Eccentric Flower:201004/News and Weather
From Eccentric Flower
News and Weather
It's been pretty beautiful the last couple of days, and my productivity has dipped below even its usual meager level. No, I'm not in trouble - I'm not neglecting the daily firefighting and urgent business - but it's starting to eat at my brain that I'm not getting any major work done. It's not gnawing at me enough that I'm actually doing it, but I figure that I'm getting close to critical mass, and sometime in the next two days it'll be sufficient that I put aside the internet and hunker down and enter the fugue state that allows me to get Serious Work done for about two days, at which point I'll have caught up my backlog.
Save that paragraph above, because if you ever find my work habits (or, for that matter, my play habits) mystifying, it will explain everything.
With me, there are two states of mind - either I do only things which can be dealt with in bursts of fifteen to sixty minutes, or I can try to get into Serious Work done, which requires a special mindset that is very tricky to get into and very tricky to get out of. This is the Gumbo Rule.
As you know, Bob, I don't cook very often. Some of that is because I live with a Truly World-Class Genius Chef Who Would Totally Be Rich Running an Expensive Restaurant Right Now If I Didn't Think She'd Die From Stress, and who wants to compete with that? But the other problem is this allocation-of-effort issue. Basically, I'm willing to throw something together if I can do it in a half hour and not give it my undivided attention, or, for special occasions or when the mood hits, I'm willing to cook something that will take me all afternoon (like gumbo, which cannot be made properly in under three hours, although some of that is unattended cooking time). But there's no in-between. Devote two hours of complete attention to cooking just to make a normal weekday dinner? You must be kidding. It's not worth it, not when I'd just as soon make a peanut-butter sandwich.
Similarly, I can spend all day fighting crises - and get commended for it - without it really bothering me or making me feel overextended, because crises tend to resolve quickly and in bursts. Solving ten half-hour problems in a day is, to me, a constructive use of a day and I don't have to resort to mental handstands to get in the right state of mind to do it. But real programming - for that I've got to get myself in a special state, a not-very-interruptible one, and that just doesn't strike me as worth doing until I absolutely cannot ignore the matter any longer.
The only problem with this setup is that there's a part of my brain which doesn't consider the firefighting to be "real work," and it chews at me and decreases the pH of my bloodstream the longer I shoo it away.
That goes for writing as well, or at least it used to, but I've gotten better and better at ignoring that part of my brain where writing is concerned because I've convinced it there is no longer any payoff, and the guilt has lost a lot of its oomph. Whereas that part of my brain can still convince me "If you don't go do some Real Work you'll lose your job and everyone will see what a complete failure you are and you'll be living in a cardboard box," even if it isn't true. Or, put another way: In writing I have accepted failure, more or less, which has pulled its fangs there.
Anyway, so, I haven't been doing any Real Work, but I'm sure its moment is coming. Very soon. Possibly tomorrow.
What have I been doing? Well, among other things, I've been wishing for a new written-format social medium and griping because, as usual, no one else has the same desires as me. [And here we complete our drift from the rather generic title topic into a fairly specific rant. Consider yourself warned.]
My distaste for real-time voice contact is well-known. I simply don't communicate well verbally. I can't form thoughts coherently, I stumble, I loop around, I repeat myself, I overuse words and phrases, and in general am ineffective in that medium. With the written word I function at lightning speed and am generally lucid and even sometimes succinct. With the written word, I seldom commit sins like reusing the same key word twice in a single paragraph, and even when I slip, I work so quickly that I can go back and change my second use of "coherent" to "lucid" and you'll never know. I type almost as fast as I think. I can spit rings of words around you in a written medium.
In a written medium, I am in utter control; I can make my signals do exactly what I want them to do. In a spoken medium, it's like my trying to draw; I just can't make the pencil or brush do what my mind wants it to do, and I don't understand why I can't - since in my other media (words, programming) thought translates perfectly into action. Why shouldn't it here?
It frustrates the hell out of me. And it frustrates me even more knowing that the rest of the world vastly prefers audible communications. It frustrates me every time I go to one of my online games and am prodded to get voice chat, or even excluded because I refuse to do so. It frustrates me because it doesn't matter if *I* am capable of making real-time strategic decisions in a fast-moving combat scenario while at the same time keeping up a stream of typed conversation: It doesn't matter, because no one else is willing to read it. I can fight and type at the same time, but they can't fight and read at the same time. Forgive me for thinking this but to me this often feels a lot like they are idiots. I know it isn't true. But I feel like they're unwilling to do the legwork, that they're opting for the lazy way, because my mind just refuses to believe that they are unable to.
(Remember my classic neurosis: If I can do it, surely you can do it. If I can't do it, then it's a miracle anyone can do it.)
