Well, I’ve had some free time lately. And I’m not going to be at RIT much longer, so I have to take care of this internet connection while I still have it. Therefore I have started my great IMDB top 50 streak. If you go to IMDB there is a list of the top 250 movies, and it’s a fairly static list. So my current pastime is downloading movies in the top 50 of this list which I have not already seen, and watching them on my nice Samsung 172x monitor with mplayer. When I’m done I hope that nobody will every say to me again “you haven’t seen that?” because I will have seen it.

A few weeks ago I had a run where I watched every major mafia movie whether or not I had previously seen it. Conveniently this coincided a great deal with the IMDB list since the first two godfathers are ranked very highly. The first of which has held the number one spot for a very long time. So that is basically where this whole thing started.

This has got me thinking. That with the internet making it very easy to acquire popular full length feature films very easily and watch them in succession with little effort, that someone could potentially watch every significant movie ever made in a very short amount of time. I’m trying to think of what the far reaching consequences of such a thing are, if there are indeed any. But all it pretty much means is that we can watch a fuck ton of movies. I consider this a good thing, since I have cast off broadcast television, I can still sit back and relax to some commerical free video entertainment. And theoretically the best movies ever are better for my brain than whatever is on the “idiot box”. And it keeps me off slashdot for awhile. I just wanted to share this with people.

Now, click and unfilter all the replies so you can see the whole thread. Isn’t it interesting how many people obviously did not read my whole post. I was simply pointing out some of Moore’s cinimeatography techniques as well as some of his persuasive techniques. I was giving a demonstration of how the average person leaves the theatre believing more than the facts. I showed how Moore gets real shocking truths and then implies other non-truths. Yet the non critical thinker will walk away with those implications having just as much power in their mind as the facts.

The replies to this post were most frightening. One person told me how if I like Adam Smith I wont vote for Bush. No shit, I said in the post I’m not voting for Bush. They’d have to shoot me to keep me away from that absentee ballot. And they’ll have to arrest me or kill me to keep me away from Canada if he wins and I graudate RIT.

A few people pointed out how Bush and the media use the same technique. Yes, they do. But it isn’t in the setting of a movie and doesn’t have the same setup. The media will just make implications outright. Moore gets you in a truth state of mind. He tells you fact after fact and shows clip after clip of things that really happened. So when he slips in an implication it blends in with the truths into your brain. The news supposedly is the embodiment of truth. So they don’t need to use all the nice film methods they just do it outright.

One poster thinks that anyone who believes ‘Z’ has comprehension difficulties. Not at all. They simply fell victim to being weak willed, ingorant, impressionable and the strongest persuasive medium known to man, the documentary. While it is their fault it is not due to lack of comprehension. If you proposed the same things to this person in every day conversation they just might disagree with Z depending on the person.

One guy at the bottom was just sick and tired of people talking about truth. This guy obviously read two words from my post, and then he posted exactly what was on his mind all week. Of course he did inform me of some movies I will see so he gets bonus points.

One guy called me a conservative and accused me of using the same line of thinking as Rush Limbaugh. Lol!!!!

Lastly GOD_ALMIGHTY did chime in with some wise words. But he did seem to kind of veer off, his post should not have been a reply to mine, but stood upon is own. He was probably just trying to piggyback of my +5 :P

Ok, enough silly slashdot jokes, now for the real stuff. What are these posters thinking? What makes them type in the things they type. The answer for most of them is simple. They are passionate about this issue. Tons of people are, look how many posts are in the big thread! It’s definitely top 20 if not top 15 articles on slashdot ever in terms of total posting. And as passionate as they are they have something to say. And since not everyone is Michael Moore you can’t $30 million worth of people to get in their cars to come listen to you. So they go to slashdot like me. They wont make a post that isn’t in reply to something because they feel it will go unnoticed. So they start reading what others have to say. To some of them they go “hell yeah!” and keep going. Posting on slashdot is not something you do in excess like in a newsgroup or phpbb forum, so they wont actually make a post that says “this post is good” very often. If they do, it will be an AC post saying “mod parent up”. But those posts will usually already be +5 and the “mod parent up” post will be minussed into oblivion. So as soon as they see some collection of words that is vaugely contrary to their original idea they jam the reply button. They make a sentence to transition from the general idea of the parent post and then they lay their idea down for you.

I don’t know if it is a desire to change the minds of others. It might be just desire for someone to acknowledge their existence. Or maybe it is simply the need to validate their own ideas within themselves. If their ideas cannot effectively counter someone elses or be supported by other human beings then that’s a problem that does not sit right. Now, I am guilty of many of these, but I notice it. I am trying to watch myself, exactly what I do and why I do it. And by doing this my eventual goal is to escape these things. Especially existence acknowledging one. I need to keep doing this because somewhere inside of me I don’t truly recognize my own existence and need it to be constantly validated. But by simply paying attention to it, soon this will be unecessary. In the meantime I can keep doing the things I do, but I will try to do them better or more correctly. I read entire posts. I only post if I feel it will be +5. etc.

As you can see I got off on a tangent like the other guy. Did you ever notice that when your friends move away and the amount of human interaction you get suddenly decreases you start thinking on a much deeper level? Well, that’s what’s happening to me right now. I think its time to stop thinking and hit the hay. Don’t vote for Bush and don’t walk away from F9/11 thinking more than the truth.