invertigo hayfever

Max Headroom was a mid-80s television project by husband and wife filmmaker duo Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, who you might know as the directors of the first Super Mario Bros. movie. (Remember their names; there'll be a quiz later.)

Max Headroom's aesthetic went on to foundationally influence how we portray "glitchy" characters in film and games, but — stay with me here — the writing was indirect and overshadowed by the powerful aesthetic, and as such the underlying message they wanted to convey with this character would go clear over seemingly everyone's heads for decades... until 2020, when a YouTuber named Space Feather made this video essay — I mean it, stay with me — with a correct interpretation of this mysterious character that finally got everything about him completely right:

I'm able to say this about it because Annabel Jankel said so:

I'm not aware of any other video essay about the subtext of a piece of popular media being ignored or misinterpreted by the masses, whose original author has subsequently rolled up in the comments and given the essayist an unambiguous "thank god, someone who gets it." (If you are, let me know in the comments below, and be sure to like and follow.)

At the end of the essay, Space Feather laments that there's not a Max Headroom for current year. Where the original was very sharply satirizing the local maxima inevitable to television-centric culture (chiefly late night talk shows and what human attributes are considered acceptable for a TV star), maybe a modern day one would criticize the downstream results of the techniques corporations use to prey upon our minds on today's internet.

Well, three and a half years later, it seems Space Feather took matters into their own hands, creating the character Kernel Panic and applying this understanding of Headroom's intended subversiveness to comment on subjects from algorithmic radicalization, to how streamers feel a need to constantly fill the air, to insincere YouTube ad reads.

(flashing lights warning on the videos in this playlist)

This 1-bit piece was done on commission for good friend @Sotenga (who doesn't post here much but really should). His prompt was, "the front gates/opening from Castlevania" - the MacVenture-esque interface surrounding it was entirely my idea. Drawn entirely in FullPaint on a 1986 Macintosh Plus, with the "raw" version courtesy of Mini vMac.

And as far as finishing touches go, I felt like a MacVenture riff wouldn't be complete without some prose, and I am nothing if not a major Castlevania geek. Transcript of said prose is under the Read More.

I sadly cannot make it to this documentary premiere, but for folks in the general Tokyo area - my friend produced a documentary on queer folks in Japan.

The documentary most folks know about LGBTQIA+ people in Japan is Queer Japan which is good in its own right--it introduced a lot of the activists and pillars of the community that have been around for a long time in Ni-chome, the gay district of Tokyo. But queer folks aren't just in Ni-chome; and this documentary has a wider lens.

*To folks not in Japan -- if you're interested in spreading the word about this documentary they have an Instagram here to follow and share.

i know its bc of youtubes monetisation restrictions but i lose a non-negligeable amount of respect for people who censor words in their videos lol

The thing is that there's ways to evade demonetization that don't involve bleeping yourself or using cutesy TikTok euphemisms. There's a million fairly normal-sounding ways to say someone passed away, their life ended, their injury was fatal, etc... before you get to "unalive."

I hate to sound like my high school teacher saying "swearing means you aren't creative enough to say it another way!", because the monetization rules are fucking stupid. I know it's harder to filter for hate speech than for single words, but it's so goddamn insulting that Nazis get to quibble about "um but it's my sincerely held belief" and yet saying certain synonyms for "make love" or "go to the bathroom" is beyond the pale

but at the same time, from a position of being unable to change those rules... I do think saying "f*ck" means you aren't creative enough to say it another way, because c'mon, there's so many options available to you

I found this Google Sheets list of words that get you demonetized on YouTube, and it's not 100% reliable because the rules aren't public or consistent, and I realize "demonetized" isn't "banned," they're just advertisers not wanting their content to appear on a video about cancer or how to use a condom...

but even so it's still very strange that according to this list, some topics you could not monetize are:

• My Favorite Shows To Binge Watch
• How To Dye Your Hair Blonde
• Recipe for Hot Sauce
• Why Jews Celebrate Purim
• A History Of LGBT Scientists

like, again, these aren't forbidden, they're just "controversial," but how fucked up is it that if enough people hate you or have a fetish for you, it becomes controversial for you to mention yourself