The old games are exactly that. Old. And like anything old, they lack sap, spine, vigor. In many, many ways, the Occupy Wall Street movement calls this out. 99% of a population will always have more game than 1%, it's a biological fact, Jack.
Saturday's Silent Protest against the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda Katehi, is one of the best ways yet of #OWS demonstrating the impotency of the old games.
Here's the GameChangers scene breakdown:
A day after the notorious on-campus pepper-spraying incident, the UC Davis protesters have the idea of creating dialogue with Katehi, by forming a stage between the Administration Building and her car. (Note that no one is out front taking credit for this idea, it doesn't belong to anyone. It is a shared concept in which everyone can play a role. Ownable ideas are typical of an old game; shareable ideas are typical of a new game.) The stage is a hundred yards long, a catwalk extending the length of the theater, lined by hundreds of students sitting on the ground in order to effectively elevate the stage.
In forming this stage, the protesters change roles, from 'Quad Occupiers' to 'Silent Audience.' It doesn't take them much time to do this. There's no 'spin' of a story being told or sold, no research to back it up, no 'official position,' only a simple intuitive agreement to keep their mouths shut for the duration of the scene. Game on. 'Silent Protest' is the name you can give the game. The reality of the scene emerges from the focus on this game, this agreement. It is the absence of protest that will make the protest so dramatic.
After 3 hours of what must have been a lot of hemming, hawing and phone-calling by her team about 'how to handle it,' the scene finally begins when the Chancellor enters, accompanied by a couple of non-speaking 'extras.' She is lit dramatically by the glow of cameras----eyes of the world----tracking her across the stage. Her delaying has made this a nighttime scene, which is even more dramatic, the darkness creating a heavier silence. By taking the stage without a script, i.e. nothing in her head, Katehi is exposed as someone with nothing in her heart. She's got nothing. Because ----
Her script won't be ready until tomorrow!
The silence of the audience is remarkable. Its discipline is impressive. No one breaks. The silence is marred by a few unable-to-resist journos whose subdued questions as the Chancellor nears her car only underline the otherwise-completeness of the silence.
Here is what gets revealed by the scene: The Chancellor cannot speak for herself. Her heart is closed, her emotions as frozen as the mask of solicitude fixed on her face. She is afraid of saying the wrong thing. Her institution's students intimidate her. There is no dialogue between player and audience...between citizen Katehi and community...between administration and student...between authority and autonomy. No dialogue. Nothing. Just the silence of an old game, getting called out for what it is. Frozen on empty.
The protesters didn't have to say a thing. All they had to do was create an environment in which the old game of 'script and control' would be displayed in all its inadequacy for the world to see.
Onward.