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I'm deeply intrigued by the Year Zero alternate reality game, implemented by the same people who brought us I Love Bees, and as you might expect, this time it's refined, focused, and deeply disturbing. It's right up my alley, as it turns out, being a lifelong fan of apocalyptic/dystopic future storytelling, except I think we've hit a point where the number of thresholds we have to cross to go from present-day-life to horrific-dystopia is in single digits. But Year Zero's conceit -- that a planetary "subversive" movement uncovers a quantum-computing solution to send information back in time -- feeds into the form and function of its content (websites like IAmTryingtoBelieve.com, the chilling HollywoodInMemoriam.org, and my favorite, ThePriceofTreason.net, with their presentation similarly distorted by the time-travel), and despite recently-voiced warnings of the perils of worldbuilding, I'm waiting for the storyline to unfold further. Thematically it's a perfect synthesis of the fears of the future with the anxieties of today -- it's like a shelf of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Robert Heinlein crashed into a TV set showing FOX News -- with just a hint of potential redemption.
Of course, this has little to do with the actual Year Zero album, but I think it clearly transcends what we'd reflexively call "viral marketing" -- this isn't sticking Lite-Brites up in Boston; the ARG has become a narrative form in and of itself. What strikes me most about all of this, though, is that for all of the issues, for its potential relevance, for all of the ideas presented in Year Zero, it will never provoke as much discussion or dialogue as those Lite-Brites in Boston promoting a movie about a lump of meat, a carton of French fries and a hedonistic milkshake. Maybe we do deserve to be overrun by tin-hat tyrants and drugged into docility. And maybe we already have. I'm not giving up on the whole human race yet; I'm just starting one person at a time.
Of course, this has little to do with the actual Year Zero album, but I think it clearly transcends what we'd reflexively call "viral marketing" -- this isn't sticking Lite-Brites up in Boston; the ARG has become a narrative form in and of itself. What strikes me most about all of this, though, is that for all of the issues, for its potential relevance, for all of the ideas presented in Year Zero, it will never provoke as much discussion or dialogue as those Lite-Brites in Boston promoting a movie about a lump of meat, a carton of French fries and a hedonistic milkshake. Maybe we do deserve to be overrun by tin-hat tyrants and drugged into docility. And maybe we already have. I'm not giving up on the whole human race yet; I'm just starting one person at a time.