Thursday 25 August 2022

Whatever happened to FUN?

 

"Whatever happened to fun" by Midjourney AI

“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” Oscar Wilde 1845 - 1900

The world woke up to the news that Sanna Marin, Finland's young, smart movie-star-ish prime minister, who gave the country a young, glamorous profile, went to a party, was caught on video dancing, and had to take a drug test to prove she had not snorted cocaine. JEEZ. After two years of Covid, an ongoing war in Ukraine, inflation, and a looming recession, the PM was trying to have some FUN.

Fun is good therapy. In 2002 when Eki and I were working on our first big doc project* my husband died. Not long after, depressed and disoriented, I went to the studio. I told Eki, I missed Klaus making fun of me. He said “guess that's my job now” and we got to work.  When the crew (Eki, Antti Hacklin, and I) were on location, the guys would play jokes on me. First I'd fall, then I'd laugh.

People in a funk are going to Fun therapists. Fun researchers are conducting studies. Finns have a rep for being 'silent and stoic'.  Hope to hell the PM kicking up her heels put a lid on that. So here's to you Sanna for showing us how, after gloom and doom, how to party-hearty. CHEERS!

*Ten Finnish Architects

Source: New York Times

Next week:  Old King Kong in Trumpsterland

Note: Eki is having so much fun with AI apps we've postponed posting the digi-pics. So far he has 159 versions and counting. 

Fun party by Midjourney AI
Note: Jeez indeed. This newest PM controversy was yet another nothingburger calamity. The press has ponied up many earlier - from Marin showing cleavage when photographed with Finnish jewelry, to leaving home one of her two official phones when at a bar and missing info that she should quarantine because of COVID exposure, to her eating government-paid breakfast at the PM residence (like all other PMs before her), to *gasp* wearing a leather jacket and going to a rock festival...

The common nominator is a schoolyard bully-like avalanche of scandalous press and übermoralistic scorning by the opposition. The social media and yellow tabloid press are understandable, but this time even YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation fell for the manufactured controversy. 

The drug use allegations came from the Ylilauta bulletin board, which could be said to be the local equivalent of 8chan. A complete sewer of conspiracies, profanities and likely some Russian trolls too. And the press ate it without any source criticism or sanity checks. For a few days, the news was filled with this, and also other conspiracies and inaccuracies and outright lies that could have been caught with even a cursory examination.

Perhaps Marin should have been more diligent. Perhaps. After all, despite the moralist outrage, she didn't actually do anything wrong, really.

But the pres fu*ked this up royally, and fail to assess it properly, or even admit it. Which is very worrisome. I want to defend the mainstream media in this time of alternate truths, but nowadays they make it quite hard.

CU
--
Eki

No comments:

Post a Comment