From @WSJFreeEx via @WSJOpinion: The most venerable kinds of faith are more wondrously imaginative, less brittle upon contact with new knowledge, than Steven Spielberg seems to suppose, writes @SpencerKlavan https://t.co/Ma4A6SUFIy
Backrooms has me thinking again about storytelling via suggestion, which I think is really key to the conversation I had with @andrewklavan about video games. Megaman X, one of my favorite games ever, is probably the key example. There’s a kind of iceberg effect where a few light touches invite the player to sketch out a whole universe “offstage,” which is key to the immersion effect achieved by games and online trends like Backrooms. Different, certainly, from the explicit structure of the classical novel, say—but still, as I argued in this episode, an intriguing and at least potentially exquisite mode of storytelling. Full episode below.
FYI, if you're an @audible_com member, the audiobook of my conversion memoir, "The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ," is on sale this month for $7.99. https://t.co/nzXBsIYI3f
What’s so fitting about the triumph of Backrooms over Mandalorian is that Kane Parsons and Will Soodnik have turned this online legend into a parable about the ugliness of remake culture. It’s funny that the Backrooms trend predates the AI boom, because in many ways it embodies some of the uncanny horror that AI slop can stir in us. But in other ways Backrooms is about deeper trends of which slop is just one symptom. Others include therapy culture, the remake glut, and our obsession with nostalgia. Now a new generation of content creators, who never lived through the periods we all yearn for, are exposing our nostalgia as the Baudrillardian grotesquery it is. So I argue for @TheFP today:
In case you somehow haven't noticed, there is currently a large shortage of real, masculine men in the world. Pawel is trying his best to combat that by spending time with the manliest men he can find.
Check out the trailer for @beamanwithme's most recent episode of #BeAManWithMe.
It's been a while since I've done an All-Access, but I am doing one today with @SpencerKlavan. AA @realDailyWire members tune in at 5PM Eastern and ask us anything. We will answer anything.
Don't miss the latest installment of Klavans on the Cutlure with me and @SpencerKlavan in which we discuss the question of whether video games can tell good stories, with reference to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game we both loved. https://t.co/1MnlkAqsRe
On what other show can you listen to me explain to @andrewklavan how Aristotle would feel about Dungeons & Dragons? On NO other show besides Klavans on the Culture:
https://t.co/NYPisrqMT7