(noun) : Trolling with affluent presence.
(See: “rich” in economic contexts, “affluent” in the sense of abundance, and “presence” as defined within “Rich Presence” as implemented in Discord.
For further clarification-1)
Sitting on a cornflake
Waiting for the van to come
Corporation T-shirt
stupid bloody Tuesday
man ...
You let your face grow long
Reminiscing on Walrus, John Lennon recounted being chuffed by some student fan mail out of Quarry Bank: a literature class at the school had taken up the folly of trying to analyze, interpret --- divine meaning --- out of Beatles lyrics.
Lennon of course was privy to his process but these students were not:
"I’ve had tongue in cheek all along – all of them had tongue in cheek. Just because other people see depths of whatever in it…
What does it really mean, ‘I am the eggman’? It could have been ‘the pudding basin,’ for all I care. It’s not that serious.”
Just a gag, really.
Some time ago a person took to commenting on the music I listen to which shows up in rich presence on discord. I have rather ...eclectic? music tastes, and a penchant for darkness in music (I was 'trained classically' on the late romantics, after all, and consider myself a Mahlerian above all else).
Whether they simply enjoyed stirring up drama or were frankly concerned, sometimes taste is just taste and listening has no subtext; trying to extrapolate a person's state of mind based on their listening habits is inane and teeters on delusional, if you ask me.
Natülich, I found myself equal parts amused and perturbed; I decided the logical thing to do was quietly escalate.
So I started repurposing some machines I have into what I'm calling NotVox NodBoxes. NotVox Itself is a 'distributed system' deisgned for remote-controlled Spotify playback discreetly and with ludicrous parameters, i.e., with the express purpose of trolling.
Each NodBox is just a fedora server 41 instance which,
runs a daemonizedspotifydservice viasystemd- auth troubles changed that plan
Once an acquaintance
A person Matt knew
Took up a strange habit—
watching sounds pass through.Digital specter,
Quiet observer,
Tracking notechoes
but chords, giving fervor?Each note a confession,
Each album a clue—
A detective of playlists
Interpreting mood?"You must be unwell,"
They whispered with dread,
"I saw Nick Cave playing—
I know what that meant."But this jukebox of life
Is never so plain,
Some days it's just Cohen,
Some days Sugar Ray.So let them decode,
Let them divine—
The secrets of shuffle
Are no friend of mine.
-mfw
Footnotes
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Cross-reference “trolling” with considerations of digital performance art. Interpretive approaches vary. Some argue that trolling constitutes reactive dramaturgy, while others frame it as an emergent behavior within networked social systems. No consensus exists. May as well scroll back up now if you clicked the footnote ;) ... or should you? would matt ever suggest using the mouse? what's that arrow ?-> ↩
