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“Gloriously misdirected creativity”
Posted by Mike Sugarbaker at 5:04 pm on 8/22/2005
I came up with that phrase two weekends ago, up in Portland, while walking with Ouroboros and some other E2-emeritus heads I don’t see often enough. I was telling them about _whytheluckystiff, and his various projects intended to teach people the programming language Ruby. Said efforts include lots and lots of cartoons, wildly meandering text, and the occasional live performance with band and shadow puppets.
Why “gloriously misdirected”? At the time I just meant to convey the WTF-ness of it all, along with the possibility that the work’s intended effect on its audience was not being fulfilled to the degree the creator believed. Or that the size of said audience was smaller than it appeared - why that part is important to me at all is the subject of an ongoing internal debate, though. A debate attended by many people with angry placards.
I seem to be applying this phrase to everything in my cultural life lately - from gaming (although the glory there is often missing) to odd internet phenomena to… wait, that is everything in my cultural life right now. I have of course considered it as a slogan for Fictionsuit (which LAUNCHES ON AUGUST 31).
I mainly intend it as a compliment, but it does open up the aforementioned debate. It’s still percolating in my head and I’m going to let it, and in all likelihood post about it here again. I’m considering trying to blog here every day in the month of October (which may be an act of GMC itself), and if that happens I can just refer back here as a reference point whenever I type GMC.
To let you know that… you know… I’m not talking about trucks. Thanks for your cooperation.