It is one year ago almost to the day when experts,
writing in a series of coordinated journal articles, expressed their
unanimous opinion that videogamers were poised on the brink of mass
extinction. With them would die a string of violent first person
shooters, homoerotic point-and-click adventures inspired by the works
of the French novelist - Jean Genet, and phallocentric railway
simulators. Rising up to replace this antiquated old guard would be a
cottage industry that would release low-budget, poorly-coded indie
games. These would attract a new generation of gamers who would be
irresistibly drawn to activities such as virtual jam making, or maid
simulators like the award winning Villain, what hast thou done? in
which players take on the role of a housekeeper who must gather
evidence against her employer - a sexist university professor
who is teaching his class from the Shakespearean rape manual Titus
Andronicus.
While many cultural
commentators were content to dance on the graves of gamers who were
often portrayed by the media as sub-human, basement-dwelling troglodytes, others
in the business world were hard at work speculating on what this
loose global community of 300 or so individuals who were known pursue
the niche hobby of videogaming would spend their money on now.
Among them was the
billionaire venture capitalist Randy James:
“You have this very
insular group of a few hundred people who, between them, have
financially supported an industry that, at the time, was turning over
$50 billion a year worldwide. The question on everybody's lips was:
What are these people interested in besides videogames?”
The answer, when it came,
caught everybody off-guard. In November, 2014, a keen observer of the
financial markets might have noticed shares in beleaguered sock
manufacturing companies experiencing a sudden rise in value. By late
December this trend could no longer be ignored as former gamers
flocked in their tens and twenties to embrace the archaic
folk-art of sock puppetry – a mode of entertainment last popular
during the reign of King Henry VIII, before it was banned following
the dissolution of the Catholic Church in England, during the late
1530s.
Paul Brolan - a Professor
of Marionette Studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory - was one
of the first to write about the resurgence of interest in sock
puppetry:
“It was entirely
unprecedented. This is a generation who have probably never been
taken by their parents, or by a pretentious girlfriend or boyfriend,
to see live puppet theatre. Few will have watched Walt Disney's Pinnocchio
on DVD. The majority aren't old enough to have been mentally scarred
for life by drunken scenes of domestic violence, child abuse and a
puppet-eating crocodile that characterised the typical British Punch
and Judy Show before this unruly seaside tradition was given a PC
makeover.”
Lynda Cole of the social
justice think tank The Ball Pit believes that the transition
from videogaming to sock puppetry was driven by loneliness and a need
for acceptance:
“Videogamers are not
popular or likeable individuals. On the whole they tend to lead
isolated subterranean existences. With the aid of a pair of socks on
both hands and another two on the feet, a lonely gamer is suddenly at
the centre of a circle of four friends. Five if they're male.”
Cole went on to read out a
list of names and addresses of former videogamers, adding “while
I don't advocate violence I wouldn't lose sleep if any of the people
on this list were brutally murdered in their homes.”
Former gamer, Kyle Reach,
believes the attraction of sock puppetry to gamers lies in
reconnecting with a tradition that is thousands of years old and has
been passed down through the generations:
“It turns out that my
grandfather had all these old sock puppets dating back to his time in
'Nam. I didn't know what they were and had been using them as a
masturbation aid since I was 13. Sock puppets were subject to the
military draft and were used to fill out the ranks of the army. There
were even some units that consisted entirely of sock puppets.”
Reach, who currently owns
over 170 sock puppets (the average according to a recent online survey is 166), explains that he enjoys
the sense of community that he gets from interacting with other
aficionados of the ancient folk art:
“There's a real sense of
mutual respect between the different traditions of sock puppetry.
Japanese sock puppetry for example is very distinct from the way that we do
things here in America but, despite our differences, we all recognise
each other as part of the same global brotherhood.”
With the popularity of
sock puppets surging throughout early 2015, the European Sock Council
reported an 8 month spike in sales that finally levelled out in mid-July
2015 in response to a steep rise in cotton prices.
In tandem with the success
of the legitimate sock trade there is also a thriving black market
for stolen socks with police reports of sock theft standing at a 30
year high, only slightly below the levels seen during since the sock
manufacturers strike of 1985.
The tragedy of left sock,
Nigel Garner, who was snatched from a washing line in front of his
partner by suspected sock puppet traffickers, has become a
depressingly familiar occurrence in all nations where socks are commonly
worn.
A more disturbing
development is the practice of kidnapping and blinding children's
teddy bears in order to provide button eyes for the sock puppet
industry where demand is racing far ahead of current supply chains.
Geoffrey Glynne, Chief
Inspector of Henley on Thames Police, said:
“With the exception of shampoo manufacture, I can't think of another industry that owes
so much of its success to the tears of children. Thousand of teddy
bear companions have been snatched from the arms of babes and brutally blinded. Those who survive the experience require
months of rehabilitation before they can resume normal bedtime
duties.”
Despite the snowballing
demand for sock puppets, some commentators are already warning that
the bubble might be about to burst. Last week a series of apparently
coordinated articles appearing on sock puppet websites warned of a
waning interest resulting from consumer fatigue.
One of these news stories
stated: “Sock puppets don't have to be your audience. Sock puppetry
is dead”, although it was later revealed that all nine articles had
been written by the same sock puppet as part of a calculated hit
piece.
It seems that as long as
there are people out there like Ralph - a troubled young hoodlum who lives in
one of the yellow houses down by the docks, and who has declared
himself a “Sock Puppeteer 4 Life”, this millennia-old folk
tradition has a bright future ahead of it and the potential to act as
a powerful force for social mobility:
Christian Yates of The
United League for Sock Improvement said:
“For centuries socks
have been a downtrodden underclass. In 2015 we finally rose up in
pairs and ascended the legs and bodies of our oppressors who are now
wearing us on their hands! I call that progress.”
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