But here's the interesting thing: I realized that I don't especially like real-time written social contact either, except in special circumstances, when the mood and the time permit. That is, instant messaging or chat. The problem is that it's invasive. It's not as invasive as the telephone, but I feel like I can't just step away from an IM conversation for an extended period of time to do something else; I feel like that's rude to the person on the other end.
With something like Twitter, the thing is that it can happen as quickly or as slowly as I like. The problem is, y'all aren't doing it as fast. I know there's a gap here because I hear people complain about information overload on Twitter. Say what now? I wish there were three times as much information. When I turn on Twitter in the morning, I read back to where I left off the previous night, and I'm annoyed when it only takes me a minute or two. On a day like today when I'm not doing Real Work, I check it, oh, not more than once every five minutes or so, unless I'm actually dealing with a crisis. On a day when I am doing Real Work, obviously, I don't check it because I don't check anything else while I'm doing real work. And then, after I come out of sequester, I'll check it and be disappointed that there wasn't more.
The problem isn't that I need more to do. The problem is that this is my conduit. This internet thing, this is my preferred window through which I encounter the world. Yes, it's at a remove; I happen to like it that way. So when it doesn't live up to my needs and expectations, and I fulminate for a while, I'm not blowing it out of proportion. This is the tool. It's the only one I like. If you use one hammer all day long, it should be a hammer that doesn't give you blisters or leave your arm sore at the end of the day. These things are actually important.
Some of you are thinking, right now, "You need to get away from the computer more often." And I can understand why you're thinking that. But you're wrong. I do need to interact with other people more often, that's true. But you're defining "interact" too narrowly. There's nothing wrong with satisfying my interaction RDA with online contact, even intermittent, indirect, non-real-time online contact ... if everyone else would just cooperate so I could get my RDA.
Of course, I can't encourage you to live your lives on the computer the way I do, and obviously most of you have other practical concerns which prevent you from doing so, things like kids and jobs that force you to interact away from the screen. And my tongue is at least partially in my cheek; I do recognize the value of getting out and getting sunlight and fresh air and actual eye contact with other humans. (In fact I've been doing a lot of that in the last few days when I should have been working!)
I just want, when I do sit down at the computer, to have a near-constant inflow of information, and more than that, I want to know that my outgoing information is being seen and absorbed, or what would be the point in transmitting it? And often I feel like I have a shortfall of both - both an insufficiency of incoming data, and insufficient confirmation that outgoing data is accomplishing anything useful.
I think I would also like more commonality. This is the major source of my disgruntlement with the social aspects of online games. You would think, in a perfect world, that it would be a great spur for socializing. I mean, you already know you have something in common, because you're all here playing this game, right? Even if the conversation were all "shop talk" about the game, that'd still be something. But it doesn't happen that way. Most of the people who play these games are really not interested in conversation. Some of them seem outright incapable of it. And on the rare occasions when they do talk, the level of verbal fluency and fluidity is often appalling.
No, I'm not being an intellectual snob; I don't insist you use the same size vocabulary I do. I'm not talking about that. You don't have to use "commonality," "disgruntlement," "fluency," or "appalling." You can type entirely in words of one syllable if you like, and it still might turn out to be a good conversation. Nor am I talking about spelling, nor grammar; although I consider those things important, a lack of them is not necessarily fatal. No, what I'm talking about is the complete inability to present concepts. I'm talking about the kind of sentence where you read it, and read it again, and still aren't entirely sure you have figured out what they were trying to say.
I'm sure these people are far more coherent in voice chat! I'm sure that's why they favor it so heavily, why so many online games are considered to be missing an essential component these days if they don't offer that service. It's just a damned shame that they insist on communicating in the medium where, if I tried it, I'd sound as incoherent as they do when they try to write.
Bottom line: I refuse to play in their house, and I'm annoyed more people don't come to play in mine.
Dude, you're only following 68 people on Twitter. I'm following more than 200. It is plenty enough info for me, most days, especially because I follow a lot of film people who post a ton of links.
As for IM, I have started being more firm about "brb" or "bye" because I want to walk away for a bit.
-- 21:12, 6 April 2010 (BST)
Wouldn't make any difference; links are not the kind of content I'm talking about and I mostly just skip past those. (And the reason I don't follow 200 people is that I don't follow people who do nothing but post links.)
-- 21:15, 6 April 2010 (BST)
Apparently this is also a suboptimal place to have a conversation -- I wrote a fairly lengthy comment and received the response that I was "blocked" from editing. I think the real problem was that I wasn't logged in. Regardless, the comment has been eaten with nary a burp.
-- 21:17, 6 April 2010 (BST)
Which, er, I didn't mean to sound as critical as it probably came out. More like rueful.
