Ben Stone studied art with Saburo Muraoka and Marina Abramovic. He has published in Southerly literary journal as Leon Ward, and is the author of the novels Sex and Death in Sigatoka, Natives, Monsters are Real, and the short fiction collection, The Rise of X. Ben is currently doing a Masters by research with the novelist Rohan Wilson. www.benstone.xyz
X
“He..who owns the youth, gains the future.” – A. H.
Dear Representative,
I’m writing to inform you of a development within the increasingly overlapping media and so called “gaming” realms of which you should be aware. I do this expecting that you in your capacity as Alternative National Leader will be just as horrified about our dire mutual predicament upon revision of these facts as myself, and that realising something must be done, you’ll take action directly.
But beyond your obvious directional virility, I’m also writing to your eminent self because it was firstly you, sir, who only yesterday I saw my child J––– shoot right there on TV.
That’s right. You read me correctly.
J––– shot you, sir, as with a real bullet from a real gun, right there on the nationally televised news cycle as if for all to see.
As it turned out, the footage I witnessed that first time hadn’t been live (though I’m led to believe the “games” from KOD®™ work just as well with live broadcasts), but was in fact a replay of you addressing the media about how the commie-inspired government besetting us with anti-working-family incompetence is without question the worst in this nation’s history. Even worse than last time, you were saying, because our renewed Triple-A credit-rating and relatively low debt’s not fooling anyone. But regardless of the veracity of your prosecution, just imagine my horror, sir, when J–––, wireless gun controller in hand, suddenly blew your head apart like an overripe watermelon.
Just picture it, sir.
Well, needless to say that having just popped my head into J–––‘s room for a random “hi” after getting no response knocking, the uncanny “reality” of seeing you assassinated in broad daylight was nearly more than I could bear. Like a near-physical stab to my blue tie heart, a swirling disconnect I imagine would inflict any right-minded person bore down, and it took at least an eternity of dying inside – in fact until J––– killed you again several seconds later – to realise that maybe you hadn’t in fact just been executed like right there on TV for the world to see. I mean, of course you hadn’t since I’d already seen that exact same press release several times on the news cycle, but I suppose I was thinking, well, maybe you’d made yet another one saying the exact same thing, which wouldn’t be unusual since that’s what you guys do these days, right? Say the same thing again and again – staying on message or whatever you call it – drumming it in right or not until it becomes reality one way or the other?
Anyway, there you were saying, “Clearly this is ah the worst government in history ah-” when, “BAM!”…blood and brains splashed across the wall behind you. There were even splatters of blood on the screen – that’s how real this thing is – which was supposed to be on the lens of the camera videoing the massacre, and for all the world even though this might be me showing my age, it truly looked as you collapsed headless and generic screaming ensued that you’d actually, really been shot. Of course, that was until several seconds later when, to my boundless relief, you faded back in, brow creased and rouge shining prosecuting your God-given belief that this is in fact the worst government in history (despite the pesky rating and low debt things) like nothing had ever happened.
Only it did happen, sir, more or less, and then it happened again.
POW! and head-explosion, blood splattering the camera slash screen, generic women screaming as the body, yours, collapsed, and then reset – I estimate about 3 seconds later – ready to go again.
Now, as you’d be well aware, sir, children like my J––– in Year 8 can be difficult at the best of times. Surly, rude, obnoxious and cruel as empathy has not yet fully developed, and though I hate to say it, sir, ignorant as they seem to spend their waking hours glued to “reality” shows while sharing inanities on social media until obscene hours of the night, is more or less par for the course. What I believe however is not par, sir, is psychopathic glee blowing the heads off TV-based authority figures like yourself for no other reason than it’s “funny”. And while I realise there’s a danger my offspring, J––, might come across as a bad apple and not in fact representative of h– cohort, you’d be ill-advised to take this line, sir. Because as I understand it, this game, which I believe to be called X, or The Rise of X, or Dumdum Head or Democrazy – even Bitchinator as one online reference indicated (I personally suspect it has multiple names which is helping hide its disturbingly wide distribution) – it’s extremely popular and played by quote unquote “everyone”. Should this be correct, and which I strongly believe it to be, then clearly this demonstrates that not only is it not my alleged parental shortcomings or those of J––– that has led to characters like yourself, sir, being assassinated by hormonal minors right there on TV, but is in fact a serious, wider problem that our troubled society itself has contracted. Now, not only are we to continue suffering under the worst government in history since the last time they were in (despite the credit rating slash low debt thing), but we’ve suddenly become surrounded by millions of empathy-less would-be killers realistically to a fault blowing the heads off television actors like yourself thousands of times a day each.
