Skip to main content

Book Review: Identity Crisis by Ben Elton

Identity Crisis by Ben Elton.
I'm a fan of Ben Elton's work, particularly his ability to tell a story that taps into an aspect of the zeitgeist of the day. In Identity Crisis Ben weaves a story around social media outrage and its influence on shaping almost everything from the mainstream media and celebrity down to individual everyday people.

The book also explores the minefield of gender identity as modern inclusiveness clashes with traditional thinking.

In the story, Mick Matlock is an old school Scotland Yard detective, investigating a murder with no clues, when he inadvertently becomes the focus of social media outrage for victim blaming.

As his investigation continues the body count increases with each new victim seemingly a casualty of social media outrage. Mick begins to suspect much more is going on.

Initially I found this book a little difficult to stay hooked into. Whilst I use social media I'm not as hooked into it as people who live on their phones and computers seem to be.

While social media does influence much that happens in the real world, with trending hashtags and viral posts, I'm somewhat frustrated by the arrogance of social media's self importance. Especially given that the most vocal on social media are often the worst kind of people imaginable... and they're the ones shaping the conversation.

Identity Crisis is very much focussed on these people and their influence but it goes much further into how their outrage can be manipulated and leveraged to affected things with much higher stakes than just causing offence.

I honestly don't care much for people who get offended or outraged on the internet. Fortunately the books main character, Detective Matlock, doesn't either, which helped to keep me reading.

Once I got into the main part of the story, I definitely enjoyed how everything begins to unfold. Seeing behind the curtain of how social media manipulation could (and probably does) happen (maybe with a lower body count though).

My only gripe is that I felt the ending didn't really resolve itself in a satisfying payoff. It's not terrible but it's one of those endings where I (at least) thought 'Is that it?' The ending kind of cuts itself short in terms of the characters in the sense that, it took me quite a way into the story to really invest in them, and now it's done? Maybe I just wanted a little more time with these people.

Overall a great read. Especially, I would think, if you're neck deep in social media participation and haven't really thought about why certain topics, hashtags, and posts, suddenly start gaining traction, while anything you try to make viral struggles to even be seen by your own social media 'followers'.

Identity Crisis is available from Amazon.

* This post contains affiliate links.

Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

Is AI Art 'Art'? The Say NO to AI Art Movement, and Why Human Artists Will Adapt

AI Art No T-Shirt by TET Also available on other items . Right now there is a big debate over not just whether AI art is 'art' but whether AI's are actually ripping off the work of actual human artists, without their consent, to create their images - particularly images 'in the style of' specific artists. From my own observations this debate started to get more traction when artist's signatures began appearing in the output of AI Art  image generators. Is It Art? Cool Froyd the Cat Sketch by TET. My style is very much influenced by classic Disney and WB character styles. To get some clarity on how real human artists work (of which I am one)... we, that is all of us... take influences from the art that has come before. i.e. whatever artists we like, have studied, seen etc. we are influenced by. It shows up in our work, intentionally or not. If you really study my own cartoony art style you'll see I'm heavily influenced by early Disney and Warner Bros cart

If I Could Talk to the Animals... Maybe AI Can Make This a Reality?

W e've always been able to talk to animals, and it's sometimes said, jokingly, you may have a problem if they start talking back, but what if they could? One thing that AI is good at is processing data and spotting patterns, common elements, and highlighting relationships which makes it ideal for all kind of research, so why not studying the language of animals? It seems like science fiction but so were  real-time language translators not too long ago. What if you could understand exactly what your pets are saying to you and speak back to them (through a real-time translator) in their own language? While were not there yet, advancements in AI learning systems seem to suggest that the idea is no longer as far fetched and fanciful as it used to be. To be honest, using AI to decipher animal communication accurately, is something that never crossed my mind but I'm truly excited to know that this research is being done. Watch the Bloomberg Originals video, Could AI Unlock the S

The Braille Skateboarding App - How it Changed My Mind on Switch Skating

My Profile on the Braille Skateboarding App. Braille Skateboarding launched it's new Skateboarding App worldwide on November 23rd, 2020. About a month prior to that they did a 'soft launch' via email for anyone living in Australia. I'm guessing this was to give the app a final test in the real world before launching it proper. Rather than explain what it is, watch Aaron Kyro, founder of Braille Skateboarding, run you through the app in the launch video below.  In a nutshell the app is virtually everything Braille has to offer accessed right from your phone, from tutorials to the Braille Army Community. The app is free but you can unlock more features if you upgrade to a paid membership. Braille App Trick List. One of the apps unique free features is keeping track of the tricks you've learned and giving you an overall score so you have some way to measure your progression. There is an extensive list of tricks, covering all types of skateboarding, categorized by diff

Optimus Robots, Self Driving Cars and Buses - Tesla's 'We Robot' Event and the Evolution of Optimus

Tesla Optimus Robot Serving Guests. Image: Tesla O n the tenth of October Tesla held their 'We Robot' event, which I guess is the new incarnation of their previous Tesla AI Day annual event. There were three much talked about reveals, the driverless taxis, a driverless bus, and Optimus robots moving around the event, fully interacting with people 'on the ground'. Tesla Driverless Taxi. Image: Tesla While it was cool to see so many driverless taxis, that you could get in and experience for yourself as they drove around the Warner Brothers lot, and the driverless bus was something of a surprise reveal nobody expected, my attention was on Optimus. Tesla Driverless Robovan. Image: Tesla It was in September of 2021 that Elon Musk first announced his plan to create an affordable, humanoid, domestic robot, that would eventually be in homes worldwide. That vision was underlined with a person wearing a robot suit, that wasn't as well received as Elon may have liked, despite

Movie Review: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) *No Spoilers*

I f you're like me and didn't go to see  Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom  in theatres you made the right choice. For context, I loved the first Aquaman movie . It's one of my favorites from the Snyder/DCEU era. It is a relatively well made adventure story, with some fantastic world building, amazing visuals, and included some commentary on  environmental issues as well. Despite having, mostly the same creative team, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes across as a film that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, in terms of a sequel. On the one hand it wants to showcase the cool, fun, wisecracking, but bad ass, rock'n'roll  version of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) with another rollicking adventure. On the other it feels like someone said it had to be epic with potentially world changing stakes so Aquaman would have to do 'King Shit' and be all serious, navigate deep sea politics, and generally try to be a responsible heroic good guy that he is when he's not being

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now

Robot Uprising Update: 1X Plans to Build 100,000 Humanoids by 2027 - I, Robot's Vision of the Future Getting Closer

1X Technologies, Robot for the Home, Neo. B ack in 2022 Google announced it had a small army of 100 AI enabled robots training at the company to become home helpers. As far as I know these robots, which were visually, little more than a pedestal on wheels with a mechanical arm and a head full of cameras, haven't emerged in anyone's home (and haven't banded together, laser guns attached, to start robot Armageddon either). Undeterred by Google's lack of progress, along with the rapid advances in humanoid robots,  1X Technologies , a robotics company based in Norway and San Francisco, focused on creating humanoid robots for your home, plans to build 100,000 of its Neo Humanoid robots for the home by 2027. That puts them into I, Robot territory. Let's hope they don't own any big, omnidirectional trucks to facilitate the roll out on mass, while some old school, naysayer detective tries to warn everyone that something isn't right! 1X Technologies, who have at le