-- 21:18, 6 April 2010 (BST)
The login system here is capricious. Some people it seems to keep logged in forever; others, like me, can get logged out in the middle of composing a post. I wish I knew.
(But, yeah, I will readily concede this is a suboptimal place to have a conversation.)
-- 21:27, 6 April 2010 (BST)
I like voice chat in games for the same reason I do not usually use my horn in a driving emergency -- if I really need to tell a teammate something, it's because my fingers are BUSY. During low-key stuff I have no trouble typing and doing stuff, but I have to switch into chat mode and while I'm typing, I can't input commands. Even if it only takes me a second or so to type something, that's a second when I can't be controlling my character. If it's critical enough to be telling you something, it's critical enough that a second of not controlling my character may mean I (or you) are dead.
I have no trouble reading chat. I have attention to spare, it's just that I don't know how to resolve needing to use the same keyboard to type chat messages and control my character...
-- 22:20, 6 April 2010 (BST)
I can type "mez right" or "stop" fast enough that it doesn't stop me pushing the same seven keys over and over (my god combat is boring in MMOs). If I'm in a situation where a fraction of a second in pushing the five key makes a huge difference, then I don't want to be part of that world. We are talking about MMORPGs here, not shooters. (Related thesis: Why I don't play shooters.)
-- 22:53, 6 April 2010 (BST)
So remind me what your objections to Facebook are that aren't identical to your previous objections to Twitter?
-- 23:29, 6 April 2010 (BST)
Well, the summation on Twitter, to refresh your memory, is that it is often banal and idiotic, and promotes short attention span and lack of focus on real content (by which I mean, say, the ability to read and absorb a couple of thousand words at a time).
All of these things are still true, but Twitter turned out to actually be useful, useful enough for me to overcome my dislikes of it (which, I stress, are still present, I'm just ignoring them). Mea culpa.
Facebook is banal, idiotic, ugly, high-school cliquish, full of stupid people, full of malware, petty, has deep privacy concerns, is run by evil people, is full of illiteracy, spammy, very white-trash[see below], and in general is doing its best to contribute to the downfall of humanity.
I could possibly overcome those objections as well, were I willing to be tarred with that brush, but I'm not. Despide the fact that I know full well that there are some genuinely good and intelligent people on Facebook, the MAJORITY type of Facebook user is a type which I do not want to be put in the same category with.
And yes, that IS snobbish and classist and a lot of other ugly things, so we'll just take your criticism as read, mmkay?
-- 00:34, 7 April 2010 (BST)
Regarding IMs, I take for granted that any conversation can suddenly go on hold or drop entirely without notice. It's the nature of the medium. People IMing are usually multitasking, and IMs are rarely at the top of the priority list.
Regarding Twitter, I'm certain there are more than 200 people who don't just post links... consider browsing through the people your friends follow, list, and/or retweet and seeing if you can pick up some more? (I follow about 140, across three accounts, and that's more than enough for me. I tend to go with the reverse strategy of culling people who post too often, unless they're people whose updates I really enjoy.)
-- 00:43, 7 April 2010 (BST)
I am reminded that, if either is the white-trash one, it is MySpace, so I have crossed out the clause above. However, the fact that I have looked at both and am incapable of distinguishing between the two of them should tell you something.
Sorry for the extra-vehement response, Peebles; I realize it was a little like shooting me with a popgun and having me come back with the Gatling. You may not have realized before the depth of my detestation for Facebook and MySpace. I guess you do now. Whatever I may have felt about Twitter it is not a thousandth part to what I feel about those two places.
-- 01:03, 7 April 2010 (BST)
Nah, you didn't seem particularly vehement. I knew generally how you feel about Facebook. I just wanted to know if it was going to be productive to point out that it provides something like the instant-gratification information overload that you're craving.
-- 03:21, 7 April 2010 (BST)
Joy:
Do you not have trouble using the phrase "white-trash"? I don't use it anymore since I get very uncomfortable with the implications.
-- 19:19, 13 April 2010 (BST)
Is "trailer trash" worse or better?
I use the term because to me it fills a particular niche which there is not a word for. I'm not biased against the poor, because I grew up poor and I know there are a lot of good poor people. There are ALSO a lot of people who have embraced a culture of the extremely lowbrow, of stupidity and banality and trashiness and poor taste, and these are the people I admit to an unreasonable bias against.
You see my problem: I can't say "classist" because these days that's reserved for distinctions of social-strata markers (like where you went to school) or how much money you have, neither of which I care much about. (In fact, if anything, my biases there are strongly against the rich and/or upper-crust, many of whom I think need to suffer some horrible divine venegance.)