Painted in this way, sir, surely I don’t need to remind you that this is exactly why guerrilla groups in the world’s forsaken corners who’ve crossed into evil – think the Lord’s own Joseph Kony, for example – recruit children J––’s age to carry out horrendous acts. Quite simply, they choose them because, in their immature state of effective retardation, they don’t think about it, or if they do, they think it’s funny.
Exactly like The Rise of X.
With this development in mind, sir, let me just say that it’s difficult not to think how it was kids that betrayed their parents to the enforcers in Jonestown leading to the massacre, and as much those you hear about in the Hitler Youth or the settlements and even that horrendous left-wing pinko dystopia Nineteen Eighty Four for Christ’s sake. In fact, I can tell you, sir, that since witnessing your head being repeatedly exploded in degrees of realism never quite the same twice that would, without a shred of doubt, seem to the uninitiated unquestionably to have happened, I didn’t feel safe to the degree I don’t think I slept even five minutes last night. With my wife away on business – Jakarta if that’s at all important – I must admit I even resorted to, quietly, locking my bedroom door for fear that J–– in a crazed stupor having executed the likes of yourself repeatedly to the early hours of the morning, might have got to thinking that somehow I was a TV authority figure with all my blue ties and try to “bitchinate” me.
Now, before you advise your secretary to write back telling me you appreciate my concern but that maybe I need to exert some authority and remove the offending game from my apparently psychotic child, let me remind you, sir, as a fellow parent yourself, it’s not always that simple. Of course, horrified as I was, I immediately entered into heated negotiations to remove the offending software, and failing that, the hardware itself, but was prevented from doing so when my child, J––, howling like I was assaulting h–, reminded me that I was being “actively monitored” by h– BigBud®™ app, which was by that point pulsing h– ever-present smartphone a menacing red that meant it was recording and preparing to connect live to the nearest police station chatbot server. As you would know having successfully pushed for the intervention, smartphone BigBud®™-styled apps deliberately do not differentiate between domestic debates and any number of charged situations that might occur with strangers or bullies – due of course to their purported aim of reducing through the potential notification of authorities more or less any substantial “negative energy” which could become “totally uncool”, according to BigBud®™ itself – and so while I think they’re a great idea generally, it does mean that parents needing to lay down the law like in this case are at a distinct disadvantage once their kids like J–– figure out that to override said law, they only have to become hysterical. Anyway, realising that I could soon be defending myself to a police chatbot against trumped-up charges (and these from my own flesh and blood who’s not only bled me dry financially over the years having to have the latest gadget this and gimmick that for fear of crucifixion by h– peers, but whom in many ways has also consumed what I realise now should have been the best years of my life that will never come again), I withdrew as gracefully as possible warning this in no way meant I was happy with what was going on and it certainly wasn’t the end of the matter.
At that point reeling as through the door I heard further shots, splatters and ensuing screams interrupting you as you droned on and on about the horrendous government we’re suffering despite the incongruity of the Triple-A thing, I realised I needed at least information, and so reopening the door demanded where J–– had got the offending game. Two quick-fire virtual murders of yourself later, I repeated my demand and was told in no uncertain terms G–––––– at the mall and to “get the hell out of” h– “domain”. And for your information, sir, that level-three word “domain”, which I’m seriously considering being impressed by once this awful episode is behind us, was not in fact me paraphrasing.
But nevertheless, rather than turning the house mains off or getting on the phone and ringing the police whom I’m sure we both know would’ve simply told me re the “game” that, since there was no actual law being broken in the playing of it as things stand, there’s nothing they could do, I not quite in a rage but not far from it got in my car and drove to the mall in question.
