[arg_discuss] English Gargoyle ARG?

Morbus Iff morbus at disobey.com
Wed Oct 3 13:21:32 EDT 2007



> I don't have anything to do with this particular project, but I'm curious,

> what standard are you using to decide this is not an arg? How do you know?

> What is it lacking?

>

> Personally, I would say this is an ARG, even if it goes no further.


Even if it /goes no further/? Wow.

When I first heard the story, I thought "ooh, this'd be great as an
ARG". But I'm an incredibly cynical bastard. When I saw the secondary
story, I immediately pff'd and, while I'll still track it (in as much as
I still track any fortean story, such as the UFO Drones, the Gable film,
etc., etc.), I'm a skeptic first. I'm more than willing to accept the
second story's "yawn, lame artist publicity stunt" because I've seen it
a thousand times over (in 10 seconds of thinking, the Boston bomb
threats for that Cartoon Network show, the Sony PSP graffiti).

Is the mysterious Poe grave visitor a (now-solved) ARG?

It's not that I /know/ it's not an ARG. It's that I'm a skeptic first
and more than willing to accept that it's something lame (whereas "lame"
is roughly defined as "woohoo, this has piqued my interest!", "oh. it's
THAT? jesus christ."). If it went further (and it certainly could with
the "artist is a hermit" angle), then it could develop into an ARG,
sure. Am I going to hold my breath? Nope. If it does turn into an ARG,
I'll be pleased (and, man, when 27.com put the UFO drone stuff as their
background image, I was giddy! But that turned lame too).

I would /hate/ for "ARG" to devolve into a useless TLA such as CMS has
(content management system, now so loosely defined it can refer to blog
software, Microsoft Word, or Unix's "cat"). And, no, I have no list of
checkboxes on what /I/ consider an ARG. Is "chaotic fiction" any better?
Would you consider this chaotic fiction?

--
Morbus Iff ( sleep breeds sanity )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
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