What I need is a word that expresses my distaste and, yes, unreasonable and nasty bias against some forms of the popular culture of stupidity. If I call out specific markers, someone will pipe up with, "Hey, I like that, and I'm offended!" - like I learned the last time I did a rant about NASCAR, a prominent marker of this set.
In the UK they have the word "chav," which is very similar to what I'm getting at, but putting aside the fact that no one in this country except Anglophiles knows the word, I gather that it is increasingly contentious in its home nation:
Guilty as charged. It's no one's fault if they're born poor. It's no one's fault if they're born in a culture that consists of nothing but NASCAR and Christmas Tree Shops, or the equivalent thereof. It IS their fault if they decide to revel in that culture instead of running screaming from it as fast as they can.
If that makes me mean-spirited and evil, so be it - but do bear in mind that I spent a lot of time and energy and pain trying to get away from the culture of my youth, and that this may be something hardwired very deeply in my brain.
-- 20:51, 13 April 2010 (BST)
P.S. One of my least favorite (albeit fictional) chavs in the world is the reason I never did take to watching the revived Doctor Who, even though I rather liked Eccleston. I hear she was supposed to be an "audience surrogate." Guess that means I'm not the audience, then.
-- 21:04, 13 April 2010 (BST)
P.P.S. A term which means very close to what I am trying to get at, in this country, is "redneck." However - and this will either amuse or annoy you or both - I don't personally use the term "redneck" because it offends me, because I have seen it used too often as a catch-all to express condescension about the poor, particularly the Southern poor. (See also: Southerners, condescension toward by Northerners, subsection "People Columbina's gonna punch in the face one day.")
-- 21:07, 13 April 2010 (BST)
P.P.P.S. And if all that was tl;dr for you, or seemed inconsistent to you, let me make it simple:
I have no bias against the poor. I have no bias against the uneducated. I have no bias against the lower class. (I'd be shooting myself in the foot.)
I have a bias against the stupid, and especially against the willful and deliberate glorification of stupid.
-- 21:11, 13 April 2010 (BST)
I call it Bart Simpson Syndrome, that is, the deliberate glorification of mediocrity. I have nothing but contempt for anyone who chooses to be less than they could be, especially since so many of them wind up on the public dole. I hate having my pocket picked by stupid, lazy... let me know when you come up with the right term. For now, I'm fine with trailer trash.
-- 21:26, 13 April 2010 (BST)
Ah, see, I was doing okay until you brought in the public dole. While I admit that I've had problems with this in the past ("If they really WANTED to work, they'd find a job"), I gradually decided this wasn't reasonable of me, and economic conditions have made it less so. There are a lot of people right now who have no alternative but to be on some kind of social support. This is why I don't discriminate on the basis of poverty. Poverty is almost always not a choice.
-- 21:32, 13 April 2010 (BST)
I agree. I like the concept of Workfare, in which people who are willing to try to better themselves receive assistance to do so. My problem is with the slugs who don't even try. When I was living in Vallejo, CA, a million years ago, our rooming house was a made-over, huge old house divided into seven different apartments. The single mom living in the basement apt. with her three kids couldn't wait to have another child, so she could get more welfare and move someplace better. She considered it her right. She may have been a product of several generations of the same attitude, but I don't have to like it.
-- 21:40, 13 April 2010 (BST)
So, why should we run from NASCAR and Christmas Tree shops? For me, given the choice between The Three Stooges or The Wagnerian Ring Cycle, I'll pick the Three Stooges.
Also, an interesting article about culture: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/08/TheCultureoftheCommons.shtml
-- 21:59, 13 April 2010 (BST)
Joy:
Well, trailer trash does leave out the racial comparison, and I see your point about a lack of bias against the poor but a bias against the glorification of stupid. Although all of this comes close to my father spouting off about things being "uncouth" and even if I don't personally get NASCAR I'm not sure it is something to make fun of from some sort of notion of high or low, worthwhile or trashy, culture.
guppy hates it when people use redneck (disparagingly - she actually uses it in a positive way) for I think very similar reasons.
-- 18:57, 15 April 2010 (BST)
Iain:
I can't just step away from an IM conversation for an extended period of time to do something else; I feel like that's rude to the person on the other end.
You know ... most IM clients do have an option that lets you click a button that says something like "Have to step away for a moment, be back soon" or some such. And especially if you actually say, "I need to do XYZ, be back in a few" before you click the button, most people are perfectly understanding.
I decline to engage in the Twitter part of the argument, as it is of the devil. DIE, DEMON TWITTER, DIE LIKE THE DEVILSPAWN THAT YOU ARE! ... ahem. I may have strong feelings about that.
-- 21:09, 6 April 2010 (BST)