I knew the shop G–––––– J–– had referred to having dropped no small amount of credit card debt there over the years, so I walked right in there and waited for the clerk to finish selling a maximum seven-year-old something called FaceBoom®™. As you might also be aware, this game I later looked up involves befriending in a “mostly virtual environment” what may or not be AIs, characters essentially, or if networked as recommended, then potentially other human “players”, with the aim of tracking down and “unfriending” with “extreme prejudice” certain outsiders, real or AI, who have become “marked” as quote unquote “uncool”.
Whatever that means.
But more to the point, when I finally got to confront the hormone-ravaged visage of the G–––––– employee probably not long out of high school h–self with: Did your shop sell my child this game with which they’re now mock-murdering authoritative characters on TV with, and if so, have you considered this might not only be unethical but downright dangerous in a multitude of real-world ways?, the employee mumbled something to the effect of was I like serious, sir?, because of course they didn’t stock the game I was describing since my child, who they couldn’t take responsibility and or liability for, would’ve purchased it independently via a KeyKardo®™, or KK®™, (even K+KK®™ standing for Kids KeyKardo®™) they sell a lot of.
And right there, sir, is the insidiousness of these game makers and their accomplices like G–––––– they indirectly employ.
Because by circumventing our locally high standards via “access kards” (sic) to websites based in obviously lawless hell-holes somewhere out there, these evil parasites can rake in huge sums of hard cash while at the same time effectively poisoning good communities with the toxic lampooning of respectable men such as yourself to the point it can only end in tears.
And here read, sir, not just any good community, but our community, sir.
But alas, teenagers like J–– don’t care about ‘abstract’ things like our community. What they care about is how many Likes they’ve got and which midget-throwing video is funnier, which is completely normal for h– age, but as I keep telling h–, they have to live in a community whether they like it or not so they should damn well start caring.
So anyway, on the verge as I was of accusing the spotty gaming employee of just this – and that’s the moral poisoning my child and thus our community – it was suggested by h– that like why don’t I like purchase a KK®™ and like see for myself if I want more info, since, like, they had solid legal advice they were within their retailing rights to sell the cards supplying access to what may or may not be The Rise of X, or Dumdum, or Bitchinator, or whatever the pestilence-ridden game is called. I of course in turn did this, and returning home and accessing the KOD®™ website (which, get this, stands for Kill On Demand, or Kraze on Demand – nothing seems to have a single signifier) via the KK®™ (and which in fact I discovered grants access to many other such KOD®™-like sites), can you imagine my horror, sir, when not only did I discover the highly purchase-ranked TRoX (its acronym but also yet another name) complete with horrendous TV screen shots of various politicians and or celebrities like yourself being “virtually executed” in all manner of grisly detail by upgradeable (read: purchasable) weapons, but also other so-called “games” such as Guilty as Charged (GaC), Taking Out [zee] Trash (ToT), Zombie Sic (Zic) [sic], and BanzaI!, all with similar smart screen interactivity utilising extreme violence?
Literally, sir, it was beyond my worst nightmares.
Take BanzaI! for example. Via its promotional videos, this conceptual abortion seems to utilise similar animated-loop-technology (ALT) on TV and movies, where the player, or gamer you’d be called playing it, to a pre-recorded shriek of “BanzaI!” (hence the title) beheads the unfortunate personality you slash at on screen. You do this apparently with a programmable controller, or even an app-enabled smart phone, and a parametered gesture.
Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up.
Another monstrosity I mentioned, Zombie Sic (I assume to be as in “sic ’em”, but which could also be “sick” as in infected or even “fully sick!”), involves “tagging” an on-screen personality with glowing green “Brain Juice” (BJ), which causes lurking zombies – animations I suppose although they looked just as real as the news anchor victim on the screen-capture – to tear the unfortunate authority figure to screaming, bloody shreds. This would occur over about seven hair-raising seconds where I suppose laughter would ensue, until, like nothing had ever happened, the original action of whatever the program is resumes.
Still another, the disturbingly named ToT (Taking out [the] Trash) features crushing dumpsters falling on targeted victims, while Guilty as Charged (GaC) sees animated loops of targeted personalities (such as your onward Christian self) falling through trap doors down into burning, screaming “Hell”.
