Written By: Zack Kopp
Be the Media
Canadian/American media personality Tom Green?s evolution from contrarian agitator to transformative model is a great descriptor of recent psychic and social change in the (post)modern West. Green currently hosts a show on web-O-vision (the internet) from his own living room in Los Angeles, which is completely free of corporate funding or censorship, episodes of which are available for viewing at Tom?s site and YouTube. Green pioneered the very first live internet talk show only a few years ago, and makes full use of the near-universal inter-connectivity currently available, enabling real-time conversation with viewers via Skype. His transformation from hijacker of public P.A.s to home broadcaster indicates a lifelong tendency toward performative art. A little known fact: it was Green who broke the news of the U.S. Navy Seals? execution of Osama Bin Laden. He got there first.
Tom Green has seemingly utterly transcended his formerly vengeful character, becoming a pioneer of the movement on the part of creative types beyond domination by a cluster of unseen programmers. Tom Green is de facto avatar of reclaiming broadcasting power via the internet. His show has featured such notables as comedians Norm MacDonald and Joe Rogan (whose additional status as a psychonaut is well-respected among those in the know), also little known celebrities like Bollywood?s Sameera Reddy, and old guard holdover Ed McMahon, who gets drunk and chats about the 21st century. I?ve always been a fan of humor?s propensity to alter the emotional balance of any situation, and when I first became aware of Green as a teen in the 1990s, via his MTV show, I didn?t like the angle of his jokes, most of which seemed rooted in malice. Green?s pranks evolved over the years, from apparently unprovoked attacks on his parents, to deliberate spoofs of the illusory construct of authority via commandeering the pagers at shopping malls, or asking passersby ?Where are you going?? until receiving a reaction which seemed worth broadcasting, whatever that may or may not connote about the current of self-conscious hostility running through some members of society as a result of who knows what (I?m just a witness).
During his interview with Rogan, Green mentions the idea of a trans-personal or crowd-sourced portal of internet access controlled by entrepreneurs. Rogan applauds Green for breaking with the fat cats, who he says are basically criminals and have ruined commercial entertainment by kowtowing to advertisers for decades. ?Well, we?re all in this thing together,? responds Green, making fleeting reference to Rhonda Byrne?s The Secret, which is easily misunderstood by the undiscerning as carte blanche for denial of the adversity and corruption seemingly entrenched in most or all major institutions by now. Exposing these things is good, Rogan corrects him, since it amounts to rooting out dysfunction. ?You?re right,? concedes Tom Green, and you can see the understanding in his eyes. We can all express ourselves freely via podcasts, webzines, Facebook groups, etc. The mass mind is conditioned to repetitive submission and resubmission of creative effort, literary, artistic, musical, or comical, and obedience to the official process of rejection. Creativity is the only inexhaustible resource, an unlimited gift born in everyone, but the efforts of advertisers and other illusory authoritarians have apparently succeeded in convincing many of us of its scarcity, or at best, its location on private property access to which is hard won.
Sources / Supporting Links / Works Cited: Joe Rogan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDIM2x2xRT8, Beyond money http://metacurrency.org/, Norm MacDonald http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHlDJ-lIebU, Psychonaut http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=psychonaut, Where are you going? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfm8-zAenek, Mall paging http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN4eQNppCos, The Tom Green channel http://tomgreen.com/
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