Enthusiastic sh.it.head

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  • 138 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Context matters a lot:
    -Discussing a general topic at length among peers, and someone says “Dude, no one cares”? They’re telling you to stop taking, and a) are annoyed, or b) in a mood to put you down. Use the rest of the context to determine your next move (e.g. stop discussing it, point out why it’s important, or leave).

    -Discussing an insecurity of yours, and someone says “Dude, no one cares”. Usually means they think the basis for your feeling insecure is unwarranted, usually though not always followed by a more direct statement on said insecurity. Meant to be reassuring, as someone else said.

    -In some cases, “no one cares” means that in the speaker’s experience, the amount of people who do care about thing x is marginal, to the point that paying too much attention to that warps the understanding of the situation. This is tricky - by way of example, I’ve said “no one cares if people are trans or not” before (I’ve learned - this is a deliberate example, stay with me). Taken at face value, this is blatantly untrue - some people care a lot, both in a negative and positive sense. But as just a guy in the world, this is truly my experience - other people being trans generally isn’t something the majority of people care about. I can think of only one person I’ve met who does care (negative sense), and he’s generally a weird guy anyway.

    As you can imagine, though, going around saying this carries some danger, as it can gloss over the risks posed to trans people by those ostensibly marginal figures. My saying no one cares is a product of my necessarily limited exposure to and experience of the world. The best way to approach this IMO is considering, and speaking respectfully to, the speaker’s blindspots - whether or not the people who care are truly marginal demographically, the impact the people at the margins actually have in the topic of discussion, etc. Depending on the exact topic, either it will be demonstrated that it is essentially true - while it’s doubtless someone cares, the number of people and impact they have on the topic is marginal to the point that this is irrelevant to the topic at hand - or identify a blindspot that hampers the speaker’s understanding of the situation.

    I will note that in speaking of context, you may not be neurotypical (took a couple tests at some insistance by my kid, and despite being an odd duck in general, odds are I am) - unfortunately I can’t speak to how to elicit and identify full context in that case, but others here might. Apologies if that’s the case, where “use the rest of the context” probably sounds like “draw the rest of the fucking owl” in an owl drawing tutorial.


  • I’m not certain I buy that in every single case, but do buy into it for many, many cases.

    It’s actually something I tried to pass on to other folks when I worked a phone customer service job - there’s cases where it’s obvious the anger is coming from somewhere else if you’re paying attention (example I had and shared was clearly fear), so told people to pay attention to exactly what folks are saying to try and elicit that, and speak/address the actual problem/emotion.

    Fuck I miss that job some days…feels like the only thing I’ve done that I was really, really good at. Was also a small team with very little corpo oversight at the time, so don’t know if these approaches would fly as well today v. scripted responses.


  • To this day, I haven’t the foggiest what the fuck he and Guattari were trying to say, but think the concept of the rhizome can be useful insofar as I think I understand it.

    sigh Gonna have to try again. Started reading Benjamin’s Arcades Project recently in a similar fit of “shit you referenced in grad school and successfully bullshitted your way through because no one else actually understands it either” guilt, may as well do it for the big D too.

    My experience re: this phenomenon was “I stared at A Thousand Plateaus for a while, then all of a sudden every fucking thing I read afterwards mentioned this guy.”





  • A challenge for you (or anyone interested in taking it up): Once a day, while waiting for public transit, pay attention to the people around you. Does anyone have something interesting about them (hair, clothes, jewelery, weird keychain thing on their phone, etc.)? Ask one identified person about it. See someone who looks like they are on the verge of tears? Ask them “Hey, is everything ok?”

    9/10 times you’ll have a brief Q-A-back off interaction, but sometimes it’ll turn into a longer conversation. Yes, it feels awkward. Yes, in some places you’ll come across as rude/uncomfortably weird (keep your dominant culture in mind - you probably wouldn’t try this in some place like Finland or something). But I’ve had some very interesting experiences doing this in the past (usually with the ones who look upset - if you’re willing to be a sympathetic ear you might just make that person’s day).



  • Being a little literal, but I can guarantee someone has said 1, 3, 5, and 7 in the past twenty years. Heck, probably the last year.

    Payphones are still a thing in some places and get used - I started doing a thing involving them a yearish ago (it’s in my post history if anyone really cares). Literally had someone ask “Hey, are you done with that phone?” as I was jotting down its number, which was shocking. Can confirm where I am they still take coins (it’s 50 cents now, unless you’re calling a toll-free number).

    VHS is making a … come back isn’t really the right word, but there’s a small number of folks interested in what’s on old tapes they find and some hobbyists swap stuff. And there are still a few video rental places around (though really, really rare - or near places like campsites, catering to folks with cars that still have DVD players or households with spotty internet).

    It’s all still disappearing, no doubt, but not 100% dead yet.



  • I feel like there’s a way to do it that doesn’t suck - an examination of the book WRT the hero’s journey, picking out elements borrowed from English literary tradition to see how they’re deployed v. original texts, etc.

    Real talk though, I feel it comes from a place of not knowing how to appeal to young people. I ran into the very same thing once when asked about course ideas for first year students coming directly from high school. I had no idea (still don’t) what would appeal to kids, so I thought a course that used Harry Potter as a keystone text (everybody being familiar, using it as a bridge to more traditional lit) could work. But as I said the words I knew 18 year old me would’ve hated that, sooo…