And sir, there were dozens if not hundreds more.
Needless to say, I didn’t purchase any of these abominations. No sir-ree. And the fact that the more expensive of such didn’t even require a gaming console, but could be played with a Bluetooth screen, glasses or “jacked ad pan[el]” paired or “forced” to a new generation smart phone – the former and last of which I by the way possess – only inflamed my concern that something seriously needs to be done before it’s too late.
Now, obviously as far as The Rise of X and its offshoots are concerned, it’s going to be hard if not downright impossible to get the cat back into the bag as it were, but perhaps, with some “the adults are now in charge” resolve, not to mention your self-noted “methodical, purposeful” direct action way of “getting the job done”, we just might prevent its doubtlessly more shameless and somehow even bloodier successors eventuating.
And yet, sir, how, I imagine you wondering, can we possibly stop the next wave of digital excreta overrunning and defiling our screen celebrities via pubescent psychosis? Well, as you should duly note, I have a few ideas.
Because upon deepening my research into these matters, imagine my intrigue all the way to mortification, sir, when I discovered that so-called “games” like TRoX and the other VIs (Virtual Interactives) in fact appear to owe their origins to a single so-called “artist’s” “exhibition” some years prior. A gallery in Houston, Texas, my inquiries have unearthed, originally hosted a so-called “installation” entitled “Vote” (hence the Democrazy alias for TRoX I’m supposing), which involved, as I understand it, several “hacked” or “jacked” and networked P–––––– consoles, a super-large flat-screen TV bought from a porn theatre, an authentic Persian rug from quote “a house deliberately or not bombed in the 3rd Iraq War”, and a gilded 17th century Dutch sofa with royal provenance. Apparently the graphics weren’t nearly as good as the offshoot VIs like X now, but the concept, I’m convinced, is inescapably the same. Technically speaking, it would appear this degenerate calling himself an “artist”, a one Paul Ngmai, Australian, paid some computer whiz to find a way for the jacked and networked P–––––– consoles to “animorph predetermined loops via sampling software” into segments of “momentarily revised” television they were recording in real-time. In essence then, when your head exploded in a mess of blood and brains while you were droning on and on about the government’s wilful economic vandalism despite the inconveniently low debt and renewed Triple-A thing, what really happened was that a recording of you in the last seconds before the controller-trigger was pulled became gruesomely animated by the game software overriding the continuing broadcast. In short: a cleverly digitised rendition of yourself beheaded utilising the very broadcast itself.
Clever, you’ll agree, but as you’ll agree even more, sir, quite rude.
And I’ll tell you this: Despite the tedious arguments about how “clever art” doesn’t need to justify itself, well, a vital question is nevertheless left hanging like a musky fart in the afternoon breeze.
Quite simply, sir: Why?
Why encourage the hormonally unstable to disrespect adult and methodical authority figures like yourself and other actors on TV to the extent of virtually blowing your heads off? How in fact and more to the point can charlatans like this Paul Ngmai fellow be allowed to get away with encouraging the virtual extermination of the celebrity class on a scale not seen since the various French Revolutions simply by calling it “art”? And even if it’s true he’s descended from an Aboriginal Australian and Vietnamese war-bride (apparently he took his mother’s name when his father abandoned him as a boy), this self-proclaimed “contemporary artist”, this grandee impersonator and would-be intellectual ultimately responsible for the unleashing of horrifically violent tendencies in youth like my J–– must be made to realise (perhaps through retrospective legislation and subsequent jail-time should you indeed re-snatch the top job?) that no-one, and especially not so-called “artists”, can be allowed to dodge ultimate responsibility for their creations.
And sir, don’t just take my word for it. Have a good look at some of his “art” for yourself. I think then you’ll agree that not only the market-place credibility of this delinquent but also his legal status as a free man should be carefully examined in the added light of his Real Big Brother series, where he apparently paid master criminals (yes, that’s what I’ve in fact read, sir!) to break into houses in various countries and install secret surveillance equipment. Sure reviewers for Art in America, Parkett and Artforum International slavishly responded with fluff-pieces gushing terms like “amazing”, “visionary”, “Attenborough-esque”, and even “the unadulterated, unconscious human animal as both artefact and ready-made”, and despite that his victims were apparently later not only paid handsomely for their simply “raw beingness”, but that amazingly none of them sued, which, you sir being in a party of lawyers would be as astounded by and or suspicious of as myself, it’s nevertheless hardly art and should never have been allowed.
