[UA] UA Google game

[Matt Norwood]

DannyK proposed a new game on unknown-armies.com:

"We should have a UA contest: take one of the top-ten Google searches 
and turn it into a UA rumor, cabal, or artifact."

Sounds great! And to add a twist, I'll use Google's Zeitgeist feature 
(http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) for this divination, 
drawing in one or more ascending and one or more declining queries to 
draw a picture of the occult underground. I'll look at the zeitgeist for 
2002 (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2002.html):

Top 20 Gaining Queries
2002

        1. spiderman

        2. shakira

        3. winter olympics

        4. world cup

        5. avril lavigne

        6. star wars
        ...
        8. american idol
        ...

Top 20 Declining Queries
2002

     1. nostradamus

     2. napster

     3. world trade center

     4. anthrax

     5. osama bin laden

     6. taliban
     ...
     8. cnn
     ...

Wow, this is almost too easy:

1. It's pretty obvious that Spiderman has taken over the role of the 
Oracle from Nostradamus, his fast-and-loose spider-sense replacing the 
methodical astrological calculations of the Old World of magic.

2. This doesn't sound terribly UA-relevant, but it's clear that 2002 was 
the year that the mass-marketed crap music Empire decided to Strike Back 
(see number 6 for more on this theme). Shakira and her pop-music cohort 
were back on top at the end of 2002 as the RIAA geared up for an 
anti-file-sharing extravaganza. Perhaps the whole file-sharing crackdown 
in progress is an attack on Infomancy as a school? There are all kinds 
of billsin the works that will prevent people from using their 
information in ways other than the way the creator planned: this would 
spell the death of infomancy on the Internet, just as it looked like it 
was going to explode in power and popularity as a school of magic. Maybe 
the Sleepers are in league with the RIAA and the old-school notion of 
authorship and copyright?

3. This one and number 8 both point to the replacement of news content 
with "info-tainment" and spectacle: the world trade center, symbol of 
the beginning of the end of the new Rome, is replaced with the 
bread-and-circuses of the Olympic Games, while the voyeuristic 
king-for-a-day fantasy of American Idol replaces CNN, the tool for 
actual empowerment through knowledge. Both of these are references to 
Dermott Arkane's ascent, as the nature of the "news" changes drastically.

4. Okay, this one gets more specific than all this other large-scale 
conflict stuff. Anthrax symbolizes the threat of Plague which has loomed 
large in the public eye recently, and the World Cup clearly represents 
some kind of magical chalice that can save us. Is this the Grail? A 
chalice that restores life and cures disease in the drinker? The Grail 
is linked to the Cornucopia, the horn of plenty owned by Zeus that gave 
forth all food in abundance... perhaps this is what makes it the "world" 
cup, the cup that brings forth all things. "I'd like to give the world a 
Coke"... need I say more?

5. Along the same lines as 2, 3 and 8. "Who's Osama Bin Laden? Here, 
kid, listen to some more of this screechy Canadian girl...". Another 
attempt by Arkane to distract the masses from the objective, unalterable 
fact that the perpetrator of the September 11 attacks has never been 
brought to justice. Spin as he might, this will be a difficult hurdle 
for the Heisenberg Messenger.

6. Everyone, of course, knows that Bin Laden actually trained his troops 
using Star Wars as a propaganda video: the young Mohammed Atta is 
recruited from his dull desert farm existence to fight the evil empire, 
he trains under a robe-wearing hermit named Obiwan-sama Ben Kenlaben or 
whatever, he flies his spaceship through the narrow canyons of the enemy 
city while being chased by imperial fighter jets and finally "trusts in 
the Force" of Allah and turns off the auto-pilot to hit the bullseye and 
blow up the Death Star... you know. What, you didn't know that? After 
Bush tried to "strike down" bin Laden and he instead vanished into thin 
air, I'd have thought that everyone would make the connection. And then 
when the Empire Struck Back at the desert planet of Afghanistan only to 
reveal that the US had, in fact, fathered the entire Taliban movement 
during the Cold War? You didn't get it? Come on, this stuff is even more 
obvious than the Communist symbolism in the Smurfs. Anyway, the switch 
from Taliban to Star Wars rounds out last year's theme of 
news-converted-to-escapist-entertainment that Arkane has been working so 
hard on. Good work last year, Dermott. Take a break. You deserve it.

Matt Norwood


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