Is Social Fiction a Modern Idea?

Technology and the Changing Shape of Art and Literature

Looking at recent stories we’ve covered on Snapchat, Instagram, and Skype got me thinking a lot about the past.

40 years ago, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed Rhizome: a philosophical concept they called an “image of thought.”

The rhizome is a part of the root of a plant, usually hidden below ground. When separated, each piece of it might give rise to a new plant. It grows laterally, but can also create new shoots that sprout upwards. It is a symbol of new, organic growth.

Deleuze and Guattari use the term “rhizome” to describe elements that influence and attract each other without a clear origin or genesis. Studying the rhizome means looking at the now — focusing on the moments in the middle, and in between — and so narrative history and culture are less important than studying connections as they are made, broken, and renewed in the moment.

This might be a confusing concept, but keep it in mind; I’ll come back to it later.

Breton’s New Media

90 years ago, in 1918 or 1925 (depending on who you ask), Andre Breton started a game called the “exquisite corpse” in an old house in Paris. Together with a group of surrealist friends, they took turns writing on a sheet of paper, folding it to conceal part of the writing, and passing it to the next player. The result was the creation of something new and unique through the work of many; sometimes it was fun and playful, and sometimes it was enriching and thought provoking.

Random? Absolutely. But we’ll come back to this idea, too.

Deus Ex Mask-ina

2,500 years ago, the Greek invented theatre. They saw great power in the spoken word, and it was their main method not just for communication, but for storytelling, too. At this time, the spoken word held power. It was ‘alive’. Written text, on the other hand, was thought dead once recorded.

This contrast between spoken and written word is difficult to comprehend now, but it had a major impact on how theatre was understood at the time; it was more than just a reproduction of reality. It was a kind of hyper-reality.

So much so that in theatre, the mask of a god — and the speech of that god — was not simply a representation, it was the god itself.

The very idea of a god on stage is preposterous to us now, but time has a funny way of turning the preposterous into the everyday.

The Power of Image

Think of it this way: in the past we weren’t surrounded by media as we are now. Access to images — paintings, drawings, etc — was limited. If you wanted to view a painting you had to go somewhere specific; a place with very specific rules and regulations. A place of importance.

To view a picture like this, then, was special, valuable, and perhaps surreal. The image of a saint holding a (flaming) sword was more than just an image. It was intimidating. It was real. This, too, was a kind of hyper-realism, and not much different from people terrified by a moving train arriving at La Ciotat when the film was first screened in 1896.

What’s Real?

But why does all of this matter? Why talk about rhizomes, and exquisite corpses, and theatre, and the evolution of images?

Because if we look at social fiction, we can see this phenomenon reiterating.

Many who watched the Sickhouse film on Snapchat thought they were watching something true, as it happened. Many who originally followed Excellences and Perfections thought they were following the life of a young model. In 2000 and 2001, people believed they were talking to a real time traveler when John Titor appeared, claiming to have come from 2036.

All these stories felt believable; many of us believed them.

There’s an element of transience to these stories that give them power. While ‘alive,’ readers (viewers?) are pulled in and involved. They are active in the narrative, and not simply passive.

This transience is intriguing. A story that exists in a certain place at a certain time is not unlike the gods appearing ‘in person’ once a year in Greek theatre, no?

The changing landscape of storytelling also allows us to play with linearity. A recomposition of fragments of information — videos, photos, text — is often enough to tell a story, create a mystery, or craft a particular message.

Intermezzo — The Spaces In Between

Snapchat and Instagram Stories show a trend towards telling stories in real-time; stories told while people get ready for parties, sit down for coffee, go to the toilet, train at the gym, or study for a mid-term exam.

It might sound silly to build interest in the spaces between things — in the rhizome — but this idea is interesting to me; it’s a new function of communication and storytelling for a new generation.

As a personal example, my parents are from a generation of sending letters. They don’t like Facebook messenger or text messages — they don’t like to reply, and when they do, they write letters. But even when I chat with my 17 year-old cousin, I feel a similar gap — in the emoji, the abbreviations, and the lack of punctuation — like time is different between us.

I wonder if these developments in communication and writing — short messages, chats, tweets, and short videos — will allow us to create emotions and reactions in short amounts of time, too? Will we start to feel things faster?

If we do, and if we go through life at a quicker pace — experiencing emotions faster — how short will the time be between these moments?

It’s worth considering how traditional literature will keep up.

Weaving New Stories

I think this is why I keep coming back to thinking about the rhizome. In media like Sickhouse and Excellences and Perfections, we see copycats, expansions, developments, and sequels.

Think of the birth of characters like Very Lonely Luke (Skywalker) and Emo Kylo Ren — it’s like playing Exquisite Corpse with Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the first player’s turn.

The tools we have for telling stories and weaving brand new narratives seems infinite; they allow us to start in the same place but move in entirely different directions.

Interactive media and social fiction create stories that in turn create more stories and deeper experiences; this interweaving of new-form literature might one day say something important about the direction of this generation — and about our perceptions of identity, reality, and truth.

Woven is supported by LongShorts, a social media-based storytelling app. Check it out here for iOS.