A Manet nude sitting suggestively with clothed gentlemen on a river bank, sir, is art.
A Margaret Olley Impressionistic flower arrangement though a century late, you’ll also agree, is art.
What is not art, sir, but worthy of intense scrutiny and televised frowning by yourself is this Ngmai man’s horrendous Subverse prints. As you’ll be just as gobsmacked to find, these over-sized would-be political ad posters in antique frames unashamedly denigrate, if not actually defame, note-worthy individuals like yourself with outrageous montaged slogans that defy common decency and or accord. Your poster, for example, sir, sports yourself devilishly grinning in a drought-ridden paddock complete with dead animals and the unfortunately rehashed slogan CLIMATE CHANGE IS CRAP!, while another in the series of re-running American Presidential candidate Sarah Palin reads amazingly: FUCK THE WORLD BECAUSE WE CAN!
I mean really, sir. This is art?
And these are only two examples among many. If you ask me, abominations such as these mock political posters were practically the static prototypes for the virtual assassinations that Mr. Ngmai later perpetrated in his Vote show, in Houston, and now my child’s TV, yet was he stopped?
Was he stopped before J–– could trigger a virtual trapdoor purportedly for all those so-called refugees you methodically and purposively had returned to the murderous countries they fled so you’d burn in Hell?
No, sir, he was not.
Rather, he was lauded and paid outrageous sums of money (apparently those Subverse works as single editions are now worth several hundred thousand dollars each!), which only urged him to commit further crimes against humanity such as his recent and inanely titled Dog Day Parliament show. In this cruel and unusual Frankenstinian “artwork”, dogs from a local pound had their sides shaved and spray-painted with non-toxic fluorescent numbers before being set loose in a scaffolded pit arranged like a parliament. You know: two main halves in a horse-shoe; front and back benches; a table with “constitutional” documents separating them (in this case they were biology books apparently); a speaker’s chair and overlooking gallery. But despite apparently sworn testimonies from the few to actually view it directly (it was an internet only show) that the dogs’ welfare was provided for with vets on-site as well as plenty of food and water, I’ve in fact read online that the “artworks” attacked each other as they formed “gangs”, or factions as you’d know them, and that there was faeces and urine marking territories and standing orders everywhere. To literally top it all, an overhanging score board circulated the dogs’ numbers next to rising prices and decreasing time mocking, I suppose, lobbyists. Essentially, sir, if someone didn’t buy a particular dog (read politician) before its time reached zero, it would be returned to the animal shelter (read electorate) to be “put down” as per originally intended (and no gold-plated pension to boot!). And sure, even though all the dogs it seems were eventually sold from anywhere between ten to (outlandishly!) one hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars, and the money (though I don’t buy it) was donated back to the participating shelter, are we really prepared as civilised men to stand back and allow this kind of scam in the guise of art to be perpetrated by the likes of this pestilent buffoon? I mean, explain to me if you would, sir, the benefit to society of his chocolate replica M16 rifle and grenades that, arranged in their respective glass and steel cold-cases on some national gallery wall, resemble male genitalia? What are young people, sir, to make of quote unquote “Little People in horse-suits riding gimp-masked naked models while whipping and kicking them with spurs as they race a gallery-installed obstacle course”? I think it hardly matters that the naked whipees were consenting S&M advocates or that obviously cowed critics believed it made for “uncomfortable contemplation of the Sport of Kings and inheritance of the signified”, when the real question goes begging: but is it really art?
In taxpayer-subsidised galleries and institutions no less?
Because, sir, if the answer to this vital question is a sad and lamentable “yes”, then I believe we’re in fact confronted with a problem every bit as dangerous as mass illiteracy caused by “Like” dependency on social media. Even sir, drug-resistant bacteria plunging us one headshot at a time back to the Dark Ages looks, by comparison, sorely tame.
