Bad Blurring of the Lines

On Twitter there is a sprawling community that is rancid, rank, and utterly decadent. This community prides itself on these virtues in mock-physical sense. They are zombie fans. Some of them purposefully obliterate the line between fiction and reality in their communications. They are in essence role-playing on Twitter as zombies. Their antics are as funny sometimes as they must inevitably be disturbing to non-fans of zombie movies and fiction. It is easy to image the horror and indignation of the horror uninitiated in response to the outlandish and gruesome posts. A fan of horror and of zombies can really get into most of what they do. They are awfully witty and comedic for the walking, ravenous dead. They have the most interesting and not for safe work outlook as well.

There is one trend that has developed recently that bears consideration. It also seems to be ill conceived and for once in bad taste regardless of the popularity of it, and the popularity of zombies and horror. Not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and there is no apparent backlash against it. The trend is to equate the H1N1 virus, otherwise known as human communicable swine flu, with a new and real zombie outbreak and ultimately a start to a zombie apocalypse. Now, it's not the disease factor that is the problem, nor the idea of a zombie apocalypse. There is a great Facebook group called The Hardest Part of a Zombie Apocalypse Will be Pretending I'm Not Excited which expresses the normal sentiment of zombie fans.

It is not even either of these ideas, but at the same time they do lend to the unease of this blurring of the line of reality. The first fear is that some people who are not aware of the fact that this is fictional masquerading as real will get the wrong idea and spread panic like wild-fire. The second is that such a pairing of a real disease, which has resulted in the real deaths of people, with a fictional milieu is insulting to those who have died. A virus that causes the dead to rise is nothing new. Neither is fiction revolving around death by contagion. Something about it just doesn't sit right though and the sooner the trend is over the better. This speaks to what is acceptable, where the line is between the shock and the horror desired, and just being distasteful.

Mood: smooth.

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Divergent Meanings

I would like to start with a little bit about what has happened during the hiatus I planned. I had every intention of starting the blogs back up in the middle of the month, after finding that the Battered Spleen Productions Knowledge Base coding work was taking longer than expected. Then when it came time to write the first article I was sick the entire week. So here we are now. Please accept my apologies.

Sometimes words are a losing battle. One word that gets a lot of bad press is stereotype. There are times that an idea is a stereotype not because it's an easy, and often incorrect assumption upon which to fall back, but because it is actually such a common occurrence. Other times it does suffer from bias and misinformation. Such biases and the flurry of reasoning and illogic, both at once in some cases, had been covered before the hiatus. Getting back to the losing battle, sometimes one of these stereotypes, when tied to a single word should maybe be considered a lost cause. When this happens there are essentially two options to consider. One is to use a different word altogether. The other is to accept, in the sense of ignore, the negative connotation.

Now, I in no way mean to malign anyone with this, or stir up trouble, or look down on anyone. Caveats and warnings like this usually are enough to cause confrontation, practically something of a tie in--in and of itself--to the themes being pursued in these Dark Corners. What I speak of is a word that has rather negative connotations to many and varied people, but at the same time strikes at, beyond the direct offensiveness of it, another group. The controversy over misappropriation of this word may even be to one degree or another misinformation itself. It may only be a piffling insult. It is hard to tell from the outside. Such is the nature of bias and ignorance. So, what is this contentious word that deserves such preamble? The word is witch.

To horror lovers everywhere witches are evil and vile people bent on vengeance, violence, depravity, and associating with all kinds of other evil. Witches though are also members of the Wiccan faith. Therein lies the problem. It might be inferred now that I would consider using the word witch in connection with the beliefs of Wicca's a lost cause. I am in no position to decide such a thing. The problem lies in using the wealth of horror mythology and material on evil or satanic witches. Some people take offence at putting the word evil in front of a group's name, like there is any group of any size that is 100% free of evil, no matter how much we wish to dismiss such people as not belonging to the group. However, doesn't that fly in the face all that has been discussed on twisting ideologies?

Mood:

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