm. Moreover, there’s a bevy of other terms, words and phrases that for obvious reasons, can never air on Canadian TV. This would include, among other things, hate-speech,  racism, libel and a wide range of cultural and social taboos. 

As moderators, it’s our job to filter through the messages sent in and, in effect, censor those that violate the myriad rules concerning what’s appropriate for national television. This is a complicated, subjective and context-dependent problem for us to solve, and getting a specific consensus on how to deal with a problem that is inherently personal is even more complicated. 

Thankfully, we have the benefit of working in teams, and this often leads to two or three-way discussions on meaning, intent and context. 

It’s fascinating in its own right, and you tend to learn a fair deal about how people deal with taboos when they consider offensive statements in an objective fashion. It’s not easy, and we’re reminded constantly that the individual message has cost someone money. 

Caution is the name of the game.

Continuation Continued?

The evaluations have been hanging over our heads like the Sword of Damocles (don’t be lazy – wiki-it!) for a few weeks now. We dread it for all the same reasons everyone dreads being evaluated – the fear of a personal attack or of a denigrating comment leaving an especially nasty mark, one which throws your worldview into chaos and makes you question the very essence of your being.

Or, y’know, get pissed off and go out drinking until you can’t remember what it was you were upset about in the first place. Makes the world go round y’know?

Regardless of how we deal with the criticism, I find it hard to believe any of us will be judged overly harshly. Everyone seems to be enjoying their job and their colleagues' company. The group is gelling well and everyone seems legitimately interested not only in keeping their jobs, but seeing where this network is going to go, what the future holds (ouch – just realized that’s in a TXT-TV promo; been hearing that line too often I guess).

It’s a legit feeling of interest; three months in and a bond's been formed; didn’t take very long either before it got solid – these are important considerations from the mod’s perspective: a decent job is one thing, but good company at the job, the kind that naturally leads to collaboration and idea development, that’s crucial for high morale. 

Morale seems to be the single most important currency for young people in a massive city during a recession – for what’s good pay worth if you’re miserable where you work? Maybe it’s a generational thing – my parents and their ilk, the boomers, can’t fathom why so many of us urban bohemian types judge jobs by whether they keep us happy in and of themselves, as opposed to the scales of pay and their bizarre Consumerist-Happiness associations. Oh well, I’m having a difficult enough time just wrapping my head around the world we live in; that issue will have to wait for another day.

The feelings of dread are palpable though; no one wants to be judged too harshly – and there’s a reason for that too. As the children of the boomers, we were told since day one – each and every one of us, how special and beautiful and righteous and great and amazing we all were (are). Not only re-enforced by our parents, but the education system, television and media in general, years worth of NFB shorts and YTV reminding us of how special we all are. 

Turns out we youngsters bought it hook line and sinker back then and I think we’re not the best at handling criticism as a result. Whatever, Bert and Ernie never judged us…

Seriously though, I think we’ll be okay and there’s not a whole helluva lot to worry about. Part of ‘the dread’ stems from the fact that we’re the first batch of moderators; we’re the first group to go through the training, and we all came into this thing together. An element of this ‘fear’ is partially explained by the fact that we’re, in essence, making this up as we go along, sorting through problems and quandaries as they come up, often in a communal fashion. We owe our success to each other, and we seem to be succeeding together... 

So what – me worry?