Certainly it’s a problem that companies like KOD®™ (which since I began this letter understand now might actually stand for “Kill Or Die” instead of “Kill On Demand” – I don’t know which is worse) are profiting from evil “games” like the so-called Rise of X our misguided children believe are “knocked-up” and or “fun” and consequently spend parents’ money like mine on, but as you’re seeing by now, what I suggest is even worse, sir, and quite possibly the root of all evil behind these invasive products, is the shameless scourge of contemporary art itself. Because allowing drooling psychopaths like this Paul Ngmai fellow free reign with our imaginations, chequebooks, and now children’s’ minds, we have in essence suddenly woken up one morning to find our God-fearing community poisoned by upstream knock-offs and socially degenerating ideas. To this end, how, I now find myself asking, sir, can we justify providing cultural vandals like this Paul Ngmai with government-subsidised training at so-called “art schools”, when in effect what we’re really doing is preparing them with the means to undermine society via deviant-prone children’s minds? I mean, can you seriously assure me, sir, that even with your methodical and purposeful focus by the adults on stopping potential terrorism via data retention as much as the detestable cue-jumping by so-called asylum seekers with their greedy little eyes on our unemployment benefits and overpriced housing, can you actually assure me we haven’t in fact turned our backs to the even larger menace of art schools and the deviants they produce?
But to be fair, sir, it’s not like I’m generally anti-art or anything. Far from it! I myself in fact even dabbled in applications to attend one of these so-called art schools another life-time ago. I still even fancy myself a crack draughtsman you mightn’t be surprised to learn, and my colour mixing, well, when I get the opportunity to muse, sir, the results are invariably transcendental, let me tell you. And yet the fact is, sir, I count my blessings every day that perhaps through only sheer luck alone, I was not accepted. Doubtlessly such unceremonious rejection hurts at the time – I’m not shying away from such an admission – but honestly, I can see now that art school was not so much a dream misplaced as a nightmare misfired. Because to have been sucked in at such a vulnerable age to one of those festering disease pits of ineffectual hipsterism and my mind filled to overflowing with rabid deviancy and dreamy left-leaning (read commie) irrelevancies now seems like a machine-gun burst of bullets (unlike your unfortunate virtual-self, sir) I dodged by the skin of my blue tie teeth. I mean, if ever there was proof needed for ridding society of these well-springs of vegetable eating, tree-hugging deviants – even fraudsters like Ngmai, I’d suggest – then my near miss in the context of The Rise of X is it.
Because in all honesty, sir, if art schools continue to be allowed to spew out authority-disrespecting degenerates left, left and further left of centre, then what the hell’s next?
X-styled nuclear bombs triggered over cities on the weather channel?
How about participating porn stars doing unconscionable virtual acts to targeted game-show hosts in prime-time?
What if charlatans like the odious Paul Ngmai, who instead of rotting in jail for their crimes against humanity, decide it would be “cool”, “you know”, “to like”, “create”, “man”, functionally aesthetic designer pathogens that then wipe out half the world’s population?
Even: What if misguided miscreants like my dear little J–– thinking they’re artists too in fact begin making “performance art” with 3D printed guns, not for use on the TV screen mind you, but in flesh and blood press “galleries”?
Because it’s this apocalyptic scenario, sir, which I strenuously believe must be methodically and purposefully considered by your eminent and adult self. Seriously, the time to act is now.
In conclusion then, let me just add that as the leader of the newly formed Fearful Adults Demanding Safety (FADS), I, sir, will be instructing my inflating members to vote for yourself and affiliates in the upcoming election, not only to help dislodge, as you put it, the worst government in all history (despite the annoyingly renewed current Triple-A yada yada yada), but with a mind to your expected support put an end to the tyranny of contemporary art in our society.
Because by our one and only possible God, sir, we cannot afford the likes of my J–– to believe, even for a second, that they might somehow be “artists” waiting to break out. I mean, seriously, heaven above help us should that sick, sick delusion ever take hold.
Yours truly (and hoping you get another shot at even more adult, methodical and purposeful direct-action government),
(name withheld)
President, FADS