A few thoughts on the CBPL phenomenon

The reaction to "Crazy Blue Protesting Lady" has been intense since her city council video went viral. Since I've been reading her flyers for some time, I'd like to share a few of my thoughts about the recent attention brought to her, and how it relates to this blog:

I first learned of these flyers in the fall of 2010, when one of them was shoved under a locked door in my office in downtown Lincoln. It looked like it was a page out of a larger publication, but no author was listed. I searched online trying to find its origin to no avail.

Then I noticed a few more flyers taped to walls of downtown buildings. I began collecting them. They focused primarily on "subliminals" purported to be present in a variety of electronic devices, contrasted with holistic healing and health-related advice. I mentioned the flyers on a local message board, and it became apparent that more were showing up throughout the inner core of the city, most taped to lamp posts (which the author(s) claimed were tools for distributing evil "subliminals" designed to make people kill themselves).

In October of 2010, I found dozens more, posted along streets in mostly numerical order (they were numbered in the upper-right corner), and I archived those, too, as they seemed collectively to make an interesting book or "Art Brut" project.

While the flyers clearly hint at mental illness, they were of no less interest or value to me as a body of work. Many of my favorite authors struggle(d) with mental illness and depression, some ultimately taking their own lives: David Foster Wallace, Steven Jesse Bernstein, Tristan Egolf, and John Kennedy Toole, to name a few. While I agreed with little of their content, the flyers do have a lot of positive literary qualities that kept my interest in reading more of them, and it was fun to assemble them as they grew to make a larger work. Later themes grew to include more elaborate forms of alternative medicine, paranoia of many types directed at Chinese, Muslim, Russian, and generic "socialist" populations, mistrust of the medical system including medications, hospice care, and psychological evaluations, various concerns about government and politics, from local to international issues, ideas for improving school and college curricula, care and resources for the homeless and poor, a coming comet that was due to hit us in January of this year, and concerns about illegal drug use, all rich with helpfully fabricated statistics and phone numbers for buying a variety of esoteric products.

For a while, I suspected that these flyers might be part of a "legitimate" Tea Party splinter group going rogue. In several of the flyers which have yet to be posted on this site, the author self-identifies as a republican and a Tea Party adherent (using the colloquial "we"). And over time they become more critical of Obama, both in terms of actual policy matters and also rehashing the Birther conspiracy routines.

The following spring, I finally learned the identity of the author, and of her reputation on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, by finding a student-run Facebook page about her activities. The students were naturally interested in her as a quirky part of life on campus, as she regularly handed out flyers and delivered long speeches to anyone who would listen, frequently donning a long blue parka for which she was affectionately named. Like most towns, Lincoln has its own set of eccentric people who make regular appearances in the downtown area, sometimes doing strange things. For those who live here, she's become a fixture, known for her persistent outspokenness on campus and at city council meetings, full of paranoid warnings about mass death. The locals generally treat her with respect despite her brusqueness, and she is yielded time patiently at public meetings so that she can say her piece, as described in this Lincoln Journal Star article.

A YouTube video excerpting her May 7, 2012 testimony before the Lincoln City Council against an anti-discrimination ordinance went viral on May 11. In it, she's reading excerpts from her writings attempting to explain her concerns about homosexuality. As provocative as the video may be, it reflects only a small fragment of her curious philosophy. Further, most viewers may be unaware that she suffers from mental illness. Such is the nature of internet meme-making: local nuances become global sound bites. And while they can be entertaining, or used to reinforce or contradict our own beliefs, sound bites rarely lead to deep understanding. Stripped of context, they tend to drive us apart rather than bring us together. In this case, much of the discussion about the video has settled on the similarities between the ideas presented in the video with increasingly mainstream political rhetoric. As far as the video is concerned, I find myself agreeing with that perspective; it IS disturbing to find yourself in a society where legitimate political discourse can be difficult to distinguish from what turns out to be the side effects of unmedicated schizophrenia.

Perhaps this can be a learning moment for all of us, as I think the situation points toward its own resolution: sound bites as a category are low-quality information. They're effortless and entertaining to exchange, they can be provocative and used to sell ideologies with a minimum of effort (or to sell advertising on websites or in newscasts or newspapers), but they add very little informational value to important discussions we should be having as a society. We need to address the issues facing us more seriously than what can be facilitated through such cheap and easy forms of information. As mainstream media increasingly focuses on sound bites, I find myself and my friends turning within to work through political issues. At smaller levels of communication, the dialogue remains more sophisticated and more personal. Talk to your friends and family about the issues that matter to you, and work on solving them at the neighborhood level and the community level instead of hoping that the circus of sound bites will somehow come to its own senses.

This blog is primarily meant to function at the community level, too. Before the craziness of the last few days, I had only a small handful of regular readers, most of whom actually live here in Lincoln. I've collected around 300 of these flyers, but I hesitate to post more of them until the attention dies down, because there is too much potential for sensationalizing the whole thing, making it feel gross and exploitative instead of simply an eccentric set of interesting writings. Until then, maybe do some volunteer work, help a neighbor, take a class in something you always wanted to learn, tell someone you love them, make art.

Or if you'd prefer, state master garlic, wear garlic in pockets, sew undies to undershirt in front, throw out TV and dangerous items, log lock door or put rosaries on doorknob, meet at a library, speak impromptu to all at restaurants, group to solve problems, and consider using a megaphone on a cloudy day, as Crazy Blue Protesting Lady would advise.

--Scott