Forums → The Tavern → No offense, guys, but...

Asherlee wrote:

Strop will write you a novel if you let him.

Oh? You so asked for it:

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On Newgrounds: Casting Epic Win Before N00bs- and Agnry Faic

FOREWORD

Newgrounds...what to say about it? One could be forgiven for thinking me (the author of this text) strange for believing that I could at least purport to write a book on the subject. I mean, it's a website. One of those things that people with no lives waste...their lives on, because they have nothing better to do, or they can't land a date like normal people.

Note, though, that I said forgiven, because this view is patently misguided, and anybody caught holding this view in this modern society should be done a favor and have their head forcibly removed from their rectum. It is obvious that the internet has become integrated into our lives- I could easily draw a parallel between the denial that afflicts the masses, and the famous quote (or should I say, misquote):

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers

(Attributed to Thomas J. Watson, President of IBM, in 1943)

As is often the case, with perhaps the notable exception of Nobel's dynamite, the most momentous of discoveries and inventions go vastly underestimated, and so too is this the case with the internet. In the space of a generation, there has been an exponential explosion, a development afforded by the sheer networkability and technological progress that has the world connected.

Such a momentous acheivement is appreciated best by a narrow cross-section of people, those being the ones who were born near the time of the "Information Superhighway's" maiden appearances to the mainstream (if anybody here can remember when a 14.4kbps modem was hot stuff), and thus lived to witness and most likely experience the transition to its growth. The generations above, however, were left behind to the evolutionary equivalent of the Stone Ages, and the younger ones were borne into a world already endowed with that all-powerful, all-corrupting force now popularly termed 'teh internetz'. Simply put, one generation struggles to figure it out, the next can't live without it.

Exaggerated as this divide may be (as I am sure a few of you are taking exception!) it is undeniable that the impact of the internet has been momentous, sending rippling shockwaves through a global community that previously did not exist. Which is why one might be forgiven for denying its significance- but also known as a fool.

But there already exist several texts that provide a far more rigorous commentary on the internet itself- its development, its dynamics, and its potentials. However, this text will delve into but a single cross-section of that, the here and the now. Such is the internet now that already self-styled chroniclers of our (un)enlightened condition (such as myself, though this really should have gone without saying!) could expound volumes upon volumes (or at least up to the word limit) on any number of forums, self-styled free-markets of ideas. Such noble intentions bring forth such great results, evoke such pride in our human capabilities, but if one were to immerse themselves in such a wondorous utopia of knowledge, exactly what would one expect to get out of it?

This is as good a time as any to return to the eponymous protagonist of this narration: Newgrounds. I feel rather justified in anthropomorphising (or at least reifying) this thing known as Newgrounds, for it has become such a household name among such a large part of the online community that one could convincingly argue that it should be thought of not as the sum of its constituents but an evolved being, a collective consciousness, and spoken of as an entity in itself. This, from the humble basement-production-hobby-magazine beginnings of Tom Fulp and friends (the history of which is a fantastical story) more than a decade ago...indeed this is a huge acheivement, driven by a community dedicated to the culture, and thus the future of flash animation and games production and commentary.

Upon the backdrop of the internet (as well as that all-appropriating, near-hegemonistic American popular culture machine...though I do not intend to write so close to such a dangerously political line!), such a story is certainly not unique. The question is just how representative Newgrounds is of the online demographic, if there were such a thing. Perhaps it is my hasty aside that in fact contains the key to this: for this text will deal with popular culture, the biggest barometer of the masses, of sensibilities and trends, and the climate and the tides of the various generations that form our whole. It is popular culture that largely represents and dictates how we think, and how we express ourselves...and dare I say, how we enslave ourselves to the very cultural machines of our own creation (for no text would be complete without at least an entire section on the conformist imperative!)

What I shall argue, then, is that Newgrounds should be thought of as one of the representations of youth culture as we know it, as a subset of our (still chauvinistic) society (the rest being relegated to other facets such as "Social Networking: Livejournal & Facebook", and the like). In keeping with the true spirit of freedom, ideas are mere currency to the capitalist combine of competition and popularity. Sneak a peek at the NG BBS and you are shown a raw look at the collective consciousness of the adolescent mind, seeking its own identity, struggling to individuate itself in the face of hostility and brown-nosing. No matter your faction, be you hardcore gamer, goth, emo, sk8ter-boi, punk, furry, pothead, the rare female, or, (God forbid), your average middle-class white-suburban kid, the politics and its rhetoric, the thoughts (and lack thereof) are freely expressed in such eloquent phrases as:

FK OFF U F**GOT, ur *** and suck yo momma.

Attributed to...probably several thousand 12-15yr old noobs who want to boost their forum post count. Censorship added.

The aesthetics, the appreciation of quality (but more importantly, blood, guts, lead and boobs) but also, more importantly, the rampant fanboism exposed bare by a brief perusal of the Portal's Top 50...yes indeed, Newgrounds has it all.

Because one can approach a critical appreciation of Newgrounds' content in one of two ways: search through 1500 reviews for a handful of gems, or flick through the other 1495 to get the general idea of what proportion of people think something is 5'd! (an expression exclusive to Newgrounds) and what proportion think it's g**. What value there is in here is debatable, perhaps, to the academics, but what is no less remarkable is that even centuries ago, our condition can be summed up in the (some say ingenious) words of Shakespeare:

...This common body,
Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,
To rot itself with motion.

William Shakespeare- Anthony and Cleopatra Act I Scene iv. as spoken by Octavius Caesar

Remarkable indeed that such great monolithic epitomes of culture as a whole can be reduced to such vapid acts of non-proposition. It is little surprise then that anthropologists have recently had the insight to make this chilling prediction: that it is examples such as this, that serve as evidence that the advent of the internet...was the dooming of our cultural posterity.

I do not mean to single out Newgrounds, nor cast dirt upon the efforts of the administration, for one man alone cannot be held accountable for the empire...or, rather, as I said earlier, this collective consciousness that NG has evolved into being. Nonetheless, worthless as it may appear, perhaps it is my vain hope, that some real insight into the human condition as it stands, now, might be shed by taking a painstaking look at every facet, every pixel, every bastardisation of the alphanumeric sequence ever committed, to discover what is unique about where we stand now.

For at the very least, we stand in this one moment, and it, by definition, is like no other.

-strop


TABLE OF CONTENTS

...no, I'm kidding. It already took me an hour to write the above. If I really wanted to write a book on Newgrounds, I would rather write the foreword last...the above would be the brief.